*Doctor. Yeah, yeah, I know. I read it in your bio.* She pranced wildly, smashing the detached wings into the ground. *If you’d put down the histology text once in a while and pulled out rudimentary mythology 101, you’d know what a unicorn is.*
Now it was my turn to mumble. “Apparently, it’s a vastly irritating creature that needs a good lesson in how to treat its creator.”
*What?*
“Never mind.” I pulled at my lip, then returned to my keyboard. “All right, Masikah. Let’s just say you’re the product of a Pegasus mother and a unicorn father.”
*It’s not a Pegasus, don’t you know? There’s only one Pegasus. And he’s hung like a horse, so he’d make a pisspoor mother.*
Too worried about the centaur family to argue, I only rolled my eyes. “Fine. The Pegasus is your father. And a unicorn—”
*—just happened to be roaming through the forest—
* Masikah heavily emphasized the last word. *Which is where unicorns live, you know. Spirits of the woodlands and all that.*
“Yes, okay—”
*When a great, winged shape hurtled out of the sky casting a massive shadow over the treetops.*
I went with it. It seemed easier than fighting.
*Instead of assuming him a dragon come to kill her and her ilk, she nursed the many and varied stab wounds he suffered crashing through the heavy canopy of trees.*
Rather than address the absurdity, I finished the story. “They fell in love, married, lived happily ever after.”
*And I’m their gruesome Frankenstein’s Monster of a love child.*
“That would be you.”
*Thus, a pegacorn.*
“Or a unisus. You pick.”
“Hmmm.” Masikah did not fight when I, once again, added the wings. She tested them, unfolding first one and inspecting it from end to tip, then the other. *How am I supposed to groom these? Blood feathers, shafts, and all that stuff made for beaks?*
I didn’t answer. Those sorts of details, like dealing with menstrual cycles, bathroom breaks, and lice, don’t belong in most “once upon a time” fantasies.
Masikah continued to examine the wings, flapping experimentally. *You’ll have to change your earlier description, you know. You said I was a unicorn.*
“The editor will fix it,” I promised. “Let her earn her share of the royalties.”
Masikah continued to check out her new appendages.
I sighed, relieved to have solved the current crisis and unconcerned about the need to convince her. After all, I was getting paid by the word. I continued: Masikah leaped into the air and sped toward Treasure Mountain. Her silvery wings cut the air like—
*No.*
My wrists drooped to the Kensington pad behind the keyboard, the one supposed to prevent carpal tunnel syndrome but mostly used as a paw rest by whichever cat chose to oversee a particular story. “What is it now?”
*I’m not going to Treasure Mountain.*
“Why not?”
*There’s a dragon there. A fearsome one. Named Kymystro, if I recall.*
I’d named the thing myself but had already forgotten if Masikah had it right. So much time, and so many words, had passed. I scanned back up the screen to the first paragraph while Masikah tapped a hoof impatiently. There it was: Kymystro. “Yes, of course there’s a dragon on the mountain. That’s what I need you for.”
*You need me to die? But I’m the world’s only pegacorn!*
Tired of arguing, feeling a bit wicked, I leaned toward the screen. “Pegasus . . . is very prolific.”
Masikah had an equally fast answer. *But unicorns only cycle once a century.*
I weighed my options. I could make Pegasus a prolific adulterer; but, thinking of my four-year-old daughter, I chose the lesser of evils. “You’re the oldest of twelve siblings. You’re two thousand years old.”
*I am?*
“You are.”
*But I don’t feel a day over seventeen hundred.*
“Now fly! Fly to Treasure Mountain and save that centaur family.”
Masikah flapped a wing in my general direction. *Let one of my younger brothers do it.*
I had to leave my computer to find the big bottle of ibuprofen. While I was gone, my blue and gold macaw clambered off her cage to methodically pluck off and shatter the insert and down arrow key covers. Masikah left muddy hoofprints on the screen.
“Your brothers,” I said through gritted teeth while waiting for the ibuprofen to kick in, “are indisposed saving other needy woodland and mountain creatures.” Anticipating another loophole, I added, “Your sisters, too.”
