by Lisa Mangum
Even so, it was difficult to conceal a squealing, bucking, energetic herd of juvenile unicorns as the girls guided it down the stairs. Windesa had thrown a cloaking spell over all, so they seemed to be escorting a gaggle of particularly tall black-feathered geese through the crowd of courtiers and aristocrats gathered for the birthday feast. To add to the parade atmosphere, she and the girls were dressed in new gowns of grape purple with veils to match.
The sound of musicians playing and singing threaded thinly through the loud hubbub of excitement in the huge, vaulted expanse of the great hall. The crowds of well-wishers and visitors filling the room all but leaped aside to make way for the wizardess and her procession.
Near the rear wall, upon which hung vividly colored arrases and tapestries depicting victories of her ancestors, Princess Amy sat in the place of honor at the long head table between her father and mother. Queen Melba, a warm and motherly woman from whom Amy had gotten her looks, could not have been more proud of her daughter. King Foghorr, already well into his cups, exchanged jests and guffaws with the Archduke of Onagawa, Countess Primrose’s father, who sat at his right hand. All of Amy’s friends sat at tables set at angles to the right and left of the center board. All of the girls, Amy included, had donned black garments and veils in spite of the happy occasion. Many of the courtiers had followed their example.
The second-to-last course had been served and cleared, making way for the parade of gifts given to the birthday girl. Heaps of jewelry and bowls of precious stones already filled the trestle tables. Works of art both ancient and new were stacked against the far wall with a pageboy to prevent them being trodden upon by revelers.
Windesa watched Amy’s face as each gift was presented. She looked to the right and left to see what her friends thought of them. If they frowned, she frowned, offering only a curt thanks to the donor, leaving that person looking unhappy and disappointed. The girl needed to learn graciousness, but first she had to learn to make a decision on her own. That would come.
The steward kept a trumpeter by his side to blow a fanfare when he needed the crowd’s attention to announce the next donor and read his or her birthday wishes. At last, the wizardess’s name was called. Windesa stepped forward with her entourage at her back. The seeming flock of geese elicited derisive comments. The commenters stopped talking, horrified, when Windesa turned to glare at them. No matter. It was all illusion, anyhow. She stopped before the table, her apprentices flanking her two and two.
“Happy birthday, your highness,” she said, inclining her head a mere inch.
“How kind of you,” Amy said, graciously. “I am so excited to see your promised gift.”
Windesa stepped to one side.
“And here it is.”
The geese hurried forward, honking. Amy laughed in surprise, then gasped as the illusion was swept away. Freed of their disguise, the herd of young black unicorns, horns of polished pearl and tails of stranded silk, danced and cavorted in the square space before the head table. They rushed to nuzzle at Amy’s hands, each crowding its head under others, even poking their companions out of the way with their ivory horns, to the laughter of the crowd. The princess couldn’t pet all of the long, silky manes at once, though she tried. Once she had caressed them, they allowed the clamoring girls at the other tables to pet them, though they returned over and over again to Princess Amy.
“Which one is mine?” she asked, almost bewildered. Windesa inclined her head again.
“Whichever one you like, highness. Choose well, because it will be your companion for a lifetime. The others are our gifts to your noble friends.”
Amy looked from one to another, trying to decide. Was one more special than another?
The last unicorn revealed, the purple one, did not hurry forward. It stayed at Windesa’s side, nuzzling in her hand for treats.
It took Amy a moment to notice him. How could she not? His amethyst coat gleamed in the light of the myriad beeswax candles. His sunset-sky eyes were the most beautiful things in the room, more than the artwork, the embroideries, the flowers, and the jewels. His horn was creamy white with a line of pure gold spiraling up from the base to the tip.
“What about him?” Amy said, pointing, her eyes wide with enchantment.
“Oh, I’m sorry, your highness,” Windesa said, evincing deep regret. “He is ours.”
“But he’s a unicorn! And this is my birthday. My sixteenth birthday.”
