The Best Science Fiction And Fantasy Of The Year Part 56

It takes me three different buses to get out to the fairgrounds, and I almost turn around and go home at each change. I probably shouldn't be doing this, but at the same time, I have to know. Maybe I'm imagining it, letting the fear of last fall put all sort of ideas in my head.

The sun's already low in the sky by the time I reach the entrance gate, and once inside the fairgrounds, I lose my nerve. I buy and drink a soda. Then I play ten straight rounds of Skee-Ball and win so many tickets that the carnie manning the machines starts giving me the stink eye, so I finish up and trade my tickets for the first thing my eyes land on: a unicorn doll.

"Not a common choice," the carnie says, digging it out of the pile of teddy bears and puppy dogs. "Not these days, anyway. Kids are too scared by the news stories."

He hands me the doll, and its gilt horn sags over one eye. I focus on it and say nothing, worried for a second that he's calling me a sicko for picking up such a macabre doll.

"You know we have one here, in the sideshow?" says the carnie, who apparently never learned when to leave well enough alone. "At least, that's the pitch. They keep it locked up real tight, though, so maybe it is real."

I nod.

"But they weren't showing it today." He shrugs. "Said it's sick."

And then, over the din of bells and alarms on the midway, over the screams of the people on the rides and the raucous music emanating from every speaker on the fairgrounds, I hear her. The unicorn. She is sick. And she needs help.

And before I know it I've taken off, backpack flouncing hard against my spine, unicorn doll grasped firmly in my fist. The same speed that carried me far away from the unicorn last Sat.u.r.day now takes me back to the sideshow tent, but I know-somehow I know-she's not inside. It never occurs to me to stop, to push this unicorn sense away, to pray for G.o.d's protection from this evil. Instead, I just go.

I wave at the guy manning the entrance, and as soon as his attention's elsewhere, I sidle toward the side, pretending to read the garish posters advertising the acts within, then skitter around the corner. The side wall of the tent comes flush with the fences surrounding the fairgrounds, but I can see that the tent actually extends a ways beyond that. I press against the canvas walls, but they're pulled snug, with little room to maneuver around, and ma.s.sive bungee cords secure the sides to the fence so no one can sneak inside the fairgrounds-or, apparently, sneak out.

I'm ready to go back to the entrance of the fairgrounds and walk all the way around the outside, when I hear the unicorn cry out again. And this time it's not in my head but a shrieking roar of anguish so loud that I can see the people on the midway pause in surprise.

And then my foot is on the lowest bungee cord and I'm pulling myself over the top of the fence with one hand. I drop to the ground on the other side, soft as a cat. The sun has dipped below the horizon, and twilight blurs the edges of the trailers, caravans, and Porta Potties that fan out haphazardly over the dirt. Still, I know exactly where she is, and I beeline toward her.

What I'm going to do once I get there, I don't know. Even if the unicorn wants to die, I have no clue how to kill her.

The unicorn wrangler's trailer is dented and in need of a new paint job. I plaster myself to its rusted sides as I hear a voice coming from a tentlike patio spilling out the back. I recognize the voice as the woman who grabbed my arm last weekend, and she's saying words my father would wash my mouth out for.

The unicorn is alternating pitiful little bleats with full-on growls, and I edge closer, trying to peek between the trailer and the canvas flaps and see what's going on. The canvas lean-to is secured to the top of the trailer with ropes and staked into the bare ground like a picnic cover on a camper. Is the woman beating the poor thing? Or maybe punis.h.i.+ng it for eating a fellow carnie?

"Don't you dare-" the woman puffs, out of breath. "Not until I come back, do you hear?"

The unicorn moans again, and I hear a screen door smack against the aluminum siding. I drop to my stomach and peek through the gap between the ground and the canvas tent flap. The unicorn is staring at me. It's s.h.i.+fting from foot to foot, lowing, and as it struggles to turn, I can see that there's something weird sticking out of its b.u.t.t. It looks like two sticks or something, but then I peer closer and realize they are legs. Two tiny legs ending in cloven hooves.

The unicorn's not fat. She's in labor.

She struggles to lie down on the hay coating the ground, pulling against her chains so she can lick her backside. I hear the screen door open again, and my view is blocked by the women's feet and the dirty hem of her skirt.

"I said wait," the woman snaps at the monster, who merely growls in response. "I don't have it ready yet." She sets down a large bucket, and cold water sloshes over the top and splashes me.

That's weird. I've heard of people boiling hot water before births-though I'm not sure why-but a bucket of cold water?

The unicorn pauses in her labor pains and lays her head against the ground. One big blue eye bores right into mine.

"You better pray this one is stillborn, Venom," the woman says, and her foot taps the earth near my face. "I hate doing this."

