by Sean Platt
He remembered Grappy’s trepidation about the wall — his feeling that it was symbolic, the humans keeping themselves separate just as they kept magic separate: light from dark, dark from light, just like the peach tree in early Mead. And if the wall had been worth fearing all those (apparent) years ago, then given its size now, Edward should be terrified. Before, the humans had used pickets to make their wall. Now they had fortified stone with parapets, and Edward could see where men on guard might stroll around the wall’s top.
The city wasn’t truly closed off, though; the wall included an enormous set of wooden gates that, as Edward neared, he could see were standing wide open. Humans were moving in and out, casually, on wheeled carts or on foot. And, Edward saw, on horses.
That made his lip curl. Horses.
Edward remembered what Grappy had said about horses, and about his theory that Providence had created horses in unicorn form as a way of mocking them. Only Grappy didn’t see it as mockery, per se — more like a good-natured joke. Edward understood the concept but didn’t have much experience with it. Even his appies had mocked him. It was how unicorns were. If Providence was trying to nudge unicorns with the existence of dumb beings that looked exactly like them, Edward was ill-equipped to understand it. So he let it go.
The city was enormous. It wasn’t just a castle, though it contained one. It wasn’t just a collection of homes, though it appeared to have those as well. It was more than a city, and Edward found himself wondering at what Saul the piper had said. There had apparently been unicorn incursions — incursions that somehow hadn’t destroyed the city. It raised a host of questions. Because if those incursions couldn’t really have been invasions (the city was still standing), then what had they been? Why had the unicorns intervened at all? In his day (not long ago by Edward’s timeline but apparently a long time by everyone else’s), unicorns had avoided humans. The two groups had stared at one another across long distances, wary. Only Adam and a few crazy others had been heretic enough to desire entry into the human settlements. What had changed that? What had the humans done to warrant unicorn attention? Was it malicious? Dangerous? Edward had no way to know. And similarly, the unicorn couldn’t know if his presence would be alarming, if city dwellers would try to attack or drive him away.
The thought was too late, and apparently groundless. People came and went, glancing at Edward in ways that weren’t unfriendly. He looked inside the open gate, wondering if he could — or should — enter the city. The enormous stone walls surrounded a whole system of buildings. Near the front gates were wide, dusty streets lined with small stalls backed by people selling produce, items crafted from alloy, tools, and other items they’d grown or created. Edward could see a shop that repaired wagon wheels and another that crafted horse shoes. That made Edward double-take. Shoes for horses? It made no sense. He saw a cobbler of human shoes, and a maker of clothes. There seemed to be homes scattered throughout, and in the very center was a huge castle made from the same gray stone as the wall. The castle was the city’s crowning jewel, topped with towers and parapets, studded with small windows that looked into what seemed from the ground to be bleak darkness.
As he approached, Edward saw a human boy of mayhap twelve years old sitting on a row of rocks lining the road. The boy wasn’t like the others: going about their business, moving in and out, and bustling with purpose — grim purpose, Edward realized now that he had the boy for contrast. The boy seemed to have no purpose. He was simply sitting, one foot on the rock, knee against his narrow chest, his other foot dangling and kicking at the dirt. The boy’s gaze was down, his leather shoe brushing soil. He had a mop of dirty blond hair, and as he watched his swinging foot, the mop obscured his face.
Edward approached the boy.
He didn’t like humans and didn’t particularly want to become involved with any of them, but something within his new adult body had brought him to the city gates. He hadn’t even done it intentionally. Here he was, on the city’s doorstep, and he’d already decided this wasn’t the same place the Realm had been years before. Mayhap it had been destroyed during Mead’s flood, or mayhap it had moved. A flood would destroy this city as well (and the idiots had put it in a valley, Edward thought with scorn), but very little else could. They’d made it sturdy, built to last. But regardless of why or how or when they’d made this new Realm, it wasn’t where it was before. The hills were different, like the valleys and rivers, as much as he could see them. Edward didn’t know where the haven had been relative to this place, or where Mead was, but at least he was finally in the right world. Finding home, if it still existed, simply meant putting one hoof in front of the other until he was there.
Still, his hooves had brought him here — not past the city, but directly to it. There was something about this Realm that mattered. He thought yet again of Adam, about how he’d wanted to open ties with the humans, and had, Edward remembered, implored his grandson to do the same. At the time, the idea had seemed repugnant. But so much had changed. Worlds had been crossed; empires had risen. Something had leaked, and the humans were, Edward could feel, still using the magic they didn’t understand.
The Realm wasn’t just a stop for Edward. The Realm mattered.
And so, apparently, did the boy with lightness radiating from his soul, bright enough for Edward to feel in his bones.
“Boy,” said Edward.
The boy looked up, met Edward’s big, blue eyes, then looked down again. In that small glance, Edward saw that the boy’s eyes were as blue as his own.
“I’m talking to you.”
“I know,” said the boy.
