Zombies Vs. Unicorns

I began searching all of Wales for people to heal and virgins to talk to. I found hundreds of the first and none of the second. I tried. Pure, hopeful, wondrous hearts are far less common than truly sharp need. And to find the two together? It is a very rare person who can hear a unicorn. So I pursued other intoxications.

Word spread, and those in need walked the woods, looking for me. I was stealing life, as well as giving it, every time. It felt entirely natural to me, in the way that a head shake violent enough to snap a rat’s neck is natural for a terrier. I slowly came to understand that the ratio of gift to theft was mine to decide, that I could control it. And I quickly learned this: The balance between giving and taking impacted the exquisite physical thunder I felt when my horn touched human flesh.

The more I stole, the better it felt.

At first I took more years of life from children. It seemed fair. I was saving most of them from very early death. Gray beards and prune-faced women kept more— because they had less to start with. And so it went. At first. Eventually I gave in to whimsy. There was a humble, kind man whose dog revered him. He kept most of his remaining years. The woman who wanted me to cure her small pox, but not her mother’s, lost most of hers. At first this was amusing.

The day the game found its limits: A smelly, bestial old man slapped my muzzle when I bent to touch him with my horn. He had no idea what he was doing—disease had clabbered his brain. But still, it pissed me off. I jerked his last breath up and out of his mean, miserly chest and kept it for myself. It felt right. I did not heal him. I killed him. And killing him satisfied my hunger the way nothing else ever had. Ever.

I was afraid I would do it again. And I did. Over and over. Stealing a baby’s entire life was the best. The jolt was violent, and the calm satiety that came after it lasted a long time. I loathed myself afterward, of course. And the loathing lasted much longer than the satisfaction. But it never stopped me. Here’s an odd thing: The parents never blamed me. It was never my fault, always somehow theirs. Too late to find me, the wrong blanket the night before, something. They wanted to believe in the magic, I suppose. It made me feel filthy.

One sunny morning I stared at my reflection in a pond. My eyes were as dead as last night’s coals. My coat was spattered with the blood of a child who had nearly killed herself falling from a barn beam. Because of me she was indeed dead now.

And I realized that if I ever again found that special sort of virgin to talk to, I would have only horrific things to say.

That afternoon I waded into the sea and I pulled a long, slow underwater breath into my lungs, trying to die. I woke up on a rocky shore, a circle of human children around me, their faces lit with joy. I staggered away, gagging up salt water and coughing until I bled. Then I healed.

I was desperate to find others of my kind, to see if they felt what I felt, did what I did. I hoped they had found a way to stop killing. But I never saw another unicorn, not even from a distance. Maybe they had all found a place to hide. Maybe they were all dead. Maybe there is only one of us at a time. I don’t know.

I kept searching for a pure heart with a terrible need so I could have the great relief of being listened to. I couldn’t find one. I stumbled through fifty years of silence. Then a hundred. Sometimes I tried to hide. But I had healed so many people that everyone knew a story or two, and those stories were passed down.

The parade of the injured and sick was endless—and an endless temptation.

I could sometimes be more or less fair for a while, but then I would slide backward again. Every time I thought about the feeling I got when I sucked the life out of a baby, I shivered and longed to feel it again.

I tried three more times to end my life.

It didn’t work. I healed.

Obviously.

If I had managed it, I would not be watching the woods for a virgin this morning, would I? And these are not the woods I grew up in. I left Ceredigion County more than three hundred years ago because I overheard men talking about ships sailing to the New World.

Really? A new world?

It was huge, they said, and only the eastern coast was sparsely settled. I began to dream about a place with no people. No babies. Under a cold, yellow Welsh moon, I ran straight at a rock wall, over and over, until I finally snapped my horn off at the base. It bled, then scabbed. While it began to heal, I galloped all the way to Cardiff, to the sea. I found a dock and waited. When I saw livestock being boarded, I lowered my head, looked pitiful, and joined the party. I wasn’t on the lading list, but the captain thought he could sell me in America, so he led me aboard.

