Unicorns Read online

  UNICORNS!

  Edited by

  Jack Dann & Gardner Dozois

  This is a work of fiction. All the characters and events portrayed in this book are fictional, and any resemblance to real people or incidents is purely coincidental.

  eISBN: 978-1-62579-117-7

  Copyright © 2013 by Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann

  First printing: May 1982

  Cover art by: Ron Miller

  All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form.

  Electronic version by Baen Books

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Acknowledgment is made for permission to print the following material:

  "The Spoor of the Unicorn: An Adventure in Unhistory" by Avram Davidson. Copyright © 1982 by Avram Davidson.

  "The Silken Swift" by Theodore Sturgeon. Copyright © 1953 by Ballantine Books, © 1979 by Theodore Sturgeon. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agent, Kirby McCauley.

  "Eudoric's Unicorn" by L. Sprague de Camp. Copyright © 1977 by DAW Books, Inc. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agent, Eleanor Wood, Spectrum Literary Agency.

  "The Right of the Horse" by Larry Niven. Copyright© 1969 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, October, 1969. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "The Night of the Unicorn" by Thomas Burnett Swann. Copyright © 1975 by April R. Derleth and Walden W. Derleth. First published in Nameless Places (Arkham House, 1975). Reprinted by permission of Margaret Gaines Swann.

  "Mythological Beast" by Stephen R. Donaldson. Copyright © 1978 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, January, 1979. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "The Final Quarry" by Eric Norden. Copyright © 1970 by Mercury Press, Inc. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, May, 1970. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "Elfleda" by Vonda N. Mclntyre. Copyright © 1981 by Vonda N. Mclntyre. First published in New Dimensions 12 (Timescape/Pocket Books). Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agent, Francis Collins.

  "The White Donkey" by Ursula K. Le Guin. Copyright © 1980. First published in TriQuarterly 49. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agent, Virginia Kidd.

  "Unicorn Variations" by Roger Zelazny. Copyright © 1981 by Davis Publications, Inc. First published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, April 13,1981. Reprinted by permission of the author.

  "The Sacrifice" by Gardner Dozois. Copyright © 1982 by Mercury Press. First published in The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, March, 1982. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agent, Virginia Kidd.

  "The Unicorn" by Frank Owen. Copyright © 1952 by Weird Tales. First published in Weird Tales, November, 1952.

  "The Woman the Unicorn Loved" by Gene Wolfe. Copyright © 1981 by Davis Publications, Inc. First published in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, June 8, 1981. Reprinted by permission of the author and the author's agent, Virginia Kidd.

  "The Forsaken" by Beverly G. Evans. Copyright © 1982 by Beverly G. Evans. By permission of the author.

  "The Unicorn" by T. H. White. Copyright © 1939, 1940, 1958 by T. H. White. First appeared as Chapter Eleven in The Witch in the Wood by T. H. White and subsequently as Chapter Seven in the rewritten Queen of Air and Darkness, the second constituent book of The Once and Future King by T.H. White. By permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons.

  The unicorn is noble;

  He keeps him safe and high

  Upon a narrow pat and steep

  Climbing to the sky;

  And there no man can take him;

  He scorns the hunter's dart

  And only a virgin's magic power

  Shall tame his haughty heart.

  From a medieval German folksong

  The editors would like to thank the following people for their help and support:

  Virginia Kidd, David Hartwell, Trina King, Edward Ferman, Susan Casper, Jeanne Carpenter, Tom and Vivian Smith, Mark Owings, Perry Knowlton, Diane Zagerman, Tom Whitehead of the Special Collections Department of the Paley Library at Temple University, J.B. Post of the Map Department of the Free Library of Philadelphia, Ellen Kushner, Fred Fisher, Michael Swanwick, Stuart Schiff, Pat LoBrutto, Al Sarrantonio, Bob Walters, Tess Kissinger, Elizabeth A. Lynn, Brian W. Aldiss, Avram Davidson, Ellen Datlow, George Scithers, George Zebrowski, Brian Perry of Fat Cat Books (263 Main Street, Johnson City, New York 13790), and special thanks to our own editor, Susan Allison.

