Chapter Thirty-One #2
Dian made no sign that they’d heard, taut as a harp string where they stood beside her.
The unicorn didn’t stir either, asleep as he was in a far pile of tawny hay, his face buried under a foreleg, his back hooves slung out across the grass.
Unicorns had always been rare, as long as there’d been human records to say so.
One of the most elusive of creatures, they didn’t adapt well to captivity and often died in ways their keepers couldn’t understand.
Before Issy, the last unicorn who’d survived longer than a few years had been Francie, at the San Francisco Extraordinary Zoo.
She’d lived an astonishing twenty years before dying in 1944, just weeks after her beloved keeper was sent off to fight in the war.
The keeper had died in the Battle of the Bulge, and Francie of a lung infection.
This was the official reason, anyway. Unofficially, the keepers said it was heartbreak.
Males though? There’d never been a male who’d been kept in captivity, not for over two hundred years.
Frida remembered her mum telling her about a paper by a professor she admired, Nuala Andrews, who’d been trying to theorise why this was.
For centuries, it had been the same: the moment a male unicorn was put into confinement, they just – died.
Usually within days, sometimes within hours, or in worst cases, minutes.
Andrews had hypothesized that the females were more resilient, but the truth was, no one knew.
All Frida could hear was her own pounding heart as she traced her eyes over the graceful curve of the unicorn’s long neck from where he lay asleep.
The pure white of his tail, the pale lavender of his hooves.
It had been documented that only the males had that distinctive lavender tinge to their hooves.
There was no glow from his unicorn horn, not like Issy when she dreamed, but maybe he’d only just fallen asleep, not yet dreaming.
Or maybe male unicorn horns didn’t glow.
Pink flamingos blazed through her mind.
She tiptoed forwards, ignoring the persistent pain from being so close to the fence.
She didn’t want to wake him, but when would she get this chance again?
He might have been the last male unicorn ever seen by humans.
She could write her own paper, she thought with a shock of delight, as the only person alive who could say they’d seen a male unicorn.
She’d call it: The Dreaming Habits of Unicorns, by Frida Rose, and it would be published in over fifty languages.
And her mum, wherever she was, would be so proud.
Frida may have dreamed of being a zookeeper, but Ada Rose had dreamed of being a writer.
Frida had just edged around the corner of the fence, and seen the unicorn’s face pooled in shadow, nestled under that long, muscular foreleg, when she drew in a gasp so sharp, the unicorn must have heard, for the creature startled, his long eyelashes fluttering rapidly.
A hand closed on her arm. The touch painfully gentle.
Frida barely registered the fact that it was Dian though, barely acknowledged the heartbreaking nature of their touch. She was just staring at the unicorn’s face.
‘Let’s go,’ Dian croaked.
But Frida couldn’t move. Her heavy boots were stuck to the ground. She thought she might be sick again, but with an iron will, managed to stop herself. ‘Do you see—’
‘I see,’ they said, and their breath chilled her already freezing neck.
Frida was shaking all over. ‘His horn.’
Their urgent fingers tightened. ‘I see.’
‘It’s – it’s gone. Where’s it gone?’ she said stupidly.
There was a jagged, badly healed wound where his horn should have risen in a majestic, powerful line from his forehead.
The wound wasn’t old either. Done in the last weeks, perhaps.
No fresh blood, just an ugly rusty-brown scab that sealed the vulnerable spot on his forehead.
A hollow pit opened up inside her as Dian started to urge her away.
Could a unicorn still dream without his horn?
Unicorn horns were valued more than gold, as precious as a basilisk’s eye or a phoenix’s tail feathers.
But to take a horn from a living unicorn?
What kind of person would do such a thing?
Sir Joshua had rescued animals in the very worst states.
Elephumps without their tusks, wyvern without their tongues, manticores with their tails shorn off.
She’d known that, that there were terrible people out there, who did terrible things.
But as she stumbled after Dian, pulling her down another twisting pathway and away from that dreadful sight, her mind spun, and righteous anger boiled inside her.
She’d happily go and rip those hunters’ hearts from their chests, disembowel their corpses, and leave their eyes and tongues to be pecked out by crows.
Her anger was a living thing inside her, and it seemed as if her skin sizzled with it.
‘Wait!’ she cried, tugging back on Dian’s arm.
They stopped, their face pale, something fragile and infinitely breakable in their expression.
Frida was shaking. ‘Is that . . . Is he . . .’ She gazed sickeningly back beyond the walls of the garden. She couldn’t say it.
Dian knew what she was asking though. Their breathing hitched and she could see the emotions battering them, raw and terrible, and the effort it took to get a handle on themselves.
She, who was a pro at such things, who had her rosewood box to lock all these things away in, knew what that felt like.
As she watched every dire emotion cross their face, she understood that they were nowhere near as good at hiding their feelings as she was.
This knowledge came with shocking clarity, making her feel like she’d lost gravity for a moment.
‘No . . .’ they eventually managed to say, their voice frayed with sorrow and exhaustion. As they trailed off, Frida heard the unspoken words anyway. But they are someone’s friend.
Helplessly, she squinted up at the stars and wanted to scream. How could those stars witness such horrors and do nothing? How could anyone, without shattering?
‘I wonder what happened to him,’ she moaned. ‘I wonder who did that to him.’
Dian held her in a long gaze, the curve of their cheekbones illuminated by the blazing starlight.
They were, all of a sudden it seemed, standing so close to her, she could see the soft strands of lighter green in their lashes, the incredulity in their expression.
Frida shifted, her boots crunching awkwardly on the pebbles.
That familiar thorn bloomed in her throat, threatening to choke her.
Quickly, she looked away, for she could no longer look at them.
She realised for the first time that a full moon had started to rise, ochre-yellow light peeking over the wall to their left.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Dian’s delicate ears swivel and when she glanced back, they’d turned to look away down the path.
Something crossed over their face, something that looked like fear.
Then without another word, they set off at a trot, away from the cages, without waiting to see if she would follow.