Zombies vs. Unicorns (39 page)

So the town had its Hanging Day after all.

After the Duke’s death, the officers led James and me to the limousine and helped us in. We drove slowly through the crowd, who watched us go—some cheering, some looking on with silent, stunned faces. I passed my parents, who were standing hand in hand, gawking like the rest. I rolled down the window to wave at them, but they looked at me as if they had never seen me before in their lives. I had become someone else to them.

I have not been home since. I live in the palace now, where there is a room made up for me. Because he is the Duke, my parents don’t object to me living here. They know we have to stay together. The town accepts that their Duke is dead, because
I
am alive. I am the symbol. I am what proves that though James is dead, he is still human.

He has even found a priest to marry us. It used to be illegal, the marriage of the living and the dead. After this, I don’t know. Everything is different now. Everything is changing. Because I am the betrothed of the Duke, I don’t have to endure the curious stares of the townsfolk when I go out to the market, or
to the square, or up to the cemetery to put salt on the graves of my ancestors. I ride in the town car, and I keep the tinted windows rolled all the way up so I don’t have to see their faces when they look at me. I know they wonder what it is like, to love and be loved by the dead.

I would tell them it is much like it is to be loved by the living. James is not like he was when he was alive. He is quiet now; he talks very little, and does not share his thoughts with me. He does not sleep at night, and cannot dream. But many men are quiet, and most don’t share their thoughts even with the ones they love. In many ways he is just like the James I always knew.

Except that when he touches me, even now, I can’t help but shiver. If only the dead did not have such cold hands.

“The Third Virgin”

Holly
: Unicorns are thought to possess healing powers. In particular, their horn is believed to remedy everything from bad breath to serious disease. Goblets inlaid with unicorn horn will purify poison poured into them, and candlesticks of the horn itself hold candles that burned especially brightly and very long.

But in addition to the much-coveted horn, other parts of the unicorn are also useful. Shoes made from unicorn skin will keep feet from having sores and bunions, a pelt of unicorn fur will cure fever, and ground-up unicorn innards will cure leprosy. Unicorns are useful creatures, hence all that creepy hunting of them.

Kathleen Duey’s “The Third Virgin” explores what it means to have those healing powers—what the cost is, both to those who are healed and to the unicorn itself. I love this story; it still haunts me.

Justine
: Wow. Obviously, I am anti-unicorn, but this story gives me ammunition I never even thought of. Who knew that unicorns are massive whingers? (For the Americans: A whinger is someone who complains constantly and lives in the land of half-empty glasses. It is not the same as being a whiner; it’s much, much worse.) You don’t see zombies standing around moaning about the awesome cost and responsibility of eating brains, do you?

This story also answers the question, “Unicorns? What are
they good for?” with an emphatic, “ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.”

The anti-unicorn case rests covered in glory.

Holly
: I’m not going to even touch what Team Zombie is covered in. Sores, maybe? Goo of some kind? Whatever that is, I wouldn’t call it “glory.”

By Kathleen Duey
 

I need a virgin.

I know, I know. But I do.

So I am hiding in the woods near a high school.

Pathetic, yes. But necessary. The virgin can’t be an old man or a wee slip of a child or a man with a child’s wits this time. I need strength and resolve. Am I the first to try this? More likely I am the ten thousandth. It hardly matters. I continue to starve myself. I don’t know if I can keep it up—or if it will help. I can only hope that this is the last conundrum of my endless life.

I have no idea when or if I was born, nor what spawned me. I know when my memories began, because I still have every single one of them. It was a warm morning back in Cymru—the place they decided to call Wales, eventually—when I saw the sun rise for the first time. After that, I wandered.

Always alone.

Always hungry.

I was often frightened, and I envied the fawns and the fox kits their graceful mothers and watchful fathers. I coveted the way they all knew what they were meant to eat. I didn’t. I tried everything. I spat out twigs and flesh, and vomited up berries, and had no idea what would still my hunger. And in spite of it, I grew.

When my body changed, my dapples faded into the silk white coat of adulthood. Then the horn split the skin of my
forehead. It scared me, this long, sharp spike shoving its way outward. I had to walk differently, allow more breadth of passage in the forest. And I began to feel something beyond my constant hunger. It was a separate ache. A need. For what, I had no idea.

I was very young when I discovered I could not hurt myself beyond my ability to heal. There was no cut, no bruise, no broken bone that did not quickly repair itself. The first time, I watched the magic, both sides of the gash straining to touch, to cling, to erase the damage I had done. I thought all pain passed quickly, that all wounds healed in the course of a morning—until I followed a grounded bird flopping with a ruined wing. I began to watch. None of the other creatures healed like I did.

The first human I ever saw was nearly naked and filthy. She was running, screaming, bleeding. I understood her cries, but had no idea how to help. I hid as her pursuers passed me. I don’t know if she died or lived, or what happened to her.

The First Virgin:

One drizzling gray morning a farm girl spotted me through the trees. She ran toward me, pleading with me to save her father, a coal miner nearly crushed when his bell pit collapsed. Her heart was a roiling mass of emotion that both excited and scared me. I bolted, but I could hear her behind me, shouting, begging, heartbroken. I stopped and looked back. Her desperation—even at that distance—felt sweet. As she came closer, I lowered my horn by instinct, even though I had no idea what I should do with it.