*Oh, dear.* Masikah raised a careful hoof to her mouth. *There are a lot of fantasy stories needing pegacorns, aren’t there?*
“Yes,” I said with all the sincerity I could muster. “And I need you for this one.” I started again: Masikah leaped into the air, silvery wings cutting the air like—
*Nah, I don’t think so.*
I felt a ball of fire rising into my throat. My acid reflux had returned, probably hastened by the handful of ibuprofen I had taken. “What do you mean, you don’t think so? The centaurs need you. Kymystro might be eating the father at this very moment!”
*He’s not.* Masikah sounded certain.
*How can you possibly know that?*
Masikah breathed on one of her pearly white hooves, then polished it with a wing. *Because you’re here arguing with me, not writing a dramatic death scene complete with terrified, wailing half-human children.*
I sighed, cracked my knuckles, and began anew: The sun tipped over the mountains, dragging bands of multicolored light in widening rainbow rings. Kymystro folded his leathern wings and stepped down from the zenith, striding toward the ravine where Father Centaur lay, exhausted from his struggles. His shattered leg refused to hold him, yet he had fought long past surrender. He could hear the cries of his children in the distance, screaming for him in a panic that goaded him to keep trying long after the battle was lost.
Masikah winced. *That’s awful. But we’re in a fantasy story, right? These things always work out happily.*
The father pawed at the cliffs, pain spearing his injured leg so fiercely his vision disappeared. He grunted in agony, felt blood run from his splintered hooves.
Tears filled Masikah’s huge, blue eyes. *His leg needs healing.*
I smiled despite the grimness of the scene I was creating. I was winning. “He needs the touch of a unicorn horn.”
*Or a doctor, Mickey.*
“I’m a pediatrician, not an orthopedic surgeon/veterinarian. It would take a miracle to fix that smashed leg. He needs the magic of a unicorn horn.”
*Yes.* Masikah considered for several moments. *Too bad I’m a pegacorn.*
My story came crashing down again. I had nearly cornered her, but the moment was lost. “Pegacorn horns work the same way.”
*Who says?*
“I do. And I made you.”
*I thought Pegasus and a unicorn made me.*
I had had more than enough. This creature I invented reminded me too much of my twelve-year-old son, a true pre-adolescent who invoked arguments so one-sidedly twisted he could turn a lawyer honest. “Look, Masikah. You’re going to Treasure Mountain. And that’s final.”
*No.*
“Yes.”
*No.*
“Yes!”
*No!*
Visions of my eight-year-old now. I balled my hands to fists, though I found nothing to punch in the world I had created. Badly. Very badly. As a parent, I knew I had only one recourse. “Then I’m taking away your pretty wings.”
*Go ahead. I didn’t want them anyway.*
Masikah spoke the truth. I needed her to wear those wings more than she did.
“. . . and replacing them with filthy bat wings.” The shimmering feathers disintegrated. In their place appeared tarry wings swarming with irregular, lumpy warts better suited to Kymystro.
Masikah made a strangled noise but still refused to move.
“And th
at shiny white coat . . .”
*Yes?* Masikah’s voice held a meekness I had never heard before.
“Dank purple.”
*Purple?!* Masikah studied herself, traumatized as her coat turned a dingy shade of violet and I added green spots for an uglier effect.
Masikah screamed. *I look like Barney!*
I was on a roll. Masikah’s teeth crooked in several directions, rotting in her gums. Her flowing tail coalesced into a stubby wad of skin with a few donkey hairs sticking from it like a paintbrush. Her mane looked as if a child had hacked at it with a pair of rusty scissors, and the massive friendly blue eyes grew bloodshot and frantic.
*All right! You win!* she proclaimed, returning the story to my control.
Masikah leaped into the air, her grubby wings slapping air like awkward paddles. Charged with worry for the centaur’s family, she sped to Treasure Mountain just in time to find the dragon, Kymystro, descending on a deep ravine, talons spread wide, mouth twisted in a sharp toothy grimace. “Stop,” she shouted in a burst of rot-toothed, fetid breath.
“Unicorn?” The dragon poised mid-dive to stare at Masikah. “Where did . . . ? How . . . ? What in deepest, darkest hell happened to you?”
