***
The unicorn lay very still on the ground, unmoving and not breathing. Shane stared at the young unicorn in pitiful silence and the silence grew more and more extended until it seemed that it was a long weary whistle. It was a tuneless whistling that seemed to foretell the echo of death itself.
He did not feel the need to cry for the passing of his short-lived friend as he had seen death many times in the time he had spent with the humans. ‘And,’ thought Shane, ‘many of the deaths were not as sudden as this one but were, in fact, long, lingering, painful excursions into terror itself. No, I do not feel like crying for the death for the unicorn called Flack, because death, when it came, had been short and swift.’
“To think the poor, young fool thought he had lived for only six days,” said Shane to himself, quietly, and no voice came back to him from the eerie silence to try to argue the point on behalf of the still and silent unicorn.
‘I have seen many horses calved and none have been the size of Flack within six days. I think the poor creature must have had a memory problem and has tried to block out his past. Perhaps, a traumatic event he had not long ago and chased away his early memories…’
Slowly standing up, Shane gave a final glance at the unicorn and then, abruptly, Shane turned his head, his eyes quickly scanning the area around himself, and he began to walk away. He could do nothing to hide Flack’s body from the sight of any passing humans and so he left him there, he left the unicorn in peace and continued walking away.
The majority of the stars hid behind a long, dark cloud and a dull serenity took up its position over the land overhead. Watching the long, black cloud nearing the horizon, he knew that soon it would be morning again and that he would just have to return to his station at the human camp. ‘There is every chance that the human’s there will not blame me for any part in the death of my master and so my life will be spared.’
Breaking into a faster run he was moving ever quicker away from the place that he had left the unicorn.
The cloud eventually crept over the horizon leaving only a few smaller clouds behind in the sky and Shane’s eyes were forever creeping up to look at the many stars that pitted the sky; twinkling and dancing as if they told each other stories to while away the night.
The sight of the clear, crescent of the moon gave him a yearning to howl into the silence of the night but he refrained from this for he did not wish to attract any wandering band of humans who may feel hungry and mistake him for a free running beast.
And so, he joined the very silence of the night and walked on while his mind forever turned to study his knowledge of the unicorn which he had left behind. He had not known the unicorn for a very long time and yet there had been something about the unicorn that was not right, something strange. It was not something evil and he could only decide that, ‘It must be the naivety of the mad.’
The darkness grew thicker around him, almost as if it was a touchable, velvet, blanket that was surrounding him and then, suddenly, the moon and stars all vanished from the sky. And then he realised that the moon and stars were not all that had vanished. The sky had disappeared altogether. Above him there were no stars, no clouds, there was nothing. There was an immense blackness that seemed to too heavy to remain above him and he felt as though something dark was about to come crashing down on him. Going walking forward, he saw that the ground seemed to somehow emit an eerie glow; lighting his path through the forest and casting shadows in strange positions. He walked on trying to ignore the occurrences that were going on around him, thinking, ‘I must be tired, perhaps the events of the day have just been too much for me.’
Continuing to run forward, Shane slowed his pace a little as he realised that the ground seemed to be fading, though he felt as though he was running on something solid. The eerie glow from the ground began increasing until the shapes of trees and grass began to fade from sight. The faint blue light which emanated from below him was not a bright light but still the objects around him faded into nothingness.
The hair along his neck stood up and his skin prickled with fear. He had never experienced anything such as this before; something was greatly wrong and he did not know what.
Panic gripped him, and began to run faster again, his heart pounding and his eyes searching for a welcome return of the stars above or the trees before him, or anything that could restore his mind to calm… a cloud, a plant, or another animal. But there was nothing, only the velvet blackness, a piteous shroud that, though scaring him, did not seem to want to harm him, yet, and the eerie blue glow that was the ground underfoot.
He continued his running and his heart continued its pounding. His eyes continued searching; as the eyes of a wild beast would search for prey, or a place to hide from danger. He knew he ran through this void, this darkness, even though he could no longer feel the ground beneath him and then, glancing behind him in case he was being chased, he saw his paw prints, looking like they were made in a snow… ‘Only, there is no snow, only the blue light...’
