I didn't waste a minute thinking that I was crazy. The natural assumption was that someone was making a movie outside, and that this was something whomped-up by the Special Effects Department, like those poor elephants that had to stand around wearing fur overcoats in Star Wars. Or perhaps it was a publicity stunt. It probably said Eat at Joe's in huge neon letters on the other side.
I had some shopping to do anyway, and so this seemed like the perfect time to go out. I grabbed my purse and let myself out the front door. The unicorn was just cantering back down the block, returning in the direction from which it had come. Too bad Jenny goes over to Stacey's house on Sundays, I thought, watching it run gracefully along. She was six, and she would have loved this. Then the unicorn saw me, and stopped. It daintily raised one foot, like a setter pointing, and then it lilted its head back and flared its nostrils. It was smelling me, catching my scent on the breeze.
Then it looked at me, right at me, and, still staring at me, pawed impatiently at the ground with one silver hoof, as if it were waiting for something.
As if it were waiting for me.
Its movements were flowing, graceful, completely natural. A pretty damn good mockup, I thought, feeling the first pangs of doubt. There didn't seem to be any cameraman in evidence—in fact, there was no one around at all this time of the morning. So, at the risk of ruining somebody's long shot, I started walking toward him. He snorted, tossed his head, and shuffled his front legs nervously. I stopped, startled, less sure by the second that this was a publicity stunt or a movie gimmick, but he wasn't running away, and didn't really look very dangerous—he was still staring at me gravely, with bright, intelligent eyes—and so, hesitantly, I started walking toward him again.
He snorted again when I was a few steps away, softly, a gentle whickering sound, and then I was beside him, gingerly stretching out my hand, and then I was touching him.
He was covered with some sort of thick silky hair or fine-grained fur, and he was softer than anything I had ever touched, softer than the finest Angora. He was warm to the touch, and I could feel muscles twitch under his coat from time to time as he shifted position slightly. This close to him, I could hear him breathing, a deep, rhythmical sound, and I could smell him—a warm, spicy odor, not at all horselike, not at all unpleasant. I could feel his warm breath on my face. There could be no doubt anymore. This was no mechanical mockup—this was real.
Bemused, I stroked him, rubbing my hand through his thick mane, patting the graceful arch of his neck. He made a sighing sound of contentment and leaned into my fingers. We were almost eye to eye now, and his eyes watched me steadily and thoughtfully as I patted him—his eyes were large and liquid and extraordinarily beautiful, silver on ebony, flecked with specks of molten gold, like no eyes I had ever seen. I scratched his head, and then, gingerly, I brushed at the base of his horn with my fingers, but I could find no seam or junction; as far as I could tell, it grew naturally out of his forehead. Surely it would be more obvious than that if the horn had been grafted on surgically, and besides, grafted onto what? I knew of no breed of horse in the world that was even remotely like this—if it even was a horse in the first place. Right now it seemed to be purring, a decidedly unhorselike thing to do.
I had been right the first time: it was a unicorn. Plain and simple as that—nothing else but exactly what it was. I kept stroking him, and he nuzzled against my hand in a way that made me wish I had a carrot to give him. "I thought you guys were only supposed to let virgins touch you," I said ruefully, ruffling his mane. "Well," I continued, "I hate to tell you this, but this time you blew it. A virgin I am not. You're too late. By about fifteen years, too late. You should have come around while I was still at Swarthmore." But the dumb beast didn't seem to care. He whickered and butted his nose against my shoulder, and I took this for my cue to scratch him behind the ears—which indeed it seemed to be, for he bent his neck and sighed with pleasure. I kept scratching. He rested his head lightly on my shoulder, rolling his huge eyes and looking soulfully up at me, and then he licked me on the cheek.
I kept on patting the unicorn for what seemed like hours—and perhaps it was. But at last I began to become aware of the passage of time again. It was getting on toward afternoon, and I had things to do before Jenny got home.
I had found a unicorn, but unicorn or no unicorn, I still had to go to the Pathmark.
