Unicorn Tracks

by Julia Ember

  “Even with the language barrier?” I teased, leaning over to plant a soft kiss on her forehead. I wanted to kiss her lips, but so soon after our encounter with the guard at Obasi’s well, I couldn’t. “My father barely speaks a word of Echalende. Sorry. It’s not like tourists really come here.”

  Tentatively, Kara reached out to stroke my hair. Even though I wanted her to touch me, I stiffened as her fingers wound themselves around a loose braid. An image of a large hand grabbing my braids and throwing me against the ground flashed through my mind. I pulled back and braced myself against the barn’s wall.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” she whispered, a sad frown tugging at the corners of her mouth. “When will you realize that? Sometimes you’re okay and then you back off again. You don’t have to keep pushing away from me.”

  I traced her jawline with my finger. Her sadness made me feel guilty, even though I couldn’t help the way my body was reacting. “I think it’s just… seeing the Pits today. Knowing he’s so close.”

  “What do you think will happen? Will he kill himself?”

  I shrugged. “They all do in the end.”

  “But what if it takes years? Is he going to haunt you for that whole time?”

  “I try to think about other things. It helps when I’m away from here, working. I love my family, but it’s worse every time I come here. When it first happened, my father never really got it. He kept saying again and again, ‘We caught him, we caught him, it’s over.’ He didn’t understand why the rest of me didn’t heal when my cuts did.”

  Kara adjusted her position so she could lean up against the wall beside me. She looked up toward the barn’s rafters. “We need to get Tumelo back.”

  I nodded. Our shoulders brushed. The accidental touch disarmed me, and my body relaxed. “What do we do about the stone?”

  “Give it to the General?”

  “I’m not sure… we have these legends. I was always taught that they were stories, just fairy tales. But they talk about a moonstone that can be used to stir the unicorns into battle fever. They respond to it, and it makes them vicious. Kings used it.”

  She slowly rested her head against my shoulder. “So it’s more than just a way to lure them. It changes their behavior.”

  “If the legends are true.”

  The foal struggled to be put down. We carried him outside the mare’s stall and let him try his legs on the solid earth. His legs splayed, and he shuffled around the inside of the barn, nosing curiously at stray wisps of hay and empty buckets.

  Laying down in the clean straw, we watched our quadrupedal little orphan explore his world on wobbly, bowed legs.

  Kara stroked my stomach as I breathed in the scent of fresh cut straw. “Do you trust the General with it? If it turns out to be everything the legends say it is?” she asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “Then for now, we keep it close.”

  MAMA LIFTED Imrai to the assembly bell, helping him swing the ceremonial gong with his chubby toddler arms. Someday, calling the warriors’ gatherings would fall to him, and by the time he was a man, Mama wanted Imrai to feel like his exercising his power was as natural as taking a breath. When he finished ringing the bell, he waved at me in excitement. I’d made friends with my brother again by slipping him cubes of sugar at breakfast when Mama’s back was turned.

  The village warriors drew around my father in a semicircle, pulling their masks down over their faces. Our central square filled with the men and their tall horses. They wore thick paint smeared across their chests in jagged scratches of red and green. Each of the twenty men had a rifle slung over his back, and wore the ceremonial claws covering their right hands. They presented themselves as a deadly mix of new technology and formidable dedication to tradition.

  I struggled to climb into Elikia’s saddle, my legs restricted by the fabric of the new dress Mama had given me and forced me to wear. It wouldn’t do for me to appear before the General dressed in dusty man’s clothes like an ill-bred tramp. Kara and I parked our horses behind my father, facing the crescent moon of assembled warriors.

  I felt out of place in the warriors’ gatherings with so many of Obasi’s friends and former brothers appraising me like an enemy. In Nazwimbe, when you were elected to the warrior’s guild by the chief, the position was for life. The guild became your family. Before I left with Tumelo, I had told my father how I felt several times, but he always dismissed me. They understood, he’d comforted, they knew that what Obasi did was unforgivable. It’s all in your head, Mnemba. When will you stop believing the whole town is your enemy? But if that was the case, then why did I always feel like they waited for me to do something? Like their eyes held hope, pity, and accusation all at the same time?

