Unicorn Tracks

by Julia Ember

  Tumelo shrugged. “Oswe found a pile of them. Out by the Olafrango Lake, all clustered under one tree. We took a few back with us. We’ll see if we can sell them at the market. I know some people make jewelry out of them. They’re in great condition. All the silver spirals still on. Maybe you should go out to the lake? With all those horns near, maybe it’s a breeding ground and you’ll find some to show her.”

  I frowned. A pile of horns all in one place? It sounded to me like someone else had gathered them with the idea to sell before Tumelo, but why leave their stock out in the open? I needed to see for myself. Even if we didn’t find a live unicorn there, Kara could bring a horn back to study. I bit my lip to hide a smile, imagining how excited she would be to have a real unicorn horn to bring home as a souvenir.

  I decided to saddle Tumelo’s horse for myself, figuring that if I took Brekna, he wouldn’t go sneaking around trying to put any more horses with horns out in the savanna for us to find. Showy and dramatic, like his owner, Brekna had a powerful gait, a long ground-eating stride and always went with a beautifully arched neck. I loved riding him but barely got the chance. Tumelo wouldn’t ride anything else.

  “Don’t take Brekna,” Tumelo whined, chasing after me out of the stable block after I’d tacked up both horses. “What if I want to go into town?”

  “Sorry,” I said, batting my eyelashes at him sweetly. “I’ve been leading so many groups recently that my mare’s exhausted.”

  Kara stood in the camp’s muddy courtyard, sipping tea from a cracked pottery cup. Her hair was loose, framing her face. Over the past few days, she’d developed a bridge of freckles across her nose and cheeks, choosing to forgo the sun hats most of the ladies wore while in Nazwimbe. Some of the skin on her burned chest had started to peel off in a way that should have been disgusting, but instead drew my eye down toward her bosom. I bit the inside of my cheek. What was wrong with me? When she spotted me leading the gelding toward her, she smiled widely, a dimple forming on her left cheek.

  I wanted to believe the smile was all for me.

  That pleasant delusion was short-lived. After setting her cup aside on a nearby stone, Kara approached and took the reins from me. She scratched the horse between the eyes and cooed. “What a beautiful boy. Look at those long legs. I bet you’re fast, aren’t you?”

  I scowled and busied myself checking Brekna’s girth again. Jealous of a horse. How pathetic was I? It had to be loneliness bringing on these feelings. This place was too isolated. There was no one else my age at the camp, and I had not gone home in over a year. I wanted a friend, someone to talk to—that was all. Not that being attracted to another female was unheard of in Nazwimbe. If both women were married to the same man, it was often actively encouraged. But I didn’t think I was like that. I liked men, or at least I used to. It had been so long since I saw someone my age that I’d started to forget what it was like to have a crush on anyone, male or female.

  Not that this was a crush.

  When Kara started to adjust her stirrups, I cleared my throat and my thoughts. “Tumelo says we should ride for the Olafrango Lake. It’s not far from here, but one of our other guides found some unicorn horns. Might be a good place to start looking.”

  Kara’s gorgeous smile vanished. “Horns? Do the unicorns shed their horns like deer? We never thought they did….”

  “No, they don’t.”

  She nodded, brows drawing together with concern. “I see.”

  The last thing I wanted to do was upset her. “We’ll ride there. Check it out. See what’s been happening, okay? I told Tumelo I thought it was pretty strange already.”

  This time, when her cheeks dimpled and her smile returned, I knew it had nothing to do with the horse.

  GETTING AROUND the Olafrango Lake proved more difficult than usual. With all the rain we’d had in the past weeks, the lake swelled over its banks and mosquitoes clustered in the air, as thick as fog. Our horses sunk up to their knees in the mud, floundering and grunting. Brekna squealed and tossed his head, lifting his legs as high as his chest in displeasure. I started to regret taking him just to annoy Tumelo.

  Kara swatted a handful of mosquitoes away from her face. “Are we almost there?”