The unicorn stares at me, her bloodshot eye wide with terror. And with a shudder that goes from the top of my head into the tip of my toes, I get it.

The unicorn bleats and moans and licks and pushes, and slowly I can see the baby's head pus.h.i.+ng out to meet those spindly legs. The head is mottled white and red, and its eyes bulge out from either side of its oblong cranium. Between the baby's eyes is nothing-no horn. Maybe it grows in later, like antlers on a deer. Some sort of glossy membrane encases the baby's body, and it's turning translucent in the air, or maybe because it's being stretched. I can't tell.

I'm scared someone will come round the corner and catch me peeping underneath the tent. I'm terrified the wrangler will lean down and see me. I can't believe I'm watching the birth of a unicorn. How many people alive have ever seen anything so extraordinary?

The unicorn wrangler is clearly one of them, as I can hear her hissing with impatience, and her foot hasn't stopped its restive tapping. The unicorn turns to lick at the baby, and the membrane splits wide. For the first time I see the baby unicorn move. It blinks and wiggles and slides even farther out of its mother.

The wrangler hurries over to the unicorn, grabs the baby by its slimy two front legs, and yanks it the rest of the way out. Venom screams in pain, and then the ground is covered with some sort of foul-smelling liquid.

"Jesus, Venom!" cries the woman, dangling the baby just out of my sight range. "You reek." She takes a single step back toward the bucket, and the unicorn pauses in its anguish to lock gazes with me.

My hand shoots out beneath the flap and tips the bucket over.

Cold water floods the hay inside the tent and spills outside to soak the front of my s.h.i.+rt and pants. I bite back a gasp, but I needn't bother, since the wrangler is screaming b.l.o.o.d.y murder. She drops the baby unicorn, who tumbles into the wet hay in a heap. Then the woman s.n.a.t.c.hes up the bucket and vanishes into the trailer.

The baby s.h.i.+fts feebly on the ground, bits of membrane and hay sticking to its wet hide as it tries to slither back toward its mother's warmth. But there's something wrong with Venom. She keeps trying to raise herself and move toward her child, but can't. She looks at me again, pain and pleading shooting at me like an arrow.

"No," I say. "I can't."

From inside the trailer I hear water running. She's refilling the bucket. She's going to come out here any minute, and then she's going to drown that baby. That poor, innocent little unicorn baby who never killed anyone's cousins. Who never did anything but get dropped moments after it was born. How can it be evil?

Venom pulls herself over to the foal, licks the rest of the membrane away, and rubs it all over with her snout. The baby's crying high-pitched, pitiful little bleats and trying to crawl under its mother's fur. The unicorn glares at me and growls.

I say that word the wrangler used, stuff the doll into my backpack, and pull myself beneath the tent flaps, smearing mud, wet hay, and much nastier stuff all over my clothes. As soon as I'm inside, Venom nudges the baby at me with her nose.

"I can't," I repeat, but then why am I here?

The pitch of water hitting bucket grows higher. Soon the bucket will be filled. Venom bleats again and, with much effort, shoves herself to her feet to face me.

I stumble backward as Venom bends her knees and bows, touching her long corkscrew horn to the ground. She looks up at me from her supine position, and her desperate supplication hits me with the force of a blow.

The sound of running water dies.

I s.n.a.t.c.h up the baby and run, not looking back when I hear the screen door slam, not stopping when the wrangler screams, not noticing until I'm miles away how fast I'm going. Or how I don't even feel out of breath.

When I finally do arrive home, it's black out. I sneak around the side of the house into the garage and unwrap the foal from my gym uniform, which is now every bit as streaked with afterbirth and mud as my clothes. I don't know how I'm going to explain the mess to my mother.

I don't know how I'm going to explain the unicorn, either.

The baby unicorn hasn't s.h.i.+vered since I wrapped it up in my clothes, and its skin is dry and crusty now. I'm pretty sure its mother would have licked it clean, but I'm not about to do that. Still, I know I need to keep the baby warm. And find it something to eat.

Our garage is too stuffed with junk to fit the car anymore, but that makes it a perfect hiding place for the foal. I shove aside boxes of picture alb.u.ms and Christmas ornaments and pull down a ratty old quilt we sometimes use for picnics. If I can make a nest of the blanket, maybe I can put it behind the storage freezer. The heat from the motor will probably be enough to keep the baby warm overnight. I look back to where I left the unicorn on the pile of my dirty gym clothes. The foal is pus.h.i.+ng itself up on wobbly feet and taking a few tentative steps.

Uh-oh.

Near the door there's an old plastic laundry basket filled with gardening tools that I dump out onto the concrete. I arrange the blanket inside, hoping the tall sides of the basket will be enough to keep the unicorn from getting out. And the sides and lid have enough holes in them that I won't worry about the baby suffocating. I wedge the basket in the s.p.a.ce I've made behind the freezer and put the unicorn inside. As an afterthought I pull out the unicorn doll I won on the midway and put it in there with the baby.

