The Urban Fantasy Anthology (Peter S. Beagle) (Kitty Norville 1.50)

“No one’s ever going to believe you,” Julie said to the dog. The golden retriever listened attentively, waited a moment to make certain she had no more to confide, and then gravely licked the unicorn’s head, the great red tongue almost wrapping it round. NMC’s incessant grooming had plainly not prepared the unicorn for anything like this; it sneezed and took refuge in the depths of the pocket. Julie said, “Not a living soul.”

The dog’s owner appeared then, apologizing and grabbing its dangling leash to lead it away. It looked back, whining, and its master had to drag it all the way to the corner. Julie still huddled and rocked on the bus stop bench, but when the unicorn put its head out again she was laughing thinly. She ran a forefinger down its mane, and then laid two fingers gently against the wary, pulsing neck. She said, “Burnouts. Is that it? You’re looking for one of our famous Avicenna loonies, none with less than a master’s, each with a direct line to Mars, Atlantis, Lemuria, Graceland or Mount Shasta? Is that it?” For the first time, the unicorn pushed its head hard into her hand, as NMC would do. The horn pricked her palm lightly.

For the next three hours, she made her way from the downtown streets to the university’s red-tiled enclave, and back again, with small side excursions into doorways, subway stations, even parking lots. She developed a peculiar cramp in her neck from snapping frequent glances at her pocket to be sure that the unicorn was staying out of sight. Whenever it indicated interest in a wild red gaze, storks’-nest hair, a shopping cart crammed with green plastic bags, or a droning monologue concerning Jesus, AIDS, and the Kennedys, she trudged doggedly after one more street apostle to open one more conversation with the moon. Once the unicorn showed itself, the result was always the same.

“It likes beards,” she told Farrell late that night, as he patiently massaged her feet. “Bushy beards—the wilder and filthier, the better. Hair, too, especially that pattern baldness tonsure look. Sandals, yes, definitely—it doesn’t like boots or sneakers at all, and it can’t make up its mind about Birkenstocks. Prefers blankets and serapes to coats, dark hair to light, older to younger, the silent ones to the walking sound trucks—men to women, absolutely. Won’t even stick its head out for a woman.”

“It’s hard to blame the poor thing,” Farrell mused. “For a unicorn, men would be a bunch of big, stupid guys with swords and whatnot. Women are betrayal, every time, simple as that. It wasn’t Gloria Steinem who wove that tapestry.” He squeezed toes gently with one hand, a bruised heel with the other. “What did they do when they actually saw it?”

The unicorn glanced at them over the edge of the cat box, where its visit had been cause for an orgy of squeaking, purring and teething. Julie said, “What do you think? It was bad. It got pretty damn awful. Some of them fell down on th

eir knees and started laughing and crying and praying their heads off. There were a couple who just sort of crooned and moaned to it—and I told you about the poor Frozen-Yogurt Man—and then there was one guy who tried to grab it away and run off with it. But it wasn’t having that, and it jabbed him really hard. Nobody noticed, thank God.” She laughed wearily, presenting her other foot for treatment. “The rest—oh, I’d say they should be halfway to Portland by now. Screaming all the way.”

Farrell grunted thoughtfully, but asked no more questions until Julie was in bed and he was sitting across the room playing her favorite Campion lute song. She was nearly asleep when his voice bumbled slowly against her half-dream like a fly at a window. “It can’t know anyone who’s not in the tapestry. There’s the answer. There it is.”

“There it is,” she echoed him, barely hearing her own words. Farrell put down the lute and came to her, sitting on the bed to grip her shoulder.

“Jewel, listen, wake up and listen to me! It’s trying to find someone who was in that tapestry with it—we even know what he looks like, more or less. An old guy, ragged and dirty, big beard, sandals—some kind of monk, most likely. Though what a unicorn would be doing anywhere near your average monk is more than I can figure. Are you awake, Jewel?”

“Yes,” she mumbled. “No. Wasn’t anybody else. Sleep.”

Somewhere very far away Farrell said, “We didn’t see anybody else.” Julie felt the bed sway as he stood up. “Tomorrow night,” he said. “Tomorrow’s Saturday, they stay open later on Saturdays. You sleep, I’ll call you.” She drifted off in confidence that he would lock the door carefully behind him, even without a key.

A temporary word-processing job, in company with a deadline for a set of views of diseased kidneys, filled up most of the next day for her. She was still weary, vaguely depressed, and grateful when she returned home to find the unicorn thoroughly occupied in playing on the studio floor with three of NMC’s kittens. The game appeared to involve a good deal of stiff-legged pouncing, an equal amount of spinning and side-slipping on the part of the unicorn, all leading to a grand climax in which the kittens tumbled furiously over one another while the unicorn looked on, forgotten until the next round. They never came close to laying a paw on their swift littermate, and the unicorn in turn treated them with effortless care. Julie watched for a long time, until the kittens abruptly fell asleep.