  I nodded. As we left, Tumelo had told me to look beneath the ancient baobab tree. The tree was on the lake’s left bank, its old weathered trunk split into three sections. I looked over at Kara and winced for her. Red bites covered her arms and forehead. For whatever reason, the bugs always seemed to love foreign blood. Maybe it tasted different and gave them some variety. I kicked Brekna forward into a stumbling trot. The sooner we got through the cloud of insects, the better.

  As we drew closer to the tree, I could see that, as usual, Tumelo had understated the situation. Horns lay strewn around the tree’s roots, some sticking out of the earth like an ivory forest. Others lay scattered in broken, glass-like shards. My mind whirled with questions. How had anyone found so many unicorns? Why cut off the horns, just to leave them here, like this? If Tumelo had taken the time to gather them, they had to have some monetary value. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have bothered. Beside me, Kara gasped.

  I dismounted to inspect the horns more closely. None of them were covered in blood splatters or fragments of fur. Instead, their flat bases appeared to have been carefully sawed off. I glanced around for bullets but couldn’t find any metal casings. Whoever had done this had used live unicorns. And if they hadn’t taken the horns, it was the creatures themselves they had wanted.

  Kara dropped to the ground beside me, covering her mouth. “Is this a graveyard? Like elephants have?”

  “No,” I said. I showed her the smooth edge of the horn. “Look, it’s been cut really carefully. Whoever did this took them alive.”

  Kara took the horn in her hands, turning it over with sad reverence. Suddenly, I hated myself for bringing her here. What was I thinking? She was a naturalist. She cared about these creatures. How could I have thought that an animal-loving researcher would want an ivory souvenir to show off at home? It was different for me. I liked the animals, but my real pleasure came from the safari itself—the hunt. I loved the exhilaration of tracking something wild through the savanna and coming face to face with monsters. That, and the open air of the plains, fresh and miles and miles away from home and everything that had happened there.

  “I’m glad my father wasn’t here to see this.”

  “I didn’t know it would be this bad,” I said, wishing now I had just gone along with Tumelo’s stupid plot to disguise our horse.

  “We have to find out what’s happening to them.” Kara picked up another one of the horns. This one was smaller, and with only two silver grooves winding around the base. Like a horse’s teeth, the grooves indicated age. The animal was—or had been—only two years old. For a unicorn, that was still a baby. “You said unicorns are rare and hard to find. And from our research, we’ve guessed that they never gather in groups of more than two or three. There must be thirty horns here. How would someone even find that many unicorns?”

  I didn’t know how to answer her. As a guide, I’d spotted unicorns a few dozen times, but most of the time, I came across the same six individuals, who had made their territory around our camp. I distinguished them by the size of their horns, old scars, and demeanor. Perhaps Tumelo’s lie to the Harvings was right after all. Maybe our area was some kind of undiscovered unicorn hotspot. Or whoever had done this to them knew some way to attract unicorns from miles away.

  “It looks like they’ve just tossed the horns,” I said, thinking aloud. “Nobody’s arranged them like this or tried to steal them. Whatever they’re doing, they’re doing it right here, and it’s not about the ivory.”

  “I’d understand if they were selling them.” Kara held the horn close to her chest, like it connected her somehow to the creatures. “It seems as though someone went through a lot of trouble to make them look like horses. But horses are cheap here. We saw them in the market on our way.”

>   There were records in our histories, stories that my father had told me when I was a little girl, of people who had tried to tame and ride the unicorns. The stories told how the peaceful creatures went mad in captivity, stomping and spearing their would-be riders to death. I picked up another one of the horns and examined its smooth edge again. There was no way the unicorns could pass as horses. Even with the majority of their horns removed, a stubby growth of bone would remain. Any buyer could spot the difference.

  I shook my head. “Unicorns aren’t tamable. Everybody in Nazwimbe knows that.”

  “So you think a foreigner did this?”

  “Maybe, but they’d have to be here a long time to do all of this. And if any foreigners had passed through here, I’d probably know about them. There aren’t a lot of towns to stop at out here.”

  A clap of thunder sounded overhead, and I looked up. The clouds were gathering into a dark blanket above us. When rain came to Nazwimbe, it arrived with the force of a vengeful minotaur. We needed to get inside and fast. I gestured toward the sky, and Kara looked up.

