The Thirteenth Unicorn

by W. D. Newman

CHAPTER 5

  WEDNESDAY MORNING FLEA MARKET

  It seemed to Ben that he had just laid down his head on his pillow and then his Grandma was shaking him, trying to wake him up. He opened his eyes a crack, against the light from the hallway and turned to look out the window. It was still dark. Why was Grandma waking him up in the middle of the night?

  “Come on, sleepy head. If we don’t hurry we’ll miss all of the bargains,” Louise whispered.

  Ben looked at his watch and pressed the little wind-up button. The face lit up a pale greenish-blue to reveal that it was 5:30 AM.

  “Grandma, do we have to go so early?” Ben groaned.

  “Yes, dear. If we’re not there by seven, we’ll have a hard time finding a parking place and all of the good stuff will be picked over. You can stay here if you’d like, but remember, we promised to have that talk today over some pizza at lunch. Of course, Casey is going. I suppose I could just have that talk with her and then she could fill you in when we get back. George is going to be mucking out the stalls today too. You could stay here and help him; I’m sure he’d appreciate it.”

  Ben threw the covers off and hopped out of bed. “No, I’m fine. I think I’d rather go to the Jockey Lot instead of shoveling horse poop. Besides, I want to hear your story firsthand.”

  Louise smiled and patted him on the head. “Hurry and get dressed. We’ll eat a bite of breakfast before we leave.”

  They pulled into the Jockey Lot at 6:30 AM. Ben and Casey were absolutely amazed at the size of the crowd this early in the morning. The highway ran parallel to the river and the buildings followed alongside the river, with the parking area between the buildings and the road.

  Even at this early hour, the closest parking space they could find was three rows from the rear of the parking lot. The Jockey Lot itself did not have any sort of defined entrance. The buildings were just pole sheds with tin roofs, so you could walk ‘into’ the Jockey Lot from anywhere.

  They walked the outer perimeter first and worked their way inward. Casey found a vendor selling name brand knock-offs and bought a tee shirt, while Ben found a table full of used Play Station games, five dollars per game or three games for twelve. He started to buy one, but changed his mind and put it back.

  Eventually, they made it to the center of the complex, where Louise began looking at chickens and goats. Casey worried she might actually buy one and she or Ben would have to hold it in the car on the way home, but luckily, Louise did not see anything that caught her eye.

  Time flew by quickly and by nine-thirty the crowd was already noticeably thinner. They had covered the main area under the buildings. Now they were making their rounds through the parking area where a lot of people sold stuff right out of the trunk of their car or the back of their truck. Louise had been looking at jewelry all morning and finally bought two necklaces from an oriental lady after several minutes of intense haggling. By eleven, they were back in the car and heading into town for lunch.

  Mario’s Pizza was located in a building that used to be a Bantam Chef restaurant on the west end of Main Street. The original building did not have any seating. You ordered your food at a window on the left side of the building, then walked over to the right side of the building to pay for it and pick it up. When you got your food, you went home to eat it.

  When the Bantam Chef went out of business, Mario bought the facility and enlarged the structure, so there would be seating for his customers. To create an Italian restaurant atmosphere, Mario installed booths under arbors bearing plastic grapes and painted a countryside mural on the wall that divided the kitchen from the seating area. All of that aside, Mario did have some totally awesome pizza. Louise directed them to a booth in the back corner, and as soon as they were seated, a waitress was there to get their drink orders. Everyone requested Cokes, and when the waitress returned with their drinks, Louise ordered a large pepperoni and sausage pizza.

  “Okay, Grandma,” said Casey, “Tell us some more about Camelot and what you are doing there?”

  Louise sipped her cola and dabbed her lips with her napkin. “I’m going to start with the story of Zorn first. Zorn was the home world of wizards. It was a dying world where the polar icecaps were melting and the sea levels were rising.”

  “You mean they had global warming in Zorn too?” Ben asked.

  “Yes, it appears so,” Louise answered. “Anyhow, all of Zorn’s inhabitants had some inherent magical talents and those with the most powerful magic were called wizards.”

  Louise paused once more to sip her cola and then continued, “Zorn was governed by a council of twelve wizards; one from each district on the last remaining continent on Zorn. On this world, wizards used magical tunnels called pathways to travel to and fro about their world. One of the wizards on the council, an eccentric old man by the name of Merlin, used an ancient and powerful magic on these tunnels to probe for worlds that existed in other planes of existence. The first world he discovered he named Camelot, and to the wizards delight, Camelot was a beautiful, uninhabited world that was strong in magic. Many of the creatures from Zorn, not native to Camelot, were brought there and a great city named New Zorn was constructed. Soon the wizards at New Zorn, eager to complete their perfect utopia, began probing with their tunnels for other worlds, searching for intelligent life. Eventually, tunnels were established to Faerie, Crag, and Earth.”

