Paper Cities, an Anthology of Urban Fantasy (17 page)

Suddenly colder, his spine reacting to an impression — a latent memory that was more instinct than personal recollection — Colby shivered and looked away from the dome of ice.

Ahead of them, David and Jack tracked the unicorn’s trail, eyes watching for the chaotic pattern of each successive spatter.

“Listen,” Hurley said, “It’s not a big deal if you are, but — ”

“What about Jack?” Colby interrupted, indicating the two men ahead of them. “Is he a virgin too?”

Hurley opened and closed his mouth several times. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“By your argument, non-virgins can’t see the unicorn, which would explain why long-time studs like you and David can’t see it. You’re blind because you shook your dicks at too many girls over the years. Is that how it works?”

“It’s just an idea — ”

Colby cut Hurley off with an abrasive laugh. “Maybe I’ve not had the ‘office romances’ that you’ve had, but I lost my virginity when I was fifteen, Hurley. And I’ve slept with a few women since then.”

“Fine,” Hurley snapped. “You got a better explanation?”

“We should be asking Jack. He seems to be the resident expert.”

“Right,” Hurley snorted. “David would know better. He’s been hunting — ”

“What?”

“Maybe that’s what it is.” Hurley grabbed Colby’s arm. “Listen, maybe it’s like that thing where every story changes with every telling. You know, like that game we did in school where we’d all line up and the teacher would whisper something to the first kid. He’d pass it along to the next, and the next to the next, you know, on down the line. The last kid then says aloud what he is told, and it is always different. Maybe the myth of the unicorn is the same thing. After all these generations of telling the story, the details have gotten muddled. Maybe it’s not about being a ‘virgin’ but about being innocent.”

“Innocent. How?”

“You ever been hunting, Colby? Have you ever killed anything?”

“No. Jesus, Hurley.” Colby grimaced. “I’ve never even held a crossbow before tonight.”

“Right. And David and I have. He’s taken me bow hunting with him a couple of times. This isn’t my first time.”

“But that would mean that Jack is innocent too.” Colby glanced at the receding pair. Until Jack found his quarry again.
Until they caught up with the wounded animal
. His chest tightened as if a python was squeezing his ribs. “What happens to the unicorn if we kill it?”

Hurley hefted his crossbow, getting a better grip on the stock. His eyes were bright and clear, unstained by alcohol. “Maybe that’s when it becomes visible again. Maybe that’s the only way the rest of us will ever see it.”

•

The waitress replenished their drinks, removing the ice-filled glasses as if she were clearing the detritus of an expired ceremony. The four men made no eye contact with one another for a moment, their faces turned in random directions like a quartet of demagnetized compasses. The foursome, cast adrift from their collective mood by Colby’s outburst, sought other distractions. Hurley stared after the waitress; David grew fascinated with the play of light on the half-moon of his fingernails; Colby’s eyes roved around the room as he tried to pretend he didn’t feel the feral burn of Jack’s gaze.

“Are you tired of listening to us, Colby?” Jack asked. “Is it too much of an effort to have a beer and play along for a few hours? Have we bored you that badly?”

Colby stared at his glass, unwilling to raise his head. “I’m just tired,” he said. “Long week. It’s got nothing to do with anything.”

“Yeah, ‘nothing.’ Is that the whole problem? You woke up this morning and realized just how empty your life is. When was the last time you got a decent raise? Or had a date? What friends do you have outside the three of us? Are you still living in that shithole in Parkway, or did you ever manage to save enough for a deposit on a place across the bridge?”

Each question was a psychic blow that collapsed more of his body: his lungs grew tighter, his stomach knotted, his throat constricted to a tiny hole. Each question externalized an interior complaint Colby had been fighting, had been dismissing these last months as he had focused on his report. As if everything would be resolved with the release of his findings; as if his document was a life-affirming manifesto instead of a study in paper consumption. Jack’s questions were delivered as if he was trying to push Colby into the existential blankness that filled the void behind the inconsequential truth of his report.

Colby tried to brush them off, tried to dismiss them with a wave of his hand. “Forget it,” he said. He struggled to get out of the plush comfort of the chair. “I’m done. I’m heading home.”

