The Lady and the Unicorn
Eleanor liked the way her husband smelled. It was a strange mixture of sweat, soap, and axle grease, from working on cars all day long. Now he was asleep, his damp hair ruffled by the pillowcase. He had been tossing and turning, and from the soft moonlight that stole through the blinds, she could see that his face had turned rigid. He was clenching his teeth.
She brushed her hand over his ears, letting her fingers comb through his thin hair. He moved slightly at her touch, and for a moment she thought he would wake up.
“Love?” she murmured. Her voice sounded half-asleep.
Still, he smiled and turned towards her. A gentle snore came from him, vibrating the walls of the room, followed by another of even greater proportions. She listened to him for a minute, letting her breathing fall in sync with his snoring.
“Love?” she murmured again. Her lips trembled. “I can’t sleep.”
Her voice was soft, too soft to wake him up, but that was okay. She didn’t want to disturb him. He had gone to bed early, sleeping from a hard day’s work, and soon he would wake up again, only to work another day and come back home, coated with new stains and smells from his job. Every night, he would wash himself, scrubbing his oily, dark skin into a soft pink. The stains always disappeared, but the smell never seemed to wash away.
His face was passive and so at ease that she couldn’t resist smiling, reaching out to stroke his cheek. Her fingers bumped along the bristles of his unshaven face. “I think I had a bad day,” she admitted in a whisper, leaning closer to him so her face nearly touched his. “I took Julia to the doctor today. She has an ear infection. But the insurance won’t pay for the medicine the doctor prescribed. They say it’s nothing. They say that she’ll get better. But I know she won’t.”
He gave a louder snore than usual.
She shivered and sat up quickly, afraid of waking him up, but after a moment, his body relaxed. Once more, she hovered just above his face, brushing back her long hair so it fell back. “She’s deaf. She can barely hear what I say. You remember how she loved music, more than anything? She can’t hear it. It’s nothing to her.”
Her voice felt raw, and besides, she was getting too shrill anyway. She stopped talking and rubbed her throat instead. Once more she forced herself to breathe with his snoring.
For a minute, all she concentrated on was him and soon she felt her eyes close. Colors began to play across her eyelids, green and yellow dots dancing in front of a black curtain. Once more, she snuggled beside him and sighed, burying her head into a fleece blanket.
She might have fallen asleep, but a second later, a sharp whistle came out from her husband instead of the usual snore. She jerked up and gave a cry, clutching the blankets around her tightly. Then, after realizing what the whistle was and how loud she must have cried, she clamped a hand over her mouth, her face turning red.
But her husband didn’t hear her and the snoring continued anew. Except now she couldn’t sleep.
Eleanor listened to him for several more minutes and tried to keep quiet. She rocked back and forth, shivering, her hands rubbing her sleek polyester sleeves of her old nightgown. There she stayed until finally a sick lurch came to her stomach. She leaned closer to her husband. “I think it’s much worse than just an ear infection,” she confessed. She reached out to touch her husband’s shoulders, but he turned away from her, rolling onto his other side. He stopped snoring.
Though she knew that he was only asleep and he would not be able to hear her anyway, a terrible pang of loneliness hit her. She crawled off the bed and stood up, her pink nightgown a pale gray. She shivered and cast a glance at her husband. He was huddled in his blankets, fast asleep, only the tiniest bit of his face showing. In the moonlight, he looked like a ghost.
For a moment, she just stood there, watching him. Then, carefully so she would not wake him, she crept out of the room and into the hallway.
In the daylight, the hallway was a multitude of bright colors, from the family photos that hung neatly on the walls to the blue shag carpets covering the oak floor. But now at night, the moon cast an eerie glow on everything so that the colors were weird and distorted. She blinked, adjusting her eyes to the pale light, and tiptoed through the hallway, her fingers trailing over the frames and faces of her family.