“I guess that’s what being immortal is like,” she said aloud. The unicorn looked back at her, its eyes gone almost black. Julie said, “One minute they’re romping around with you—the next, they’re sleeping. Right in the middle of the game. We’re all kittens to you.”

The unicorn did a strange thing then. It came to her and indicated with an imperious motion of its head that it wanted to be picked up. Julie bent down to lift it, and it stepped off her joined palms into her lap, where—after pawing gently for a moment, like a dog settling in for the night—it folded its long legs and put its head down. Julie’s heart hiccuped absurdly in her breast.

“I’m not a virgin,” she said. “But you know that.” The unicorn closed its eyes.

Neither of them had moved when Farrell arrived, looking distinctly irritated and harassed. “I left Gracie to finish up,” he said. “Gracie. If I still have my job tomorrow, it’ll be more of a miracle than any mythical beast. Let’s go.”

In the van, with the unicorn once again curled deep in Julie’s pocket, Farrell said, “What we have to do is, we have to take a look at the tapestry again. A good long look this time.”

“It’s not going back there. I told you that.” She closed her hand lightly around the unicorn, barely touching it, more for her own heartening than its reassurance. “Joe, if that’s what you’re planning—”

Farrell grinned at her through the timeless fast-food twilight of Madame Schumann-Heink. “No wonder you’re in such good shape, all that jumping to conclusions. Listen, there has to be some other figure in that smudgy thing, someone we didn’t see before. Our little friend has a friend.”

Julie considered briefly, then shook her head. “No. No way. There was the knight, the squire, and that woman. That’s all, I’m sure of it.”

“Um,” Farrell said. “Now, me, I’m never entirely sure of anything. You’ve probably noticed, over the years. Come on, Madame, you can do it.” He dropped the van into first gear and gunned it savagely up a steep, narrow street. “We didn’t see the fourth figure because we weren’t looking for it. But it’s there, it has to be. This isn’t Comparative Mythology, Jewel, this is me.”

Madame Schumann-Heink actually gained the top of the hill without stalling, and Farrell rewarded such valor by letting the old van free-wheel down the other side. Julie said slowly, “And if it is there? What happens then?”

“No idea. The usual. Play it by ear and trust we’ll know the right thing to do. You will, anyway. You always know the right thing to do, Tanikawa.”

The casual words startled her so deeply that she actually covered her mouth for a moment: a classic Japanese mannerism she had left behind in her Seattle childhood.

“You never told me that before. Twenty years, and you never said anything like that to me.” Farrell was crooning placatingly to Madame Schumann-Heink’s brake shoes, and did not answer. Julie said, “Even if I did always know, which I don’t, I don’t always do it. Not even usually. Hardly ever, the way I feel right now.”

Farrell let the van coast to a stop under a traffic light before he turned to her. His voice was low enough that she had to bend close to hear him. “All I know,” he said, “there are two of us girls in this heap, and one of us had a unicorn sleeping in her lap a little while back. You work it out.” He cozened Madame Schumann-Heink back into gear, and they lurched on toward the Bigby Museum.

A different guard this time: trimmer, younger, far less inclined to speculative conversation, and even less likely to overlook dubious goings-on around the exhibits. Fortunately, there was also a university-sponsored lecture going on: it appeared to be the official word on the Brueghels, and had drawn a decent house for a Saturday night. Under his breath, Farrell said, “We split up. You go that way, I’ll ease around by the Spanish stuff. Take your time.”

Julie took him at his word, moving slowly through the crowd and pausing occasionally for brief murmured conversations with academic acquaintances. Once she plainly took exception to the speaker’s comments regarding Brueghel’s artistic debt to his father-in-law, and Farrell, watching from across the room, fully expected her to interrupt the lecture with a discourse of her own. But she resisted temptation; they met, as planned, by the three tapestries, out of the guard’s line of sight, and with only a single bored-looking browser anywhere near them. Julie held Farrell’s hand tightly as they turned to study the middle tapestry.

Nothing had changed. The knight and squire still prodded a void toward their pale lady, who went on leaning forward to drape her wreath around captive space. Julie imagined a bleak recognition in their eyes of knotted thread that had not been there before, but she felt foolish about that and said nothing to Farrell. Silently the two of them divided the tapestry into fields of survey, as they had done with the gallery itself when the unicorn first escaped. Julie took the foreground, scanning the ornamental garden framing the three human figures for one more face, likely dirty and bearded, perhaps by now so faded as to merge completely with the faded leaves and shadows. She was on her third futile sweep over the scene when she heard Farrell’s soft hiss beside her.