“You need to do something,” Jack said. “Something real. Jump out of an airplane, race a motorcycle. Something like that.”

Colby paused, one arm partially snared in his coat. Against his better judgment, he turned and looked down at Jack. “Now?”

“Why not?”

Colby had a show of looking around the room. “Because it’s the middle of the night. Because I — ”

“Because you’re scared? Because it’s easier to talk about doing something than actually doing it? Because you’d rather bitch about us telling the same old stories than actually go out and make a new one?”

“No — ”

“It’s just an excuse, Colby. Whatever you’re going to say. It’s just a lame excuse to do nothing again.”

Colby flushed. He shoved his remaining arm in his coat. “What the fuck do you care?”

“Because I think you’re right. Because Hurley does tell the same damn story every time, and I’m sick of it too. But is that his fault? Is anything we fail to do here any fault but our own?”

“Jesus, Jack,” Hurley snorted, stung by his words.

Colby’s tongue was dry, and he licked his lips as if to find moisture on them. “What did you have in mind?”

Jack smiled. “There’s a unicorn in Windward Park.”

Hurley laughed. “Ah, shit, that’s a good one, Jack.” The others looked at him. “What? It’s a good setup for a story. Giving us all grief for being boring and then hitting us with…” He faltered. “What? You believe him?”

David nodded. “I heard it too. From someone else.”

“Oh, and that makes it true?” Hurley shook his head and reached for his drink. “Everyone could be telling the same lie here. That doesn’t make it true.”

Jack was still staring at Colby. “So let’s go find out. If you’re so eager for something true and hard and honest, then let’s go. Let’s go out there right now and find it.”

“Why?” Colby asked, the only word he could manage.

“Why not?”

“That’s not a reason.”

“Isn’t it?” Jack raised his chin towards the wall behind Colby. “David and Hurley have enough hunting gear to outfit all of us. Let’s go bag ourselves a unicorn and get the head stuffed. Mount it right there on the wall behind you so no one forgets.” He laughed and looked at the others, spearing them with the fervent gleam in his eyes. “Fuck the stories. Let’s go make our own.”

•

The ground was slick and icy near the lion statue, and Colby nearly fell. His hip caught on the angry mouth of the statue where he regained his balance, leaning against the cold stone for support. Behind him, Jack shouted incoherently, giving voice to the bloom of pain from the shattered bones in his shoulder.

The unicorn thundered up Glory’s slope, its hooves cracking against the frosted hillock. Colby pressed himself against the stone lion, stealing a glance upslope as the animal passed. Silver twinkled in its mane, its horn a glittering spike. Blood streamed down its white flank from Jack’s earlier crossbow bolt.

“Where is it?” Hurley was in a panic. “Where the fuck is it?”

“Look for Jack’s bolt,” David shouted. Standing in the open meadow at the base of Glory, he sighted carefully through the sights of his crossbow.
The experienced hunter
, Colby thought, transfixed by David’s patience,
waiting for his prey to come into range
.

The unicorn charged down the slope past Colby, head lowered.

But he can’t see it.

David squinted and fired. The unicorn flipped its head up, horn rising. The metal bolt struck sparks — a cascade of falling stars — as it ricocheted off the hard horn. Galloping past the stunned hunter, the unicorn dipped its horn down. David spun, trailing a thin arc of crimson, and then he was facedown on the ground.

Hurley hesitated, caught between trying to do something for Jack’s shattered shoulder and his fallen friend. Colby found himself wondering how surreal the scene must be for the florid salesman. First, Jack had been knocked down and trampled and now David, throat cut, was a crumpled shape on the white ground. All the while, Hurley hadn’t seen the animal that had dropped two of his companions. Like fighting a ghost.

The unicorn wheeled near the tree line and pounded back across the field. Colby braced his back against the cold statue as the animal charged towards him. His crossbow lay on the ground not far from him, but he didn’t dare move from the statue, as if he could meld himself into the stone and disappear.

The unicorn pulled up short of Colby, rearing back on its hind legs. Up close, its hooves were huge and flashed like the blade of a headsman’s axe. The blood streaking its flank made its ribs appear like dusty shadows under its pale skin. Its eyes were stark and white with panic, and its chest heaved like massive bellows.

