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by Melanie Fletcher
Dark Fantasy, 21 pages.
Originally Published in Quantum Muse, 2002
(1) Rate this Story Bartok never told anyone about the unicorn.
Which made sense — after all, the beast wasn’t even part of his heritage. It was a creature of European mythology, a pale horse with a single nacreous horn sprouting from its forehead, its eyes rolling red and wild as it thundered through the forest. Bartok was of another order entirely, a Russian, his bones steeped in the mythos of the Baba Yaga and the firebird, the cold winds of the Urals reflected in his soul.
Nonetheless, he knew the unicorn like he knew his own skin. The fine white hide, the hooves of heavy metal that struck sparks along the ground, the great hooped nostrils snorting breath, and the wonder of the single protrusion, the glistening horn that marked it as unique, magical, other.
He was sixteen when the unicorn made its first appearance. The young Bartok was the son of a minor Russian Mafia leader, spoiled as such with Western goods and luxuries available on the thriving black market that was Russian’s shadow economy. At that age, he dressed in the finest designer clothing, listened to MP3 players and the later bonefone amplifiers, drove a lovingly restored Morris Mini. Beneath the retro-Western chic was a strong but unformed intelligence, sopping up what scraps of education his father tossed his way — a destitute businessman offering lessons in English and French in return for clemency on a debt, a whore who knew Russian history, even an old academician grown addicted to cheap vodka who took him up on the roof of his father’s dacha and explained the pattern of the stars.
Bartok’s father, a fair-haired man with Siberian eyes and a single scar across the bridge of his nose, kept him supplied with everything he needed, reinforcing the belief that Bartok was special, separate, endowed. And so it was when he decided to have his first woman, it was the luscious little daughter of the local gasoline peddler, and her cries and beggings made no difference to him. His shield of entitlement stopped the sounds like so many raindrops on a pane of glass, as he leisurely forced her to the bed of her parents’ apartment (the rest of the family out manning the black market stations that sold the impure Turkestanish gasoline), tore away her cheap blouse, beheld the small, firm breasts that were his to fondle.
He had opened the fly of his levis and was preparing to mount her when he saw something out of the corner of his eye. Assuming it was a member of the girl’s family, he turned to order them out.
He saw the unicorn. Silent, encased in a blaze of holy light, it stood at the side of the bed, watching them — watching him — with a mix of equine humor and contempt.
Bartok froze in shock, still braced over the girl. And then the heat from the unicorn’s hide washed over his own skin, sinking into the icy Russian winter that was his soul, filling him with an unearthly rapture. He could smell the horsy musk of its hide, see each individual hair of its mane, the pearlescent glimmer of its hooves, the spiraling glory of its horn. The eye turned to him was a deep red, the color of blood.
It was ecstasy.
Is this how you would throw away your gift, it said inside his head. Spending it in the gruntings and thrustings of mortal lust? I would have thought better of you, Bartok.
And suddenly he understood what it meant, the message dropped into his head in a hot burst of knowledge. To rut with this girl was to lose his sacred status, his innocence of women. But to pull back, to keep himself pure, would mean he was worthy of the unicorn’s attentions and more of this white-hot bliss that surged through his veins.
If he chose the girl, he would say farewell to the unicorn forever. If he abstained, however...
Bartok stumbled to his feet, the girl forgotten. No mortal flesh could compare to the enticement of such a demon lover. “I am yours,” he cried, as the girl cowered against the bedstead. “Yes, oh yes, I am yours, now and forever.”
Humans speak such pretty words, but they mean nothing, the unicorn said, tossing its mane. If you are truly mine, you must prove your dedication to me.
“How?”
There is no room left for old magic or its creatures in your modern world, and because of this I die a little each day. I must have a place made for me in your new world, using the human magic of science. Make this place for me, Bartok, the unicorn said. Bring me back to this world, by the work of your own hands. Then, and only then, shall you be worthy of me.
And then it was gone. Bartok was left alone with the shivering girl. He didn’t bother to ask her if she had seen the unicorn — it wasn’t important, she wasn’t important. All that mattered was his vision and his task. He did up his trousers and left without a word, a new goal blazing in his soul.
The first step had been facing his father and demanding a university educa -- [End of Preview.]