Oddest of All (19 page)

“You have given me what I wanted,” replied Nils, clutching the harp to his chest. “That is generous enough.”

“Let us at least teach you our songs,” said the goblin king.

“Are they the songs of the Earth?” Nils asked hopefully. “I have been told that is what I must learn.”

“What else would they be?” asked the king.

So Nils agreed to stay.

 

He spent three years with the goblins, listening to their songs and practicing on the harp. He had hoped the instrument would be magic and play with beauty the moment his fingers touched its strings. But this was not so, and Nils spent many hours learning to coax sweet music from it, trying not to be vexed by the missing string.

When he had learned all the songs of the Earth and could also play the harp passably well, the goblins placed a magic on the instrument to keep it safe from harm, then pointed him to a path and told him it would take him to the surface.

What they neglected to tell him was that there was a dragon along the way.

This was not malice on their part. The dragon, whose name was Gorefang, was the last dragon on Earth. He had been slumbering for so long he had been forgotten by everyone, even the other dragons, who had left for another world long ago. In fact, he himself had almost forgotten he existed. But when Nils came stumbling into his cave Gorefang roused himself. With flames flickering at the edges of his nostrils he grumbled, “What do you want . . . human?”

“I wish I could tell you. But I do not really know, which is why my heart knows no rest.”

“And why do you have such strange eyes?”

Though Nils did not care to tell the story of what had happened when he was young, one does not lie to a dragon.

“A sad tale,” murmured Gorefang at last. “No wonder you are restless.” Shifting one massive claw so that it pointed at the harp Nils carried, he said, “It has been long since I heard music. Play for me.”

“I know only the songs of the Earth. I'm not sure they would please a dragon.”

“They'll do for a start. When you have sung those until I am tired of them, I will teach you the songs of Fire. After all, we have plenty of time.” With that, Gorefang shifted one vast, scaly wing so that it blocked the passage out.

With a sigh, Nils began to strum the harp. His music was better now than when he first picked it up, but still not what he wanted.

When he had played the songs he knew many times over, Gorefang yawned and said, “Enough. They were fine, but I cannot bear to hear them anymore. It's time you learned some new ones.” And for the next three years Gorefang taught Nils the songs of Fire, which could set a heart aflame.

During those years, Nils drank from cold underground streams and ate little more than mushrooms and blind fish, though the dragon would toast them until they were quite tasty.

One day Gorefang closed his eyes and said, “I'm tired, and I've taught you all the songs I know. It is time for you to go.”

Nils thanked the dragon seven times, then strapped the harp to his back and continued on his way.

His skin was pale now from his years underground, and he was more restless than ever, for something still gnawed at his heart, though it was nothing he could name.

When he had finally made his way to the surface he found himself at the edge of the northern sea. After gazing out at its vast gray surface, he sat upon a rock and began to sing, first the songs of the Earth, then the songs of Fire. They were lovely, even though he was hampered by the missing string.

While he was singing the fourth of the songs of Fire he heard a splash. Looking down, he saw a mermaid, her gold green hair floating like a fan over the water, her great fish tail clearly visible beneath the waves. She sang to him. He responded with one of the dragon's songs. She sang again, and beckoned, and with no thought for life or future Nils clambered down the rocks and into the water. The mermaid gazed into his silver eyes, then twined her arms around his neck and pulled him to the bottom of the sea, where she gave him a shell that let him breathe.

For three years Nils lived beneath the waves with the mermaid, and was her love, and they taught each other songs. But at the end of that time he grew restless, because his heart was still hungry. So the mermaid carried him to the surface and let him go, kissing him once for love and biting him once for anger before she sped him on his way.

So now Nils knew the songs of the Earth and the songs of Fire and the songs of the Water, and he wandered the north, going from village to village, singing for his supper. He had learned to play his harp quite beautifully by this time, and the missing string bothered no one but himself, because he was the only one who knew there were still songs he could not play, and chords beyond those his harp could sound. Still, his appearance troubled people, for they had never seen anyone so pale, much less one with eyes of silver.

As the decades passed, his hair became silver as well. Even in age he was beautiful, though in a strange and distant way, and everywhere he went at least one maiden would try to follow when he left. To stop her, he would sing a song so laced with loss and longing that she would sit by the side of the road and weep, unable to move. Then he would go forward alone.

Finally one maiden, bolder or more sly than others, followed him at a greater distance. He didn't realize she had done so until late at night, when he woke to find her on the opposite side of his dying campfire, staring at him with more curiosity than love, which he found refreshing.

“Why do you never stay in one place?” she asked.

The wind sang gently through the tops of the pine trees. The stars blazed in an ebony sky. And Nils's heart nearly burst with the question.

“I'm looking for something,” he whispered.

“What?”

“I don't know.”

“You would be a dangerous man to love.”

“You could not pick anyone worse.”

“My name is Ivy Morris, and I will walk for a while with you.”

Despite his efforts to turn her away, the girl traveled with Nils for a year and a day. When he sang the song that had stopped the others in their tracks—which he did more than once—she continued walking, tears streaming down her face, murmuring, “I understand, for I am a wanderer, too.”

Finally Nils wrote a new song, just for her. He called it “Song of the Wanderer,” and it spoke of both their lives:

 

Across the gently rolling hills

Beyond high mountain peaks

Along the shores of distant seas

There's something my heart seeks

 

But there's no peace in wandering

The road's not made for rest

And footsore fools will never know

What home might suit them best

 

Ivy thanked him for the song.

The next day she was gone.

 

To the south, the world was changing as the age of machines crept on, transforming the earth in more ways than the people who were building and making and inventing could begin to understand. But in the northern forest Nils continued his wandering, spending less and less time in the villages and more time on the mountainsides, trailing the splashing streams, sitting on high promontories, singing only to the wind and the eagles.

