Unicorns II

by Gardner Dozois

  She looked at me for a second, then turned and cracked the top on a tall can of beer. Handed it to me. "Let's take a walk," she said.

  I reached to pick up my duffel bag. "You can leave that," she said.

  "I'll carry it," I said, slinging the strap over my shoulder. A man like me can't be leaving sixteen imitation Rolex watches around where someone could steal his livelihood. I reached for my change on the bar.

  "That'll be safe," she said firmly. I nodded and left it where it was.

  "I'll watch the till," said the kid at the pool table as he sank the eleven ball. "I anticipate a real rush of customers," he added with a laugh, taking aim on the twelve.

  "Thanks, Mike," Jo said. "This way."

  I followed her through the kitchen, heavy with the smell of chilis, fried meat, and freshly baked bread. She gave one pot a stir, tasted the spoon, and turned down the gas. The screen door slammed behind us, and I was looking at a scene straight out of the '60s.

  A wide dirt path, or maybe it had once been a narrow road, curved out from the back steps. It was heavily rutted and scarred. But what flashed me back were all the mismatched dwellings that lined the path.

  I hadn't seen such a mishmash of funked-out, burned-out architecture since Life magazine, or maybe it was People, ran a photo spread on hippie communes back when I was a kid. No two places looked alike. The only thing they had in common was that they were all deserted and all falling apart. That didn't stop crazy Jo from waving at them as we walked down the path, her bracelets and—I now noticed—anklets, flashing in the late afternoon sun.

  There were wrecked adobe houses and ruined log cabins. They sat beside disintegrating geodesic domes and caved-in sod huts that were nestled up next to rotting frame shanties and rusting travel trailers. A collapsed teepee leaned against something unidentifiable, apparently a home of sorts once made out of mud and sticks. All the hollow windows stared at us like the eyes of blind men, and it gave me the creeps. Jo didn't seem to mind, and she whistled and waved to them as she led me down the path, as though the empty windows were full of friends she was greeting. I was following a bedbug crazy woman, for sure.

  At the end of the path was a small corral; hard-packed dirt with a few struggling weeds, surrounded by a collapsed fence of weathered junk lumber and dried tree limbs. Tumbleweeds were caught in the fence, and there was a pitiful swaybacked burro in the middle, pawing at the dirt and brushing flies off with its tail.

  "Isn't this beautiful?" Jo asked, sitting on a rock. "This is my favorite place in the world."

  I didn't know what to say, so I just shook my head. It looked like a dump to me.

  "This place is magic," she said. "There are legends surrounding this area that go back to the beginning of time. The Indians considered it sacred ground. The Spanish built a mission here. It's a touchpoint to the spirit world. Can you feel it?"

  "No," I said truthfully.

  She smiled, fingering the unicorn around her neck. "It takes time," she said. "If the time is right, you will see. Your heart must be ready."

  I could see all right, but what I saw was a mangy animal, a lot of desert, and some barren mountains off in the distance.

  "So tell me about your father," she said. "The one that didn't leave you that fake Rolex in his will."

  Which story to tell? I had several, all lies. In one, my father was a war hero. In another, he played baseball for the New York Yankees. Or he was a stock car driver, a successful surgeon, a missionary in Africa, it all depended on the situation.

  "He died in prison," I said, and couldn't believe that the words were coming out of my mouth. "A riot or something. I was, I guess, about fifteen. He robbed gas stations, and sometimes liquor stores. I never got to see much of him. He was either traveling or in jail."

  The burro had come over, and she was petting the sorry beast.

  "My mother split when I was two. Mostly I was raised by my aunt and uncle. My Uncle Dan did occasional second-story work, stealing jewelry and cash, stuff like that. He hardly ever got caught, and he had a good lawyer. My aunt was into welfare fraud. She got about ten checks a month under different names. They treated me okay as long as I kept running scams and bringing in some cash. I mean, they didn't beat me all that much."