But she knew. She lay one trembling hand on my neck, and
guided me through the trees to a cottage. She coaxed me gently, waiting for me to puzzle my way through the open door, then to clop across the smooth wooden planks. Her father was dying. I could feel it. She stood close to me and showed me what to do, with gestures and words that made it clear she understood my fear and my inexperience.

I bent to touch her father’s brow with my horn. The jolt I felt nearly buckled my forelegs. Something coursed through me, and I transmuted it into something I could give back to him, but not in full. I stole some of his life, without thinking, and my hunger was instantly stilled. For the first time in my life, I felt the strength that comes from eating. But was the man healed? Had I done it correctly?

He sat up. He flexed his legs. His weeping daughter was whispering, her hands light on my skin, thanking me, assuring me that I had done everything perfectly. And I only then realized that
she
could hear
me
; she was understanding my thoughts. I had lived all my life as silent as stone, hungry, aching, confused. All that was gone for a while. It was intoxicating.

There are legends about unicorns. I have heard—or overheard—most of them. I know there are paintings and tapestries that depict us looking love-daft, kneeling, staring up at a pretty girl. I am sure I looked as silly as any of them that first time.

But the virgins I have sought ever since cannot be defined in the narrow, idiotic way most people use the word. There are older, deeper meanings. Virginity means unmarred wonder, belief, new green grass, continuous rebirth. And even that
is not enough for me to be able to talk, to be heard. There must also be a need so sharp that I feel loved, at least for a while.

I began searching all of Wales for people to heal and virgins to talk to. I found hundreds of the first and none of the second. I tried. Pure, hopeful, wondrous hearts are far less common than truly sharp need. And to find the two together? It is a very rare person who can hear a unicorn. So I pursued other intoxications.

Word spread, and those in need walked the woods, looking for me. I was stealing life, as well as giving it, every time. It felt entirely natural to me, in the way that a head shake violent enough to snap a rat’s neck is natural for a terrier. I slowly came to understand that the ratio of gift to theft was mine to decide, that I could control it. And I quickly learned this: The balance between giving and taking impacted the exquisite physical thunder I felt when my horn touched human flesh. The more I stole, the better it felt.

At first I took more years of life from children. It seemed fair. I was saving most of them from very early death. Gray beards and prune-faced women kept more—because they had less to start with. And so it went. At first. Eventually I gave in to whimsy. There was a humble, kind man whose dog revered him. He kept most of his remaining years. The woman who wanted me to cure her small pox, but not her mother’s, lost most of hers. At first this was amusing.

The day the game found its limits: A smelly, bestial old man slapped my muzzle when I bent to touch him with my horn. He had no idea what he was doing—disease had clabbered his
brain. But still, it pissed me off. I jerked his last breath up and out of his mean, miserly chest and kept it for myself. It felt right. I did not heal him. I killed him. And killing him satisfied my hunger the way nothing else ever had.
Ever
.

I was afraid I would do it again. And I did. Over and over. Stealing a baby’s entire life was the best. The jolt was violent, and the calm satiety that came after it lasted a long time. I loathed myself afterward, of course. And the loathing lasted much longer than the satisfaction. But it never stopped me. Here’s an odd thing: The parents never blamed me. It was never my fault, always somehow theirs. Too late to find me, the wrong blanket the night before, something. They wanted to believe in the magic, I suppose. It made me feel filthy.

One sunny morning I stared at my reflection in a pond. My eyes were as dead as last night’s coals. My coat was spattered with the blood of a child who had nearly killed herself falling from a barn beam. Because of me she was indeed dead now. And I realized that if I ever again found that special sort of virgin to talk to, I would have only horrific things to say.

That afternoon I waded into the sea and I pulled a long, slow underwater breath into my lungs, trying to die. I woke up on a rocky shore, a circle of human children around me, their faces lit with joy. I staggered away, gagging up salt water and coughing until I bled. Then I healed.

I was desperate to find others of my kind, to see if they felt what I felt, did what I did. I hoped they had found a way to stop killing. But I never saw another unicorn, not even from a distance. Maybe they had all found a place to hide. Maybe they
were all dead. Maybe there is only one of us at a time. I don’t know.

I kept searching for a pure heart with a terrible need so I could have the great relief of being listened to. I couldn’t find one. I stumbled through fifty years of silence. Then a hundred. Sometimes I tried to hide. But I had healed so many people that everyone knew a story or two, and those stories were passed down. The parade of the injured and sick was endless—and an endless temptation.

I could sometimes be more or less fair for a while, but then I would slide backward again. Every time I thought about the feeling I got when I sucked the life out of a baby, I shivered and longed to feel it again.

I tried three more times to end my life.

It didn’t work. I healed.

Obviously.

If I had managed it, I would not be watching the woods for a virgin this morning, would I? And these are not the woods I grew up in. I left Ceredigion County more than three hundred years ago because I overheard men talking about ships sailing to the New World.