He didn’t say anything else, and for a moment Edward didn’t know how to continue. His part of the exchange could’ve been read from a master unicorn script. It was the way all adult unicorns spoke, and Edward had adapted automatically, drawing from memory. Edward was the inquirer. The boy was the subject. When a unicorn adult approached a lesser (that lesser had been Edward many times), what followed was more like an interrogation than a discussion, and the subject of that interrogation was supposed to have the good sense to act appropriately humbled. But the boy had taken Edward at face value, believing that the unicorn’s statement about talking to him was simply Edward stating the obvious.
Edward considered telling the boy to show some respect but realized that was ego talking. The boy wasn’t disrespecting him; he had seen it in his brief blue-eyed glance. Edward wondered again why he was at the city, why he was talking to the boy, and what he hoped would happen next.
“What’s your name?” Edward asked.
Again looking down, still brushing the dirt with the tip of his toe, he said, “David.”
“I’m Edward.”
The boy looked up again. Something passed between them as their eyes met. Edward realized that David didn’t seem remotely surprised that a unicorn was speaking to him. Realm citizens had either experienced some non-acrimonious dealings with unicorns, or David was simply very accepting. Regardless, Edward continued to feel that strange compulsion in his chest — a force drawing him to this boy. Why was that? He’d never felt anything quite like it, even with other unicorns. Edward hadn’t been old enough to find a mate when last he’d seen his own kind, but this didn’t seem like the compulsion others called love. It was more like intuition. It felt like a thread stretched between them, as if something in David was reaching out to something in Edward, and the unicorn was reaching the rest of the way to grasp it.
“Hi, Edward.”
“Do you live here?”
David looked toward the open gate with a longing glance. His look suggested that the gate was closed, chained, boarded, and barricaded.
“I used to.”
“But you don’t now?”
“No.” He looked up. “You see, sir, I lived near the castle.”
Edward felt disarmed. He’d never been called “sir” and didn’t know the word, but its meaning was clear from context. It was a noble thing, a gesture of the bo
y’s respect. Edward suddenly felt ashamed for doubting the boy earlier then wondered at his own sense of shame.
“Why does it matter that you lived near the castle?”
“Because of Goliath, sir.”
“Goliath?”
“The tyrant king.” David looked up at him as if realizing for the first time that Edward was a unicorn. His head cocked sideways, and his shaggy blond hair spilled across his brow. “You don’t know about Goliath?”
Edward shook his big white head then looked at the people coming and going. It didn’t seem like a city under a tyrant’s siege.
“Don’t let them fool you,” said David, following Edward’s gaze as if reading his mind. “The people of the outer rings are merchants, and they must trade so The Realm can grow.”
Edward sighed. He didn’t want to ask a human boy for a lesson but would apparently have to. His only other option was to keep his unflappable unicorn pride and spend hours trying to mine a story the hard way.
“I’m not from around here,” said Edward, realizing it was a half truth. “Tell me about the city.”
The boy shifted on the rock, dropping his second foot to the dirt. He looked up at Edward and smiled. The unicorn couldn’t help but admire his bearing. He was obviously upset, apparently displaced from his home. And yet here he was smiling as he readied his tale.
“All right,” said David. “The Realm is arranged in rings, with the castle at its center. Around it, there’s a circle of small farms. That’s where I used to live. The farms grew food for themselves and to sell throughout The Realm, because the next ring out grows nothing. They are the smiths and tailors, makers of carts and tools. The traders, who make nothing but sell everything for the others, are on the outside.”
“Okay,” said Edward.
“The king and queen lived in the castle. Their job was to care for the kingdom. They settled disputes and saw that holes were repaired in interior roads. They were like the keepers. We all gave a small percentage of what we had because they were the king and queen and watched out for us. They raised the army that would protect the city if it was attacked again.”
Edward wanted to ask about the word “again,” but something else seemed more important.
“Their job was to take care of the kingdom?”
“Yes, sir,” said David. “A few years ago, when I was nine, a tribe of barbarians came to the city. Our army almost drove them off, but all we had were spears and rocks and one canon, and the wall wasn’t complete. The army was led by Goliath. He is a giant. Our men and women couldn’t hurt him because he is strong and wears heavy armor. He killed the king and queen then took over the castle, which he made our people change so he could fit inside and live in its walls. He killed many of the workers because they were too slow, or failed to remove an arch that Goliath bumped his head into. Once the giant was settled, he declared himself king. He dismissed his army, and they filtered into the farms and became overseers. Instead of accepting some of what we had, Goliath wanted it all. He wanted to sell it — to make himself prosper rather than The Realm. He took from the others, too — smiths, tailors, and makers of objects. But he took most from the farms, and let many farmers starve. We tried to push back, to tell Goliath that if we couldn’t live, we couldn’t make him food. But he found something. A kind of magic. After that, he was able to make plows plow themselves, and crops grow large without tending. He said he didn’t need us anymore then threw us out of the city. The makers of things fear they are next, if Goliath finds a way to smith copper and iron with magic. For now, they are safe. The sellers in the outer ring are safest because their services are still required, seeing as magic cannot sell goods for gold and silver.”
David looked at the gates and sighed. “So this is who we are. What the great Realm has become. You haven’t seen it before now? Well, look upon it, sir. It’s a rich city because it has a rich king, and the rest go on happily because they know nothing else. But us? My family? The workers who used to make The Realm run? We are no longer required.”