And then one night, standing on a high hill and looking down at a crystal stream, Nils saw at last the thing he desired, the thing he had sought all these years, the thing he had longed for without knowing what it was he longed for, the thing his family had wronged so badly, so long ago.

He saw a unicorn.

Nils stood as if frozen while he watched it drink from the clear, cold water. Its coat glowed like white fire in the moonlight. Its creamy mane was like the froth on the waves of the northern sea where he had swum with his mermaid love, and its horn was a spiraled lance that seemed carved from the jewels of the earth. The sight of the creature filled him with such terrible longing that he could not speak.

When the unicorn turned from the stream he followed it, much as the girl named Ivy had followed him, though at a greater distance. He did not want it to know he was there. Not yet. Not yet.

It was not hard for Nils to trail the creature, for his heart was so tied to it that even when it was beyond the edge of his vision he could sense it. But Nils was not the only one stalking the unicorn. One afternoon as he came over a ridge and saw, as he knew he would, the unicorn in the green valley below, he saw something else, too. Something that filled him with cold terror.

It was a Hunter. Not just a man out hunting for his family. This was one of his own family, a man like his father who had but one mission in life—to find and slay the unicorns.

That was bad enough. Even worse, he had already captured this unicorn. It was an old story, one that Nils knew well. In the clearing stood a maiden. The unicorn had come to her, as a unicorn always will to a maiden in the woods, and she had slipped a golden bridle over his head, putting him in her power. Now she held him while the Hunter approached, spear in hand, ready to strike the final blow.

Nils was too far away to stay the Hunter's hand.

So he did the only thing he could, the only thing he knew.

He sang.

Taking his harp from his back, he sang the saddest song he knew, using every trick he had learned from goblin, from dragon, from mermaid, every bit of skill he had gathered in the decades since he first touched the harp.

The Hunter hesitated. His hands began to tremble.

Nils started forward, singing more softly now, intimately, caressing the Hunter's heart with the pain that had clutched his own for all these years, crafting his song like an arrow to pierce the other, and pouring into its notes all he knew of loss and longing.

The Hunter turned and stared at Nils in wonder. Then he dropped his spear, fell to his knees, and began to sob, releasing a flood of sorrow that had been locked in his heart from the first time his father had beaten him.

Nils walked past the sobbing Hunter, past the terrified girl.

“I have been seeking you for a long time,” he said as he slipped the golden bridle from the unicorn's head.

The silver-eyed creature did not answer, but knelt in a clear invitation. Nils climbed on its back, and they fled through the forest, leaving Hunter and maiden far behind. When they were many miles away the unicorn stopped and Nils slid to the ground.

The unicorn turned to him, and Nils, who would have done anything for the beast, suffered anything for it, did not move at all when it stepped toward him, pointed its horn directly at his chest, and pierced the flesh above his heart.

Nils was sure he was about to die. To his astonishment, what happened instead was that the unicorn was able to speak to him.

To his sorrow, its voice was filled with horror.

“Something has happened to you,” it said. “You've been touched by something, changed by something. You have—I don't know what this means—you have a bit of unicorn in you.”

Nils's shame was so great, his first thought was to turn and run. But he could not leave the presence of the unicorn.

Nor could he stay silent.

So he told the story of what had happened when he was young, and his father had slain the unicorn. As he spoke he began to weep, something he had not done since he was four years old. He wept even more when the unicorn wept, too—and still harder when it placed its horn across his shoulder and murmured, “Whatever forgiveness you need, I grant.”

In the storm of weeping that followed, Nils shed all the tears that had been locked inside since the moment he had swallowed the unicorn's flesh, tears for himself, for his mother, even for his father: tears of guilt, tears of rage, tears of loss.

He wept until there was no more silver in his eyes, and they were once again as they had been when he was a boy, as blue as the northern skies. And where each tear fell a flower grew, a little white flower that grows to this day in the northern hills, and which herb women call Heart's Ease.

When at last he was done with weeping, the unicorn, whose name was Cloudmane, and who was the first female unicorn ever to act as Guardian of Memory, said, “Pluck a hair from my tail.”

Nils blinked. “Why would you want me to do that?”

She nudged him playfully and said, “Because your harp is in need of a string.”

So Nils did as she said. The silver hair was gossamer thin, but stronger than steel, and when he had used it to string his harp, he ran his fingers over it and heard at last the sound he had been waiting so many years to hear. Then he wept once more, this time for joy.

Nils traveled with Cloudmane for three years. In that time she taught him the songs of the unicorns, which are the songs of the Air, and his heart was at peace.

When Cloudmane had taught him the last of the songs she knew, Nils bid her good-bye. Then he climbed to the top of a mountain, where he sat himself down and, looking out at the world, sang and sang, until at last he could sing no more.

THIS BEING my third solo collection, I suppose I can no longer claim to find the short story an unnatural form. Even though my brain generally seems to think in novel-sized ideas, I actually like the discipline required for a short story, which forces me to do more with less. The odd result is that I end up doing what I think is some of my best writing this way.

For those who care about such things, here are a few notes on where this batch came from.

I originally wrote the opening story, “In Our Own Hands,” as a booklet for adult literacy training. (My hometown, Syracuse, is one of the epicenters of adult literacy, having been headquarters for both Laubach Literacy and Literacy Volunteers of America, which eventually merged into ProLiteracy Worldwide.) Later I rewrote it for
Bruce Coville's Alien Visitors
. I've rewritten it yet again for this collection, and I think it has now found its final shape. I know the unresolved ending bothers some people, but to me that's the point of this kind of story. (And, of course, you have to tip your hat to Frank Stockton's “The Lady or the Tiger” whenever you try something like this.)