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

full, the other a slim,bluish crescent. Their radiance was sheer, and with the stars the landscape showed bright as day.

And the stars came in constellations. And they formed im ages, not as they were said to do in Tanaquil’s world, but exactly. First a woman, drawn from east to west as if in zircons and beryls, holding a balance. And as she went over and began tosink, a chariot rose in quartz and opals. It had no horses in theshafts. No shafts. For each hour, it seemed to Tanaquil as shewalked, another constellation came into the sky. After the char

iot, a lion, and after the lion, two dolphins, a tree, a bird, acrowned man, a snake that crossed the sky like a river of silver fires.

“You see,” Tanaquil muttered, as each came up, “how could we manage here?” The moons and the stars showed her the burnt grass, theblackened flowers. Never had any path been made so easy.

Under the cool-warm lamps of the night, panthers gamboled on the shore of the lake. In the forest foxes upbraided her. Wouldshe have shed tears if it had been possible? Surely she would havebeen angry.

She came at last back to the orchards above the sea. In the moonlight, under the sinking starry hand of the king, the line of water was like mercury. The star serpent coiled over the or chards, and their song went on by night as by day.

Tanaquil walked through the orchards, and came under onesilent tree. She had expected this. It was the tree where she hadtouched the apple.

The peeve woke. It interrogated the apple tree.

“No insect.”

“No insect. My fault.”

They walked from the orchards through the flowers. Likeblackened bones, the snapped stalks where they had troddenbefore.

They reached the shore. She was not fatigued. Fast and grim, the egg of darkness hung on the light-rinsed sky. The Gate. Theirs.

Tanaquil gazed across the land of trees and flowers and beauty.

“Forgive me.”

The peeve shook itself. Its ears went up in points and its whiskers flickered at her cheek. “Insect.” A weird motion was on the ground. The flowers were rising

up again, the black husks crumbling from them. Like a fire alongthe earth the healing ran up from the shore and away across theplain. She could not hear the silent apple tree begin to sing, but the sharp ears of the peeve had caught it.

A response to apology? Because she was removing themfrom the world and, like some unbearable weight, as they weretaken from it, it might breathe again?

Tanaquil did not know. A pang of ordinary rage went through

her. Was it their fault that they had been polluted by being madesecond best?

“Hold tight!”

She ran into the sea and the mercury water splashed up;nearing the dark Gate she catapulted herself into the air and divedforward. The peeve clawed her shoulder. There was a differentsort of night, and perfection was gone for good.

12

Outside, it was daylight. Imperfect daylight that glared, andripped blinding slashes in the sea. The sea was also darkly in thearch under the cliff, piled up somehow, though the tide elsewherehad drawn away.

Tanaquil, up to her knees in harsh salt water, ploughed tothe arch mouth and let the peeve jump free onto the dry beach.

She spared one look for her world. She was not ready for ityet. But there were things to be done.

She tried to feel nothing, though all the normal feelings—anger, dismay, grief, disbelief, mere muddle—were swarming in on her. She stood in the tide pool before the shimmer, the glowing oval, so like an invitation—as the Gate on the other sidewas a warning—and, thrusting in her arms up to the elbow, like afurious washerwoman, she pulled the Gate apart.

She tore it in pieces and cast the pieces adrift. And as she didso the light of the Gate crinkled and went out, and only smears ofluminescence like the trails of sorcerous snails, remained.

Tanaquil sensed two tears on her face, and blinked them offinto the salty sea.

She kneeled in the water and fumbled at the base of the cliff. The fossil came to her hand. She wrenched it out. And standingup again, sopping wet, she beheld all the sheen of the Gate wasgone. She could see through to the far side of the cliff, the glareof the sun, and the barrenness of the sand.

“I’ll do it properly,” she said.

She pushed out of the arch and sneered at the cliff top.

Tanaquil had known no tiredness in the other world. Now she was worn out, as if she had gone days and nights with out rest. Nevertheless, she must scramble up the slippery rockand get the second fossil out. There must be no chance again

that anyone might enter Paradise. Or anything wander out of it.

She climbed the cliff. It was murderous. She hated it and told it so.

The glaring sun, which burnt you if it could, had risen further toward noon when she achieved the top. She lay there, put her hand on the second fossil, and prized it loose. With both of them, the primal keys to the Gate of the unicorn, in her fist, she fell asleep facedown on the rock.

Boom, went the surf, accept our offering.

Boom. Give over your rage at us.

“Stupid,” said Tanaquil, in her sleep, “I’ll never forgive any of you.”

Oh Sacred Beast, trouble us no more.

“It won’t, it won’t.”

The stone of the cliff top was hot, and Tanaquil was roast ing. She shifted, and saw what went on, on the beach below. She had seen something like this before. A congregation of people very overdressed and in too many ornaments; horses and chari ots up on the road among the palms; soldiers in golden mail. There was a sort of chorus of women in white dresses, waving tambourines and moaning. And quite near, a girl, with very black hair and a collar of rubies, was poised by the sea and throwing garlands on to it. The flowers were roses, and would die. “Stop it; what a waste,” mumbled Tanaquil.

“Trouble us no more. We regret