  Dedication:

  For David Hartwell

  Introduction to Avram Davidson's "The Spoor of the Unicorn":

  Avram Davidson has for too long been underrated as a writer, in spite of his well-deserved Hugo (for that mad little classic, "Or All the Seas with Oysters," detailing the sex-cycles of coat hangers and safety pins), his almost endless list of fine short fiction, his erudite and highly-entertaining novels, and the demonstrable fact that he is one of the most eloquent and individual voices in modern letters. Good as Davidson has always been, in the last few years he's gotten even better: his recent series of stories about the bizarre exploits of Doctor Engelbert Eszterhazy (collected in The Enquiries of Doctor Eszterhazy) and the strange adventures of Jack Limekiller (as yet uncollected, alas) are Davidson at the very height of his considerable powers, and must be counted as some of the very finest work produced in the seventies, in any genre. In the last few years a few long-unavailable Davidson books have come back into print again—the novels Rogue Dragon, The Kar Chee Reign, and Masters of the Maze, and the collection Or All the Seas with Oysters—and it may be that Davidson is on the brink of finally getting the sort of recognition and critical attention that he deserves. Davidson's other books include The Phoenix and the Mirror, Rork!, The Enemy of My Enemy, Clash of Star-Kings, Joyleg (with the late Ward Moore), and Peregrine: Primus. His most recent books are Peregrine: Secundus, a novel, and the collections The Best of Avram Davidson, The Redward Edward Papers, and Strange Seas and Shores.

  Here, in an essay especially commissioned for this anthology—one of a series of "Adventures in Unhistory" that Davidson has been writing, examining curious and little-known areas of history and folklore—Davidson brings his customary wit and erudition to bear in a search for that most elusive of all animals—the unicorn.

  THE SPOOR OF THE UNICORN

  An Adventure in Unhistory

  Avram Davidson

  In that one of the ADVENTURES IN UNHISTORY called An Abundance of Dragons, I declared that although the wombat is real and the dragon is not, nobody knows what a wombat looks like and everyone knows what a dragon looks like. Also, a unicorn. Platonian comment in re the Archetype would be of interest here, as to what Plato said about the unicorn, lo! it is that he said nothing. So far as I know. So evidently I am free to paraphrase, to wit, Somewhere there is a heavenly or archetypal unicorn, for if there were not, how would we have been able to formulate the image of one here below? Perhaps it is the function of this Adventure to show how; easy does it, though, Plato was the pupil of Socrates, and we all know what happened to him. Don't we.

  Whenever I ask myself, in any situation, "Where to begin?" the answer always comes from Charles Fort: "In measuring a circle, one begins anywhere." After that, no matter what digressions, it is merely a matter of getting back to it. And I begin with a quotation from Jorge Luis Borges's Book of Imaginary Beings (with Margaret Guerrero, tr. by N. T. di Giovanni, Avon, 1960, N.Y.). "To the Chinese, the heavens are hemispherical and the earth quadrangular, and so, in the Tortoise with its curved upper shell and flat lower shell, they find an image or mould of the world. Moreover, Tortoises share in
cosmic longevity; it is therefore fitting that they should be included among the spiritually endowed creatures (together with the unicorn, the dragon, the phoenix, and the tiger) and that soothsayers read the future in the pattern of their shells." It might not in the normal, everyday, course of events have occurred to you that the unicorn was related in any way to the tortoise, the dragon, the phoenix and the tiger; let alone that it is (as each of them is) "a spiritually endowed creature." But now you know. We have begun to measure our circle. Onward.

  Having already accepted that the subject of this Adventure is not merely a fancy horse with a spirally-wound horn, going tap-it-a-trot across beautifully-broidered tapestries in order to lay its lovely head in the lap of a lovely maiden, you may be prepared to obey the order, Now hear this: "The unicorn was also a symbol frequently used by the alchemists, and it represented Mercury and the Lion. It was intermingled with the Eagle and the Dragon, and, during the Middle Ages, was regarded as the sign of the Holy Spirit. The unicorn represented divine power, both in its negative and destructive aspects as well as in its creative manifestations." The this which you have now heard is not from Borges, nor does it refer to that much mis-used matter, The Wisdom of the East. It is from A Pictorial History of Magic and the Supernatural, by Maurice Bessy (Spring Books, U.K., 1960). I am of a reasonable surety that this was translated from the French, and if anyone knows who the translator was, please let me know. Monsieur Bessy, like a great many writers . . . like far too many writers . . . is likely to state casually as facts things which are likelier to have been purely his own opinions, but there is nothing I can do about that; 22 years after publication, "Clean up your act, Bessy!"—what would it accomplish? Faint transatlantic echoes of Merde, alors!, Eh, ta soeur!, Comme ça?, blague!, and other Gallic impertinences; never mind. Doubtless the same thing might equally be said of many another writer; just keep this in mind as you read his book.

