by Jack Dann
Obedience and the night are over for me; I am spent.
The nymph snores and Hekate shifts and sighs in her sleep. I hear laughter, giggling, the command to hush, but the sounds pass over me like a breeze. It must be the humans, searching in a pack for something to entertain them, and I am beyond entertaining.
We have few storms here, but when they come they are violent and long. We know now when to seek shelter, for the gentle wind that precedes them through the mountain peaks has a certain coolness, a certain flavor. My hair rises, all down my spine, for the storm-wind and the breeze of words are all too similar.
I move my legs carefully so I will not hurt the snoring nymph, then lurch to my feet. Hekate stirs but does not wake. I am already stiff and sore, and my hoof aches fiercely. But I remember the direction Elfleda and the ugly boy walked, and I remember the way the humans crept, after her.
I followed the bruised leaves of their passing, too frightened to call out. Elfleda could be beyond the sound of my warning, and the humans could come back and silence me. I climb as fast as I am able. The ache spreads into my haunches and along the vertebrae strained by my unnatural construction.
The trees end suddenly. Moonlight throws my long shadow against pale granite. The mountain peak is still far above, separated from me by ridges, flat sheets of rock, sheer walls.
I climb the first ridge, my hooves scraping the bare stone. When I reach the top I can see Elfleda and the boy, gilt in the midst of shadows. His hands are twined in her mane and her arms around his naked body. He moves against her.
They are safe, and alone. I am spying on them, up here silhouetted against the sky, and I am ashamed. I will go back to Hekate's solid warm side—
The moon reflects from ornament or weapon.
"Elfleda!"
As she throws up her head at my warning the humans rush her. The boy jumps away, surprised and embarrassed. The other humans are all around, yelling in triumph, holding nets and ropes to take back the defiance they gave her. The ugly boy looks from one face to another, confused, humiliated: at least he did not know what use they planned for his initiation. He sees the ropes, and strikes one angrily away. Elfleda rears and another misses her. She charges the humans' head down, and they scatter away from her sharp horn. She is trapped by the mountain and the waiting nets.
I gallop down the side of the ridge. A noose settles over Elfleda's head, around her throat, and slides tight. She turns, flinching, grasps the rope and sets herself back on her haunches, pulling the human off balance. She tears the rope away and flings it to the ground, but another settles around her shoulders. One strikes her hind legs like a snake. Startled, she springs away, and the tension of the rope halts her in mid-arc and pulls her down. She lies stunned, a scarlet burn on her throat, blood trickling from one leg where the rope has cut it.
Laughing, the humans close a circle around her as I near, my hoofbeats echoing on the stone. To our masters, this is adventure. Between them I see Elfleda raise her head. She tosses it, as a human approaches her, and her horn opens a deep wound. I reach the crowd and scatter our frail creators with my shoulders. I charge the human who holds the trip-rope; I pick her up and throw her down on the stones.
Our masters have stopped laughing.
Elfleda kicks off the loosened rope and pulls away the other, struggling to her feet. She menaces the humans with her horn and I with my fists, my hooves. They stand back, milling around us. We are all at bay.
"Achilleus!"
She bounds forward and I follow. The humans are raising nets, crying to each other to hurry. One snare drapes low, rippling and tangled. As it rises Elfleda leaps it. I gather speed, collect myself, and jump. The strands graze my forelegs—they must entrap my hind legs—but I kick back and up, the rough cords scrape me, and I am free!
I plunge after Elfleda's pale form. Our retreat to the park, where we could hide and hope the masters might forget their anger, is cut off. Elfleda flees toward the mountain and the impassable ridges.
She starts to climb, hesitating when she no longer hears me behind her. "Achilleus, come on!"
"But where will we go?"
"Anywhere but back—if we want to live. Hurry!"
She reaches toward me in encouragement: she is too high above actually to reach me.
"There's nothing out there for us."
She looks beyond me. I turn. The masters are very near, now, confident of their prey.