He wondered, ‘Perhaps, I have lost my sight, somehow, someway?’ but thought, ‘No, my eyes are working fine, I know they are.’ Looking upwards into the heavy blackness, he felt he could almost make out some kind of detail hidden there but, try as hard as he could, he could not get his eyes to fix on something that was different from its surroundings. He felt as though his eyes were working fine and that, if he looked long enough, then he would be able to reach through the blackness and rediscover the stars that he knew were up there somewhere. ‘I know it has a tangible depth. I can feel the depth within it. I know this even if I am only seeing the blackness.’
And then, suddenly the moon and the stars leapt back into his eyes, and his feet could feel solid ground once again, feeling as though without moving he had slammed fairly hard down upon something solid. He stopped his running, his panting breaths shaking through his body and the, now tangible, night. ‘Everything is as it was. The stars above, the clouds, the trees…’
And, as he looked upon a place that he recognised, he saw the trees, the bushes, and a particular arrangement of rocks. He was confused and when his eyes turned towards the ground to the left of him, he saw something else; something that forced a gasp of surprise from his lips. It was something that he was certainly not expecting to see.
“How can the unicorn be here?” he said out loud, hearing the disbelief in his own voice.
Then, as the first shock delivered his return to reality, he had another shock. It was the Unicorns voice, soft and weak.
“Shane…? Shane...? Are you still there?” There was a pause then, again, “Shane, are you there?”
Shane was panicky, nervous and overawed, leaving him in a stunned silence. His mind could not begin to perceive what had happened to him, ‘And Flack is not dead. He lives! The unicorn has somehow been brought back to life or,’ he pondered, ‘had the unicorn really been dead when I left him? After all, I had not checked if the unicorn had still been breathing, I had just assumed that when the unicorn tumbled to the ground that the tumble had been the last remnants of life ebbing from the unicorn’s young body.’
He knew he could not have walked in some huge, giant circle. ‘I could not have done that, of that I am sure. And what had happened to the stars, the clouds, and the ground?’
“Shane? Shane?” came the whispering of an insistent, pitiful voice, breaking him from his train of thought, his reverie. This time he replied.
“I’m here,” he whispered to the unicorn.
“What happened?” questioned Flack.
“I’d like to know the answer to that myself.” Shane dwelt a little on that which had happened and decided, almost instantly, that it would be far better for him to try not to question the events that had taken place.
“Water,” whispered the voice of Flack through the silence of the night. Shane noted that, somehow, the unicorn’s voice held an eerie quality of determination in its weakness.
“I’ll find some,” Sh
ane replied immediately, grateful to be doing something other than thinking about that which had happened.
He turned to run but stopped dead in his tracks. His eyes could not believe what he was seeing before him. ‘A tree? I see a tree with a cascade of gentle water running from a large branch, tumbling toward the ground and yet never reaching the ground but instead, at about a paw’s height above the soil, it merely vanishes. No water is reaching the ground!’
Shane was fast beginning to doubt his own sanity in much the same way that he doubted the unicorns. And so, in his own mind, he decided to accept it all as a dream, and just go along with dream. ‘I will fetch the water for the Unicorn and then, later, I will wake up. For the moment, I will live the dream.’
Moving warily toward the falling water, he slowly pushed his snout into the water, trying to convince himself that what he was seeing was real. ‘Even in a dream there can be dreams,’ he thought. He began to lap at the falling water, gathering it within his mouth and throat, preparing to take it to the unicorn and allow it to spill into the Unicorn’s mouth.
The water was cool and refreshing, though it had a hint of a taste that Shane could not identify. ‘I hope it is not poisoned!’
Turning around and moving slowly toward the unicorn, he was surprised to see the unicorn sitting up and watching him. Perplexed, he made his way toward the unicorn and, as he stopped before the unicorn, he saw the unicorn push his head forward, tilting it to the side a little and then, moving his own mouth above the unicorn, he opened his mouth and allowed the water to fall. He could see the unicorns tongue pulling the falling water into his mouth and, when the water stopped, Shane turned around and returned to the water source and gathered another supply. Returning to the unicorn he allowed the water to fall into the unicorn’s mouth again.
His mind blank, Shane returned for more water and repeated the same small trip many times until, when he was about to return for more water, he was stopped by the unicorn speaking to him.
