“Is that blood?”
Gran shrugged. The last thing she gave us, looped around fine, long strands of something that looked like hair, was Maggie’s old ring.
Maggie looked at it, but she didn’t touch it. “You carry it,” she told me. I was looking at Gran.
“She’s right. You carry it. It’ll point you in the right direction.”
“We can trust it?”
“To find a Unicorn? Yes. You can’t use it against one, though. Don’t even try. And if it talks? Don’t listen.”
“As if.”
“There are a couple of other things I should have probably told you both. Maggie’ll get a clue, once you’ve started. You might have trouble.”
Great. “What?”
“You’ll be walking old roads, if there’s a Unicorn to be found.”
“You’re not talking about old city roads.”
“Good girl.”
“They’re safe?”
“Not bloody likely.”
“What does not safe mean?”
“You’ll find out.” She handed me the last item. It was a long dagger, slender and shiny. And not really legal, on account of the way it disappeared in the hand. “Concealed weapons,” I told her, doubtfully.
“You take it, or you’re not going.”
“What am I supposed to do with it?”
“You’ll figure it out. Oh, and one more thing.”
“What?”
“You wait until the full moon. You hear me?”
“Yes, Gran.”
Maggie was different, that night. Different in pretty much every way I could think of. Clothing was different. Hair was pulled right back off her face, and her skin seemed almost silver, like moonlight incarnate. Her eyes were clear and dark, and she didn’t look afraid. Of anything.
The cars made their constant background purr, punctuated by honking. Gran cursed them roundly as she joined us in front of Maggie’s house. “I’ll stay until you get back,” she told us firmly.
“You’d better,” Maggie replied. But her tone of voice was strange as well.
Gran seemed smaller, thinner, than she usually did. “It’s your time,” she told Maggie, “not mine. But you’re right—the maiden is out there. I can see her in your face.”
Maggie didn’t seem to hear. I took a good, hard look at Gran. “Don’t light that,” I told her, because she was fumbling with her pipe.
“I know, I know.”
So, with a ring for a compass, and one that swayed every time there was the faintest hint of breeze, we began to walk down the street. Maggie decided—for reasons that aren’t even clear to me now—that we had to walk in the middle of the damn road.
“You’ve got kids to think of,” I told her. “What the hell is wrong with the sidewalk?”
She didn’t answer. Then again, if I’d asked Gran that question, she’d have clipped me with her cane.
Instead, she walked. She didn’t apparently look at the ring to see which direction we should be walking in, but she had me for that, and I was thankful for streetlights.
“Do you think your husband was a Unicorn? I mean, your ex?”
“No.”
“But the ring—”
“No.”
“But you think a Unicorn gave him the ring.”
“Yes, I do.”
Light dawned, in the figurative sense. “Because then you wouldn’t know.”
She nodded.
“And if you didn’t know—”
“I couldn’t find them.”
“Why didn’t they try that on Gran?”
“I don’t think your Gran can do this,” she said softly. “She’s too far away from the maiden. And she has to be.”
“Why?”
“Because of what she is. She can see the maiden in my face,” she added softly. “But I would guess that if we manage to find the Unicorn, and if the Unicorn is with the maiden, the maiden will see her in my face as well.”
I thought about that for a long time. “My Gran does like you,” I said.
“I know. She drives me crazy, but I like her too.” She gave me an odd look, then. I didn’t understand it. “She’s tired.” Maggie banked left. “But she’s waited a long time, and I’m really grateful to her. She’s the hardiest of the three of us,” she added.
Looking at Maggie, I wasn’t so sure.
I fingered the invisible knife, thought some more, and then asked Maggie, tentatively, if she wanted it.
Maggie’s brows rose. “Me?”
“That would be no.”
“Definite no.”
“Why?”
“I’m the mother,” she said quietly. “I don’t think I could use it.”
“Then I’ll use it for you.”
Maggie said nothing. After a while, I joined her in nothing, and we walked into the darkness.
When the darkness changed, I can’t be certain. But the streetlights vanished, and the moonlight grew more distinct. I could see stars, cold and clear, without the haze of light and pollution as a veil. Trees passed us by; they were tall, weeping willows, and beneath them, water pooled in still, clear mirrors. Everything about this road was beautiful. But you don’t live long with Gran if you’re an obvious sucker for beauty.
I followed Maggie. Maggie glanced occasionally at the ring, tilting her head with a vague look of disgust as she listened to it. I didn’t hear anything. But it was clear that in this place, she could. I almost envied her the ability.
“We should have gone on the new moon,” she said. Something about her voice made my hair stand on end. But she didn’t dwell on the should have, and I was just as happy not to.
We made our way down a sloping hill, crushing flowers as we did; there wasn’t any way to walk this place without leaving a mark. Maggie didn’t seem to care, and because she didn’t, I didn’t. I never did like flowers much, anyway.
And I discovered, that night, that Unicorns run in packs. This goes against conventional wisdom, but then again, everything does. We stopped for a minute while we watched these creatures cavorting in the shadows. The shadows cast by one huge tree that seemed to go up forever. I thought that it must go down forever as well, but then again, Gran leaves the weeding to me, and I’ve learned to take roots personally.
