The Unicorn Anthology, page 31
Ian interrupted. “And when your aunt found out you were gone as well,” he said to Richard, “that’s when we really got worried and called the police.”
Dylan added, “Well, you can imagine the scene.”
Heather and Richard could, indeed, imagine the scene. But they didn’t speak. They just looked at each other, smiles hidden behind serious faces.
Mrs. Fielding came over and enfolded them at once. “It was silly to run away,” she said to them both. “What happened at the table was nothing.”
She smelled of talcum and early-morning coffee, and she seemed both angry and relieved. Richard breathed deeply, and for the first time since they had been found, spoke. “It wasn’t ‘nothing,’ Mrs. Fielding. It was actually the beginning of something.”
Mrs. Fielding did not answer. Perhaps she hadn’t heard. Or perhaps she was afraid to ask what he meant, since they had been found sleeping together in the woods, Heather in her nightgown. But she was silent and just gathered them both in again, as she gathered all the arguments at her house, without judgment.
Heather allowed herself to be gathered in for a moment. Her chin went down on her chest, and the napkin tucked in her bodice tickled. She pulled it out and stared at it for a moment. It was no longer stained. It was white and fresh and gleaming.
“Look, Richard, look!” she cried, holding it up to his face. As it came close to him, Richard could smell the sweet scent of crushed violets, and faintly imprinted on the linen napkin he saw a pattern of swirls as if something spiral had lain there.
He sucked in his breath, and Heather tucked the napkin back into her gown, and without a word more they all went home.
There were explanations, of course. For a swamp doesn’t appear and children disappear without them. But none of the explanations mattered to Richard and Heather. And they, alone, offered none in the general clamor that followed their midnight transfiguration. For indeed, how could they explain about the unicorn? It was, after all, a mythical beast. Or the shimmering pool that had become a bog? Or the wine-stained table napkin now gleaming and white as the unicorn itself? They could think of no explanations that anyone would believe, and so they smiled and gave none.
But they kept the napkin safe, first in one drawer and then another, to remind them both, as if they needed reminding, of that moment in time when autumn became summer and now became then and what was logical and what was magical became one.
Eighteen
It was just dawn. The sun rose, shrouded in fog, and fog covered the valley.
The white hart ran swiftly and purposefully out of the woods. In the distance, he could hear guns and the occasional bleat of a car horn.
He came to a wide macadam road which smelled sharply of men and machines and was covered with a rolling mist. He hesitated a moment, then clattered onto the hard surface.
The deer traveled east, toward the sun that burned behind its mask of fog. He ran for several miles, passed only by a single slow-moving car, but in the white fog he was almost invisible.
Suddenly, he plunged into the brush on the opposite side of the road, turned around for just a moment, and sniffed the air. His ears twitched forward and back. Then he moved into the low briars and disappeared.
The woods on this side of the road covered thousands of acres and were part of a protected reserve.
The white hart was never seen again.
UNICORN SERIES
Nancy Springer
[I]
I am not unlike the unicorn,
Shy wanderer of a mystic solitude,
Serene as ignorance, yet keenly drawn
To seek the lap of truth. You’ll think me puffed
With pride to set myself beside the faery
Form of sorrow. Yet I too have known
The traitor virgin, the mocking hunters, the sharp
Teeth of the hounds. I too have felt the hard
Encircling boards. Only I lack a white
And supple body and a soaring horn,
Their passion lost in unity of loves,
To dream completion for the half-made world.
[II]
Solitude
is a vast sea
a vast sand upland
the high wild mountains
the high wild wind in the sky
the high wild wind
among the strange trees
where hidden one with white mane
lank and stirring on his withers
and a wide seeking eye
scans sea and mountain and sky
Solitary
is the unicorn
from the day it is born
[III]
Snow shuts down
the highway, street lights
lets the stardark in.
The wild things cry in the wind.
White in the nightout
Nearer than the stars
The unicorn is standing
In the snow.
[IV]
Moonglow unicorn
Son of the moon
Of pearl is your horn
Stars fall from your mane
And your flank is as white
As the white winter light
Of the moon.
[V]
Tell me, fair unicorn,
How, like a young woman
World knew its own wonder
Those days of creation
With the one mystic eye.
Great god-eye of sky,
Clear eye of awareness
By which as in mirror
Of bright mountain water
A fair cloud-white unicorn
Or a young woman
Might if they saw truly
Yet see self divine.
[VI]
The unicorn leaps on the mountains.
The unicorn couples amid the mountains
Under a crescent moon.
The horn is as hard as the mountains,
Singular as the horns of the moon.
Where the sunrise is,
There is the silver unicorn.
Where the sunset is,
There is the golden unicorn.
Where the moonlight is,
There is the unicorn of shining horn.
The unicorn leaps on the mountains.
The unicorn flies in the far dark sky
Unseen, between as the stars spin by
On their rounds of mystic omen.
[VII]
The waves arch their white crests,
The waves leap in moonlight.
The unicorn lives in the waves.
The moon is a bright curve
Whose two horns are one.
The unicorn lives in the moon.
The moon is crescent,
Full, decrescent, dark
The waves leap in darkness.
The unicorn lives.
[VIII]
The mist is rising.
The unicorn is walking in the meadow.
See the soft grass,
The silver tufts of grasses by the river?
The unicorn is silent.
Softly it walks through the wish light,
Through the pearl gray light of dusk
The flowers are folded.
Who has seen the unicorn?
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Peter S. Beagle
PETER SOYER BEAGLE is the internationally bestselling and much-beloved author of numerous classic fantasy novels and collections, including The Last Unicorn, Tamsin, The Line Between, Summerlong, and In Calabria. He is the editor of The Secret History of Fantasy and the co-editor of The Urban Fantasy Anthology.
Born in Manhattan and raised in the Bronx, Beagle published his first novel, A Fine & Private Place, at nineteen, while still completing his degree in creative writing. Beagle’s follow-up, The Last Unicorn, is widely considered one of the great works of fantasy. It has been made into a feature-length animated film, a stage play, and a graphic novel.
Beagle has written widely for both stage and screen, including the screenplay adaptations for The Last Unicorn and the animated film of The Lord of the Rings and the well-known “Sarek” episode of Star Trek.
Beagle is the recipient of the Hugo, Nebula, Mythopoeic, and Locus awards, as well as the Grand Prix de l’Imaginaire. He has also been honored with the World Fantasy Life Achievement Award and the Inkpot Award from the Comic-Con convention, given for major contributions to fantasy and science fiction.
Beagle lives in Richmond, California, where he is working on too many projects to even begin to name.
ABOUT THE EDITOR
Jacob Weisman
JACOB WEISMAN is the publisher at Tachyon Publications, which he founded in 1995. He is a World Fantasy Award-winning editor and is the series editor of Tachyon’s critically acclaimed, award-winning novella line, including the Hugo Award-winner, The Emperor’s Soul by Brandon Sanderson, and the Nebula and Shirley Jackson award-winner, We Are All Completely Fine by Daryl Gregory. Weisman has edited the anthologies Invaders: 22 Tales from the Outer Limits of Literature, The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (with David G. Hartwell), and The Treasury of the Fantastic (with David M. Sandner).
Weisman lives in San Francisco, where he runs Tachyon Publications just a few blocks from the house he grew up in.
Peter S. Beagle, The Unicorn Anthology
