by Sean Platt
“Stop feeling sorry for yourself,” he said.
“Edward?” Cameron called from inside the house.
“It’s nothing. Stay where you are,” Edward yelled. But hoofbeats continued to approach, so he yelled louder. “I said it’s nothing!”
The hooves slowly retreated. Above Clint, Edward’s horn glowed. But Clint didn’t want to be healed. He pushed up onto his rear, then climbed to standing. He was bleeding from a dozen places, but waved Edward away.
“Don’t heal me.”
“You’ll bleed to death.”
“So I’ll bleed.”
A glow struck Clint. He looked up at the unicorn, furious.
“You were bleeding on my patio,” Edward explained.
“You see?” Clint said. “Magic makes everything pointless. You kick me through a window, then heal me. So why do it? What’s the meaning? To make a point? You know what Stone said? He said we had it too easy. ‘You and Edward don’t know what it’s like to ride for real,’ he said. ‘It doesn’t mean anything if you get shot. You can shoot through walls.’ And on and on. And he was right. What difference did it all make, in the end?”
“It made a great deal of difference.”
“I’m still a grizzled old gunslinger who will die alone. You’re still a jerk who will kick me through a window if it suits you. And you still think I won’t understand. You still won’t tell me everything.”
Edward sighed. “Sit down.”
Clint, disarmed by the sudden resignation in Edward’s voice, sat.
“First of all, I didn’t know it all from the start. I learned it along the way, same as you, except that I was usually a few steps ahead. And when, back in San Mateo Flats, I refused to tell you what I’d realized — namely that Kold hadn’t gotten the Orb out of Mai, that she would likely recover, and that when she did, she’d finally be the pure Orb that she was supposed to be — I didn’t refuse to tell you because I thought you were too dumb. I didn’t tell you because in the end, what happened had to be your decision.”
“I don’t und…”
“Magic has rules. You know that. You also know that it’s not inert, and that it responds to the will of the soul who wields it. Unicorns are the white. There is no conflict inside us. But you? Humans? You are rife with conflict. Unicorn ‘free will’ means little. But your free will means everything. I couldn’t pollute your decision in the final reckoning. I had to follow your path, whatever it turned out to be. You sealed our fate when you set me to fight Cerberus. I knew it was wrong, but did it anyway.”
“Moronic! You should have told me!”
“In the end, I did.”
“But by then, I couldn’t change my mind! What sort of idiocy is that?”
“Conviction. Belief. Decision. Intention. All matter. I know it’s cruel. But once you chose not to try to persuade Mai, it was all over.”
Clint shook his head. “It’s not fair.”
“Nar. It’s not. But what you must understand, Marshal, is that as I’ve told you over and over and over again, Mai is in a better place.”
Clint waved a dismissive hand, exhausted by the ancient discussion.
“I’m not talking about superstitions and legends, Clint. I’m not talking about NextWorld. You thought the new magic growing inside Mai consumed her like a cancer, but it’s more like she outgrew her body. When I was overpowered by the magic south of Nazareth Shiloh at the open vein, I felt a small portion of the same thing. What you saw was that I forgot myself. But what it felt like to me was that I was in the wrong place. I didn’t know where to go. It was as if I was wearing ‘Edward the unicorn’ like a costume. I didn’t know how to wear that body with the magic so intense, and if I could have left my body, I would have. Same for Mai. We saw it from the start. Her abilities. Then her fugues and blackouts. Hours and days gone missing. You knew it when you hitched her. Her condition was very advanced by then, but when she died, she didn’t just die. She evolved.”
“Evolved into a box under my apple tree.”
Edward shook his head. “What you buried was just her husk. Like what we found in that lean-to before her purified soul returned.”
“And all for nothing.”
“She knew it, Clint. You know she did. Kold found her after we split from him, way back at the beginning after we left The Realm. Kold knew, even then, what she was. So she ran. But she didn’t run without direction; she ran where her magic told her to go. And when she found you, she held your arm for protection. She fought him for years as we followed — enough fighting to strip the soul from her bones. But in the end, she knew what had to be done. The fight was necessary. She had to die, so that she could be reborn as the pure being she was intended to be.”