“She did,” Masikah said, jabbing a hoof toward the computer screen, where I prepared to type the final, bloody showdown. “And I’m the heroine.” Her red eyes narrowed, and her voice emerged as thick and vile as a demon’s. “You should see what she has in store for you!”
Kymystro’s eyes went round as dinner plates. With a sudden burst of wing beats, he rose from the mountaintop and flew toward the sun, never to be seen in one of my stories again. I sat, stunned, the great battle taking up half the space in my brain now indefinitely postponed. My mind seized. My fingers stilled on the keyboard, not knowing what to write. The desperation; the frantic action; verbs like crashed and flailed and spasmed no longer had a place on this peaceful mountain, where the only sound was the moaning of a wounded centaur.
Masikah touched him with her horn, and I watched as health flowed back into his body. His lungs filled with steady breath, his dragging leg straightened, his pelt returned to a rich, dark chestnut. A moment later, he scuttled wildly from his rescuer. “What the hell are you?”
“I’m a unicorn,” Masikah said gently, her musical voice a grim parody to the ugliness of her being. “At least, I was.” She looked at me. *And now, I put my life in jeopardy to save another. I performed a heroic action despite my reticence and rescued the lives of eight centaurs. The rules of writing decree that I get rewarded.* Masikah looked at me with those hideous crimson eyes, but still managed to get across her need and desperation. *Don’t they?*
I let her sweat. It was only fair; she had done the same to me. “It’s not truly heroism if I have to force you.”
Masikah studied her hooves. *I guess I deserved that.* She gave a horsey shrug. *And I suppose I can live with being . . . whatever it is I am.* Bending a knee to make a climbing step, she assisted the centaur from his prison, then flew to the lip beside him.
“My family,” the centaur whispered.
“Let’s find them,” Masikah gently replied, her voice a sudden croak, her body slimy green, and her legs long and amphibious. She hopped along beside the centaur as he watched her newest transformation with wild, uncertain eyes.
But by the time Masikah reached the cave mouth, she had, once again, become the unicorn described in the second paragraph of this story. She kicked up her heels and raised her flowing tail, a clear horsey version of the all-too-human “moon.”
I didn’t tie her to railroad tracks. Kids, it seems, have softened me.
THE HERO OF KILLORGLIN
Fiona Patton
Fiona Patton was born in Calgary, Alberta, and grew up in the United States. In 1975 she returned to Canada and now lives on seventy-five acres of rural scrubland with her partner, one teeny chihuahua that has more winter coats than she does, five male cats, and a ferocious little female fire-cat that rules the roost with an iron paw.
THE LATE SUMMER BREEZE whispered across the hills and loughs of County Kerry. It wove through the tree-sheltered valleys where placid herds of brown-and-white cattle grazed beside cream-colored sheep and dun-colored roe deer and feathered across the reeds and grasses of the many low-lying bogs and marshlands. On a shallow rise overlooking a pool of still, clear water, Brae Diardin of the Ulaidh Fianna lay beneath the sweeping branches of a single hawthorn tree, her tunic flung carelessly to one side, and the faintest outline of a white hound with red ears shimmering in the sunlight above her pale skin and bright copper hair. Reaching out with one bare toe, she gave her dog, Balo, a scratch under his graying muzzle, echoing his grunt of contentment with one of her own.
The two of them had come south three days ago after the Fianna had repelled an attack by their ancient enemies, the Fomair, off the coast of Ulster. They and Brae’s three siblings had figured prominently in that battle and so, in reward, they’d been sent to the quiet ring fort of Staigue on the west coast of Munster to enjoy the last of the hot summer days while the rest of Fionn mac Cumhail’s legendary warriors chased down the few remaining Fomair that had eluded them in Donegal.
“Which is just fine with us, isn’t it, boy?” Brae said fondly, moving her foot to scratch the hound under his worn leather collar. “You’re getting far too old to go hunting giants and goblins these days, aren’t you?”
Balo’s ears perked up at her words, but he laid his head back down almost at once and she reached over to inspect his right forepaw, feeling the slight swelling around the ankle joint beneath her fingers. At almost twenty-five years old and one of the fabled faery-hounds of the Aes Sidhe, Brae was in her prime and could expect to live far longer than the earthly members of the Fianna, but Balo was a mortal hound and nearing ten. The battle against the Fomair and the subsequent journey south had left him stiff and lame. Soon they would have only one journey left: to her mother’s home in Anglesey where Balo would spend his final days before her hearth, warm and safe.