It's bleating again, but you can't hear it above the sound of the freezer. Bet it's hungry. I wonder what I can feed it, since unicorn milk isn't an option. I grab my book bag and head inside, making a beeline for the stairs.

"Wen!" my mother calls from the kitchen, but I don't stop. "Wendy Elizabeth, you get down here!"

I grimace at the use of my full name. "Can't," I call from the top of the darkened stairwell. "My, um..."

Mom starts up the stairs, so I duck into my bedroom and pull off my clothes, stuffing the dirty stuff into the back of my closet. I'm in my underwear when she tries the door and I push against it.

"Mom!" I cry. "I'm not dressed!"

"You're late for dinner! Why didn't you call?"

I lower my voice, and then I tell my mother a lie. "My, uh, my period started at Katey's house and it made a mess and I was too embarra.s.sed so I walked home."

"Oh, honey." My mom's voice is softer now. "Well, wash up and come downstairs. Make sure you get your pants in the laundry tonight, though, so it doesn't stick. There's stain remover by the washer downstairs."

"Thanks," I say. If the blood does stain, how will I explain getting my period all over my s.h.i.+rt? s.h.i.+rt? But that's the least of my problems. After was.h.i.+ng the blood off my arms and face-which grosses me out more than I can say-I pull on fresh clothes and log on to the Internet. I look up both how to care for orphaned deer fawns and how to care for orphaned lions, figuring that if anything, a unicorn is a mix of the two. But that's the least of my problems. After was.h.i.+ng the blood off my arms and face-which grosses me out more than I can say-I pull on fresh clothes and log on to the Internet. I look up both how to care for orphaned deer fawns and how to care for orphaned lions, figuring that if anything, a unicorn is a mix of the two.

This is going to be harder than I thought. Apparently it's not as simple as just giving them milk. Fawns drink something called "deer colostrum," and lions take special high-protein baby formulas. Neither of which I have any ability to get my hands on.

What am I doing? I can't take care of a baby unicorn. Even if I could figure out how to feed it, it can't be legal! And it can't be right.

Back downstairs Mom and Dad are waiting at the table. I slide into my seat, and Dad says grace. Dinner takes forever, and I can barely eat a bite. Dad doesn't eat much either, because Mom is trying out a Moroccan recipe she got from Yves's mother, and Dad thinks anything more exotic than spaghetti is too weird to count as food.

But it does give me an idea. Yves's mom sometimes cooks with goat's milk. Maybe that's closer to unicorn than cow. After the endless dinner and the even more endless was.h.i.+ng up, I turn to Mom. "Can I run over to Yves's house really quickly? I need to get his notes from history cla.s.s." Lie number two.

"Be quick," my mother warns.

Yves answers at the kitchen door. "Hey," he says, leaning against the frame. "What's up?"

"I need to borrow some goat's milk."

"Borrow?" He raises his eyebrows. "Like you're going to bring it back?"

"No. I mean I would like you to give me some goat's milk. Please."

Yves shrugs and heads toward the fridge. "Just so you know," he says, retrieving the slim carton from a shelf on the door, "it's pretty nasty all by itself. What do you need it for?"

So I lie again. "My mom has this new recipe she's trying out and she, uh, remembered you'd have some..."

"At nine o'clock at night?" Yves's big, dark eyes are staring right through me. It's not fair. It's hard enough lying to my parents, but Yves?

"Yeah. It needs to... marinate overnight or something. I don't know. She just sent me over here." I look away. "So, in case we ever need to get more, where does your mom buy this stuff?"

"There's a Caribbean grocer downtown," Yves says, handing me the carton. "Hey, Wen, you okay?"

I step off the stoop into the darkness so he can't see my eyes. Biscuit the cat is off on another of his nocturnal strolls. He's shredding Yves's mom's flower bed. Mrs. Schaffer really needs to get that beast under control. "I'm fine."

I'm not fine. I haven't been this not-fine in months. And we both know what happened then.

Part of me expects him to come forward and touch my arm the way he's been doing since last fall, but he doesn't. He stays on the stoop, and there's a s.p.a.ce the size of Summer between us.

"Well, see you at school," he says.

I return to my own yard and approach the garage with trepidation. I hope this works. I hope I'm not too late. How soon after birth should a baby unicorn eat?

What if it's already dead? I catch my breath, freezing with my hand on the door. What if I went through all this and the unicorn died while I was eating dinner? All that effort, all that terror, and it might just croak in my garage, alone, without its mother nearby.

And maybe that would be all right. Maybe the wrangler knew what she was doing when she tried to drown it. After all, these things are deadly. Dangerous. Evil. Maybe she had the right idea, to never let it grow up. But then I remember the look in Venom's eyes, and I rush inside.