“Is anything wrong?” asked Flack. “You don’t look very awake just yet.”
“No, I’m fine,” came Shane’s reply. He was wide-awake, he knew that, but he just could not believe that he was not in some strange dream. ‘I have had a few of them in the past,’ he thought, recalling the time when he had licked a fungus plant. Shivering at the recollection of that dream, Shane saw the images in which he saw himself dying and returning to life in human form, becoming the very creature that he despised and feared above all others.
The unicorn responded well to the water that he had managed to get to it and, for a while, the two of them simply lay there in silence, Shane thinking his own confusing thoughts and believing that the unicorn was doing the same.
“I’ll just browse around for some food,” said Flack, as he stood up and trotted off with not a care in the world.
Shane was trying to put pieces together and was failing, miserably. ‘The unicorn seems to have no recollection of collapsing, or is simply trying to forget it as he has his own past. The unicorns face betrayed no recollection or concern for what has happened! Then again,’ thought Shane, ‘he did not have to go through the vanishing sky and ground…’
Shane’s face, however, was not one that was exactly carefree as he mumbled to himself. ‘Six days old! Dead yesterday, alive today! And he does seem to have grown since the time he collapsed! I leave him dead... I walk away and then find myself returned to where I left him... I called ‘him’ mad! I am beginning to think that I am the one who is mad!’
With these thoughts in his mind, Shane flopped, uncaring, to the floor and just lay there, with his tongue hanging out as he panted heavily. Then, disturbing his silent reverie, a bee came gently buzzing around him, swaying widely in the light breeze beneath an early morning sun, moving toward him, then away from him and then back again. Shane showed a complete disinterest in the little insect as it continued dancing lazily in the light breeze. The bee would not have this and shot forward towards his left ear, were it began a deafening buzzing. Shaking his head, Shane tried to ward off the little creature, letting it know that his body was not a thing to land upon and it would move violently to prevent it resting.
Flying away for a second, the bee returned to Shane’s ear and increased the volume and intensity of its buzzing. Shaking his head once again, Shane stood up and, trotting a little distance away he lay down once again, hoping that the annoying bee would get the message and leave him alone. He knew that the bee had no intention of leaving him alone when it came flying around in front of his face, being buffeted in the breeze a little for a moment, before racing forward and buzzing loudly in his ear once again. Shane made no attempt to shake his head as he believed that it would make the bee go away. ‘I wonder if I have walked through flowers and have got some pollen upon my coat?’ he thought, trying to ignore the incessant noises the bee made as it swooped in toward his ear and then away again before returning.
The bee appeared to be getting annoyed at Shane’s lack of interest in its activity and, peeling away and flying in a small circle, the bee landed on Shane’s head between his ears and, as he never flinched, he could feel the movement of the bee as it began to walk down Shane’s face. Walking down between the dog’s eyes the bee proceeded to make its way towards Shane’s nose when, just before it got there, it stopped and turned around. The bee now had Shane’s attention as he almost went cross-eyed in trying to focus on the bee. It was difficult to focus but he did the best that he could.
Then, quite suddenly, the bee spoke, simply saying, “What’s the trouble, Shane?”
Shane replied sarcastically, in his thoughts, ‘Oh, nothing. Everything is just fine.’
The bee replied, saying, “Good, keep it that way… and don’t you worry, stay with Flack and all will be well.”
“Eh?” Shane was startled and his sudden movement caused the bee to fly up from his nose.
Leaping to his feet and beginning to run off after Flack, Shane thought, ‘I’m mad. I’m going quite mad,’ he said to himself. ‘I have just been talking to a bee!’
His mind told him, ‘It is impossible for beasts to talk to any of the insects!’ “It’s all a bad dream,” he said to himself, increasing his speed in pursuit of the unicorn.
Catching a hold of Flack’s scent he bolted off in that direction, his eyes looking suspiciously at a number of bees that he saw moving about nearby flower heads.
***
Behind him, and high in a tree, a lone bee hung delicately to a leaf that swayed gently in the breeze. Then, suddenly, the bee leapt into action; up into the air, its powerful wings beating a well played rhythm on the zephyrs, as it set off on the trail that Shane had followed only moments before. The bee was following along the path of Shane and Flack.