“But he is purple, your highness. Unique, but most unfashionable. Purple is a wizard’s color.” Windesa smiled as she indicated her own costume. “We do not seek to be stylish or à la mode, we who deal with the eternal and the unknown.”
Amy very nearly pouted.
“He’s prettier than the others. I want him.”
“Are you certain, highness? He is … different. If you accept him, you would be different from your companions.”
The noblewomen were horrified, looking from the unicorn to Amy and back again.
“Oh, no, princess,” Countess Primrose protested. “Doesn’t he stand out … rather too much?”
“I like that,” Amy said, then glanced at her friends. “I think.”
“It would be a humble gift, since he is such an unfashionable hue, but it might be all right,” Lady Anatolia said, with a haughty eye. “If the wizardess offered him to you properly.”
“I’m afraid not, your ladyship,” Windesa said, curtly. “He is rather too special to be rejected, so the offer will not be forthcoming. Please enjoy your gift, your highness. These unicorns are all very healthy and easily trained to do tricks. I wish you a very happy birthday.”
She laid a hand on the purple beast’s neck and turned away. The apprentices gathered around her. Negara’s eyes were dancing. Windesa had all she could do not to answer with her own twinkle. She kept her face deliberately expressionless.
“Wait!” Princess Amy cried. “Don’t go, wizardess!” Windesa took her time turning about. A sly smile had spread across the faces of the girl’s parents. “Please don’t take him. He is very beautiful. I have never seen a purple unicorn before. I would like to have him.” She swallowed hard. “Please.”
Windesa raised an eyebrow.
“Even though he is different?”
“Yes! Mostly because of that.”
“You don’t mind standing out?”
Princess Amy hesitated.
“I … I …” Amy swallowed, and her voice came out very small. “No.”
“Well done, your highness!” Windesa said. Relief rushed through her. The girl had done it! She was capable of striking off the shackles of peer pressure. “Then he is yours.”
The purple unicorn let out a shrill neigh of joy and reared, pawing the air with its tiny jeweled hooves. It galloped from Windesa’s side. It leaped over the table as if it was knee-high and snuggled into the space between the queen’s chair and Princess Amy’s. The girl threw her arm over its silky mane and stroked its violet ears and ivory horn. The other noblewomen looked envious, but only to an extent. It was hard to be jealous when one had one’s very own unicorn, even if it was not the same color as the princess’s.
“Our work here is done, girls,” Windesa said, gathering her apprentices together with a gesture and making for the door past the startled steward. “We have started a new fashion.”
***
A Single Spark
Mary Pletsch
The foreigners wanted her to help them kill a unicorn.
Sharareh knelt on a rug inside her father’s tent, by all appearances the dutiful daughter, but her keen hearing picked up the murmured words of the men outside. Fear acted as a flint, striking a single spark off her soul—her hidden wrath, her secret rebellion.
It was definitely her the strange men were interested in; her money-hungry father, Abbas, was even now insisting that she was the purest, most obedient, and most devout of all the unwed women in the tribe. None other would entrance a unicorn as quickly and as readily as his Sharareh. His
asking price was, in the end, a bargain.
Overhead, the desert sun blazed with its customary ferocity as it climbed towards high noon. The tribe’s encampment in the oasis took shelter from the unforgiving heat in the dappled shadows cast by the long fronds of palm trees. Sharareh struggled not to sneeze as the white veil she wore across her face tickled her nose. She was not accustomed to the formal clothing her mother had dressed her in that morning in accordance with her father’s wishes.
She wondered if her mother had known what she was doing when she named her youngest daughter Sharareh—a name that meant a single spark. Why had her mother bequeathed her such a destiny, only to spend the next twelve years teaching her to bury it?
A thin dagger of sunlight slit the flaps of the tent, tracing a line across the floor that stopped just before Sharareh’s knees. She leaned forward until the strangers’ horses came into view through that narrow gap. The northern leader, a man with the strange name of John—a name so blunt and harsh next to the lyrical names of her people—had ridden to the camp atop the biggest of the horses. Sharareh watched as the huge black horse nudged his way in between her father’s camels for a chance to drink at the oasis spring.