“And then because of me, she never even fulfilled whatever destiny she was supposed to have.”
Edward sighed again. “Mayhap.”
Clint felt a drop of blood fall onto his hand. Another landed on his leg. But when he looked down, he realized that it wasn’t blood that had fallen. The liquid was clear, like water. It had rolled from the end of his nose. He was surprised, but made no effort to wipe the tears from his eyes.
“I miss her. Even after all these years.”
“She’s all around you,” Edward said.
“Platitudes.” Clint shook his head.
“Truth,” the unicorn countered.
A long, quiet moment passed between them. Edward hadn’t yet fixed the shattered glass door. In the quiet, a gust of wind caused a sliver of glass to teeter from the frame and fall with a clink.
“A kid came to see me. He says the magic is gathering in town.”
“Yar. The unicorns know about it.”
“And Kold knows?”
“Yar.”
“Is this it? Is this how it ends?”
“I don’t think so. This is something else. Whiter. More powerful. But most importantly, more focused. Things are growing. Literally growing. New fields. Crops coming to maturity in days rather than months, and producing huge yields. Different parts of town at different times. At the hospital in OldTown, all of the patients’ plants began to bloom long after they’d died and been forgotten. Incurable patients healed. A woman with a broken neck stood and walked out, unharmed, as if cured by a unicorn, back before we got disgusted enough with the human population to cut off most contact. But then whatever it was moved on. The next day, the plants at the hospital again started to falter. The patients who had begun healing reached a plateau. And on that day, a row of azaleas bloomed from a long, hairline crack down the center of Main Street.”
“What is it?”
“I don’t know.”
“For real you don’t know, or I’m not going to tell you because you won’t understand I don’t know?”
“The former. I’ve run out of foreknowledge. Your decision was the end of it. This is all new to me.”
“But what do you suspect, oh wise and great unicorn?”
Edward tossed his head toward the open end of the patio. “Come on. I’ll tell you on the way.”
“On the way?”
Edward nodded. “We’re going to the river.”
CHAPTER FOUR:
DOWN TO THE RIVER
Clint’s horse was very excited to go to the river.
“Yippie! Mee-sa wanta walk in the water!” said the horse.
The horse was named Joe. Joe’s grappy (who was also named Joe, same as his appy) had followed Clint, Edward, Mai, and Pompi all the way from his herd of slow talking horses who drank from the magic Rio Verde river to Clint and Mai’s front door. When Clint tried to shoo him away, Joe (generation 1) had explained his life’s purpose versus Edward’s life purpose in what had sounded like a sea islands accent, getting most of the facts wrong. He even got Clint’s gender wrong while standing directly in front of him. Then Joe had foals with a local horse, and Joe Jr. had foals with another local horse. After the third generation of talking horses with inexplicable accents, Edward had concluded that t
he genes that dictated stupidity could not be diluted away. Edward was still with Clint at the time, but all three generations of Joes had grown on the unicorn despite their idiocy. They had all come in handy on occasion. Joe Jr. thought he was a stagecoach. Edward tried to explain the difference to him many times, but a man could ride a stagecoach the same as he could ride a horse, so it didn’t end up mattering.
Clint asked why they were going to the river. Edward said it was because he stank.
“I have a tub at the house,” Clint said.
“Yar, but I fear you’ve not learned how to use it. Besides, the river is on the way to town, and bathing this way gives me an opportunity to dunk you under water.”
“We should go to the Verde,” said Clint.
“Mee-sa wanna see the green riva, Meesta Clint!” said Joe.
Edward looked briefly backward, first at Joe and then up onto Joe’s back, at Clint.
