Black Unicorn by Tanith Lee (best electronic book reader TXT) 📗

Today Tanaquil went for a Walk.

As she plodded across the sand, skidded down dunes, shewas entirely occupied with questions. Had yesterday been sodifferent from all the other days? Had she felt, yesterday, this terrific urge, much more than fantasy, to escape? It was as if, likethe eagle, she had changed shape overnight. Now she was some one else, another, desperate Tanaquil.

But it was impossible. She must get away—and she could not.

Some peeves were romping near the base of the rock hills. They gave off loud raucous squeaks, and Tanaquil realized theyhad not caught the magic speech.

She drank the water from her bottle, then got up the hillformed like a bridge, nearly flat at the top, and with the greathollow arch beneath. She sat on the bridge-hill and looked at allthe old scrapings her own knife had made. There was one small fossil left, a pale shell, but so delicate it would crack if she cutdown for it.

Tanaquil stared out instead over the sand. Gradually a mi rage came to be, of a river with trees on its banks.

Once the whole desert had been covered by the sea, whichhad left behind the shells and skeletons of weird creatures now extinct. One night, Jaive had shown Tanaquil an illusion of thesea on the desert. The waves had swirled about the fortress, frosted at the top with foam, and the moon shone redder than the sun.

“You must remember,” said Jaive to the nine-year-old

Tanaquil, “that this world is badly made. But we sorcerers be lieve there are other worlds, some worse, and one the improved model of this. Of this perfect world we may catch glimpses.”And she had tried to teach Tanaquil use of the magic mirror, butTanaquil had made a mistake and the mirror cracked and Jaivehad been furious.

“Oh, Mother,” said Tanaquil.

She sat on the bridge-rock until the sun began to wester over the sloping dunes. Then she got up and faced back toward thefortress of the sorceress.

Probably she could find some cold snacks in the kitchen.There was seldom dinner in her mother’s hall. Then she must search the library for a readable book—though bursting with volumes, the library had few of these. And then. What was therebut to go to bed and sleep as long as she could?

Tanaquil went up to her room from the library, where shehad read part of a book on ancient witchcraft and part of a parchment on sorcerer-princes, having located nothing else. She had decided to try to find some of her missing clothes, whichusually moved themselves into absurd places, such as up thechimney, or mixed themselves with the furnishings and changedcolor, so that they blended.

As she was investigating the chimney, Tanaquil recalled thepeeve that had rushed up there after a bone. She hoped it had found a way out. Although the nights were icy cold, fires werenot often lit. Tanaquil, in passing, pressed the lion’s mouth forhot water, but a fountain of paper flowers fell out.

Beyond the window, light snow drifted to the desert. Themoon had risen, and the dunes were iced biscuits.

Tanaquil looked at her bed.

On the pillows lay something round and black. Tanaquil approached with caution. “Oh, no!” shouted Tanaquil. “You wretched thing!”

The peeve of the morning—covered thick with the black sootit had also sprinkled generously all over the bed and the pillows,which it had also decorated with black paw marks—raised its head.

“What?” asked the peeve.

“Just look what you’ve done, you pest.”

“Done nothing,” said the peeve. “What done?” It looked about, surprised.

“All this ghastly mess—”“Soots,” said the peeve. “Wash, wash,” and it rolled about, licking itself halfheartedly, spreading the soot further .

Tanaquil grabbed the peeve and bore it to the window. Sheplumped it in the embrasure and gave its flank a sharp tap. “Getout. Go away.”

“Moon,” said the peeve, staring rapturously skyward.

“Go away.”

Tanaquil slammed the shutters on it.

She dreamed she was running over the dunes, in the snow.Her feet were bare, she went like the wind. There were no rocks, no sign of the fortress, she did not know where she was and did not care.

She woke up because of a loud rasping and scratching on theshutters.

“Come in,” stated a voice, “come in now.”

“Go away,” repeated Tanaquil to the peeve.

But the peeve went on scratching and demanding to enter.

“If I come to the window, I’ll push you off onto the roofbelow,” threatened Tanaquil.“Come in,” said the peeve. “Now.”Tanaquil got up scowling. She flung the shutters wide. There,

in a glistening oval of moonshine, crouched the peeve. “Bone,”said the peeve to her intently, “found a bone.”

And it nosed something on the stone at its paw.

Tanaquil gazed. What she had taken for a bar of moonlightwas not. It was a bone. Long and slender, unhuman, not at onceidentifiable, the material from which it was made glowed likepolished milk-crystal. And in the crystal were tiny blazing specksand glints, like diamond—no, like the stars out of the sky.

“A bone?” whispered Tanaquil. “Where did you find it?”

“Found it,” said the peeve.

“But where?”

“Sandy,” said the peeve, “hot.” It blinked and took the bone lightly up again into its mouth.

Tanaquil reached out to touch. The peeve growled around the bone and lashed its tail, making a thumping noise on theshutters. “Mine.”

“Yes, I know it’s yours. But you brought it to show me. Letme—”

“Rrr,” said the peeve.

It backed away, the incredible tube of starlight gleaming between its teeth.

“You mustn’t—don’t crunch it—” cried Tanaquil.

The peeve wrinkled its face and abruptly threw itself around, in a kind of horizontal somersault. It fled, fur rippling, tailflapping, scuttling and rolling along the roof below, and vanishedover an ornamental weathervane into the confused stages of dark ness beneath.

2

Morning was still dim in the kitchen. The oil lamps burnedand the cook was taking her hair out of its pins, while Pillow bathed her child in the sink.

Tanaquil advanced and, bravely opening the pail for therubbish heap, began to rummage.

“Why, whatever are you after, Lady?”

“I’m looking for a nice juicy meat bone.”

Pillow gave a faint shriek.

The cook said winningly, “Now, Lady. Just you wait, andI’ll do you some fried