Exit Unicorns

by Cindy Brandner

  “Stay there,” she heard Casey say from somewhere to her left and then there was the sense only of noiseless steps and an echo of breath on stone.

  “What are you doing?” she asked, the impact of the whole darkness sitting in the notes of her voice, making it small and tinny and echoing it back a hundred reedy ways.

  “Findin’ light,” he said, two words that splintered and divided again and again, against stone, so that it seemed he surrounded her on all sides.

  She didn’t ask what he meant by this as the sound of her own voice, endlessly refracted, spooked her. A moment later there was a soft hiss, followed by the eruption of a halo of light in the darkness. It moved through the still and became, one by one, several pinpoints of light, tiny warm stars in the night of the cave.

  “How—” she began halting as the word came back to her in twenty ghostly syllables.

  “Candles,” Casey said, “seems as if no one has discovered this place since I last was here.”

  “How long has it been?”

  “Not so very long,” he hunkered down to the floor, seeming in the half-light to be searching for something, “but it might as well be lifetimes. I’ve never brought anyone here before, even Pat an’ Daddy didn’t know about it.”

  “Thank you,” she whispered and the whisper rippled in, lapped upon itself in concentric circles until it disappeared with a misty sigh in the middle of the cave.

  “Ah, there—come here, Jewel,” he said, beckoning with one hand the other having found what it sought. She knelt down beside him, the stone completely smooth beneath her legs. “Give me yer hand,” he commanded and she did as bid. He guided her fingers into several small grooves in the stone, rippled with irregularities, not at all like the unblemished surface above. She shivered, an indescribable chill emanating up her arm from the grooved rock.

  “What is it?”

  “Footprint,” Casey said and lowered the candle he held until her hand gleamed against the black rock.

  Eight fissures divided the rock, eight precise tears that mimicked the shape of her own hand, though shorter by a good two inches in each case and with an additional three digits beyond her thumb.

  “It looks like a hand,” she said part of her wanting to snatch her own fingers away and part of her wanting to absorb all the time that resided in the rock.

  “That’s exactly what it became, though there was a long time between what you see there and your own hand.” He swung the candle back, opening the darkness a swatch at a time. “See.”

  Behind her stretched a trail of footprints, the same eight fingered foot, four tracks to a set as though the creature had walked in a very measured step, indicating it would seem a body too heavy for its appendages.

  “It would have been one of the first walkers, maybe even as old as the Devonian age, when the world was populated by hordes of fish an’ not so much else. It could have left these tracks because the ground was swampy, still half-submerged in water. But this creature, whatever it was, was making the first tentative steps toward land. Maybe for food, maybe for shelter, or maybe like me he wasn’t so overfond of water.”

  “How long ago?”

  “Three hundred an’ fifty, maybe four hundred million years, give or take hundreds of thousands either way. I’m no scientist, but I read about an eight fingered fish they found in Greenland back in the twenties an’ this seems to fit with that.”

  “You never told anyone?”

  He shook his head, face half-sheltered by the dark, the other side flickering in the uncertain candlelight. “No, y’know what would have come of that, masses of scientists, newspaper an’ magazine people, an’ then bunches of tourists coming to stare at these impressions in rock. They’d have had to tear the cliff apart to make it more accessible an’ so on an’ so forth. I couldn’t be responsible for that, couldn’t do that to Harry.”

  “Harry?” she raised her eyebrows.

  “Aye,” he responded somewhat sheepishly, “it’s what I called him. He felt like a friend somehow, as if his echo were left to reassure, here in his footprints. When I die I want to be left with some dignity an’ peace, I’d not want people staring at my remains an’ takin’ pictures of them. I think maybe he would have appreciated the same consideration.”

  “But these are just his footprints.”

  “Aye, maybe that’s all they seem to you an’ I, but they are all that remains of what may have been the first inkling of what was to come. Just the fact that he chose to crawl out of the water one day opened up a whole new world of possibilities. He stumped out of the mire an’ millions an’ millions of years later Michelangelo painted the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel an’ Galileo pointed a stick of glass at the sky an’ opened up the universe. I think maybe we owe this eight-fingered ancestor a little privacy for those things.”