“I’ve been to the Verde,” said the unicorn. “It’s almost impassible. I had to do something like a half-fold to cross what was essentially a half-shimmer — basically a huge fracture back near Baracho. The path we came in on all those years ago is gone. People, elves, giants, and others are managing to cross it on the days when the worlds are close, but I can’t imagine how many others simply walk off the end of the road and into the abyss. The fissure is barely visible to the non-magical eye, but it’s most certainly there. The crack is especially deep, too. You should feel what’s leaking from it.”
“I want to drink from it so that I can get magic cancer and die,” Clint said.
Joe gave a shrill shriek of alarm.
Edward ignored the horse. “Tell me something. What made you come to talk to me today?”
“The kid. I told you,” he said. And Clint had told him, in full, on the ride down. He had to keep shouting the story to Edward because Joe wanted to veer off course. Joe’s meandering was bad enough that the old gunslinger wished Edward would just hurry up and invite him to ride again. He’d even mentioned it to Edward, and Edward had said that he would, but that they’d lost a bit of bonding that would have to be re-established first. And also, Clint stank.
“You didn’t come to talk to me about the kid. You came to talk to me about Mai.”
“I came to talk to you about the kid,” Clint said. “And the magic he said was brewing.”
“Do you even know who that kid was? Billy Bristow?”
“Townie kid. It nar matters.”
Edward turned his big white head to look at Clint. “That’s Teddy’s grandkid. You remember Teddy.”
Clint did. Teddy was Solace’s town kid all those years ago. The young orphan who’d had that dumb, googly-eyed horse.
“That annoying kid,” said Clint. “Yar, I remember him.”
“I heard the story from Teddy’s appy years ago. Teddy followed us. That’s how he ended up in Meadowlands, after it was all over. He followed us all that way, all those years. Sniffed out our trail. Asked folks after us. Tracked us like a hound. He was months behind at best, but he was there. And why not? He didn’t have anything else to do. Kid was an orphan.”
“Kid was stupid,” Clint corrected.
“When Hassle Stone came back to Solace — and I’m talking at the beginning, when it was just Stone and we didn’t even know about Kold — we tried to round up a posse. Nobody would stand with us. Do you remember? Nobody but Teddy.”
“Kid was stupid, like I said.”
“Kid was noble,” said Edward. “I didn’t like him much at the time, but I’ve had many years to think on it. And I’ve realized that until we found Sly Stone, Teddy was the closest thing we had to an ally.”
“A stupid ally.”
“A loyal ally. Do you remember what you told Teddy the last time we saw him? Do you remember the last command you gave him?”
“ ‘Go away’?”
“You told him to protect Mai. You said it to get him out of our hair and get him into Solace because we thought we were meeting Stone and Kold outside of town, but he took it seriously. And so when Teddy heard what had happened — apparently Kold bound him with some short-lived magic until he was gone — he went after us. But even more than that, he went after Mai. Because that’s what his marshal had told him to do.”
Clint looked away. “Meaningless.”
But Edward wouldn’t drop his gaze. He said, “After all these years, why did you finally choose today to talk to me about Mai?”
Clint grunted.
“I sense an answer in you,” said Edward.
“Well, I can sense one in you too,” Clint mumbled.
Edward stopped walking, surprised. Joe kept walking, so Clint reined him in.
“What are you talking about?” said Edward.
Clint settled in Joe’s saddle. “Over the past few weeks, I’ve been able to sense things I couldn’t before. I could feel the kid’s presence on my porch before he showed himself. I could feel his hesitation. I could tell his gun sights were crooked, because I could hear his mind worrying about it as he aimed at my back. I knew he’d never shot a man before and that once, mayhap a year ago, he used paint to scrawl ’Sands to The Realm’ on the side of one of their alloy buildings in NewTown, then felt stupid because he realized that the poor man who owned the building was just a citizen, with no strong feelings one way or the other about The Realm… other than anticipation of trade, of course.”
“How did you know those things?” said Edward.
“I just did.”
“And today you wanted to talk about Mai.”
“I didn’t want to,” said Clint.
Edward paced around the rider and his horse.