  “The elves and dwarves home worlds!” said Casey.

  “Tell us about them too!” Ben exclaimed, sliding up to the edge of the booth and leaning across the table.

  “Faerie was another beautiful world, rich in magic, and inhabited by elves. When the wizards made contact with the elves and invited them to Camelot, the elves eagerly accepted their invitation.”

  “What do the elves and dwarves look like, Grandma?” Casey interrupted.

  “And how were the wizards able to communicate with them?” Ben added. “Did they all speak the same language? What language do they speak?”

  “The elves are tall and very beautiful. Dangerous, too. They all have fair skin, black hair and piercing blue eyes. The dwarves are short, stocky, and very powerful. Their beards are their pride and usually, a dwarf’s rank and importance is reflected by the length of his beard. Most dwarves have nasty tempers too, but deep down they are good creatures. As far as language goes, they speak the same language as you and I.”

  Ben pushed his glasses up on his nose and wrinkled his forehead. “I wonder if we brought the language to them, or if they brought it to us?”

  “What about Crag?” Casey asked. “Finish your story.”

  “Crag was a primitive and primordial world, ruled by dragons and other fierce magical creatures. The dwarves lived there, deep under the rocky mountains, and seldom came to the surface. The wizards, however, did manage to locate the dwarves. They welcomed them to Camelot as well. The dwarves accepted their invitation and, as soon as they arrived in Camelot, sought out the nearest mountain range and started digging new homes deep into the mountain sides. And last of all, Earth. Earth was the most primitive world and had no magic what-so-ever. The wizards felt pity for the humans they found and brought many of them back to Camelot to teach and instruct. After a short time, the humans began to view the wizards as overlords. They soon rejected the wizards and began to build their own cities to govern themselves.”

  “It sounds like things didn’t work out the way they had planned,” Casey noted.

  “No, they didn’t. And as time passed, it became evident to the wizards their Utopia would never come to fruition. The elves, using their own magic, had conjured a magical forest they called the Twilight. Here, they withdrew from the other races of Camelot and seldom left the confines of their forest. The dwarves and humans warred with each other constantly and the humans even warred among themselves.”

  “What did the wizards do?”

  Louise studied her two grandchildren for a moment, a thoughtful expr
ession on her face. “Let’s stop the story about the wizards there and let me finish telling about Camelot, okay?”

  “Sure,” Casey replied. Ben just nodded in wide-eyed agreement, still on the edge of his seat.

  “Camelot is very much like our world on the surface. The sky is blue, there is a sun, a moon, and stars - the same stars we have it seems.”

  “Well, it can’t be another world in another part of the solar system or the stars would be different,” said Ben. “It must be a parallel universe, a parallel world.”

  “I wouldn’t know anything about that, Ben. But as I was saying, on the surface it appears to be just like Earth. There are plants and animals just like we have - roses, dandelions, pine trees, horses, cows, dogs, and people. Camelot is not a technically advanced world, though. There is no electricity there. It is more like our world was five hundred years ago. But with magic. All kinds of magic. And I’m not just talking about magic like witches and wizards, although those do exist. There are magical plants, magical animals, and magical beings. A lot of the things we have heard of in legend and folklore here in our world, exists in Camelot. There are dragons, unicorns, gnomes, ogres, trolls, fairies and more. It can be an extremely dangerous place and that’s why I do not want you kids going there anymore.”

  “Okay,” said Ben, “but if it is so dangerous, why are you going there?”

  “That’s a bit complicated,” Louise answered. “Let’s just say for now, that there are some very important things that need to be looked into. Things that may have an impact on our lives in our world.”

  “Does Grandpa mind you going there?”

  “George doesn’t know about Camelot. If he knew about it, he would think it was the Devil’s work, or something silly like that, and burn the bamboo patch and the Merlin Tree down to the ground.”

  “How do you go there without him knowing?” Casey asked.

  “It seems that when you are in Camelot, no matter how long you stay in Camelot, when you return to this world the only time that has elapsed is the amount of time you were in the bamboo on this side. Yesterday, Ben, when you saw me go into the bamboo, how long was I in there?”

  “I don’t know. Two or three minutes maybe.”

  “Well, I was in Camelot for two hours.”

  Ben and Casey stared at Louise with open mouths.

  “Holy cow!” Ben exclaimed. “What would happen if you went into Camelot and never came back?”

  “Yeah,” said Casey, “What would happen if someone from our world died over there?”

  Louise took another sip from her Coke and dabbed her mouth with her napkin again. “I’m not sure. I’ve often thought about that and it doesn’t make any sense to me. The longest amount of time I’ve ever spent in Camelot is three weeks. I even had an accident there that produced a nasty cut on my arm. But when I came back though the Merlin Tree to our world, I returned at the same time I had left, and the cut I had on my arm had even disappeared.”

