Unicorn Tracks (21 page)

“What about Timothy?”

Kara shrugged. “What about him? We don’t care for each other. If I stay here, the king will declare me as good as dead. The astrologer will find someone else for Timothy. Maybe he’ll get lucky and find someone he’s in love with as well.”

“You don’t know the first thing about love!” Mr. Harving shouted, wincing in pain as he stepped onto his bad leg. “Love grows over time. It’s slow. It develops. What you feel is lust, driven by this whole accursed situation.”

Kara’s chin jutted stubbornly. “It’s not.”

“What will you do here? Live in a tent in the wilderness? You’ll have no prospects. No job. What about our research?” Mr. Harving’s voice broke. He fished a dirty handkerchief out of his pocket and blew his nose. “You honestly want me to leave you here, with nothing but your feelings? Feelings won’t feed you, Kara. And in a month’s time when you’ve realized you’ve made a mistake? You’ll be disgraced. You’ll come back to Echalend and none of our friends will see you. I can’t do that. I care too much for you.”

Tumelo stepped forward. “I’ll give her a job.”

“If you think I’m going to let my only child guide tourists alone in the Nazwimbe backcountry—”

“Not as a guide,” Tumelo interrupted. He pulled a cigar out of his pocket and lit it with relish. “As an office manager. I want to expand our business. But I hate all the correspondence. Organizing with foreigners. She can do that.”

Both Harvings stared at him. Kara’s face broke into a wide smile while Mr. Harving looked about to spit in Tumelo’s face. I longed to get up and hug him, for giving me hope yet again.

“My daughter is too well educated—”

“I’ll take it.” Kara beamed.

Mr. Harving took his daughter by the shoulders. He had tears openly dripping down his cheeks. “Sweetheart, I love you. I want you to be happy. But please, think about what you’re doing. This love, lust… it’s unnatural, it’s unsanctioned. If it’s real, then neither of those things matter to me. Your happiness comes first. But I don’t want you to make a decision you’ll come to regret.”

“Look, you have two years to decide, right?” I asked, looking from father to daughter. “If it’s lust, then it’ll fade and we can have her back on a boat to you by the New Year. You’re researchers. She can continue the research here. Nobody at your home needs to know anything other than that, for now. If it’s love, well, then she stays and all the social consequences of Echalend will never reach her here.”

“I won’t change my mind!” Kara stammered. “How can you think that, after what I just said?”

Tumelo blew a thick ring of smoke toward her, silencing her outburst by sending her into a coughing fit. He knew a bargain when he heard it.

Mr. Harving wiped tears from his eyes, thinking. “I want you to be happy. That’s all I’ve ever wanted for you.”

“I won’t be happy with Timothy. You know that.” Kara fanned Tumelo’s smoke away and took a ragged breath. “I loved Mama, but she never made
you
truly happy, did she?”

Mr. Harving looked at his shoes. My heart beat so fast and hard I was sure he could hear it. After a long pause, he whispered, “You can stay.”

Kara threw her arms around him and buried her face his chest. “I’ll write to you every week.”

Mr. Harving blew his nose into his handkerchief again and then ruffled his daughter’s hair. “You have to promise me that you’ll keep thinking about what I said. About returning.”

Looking from me to Tumelo, Kara said, “Can you give us some time alone?”

I wanted to stay, to make sure Mr. Harving wouldn’t take back his permission, but Tumelo grabbed me by the arm and marched me out of the tent before I could recover from the shock of it all. She was staying, for now; she was really staying.

WHILE KARA
said good-bye to her father, I wandered the camp. Most of the warriors were too tired to notice me as I wound my way in and out of the tents. They reclined on their pallets, cleaning superficial cuts and tearing bites of jerky from slabs the length of their arms.

On the outskirts of the camp, Arusei’s men sat chained to wooden posts. Their hands were bound behind their backs, chained to the top of the posts, stretching their arms back as they knelt. I picked my way through the prisoners to Arusei’s gilded cage. He didn’t move forward as I approached, so I pressed right up against the bars, peering through. He was tied against the back corner, his wrists bound to the bars. Someone had bandaged and cleaned the leg I’d shot. The General wouldn’t give him the relative mercy of a quick death by blood-loss. His eyes followed me; his pupils were wide and his face held a dark mixture of loathing, respect, and amusement. A hasty rope gag passed through his lips. I glanced around. None of the other prisoners were gagged. It made me wonder what the General didn’t want him to say.