I stepped back away from him, and he stepped right after me, nuzzling at my hands. "Well . . ." I said. "Well, it's been lovely . . . but I have to go now. I've got shopping. . . ." He was staring at me, his eyes still bright and soulful, and suddenly I felt like a fool, standing there making polite social excuses to a mythological creature. "Okay, then," I said briskly, and I gave him one last solid pat on the neck in farewell. "Gotta go now. Goodbye!" And I turned, briskly, and briskly walked away.
I hadn't gotten very far when I heard clopping footsteps behind me, and looked around. He was following me. I stopped, feeling a trace of uneasiness. "Sorry, boy," I said firmly. "I've got to go now." He came up and nuzzled me again, and I made shooing motions at him. "Go away, now! Go on—git! Shoo!" But he didn't shoo—he just stood there and stared at me, his eyes sad and wet.
Exasperated, I turned and walked away again, walking much faster this time, but, sure enough, he kept following me. I began to run, and behind me I could hear him break into a trot. No way I was going to outrun that great beast, but fortunately I knew an easy way to lose him. A bit breathless—I'm not the jogging type, generally—I reached the place where my car was parked, and climbed into it, slamming the door behind me. Quickly, I started the car and drove away. I could see the unicorn in the rear-view mirror—he was standing by the curb and staring after me, craning his neck, looking faintly puzzled. I felt a pang of sadness, and hoped that he would find his way home again, wherever home was. . . .
The supermarket was a madhouse, as usual, and by the time I got out of there I was tired and irritable, and the encounter with the unicorn was already beginning to seem like some strange waking dream, the vivid colors of it leached away by the world's petty gray routine.
I thought about it all the way home, wondering now if it had happened at all. I had just about decided it could not have happened, when I got out of the car and saw the unicorn again.
Not only was he still waiting there patiently for me, but my daughter Jenny was actually sitting on his back, drumming her little heels gleefully against his shaggy ribs.
My heart lurched; surprise, a momentary touch of fear that quickly faded, dismay, irritation—and a strange kind of relief, a guilty joy at seeing him again.
My daughter waved. She jumped down from the unicorn's back and rushed toward me like a small excited whirlwind, hugging me, spinning around me wildly, nearly knocking me over. "Mommy!" she yelled. "Mommy, can we keep it?''
"We most certainly can not," I said indignantly, but Jenny had already scooted back to the unicorn, and was doing a sort of mad little dance of joy around it, whining in excitement, like a puppy. "Jenny!" I called sternly. "We can not keep it!" The unicorn whickered softly in greeting me as I came slowly up to it, and reached out to nuzzle my hands. "None of that," I said grumpily. I glanced at my wildly capering daughter, and then leaned forward to whisper exasperatedly into the unicorn's ear. "Listen! Let me tell you again. I am not a virgin, understand? Not. There was Steve, and Robbie, and Sam, and Trevor, and Herbie, that slimy little toad. . . ." The unicorn licked my face, a touch as soft as a falling leaf. "You've made some kind of mistake," I continued doggedly. "You shouldn't be here, not with me. Find somebody else. Or go back to whatever fairy tale you galloped out of. . . ." The unicorn looked at me reproachfully, and my voice faltered to a stop.
My daughter had gotten tired of dancing. She had buried her face in the unicorn's mane, and was hugging him tightly; he nuzzled her hair, and licked her on the ear. "Oh, Mommy," she whispered. "He's wonderful. He's the most wonderful thing I've ever seen. . . ."
"Well, we can'
t keep him," I said weakly. "So don't get too attached to him."
But already it was starting to rain, a sooty city rain that left streaks along the unicorn's shining silver flanks. The unicorn was staring at me with his great sad eyes, and I felt myself beginning to melt.
"Oh, Mommy, it's raining. We can't leave him out in the rain—"
The garage door was big enough to get him inside with no problem. At first I'd meant to make him stay in the garage, but Jenny pointed out that the door into the basement floor was almost as large as the garage door itself, and after a while I relented, and let the unicorn squeeze himself through that door too. There were only a couple of interconnected rumpus rooms down there, and the only thing of any value was Herbie's pool table, unused since the divorce, and that the unicorn could smash to flinders for all I cared.