  “If you stay in Camelot for a year and come back, when you go back to Camelot do you go back to the age you were the last time you were there?” Ben asked.

  “No, it’s like starting over each time you go in.”

  “So the cut on your arm would not have come back, if you went back in that time you had your accident?”

  “No, it seems that anything physical that happens to you while you are over there gets ‘erased’ when you return here. Like I said, it doesn’t make any sense to me. I suppose if someone died in Camelot, they would be dead here too. What I mean is, if I died in Camelot and you brought me back through the Merlin Tree, I would still be dead here too. I don’t think death can be erased.”

  “What do you mean by anything ‘physical’,” Casey asked.

  “Well, your memory obviously doesn’t get erased so you could very well be emotionally traumatized if something bad happened to you or someone you loved. I’m not certain, but I believe magical spells can be carried through to our world too.”

  “What makes you think that?”

  “I can’t say right now, but that’s one of the important things I mentioned I am looking into.”

  “Grandma,” Ben interrupted, “You went into Camelot yesterday. If you waited a year before you went back, how much time would have passed in Camelot since your last visit?”

  “If I wait a year before I go back, the exact amount of time that has passed here since my last visit is the same amount of time that will have passed there.”

  Ben scratched his head. “You’re right, Grandma. It doesn’t make any sense at all.”

  At that moment, the waitress appeared with the biggest, greasiest, cheesiest pizza Ben had ever seen. The question and answer session was over. All three of them attacked the pizza with a vengeance. When they finished, Louise left the waitress a tip and the three of them walked out of the cool, dim restaurant, into the bright and hot May sunshine. As they were walking across the parking lot, Ben tugged on his Grandma’s sleeve.

  “Grandma, do you think you could take us to Camelot and show us around one day? I’d love to see a unicorn or a dragon.”

  “Unicorns are very, very rare and there is actually only one dragon in Camelot,” said Louise as she rummaged in her purse for her car keys, “but that is another story.”

  “Well, I still want to go. Don’t you, Casey?”

  Casey shook her head. “No. Well, yes, but only if Grandma will take us.”

  Louise found her car keys, unlocked the car and slid in. The Galaxy did not have electric locks, so she had to slide across the seat to unlock the passenger door. Ben and Casey hopped in and buckled their seatbelts while Louise turned the key in the ignition. The old car protested laboriously, but finally roared to life and, with a puff of blue smoke, they pulled out of the parking lot onto Main Street.

  “Well?” Ben asked.

  “Well, what?” Louise replied.

  “Will you take us to Camelot and show us around a little?”

  Louise drove on for a few minutes in silence, then finally spoke to her grandkids in a quiet voice. “Remember how I said there were magical beings in Camelot? What would happen if you kids went there and were captured by gnomes? I’ll tell you what would happen. They would take you both to the slave mines and you would spend the rest of your lives digging in the dark with dull pick axes and shovels. What would happen if an ogre caught you? He would eat you both, right on the spot. It’s a very, very dangerous place.”

  Casey turned white, but Ben just pushed his glasses up on his nose and scrunched his brow up. “Grandma, you went in yesterday. You said that when you go back, the same amount of time will have passed in Camelot that has passed here. So what if we went in today and we stayed for ten years and then you came in right after us? How could ten years go by for us, over there, and only one day go by for you?”

  Now it was Louise’s turn to scrunch up her brow. She drummed her fingers on the steering wheel as she drove. “Wow, Ben. I’ve never even considered that.”

  “Well, I’ve got an idea,” Ben said. “If it is a parallel universe then, maybe, there is more than one.”

  “What do you mean by that?” Casey asked.

  “Here’s what I think. If I went through today and stayed over there for ten years, and then you came through a couple of minutes behind me, I would be in Camelot in one universe, where ten years has elapsed, and you would be in Camelot in a different universe where one day has elapsed. In other words, we would never be in Camelot together unless we entered at the same time.”

  “Okay,” said Louise, “but let’s take this one step further. Let’s say you were there ten years and then you come back and we go in together - which universe do we go into? The one you were in last, or the one I was in last?”

  “My guess is we would always go to the newest. So, to answer your question, we would probably go back to the universe you came out of. Why don’t we find out? Do a little experimen
t? Besides, I really want to see this place.”

  By now they were back at the farm. Louise turned into the driveway and put the car into park. “Okay. Here’s the deal. George is taking some cows to the sale in Anderson this Saturday. He’ll leave early and come back late. We’ll do our little experiment when he leaves. Until then, I do not want to see you kids go anywhere near that bamboo. Deal?”

  “Deal!” said Ben.

  “Deal,” said Casey.

  Louise put the car in drive and proceeded up the driveway. “Now it’s time for me to show you my new little babies,” she said with a smile.

  *****