But warm and safe without Brae.
A single cloud passed across the sun, bringing the faintest hint of autumn on the breeze, and she shivered. She couldn’t imagine a time without Balo by her side, racing through the oak and rowan trees that sheltered the royal palace at Tara, or bounding through the surf at Ferriter’s Cove, or along the sandy strand at Ardmore. They’d been together in wartime and peacetime for most of Balo’s life; ever since Brae’s Aunt Tamair had dropped the squirming ten-week-old bundle of brindle energy into her arms after she’d been accepted into the Fianna at age fifteen. At eight months, he’d followed her to battle when invaders from the north had landed at Broadhaven, and a year later he’d saved her life at Lough Gill when the bluff had given way under her feet while fighting a trow. They’d hunted for deer and rabbits in the dappled woods of Powerscourt and salmon in the deep waters of the Shannon River. They’d stood together against the enemies of Ulaidh from Maulin Head to Schull and traveled the otherworldly paths under the sea to Ynys-Witrin in southern Logres. Always together.
With a sigh, Brae draped one arm across the hound’s warm flank and he turned to swipe at her face with his tongue.
“You still have a couple more months of hunting in you, don’t you, boy?” she asked, resting her face against his. Balo’s tail began to thump against the grass in response to the worried tone in her voice and she nodded in resignation. “But only just,” she admitted. “So, we’d better make it count, eh?” Shaking off the somber mood, she smiled down at him. “So that means no more excitement, all right?” she said, reaching down to take his muzzle in her cupped hands. “No more giants, sea serpents, northerners, monsters, or otherworldly hound packs. We’ll go to Anglesey in the fall; that’ll give your paws a chance to heal, but in the meantime, Munster’s at peace and the Fianna are on guard. There shouldn’t be any reason why we can’t spend the rest of this summer lying back and doing nothing. Agreed?”
She touched her for
ehead to his to seal the bargain but as she straightened, the wind brought a sudden, unfamiliar scent wafting down to them. Balo gave a woof of warning, there was a snap of branches above their heads, and looking up, they saw a small red and white creature staring down at them through the leaves of the hawthorn tree.
“It’s a cat.”
The next day, lying with her head pillowed on Balo’s flank, Brae gave her older sister, Isien, a sleepy-eyed look in response to her indignant statement. The four siblings had spent the morning hunting with their dogs and now all eight lay sprawled under the hawthorn tree with the boneless grace that only well-fed hounds, mortal or Sidhe, could master. Giving a great yawn, Brae shook her head.
“No,” she corrected lazily, “it’s a fire-cat.”
“No, it’s a cat-cat,” Isien insisted, flicking her own copper-colored hair from her eyes. “What’s it doing here?”
Brae craned her neck to see the creature wrap its oversize white paws about Balo’s muzzle and begin washing his face. It bit down on his lip and Balo shook his head, sending cat tumbling into a bed of cowslips.
“Being too cute to be believed?” she hazarded.
“And taking its life in its . . . claws,” Cullen, the youngest sibling, observed. Cocking his head to one side, he watched as the cat flung itself at the old hound once again, scaling his shoulder like a brightly painted woodpecker.
“Balo won’t hurt it,” Brae answered carelessly.
“But where did it come from?” Isien persisted.
Brae pointed wordlessly up into the hawthorn branches.
“Why?”
“I have no idea.”
After it had received Brae and Balo’s full attention, the red and white creature had scaled swiftly down the tree trunk headfirst, digging its tiny claws into the bark to keep its balance and, once standing in the meadow grass, had revealed itself to be a small, half-grown calico cat with wild multicolored fur sticking out in all directions and a disconcertingly intelligent expression in its wide golden eyes. It had immediately attached itself to Balo, following him and Brae back to Staigue and, despite Brae’s best efforts to lock it out of her room, had somehow managed to be found sleeping beside the hound in his nest of old blankets by Brae’s bedroll the next morning. It had eaten half the dog’s breakfast, then disappeared, only to reappear once more after the morning’s hunt.
Fantasy Gone Wrong Page 4