The horse managed only a few sips before the camels squeezed together, crowding him out. His owner did not seem to care that his mount was struggling; he was too busy bartering with Abbas. Similarly, Sharareh was certain her own father gave no thought to how his daughter felt as she waited for him to decide her fate.
Sharareh’s sisters had been married off for the highest prices their father could get, and now only Sharareh was left. She had known she would be sold eventually, but she’d hoped for a few more years before she’d needed to fear a husband. Yet here she knelt, barely twelve years of age, dressed in her older sisters’ wedding clothes. The robes gaped open against her flat chest and snarled her ankles with excess fabric.
A listless breeze blew her father’s words to her waiting ears. John expressed his approval, agreeing that Sharareh was the type of girl they sought, and then Abbas began to feign second thoughts. Perhaps, for a few more shekels or a goat, he might be willing to trust the men to safeguard his daughter’s virtue during their hunt.
Sharareh pressed her lips together and gagged down impotent rage. It caught fire in her guts, leapt from her roiling belly and clawed its way up her throat, burning. Though she swallowed down cries of fury, she could not prevent the bitter flavour of anger from rising into her mouth and curling her tongue with its vile aftertaste.
Abbas had argued with the other men of the tribe that morning, even going so far as to call in unpaid debts to ensure that he would be the one to barter with the foreigners. None had stood against him: not the other men, not their wives, not Sharareh’s own mother, and, in the end, not Sharareh. She raised her hand to rub the bruise that bloomed beneath her veil.
Sharareh forced herself to breathe slowly and deeply, but her blood roared in her ears like the flash floods of spring. These foreigners wanted bait, not a concubine, she told herself—until the fear in her belly demanded to know what would become of her once they’d caught their unicorn. She had no answer.
She could strip off her robes and run, risking the fate of disobedient maidens. She had seen what had happened to Rasheesh: stoned to death, her body left for the vultures. Abbas had taken Sharareh’s arm tightly in his grip and hissed into her ear that she was looking at her own future should she not learn to mind. Sharareh knew that although she was a swift runner, she could never hope to outpace John’s horse, or her father’s camels. She would be caught if she tried to flee.
Desperately, Sharareh mouthed prayers to a god whose existence she’d long doubted—or maybe God, like unicorns, had no interest in willful girls. Outside, Abbas loudly protested John’s bag of gold was still worth less than his daughter’s bride-price … and there was no guarantee they would catch a unicorn and return his dear Sharareh. Sharareh snorted and gave up on her prayers when the strangers doubled their offer and Abbas finally agreed to the deal.
Through the flap of the tent, Sharareh watched John’s horse sidling anxiously, shifting its head from side to side. It would have made a fine stallion, had the Northerners not gelded it. It lifted its head to the wind and gazed out into the desert. The look in its eyes became distant, as though it saw, somewhere near the far horizon, the life it might have led before it had been broken to saddle and bridle.
Yes, the great black gelding recalled freedom, however faintly and fleetingly. Sharareh could not mourn the loss of something she had never known, and she wondered if perhaps the horse’s life was harder than hers, because it remembered what it had lost.
* * *
Sold, like a horse or a goat. As a child, Sharareh had gotten through each day under her father’s thumb by living in the small pleasures of the moment. Now, riding on this stranger’s gelding, she found herself forced to look upon her future. She beheld a horizon as forbidding as the desert around her, drawing nearer with every beat of the black horse’s hooves.
The image of that rapidly approaching horizon gripped Sharareh’s mind as she sat on the saddle in front of the man called John, riding through the wastelands of the desert under a pain-bright sky. She had not been permitted to change out of her bridal attire. John and his men had been in too much haste to leave; their greed for the unicorn’s horn oozed out of every sweaty pore as they galloped through the heat of the desert like mad things, undeterred by the brutal heat of the noonday sun.