Usually when she looked at the photographs, the first thing she noticed was her husband’s beaming face, which she found handsome, even after seven years of marriage. But now, Julia’s face poked out. In all the pictures, she was smiling as she always did, as a three year old was supposed to smile, though the moonlight twisted the picture, making her face strangely pale. Still, a smile flickered on Eleanor’s face as she stared at the pictures. There was Julia as she first walked. Julia, being kissed by her father, who had a dark oil stain on his nose. Julia, playing with a stuffed doggy. Julia…
But the photograph that attracted Eleanor the most was the one with her by the ocean. Julia was holding up a conch shell to her ear and had the most surprised, most delighted look on her face. “Look Mommy!” Julia had cried, just before the picture had been taken, small waves rushing to her ankles as she stood barefoot in the wet sand. “I can hear the ocean!” It was the most perfectly ridiculous thing that Eleanor had ever heard, and she quickly beckoned her husband to snap a picture. And now the moment was forever frozen in time.
She fingered the frame and sighed, glancing around. The curtains were drawn, as they always were at night, and she could see a bit of orange poking out from the streetlight. She considered going to Julia’s room, to check up on her, but just the thought of that made Eleanor shiver.
No.
She would let Julia sleep in peace. Besides, she wouldn’t be able to help her anyway. Julia was drugged up on cough syrup and pills already. No, Eleanor’s place was back in her husband’s room. There, the blankets were warm and his thick musty smell engulfed the room. That was where she belonged. She shivered again and began to tiptoe back to the room, but something made her hesitate.
She heard something.
At first, she thought she was just imagining the noise. It wasn’t very loud, only a faint throbbing in her ears, and if it weren’t so cold and strange in the deserted hallway, she guessed she might have missed it entirely. Still, as the pulse echoed across the hallway, interrupting the gentle snores of her husband, she felt a strange mixture of fear and joy rush through her.
She frowned.
It reminded her of the times she had gotten songs playing endlessly in her head. But unlike those times, where the sound seemed to play in her head, this song came from the outside, somewhere. And though this music was strange, more of a rhythm than an actual melody, there was something familiar about it.
As she stood there listening to it, the music swelled, its pulse ringing through her entire body. She could feel it getting closer, and the moonlight seemed to intensify, the small orange streetlight waning through the curtain.
Her lips trembled and she could feel her knees begin to wobble, but she forced herself to stand up straight. Then, very slowly, she crept to the curtain, her hands shaking as they grasped the seams of the rough fabric. For a minute, she forced herself to breathe deeply in, her breath automatically in sync with the pulsing beat she heard from outside. Finally, when she could bear it no longer, she jerked open the curtains. And then she gasped.
She saw a unicorn.
At first, Eleanor just stared. She wanted to believe that it was just a white deer, or maybe a horse, but something about this beast was so different from either, so lovely that the mere sight of it sent a surge of both panic and wild joy into her throat that…
She pressed her face close to the window and watched.
The unicorn was outside just below the streetlight, jumping up and down on her hind legs fighting off some invisible foes, twisting her head around so that her alicorn spun in the air, creating small white sparks. As Eleanor squinted, she realized that the unicorn was fighting (playing?) with the moths gathered near the dull orange streetlight. As the unicorn jumped up and sailed near the moths, the moths fluttered toward her, and then it was a race! The unicorn leapt, a look of ecstasy spread across her face as her neat cloven hooves kicked out into the air among the moths. And the more she jumped, the more the pulsing in Eleanor’s body throbbed until it became apparent that the pulsing was not her head or even her body, but her heart.
Eleanor wanted to meet her. She strained at the window, her breath fogging up the glass, until at last the music became too much, and she raced to the nearest door, stumbling out onto her front lawn. It was dark – everywhere where unicorn didn’t touch was dark – but that didn’t stop her and she continued blindly on until at last, the light shone on brightly before her and she was close, very close, to the unicorn.
It was then where she regained her senses, and realized just how long and sharp the unicorn’s alicorn was and how strong and graceful the unicorn had kicked out as she had played (fought?) with the moths. And as these thoughts came across her mind, Eleanor realized how blind and ugly she was in the unicorn’s presence and how her knees trembled spastically.
The unicorn had stopped moving and she lightly stepped forward towards Eleanor, the blades of grass barely moving under the unicorn’s weight. Eleanor brushed off her flimsy pink nightgown, thick with the strange smell of sweat, soap, and axle grease.
“Have you come for me?”
