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

peeve, which had followed Tanaquil on each excursion to the blacksmith’s forge. They thoughtthe peeve was a pet. They admired its loyalty as it sat staring atthe smithing work. Tanaquil knew the peeve was only interestedin the parts for the unicorn. As she labored over it in her room,the peeve had watched her from its lair under the bed, sometimescoming out to paddle across her tools and upset them. It rarely spoke. Yesterday the herders had come to the fort, and large cutsof meat were now being prepared for Jaive’s dinner. Tanaquil hadbrought the peeve several samples, which it had dragged underthe bed to eat; a nasty, smelly arrangement that Tanaquil tried tooverlook.

“Hallo, peeve,” said Tanaquil now, letting it know she couldsee. The peeve ignored her. It slowly raised one paw, and before she could protest, it tapped the lowest bone of the left hindleg.

A sweet chiming note came from the leg, and echoed awaythrough the skeleton.Tanaquil sat up. The peeve jumped off the table backwardsand shot under the bed. “You see,” said Tanaquil sternly, leaning down to confrontthe peeve’s astonished pointed face, “I told you not to touch.”

She got out of the bed and went to the suspended skeleton.Light as dust, she flicked at the bones of the forelegs, and otherchimes winged over the room. She ran her fingers along the cage of ribs, and there was a rill like silver beads falling down a stair ofmarble.

She had not been able, last midnight, to bring herself to try ifthe unicorn would move. She was half afraid it might, and thatmovement would dislodge some bit of it, which would then comedown and break. But also, she was just afraid.

The chimes of the bones filled her with awe. She steppedaway. And going to the bed she sat there and only gazed at theskeleton, while the peeve put its head out and gazed too, saucer-eyed.

Bird knocked on the door, bowed, and held out a wave of olive-green silk.

Tanaquil’s “best” dresses never went sorcerously missing,for her mother stored them in a closet of her own apartment.Tanaquil accepted the dress, a unity of floor-length, wide, rus tling skirt, boned bodice, high neck, and complicated sleeves. Ithad a sky-blue embroidery of lyres and lilies all over it.

Bird spied past Tanaquil unavoidably.

“Ooh, what’s that?”

“What exactly?”

“That dangly glittery thing.”

“Just something I found somewhere. It’s been there ages.”

Bird looked doubtful, but she only said, “Your lady mother says I’m to attend you to the feast.”

Tanaquil frowned. As she had feared, her mother was set onmaking the dinner excessive and full of fussy rituals. “I’m to wearmy gray velvet gown,” said Bird.

“Oh, good,” said Tanaquil.

“The gong will be struck just after sunset. Then we’re to go down.”

Bird was obviously looking forward to the dinner. Perhaps everyone was, except Tanaquil, who felt annoyed and almost embarrassed, for Jaive had suggested the dinner to Tanaquil as the cook had suggested she bake a cake.

When Bird had been persuaded to go, Tanaquil shut her door and tossed the splendid dress onto her bed, where the peeve came to investigate it.

Tanaquil was dissatisfied. She had found she did not want to go near her work table under the beautiful bones.

“This evening,” she said to the peeve, “before the stupid feast, I’ll see if I can’t get it to move.”

Then she turned her back on the unicorn skeleton and went to sit in the window. But it seemed to throw a far reflection on the desert, which glittered.

An hour before sunset, Bird came back to tong Tanaquil’s hair into corkscrew curls. Something had happened to the tongs on the way. They wriggled and heaved and eventually got out of Bird’s hands and strode on their two legs into a corner. The peeve hissed and spat at them from its nest in Tanaquil’s dress.

“You shouldn’t have let your pet get fur on your gown,” said Bird.

They threw water on the fire they had meant to use for the tongs, and hoisted the peeve off the dress— “No, nice,” it cried, clawing out lengths of embroidery—Bird dressed Tanaquil and exclaimed over her glory.

“I can’t breath for these bones,” said Tanaquil.

Everything was bones. The tight bodice, the peeve’s stinky snacks under her bed, the glimmer of the skeleton from the beam—at which, now, Bird did not even glance.

The peeve sulked on the pillows. “Go and put on your velvet,” Tanaquil told Bird. “I’ll meet you by the gong at sunset.”

When Bird had gone again, Tanaquil knotted up the skirt of her gown and climbed on the work table. “Now.” Taking up one of the fine tools she kept for the insides of clocks, Tanaquil inserted it carefully into a small bronze screw. Next, using the handle of the tool, she hit the wheel in the foreleg of the beast. The wheel spun, became a blur. A hinge shifted, a shaft narrowed as a pin slid backward—

“So you won’t do it,” said Tanaquil to the unicorn, boldly.“You’re meant to paw the ground—the air, if you like. Why won’t you?” She tried the same procedure on the right forelimb.The wheel spun, the joints of bronze moved, but nothing hap pened. “Have I miscalculated the weight?” Less nervously, nowthat she was disappointed and puzzled, Tanaquil tried to wakethe tapering tail, the brilliant head. There was no response.

Gradually the immobile unicorn of bone began to change to ruby. The sun was setting in the window.

“If you won’t, you won’t.”

Tanaquil got off the table. She knew a shameful relief, and atthe same moment she was drained, as if she had walked for miles under the midday sun.

The unicorn swayed like a fire.

“I’ll have to go down.”

“Down,” said the peeve. It burrowed under a quilt.

Tanaquil left the room and closed the door. Her hands werefull of pins and needles. Then she heard the gong boomingbelow, early, and gritting her teeth, descended to Jaive’s dinner.

Jaive rose to her feet in an explosion of sequins. “We salutethe savory junket!”

Everyone else clambered up. “The savory junket!”

They all sat down again.

And the two old stewards, a pair