  I looked away from Jo. How could I be saying this? The truth was a door I thought I'd closed a long time ago. I focused on the mountains in the distance. If I squinted just a bit, one of them looked a little like an eagle half turned away from us.

  "You ever been married, Mark?" she asked.

  "Twice," I said. "Not very long either time. The first was a big mistake; we were too young. The second—Mary was her name—well, I was just bad to her. She was okay and tried hard, but I just didn't have it in me."

  "What didn't you have in you?"

  "I dunno," I said. "Love, compassion; whatever you want to call it, I fell short. She needed a stable life, and I had a bad case of the wanders. She was good to me, though. Better than I deserved."

  "Life started in a place like this," she said, reaching down for a handful of sand and letting it trickle slowly through her fingers.

  "Pardon?"

  "Africa," she said, looking off into the distance. "Probably wasn't too different from this place. It was a harsh beginning, but we've come a long way since then. I think the heat's elemental, kind of like we were forged in some big furnace. Eventually we all come back. I think that once in our lives we find a place like this, and if our heart is clean, we'll see the magic. Do you still love her?"

  "Mary?" The shift caught me unawares. For some reason, I'd been thinking about lions. "I guess I do. I don't know. She's somewhere in California, last I heard. Bakersfield. I try not to think about her too much. It was a long time ago, and we were different people."

  "Some Indian tribes think we came from a spirit world. Some say it was from a cave not far from here. Others say we came from the sky. I like legends. Mostly I like them because they can all be true. It's a vast universe, and there's room for all kinds of things. What's important is what is in your heart. Did you always want to be a con man?"

  I shrugged my shoulders. "It's what I know, I guess. Oh, I finished high school all right, and even sat in on a couple of junior college classes. Mostly art classes. But my uncle, he didn't see much use for that, and as long as I was staying at his house, I had to pull my own weight. I did okay."

  "It gets cold here, too," she said. "Bitter cold. That's elemental, too. The Inuits believe that all animals have spirits and should be treated with respect, even when it is necessary to kill them for food. Are you hungry?"

  Polar bears. Walrus. Flat tundra, harsh and cold.

  "I guess I am," I said.

  "Good," she said, hopping off the rock. "I'll put you to work and you can earn your dinner."

  Walking back down the path to the restaurant, I was embarrassed at having told Jo so much. It wasn't like me at all to reveal so much of myself to anyone, much less to someone I hardly knew. My duffel bag was getting heavier. I wished I'd left it.

  Someone must have been working on the lawns in front of the broken-down houses while we were at the corral. They looked a lot neater. It was only after we walked in the back door to the restaurant that I realized that I hadn't seen the buildings when I'd come into town.

  Jo put me to work scrubbing pots and doing dishes. For a nowhere place, they served a lot of dinners. I didn't see most of the customers, since I was working in back, but once in a while someone would wander through the kitchen and talk to Jo or me. Everyone seemed to know everyone else. It was like a neighborhood bar and restaurant, except that there was no neighborhood.

  There was no shortage of kids, though. It seemed like there were always one or two underfoot. They didn't seem to bother Jo, and she chatted with them as she cooked. They seemed to like her a lot.

  One of the kids, her name was Donna, took a real interest in my rose tattoo. She was shy about it at first, but then I showed her how I could flex my arm and ma
ke the stem move. She thought that was great fun, and kept bringing her friends back into the kitchen to see it.

  We kept busy all night I enjoyed the work, and the chili Jo made was outstanding. The easy friendliness of the people coming back into the kitchen to visit made it seem like one big family. The time passed quickly, and I was surprised when Jo started closing down.

  We sat in the quiet bar and talked for what seemed like hours. I told her things I'd never told anyone else. I even showed her my sketch book and she didn't laugh.

  She said I had a lot of natural talent, and, with a little training, I could be a professional-level artist. I was embarrassed, but secretly pleased.

  It wasn't like I was just jabbering. She really listened to what I said, like it was important. Not that is was, really; I was just telling her about how I grew up.

