Melody's Unicorn

by Richard Swan

  ‘I … I’m Melody,’ she said nervously, trying to deflect the intensity of the older woman’s gaze.

  Alwyn’s expression didn’t soften. ‘I know that. I can see you are. I can see who you are too, and why you’re here. But I can’t see what you are. It’s clouded, and that troubles me. There’s something else too.’

  Melody was torn between keeping silent and wanting to know what else Alwyn sensed, but at that moment Alwyn’s gaze broke away and she stared across the room, as if focusing on something neither Melody nor Tamar could see. She remained absolutely still for a few moments, then began to speak in a voice that sounded deeper and more distant than her own.

  ‘Not in the air,

  Not in the ground,

  Not on water,

  Not on land,

  Not in fire,

  Not in the sun,

  Not in all,

  Not in one.’

  There was silence. Melody sat stupefied, and Tamar looked frightened. Alwyn continued to look into the distance, as if no longer aware of their presence. Her eyes were fixed on a scene not physically present, and for a fleeting second Melody had a sensation of something big, and dark, and menacing. But before she could make sense of it the moment was gone, and she was back in the room staring at Alwyn, who returned her look and smiled wanly.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said simply. ‘I don’t know what happened then. Do you, Melody?’

  Melody shook her head. She had been about to ask the same question, and was dismayed that Alwyn seemed to have no more idea than she had about what was going on.

  ‘I’ve no idea,’ she replied. ‘I’d hoped you did. And what did you mean by asking me what I was?’

  Alwyn’s expression was puzzled. ‘I don’t know. It just came to me. I don’t know what you are, and I don’t know what made me ask the question, but I know that you’re more than what you seem. You’ll need to discover, I think.’

  ‘But what about the verse?’

  ‘I don’t know about that either. It doesn’t make sense to me, and I’ve never heard it before. It came to me, like the question, when I looked closely at you. I suspect you’re the only person who could answer the question, or make sense of the words.’

  Melody wasn’t sure whether to be mystified or angry. ‘But you’re a seer! Corann told me to come and see you. I’m sure he thought you could explain what’s going on, and what’s going to happen.’

  ‘Corann wasn’t very honest if he told you anything like that. I suspect he didn’t. Tell me what he really said about me.’

  Melody thought back. Corann had said that seers couldn’t see the future, that nobody could do that. He’d also said that he thought Alwyn would be able to see more in Melody than she could see herself.

  ‘He said that you might be able to see more in me than he or I could on our own,’ she said reluctantly.

  Alwyn laughed. ‘And he was right. I can certainly see something in you, and you clearly aren’t able or willing to see it for yourself.’

  ‘But what is it?’

  ‘That’s the irony. I can see something, but I don’t know what it is, any more than you do. I only know that you need to find out, and soon.’

  ‘Why? And why soon?’

  ‘I don’t know the answer to either of those questions. I only know I’m right. Five or ten years ago, perhaps, I’d have been able to see more, but like everyone else my power has faded as I’ve grown older. The things that were clear when I was young have become cloudier now, their boundaries less well defined. What you are I’m not sure; what you’ll become I’ve no idea.’

  ‘But Corann said you’d be able to help me!’

  ‘I doubt it. I guess he said it would be worth a try. That’s what he usually says about things. And he’s right. It was worth a try. And it hasn’t been wholly useless. At least you know there’s a mystery to be uncovered, and that’s always better than having no idea that there’s a mystery at all.’

  ‘But I did know there was a mystery. I even knew what the mystery was, and I’ve been asked that question before too.’ Reluctantly, Melody explained about the dryad and the words he had spoken, the same words that Alwyn had repeated. And she explained about the Big Issue seller who had seemed so shocked by her.

  Alwyn was silent for a long time. ‘There are two possibilities,’ she said at last. ‘One is that I’ve acquired those words from you, have sensed them at the forefront of your mind and simply repeated them, like a radio receiver tuned to a particularly strong broadcast.’

  ‘Is that possible?’

  ‘Certainly. It’s the way most clairvoyants work. They don’t make things up, they merely sense what their clients are thinking and build a picture from there.’

  ‘Is that what’s happened here?’

  ‘I don’t think so. That’s not what I do. I can sense other people’s thoughts and feelings, of course, just as you can, but I can see further than that too. That’s why I’m a seer. I can detect things people aren’t aware of, things they don’t even know are connected with them. That’s the second possibility. I don’t think I heard those words because you’d heard them. I think they’re part of you, part of what you are.’

  ‘And what am I?’

  Alwyn smiled. ‘I asked you that question, and you didn’t like it. I don’t know, and you don’t either. Not yet. But you will. There’s something special about you, something that will determine your fate and your future – perhaps the future of many of us. I have no idea what that is, but I am sure you’ll find out, and do so very soon.’

  ‘Very soon? Today? This week? This year?’

  ‘I’m sorry. I have no idea. That’s another strange thing about you. There’s something odd about you, about your time.’

  ‘What does that mean?’

  Alwyn sighed. ‘I’m sorry. I don’t know that either, and I realise I’m not being helpful. I can normally read people easily, but nothing about you is simple. I’m not sure where to start – or rather when. You don’t seem to fit into time in a normal way. It’s as if you’re partly elsewhere, or elsewhen.’