"All right, Jenny, but remember, it's only for tonight. . . ."
Of course, we kept him.
Actually, he turned out to be remarkably little trouble. He seemed content to stay downstairs most of the time, as long as we visited him frequently and patted him a lot, and after a while we noticed that he didn't seem to either eat or eliminate, so two of the major problems that would have arisen if we'd been keeping an ordinary horse in our rumpus room never came up at all. To my relief, he didn't insist on trying to follow me to work on Monday, and although I half-hoped that when I came back from the office that evening, he'd be gone, I was also a bit more than half-glad when I came down the basement steps and heard him whinny to me in greeting.
Some of my friends adjusted with amazing ease to the fact that I now had a unicorn living in the basement, and those who couldn't adjust soon stopped coming around at all. One of those who couldn't adjust was Ralph, the guy I was seeing at the time, and I was broken up about that for a day or two, but the unicorn snorted and gave me a look that seemed to say, him you're better off without, you can do better than that, and after a while I came to agree with him.
Jenny and I spent many evenings brushing the unicorn's beautiful coat and trying to think of a name for him, but although we made up list after list, none of the names seemed to fit. Mythological creatures are so intensely themselves that names are superfluous, I guess. "The unicorn" was all the name he needed.
So we settled down together, the months went by, and we had our first dusting of snow.
I was making tuna salad one frosty winter morning when Jenny came running excitedly into the kitchen. "Mommy!" she said breathlessly. "Mommy, the unicorn went into the closet!"
"That's nice," I said, continuing to dice an onion.
"And he's making a nest in there, and everything!"
"Uh-oh," I said. I put down the knife and rushed out of the room, Jenny scampering at my heels.
It was the large walk-in storage closet in the basement, but it was still a closet, and the unicorn had made a nest in there all right, pulling down old coats and dresses and treading and pawing them all into a nice fluffy mound. I leaned wearily against the doorjamb—I had been through this before with innumerable tabby cats, and knew what to expect, but Jenny was peeking timidly around my hip and saying in a hushed little voice, "Mommy, what is it?" and so I sighed, and knelt, and peered more closely myself.
Inside the warm semi-darkness of the storage closet, the unicorn softly whickered. She looked tired and rumpled and very proud of herself.
Of course, she had kittens in there. Kittens, colts, foals, whatever you want to call them. Babies. Baby unicorns.
There were five of them white as snow and about the size of cocker spaniels, nuzzling up against their mother's side. Their stubby little horns were still covered with furry velvet, and except for the fact that they were squirming and moving about, they looked just like the unicorn plush toys you sometimes see in the more imaginative gift shops.
"Funny," I said, "you didn't look pregnant." I met the unicorn's liquid eyes, and she stared back at me serenely and guilelessly. "So, old girl," I said ruefully. "You weren't a virgin either, were you? No wonder you didn't care."
The unicorn whickered again and blew out its lips with a soft snorting sound, and I sighed. I thought of the snow that was gusting around outside. No wonder you wanted a place to live—you might not be so hot at recognizing virgins, but you sure knew a sucker when you saw one. The unicorn rested her head in my lap, staring lovingly up at me out of her enormous eyes, and gently licked my hand with her velvet tongue.
Jenny was leaning by me now, her eyes as wide as saucers, her face soft with wonder. "Oh, Mommy . . ." she breathed. "Oh, Mommy, they're so pretty—"
The babies were squeaking and squirming about, making little mewing noises, and one of them nuzzled its mole-soft nose trustingly into my hand, searching blindly for milk, gently nibbling me with its soft little lips. . . .
I sighed again.
So this week I put an ad in the paper:
UNICORNS—Free to Good Homes.
But somehow I don't think we're going to get many replies.