"Hurry!" Elfleda says again, and I put one hoof on the steep rock. This is desperation. I begin to climb. I scrabble on the stone, straining upward. My hooves are made for meadows and prairies. I can hear the masters just behind me. Trying to go faster, I slip and fall to my knees, crying out at the wave of pain, reaching with my hands to keep from falling. Granite soaks up my blood.
Elfleda is almost close enough to touch me. Did she descend to help me climb?
"I can't—"
"Try," she says. "Just try . . ."
Shining in the failing moonlight, a rope slips over her head as she grasps my hand.
Another noose falls around my throat and jerks me backwards. I fumble at it, struggling to free myself and climb. The rope jerks me again, much harder, pulling me down, cutting off my breath. My bruised hoof slams against a rock spur. The pain completes my disorientation. I stumble again, falling and sliding on the stone. I am lost.
When next I am aware of anything I feel warm droplets lulling on my shoulder. I open my eyes, and see the masters leading Elfleda back down the mountain. She is at the center of a web of ropes, around her throat, her arms, her waist, binding her hands, but she holds her head erect. One of the humans reaches out and pulls her black-tipped tail. She lashes out with a sharp hind hoof and half-turns toward him, but the other humans drag her around.
I lunge up. The ugly human boy reaches out to stop me, too late. I scream and fall back, shuddering, panting, suddenly cold and wet with sweat. When I lie still the pain is only a great throbbing.
"I'm sorry," the boy whispers. "I didn't know . . ."
I push myself slowly up on one elbow, straining to see yet not move my hindquarters. Blood is black in the moonlight, but dawn will soon turn the patch beneath me scarlet. I can see the bones protruding from my shattered leg.
Elfleda and the humans disappear among the trees as I sink back to the ground. I can only see the paling sky and the single human. "Help me . . . please help me . . ." But he is wiping the tears from his cheeks, pushing the hair from his forehead. It must be the kind moonlight and dawn that make him appear less coarse, less uncertain. There is no magic here.
"Elfleda," I whisper, and the boy gazes blankly down, as if he never knew her name.
Behind me I can hear the footsteps of two more humans, as they approach me one last time.
Introduction to Ursula K. Le Guin's "The White Donkey":
Here is a subtle and evocative story about the loss of innocence by multiple award-winner Ursula K. Le Guin, one of the major writers of our times, author of such landmark books as The Left Hand of Darkness, The Dispossessed, The Lathe of Heaven, The Wizard of Earthsea, and the recent The Beginning Place.
THE WHITE DONKEY
Ursula K. Le Guin
There were snakes in the old stone place, but the grass grew so green and rank there that she brought the goats back every day. "The goats are looking fat," Nana said. "Where are you grazing them, Sita?" And when Sita said, "At the old stone place, in the forest," Nana said, "It's a long way to take them," and Uncle Hira said, "Look out for snakes in that place," but they were thinking of the goats, not of her; so she did not ask them, after all, about the white donkey.
She had seen the donkey first when she was putting flowers on the red stone under the pipal tree at the edge of the forest. She liked that stone. It was the Goddess, very old, round, sitting comfortably among the roots of the tree. Everybody who passed by there left the Goddess some flowers or poured a bit of water on her, and every spring her red paint was renewed. Sita was giving th
e Goddess a rhododendron flower when she looked round, thinking one of the goats was straying off into the forest; but it wasn't a goat. It was a white animal that had caught her eye, whiter than a Brahminee bull. Sita followed, to see what it was. When she saw the neat round rump and the tail like a rope with a tassel, she knew it was a donkey; but such a beautiful donkey! And whose? There were three donkeys in the village, and Chandra Bose owned two, all of them grey, bony, mournful, laborious beasts. This was a tall, sleek, delicate donkey, a wonderful donkey. It could not belong to Chandra Bose, or to anybody in the village, or to anybody in the other village. It wore no halter or harness. It must be wild; it must live in the forest alone.
Sure enough, when she brought the goats along by whistling to clever Kala, and followed where the white donkey had gone into the forest, first there was a path, and then they came to the place where the old stones were, blocks of stone as big as houses all half-buried and overgrown with grass and kerala vines; and there the white donkey was standing looking back at her from the darkness under the trees.