  “You’re a poet, Casey Riordan,” she said and closing her eyes took a lungful of dry, warm air, pressing her palm into the impression left in rock by a creature that had walked this way on a hot day hundreds of millions of years before. Her mind’s eye fleshed him out, the short heavy limbs, the ponderous body made for water, the sleepy eyes colored a deep and heavy amber. Harry indeed. A slow thinking creature drunk on steam and vegetation and yet one day he had made the move from the sweet ballet of the waterworld to the gravity pressed environment of land. And worlds later Michelangelo had painted his heart and soul onto the ceiling of a crumbling church. This creature deserved his peace and then some.

  “Why did you bring me here?” she asked softly.

  “I’m not talented with words,” he replied, “but I wanted to show ye something that I’d never shown anyone an’ give ye a part of myself I never thought I’d share. So that ye’d know that I trust ye as I’ve never trusted anyone else in this world.”

  “But there was always Pat and your father.”

  “Aye, but it’s instinctive to trust yer parents an’ Pat is Pat, he can’t help bein’ honest, it’s like breathin’ for him. An’ ye’ll forgive me for sayin’ so but it’s different between a man and a woman. There’s more at stake.” He lowered his head, watching candle wax drip and congeal on the stone. “I’ve known a lot of rough characters in my life. From the time I was born, I’ve been surrounded by people who had to be strong everyday just to survive. They had to be hard in mind an’ in heart to get from one year to the next. An’ ye’ve seen my back, I’ve known hatred, come to understand it well an’ promised myself I’d never be vulnerable to it again. But I’d no idea that love could make ye ten times more open to destruction. I’ve had men beat me until I was certain there was only a minute or two left between me an’ the grave an’ yet the fists an’ the knives never hurt the way it does when I think of losin’ ye.”

  “You aren’t going to lose me, Casey.” She took her hand from the hollowed and ancient fossil fingers and stroked it across his head, sweet with warmth, trembling with life. Another thing to thank the nameless creature for. For if the pattern of the hand had not been laid down there would have been no need for the overlarge and unwieldy head of the human species. From whence flowed an unstoppable flood of creativity, imagination and emotion. Emotion, both blinder and builder, destructor and creator, soaring to death-defying heights and descending to slime-ridden pits. Anger, angst, beauty, despair, melancholy, joy, faith, hope and of course, love. In the beginning and in the end it was what the trial and tribulation of the human journey came back to, circling round the center sometimes for a lifetime. Love, both the simplest and hardest answer to all questions.

  “I love you Casey, the rest you’ll just have to take on trust.”

  He reached through the half-light, fingers fumbling with a primitive urgency and she, breath caught in her throat, reached back, closing the divide. Grasping, cleaving, arching and aching as the small gasps and cries of lovemaking arced through the air and multiplied against stone, flew back in the form of a
thousand soft-winged caressing sounds, rocking the stuff of cell and synapse into a heady addictive mindlessness. And then after, in the dark, with only the pale flicker of wasting candles for stars, a warm satiation like drowning in amber without a care for dying.

  “Ye know what I said about bein’ vulnerable in love,” Casey said, fingers tracing a delicate and wavy line down the center of her belly.

  “Mm,” she mumbled sleepily, smoothing hair damp with exertion away from his forehead.

  “Well ye could kill me now an’ get no fight from me.”

  “Darkness makes you say the sweetest things,” she said, sarcasm marred by a luxuriant yawn.

  “It’d be the kindest way to go I’m thinkin’, leavin’ this earth with stars whirlin’ in yer head.” He propped himself up on one elbow and leaning over kissed her softly on the navel, causing her to shiver along her entire length.

  “Before, you called me Jewel, why?” she asked as his whiskered cheek blindly traveled the length of her skin, leaving a faintly pleasant burn in its wake.

  “Did I?” he asked. “Hmphmm, that’s odd I don’t remember sayin’ it. I suppose it’s how I think of ye though, somethin’ fine an’ rare an’ perfect.”