The unicorn stopped and tilted her head. It was apparent from her soulful blue eyes that yes, she did understand Eleanor, but she didn’t say anything. Instead, Eleanor felt an uncomfortable tickle of joy rush through her body. She didn’t understand what it meant.
She tried again. “Have you come for me?” Somewhere in the back of her mind, a spot of information about unicorn lore sprang up. “I’m not a virgin, you know.” Her voice wavered as she said this and suddenly she felt ashamed, but the unicorn only seemed to smile at her words.
It was quiet for a moment and Eleanor nervously patted down her hair, so it wasn’t so wild. She paused, waiting for the unicorn to speak. Her knees trembled.
“Perhaps you want to see my daughter?” she finally asked, her voice soft and breathless. “She is sick. If you want to, you can help her. Come! I’ll show you where she is.”
But the unicorn didn’t move and her lovely blue eyes remained impassive. A fresh wave of desperation hit Eleanor. “You don’t understand,” Eleanor whispered to the unicorn. “She can’t hear music.”
The unicorn snorted at this and then, as a response, stamped her tiny cloven hoof into the ground. A moment of silence elapsed and then suddenly an avalanche of music hit Eleanor, so strange and wild that she couldn’t help but hide her head, her fingers plugging up her ears. But the music was much too loud to ignore. She cried out desperately for it to stop, but her cry only added to the chord echoing out all around her. And then, suddenly, it was quiet.
She could still hear the music throbbing in her head, and it was a minute before she dared to unplug her ears. Her body was still trembling – it was impossible not to – but she didn’t know whether it was from excitement or anxiety. She cast an uncertain look at the unicorn, a blush suddenly spreading across her face, but the unicorn didn’t move, her tail only swatting the moths away.
“So this is music?” Eleanor rubbed her face and shivered. “I never heard anything like that before. I’m not quite sure I like it. But it was loud. Do you think Julia heard it?”
The unicorn tossed her mane into the air and neighed harshly. Eleanor backed away.
“Oh, what a silly question,” she muttered, twisting her hands together. “Of course she heard it. The music, that is. Didn’t she? It would be impossible not to hear it.”
Then why hadn’t Eleanor heard it before…?
A gentle look came into the unicorn’s eyes. She pawed the ground again and lowered her head submissively to Eleanor.
Come to me.
Eleanor hesitated at first, but the more she resisted the unicorn, the more her heartbeat pulsed until she thought she would die if she could never meet the unicorn. Her knees buckled and finally, when she could bear it no longer, she stumbled blindly towards the unicorn, her bare feet crunching into the grass.
It seemed to take forever, but finally Eleanor felt her soft fur tickling her fingertips. She laughed and wrapped her arms around the unicorn’s neck, burying her hands into the mane. The mane flowed like white liquid over her fingers.
“You’re beautiful,” she whispered.
The unicorn sighed, flicking her tail. Her eyes fluttered close and, carefully so she would not hurt Eleanor with her long, spiraling alicorn, she rubbed her cheek on Eleanor’s. Instantly a rush of joy flowed through her.
She frowned.
Eleanor stepped away from the unicorn, looking down at her critically. Finally, ever so slowly, she let her hand go to the unicorn’s forehead and traced the spiral upwards until she got to the very tip of the alicorn.
“You’re a real unicorn, aren’t you?”
The unicorn said nothing but bowed her head more, the tip of her alicorn hovering below Eleanor’s hand. At first she hesitated, but then she let her finger run along the very tip of the alicorn. And then she gasped.
She was bleeding.
Blood rushed out of her index finger, first only a couple of drops, but after a couple of seconds, it flowed like water. She stuck it her mouth to stop the bleeding, but that didn’t help any. The more she sucked on her finger, the more she felt the salty stickiness of her blood coat her mouth until at last she gasped and choked. Her knees buckled and she collapsed onto the crunchy grass.
And it hurt.
She glanced at her hand, which now lay in a puddle of blood on the lawn, and shivered. “You’ve killed me,” she murmured.