I expected them to be beautiful. And they were. Breathtakingly beautiful, in the sense that I stopped breathing while watching them. Their white coats were gleaming, and they looked like some sort of cross between a deer and a horse. But their horns glittered, and it became clear after only a few minutes that they weren’t exactly involved in a dance of joy.
They were fighting.
I don’t think they noticed us at all. I really, really wanted to be unnoticed. But Maggie had other plans, and she didn’t actually take the time to impart any of them to me. Instead, she ran the rest of the way down the hill, as if her feet were on fire.
As if, I thought suddenly, her children were in danger. This is the danger of putting the full moon, the old roads, and the mother together. I wouldn’t have guessed it, but then again, Gran never called me the brightest star in the sky.
When she almost crashed into them, I was just a few feet behind her. Running down the damn slope had been effortless for her—but for me it was a constant battle not to wind up sliding down on my face. The ground here was treacherous; it whispered.
And the Unicorns? They screamed. In outrage. In fury. They reared up, muscles rippling on their hind legs, horns no longer turned in casual cruelty against each other, as they faced this unexpected intruder.
Maggie hardly seemed to notice.
But I knew that dying here was pretty much death. It didn’t matter if we weren’t in the city; it didn’t matter if we weren’t in reality. Had Gran told me that? I couldn’t remember. I’d try later.
Gran’s knife in hand, I leapt in after Maggie, moving faster than I’d ever moved in my life. A horn hit the blade, and the blade was no longer invisible.
I expected
the impact to knock the weapon out of my hand; it’s not as if I use weapons, much. But that didn’t happen. Instead? The horn gave. The knife passed through it. The Unicorn’s scream of rage gave way to a scream of what sounded—I swear—like mortified pain.
They had hooves, cloven hooves, and those should have been their weapon of choice. Would have done a damn sight more damage. But they didn’t seem to clue in, and I wasn’t about to tell them what to do.
I thought Maggie would; she’s like my Gran that way. But even if we’d started out hunting Unicorns, they weren’t on her radar at the moment. And I couldn’t see what was, but I could guess.
I would have been half right.
The Unicorns drew back when I approached; the knife was literally glowing, and a faint trace of black ran down its edge. I thought it was blood, but the wrong colour. It probably was. Unicorn horns are tricky.
But they didn’t approach us again, and no one was stupid enough to try the horn against the knife. I shadowed Maggie—literally. I knew that if I was too far away, they’d fall on her like jackals. Like really beautiful, really delicate, jackals.
She made her way to the tree they had been circling around, and I discovered a second thing about Unicorns. They can look an awful lot like men.
Or a man.
White haired, but youthful, tall, slender, garbed in something that would probably pass any fashion test an enterprising highschooler would set—except for that horn. Middle of the forehead. Dead centre. Glistening as it drank moonlight.
Maggie was mad. Not angry, which I’m used to.
Mad mother? Not a good thing. I tried to call out to her. No, I did. But she was beyond listening.
And in a second, I was beyond trying. Her eyes were better than mine. If she was seeing with her eyes at all.
Because beyond the man, was a girl. Bruised eyes. Bruised lips. Skin the white that skin goes when fear has overtaken almost everything else. A lot of skin; exposed and framed by shredded fabric. Might have been a shirt, once. Or the top of a dress.
School-girl, I thought. Maybe. She seemed so young to me as I looked at her, I couldn’t think straight. I had never been that young. Gran said I was born old.
Should’ve been a hint.
But Gran could have told me that Unicorns are rapists.
We split up the minute the Unicorn turned. His eyes were a startling shade of blue, clear and bright in the night sky. He looked beyond us, for just a moment; saw what must have been there—the gathering of his pack.
His hands fell away from the girl as he shoved her, hard, against tree-bark. Her hands gripped the tree as she tried to meld with it. Her eyes were dark, normal eyes. Her hair was dark and dishevelled.
He looked at Maggie.
He looked at me.
I held the dagger. I don’t think I have ever wanted to kill. He looked at Maggie.
He looked at me.
I held the dagger. I don’t think I have ever wanted to kill anything so badly in my life. He laughed. He could sense it.
But Maggie moved not toward him, but toward the girl. He wasn’t her concern. No, I thought, he was mine. Mother creates life. Crone sees its end.
I’ll stay until you get back.
I lunged with the dagger as he lunged with his horn. He narrowly avoided losing it, and I side-stepped. I’m not much of a fighter, but I was fast enough; it’s kind of hard to really get into a tussle when your pants have dropped past your butt.
I wondered if this was what naked men actually looked like. Which was my stupid thought for the evening, and it almost cost me my arm.
The shadows were dancing at my back. The others were waiting. But they were a bit of a cowardly lot, when it came down to that; they knew what the knife could do, and they were willing to wait and see.
I could have despised them more if I tried really hard. But mostly, I was trying to stay alive.
Losing battle. What had my Gran said? She wasn’t a warrior. I wasn’t raised to be one either. His horn grazed my thigh, and the threads of my jeans unravelled at its touch, as if they were all trying to avoid the contact. I bled a bit.