  ‘Elsewhen? That’s not a word.’

  ‘Isn’t it? It ought to be. “Elsewhere” is easy enough, isn’t it? “Elsewhen” means the same kind of thing, only relating to time. Part of you doesn’t quite fit into the same time as the rest of us, and I think you need to find out what that means if you want to understand yourself completely.’

  ‘And how do I do that?’

  ‘I don’t know. You just need to go on looking.’

  ‘Where? Or when?’

  Alwyn smiled. ‘That’s better. Yes, keep asking questions, keep looking. Don’t give up. You’ll get to know the answers, I’m convinced. I just don’t know how soon.’

  ‘OK,’ said Melody reluctantly. ‘And thanks. You’ve helped, even if it’s because you’ve persuaded me I’m not entirely crazy. I haven’t a clue what you mean by “elsewhen”, but enough strange things have happened to me that I’m prepared to consider any idea now. Your brother’s discovered that he has power he didn’t believe he possessed, so I’ll try not to be surprised by anything that I find.’

  ‘That’s right,’ put in Tamar, who’d been sitting thoughtfully throughout the conversation. ‘I’m not the same person as the one who left the house this morning. Perhaps you won’t be the same person when you go home this evening.’

  Melody reflected on his words. She thought she understood him, and realised how much their experiences in Hyde Park had changed him. His words showed extraordinary perception. There was a confidence about him that hadn’t been there before, and the fact that he had recognised the wolves showed how far he had become willing to accept new ideas. Whether he would ever accept her she wasn’t sure, but she hoped so.

  In the meantime she wanted to be on her own to think over what Alwyn had said to her, and was sure that Tamar would want time alone with his sister to discuss his view of what had taken place. They made her stay to lunch, but immediately afterwards
she made her excuses, and said she was going to explore Oxford Street. Tamar told her to avoid Hyde Park, and she laughed and promised that nothing on earth would induce her to go in there alone.

  She emerged from the house into the pale light of an early April day and turned right to avoid walking back towards Hyde Park. As soon as she reached Oxford Street she was surrounded by bustle and noise, which drove much of the day’s events from her head. She had to concentrate to weave a path among the hurrying crowds, and she found herself drawn by the glittering shops, full of goods and fashions she’d never seen before. The vast windows of Selfridges were like a fairyland, with extravagant treasures and promises of material splendour. Melody was captivated, and wandered as if in a trance amidst a world she had scarcely dreamed existed. All around her people of all kinds, businessmen and shoppers, students and tourists, of all nationalities and in all manner of dress, formed a kaleidoscope of colour and pattern that seemed as alien to her as the dryad. The road was equally crowded with buses and taxis, a symphony of blaring black and red that rushed past, going somewhere or nowhere. She slowly made her way along the street towards Oxford Circus, never quite stopping, and always looking for something that would make sense of the whole whirling world around her.

  The first sign she had of something curious going on was when the people in the distance started to move aside to leave a small gap at the margin of the pavement. The buses and taxis edged out towards the middle of the road, then edged back a few yards further on. It was as if a disturbance of the air were travelling slowly along the length of the street, a disturbance solid enough to force people out of the way, although neither pedestrians nor vehicles seemed aware of what was happening to them. Their movement was instinctive, not deliberate. Then Melody saw the unicorn.

  She recognised it immediately, although it wasn’t at all like what she’d ever read about or imagined. It didn’t even remind her of a horse, although it had roughly a horse’s shape. Its horn wasn’t at all like a narwhal’s tusk, although she knew one was often mistaken for the other. And it wasn’t white. White was merely a colour, and this creature had no colour that any mortal could ever describe. No, what made her realise that she was seeing a unicorn was that she knew she was looking at immortality. She’d read, of course, that unicorns were immortal, but she’d never understood what that meant. Now she did. To see a unicorn was to see the dawn, and noon, and evening, all at once and forever. That was why she couldn’t tell its colour, for it didn’t shine with the sun of an April afternoon in London; it shone with the dawn and the noon and the twilight of every day that had ever been or ever would be, and the glory of that light was in its mane and in its eyes and on its horn.

  Melody stared, and stared, and didn’t move. She was aware of shiftings all around her, of vague reaction and disquiet from other people as the unicorn drew closer. ‘Look! Look!’ said a voice near her. ‘A horse! Fancy seeing a horse in Oxford Street!’ Another voice said, ‘It must have escaped from somewhere. Perhaps it’s a police horse. Look how calm and controlled it is, and with all this traffic.’ And a third, ‘What’s that light? Is it the sun reflecting off that bus? I can’t see properly. I can’t see.’ But those were the only definite responses. Many people were completely oblivious to the unicorn’s presence, and moved aside unconsciously, as those further along the street had done.

  Melody didn’t stir. She stared, stared unblinking at the unicorn in a way she had never done before, conscious even in the instant that this moment was changing her forever, that she would never look at anything again without the image of the unicorn imprinted between her and it. And the unicorn drew closer. Melody stared now at its eyes. She knew that one couldn’t look into the eyes of an immortal creature without losing oneself forever, but she still looked. She welcomed her own enthralment. But the unicorn did not look at her. Its eyes were fixed steadfastly ahead, gazing into a distance so vast that Melody could barely catch an echo of its depth.