  “Do you then?” She caught one of his hard-skinned hands in her own and put the tips of his fingers to her lips.

  His eyes in the dark were deep and soft, a wellspring of sweet oblivion she could have lost herself in forever.

  “Aye, I do. My Da’ took Pat an’ I to Dublin one time, he’d business to attend to, an’ so he gave the two of us some pocket money with strict instructions on where to meet him an’ what streets we weren’t to venture down. We were happy though just to wander an’ contemplate what to spend our riches on. I must have been about eleven I suppose. Anyhow, we ended up in front of this jewelry store an’ there was a stone in the window that was like nothin’ I’d ever seen. ‘Twas a star sapphire an’ it was so blue. I’d never seen a blue like that before not in the sky, nor the ocean. I’d the feelin’ that I could just fall into it an’ never stop fallin’ an’ in the center there’d be a whole universe, galaxies an’ galaxies of stars unendin’. It fair took my breath away, made me dizzy. That’s how I felt the first time I saw ye, breathless an’ reelin’ like I’d been hit hard between the eyes. Well the shop owner came out an’ told us to shoo, that he didn’t need riffraff hangin’ about scarin’ off the customers. An’ I asked him bold as brass what the price of the thing was an’ he laughed in my face. I was so angry I just stood there an’ repeated myself, indignant like, ‘how much will ye want for the blue stone?’ I must have seemed a prize eejit. An’ the man looks me straight in the eye, with so much contempt on his face that I could feel it shrinkin’ me right into the pavement an’ says, ‘Such a thing is not for the likes of you boy an’ ye’d do well to remember it.’ An’ then he turned his back on us an’ walked inside. I never forgot what it felt like though to be told I’d no right to touch somethin’ so fine, that the likes of me was to be denied such beautiful sights. An’ when I met ye, I thought the same, ‘don’t even think it boyo,’ I said to myself, ‘a woman as fine as her is not for the likes of yerself.’ But still I couldn’t help myself an’ you, ye never looked at me with contempt, not even at the first.”

  “Why would I?” she asked softly, running one finger featherlight down the bridge of his nose and over his lips, “When it’s the same for me. When you look at me and there’s that certain expression on your face and I want to escape your eyes and yet I want to stay within their gaze forever at the same time. And I can’t breathe or think properly and sometimes I wonder if I ever will again.”

  “There are times,” one hand glided with the grace of water up her side, “that thinkin’ properly is vastly overrated. Would ye not agree?”

  “I—would,” she gasped as he moved over her and the darkness lapped softly at their skins like the brush of velvet. She could feel his lips at her neck and then their slow exploration downward, the soft outrush of air as he moved, the silken brush of his hair against her breasts, her stomach, her thighs.

  “Casey,” she said in alarm, “what do you think you’re doing?”

  “Well,” he said against the supremely sensitive skin of her inner thigh, “I don’t know that I can recall the exact name, but I can assure ye that if I do the job right ye won’t be thinkin’ any thoughts, proper or otherwise.”

  “Ye’d best,” Casey said drowsily some time later, “catch a wink or two darlin’.” He settled with a happy sigh beside her, nose nuzzling her neck. “I’m in no condition at present to face the likes of Desmond O’Neill an’ I’ll warrant yer not as well.”

  “He sounds a little fearsome,” she said, wanting at present to do nothing more than stay in the cave for the foreseeable future.

  “He’s not so bad, but I’ll need all my wits about me when I see him.” His voice drifted near the end of his words, subsiding into the sonorous rumble of deep sleep breathing. He’d the talent of waking and sleeping on a dime, as if he’d never had the time nor patience for the drifting white minutes or hours that hovered between the two states.

  She envied him that and yet loved these moments best of all, when he slept and she could watch him, unobserved, quiet, without the sweet agitation of his conscious presence. Could kiss him gently on nose and forehead and let her eyes linger on his lines and know with a fearless certainty, that regardless of what had brought her here in the first place she had, albeit unwittingly, found her way home.