Biting my lip, I looked around for guards. A few of them mulled about, lazily swinging their rifles and talking to one another.

I reached through the bars and unfastened the gag. Lightning fast, he sank his teeth into my arm. I gasped, fighting not to scream as I wrenched my arm back away from him.

“That was for the leg wound.” He smirked.

I clutched my arm to my chest, and blood bubbled from the circular wound. Reaching through the bars again, I smacked his wounded shin, and this time it was him who bit back a scream.

Closing his eyes and choking, like he swallowed down vomit, he asked, “What is it you want to ask me?”

“What is it the General doesn’t want me to ask you? Why were you gagged?”

He shrugged. “Maybe he thought I would shout obscenities at nice little girls like you. Or maybe not. Promise me you’ll drive a dagger into my back after I tell you.”

“I won’t.” After everything I had seen him do, I wouldn’t let any amount of curiosity get in the way of justice.

Arusei laughed, flashing red, blood-covered teeth. “Worth a try.”

“Why did you do any of this?” I asked. “The General says you wanted to take over Nazwimbe.”

“He’s right, but I bet he didn’t tell you why.”

“You’re power hungry. My father said this isn’t the first time you’ve tried this shit.”

Firelight made the anger in his eyes glisten. “This strange utopia where no one is starving and we all exist without electricity or factories. It can’t last. It’s a fantasy. The world is changing around us, and Zuberi doesn’t see it. His son will be the same. We have to modernize, or we’ll be choked out.”

“You kidnapped and enslaved people. You took my cousin prisoner. You can’t just try to pretend you’re some kind of modernizing savior,” I spat. I remembered the stench of Arusei’s camp, the whip sores on the bodies of his laborers. How could he think that kind of rule would be progress for Nazwimbe?

“Yes,” he admitted, shrugging again. “I’m not saying I’m a good man, girl, but I would be good for this country.”

“By turning people into slaves?”

“By turning a few people into slaves so that all of us don’t end up that way.”

I shook my head. “You’re mad. Our neighbors don’t want that. We’ve had peaceful relations with them for years.”

“Peaceful in terms of the battlefield, yes. But they’re draining us slowly on trade terms, and what can we do to stop them? You either keep up or you get dragged along behind in the dirt like an animal.”

“What doesn’t he want anybody to ask you?” My voice felt stuck in my throat, but I forced it up, nearly gagging on the words.

“About the moonstone. He doesn’t want me to tell anyone that it actually works.” His lips curled into another grotesque smile. “For him, peacekeeping is about suppression. If he keeps things the way they are, then everyone is satisfied that he’s doing the right thing, even if the world moves on. Now that the stone is his, he’ll use it to keep things the same. Have you ever seen a unicorn in battle frenzy? If you thought our carts were terrifying, imagine what they would be like pulled by a mad demon, with only blood on its mind. Soon, I expect we’ll see our beloved General riding a unicorn stallion on his way to market. One of the men will tell how we tamed them, and that will be it.”

“He won’t do that.” My mouth set in a firm line.

“You give him too much credit, little girl.”

“He won’t.” Folding my arms across my chest again, I marched away from Arusei’s gilded prison. I had no way of knowing whether he was lying to me or not. General Zuberi had been a fixture from long before I was born. My father revered him. But if there was any chance that he might use the moonstone to entrap the unicorns and create living weapons as Arusei had tried to do, I wouldn’t let him have it. I wouldn’t let anyone have it. Tumelo’s little safari camp on the savanna was my home now and the elusive, mythical unicorns were a part of it. Before, I’d seen them as a challenge—the object of a game I played against myself and the other guides to forget bad memories. But they were part of Kara’s soul, her first true love. And that meant they were part of me now too.

I crept out to Elikia’s stable. In the lazy afterglow of the battle, no one asked any questions as I pulled my old saddlebags from the tack trunk. No one had thought to rummage through the old clothes, weathered boots, and safari equipment. My fingers brushed against the moonstone’s cold, dead surface. A shiver went through my body. I would keep it, and everything I loved, safe.