  The important thing is to note how the dainty hoof of the one-horned beasty has already crossed the Euro-Asian land mass from one end to another: long, long ago. Keep this in mind, too: "Near the field Helyon in the Holy Land is a river Mara [Hebrew, bitter], whose bitter waters Moses struck with his staff and made sweet, so that the children of Israel could drink thereof. [Not exactly what the Bible says: but close.] Even now, now being 1389, "evil and unclean spirits poison it after the going down of the sun, but in the morning after the powers of darkness have disappeared, the unicorn comes from the sea and dips its horn in the stream, and thereby expels and neutralizes the poison, so that the other animals can drink of it during the day." Our authority for this useful information is "the pilgrim, John of Herse." And how do I know that? Do I have his parchment journal lying by my side, no I don't, I know it because I have faith in the one who quotes him: Clark E. Firestone, in a wonderful book, The Coasts of Illusion, A Study of Travel Tales (Harper, '24). That is the way which items such as this are usually written, though it mayn't be fully known that such is the case. Not every author of something called, let us say, and we might safely say, as I'm making this up, Gadzooks and Genzel-worms, is going to tell you point-blank that he found out something in a book from the East Weewaw (Wis.) Public Library, let alone tell you what book. I fear that the author of Gadzooks and Genzel-worms is simply going to abstract his info and slip it to you as though it had been scraped off the wall of a tomb in Khartoum by the author himself. Well, why not. Old stuff. Of course at one time writers felt that the more titles and authors they could quote, the more impressive-sounding their own works were. Many an antique author is known by name only because a long-later one quoted him. However, gradually, a slyer note crept into the great game. "Ambergris," a later writer may state casually, "though usually assumed to be the by-product of the indigestion of the sperm-whale, was far more often produced in a pickled-pigs' feet factory in Bratislava." (I'm making this up, for pity's sake! Don't quote me.)—thus giving the impression that he, personally, found this out in the course of fatiguing researches in, of course, Bratislava . . . whereas, actually, no: he simply extracted it from a slim little volume entitled Pickled Pigs-Feet Through the Ages, the Farmers Wife Press, East Weewaw, Wisconsin, 1893, where he had found it after being driven by rain into the public library whilst waiting for his transmission to be fixed.

  I, however, will level with you. Only maybe not.

  I am not sure when this began. Even the great Gibbon indulged in it; all those immensely impressive footnotes, Slawkenbergius, xxi, 13; Berzelius, xxx, 121; Isidore of Isphahan contra Manichaeus, vl. 3—etc etc etc—you think Gibbon actually read them all? No ho ho. Gibbon lifted the refs. in toto from others. And when he presented vol. ii of the great Decline and Fall to His Royal Highness William Duke of Gloucester whose Patronage of Learning, and all the rest of it, HRH exclaiming, "Another demned thick square book? Scribble, scribble, scribble, eh Mr. Gibbon?"—why, people sneered behind their lace jabots, called HRH "Silly Billy." Only maybe he wasn't so silly. Being younger brother to George III is not absolute proof of feeble-mindedness. Almost, though. Well, and how do I know all this? I read it. Somewhere. Forget just where. Couple of places. Nyaa.

  Meanwhile. Back to the Spoor of the Unicorn, which has already led us to classical Chinese uranology, medieval European alchemy, and ancient Hebrew history—however, take note, and take careful note: although the Pilgrim John of Herse connects the unicorn with the Biblical account of Moses, he speaks of the unicorn as living in his, John's, own present time . . . not in the time of the Bible. This distinction is to be blurred, ere we have finished trekking this fabulous spoor.

  Onward.