The Shade of Lo Man Gong
by
William F. Wu
William F. Wu is a popular young author who has been a frequent contributor to Analog and Pulphouse, as well as to such markets as Omni and Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. His well-received series of stories about the supernatural adventures of Jack Hong, to which the story that follows belongs, will be reprinted in chronological order by Pulphouse Publishing as part of their "Short Story Paperback" line. His novels include Hong on the Range, MasterPlay, and The Second Book of Chaos. His most recent novel is The Robin Hood Ambush. He lives in El Mirage, California.
Here he shows us that even the longest journey must begin with just a single step. . . .
I was standing on Main Street in the fading darkness of early morning, ready to stick my thumb out, walking backward down the sidewalk. The only lights, though, came from streetlights and locked-up storefronts. The city was still asleep.
I needed direction in my life.
On the graveyard shift, lunchtime should have fallen around four in the morning. I waited until six every day, though, so I could eat breakfast in the Canton Forever, a greasy little Chinese diner that served congee in the morning. Every day, just as alarm clocks were buzzing and ringing all over town, I walked there from whatever supermarket I had been gracing with my janitorial expertise that night.
I worked for a string of six supermarkets and rotated six nights a week, filling in for the regular janitor on his night off.
It was the most creative, challenging field I had ever worked in.
"Cuh ming, Mistah Hong," said the proprietor. He was trying to say "Come in." As I entered, he held the door and gave me his usual broad, phony smile and jerky nods. Then he reversed the sign to "Open."
"Cuh ming," he repeated, still smiling. He was a short, muscular immigrant with permanently uncombed hair, anywhere between twenty-five and forty years old. Maybe. He wore baggy gray flannel pants and a white undershirt he called a singlet.
I slid into my usual booth.
The little diner had a perpetually dingy look to its black and white linoleum tiles, white formica tables, and torn fake-leather booths. It looked like a set for a cheap biker movie. Still, the food was good and it was hot.
"Goo moing," said the guy's wife. It was her version of "good morning." She was short and chubby, with a pleasant smile. Then she set down a big bowl of hot, steaming congee—a thick rice gruel with vegetables and meat in it, plus a little plate of other stuff I could drop in it. I liked it all, but I didn't know what most of it was.
"Hi." I leaned forward to smell the steam and reached for the soy sauce.
She poured tea for me and left the metal pot. After I had ordered the same breakfast six mornings a week for two weeks, she had quit taking my order and now just brought it out to me. I had been coming for two years.
Other people began drifting in, most of them regulars. Traffic picked up outside. A rowdy bunch of guys, dirty and sweaty and red-eyed, wearin
g ratty T-shirts cut off over the waist and baggy, stained pants and work boots, crowded into one booth. They had the nervous energy and raucous laughter of people who had stayed up all night without planning to.
I ate with a porcelain Chinese spoon, watching the kitchen door as I did every day. Every so often, the couple's daughter, who appeared to be about four, would peek out and look at me.
If I smiled at her, she ran away in terror. However, if I concentrated on my congee, she would watch me until her mother yelled at her.
I sat there blowing on the congee and pondering the directionless state of my existence. That was another morning ritual. I had expected more than brooms and mops out of life, but was now unburdened of that fallacy.
Working alone every night, six nights out of seven, gave me a strange isolated routine. I had no friends in town, only acquaintances, and had somehow lost the drive for close companionship. Still, I did nothing to fight the situation; I had no more rebelliousness than the dried brown fluffy stuff and the green shiny pickled stuff I was drowning in the congee.
The kitchen door creaked open a few inches. I looked away, into my bowl, and watched one black pigtail in a red ribbon appear in the corner of my eye. A second later, two small dark eyes peered at me intently out of a chubby face.
Smiley came out to bring tea to the guys who had been up all night. He took a long time getting their orders, since they kept giggling and yelling at each other. Finally, though, he gave them one more idiot smile and returned to the kitchen.
I scraped the bottom of the bowl for the end of the congee and sat back, gazing blankly at the empty seat across from me. The rut I was in took me in a circle, rotating from supermarket to supermarket without meeting anyone new or finding any breaks in the routine. My mind knew there was more to life, but I didn't feel there was. The seat had dried mustard on it. So what?
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