A FEW
weeks later, Kara and I rode through the thick brush, relishing the cool morning wind on our last day of freedom before a new tour group arrived—a strange couple who had written that they didn’t eat meat or products made with corn flour. Bi Trembla was already raging. I hoped they were prepared to live on mangos and oatmeal for two weeks.

The unicorn foal trotted at Brekna’s heels, skipping through the grass like a puppy, kicking at butterflies and sneezing as the wispy plants tickled his sensitive nose. Tumelo had named him
Moshi Nyeupe
—white smoke—after his favorite pastime. The name had stuck, in part because Tumelo flatly refused any other suggestions and because he had taught the baby his name by bribing him with bits of mango pulp. The little unicorn didn’t respond when we called him anything else.

Moshi snapped playfully at Brekna’s fetlocks and the big stallion stopped in his tracks, turning his head to glare at the youngster. The foal darted under his belly. I moved Elikia alongside the bewildered stallion and bent in my saddle to pick the tiny foal up. Although he had grown, he was still light enough to scoop up with one arm. He struggled in my hold as I settled him in front of my saddle, irritated at losing his newfound freedom. We passed a herd of impala, grazing calmly on the dew-covered grass. Moshi squirmed even harder, desperate to investigate creatures with horns like his own.

Kara chuckled and clicked to the pack mules trailing behind her. “He’s going to be impossible once he gets too big to lift. Bi Trembla’s right. We have to train him to lead on a rope.”

“We have time.” I stroked the foal’s soft fur.

After dismounting by the riverbank, I took the saddlebags off the mules, pulling out the things I’d taken for the picnic and tucking the foal into the bags in their place. I spread a blanket out by the river’s edge and laid out two baskets. Kara lay down on the blanket, her red hair falling softly around her shoulders. She closed her eyes, letting the early morning rays of sun dance across her face. I leaned over and brushed a kiss across her lips, then slid an oat biscuit between her teeth. Her eyes opened a crack, and she grinned.

“Sit up,” I said, placing one of the baskets between us. “Look what I’ve brought.”

She flipped the lid open and plunged her hand in, withdrawing it with a skeptical crinkle of her nose.

I reached in and pulled out a red hunk of raw meat. It squished and dripped between my fingers.

Kara covered her mouth. “I knew I should have packed breakfast instead of letting you do it. Do you need to build a fire so we can cook that?”

I shook my head, throwing the meat into the river. A moment later, a blonde head poked up from the surface. The mermaid smiled demurely and then dove for the meat. When she surfaced again, grinning, she had blood between her perfect, straight teeth.

“Give me some.” Kara laughed. She pulled out an enormous handful of meat, breaking it into smaller chunks before tossing it into the water. Another mermaid streamed toward it from behind a rock, elbowing the blonde aside.

Reaching for Kara’s free hand, I folded my fingers into hers. Together, we sat hand in hand, looking out across the shimmering water. We listened to the phoenixes sing, throwing chunks of goat meat into the crystal water, as the mermaids wrestled for blood.

The Beasts of Nazwimbe

A Definitive Guide by K.L. Harving

The Journal of the Strange and Exotic, J.R Root & Associates Publications: Echalend, 1892.

Introduction

The Republic of Nazwimbe is home to some of the world’s most diverse, elusive, and dangerous creatures. Uniquely among Echalenders, I have now made my home in the savanna of Nazwimbe, documenting and studying these amazing creatures firsthand. I have concluded that our existing literature in Echalend draws largely from myth rather than fact. Through my own observation and by communicating with the people of Nazwimbe, who have lived among these striking creatures for centuries, I hope to right many of the misconceptions pervading popular scientific literature. At the time of going to press, the notes I have enclosed on the species are accurate to the extent of my knowledge. Further investigation and inquiry is necessary, and I hope to inspire more eminent researchers than myself to take an interest in the fauna of Nazwimbe.

Love from afar,

K.L. Harving

Classification

Abada—A two-horned subspecies of genus
Unicornalis
. Unlike its white cousin, the Abada dwells in herds of five to fifteen individuals and can often be observed grazing alongside the wildebeest and the common zebra—thus giving rise to the myth that the Abada resulted from the liaison of these two species. Shorter in stature than the White Unicorn, the Abada has a brown coat with stripes winding up its haunches. The Abada is a peaceful herbivore and can be easily approached.