She did not understand the language of the foreigners, but she knew this area of the desert. She could guess where they were headed: the forbidden oasis, a quarter day’s ride away. There was nothing else in this direction. She bit her lip and wondered if she could find within her soul any reserves of fear. Right now she felt nothing but numbness creeping through her heart. Legends told around smoking campfires hinted at the reason why none of the tribes would pass through this quarter. The abandoned oasis was the haunt of a desert demon.
Sharareh did not believe in demons any more than gods; they seemed to her to be two sides of the same coin. Mankind did not need the assistance of a supernatural entity to give their lives over to temptation. Sharareh asked only why some people, like her father, were permitted, even encouraged, to do so, while others, like herself, were forced to choke down their own wishes in the name of others’ desires. God, as usual, did not bother to justify Himself.
A flash of light in the distance stirred some small ember in Sharareh’s soul. She narrowed her eyes, squinting against the glare rising off the sands. Strange shapes sprawled midway up a sand dune a short ways off, as though the desert had vomited them up from its dark and secret gullet. Sharareh debated pointing them out to John, but while she weighed risk against potential reward, one of the other men spotted the anomalies and pointed, shouting.
The riders diverted to approach the mysterious objects. John drew the black gelding to a halt, and Sharareh stared down at the remnants of a caravan. The dune had only partially reswallowed the mummified corpses of camels and men, their remaining flesh dried to jerky, their visible bones bleached to ivory by the scouring sands. Ruined saddlebags spilled precious cargoes of coins and jewels like entrails from slit bellies. Food spoiled in the sun next to gutted water skins. The well of fear that Sharareh thought had run dry burst inside her, splashing her insides with panic.
The man who had pointed out the bodies turned to Sharareh and asked in her own tongue, “What has happened here?”
Bandits would be the easiest answer, and an explanation these men would readily accept. It would also be a lie. What bandit would leave precious stones and shekels strewn across the desert sands? What brigand would slash water vessels and leave bread to become infested with beetles?
“The oasis that lies near here is forbidden,” Sharareh said, her voice quavering. “All the tribes of the desert avoid it.” She did not believe in demons, but mortals could also be monstrous.
The other man looked to his lea
der. His comrades were too busy pillaging the bodies to pay Sharareh any mind. “The shaykh was very clear,” the other Northerner said. “This is the oasis where the unicorn has been seen.”
Sharareh drew a deep breath. Maybe these strangers would listen to reason. She was not one to spook at shadows, but the stench rising from the flyblown corpses was no myth. “If we trespass in the oasis, we can all expect the same.”
John snorted and laid his hand on the pistol at his side. “I am not afraid of thieves.”
Sharareh watched the other men loading their saddlebags with plunder and said nothing. She was afraid of thieves, but she feared her destiny more.
* * *
Sharareh had fought, and she had been defeated. She had held silent, and she had been ignored. She had spoken up, and she had been dismissed. The bruise under her veil throbbed as the Northerners’ horses picked their way down a slope littered with loose stones, riding to the bottom of the valley that cradled the forbidden oasis. It seemed as though no matter what Sharareh did, all control of her life had been taken from her.
She regretted all those years she wasted praying to an ambivalent god to deliver her from an early marriage. Would a bridal tent have been so much worse than to be here, in this forsaken place, with these foreign strangers, on a fool’s mission to kill a unicorn?
Why were all things meek and beautiful also endangered?
John drew his gelding to a stop on the bank of the pool. A rock wall rose on the other side of the oasis; a few shelf-like ledges were visible just below the water’s surface, tapering away until the stone formed a cliff, higher than the black gelding’s head, too steep to climb.
John signaled, and his men stopped admiring their salvaged riches long enough to swing out of their saddles and dip their water skins. He permitted Sharareh to dismount, but his hand on her shoulder stopped her from kneeling to take any water for her own.