Edward looked into the city’s teeming marketplace, now seeing it for what it was: desperate animals fighting for scraps. His opinion of humanity wasn’t rising. His opinion of the boy David, on the other hand, remained intact. The unicorn felt conflicted. Was this a city worth pitying? Or a city in need of destroying?
“Where do you live now?”
“We found a new farm outside the walls. Farming is all we know, sir, and we need food to live. We couldn’t afford land, so we’ve reached an agreement.”
“An agreement with who?”
David gave a small, bitter laugh. “With King Goliath, sir. He’s claimed all of this land. He has his magic at use in the city and doesn’t need us, but why waste wealth outside the walls? So we give him most of what we have, and are left with barely enough to survive.”
Edward looked at the castle again, now feeling something he’d never felt. It was indignation — a deep anger that grew from a sense of unfairness. He knew it by description because to be indignant, you had to be proud enough to believe you deserved better, and he’d always been small and beaten. But now he was big, and strong. Now he was magic. He’d found something that was unfair, and that made him angry for a reason he couldn’t explain.
“David,” Edward said, feeling that strange connection between himself and the boy.
David looked up.
“Would you like to get your home back?”
David didn’t ask how. Drawing from some internal strength, he simply believed. The boy nodded.
“Good,” Edward said, “because I would like to help you.”
CHAPTER 23
YOUNG DAVID
Edward did want to help David, though the unicorn wouldn’t have been able to explain why. The idea, even as they began working together, made him equally proud and repulsed. David was noble and worthy, with a spark inside him that Edward rarely saw, even in unicorns. But he was human. The unicorn found himself remembering everything that he himself had told Grappy in the haven, when Grappy was arguing that unicorns should work with humans: They were vulgar, greedy, out-of-control beings who knew how to use and consume, but not how to create or give back. Humans didn’t achieve equilibrium with their world; they sucked up resources and scoured land clean so they could lay buildings atop it and call it their own. Humans collected animals and kept them fenced, claiming other lives for their own use as if they had every right in the world. And humans, Edward remembered with a start, rode horses.
But the truth said that David was different. Yar, he was soft and fleshy and mortal, but Edward’s new magic could sense something below that soft, fleshy exterior, and it was good — almost unicorn good, though tainted by a human’s peculiar brew of light and dark magic. He found that he could almost close his eyes and think of the boy as someone like himself — as if they were but two voices speaking in nothingness, like Adam and Eve floating in the beginning void, turning end for end.
David lit with a child’s excitement when Edward began working with him, teaching him the skills he’d need to fell the behemoth occupying The Realm. It was as if he forgot what was at stake and considered only adventure’s thrill, making Edward think of the excitement he and Cerberus shared when playing battle back in Mead, each secretly pretending the other were dark armies of trolls and ghryst. But it wasn’t play, and the stakes were monumental: David’s home, the balance within the human city, and David’s very life.
That last hit Edward late; he himself was almost immortal, and had only spent significant time with other immortals. Only after their training was underway did it dawn on the unicorn that David could die. Edward felt guilty — guilty for raising the kid’s hopes, for putting him in peril, and for committing him to fight because David wouldn’t back down for anything. Edward tried to think of the things he’d learned, both from Grappy and from his journey through the various worlds. There was the Wellspring to think about. And there were the curious things said by both the Sandman and th
e cat, about everyone having a story. Was this not another story? And might the Sandman find it worthy of recording in the other worlds — if that was how it worked?
Ultimately, Edward didn’t know, and really it didn’t matter. Unicorns seldom had to consider right and wrong; everything they did, in the end, was more or less right. There were shades of right, but never true wrong. Unicorn elders were strangely accepting, tending to believe that what would be would be, that even the most insidious wrong was right in the end. Edward knew that Grappy believed that.
But the more he learned about Goliath, the more Edward saw evidence that there was such a thing as true right and wrong. Goliath was wrong. If Edward thought the humans consumed, Goliath made them look generous. If Edward thought that humans were cruel, Goliath made them look like pixies. And if Edward thought that humans were selfish? Well, Goliath was selfishness personified.
Edward had laid eyes on the giant after taking excursions into the city to map the ground. Everything inside him rebelled at what he saw and felt. Goliath’s internal ugliness had boiled to his surface, twisting his features and wrinkling his skin into repulsive pits and valleys. His face was studded with black warts, with a waddle of skin under his chin that quaked when he stomped through the city, smashing without heed. The giant seemed to be simple: He thought of something he wanted to do then did it. Sometimes he wanted to step on a vendor’s cart and destroy it, so he did. Sometimes he wanted food, so he reached into public stores and took it. Edward asked around; he heard tales of the giant taking farm animals, mercantile supplies, carts, children from families to work in his castle as slaves. He was enormous and strong — easily as tall as four or five Edwards stood on end. The unicorn heard a story that once, the giant had ripped a peasant family’s house from its foundation because he wanted his castle to have another outbuilding. At first, Edward thought it was just a legend, but then he approached the castle and saw the building snugged tight against the castle wall, its foundation ragged where it had been ripped from the ground.