The unicorn frowned at this and lifted up her alicorn high, so that it would not touch Eleanor, and gently bent down to rub her furry cheek onto Eleanor’s finger. At first, this hurt even more, and it was all Eleanor could do but to hold onto the unicorn’s mane with her free hand, but eventually, the pain subsided and the most delicious sensation bubbled up in her. She smiled and took her finger off the unicorn’s cheek, inspecting it once more. It had healed completely, and even the scar from a wart she had since she was seven had disappeared. She flexed her hand experimentally and smiled, looking at the unicorn once more. A red star stained the unicorn’s cheek.
“What now?” she asked. The unicorn neighed slightly, moving her neck and shaking her head. She looked dazed at first, and Eleanor noticed how the lovely unicorn’s slender knees wobbled. She went to help her, but the unicorn just shook her away. In another minute, the unicorn reared up, giving out a neigh that sounded more like a roar, and raced away.
Eleanor couldn’t help herself – she stumbled after the unicorn, following the flickering white tail that lingered just ahead of her, a small beacon of light.
She ran and ran, chasing the unicorn’s tail, breathless, but happy. The rhythm pulsed all around her, keeping in time with her heartbeat, and off in the distance, she was sure she heard a melody, of some sort, though she wasn’t sure if it wasn’t the whistling in her ears as the wind rushed past or something else. But that didn’t matter. Music or not, her bare feet thudded along the asphalt to the song, her laughter and gasps accompanying it.
There were only several times during the race where a feeling of hopelessness came, and that was only when the unicorn disappeared behind a tree, and Eleanor couldn’t see her. But a moment later, the unicorn poked out from the brush and the chase continued in earnest. In this manner, they raced across town, from the suburban playground to the downtown pet store, and even across the office park.
It was just outside of a fast-food restaurant where Eleanor finally caught up with the unicorn. She crashed into her, barreling her head into the unicorn’s soft belly, and both of them fell, a tangle of fur and polyester. Eleanor giggled, though she hardly knew why, and rubbed her face on the unicorn’s belly, enjoying and the salty taste lingering on the unicorn’s fur and the satiny feel of each of the individual strands as they tickled her nose. The unicorn licked her ear gently and Eleanor smiled, a wild look coming into her eyes.
“I caught you,” Eleanor said, her voice breathless. “I caught you and now you have to do whatever I say.” The unicorn didn’t say anything to this. “Stand up.”
At first, Eleanor was afraid that the unicorn would not follow her directions and pierce her with that lovely alicorn, but the unicorn obediently stood up, looking down at Eleanor with a gentle patience. Eleanor scrambled up and mounted onto the unicorn, as if the unicorn were just a simple horse, letting her fingers twist around the unicorn’s lovely mane. “Let’s ride.”
The unicorn hesitated at her words, but a moment later, Eleanor felt the unicorn’s muscles tightened. The unicorn leapt forward, but it was much faster and farther than Eleanor had expected and if it weren’t for her fingers, twined deeply into the unicorn’s mane, she was sure she would have fallen off. Her stomach dropped and she pressed her cheek onto the unicorn’s neck, staring down. The world blurred beneath her.
It was only a couple of seconds, though it felt like an eternity, and when they landed, Eleanor felt a wave of relief wash over her. She was about to roll off, to tell the unicorn that she had enough, but before she could say anything, the unicorn leapt into the air again. And again. The next leap was just as bad, but by the third time, she enjoyed herself, her free hand reaching for the moon and the brilliant stars.
After the sixth leap, the unicorn stopped and Eleanor was exhausted. She was still happy, and the music pulsed stronger in her ears, but her mind spun with so many colors that she felt dizzy. She closed her eyes and sighed. Her white hands loosened and she slumped over, sliding off the unicorn’s smooth back.
She fell on something soft.
She wanted to sleep, but the unicorn nudged her awake, tickling her with her velvet muzzle. It was dark, and Eleanor first tried to turn away from the unicorn, but the unicorn only stepped over her, her alicorn gently tapping Eleanor’s eyelids.
Wake up.
But it wasn’t the unicorn that woke her up. No. The music was stronger here, and the steady rhythm throbbed in her ears and surrounded her. It didn’t sound like a heartbeat anymore. Instead it was a gentle breathing, and as every pulse came, a wave of salty moisture accompanied it, penetrating itself in every pore of her skin.