I rubbed my forehead bloody on the rough stall planks to keep my horn from growing back, and I listened to the sailors. I listened to everyone in the Virginia colony where we went ashore too. They spoke several languages and it made no difference—I understood them all.

The man who bought me rode me only once. I arched my neck and posed so his friends would admire me, scabbed forehead and all. We trotted away from the manor house, and the men talked about their investments in a French settlement beside a magnificent river. Then one of them said this: “I’ve heard that western lands are so thinly populated that you could ride for years and never see another human being.”

Full of hope, I pitched my rider into a ditch and galloped away, faster than any horse ever could. The bridle was easy. I ducked under a limb, hooked the leather strap behind my right ear on a stout twig, and backed up. Four days later I frayed the cinch with my emerging horn and left the saddle in a meadow.

I went west, not caring if I lived or died so long as I did it alone. It was rough travel across wild country, but every time I got hurt, I healed. One morning I saw mountains on the horizon. By evening I could tell they made the mountains in Wales seem timid and soft.

I stopped in the beautiful Roaring Fork Valley in what was later called Colorado.

The people who lived there called themselves Nuutsiu. I could understand them when I overheard them, once every few years, and only by mischance. I avoided them. I lived alone. Entirely. I was constantly hungry, but I healed no one and stole no life. My appetite never slackened. And my other need, the ache to be heard, to not be alone, never dimmed either.

Thirty winters came and went. I bitterly envied every other creature I saw. Their appetites were natural, not magical. They killed honestly, not pretending to help or heal. Dragonflies knew they had to watch for birds. Birds knew they should stay away from foxes. And each creature had friends, a family. They lived, then they died. I envied that most of all.

One cold autumn day, after starving myself for a long time, I felt weakened from hunger. I began to wonder if I could die. The idea brought me joy. And so I tried.

There are two magnificent mountains at one end of that valley. Aspen forests give way to pines, then the slopes steepen into a bare crown of sliding knife-edged scree rock.

I climbed the northern peak. It took all day. I stood a long time on the top, looking down that almost cliff-angled slope. Then I took a run at permanent freedom, throwing myself into the air and over the edge. I hit so hard that I expected the sky to go dark once and forever. But it didn’t. I bounced. My neck lashed to one side, then back. I felt my spine snap, then heard more bones break when one foreleg twisted beneath my weight. I slid sideways, writhing, tumbled over a ledge, hit hard again, and caromed downward across the jagged piles of scree.

I came to rest near the bottom, a white-coated bag of blood and bone splinters. I lay pinned flat by more pain than I knew could exist. My right forehoof was altogether gone. I watched ribbons of my blood continue the downhill journey we had begun together, and I hoped that I might still die. I closed my eyes again and waited.

The next time I opened them, I noticed the tiny rim of a dark, clean new hoof already beginning to grow.

I lifted my head.

Then I heard a voice.

A voice speaking the language I knew best.

A Welshman had found me.

The Second Virgin:

His name was Michael. He had come from Wales with his uncle to work in coal mines near Glenwood Springs at the far end of the valley. He lay beside me on his bedroll blankets, keeping me warm. What he said broke my heart.

While I had been hiding from the Nuutsiu, the Irish had arrived in Denver City.

There were hundreds of Galleghars, MacMahons, Gleasons, and Finleys there and in Leadville, to the south. Michael had always believed in unicorns, he said, and the miners and railroad men mostly did too. The Chinese railroad men called me Kilin, he said. The German miners prayed to a virgin named Maria Unicornis. “They all know in their hearts that you are real,” he whispered. “Like I always have.”

I closed my eyes and tried to concentrate on the warmth of his body and the gentleness of his hands while I waited for the pain to subside. I fell asleep, and while I rested, my new forehoof grew and the stringy stump above it healed, perfect and new. Other parts of my body would take longer, I knew.

Michael had a garden of curly hair the color of ripe barley. His heart shone in his eyes. He was gentle and good, and he believed that I was too. “You are so beautiful,” he said to me, quietly, his hand strong and steady on my twisted shoulder. “Please don’t die. Please.”

But I want to die, I said, and I could tell that he heard me, because his hand, stroking my shoulder, stopped, then went on again. I was lifted by the joy of that until I realized that if he could hear me, he had a need, a terrible one, and I would soon find out what it was.