  Tumelo was the only one who understood, who had listened to me and noticed how differently they treated me after it happened. He’d come back from his studies at the guide’s academy in Mugdani and had found me a shell of the person I used to be. Come with me, cousin, he’d said, his eyes bright. Let’s see if we can put some spirit back inside you. I closed my eyes, listening to the sounds of the gathering horses and the roosters crowing the early morning. We had to get him back, whatever it took.

  “One of our own has been taken,” my father began, raising his voice to a loud boom. All the men assembled already knew what had happened to Tumelo. My father had sent out runners the night before to make sure that all of them would be ready to leave at daybreak. But the announcement, the stirring of suspense and blood rage by the chief’s speech—these were our traditions. Mama stepped behind him and settled his headdress over his dark braids. “My nephew and a foreigner who was his guest have been taken captive by a slaver’s group who would overthrow our beloved General.”

  The warriors raised their clawed hands into the air and chanted, “We follow you.”

  “You honor me,” my father replied.

  At the noise of the bell, most of the villagers emerged from their huts, rubbing their eyes. They raised their fists sleepily, some of them covering yawns. A naked toddler ran out into the street, and his mother chased after him, grabbing him in her arms and belatedly raising her fist with a rueful grin.

  Kara leaned over to me, so close that her soft hair brushed against my cheek. Mama had given her a new bag to hold the foal. He nipped my shoulder playfully when she drew close. “What are they saying? Doing?”

  I shrugged. “It’s a ritual. We always do it before the warriors leave the village. Back before Nazwimbe was all one country, and the chiefs used to fight each other, it was a promise between the chief, the warriors, and the town’s people that we were all bound together. Now it’s just tradition, and my father likes to continue it.”

  Mama handed Father his chieftain’s spear, and he raised it to signal the warriors to file out. She blew me a kiss and lifted Imrai so he could wave us off. Kara and I rode up alongside Father, with the men following behind us. I felt their eyes boring into me, and I wished we could go to the General without the ceremonial guard. General Zuberi commanded a force of men larger than the total population of our village. He didn’t need the warriors Father brought to ride out against Arusei, but for a chief to greet his overlord alone signaled disrespect.

  As we rode down the path, I could hear the dissenting murmur of conversation growing louder behind us. My father’s eyes remained in front, and he seemed not to notice the way a few of his warriors traded glances as we rode past the Pits. Fury bubbled in my chest, and I remembered once again why I had followed Tumelo and left the only home I’d ever known behind. What Obasi did had broken me, but it was the town—these men—who finally drove me away.

  “What’s wrong?” Kara asked. She didn’t bother to whisper, but I doubted any of the warriors spoke her language anyway.

  I ground my teeth and looked toward the Pits. “It’s like they all blame me. I mean, I know that everybody accepts it was Obasi’s fault… but still, whenever I come here, it’s like people keep expecting me
to forgive him. Because he was a paragon. Because he wasn’t a bad person, before. Because he was their friend. They don’t understand that it’s not about them, and it never has been. It’s one of the reasons I don’t come home anymore.”

  Even though he couldn’t understand the language, my father understood the anger in my tone. He turned in his saddle, pulled his horse up, and rode next to me. Following the direction of my gaze, he squeezed my arm and said gruffly, “I know what you’re saying, Mnemba, and how you feel. And I know that before you left home, I didn’t try to understand. Now I wish I had listened better about how some of the people here made you feel. Until Obasi takes his life, and he will, there are always going to be people who wish it was different. People hold out hope that the past can be healed. But the weight of this doesn’t have to rest on you anymore. Know that if in a moment of weakness, you give in and that animal ever claws his way out of the earth, I will be standing there to gut him.”

  Emotion made me speechless. Silence fell behind us. I chanced a look back. The men who had been whispering stared at my father with gaping mouths. A few of the other warriors bore a smile that surprised me.