She yawned, stretching. As she lifted herself up, she noticed the ground slip by her fingers, shifting with every movement she put on it. Sand. She yawned again and brushed off her mouth, tiny grains falling from her lips. The air was thick and salty. It tasted like fish. Eleanor smiled and looked up at the unicorn, standing just above her.
“The ocean.”
The unicorn nodded and looked away from Eleanor, out to something else. Eleanor turned her head to follow the direction of the alicorn and smiled.
The ocean was black still, but the moonlight reflected on it, revealing small tiny white caps as the waves broke on the shore. Eleanor glanced over the waves briefly and then stared at the sky. The moon was still hanging in the sky, surrounded by dancing stars. She smiled. “It’s pretty.”
The unicorn said nothing to this. Instead, she nuzzled her blood-stained cheek into Eleanor’s shoulder and stepped out cautiously into the water. There, she turned back to Eleanor and gave a soft but urgent whinny. Eleanor frowned.
“What’s the matter?”
The unicorn looked to the ocean at first and then back to Eleanor, her face desperate. She lifted up her cloven hoof and pawed at the water. But something was wrong with her. Her delicate cloven hoof started to melt into the water. She still could stand, as long as she was in the water, but no more could she walk on land. White capped waves tossed onto the shore, the little peaks like smooth horse heads, coming to the land. And suddenly Eleanor understood.
She stepped back.
“No,” she murmured slowly.
The unicorn was still staring at her, her lovely blue eyes piercing through Eleanor. With every tremble of her ribs came another rush of waves (unicorns?) at her delicate cloven hooves. The music was stronger now, and for the first time, Eleanor could hear the entire song in its entirety. The unicorns were singing the rhythm, and the stars were dancing to it, and the melody? The melody…
She was the melody.
“No,” she whispered, her lovely treble voice wavering in a vibrato. “No, you must understand. My daughter. My lovely daughter, Julia. She needs my help. And my husband! I can’t leave him.”
The unicorns (waves?) crashed on the shores again, this time circling around her ankles. But before going back, the waves tugged at the unicorn, her unicorn, and tried to drag her back into the sea as well. The unicorn, her unicorn, cried a sharp whinny and stumbled, desperately trying to stand. Eleanor trembled and almost stepped forward to the sea, to the music, to…
The unicorns retreated and, for now, her unicorn was safe. But it was only temporarily, Eleanor knew. The tide was drifting away, and soon her unicorn would go away with it.
And she would never see her lovely unicorn again.
Eleanor closed her eyes tightly, trying to stifle her tears. “No, I can’t go, you must understand.” Her voice sounded strange and cracked. She stepped forward to the unicorn and put her arms around the unicorn’s neck, rubbing her face with the unicorn’s blood-stained cheek. “You must understand! I can’t leave. Not now. Not when I’m needed.”
Come follow me.
“No.”
It was barely a whisper, but Eleanor could see the unicorn shiver as she said this. She peered at Eleanor’s blotched face carefully before finally nodding, tears filling up her eyes. A strange choked whinny came from her, but she seemed to smile anyway, letting her alicorn stroke Eleanor’s cheek.
Eleanor shuddered and backed away.
She didn’t get far. She stared at the unicorn, her unicorn, twisting her hands together. The unicorn sighed and then bowed low, her body melting into the tide, and for a second, the two met again, the unicorn washing over Eleanor’s feet.
And then she was gone.
Wet sand clung to Eleanor’s ankles, even as she stumbled onto the dry loose sand. She was crying bitterly, tears pouring from her eyes, and it was all she could do but throw herself on the cold dry sand and bury her head in her arms. She cried for a long time – it felt like hours – but eventually, her body relaxed, with the lullaby from the unicorns rushing on the shore, her head pulsing with rhythm and her mind dancing with stars…
Then, slowly, the sand melted away and in its place, she felt her cold fingers clutching soft shag carpets instead. And though her lips still tasted salty, a familiar smell wafted to her, one of sweat, soap, and axle grease. In the back of her mind, she could still hear the pulsing rhythm pounding through her head, but the more she concentrated on it, the more it slipped away, like water through sand. The music was replaced by her husband’s monotonous snoring.
She smiled and fell asleep.