  However. Ere we onward, note also that the unicorn makes its appearance only at the break of day, and it does not bathe in the stream; it suffices, evidently, for it to dip its horn in it. The key words, however, do not include water. The key words are night, poison, and horn. Remember.

  With a cold, stern look all around, intent to smother any possible snickers, I ask, "What is it which we most commonly do at night?" The answer I promote is not, Listen to the radio, Eat a Dagwood sandwich, or, Call my Mother in East Weewaw, Wis.—it is, Sleep. Of course we sometimes sleep at other times as well. Sleep may well indeed be Nature's sweet restorer. But sometimes it is induced for other purposes than simply catching forty, in order to rise like a giant refreshed and go out and sell more Life and Casualty insurance than any other guy in the District. I will not cite you some sources which, at first sight, may seem to have nothing to do with unicorns . . . but if I were to cite, merely sources which specifically refer to them, why, you might simply go and read them for yourself. Anyone, after all, can go peek in the catalog (or, increasingly, the microfiche—harder on the eyes, easier on the feet) under U. The value of this Adventure, if value it has, is to bring before you things gleaned from fields seemingly foreign to the subject. This next field is entitled, Folklore in the English and Scottish Ballads, L.C. Wimberly, Dover, NY, '65 (reprinted from the edition of 1928).

  In Scandinavian analogues of Lady Isabel and the Elf-Knight . . . the demon-lover's sleep is induced by the power of runes, to match which we find in the Scottish ballad . . . a soporific "sma charm":

  She stroaked him saefast, the nearer he did creep.

  Wi a sma charm she lulld him fast asleep.

  Among the several devices, again, which the woman employs in order to get the murderer into her power, the original would seem to be her inducing him to lay his head in her lap, which gives her the opportunity (by use of charms or runes) . . . to put him into a deep sleep.

  According to the Swedish Sömp-runorna and the Danish Sövnerunerne, which tells a story somewhat similar to The Broomfield Hill . . . a maiden puts a man to sleep by the aid of rune charms and so preserves her chastity.

  [foot-note: For other examples of rune-slumber and sleep-thorns in romance, ballad, and tale, see Child [Ballads] . . . ]

  Very well, you've been very patient, you've read it, you've read it all: what does it have to do with unicorns? Wel
l, the unicorn in John of Herse appears only just after night has departed, night is connected with sleep, sleep is magically induced by a lady's getting a fellow's head into her lap, and that is the downfall of the unicorn: lays he down that puissant head in that chaste lap, it's off to sleep he goes. And awakes in chains. So to speak. —What? Absurd? Preposterous? My dear people, this is all preposterous and absurd. No, it won't Sell Flour, no, it has nothing to do with our Dwindling Natural Resources; it is Poetry, it is Romance, and it is also an incredibly complex account of one of the many complexities of nonsense which from ancient times have perplexed and led astray the minds of man- and womankind. Let us say in its favor that though it is nonsense, it is gorgeous nonsense, and it docs not lead us down slow cold steps to worship a tyrant in his tomb; and that at least there have never been Unicorn Riots, Unicorn Wars, Unicorn Persecutions, Unicorn Plagues, Unicorn Famines. A scholar in his study studying unicorns will encompass no one's death in the sacred names of Science and Technology. Perhaps we are where we are because we have no more unicorns. Onward.

  I have quoted Charles Fort to the effect that—But let me go back a bit. Sleep-thorns. What do thorns do? They prick, and draw blood. What do horns do? They gore. And draw much blood. Unicorns, thorns, horns, chastity, maidens, virgins, blood, sleep.

  Back to Charles Fort, and . . . But, say. Who was Charles Fort? He was a roly-poly man with a walrus moustache who, having inherited a competence, spent the rest of his life copying odd stuff, damned odd stuff, out of books, magazines, and newspapers; writing them down on slips of paper and file-cards, filling thousands of shoe-boxes in his Bronx apartment with this data, which, eventually, he drew off into 4 of the damnedest, oddest books ever compiled: Lo!, Wild Talents, New Lands, and The Book of the Damned. For a very long time nobody much read these books, and in the meanwhile Charles Fort died. Read them if you can find them. They are absurd and fascinating. They have, specifically, nothing to do with unicorns. This was the man who said, "One measures a circle, beginning anywhere."