The next night was colder. He built a little fire to warm us, and sat beside me humming and rocking himself like a child. I began to talk to him and ended up pouring my heart into his, in my own way—I told him everything except the truth. It was wonderful to not be alone. He sat with me all that day, listening, as my splintered bones sorted themselves out and my bloody bruises faded.

That evening Michael explained how he had chanced to see me falling. He had been on his way to the settlement for help when he’d seen me fall. His uncle was hurt. “Do you know what a bell pit is?” he asked me suddenly.

Yes, I told him and listened to the familiar tale. His uncle had made the pit looking for silver. It had collapsed, breaking most of his ribs and both of his legs. So, when I could walk, we started off.

Michael reached up more than once and placed his palm on my shoulder. He was a distinct and utter beauty, careful and kind in all he did, astonished by the sight of the rising moon. The silk of my white coat fascinated him. He loved textures and touching like an infant does. I had never felt less alone.

Sadly, Michael’s dying uncle was a hard-faced bastard. Michael had been right.

The uncle’s ribs were all broken and his poor, black lungs were half full of Welsh coal dust, from his early years in the mines of Wales. He could barely take a breath. Still, he reached out and grabbed Michael’s hair and wrenched him around, jabbing at the boy’s face in anger because he had been gone too long. “I’ll leave you here when I head northwest,” he said, shoving the boy, then wincing and coughing. Michael ran to get tea. His uncle slapped it out of his hand when he brought it.

I lowered my horn and went through the motions for Michael. But I made no effort at all to heal. Instead I took the last little bit of life the uncle had and then watched Michael weep and shudder and mourn. All through that long night, I told him over and over that he had done all he could, all anyone could. He was so grateful to know it was not somehow his fault. But once that was eased, I felt his other fear:

He had never made his way alone.

I still stayed until morning, sleeping close to the rough-made hearth, soaking up the warmth of Michael’s heart and hands and gratitude. He was what people back then called a half-wit, of course. The first claim robber or the first bad winter would kill him. He knew it. I was certain he would beg me to stay when he woke. I almost wanted to. I also knew he would tell anyone he met about me, like a child with a pony.

I lay awake, thinking of all the Chinese men, the Welshmen, the Irishmen who would eventually try to find me, especially once their womenfolk had followed them here and were having babies. I would fall back into terrible things. I was sure of it.

So just before dawn I touched Michael’s lips with my horn. He gasped awake, his eyes open wide in surprise. Then they closed, halfway and forever.

I lay beside him for a little while longer, feeling full. Sated. Angry. And sad. When I pushed open the wooden door and clip-clopped across the narrow porch, alone again, I thought, Northwest? Why not? It wouldn’t matter which direction I took. I was determined never to feed myself again. Never.

My resolve lasted two days. My first lapse was a man-boy of about eighteen, shot in the back, squirming with pain. He thanked me a thousand times, saying it over and over in a soft Irish brogue. Had he known that I had taken all but a few of his years, and that he would have healed without me over a month or so, he might have been much less grateful.

Two days later I found a feeble old woman, left behind by a wagon full of her relatives because she was near death with cholera. I took away her pain and, I hope, her fear, and I left her just enough life to enjoy the sunset. The third, fourth, and fifth healings were children dying of various causes. Their gratitude was sweet and tentative. They were afraid of me, as well they should have been. I stole many years from each of them, but they lived. Maybe, I lied to myself, I could control my appetite.

I ended up in Portland, Oregon, ashamed, full of stolen vim and vigor, and determined to find a way to end my life. Or so I told myself. I have been here a very long time now and haven’t even tried to suicide. I have so far contained my appetites.

Portland has been a good place for a unicorn to hide. Two big rivers meet here.

The weather includes some snow, many rainy days, and warm summers, all of which encourage the dense pine woods that surround the city. Washington Park is my forest, now. It is four hundred acres of trails and arboretums and gardens. It runs into Pittock Park, which adjoins Adams Park, then comes Macleay, and that borders on Forest Park, which extends all the way out to Linnton Park and St.