She thought then that the donkey was a god, because it had a third eye in the middle of its forehead like Shiva. But when it turned she saw that that was not an eye, but a horn—not curved like a cow's or a goat's horns, a straight spike like a deer's—just the one horn, between the eyes, like Shiva's eye. So it might be a kind of god donkey; and in case it was, she picked a yellow flower off the kerala vine and offered it, stretching out her open palm.
The white donkey stood a while considering her and the goats and the flower; then it came slowly back among the big stones towards her. It had split hooves like the goats, and walked even more neatly than they did. It accepted the flower. Its nose was pinkish-white, and very soft where it snuffled on Sita's palm. She quickly picked another flower, and the donkey accepted it too. But when she wanted to stroke its face around the short, white, twisted horn and the white, nervous ears, it moved away, looking sidelong at her from its long dark eyes.
Sita was a little afraid of it, and thought it might be a little afraid of her; so she sat down on one of the half-buried rocks and pretended to be watching the goats, who were all busy grazing on the best grass they had had for months. Presently the donkey came close again, and standing beside Sita, rested its curly-bearded chin on her lap. The breath from its nostrils moved the thin glass bangles on her wrist. Slowly and very gently she stroked the base of the white, nervous ears, the fine, harsh hair at the base of the horn, the silken muzzle; and the white donkey stood beside her, breathing long, warm breaths.
Every day since then she brought the goats there, walking carefully because of snakes; and the goats were getting fat; and her friend the donkey came out of the forest every day, and accepted her offering, and kept her company.
"One bullock and one hundred rupees cash," said Uncle Hira, "you're crazy if you think we can marry her for less!"
"Moti Lai is a lazy man," Nana said. "Dirty and lazy."
"So he wants a wife to work and clean for him! And he'll take her for only one bullock and one hundred rupees cash!"
"Maybe he'll settle down when he's married," Nana said.
So Sita was betrothed to Moti Lai from the other village, who had watched her driving the goats home at evening. She had seen him watching her across the road, but had never looked at him. She did not want to look at him.
"This is the last day," she said to the white donkey, while the goats cropped the grass among the big, carved, fallen stones, and the forest stood all about them in the singing stillness. "Tomorrow I'll come with Uma's little brother to show him the way here. He'll be the village goatherd now. The day after tomorrow is my wedding day."
The white donkey stood still, its curly, silky beard resting against her hand.
"Nana is giving me her gold bangle," Sita said to the donkey. "I get to wear a red sari, and have henna on my feet and hands."
The donkey stood still, listening.
"There'll be sweet rice to eat at the wedding," Sita said; then she began to cry.
"Goodbye, white donkey," she said. The white donkey looked at her sidelong, and slowly, not looking back, moved away from her and walked into the darkness under the trees.
Introduction to Roger Zelazny's "Unicorn Variations"
Like a number of other writers, Roger Zelazny began publishing in 1962 in the pages of Cele Goldsmith's Amazing. This was the so-called "Class of '62," whose membership also included Thomas M. Disch, Keith Laumer, and Ursula K. Le Guin. Everyone in that "class" would eventually achieve prominence, but some of them would achieve it faster than others, and Roger Zelazny's subsequent career would be one of the most meteoric and dazzling in the history of SF. The first Zelazny story to attract wide notice was "A Rose for Ecclesiastes," published in 1963 (and since reprinted in the SFWA Hall of Fame anthology, where it had been selected by vote of the SFWA membership as one of the best SF stories of all time). By the end of the decade, he had won two Nebula Awards and two Hugo Awards, and was widely regarded as one of the two most important and influential American SF writers of the sixties (the other was Samuel R. Delany). Since then, he has won several more awards, and his series of novels about the enchanted land of Amber—beginning with Nine Princes in Amber—has made him one of the best-selling SF and fantasy writers of our times, and inspired fanclubs and fanzines across the country. His books include This Immortal, The Dream Master, Lord of Light, Isle of the Dead, and the collection of The Doors of His Face, the Lamps of His Mouth, and Other Stories. His most recent books are Madwand and The Last Defender of Camelot, a collection.