  Jo said I could sleep on one of the sofas in the bar, and she brought in some sheets and a pillow. After she had gone, I looked in the cash register. It was full of money. She trusted me more than I trusted myself.

  I closed the register and fell asleep, surrounded by all the ghostly artifacts that lined the walls of the bar.

  The next morning, I followed my nose into the kitchen, where a pot of coffee was brewing. There was a note from Jo, saying that she'd gone to help a neighbor whose cow was having a difficult delivery. I poured a cup of coffee and went out the back door. I expected to feel bad for having said so much about myself the night before, but the truth was, I felt fine.

  It was cool outside, the air was clear and sharp. As I walked down the path to check out that moth-eaten burro, the row of buildings didn't seem nearly as broken-down as they had the day before. I guess I was getting used to them.

  I stopped short at the end of the path. The corral was gone, and in its place was a lush green field. A beautiful chestnut stallion was grazing in the middle, and looked up curiously when I dropped my coffee cup. He came over, stopping about three feet away from me.

  Impossible! I reached out to touch him, and he casually stepped aside. I bent down and pulled up several sprigs of grass. They seemed real enough. I chewed on one, and it tasted like grass. It was all too strange. I put the grass in my shirt pocket.

  As I hurried back down the path, I thought I saw a shadow move in a window of one of the adobe houses.

  Jo had not returned, and I was the only one around. All the junk in the bar suddenly seemed ominous, as if each piece had a sinister story attached to it, and I started thinking about all the horror stories I'd read and all the Twilight Zones I'd watched on T.V. I was looking at my duffel bag and thinking about getting out of this crazy place before something horrible happened, when someone knocked on the door to the general store part of the building.

  A man and a woman with three children stood outside the door. Their car was behind them, a rusted-out wreck loaded down with what must have been all their worldly belongings. Mattresses and a rocking chair were strapped to the roof.

  "Sorry, we're closed," I said.

  "Please, sir," said the man. "Milk for the children. I have one dollar." He slowly unbuttoned the front pocket on his frayed jeans jacket and pulled out a carefully folded dollar bill. He held it out for me to see.

  I opened the door.

  The man went over to the double glass doors where the drinks were kept. For one dollar, he might be able to get two small cartons of milk. I wondered how far that would get him. As he read the prices on the milk, the woman and their three kids—a boy and two girls—stood by the register.

  "Daddy's got work in Mesilla," said the young boy proudly. "We're going to live in a real house this time."

  "Hush, Danny," said the woman. "Don't bother the man." She looked up at me and smiled shyly. "Kids . . ." she said.

  The woman was dressed plainly, in old, but neat and clean, clothes. A scarf around her neck was held in place by a beadwork pin, decorated with small feathers.

  "That's a nice pin," I said.

  "I made it for Mama," said one of the girls, holding the woman's hand tightly. "The last school we went to had an art class. It was fun, but we had to leave."

  "I do like that pin," I said. "I couldn't talk you into trading it for some groceries, could I?"

  I saw hope flash through the woman's face, but she covered it well, and looked down at her daughter. "That would have to be Lisa's decision," she said. "I can't trade a gift."

  "Would it be enough for a jar of peanut butter and some crackers?" the girl asked.

  I nodded. "And a little more," I said.

  "Give him the pin, Mama. I can make you another one now that I know how. And they'll probably have an art class at the school in Mesilla. It's a big place, and I love peanut butter."

  I had to send them back three times to get more groceries. It filled four bags, and I slipped a twenty-dollar bill down in the bottom of one of the bags, so that they wouldn't find it until later. When they left, I put the Closed sign back in the window and went into the dark bar.

  The pin looked good on a shelf next to a carved piece of driftwood. I picked up my duffel bag.

  "Some con man you are," said Jo, with a gentle laugh, from the darkness. "Five cents' worth of beads and a few chicken feathers for all that food!"

  "I was going to leave you money for it," I said. "How long have you been here?"

  "Long enough. And you know I don't care about the money."