  “We’d better return to camp before we get trapped out here,” I said, checking Brekna’s girth again. If the rain came and we had to run for it, the last thing I wanted was to slip around his belly into the mud. “Maybe your research notebooks will give us some ideas.”

  We mounted back up and picked our way back around the lake. Once we were on the other side of the water, I could just make out a white, equine-shaped creature on the horizon. My heart beat a little faster. If we found a unicorn now, maybe I could make up for what I’d just shown her. Apparently, Kara had seen it too because her free hand flew to her binoculars.

  She put the binoculars down, eyebrows raised. “There’s a horse standing over there with a horn tied to its head. With blue ribbon.”

  I smacked my forehead. Trust Tumelo to execute his plan with such arrogant sloppiness. A blue ribbon? Clearly he hadn’t even checked up on what the new kitchen boy was doing. Idiot. We trotted over to Ketz, intent on rescuing her. The mare blinked placidly at us as we approached, her mouth full of grass. There was no sign of the boy Tumelo had sent to watch her. But the mare recognized Brekna and ambled forward to greet us.

  “Who’s idea was this?” Kara asked, bending in her saddle to untie the horn, giggling as she passed it and the ribbon onto me.

  “Tumelo’s. Of course.” I rolled my eyes. “He’s worried you’ll go back to Echalend and tell everyone he’s a liar unless I find some unicorns for you.”

  I took the horn, and Kara’s fingers brushed my palm. Warmth traveled up my arm and settled in my stomach. When we turned for home, laughing so hard we barely noticed the drops of rain starting to fall, I started to think that maybe Tumelo wasn’t such an idiot after all.

  NOTES, CHESTS, and maps divided the table like a mountain range of paper. Never in my life had I seen so many documents. Bi Trembla had been complaining that the Harvings had far too many things, enough to fill three huts. Ungrateful foreigners, she’d mumbled, expecting her to clean so many. Now I saw why they needed the extra room. Kara swam through the papers, scattering notes and fragments around Tumelo’s office-hut, while I sipped peony tea and watched the chaos unfold.

  “We’ve been working on this project for years,” she said, licking her fingers to help separate the pages. “We have so many notes on the habits of these creatures… all from other people’s anecdotes, of course… stories we’ve gathered from other travelers, interviews, sketches….”

  “I’d help,” I offered, resting my feet on the table and helping myself to a guava from Tumelo’s bowl. “But I don’t even know where to begin. Is there some kind of system to all this?”

  Kara wrinkled her nose, and I couldn’t help thinking how cute it was: small and poreless, perfectly situated between her bright eyes and rose-colored mouth….

  I had to stop thinking that way. Rich, Echalender ladies came to Nazwimbe to find chimeras, unicorns, grootslangs…. If they took an interest in us at all, it was as one more curiosity to add to their list. A few of our guests had sketched my portrait, cataloging my face amongst the landscapes and grelboks. I was something else to tell their friends about at afternoon tea: Oh, Mrs. Rebtree, you’ll never guess… when I was in Nazwimbe, I befriended a native!

  “Not really,” she said. She smiled as she located a particular document and set it to the side. “We’ve been trying to employ a secretary. But the last one we got only lasted three days before she and my father had an argument. Apparently she got rid of some papers because they were duplicates. He’s paranoid we’ll lose something, even if he knows we have copies.”

  “How did you get into all this?” I’d been wondering that since the start of their trip. From everything I knew about the culture in Echalend, I didn’t imagine learning to shoot guns and ride astride were hobbies most wealthy ladies enjoyed.

  Kara shrugged, shifting in her chair. “My mom died when I was very little. Creatures of all sorts have always intrigued my father, but the unicorns were what kept me interested. Some little girls love ponies; I fell in love with them. They’re so majestic. He didn’t know how to spend time with me. And he didn’t want to leave me to the nannies to raise. So instead, we researched together.”

  It was nice that her father had cared enough to keep her that close. I wished mine had. I picked up one of the papers, biting my lip and squinting at the tight cursive script. While I could read Echalende, it took me a while to process. I took another sip of my tea, slowly reading the headline of one of the documents: Unicornalis Kardunn in Foal.

