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then it came.
White and gleaming, stepping through
fragrant sweet violets, the unicorn came.
It was high at the shoulder, with a
neck both strong and thick. Its face was that of a goat or a deer, like neither
and yet like both, with a tassel of white hair for a beard and eyes the color of
old gold. Its slim lets ended in cloven hooves that shone silver in the
moonlight. Its tail was long and fringed at the tip with hair as soft and fine
as silken thread. And where it stepped, flowers sprang up, daisies and lilies
and the wild strawberry, and plants that neither Richard nor Heather had seen
before but knew at once, the cuckoo point and columbine and the wild forest
rose.
But it was the horn that caught their
gaze. The spiraled, ivory horn that thrust from the unicorn's head, that looked
both cruel and kind. It was the horn that convinced them both that this could be
no dream.
And so it came, the unicorn more silent
than night yet sweeter than singing. It came 'round the shimmering pool and
knelt in front of the children as they sat breathless on the blanket. It knelt
before them not in humility, but in fealty, and placed its head gently, or so
gently, in Heather's lap.
At the unicorn's touch, Heather sighed. And at her sigh, the silent woods around suddenly seemed to burst with the song
of birds—thrush, and sparrow, and the rising meadowlark. And from far off, the
children heard the unfamiliar jug-jug-jug of a nightingale.
And it was spring and summer in one. Richard looked around and saw that within the enclosure of the green meadow,
ringed about with a stone wall, encircled in stone arms, was a season he had
never seen before. The glade was dappled with thousands of flowers. He could
see, from where he sat, pomegranate and cherry trees, orange and apple, all in
full bloom. The smell of them in the air was so strong that he was almost giddy.
But Heather seemed to notice none of
this. She had taken the yellow ribbon from her waist and bound it about the
unicorn's head like a golden halter, over the forehead and around the soft white
muzzle. Her fingers moved slowly but surely as she concentrated on the white
head that lay on her lap, the horn carefully tucked under her arm. She stroked
the unicorn's gleaming neck with her free hand and crooned over and over, "You
beauty, you love, you beauty." And the beast closed its eyes and shuddered once
and then lay very still. She could feel the veins in its silken neck under her
hand, pulsing, surging, but the great white head did not move.
Richard looked over at the beast and
the girl, and on his knees he moved across the blanket to them. Hesitantly, he
reached his hand out toward the unicorn's neck. And Heather looked up then and
took his hand in hers and placed it on the soft, smooth neck. Richard smiled
shyly, then broadly, and Heather smiled back.
As they sat there, the three, without a
word, a sudden harsh note halloed from afar.
"A horn," Richard said, drawing his
hand away quickly. "Heather, I heard a hunting horn."
But she seemed not to hear.
The horn sounded again, nearer. There
was no mistaking its insistent cry.
"Heather!"
"Oh, Richard, I hear it. What shall we
do?"
The unicorn opened its eyes, eyes of
antique gold. It looked steadily up at Heather, but still it did not move.
Heather tried to push the heavy head
off her lap. "You have to go. You have to. It must be near day. The
hunters will kill you. They won't care that you're beautiful. They'll just want
your horn. Oh, please. Please." The last was an anguished cry, but still
the unicorn did not move. It was as though it lay under a spell that was too
old, too powerful to break.
"Richard, it won't move. What can we
do? It'll be killed. It'll be our fault. Oh, Richard, what have you read about
this? Think. Think."
Richard thought. He went over lists and
lists in his mind. But he did not recall it in any of his reading. And then he
remembered the unicorn tapestries Heather had found in her mother's art books. She had brought the book for them both to see. The unicorn had indeed been
killed, slaughtered by men with sharp spears and menacing faces. What could he
and Heather do about such evil?
Heather was leaning over the unicorn's
neck and crying. "Oh, my beauty. Oh, forgive me. I didn't mean you to be killed. Before I saw you, really saw you, I wanted to tame you. But now I . . . we want
to save you."
Richard watched her stroke the neck,
the head, her hand moving hypnotically over the gleaming white, tangling in the
yellow ribbon.
Suddenly Richard knew. "Heather," he
shouted, "the yellow ribbon! It's the golden bridle. Take it off. Take it off!"
Heather look at the ribbon and in that
moment understood. She ripped it from the unicorn's neck. "Go!" she said. "Be
free." The ribbon caught on the spiraled horn.
The minute the ribbon was off its neck,
the unicorn got up heavily from its knees. It flung its head abruptly backward
and the golden band flew through the air.
The ribbon landed in the middle of the
pool and was sucked downward into the water with a horrible sound. The birds
rose up mourning from the trees as, in a clatter of hooves, the unicorn circled
the pool once, leaped over the stone wall, and disappeared.
In an instant it was November again,
brown, sere, and cold.
And the pool was no longer crystal and
shimmering but a dank, brackish bog the color of rotted logs.
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