Black Unicorn, Tanith Lee [famous ebook reader txt] 📗

of the arch, near the opening,diagonally across from the fossil below. How do I know? Don’t bother.

Tanaquil crawled to see. She discovered beds of seaweed rooted obstreperously in the rock. With cries of outrage shepulled them up. And found the old wound of the fossil, obvious, exact, incredibly needing nothing.

She pressed the shell into it. It fitted immediately.

She was not prepared—

For the cliff shook. It shivered. And out of it, from the arch below, there came a wave of furling, curling light, and a sound like one note of a song, a song of stone and water, sand and night, and conceivably the stars.

Tanaquil clung onto the cliff. She expected it to collapse, tobe thrown off, but the shivering calmed and ceased, the lightbelow melted to a faint clear shine. She looked then away at theunicorn. She supposed it would dart suddenly towards the cliff and under and in, and away. But the unicorn did not move.

“What is it? Go on!” Tanaquil called. “Before anything elsehappens—anyone comes—or isn’t it right?”Yes, yes. It was right. The Gate was there, was there. Andyet the unicorn lingered, still as a creature of the stone.

Tanaquil hoisted herself over the bridge, and began to let herself down the cliff again. She was urgent now, and not carefulenough. She lost her grip once, twice, and eventually fell thirteenfeet into a featherbed of sand.

The unicorn was digging her out. She swam through thesmother and emerged, spitting like a cat. It was not the unicorn.

“Pnff,” said the peeve. “Bad.”

“Yes, thank you. Very bad.” She pulled herself upright andscattered sand grains from hair and ears. The peeve ticklinglylicked her cuts, so she lugged it away. “Why is it standing there?The Gate is—” And she saw the Gate as now it was. Open.Waiting. In the spangled dark, an oval of light. It was the light ofthe sun of another dimension. Warm and pure, both brighter and softer than any light she had seen in the world. In her world. And through the light it was possible to glimpse—no, it wasimpossible. Only a kind of dream was there, like a mirage, colorand beauty, radiance and vague sweet sound.

Tanaquil rose. She shouted at the unicorn. “Go on!”

Then the unicorn tossed its head. It leapt upward like anarrow from a bow. All its four feet were high in the air. It flew. In flight it spun forward, like thistledown, ran like wind alongthe sea.

It passed under the cliff. And Tanaquil saw it breach theglowing oval of the Gate and go through. She saw it there inside,within the beauty and shining.

And then the peeve shot from between her hands.

“Nice! Nice!” squealed the peeve, as it hurtled toward Paradise.

“No—you mustn’t—come back you fool, oh, God, you fool!”

She saw the unicorn had turned, there in the dream. Its head moved slowly. There was no denial. Was it a beckoning?

The peeve squawked and dove through the gate of light.

With a sickening misgiving, with a cruel desire, Tanaquil alsoran, over the sand, under the arch. She felt the Gate, like a sheet of heavy water, resisting her, and making way. And she too rushed into the perfect world.

11

To the sea’s edge the flowers came. Some grew, it seemed, inthe water. Their color was like quenching thirst. Blue flowers ofthe same blueness as the ocean, and of a darker blue passing intoviolet. And after those, banks of flowers of peach pink, and carmine, and flowers yellow as lemon wine. Trees rose from theflowers. They were very tall and tented with translucent foliageof a deep golden green. Glittering things slipped in and out of theleaves. The plain of flowers and trees stretched far away, and miles off were mountains dissolving in the blue of the sky. A single slender path of blossomy clouds crossed this sky, like feathers left behind. The sun burned high. Its warmth bathed everything, like honey, and its gentle light that was clear as glass.Even the waves did not flash, and yet they shone as if another sunwere in the depths of the sea. And all about the sun of the sky,great day stars gleamed like a diamond net.

One of the birds slid from a tree that overhung the ocean. Itwriggled down into the water. It was a fish. It circled Tanaquilonce, where she stood in the shallows, then swam incuriously away.

She looked behind her. The shining sea returned to the horizon. Sea things were playing there, and spouts of water sparkled. A few inches above the surface of the waves, not threefeet from her, a leaden egg floated in the air. It was the Gate.

I should close it. No. I shouldn’t be here—I have to go back—

The Gate was blank and uninviting. It did not seem to heranything would want to go near it. Even the fish, now ploppinglike silver pennies from the trees, swam wide of the place.

She looked forward again. The peeve, which somehow itselfknew how to swim, had followed its pointed nose to the shore,

emerged, and now rolled about in the flowers. They were notcrushed. They gave way before it and danced upright when it had passed.

On the plain, the unicorn galloped, swerved, leapt and seemedto fly, a streak of golden-silver blackness, while the sun unwoundrainbows from its horn.

“This water can’t be salt,” said Tanaquil, “or else it’s a harmless salt. The flowers don’t die.”

She waded out of the shallows and stood among the flowers.Their perfume was fresh and clear, like the light. She moved herfeet, and the flowers she had stood upon coiled springily upright.

“We should go back,” Tanaquil said to the peeve.

The peeve rolled in the flowers.

Tanaquil did not want to go back. If this was the perfectworld, she wanted to see it.

Birds sang from the trees. It was not that their songs weremore beautiful than the beautiful songs of earth, yet they had aclarity without distraction. The air was full of a sort of happiness,or some other benign power having no name. To breathe it made you glad. Nothing need worry you. No