  The man nearest to us looked between my father and me, whispering, “What’s bound in blood cannot be undone.”

  Pain and hope both swelled inside me.

  Father looked toward the Pits and spat on the earth.

  AS WE approached Mugdani from the height of the mountains, the whole city seemed to move like a stream of multicolored water beneath us. I hadn’t visited the capital since I was a small child, and seeing it with fresh eyes took my breath away. The streets were paved with polished bronze. The oblong houses of the ministers and top military officials lined every road, painted in brilliant reds and blues, the tiles of their roofs glittering like a fish’s scales. Terraced farms lined the mountain’s sides, holding stalks of wheat and corn that billowed in golden wisps. Mounted warriors manned every street corner, their masked faces impassive while children, merchants, and aristocrats scurried past them.

  I wondered what kind of weapons Arusei planned to bring in from Echalend that made him think he could overthrow a General who governed a place like this. No wonder he needed the unicorns.

  The General’s villa stood on a man-made hill at the very center of Mugdani. It was positioned so he could watch everything but live well above the noise and smell. As we descended into the crowded streets, Kara covered her nose with her hand. The city’s perfect image was shattered by the stench of human sweat and animal manure.

  Everywhere we rode, eyes turned to stare at us—at Kara. In a city full of ministers, the people were used to seeing processions of chiefs with their entourages come to petition the General. But a white girl with red hair, carrying a tiny unicorn foal, riding a stallion that lived to show off, drew their attention, and people came to the front of their shops and stalls to stare. Brekna danced under her, snorting. The stallion knew when people were watching him, and he thrived on their admiration. Tumelo would have been proud of his horse’s display.

  “He’s feisty today,” Kara panted as she tightened Brekna’s reins. “I expected he’d be exhausted by now, but he’s going to unseat me if he doesn’t stop bouncing around.”

  “He’s excited. It’s not every day huge crowds of people come out to stare at him. Plus he knows he’s got a rider worth showing off.” I winked at her. Her cheeks were already pink from the sun, but she blushed as red as a hogfish snout.

  “All the tour companies and shipmen told us we couldn’t go to Mugdani. Even diplomats meet the General outside the capital, usually,” she said. “I might be the first person from Echalend to ever see it.”

  That explained the reaction of the crowd. Children were now lining up along the streets to point at us. The guards squirmed in their saddles.

  My father scowled at the attention. He motioned to the rest of the warriors behind us. “Let’s trot the rest of the stretch. People are getting too curious, and I don’t want to get stuck in a mob.”

  We trotted to the base of the General’s villa complex, scattering merchants like minnows ahead of us. Some of them raised their fists and cursed as they quickly wheeled their carts out of our way. The odor of manure and bodies was replaced by the fragrance of cinnamon, orange peel, and nutmeg as spices fell onto the street. A lump formed in my throat. Those smells reminded me of Bi Trembla’s baking, and I wondered what she must be thinking now. Tumelo had promised her we would return by nightfall, but I hadn’t dared ride for the camp before going to my father. If Arusei’s men had tracked our horses home, I didn’t want to think about what they might have done to Bi Trembla. Especially if they believed she was hiding us.

  Five guards stood watch over the cobbled path that led up the mound to the General’s residence. My father raised his hand flat to greet them and then bent in his saddle to answer their questions. Unlike the rest of the warriors on the streets, they didn’t wear masks. Their brown eyes swept accusingly over Kara, and they pointed, tone angry. But they kept their voices so low I couldn’t make out all the words they said. When the name “Arusei” passed my father’s lips, the guards exchanged uneasy glances and stepped aside. I was suddenly curious how my father, and everyone else, seemed to know of him.

  General Zuberi met us on the terrace outside his red brick villa. He looked nothing like the proud warrior I remembered from my childhood. His back had stooped, and he walked with a cane. An attendant followed closely after him, clutching a folding wooden stool in her hands. She set the stool up for the General, and he lowered himself onto it with wobbling knees as our party filed into the courtyard.