“Do you like it when you ‘know’ things? Or does the knowledge feel unwelcome, like an intrusion?”
Clint hadn’t thought about it. So now, nearing the river, he did. He tried to recall the sensation of sitting on the porch with the kid behind him, reading the kid’s every thought, knowing that he would never shoot. Clint had been annoyed, but his annoyance had been at the kid, not at the knowledge itself. The knowledge actually felt good, because it hadn’t felt like he’d acquired it himself. The feeling was more like something that had been whispered in his ear by a friend, so they could laugh about it together. He could think of another dozen times he’d felt something similar, and each time, he’d felt not a sense of strangeness, but a sense of intimacy. It felt (and it was hard to admit this, but it was true) as if Mai were standing beside him.
“It felt comfortable,” he said.
“Describe it.”
Clint did.
“Why didn’t you tell me this earlier?”
Clint shrugged. He hadn’t told Edward because those odd bits of foreknowledge — as strange as they seemed in retrospect — had felt normal at the time. But regardless of the reason, Clint was enjoying the fact that for once, Edward was mad at him for withholding information.
But instead of protesting, Edward paced faster, quickening his pace toward town as if goaded. Clint felt an invisible hand pull him from Joe’s back and toss him roughly onto Edward’s. Edward yelled at the horse to go home. Clint told him that Joe would almost certainly get lost on the way. Edward said that he knew. Joe said that hee-sa a good walker and that Meesta Clint didn’t have to worry.
As soon as Clint was on Edward’s back, the unicorn began to move even faster. Clint struggled to keep his balance. His muscles were strong and tough, but it had been a long time since he’d had to squeeze with his thighs to stay horsed without a saddle or stirrups. He’d also forgotten the trick of weaving his long fingers through the unicorn’s mane. He tried but grabbed too low, and when Edward gathered speed, the slack in his arm couldn’t catch him and he rolled sideways. He fell as they were fording the river. Clint suddenly found himself soaked from head to toe.
“Good idea,” said Edward. “You stink.”
“I didn’t fall on purpose, you idiot!” Clint yelled. But since he was down anyway, Edward used his magic to hold him under
, and to scrub him with invisible brushes. Then, before the old marshal could object, he used his magic to shave off what Edward called his “depression beard.”
By the time they began to approach the OldTown section of Meadowlands, Clint, now clean and smooth-chinned, decided what must be happening. The magic Clint had been feeling must be an extension of what the kid had told him was happening and what Edward had said was going on in the city. The increase in magic meant that something was happening, or was about to happen. It’s Kold, he thought. It had to be Kold. Kold had found a way to make his Plan B work. He’d found a way to power the generator after all. He’d discovered a way to breach the wall, and the magic suffusing Meadowlands had to mean that Kold was coming down from the mountain to open The Realm.
But as it turned out, that wasn’t what Edward thought was happening at all.
“It’s Mai,” he said. The newly cleaned, still-clumsy gunslinger was atop his back, trying gamely to hold on. He was still strong and lightning fast with his guns, but falling from his mount wouldn’t do much to instill fear in any potential foes.
“It’s Mai?” Clint felt like he’d been punched.
“I’ve been pondering it for years on and off,” said Edward. “Do you remember how I said we couldn’t die when we faced off with Kold? That was because you had to make a decision, and you couldn’t decide if you were dead. We were like people playing our roles, and all of it was necessary. You, me, Kold, and Cerberus were like four hairs in a braid. Four threads in a tapestry. You know how when you see a stage show, they say that a knife you see toward the beginning means the knife must be used at the end? It was like that. And because of that sense of fate, we could have answered a few questions backward — considering the future to be the cause of the past. Why was Mai taken by Kold? Because she would be needed later, as the Orb. Why did you meet Mai? Because you would be the one to make the decision. Predestination is like that. Everything truly does happen for a reason. So when I said we couldn’t die, it was because there was a god in the machine of our worlds. We’d lived to that moment because we had a purpose.”