Colby was sucked into the winter whiteness of the unicorn’s eyes, suddenly pulled into a pure void bereft of shadow and darkness. As the animal towered over him, the panic and fear flowed out of Colby as if a plug had been pulled out of him and all the emotional tension drained out of his body. He floated in the opaque purity of the unicorn’s gaze, and instead of being lost against this background, he was a single dot upon the white sea. A nut. A seed. A catalyst.

The unicorn blinked, a shuttering of souls, and Colby was snapped back into his own body. The animal lowered its horn. Not as an antagonist, but as a gesture of recognition and kindness. Of understanding. Colby raised his hand, his fingers reaching for the tip of the unicorn’s horn.

The unicorn bleated and took a drunken step to Colby’s left, and he saw the fresh crossbow bolt jutting from its side just behind its shoulder.

Jack, leaning against Hurley, lowered his crossbow, a triumphant grin working through the pain wracking his face.

The animal staggered on the uneven slope of Glory. It shook its head, twisting its neck in an effort to see what was biting its flesh. Colby took a step towards the wounded creature, hand still outstretched. He reached for the bolts jutting out of its sides instead of the horn. If he could just touch the bolt, he could draw it out before the unicorn expired. He could stop the flow of blood.

The unicorn’s front legs buckled, and it fell heavily against the slope. Its head lolled on a weak neck, and Colby laid a hand on the heaving animal’s flank. His fingers tightened against the hot and sweaty flesh.

An irrational urge to press against the animal’s flesh shuddered through his arms — a foreign desire to dig his fingers deep into its damp skin as if by tearing into its flesh he would understand its secrets. As if the flesh under the quivering hide was a communion of sorts, a meat more divine than his own flesh. As if the animal was life itself, bleeding out onto the white ground. The unicorn was real — it was the only thing that was and could ever be real, its flank hot and shaking under his hand and cheek.

“Get out of the way, Colby!” Jack shouted. He had Hurley’s crossbow and was pointing it at Colby and the unicorn. The tip of the bolt shivered as Jack’s adrenaline-charged muscles twitched and jumped.

With a clarity like the white field he had seen in the unicorn’s eye, Colby knew Jack would fire. Even if he laid his body across the animal in an effort to block Jack’s shot, he knew such a sacrifice would be ultimately fruitless. Jack — or Hurley — would just shoot him, reload and fire again, unobstructed.

The unicorn snorted beneath him, a sighing exhalation like a furnace expiring. He could feel the ebb of its shivering breath. Colby stretched his arm across the back of the animal, and as he turned his head, his gaze fell on his discarded crossbow. The bolt was still in place, ready to fire.

“Colby — ” Jack started, a grim finality in his voice.

He could stop the flow. In a winter-frozen moment of time, Colby understood how to stop the flow of the unicorn’s blood. It was an act of sacrifice. A single act: like a single thought or a single shot. The rest was just how the story played itself out.

Colby scrambled for his crossbow, scooping it off the ground. He lifted it with one hand and pulled the trigger.

Jack quivered as the bolt struck him, his expression softening into something akin to dismay. The tip of his weapon drooped, and he coughed. Blood spattered the feathers of his bolt, and his face crumbling with a weak cry, he stared down at the metal bolt sticking out of his chest. He tried to look at Hurley, but his knees failed, and he fell.

The unicorn blew air again, struggling to its feet. Its head drooped, and its knees were locked, but it remained upright. To Colby, it was already fading: opaque through the withers, crystalline shine bleeding through its tail and mane.

I’ll never see it again
, he realized. His sacrifice was to be a different sort of blooding.

Hurley was reloading the crossbow Jack had given him.

Colby did the same.

•

“That’s a pretty sad story.” Jennie tugged on a pigtail, hair woven through the tangle of her long fingers.

Colby’s mouth was dry from the telling, as if the words had all dried up in his throat.

“I’ve heard a lot of unicorn stories recently — it’s the popular meme right now — but that one…” She shrugged. “It’s different. Most of what I hear are tales of wish-fulfillment. You know, sex stories for stunted adolescents.”

Colby nodded.

“Yeah.” She clucked her tongue once, punctuating the thought, and tapped her tray against her leg. “So, seriously, are your friends going to be joining you tonight?”