He hit me again, and I bled more.
He wasn’t laughing, but his eyes were glittering with rage. I had denied him something, and he intended to make me pay.
I would have died there.
I would have died had it not been for Maggie. At least I thought it was Maggie who came for me, Maggie who touched my shoulder, my wrist, my dagger arm.
But when Maggie took the dagger from my slowing hands, I knew I’d been wrong. Because Maggie was the mother, and she couldn’t wield this knife.
The Unicorn’s blue eyes widened, and he lost his form—which is to say, he reverted. It was certainly easier to look at him. Harder to look at the girl he’d had pinned to the tree a few wounds back.
She wasn’t wearing much. But she didn’t need to. She was utterly, completely beautiful in the stark night, and her expression was one that will haunt my nightmares for years.
She didn’t speak a word.
Not a word of accusation. Not a word that spoke of betrayal. Nothing at all that made her seem like a wronged victim, or like any victim.
Crone sees life’s end?
Not like this. She used the knife as if she’d been born with it in her hands. And he bled a lot; she wasn’t kind. Or quick. Or even merciful.
But he was very much alone, in the end. Packs are like that.
Later, I joined Maggie. Or Maggie joined us. The girl was holding the knife and her breasts rose and fell as lungs gave in to exertion, which was very distracting. Maggie had taken a sweater from her shoulders, leaving herself with a thin, black t-shirt. She put the sweater around the girl’s shoulders in silence. Like a mother. Her hands were shaking.
They looked at each other, and then the girl looked down at the knife almost quizzically.
“It’s yours,” I told her.
“You’re giving this to me?”
“No,” I replied. “It was always yours.”
She looked at it, and I handed her its sheath. She looked at that two. Her hands were shaking. “Did I kill him?”
I nodded.
“Good.” And then her eyes started to film over. “You know, he said he loved me?”
I nodded quietly.
“And I believed him.”
Before I could stop myself, I told her—in as gentle a voice as I could, “You had to.”
“No, I didn’t.”
But she did. Because she was the maiden. I could see it in her clearly. Could see it; was horribly, selfishly glad that I would never be the maiden. I wasn’t certain that she would stay that way, either.
“He was a Unicorn,” I told her, after a pause.
“He was an asshole,” she said, spitting. Like a cat.
“That too.”
She gave me an odd look. “How did you know?”
“What?”
“That he was a Unicorn?”
“The horn was a dead giveaway.”
“He wanted me because I was special.” She was. I could see that.
“Yes,” I told her, and I put an arm around her shoulder. “But he wanted to destroy what was special about you. Don’t let him. Don’t forget how to believe.”
Maggie cleared her throat. “Your mother is probably worried about you,” she said. In a mother’s tone of voice. “And my kids are waiting for me. Why don’t you come back to my place? You can phone her from there.”
“I told her I was staying at a friend’s house tonight,” the girl said. She hesitated, and then added, “I’m Simone.”
“I’m Irene,” I told her, extending a hand. “And you can stay at Maggie’s.”
Maggie nodded quietly. She held out a hand, and the girl took it without hesitation. Good sign.
We made our way back to Maggie’s house, but stopped at the foot of her walk. She looked at me, her eyes bright with moonlight. Simone was talking; she had started to talk when we had started to wal
k, and she hadn’t stopped. She wasn’t crying. She wasn’t—at least to my eye—afraid. Rescue has its purpose.
“I think you should go in first,” Maggie told me quietly.
I knew. I knew then.
“I’ll be up; I think Simone and I have a lot to talk about.” She hesitated, and then added, “We’ll be waiting for you if you need company.”
I nodded stiffly and made my way up the walk. Opened the door, which Gran hadn’t bothered to lock. Very, very little can get past Gran when she’s on the lookout.
She was in the kitchen, beside a pot of tea. She looked up as I entered, and the breath seemed to go out of her in a huff. As if she’d been holding it since we left.
“We found her,” I told my Gran. “In time, I think.”
“She’s an idiot?”
I frowned, and Gran gave me a crooked smile. “You understand.”
I nodded.
“Why it’s hard to be the maiden.”
And nodded again. “But Gran, I understand other things, too.”
“Oh? That would be a change.”
“I understand why it’s hard to be the crone. To watch. To know and to have to sit back on your hands.”
“Good.” She rose, pipe in hand. “I’ll be getting home, then.”
“I’ll go with you.”
“I don’t need company.”
“I do.”
She snorted. “You have company. Maiden and mother. I never thought—” She bit her lip. “I stopped hoping.”
“You kept watch,” I told her. “You remembered the old lore. You kept it for us.” I offered her a hand, and she took it; her hand was shaking. Old, old hand.
“You’ll be good at this,” she said, as she rose. “But you take care of my garden, hear?”
“I’ll take care of the garden,” I told her. It was really hard. “And the house. And the lore.”
“No television in my house.”
“Yes, Gran.”
“And none of that trashy garbage Maggie reads, either.”
“Yes, Gran.”
“And don’t think too much.”
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