  Later, while he still slept and the candles burned down to stubs, she retraced the floor with her hands, fitting her own once again into that of the ancient creature. Even if love was only the product of centuries of feverish longing, the development of minds that could not cope with their own abilities, the longing for something here on earth that could not be guaranteed in heaven, even if only that, they still had a lot to be grateful for. Even if it all came down to an aberrant fish with an inexplicable whim to call land his home. Even if.

  Feeling along the bumpy inroads of rudimentary and crude finger she closed her eyes and whispered,

  “Rest in peace, Harry.”

  By a quarter past seven they stood outside the doors of Davy O’Brien’s, a hole in the wall establishment painted in the colors of Irish defiance, white, gold and green.

  “Well,” Casey said taking a deep breath for the third time in as many minutes, “well then.” He cracked his neck nervously and, rather unnecessarily, kept checking the time on his wristwatch.

  “Are you scared of him?” Pamela asked, starting to feel as if his nervousness was virulently contagious.

  “Christ yes,” Casey said, not even attempting a show of bravado.

  “You said he wasn’t near as bad as Devlin.”

  “I said,” Casey took another gulp of air, “he was entirely different than Devlin. I don’t think I was ever foolhardy enough to suggest he wasn’t more intimidating.”

  “We could go,” she said hopefully.

  “No, temptin’ I’ll admit but it’d be only delaying the inevitable.”

  “Then let’s get it over with,” she said and grabbed the door handle with a determination she didn’t feel stepping over the threshold of Davy O’Brien’s, pulling a reluctant Casey in behind her.

  Silence, complete and terrible, greeted their arrival. Through a miasma of cigarette smoke and the smell of spilled Guinness, at least twenty pairs of hard, unblinking eyes surveyed them. Pamela stepped back, trodding on Casey’s toes, an action that caused him to exclaim in pain and broke the tension.

  “Johnny,” Casey said, nodding to the barman, who nodded in return.

  “It’ll be nice to see ye home,” he said in a soft voice that matched his pale hair and skin. “Dez’ll be holdin’ court in his usual spot. I’ll bring yer drink back there.” He nodded at Pamela, eyes shifting back instantly to the pint he’d already started pul
ling.

  “Right then,” Casey muttered grimly, guiding Pamela behind him with a hand that shook just slightly.

  Davy O’Brien’s had seen better days, but even in its hour of glory hadn’t been noted for its decor or ambiance. The walls, originally painted cream, were stained a dirty yellow from nicotine, the bar was a ghastly red, the stools split and shaky, the tables missing an occasional leg and the floor, laden with tobacco spit and spilt alcohol of varying brands, was plain poured concrete, which in light of its adornments, Pamela thought stepping daintily over a stream of snuff, was probably for the best.

  In the far back there was a dartboard, a picture of the Holy Family next to one of John Kennedy and a green, white and orange banner that saggily proclaimed, ‘Ireland for the Irish—Brits Out!’

  Under this triumphant statement sat a table full of men, whose heads turned as one at the approach of the two strangers. Unvarnished men, lacking any sort of polish, craggy of face and body. And to a man, their faces were filled with a wary hostility.

  Casey stopped short and Pamela bumped into him from behind. There was a protracted silence as if they were all indulged in some kind of combat where the loser would have to break the silence.

  “Stubborn as always,” she heard a soft voice say, “Prodigal son returning, I presume.”

  She peered over Casey’s shoulder on tiptoe. Sitting, back closest to the wall, was a man neither big nor small, neither fair nor dark, neither old nor young. He’d sandy hair, ruddy skin, sagging a bit by the jowls and glasses of a thickness and heft as to make him look like an owl. The godfather, she presumed, the Desmond O’Neill that made Casey shake with fear. He didn’t look intimidating, but as his soft-spoken words reached out she could, all the same, feel the authority they were spoken with.

  “Aye, it’s me Desmond,” Casey said with a humility in his voice that made her blink in surprise.

  “Did ye leave yer manners in England? Or does the girl plan to hide behind yer back all evening?”