  He had never been a large man, but when I was a child, people used to say that the General was like a leopard. Not so big as a lion nor as bloodthirsty as a hydra, but when he struck, he moved unseen, dragging his enemies by the throat to their deaths with such grace people never even saw the slaughter. Even now, old as he was, when he sat, his posture had a rigid straightness, and he balanced his cane across his knees like a rifle.

  He looked up at my father and his weathered face cracked into a smile. “Ade! It’s been too long, my friend. What an honor… and a surprise.”

  Father raised his arm in salute and then climbed down to greet the General. They grasped forearms, and then the General peered over my father’s shoulder. His eyes narrowed, and he stood up again, limping toward Kara.

  She removed the hat Mama had given her to block the sun, a gesture I knew was meant to show respect in Echalend. The General leaned his weight on Brekna’s sweaty flank and spoke in Echalende. His accent was thick and musical and his words gentle, but I was suddenly aware of the predatory intensity in his eyes. All at once he definitely didn’t look fragile or old anymore, and I wondered if we should have left Kara with his guards at the gate. “My dear, you’re a long way from home.”

  “We’re here about your cousin, Arusei,” Father said. “He’s building a railway and planning to bring weapons from abroad.”

  The General abruptly turned away from Kara. His eyes snapped up to my father’s face. “Where did you get this information?”

  “My daughter.”

  Everyone turned to me.

  I swallowed as General Zuberi turned his intense stare on me. “I work as a safari guide now, for my cousin in the lower delta. I was out with one of our guests—Miss Harving, who you see there—and we came across a pile of unicorn horns, thirty of them at least. It’s not normal… they don’t shed their horns or live in groups.”

  “Come to the point,” the General urged, tapping his cane on the ground.

  “Arusei and a group of men are capturing the unicorns. We followed them to their camp. They’re building a railroad, as my father said. And they have my cousin; they took him captive. And Miss Harving’s father. They’re going to bring weapons in on the railroad.”

  “And they just let you waltz into their camp to have a look? Did you see these weapons? Arusei just told all of this to you?” General Zuberi rai
sed an eyebrow.

  I flushed, having to repeat it yet again made me realize just how foolish and naïve we had been. “No, sir. Initially, we tracked them back to their camp to see what they were doing with the unicorns. One of Arusei’s men saw Kara and assumed we must be dealers from Echalend. Then we went back, and her father and my cousin met with him. But it all went wrong, and he arrested them. We only just managed to get away. We dressed my cousin up like a chief and Mr. Harving as a weapons dealer.”

  Father chuckled, rolling his eyes despite the situation. “I bet Tumelo loved that.”

  “And you have stolen one of Arusei’s beasts, I see.” General Zuberi gestured toward the tiny unicorn. He reached up toward Kara. “May I see it? Satisfy an old man’s curiosity—I’ve never seen one so small or so close.”

  Kara unwound the bag’s straps from around her neck and passed the baby to the General. In the arms of a new person, the foal began to struggle, but he was firmly enclosed by the fabric. The General ran his fingers over the fuzz-covered horn. “How did he capture you, huh? Was it a moonstone?”

  “We didn’t see what he used.” I swallowed, glad his eyes were fixed on the little animal instead of me. I couldn’t have the most powerful man in Nazwimbe believing that I had lied to him.

  “Did you see the weapons? Do you have any idea what it is that he plans to bring or what we will face?”

  I shook my head. “The railroad is not complete yet. But they’ve taken hundreds of slaves. I don’t know where they are getting them. I believe they are capturing townspeople from local villages or offering money to their chiefs in exchange for delivering them.”

  My father made a sound like a growl in the back of his throat. His warriors fidgeted in their saddles. The excesses and greed of many local chiefs had been stamped out when General Zuberi took power, but Father took reports of this behavior personally. In our village, we had people who had sought refuge from the tyranny of their own chiefs, many with amputated limbs and smiles scarred by blades.