  "I was fixing to leave," I said. "This place does strange things to me."

  "It does nothing but bring out what is already there," she said. "And I want to show you something before you go."

  She turned and went through the kitchen. I set my duffel bag down and followed her out the back door.

  There was magic in the air. The houses along the path shimmered and shifted as we walked past them. I held out the blades of grass."

  "I found these," I said.

  "You found more than that," she said. "Look."

  We had reached the end of the path. An impossibly white unicorn stood in the middle of a field lush with wildflowers. It walked up to Jo and nuzzled her hair. She turned to me and smiled.

  "Everyone comes to a place like this once in their lives," she said. "If your heart is right, you will recognize it for what it is. If your soul is hardened, you will pass it by and never know."

  She walked over to me and kissed my cheek. Then she went back to the unicorn, and, with a fluid movement, pulled herself onto its back. They looked perfect together, as if they were one animal.

  "Gook luck, Mark Rogers," she said. "You have found your path. To walk it or not is your decision."

  She nudged the unicorn, and it turned to the right, rearing up slightly and then breaking into a gallop across the lush field of grass, which now seemed to stretched unbroken all the way to the distant mountains.

  Smoke was curling from the first adobe house I passed on my way back. An old couple sat on the front porch. They waved to me and called my name. I waved back to them, as I did to all the others who lived in this place of spirits.

  I got a ride with the first car passing through, driven by a heavyset man with a red beard. The back seat was full of sample cases, so I crammed my duffel down at my feet.

  "Thanks," I said, settling in.

  "No problem," he said, putting the car in gear. "I like to have someone to talk to. Besides, that looks like a nowhere place to be stuck looking for a ride."

  "It has its good points," I said.

  "Not for me. I'm a traveling salesman, and I've seen a thousand one-horse towns like that. Not worth bothering with. No profit there. What do you do when you're not hitching rides?"

  "I'm studying to be an artist," I said. I looked back over my shoulder, and, as I watched, the houses behind the restaurant wavered and faded from view. The pasture was gone. Nothing but sand.

  "Say, fellow, you don't have the time, do you? I've got an appointment scheduled in Flagstaff and my watch is broke."

  I reached down into my duffel and pulled out one of
the watches. The battery was still good, and it was keeping time. I passed it to him.

  "Nice watch," he said. "Rolex, isn't it? Wish I had one, but I bet they cost a bundle."

  I paused for a moment.

  "No," I said. "It's just a cheap imitation. Keep it. I appreciate the ride."

  Somewhere I could feel doors slamming. But, at the same time, other doors were opening.

  "Thanks," he said. "So, how far are you going?"

  "Bakersfield," I said, after a moment. "I'm going all the way to Bakersfield."

  The Stray

  by

  Susan Casper and Gardner Dozois

  Here's a wry story about a woman who, when she set out from home that day, was very sure that she did not want a pet. . . .

  Susan Casper has sold fiction to Playboy, Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, Amazing, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, The Twilight Zone Magazine, and to many original horror anthologies. She is co-editor, with Gardner Dozois; of the horror anthology Ripper! and has just completed her first novel, The Red Carnival.

  Gardner Dozois has won two Nebula awards for his short fiction and four Hugo awards as the year's Best Editor. He is the editor of Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine and the annual anthology series The Year's Best Science Fiction.

  You always think of a unicorn as a horse with a horn, I reflected as it galloped past my window, and this did look quite a bit like a horse, but in some odd indefinable way it also looked just as much like a giant cat, or an otter, or a fox, or like any other sleek, smooth-furred, swift-moving, graceful creature. I opened the window, and leaned out for a better look. Yes, it was a unicorn, all right. It was silver (silver, not gray—there was a definite metallic sheen to its coat), with a cream-colored mane and tail. The single horn was gleaming white, and spiraled, and very long. In spite of the Unicorn Tapestry pictures, it had no fringy little billygoat beard—in fact, a goat was one of the few sorts of creatures it didn't look like.