Here, with his customary wit and elan, he examines the consequences of the unicorn's well-known fondness for playing chess. . . . What, you didn't know about the unicorn's fondness for playing chess? Well, read on. . . .
UNICORN VARIATIONS
Roger Zelazny
A bizarrerie fires, cunabulum of light, it moved with a deft, almost dainty deliberation, phasing into and out of existence like a storm-shot piece of evening; or perhaps the darkness between the flares was more akin to its truest nature—swirl of black ashes assembled in prancing cadence to the lowing note of desert wind down the arroyo behind buildings as empty yet filled as the pages of unread books or stillnesses between the notes of a song.
Gone again. Back again. Again.
Power, you said? Yes. It takes considerable force of identity to manifest before or after one's time. Or both.
As it faded and gained it also advanced, moving through the warm afternoon, its tracks erased by the wind. That is, on those occasions when there were tracks.
A reason. There should always be a reason. Or reasons.
It knew why it was there—but not why it was there, in that particular locale.
It anticipated learning this shortly, as it approached the desolation-bound line of the old street. However, it knew that the reason may also come before, or after. Yet again, the pull was there and the force of its being was such that it had to be close to something.
The buildings were worn and decayed and some of them fallen and all of them drafty and dusty and empty. Weeds grew among floorboards. Birds nested upon rafters. The droppings of wild things were everywhere, and it knew them all as they would have known it, were they to meet face to face.
It froze, for there had come the tiniest unanticipated sound from somewhere ahead and to the left. At that moment, it was again phasing into existence and it released its outline which faded as quickly as a rainbow in hell, that but the naked presence remained beyond subtraction.
Invisible, yet existing, strong, it moved again. The clue. The cue. Ahead. A gauche. Beyond the faded word SALOON on weathered board above. Through the swinging doors. (One of them pinned alop.)
Pause and assess.
Bar to the right, dusty. Cracked mirror behind it. Empty bottles. Broken bottles. Brass rail, black, encrusted. Tables to the left and rear. In various states of repair.
Man seated at the best of the lot. His back to the door.
Levi's. Hiking boots. Faded blue shirt. Green backpack leaning against the wall to his left.
Before him, on the tabletop, is the faint, painted outline of a chessboard, stained, scratched, almost obliterated.
The drawer in which he had found the chessmen is still partly open.
He could no more have passed up a chess set without working out a problem or replaying one of his better games than he could have gone without breathing, circulating his blood or maintaining a relatively stable body temperature.
It moved nearer, and perhaps there were fresh prints in the dust behind it, but none noted them.
It, too, played chess.
It watched as the man replayed what had perhaps been his finest game, from the world preliminaries of seven years past. He had blown up after that—surprised to have gotten even as far as he had—for he never could perform well under pressure. But he had always been proud of that one game, and he relived it as all sensitive beings do certain turning points in their lives. For perhaps twenty minutes, no one could have touched him. He had been shining and pure and hard and clear. He had felt like the best.
It took up a position across the board from him and stared. The man completed the game, smiling. Then he set up the board again, rose and fetched a can of beer from his pack. He popped the top.
When he returned, he discovered that White's King's Pawn had been advanced to K4. His brow furrowed. He turned his head, searching the bar, meeting his own puzzled gaze in the grimy mirror. He looked under the table. He took a drink of beer and seated himself.
He reached out and moved his Pawn to K4. A moment later, he saw White's King's Knight rise slowly into the air and drift forward to settle upon KB3. He stared for a long while into the emptiness across the table before he advanced his own Knight to his KB3.
White's Knight moved to take his Pawn. He dismissed the novelty of the situation and moved his Pawn to Q3. He all but forgot the absence of a tangible opponent as the White Knight dropped back to its KB3. He paused to take a sip of beer, but no sooner had he placed the can upon the tabletop than it rose again, passed across the board and was upended. A gurgling noise followed. Then the can fell to the floor, bouncing, ringing with an empty sound.