Behind the storage freezer the laundry basket is still and silent. I open the lid, and the unicorn is curled up inside, nestled up against the plush unicorn doll on the blanket. I reach inside and touch its flank. A heartbeat flutters through its velvety skin. It starts from its sleep and turns its head toward my hand, noses my palm and wraps its lips around my finger. Something inside me lets go. Yes, it's a tiny little man-eating monster. But it needs me.

I grab an empty water bottle, a rubber band, and a pair of my mother's rubber-tipped gardening gloves. I cut a finger off the gloves and poke a hole in the tip. Then I fill the bottle with the goat's milk and secure the glove finger onto the opening with the rubber band. A few moments against the back of the freezer, and the milk loses its refrigerator chill. That's going to have to be enough.

"Come here, baby," I say to the unicorn, lifting it out of the nest and cradling it against me. I try to get the bottle into its mouth, but the unicorn is having none of that, and struggles while goat's milk streams out of the hole in the glove and smears over us both.

Gross. The unicorn begins to cry, soft little bleats, and tries to burrow into my torso. I bite my lip, knowing just how it feels. What do I think I'm doing? Goat milk. What a dumb idea.

I pull off the rubber and stick my finger into the bottle. "Here," I say again, pus.h.i.+ng my milk-coated finger past its lips. This time the baby unicorn suckles, its tongue surprisingly firm. I plunge my finger into the bottle again and again, and slowly, painstakingly, we make it through about a sixth of the bottle. This is going to take a while. There has to be a better way.

I put the glove finger back on the bottle, then squeeze my finger over it, covering both the bottle opening and the pinp.r.i.c.k hole in the glove tip. Milk dribbles out and down my finger, but slowly, controlled by the pressure of my finger on the rubber. I place my finger back into the baby's mouth and let it eat.

Its eyes are closed as it suckles, its spindly legs drawn up against its body for warmth. Its skin is mostly white, covered with a soft, velvety down. It doesn't look dangerous at all. I guess this early, without its venomous horn, it's not. Just soft and fragile and dainty. I run a finger down its delicate snout. Between its eyes is a reddish mark, like a starburst or a flower.

"Flower," I say, and it opens its eyes for a moment and looks at me.

Oh, no. Now I've named it.

I can't sleep. Down the hall, my parents' room has been dark for hours, but I'm tossing and turning, trying to imagine what it's like for the little unicorn, alone in the garage. Is it awake? Hungry? Suffocating? Dying of carbon monoxide poisoning from the fumes off the freezer?

Finally I toss a jacket on, slip into my flats, and tiptoe down the hall. Outside, the moon is bright on the lawn, and I realize I should have brought a flashlight. If my parents wake up and see the light on in the garage, they'll freak out.

But once I'm inside the garage, I find I can see just fine. Maybe it's the moonlight. Maybe it's the unicorn. I peek into the laundry basket. Flower is curled up next to the doll again, and I can see its chest move as it breathes. I hope it's a girl. Flower would be a pretty funny name for a boy.

Except, wasn't the skunk in Bambi Bambi a boy? His name was Flower, and that turned out okay. Bambi, also, was a boy with a girl's name. a boy? His name was Flower, and that turned out okay. Bambi, also, was a boy with a girl's name.

I lay my head against the side of the freezer. I can't name this thing Flower. I can't keep it either. It's so dangerous, not only to my parents, who might have to come into the garage for the lawn mower and end up eaten-but also for me. It's magic, and it's all around me, and that's just not right.

Did G.o.d place this unicorn in my path as a temptation meant to be overcome? I stare down at the tiny creature curled up in the basket. It's so fragile, like a lamb. How is it to blame for its lot in life? I rest my hand on the unicorn's back, just to feel it breathe. I watch its eyelids flutter, its tiny tail swish slightly against the blanket.

When I wake the next morning, my neck is killing me from sleeping hunched over, and I can't feel anything below my elbow, since the rim of the laundry basket has cut off my circulation. The sun is peeking into the windows of the garage, and the air is stained with the scent of sour milk. The unicorn stirs, yawns adorably, then proceeds to have diarrhea all over the picnic blanket.

No goat milk. Check.

As I'm cleaning up-Flower is now cuddled on a red and white Christmas tree ap.r.o.n-I realize that I'm going to be gone at school all day. I'll have no chance to feed the baby before I go, and what if my mom comes in here and wonders where her gardening stuff has gone and why the freezer is pulled away from the wall?

Flower starts bleating again as I leave the garage and make my way into the house. In the kitchen my dad is eating oatmeal and grousing about how Biscuit peed on the newspaper again. The funny pages survived; the business section did not. He takes in my pajama pants and jacket.