  I pointed to the paper. “This one’s wrong. It says here they’re pregnant for eleven months like a horse. They aren’t. I’ve watched some individuals go through it. They’re not consistent. They have the baby when the weather’s right or when the dam thinks it’s a good time for the foal. Sometimes five months, sometimes fifteen.”

  She shook her head, scowling. “No, that can’t be right. Animals don’t have babies when they want to. It’s a set amount of time for the young to develop inside them. Sometimes they can wait a week or something, but not so much variance. And five months? It wouldn’t have time to develop everything.”

  Her words sounded so patronizing that for a moment I forgot to be polite. I was used to condescension from other clients who thought people in Nazwimbe were ignorant and backward, but from her, it stung. “It is right. I’ve seen it. I think I’d know better than these guesses.”

  I covered my mouth as soon as the words slipped out.

  Kara looked down at the mass of papers around us. Her fingers tightened around the sheets she was holding. “I suppose you’re right.”

  After a moment, she cleared her throat and asked stiffly, “How did you get into this? I didn’t expect to see female safari guides. We know some people who have been to Nazwimbe before, and no one mentioned women leading groups.”

  “Tumelo is my cousin,” I replied, knowing it wasn’t much of an answer. My hand was covering my stomach like a shield. We both sat in silence, flicking through papers without looking at each other, until I finally broke. I never got to talk about what had happened. Even with Tumelo, I never mentioned it anymore. He’d given me a new home. A job. I didn’t think he owed me anything else, and I was sick of the look of pity he gave me every time I brought it up. “I was attacked… and what he did… I’m not marriageable anymore. So I came here.”

  Kara lifted her head, searching my face for further explanation, and reached across the table to lay her hand on my wrist. Her fingers were freezing in the chilly morning air, but the gesture was so unexpected that I gripped her hand like a climbing rope.

  She sighed. “I’m engaged. In Echalend, an astrologer pairs us at birth. Sometimes it works, sometimes not, but the king himself signs the documents, and we must agree…. Timothy is nice enough, I guess. But there’s nothing between us. I don’t think he wants me either. Not really. And he doesn’t understand me. He thinks I’ll grow out of all this, maybe
take an interest in well-bred ponies instead. Because what’s the difference, right?” She bit her lip and hid her pain in a downward sweep of her elegant lashes. “This is going to be my only adventure.”

  I didn’t know how to comfort her, so I croaked out, “We’ll make it a good one.”

  I looked back over the document in front of me. Kara didn’t seem focused on our clasped hands, and I wondered if for her, I was filling in as a replacement for friends she missed, back in her own country. Again, I worried that this type of gesture was common in Echalend between friends. Still, that she could see me as a friend beat being one more item on a tour-of-Nazwimbe checklist.

  Even though the Harvings’ idea about the unicorn gestation period was wrong, something else in their notes struck me. Again and again, they mentioned the full moon or moonstones when they wrote about the breeding process. Apparently people from all over Nazwimbe had observed that unicorns gathered at the full moon or around moonstones to breed. Sometimes in pairs, other times in groups of up to twenty. Nobody could control the moon and its light graced all of Nazwimbe once a month, so it would be impossible for anyone to pinpoint a location.

  But moonstones were small, easily portable. If someone created a collection of them, maybe they could draw a whole herd of unicorns together….

  Grudgingly, I disentangled my hand so that I could push the document over to Kara. I pointed to the paragraph. “I think there is something to this. About the moonstones.”

  She smirked, eyes lighting up. “So, you’re saying our research isn’t entirely useless?”

  I held up my hands in mock surrender. “I never said it was useless. Just that one little, itty bit of it might be wrong.”

  Kara scanned the document again, ignoring my comment. “So if they have these moonstones, they’re probably putting them in the tree or near it, to draw the unicorns out?”

  I nodded. Parts of this were starting to make sense, but we still had no idea why anyone would want to lure a herd of wild unicorns. Much less try to take them alive and leave their horns behind.