  All around her people were clearing a path for the unicorn, and the taxis and buses continued their inexorable dance to avoid it. Melody alone stood still, so that the unicorn would almost brush against her if it maintained its unswerving course. Now it was upon her, so close that she could have put a hand out to touch its shining head. But she did not move, and it swept past, not touching her, not showing any sign that it was aware of her presence. Without thought, without consideration, she turned to follow it.

  She couldn’t move as fast as the unicorn, because neither people nor vehicles turned aside for her, but she knew where it had passed. The air seemed disturbed, as a rainbow falling through sunlight colours the patterns of the world around it, and Melody had no difficulty following the path of the unicorn as it moved irresistibly forward along its straight track. She knew without asking where it was headed, and its echo in the air held her fast in its wake and she walked inexorably back along Oxford Street towards Hyde Park.

  As she followed, there were occasional signs of people who had reacted to its presence. One or two stood still, looking as if they had forgotten something important, or couldn’t quite remember where they were. One little girl remained motionless, gazing in the direction the unicorn had gone, and then burst into tears. But only Melody followed it.

  At the end of Oxford Street the track led over Park Lane to the gates of the park itself. Melody couldn’t follow it directly, and by the time she’d negotiated the crossing, the unicorn had long vanished. Its path was still clear, however, and Melody entered the park without hesitating. A fraction of her conscious mind remembered promising Tamar that nothing would draw her back into the park, but he’d have to understand that she hadn’t reckoned on a unicorn for a guide. She smiled to herself, a soft, radiant smile, and pursued the straight path where the unicorn had gone.

  She felt no fear. As she expected, the unicorn’s track led past the grove of trees where she and Tamar had encountered the wolves – was that only a few hours ago? – but there was no sign of them. She would have been confounded if there were. Wolves would have run miles to escape the scent of a unicorn, and she felt as safe as if she was taking a stroll in her own garden. The track led straight on, deep into the heart of the park. Nobody was about, and again she would have been amazed to see another human being. This was the land of the unicorn; this was its territory.

  She knew where the track led. It would take her into Faërie, into the other world. She had no doubt of that, no uncertainty, no fear. Everything she had ever learned would warn her against that dark realm, would warn her that she could not, must not enter it, unless she was willing to lose everything. Her present life, her future hopes; all that she was and might be were at the mercy of the forces that lay beyond the boundary, and all history told her that nothing and nobody emerged unscathed and unchanged from such an experience – if they emerged at all. She didn’t waver. There were no doubts. If there was an explanation for all that had happened to her, if there was a purpose in her existence and her arrival in London, it lay with the unicorn and with whatever lay in the land beyond the fields we know.

  When the boundary appeared, Melody recognised it instantly. There was no indication of it, no visible sign that between one step and another she would leave the world she knew and enter the fabled land, which few mortals had ever seen, and very few ever lived to speak of. The grass looked the same, the birds sang just as loudly, but there in front of her, beneath a grafted tree in the manner of which all tales told, lay the entrance to Faërie. She could choose to take that step and accept what it meant, or she could turn aside and walk on earthly paths, but the track lay clear before her. The unicorn had trodden this way, and had passed across the boundary to the other world. Melody didn’t hesitate.

  Faërie

  The king of the feys watched curiously as Melody walked across the grass towards him. Human figures were always like this, seemingly wrapped in the little bubbles of time that ticked unchangingly about their frail beings. Time in Faërie was more fluid, ebbing and f
lowing in strange channels, sometimes lingering or turning back on itself, always meandering and purposeless. Humans carried their time with them, they did not inhabit it as feys did, and they had no control over it.

  This figure was different from most humans, though. There was a fierceness about her, an intensity, which the king had not seen before. Where she stepped, the grass shrank back as if surprised. The king looked more narrowly. The surprise of grass was always worth attending to, and at first he thought that it was merely flinching from the touch of time-shod feet. But the king realised that it was the emotion of the creature which was affecting her surroundings. Looking closer still, he saw that her intensity, her anger, were only part of what drew her on. There was a deep sorrow there too, a melancholy caused by a sense of great loss, but also a yearning, a desire for something that she had seen and could not touch. It was no wonder that the grass drew back from such a complex of feelings. It was more than grass could be expected to understand.

  With a slight sense of shock the king realised that he too had been surprised by her, yet with him the reaction was more complicated. Surprise at humans was not a quality that a fey would suspect in himself, and the king became more interested in who the creature was and what it wanted in his country. Few humans ventured in of their own accord, and those that did were usually confused or baffled, or led by a sense of vague wonder that left them with little true impression of Faërie. This creature was intent, was powerful, and the king understood his own curiosity. The creature had come into Faërie deliberately, for a specific reason, and was approaching him now in order to ask a direct question. No human that he could ever remember had done that. There was no point in speculating what the creature’s purpose might be. The king stood, waiting patiently, while Melody walked towards him and the grass drew warily back at her touch.