M F ALFREY

Regency England, and like every young lady approaching womanhood, Kirin is gifted her very own unicorn, yet Kirin cannot help but sense a looming cloud in her future; a cloud that takes the form of the forever-young Unicorn Master.

I remember the night well. From my sill, through chilled panes, the moon cut a crooked smile. Yet despite this irregular beauty, a bright speck upon Wash-heath Hill across the valley fascinated me. A magnificent bonfire honouring Cuthbert Brimshore’s twenty-first year, seen for miles, no doubt.

I imagined, for it was too great a distance for the fire smoke to reach my bedroom window, that intruding through the window crack was the scent with which every child becomes familiar. It as an aroma which will forever restore me to one particular memory yet rather wishing it this one. One of a naïve little girl sitting on her bedroom sill. The memory: to this day, clearest whenever farmers burn back their fields, whenever oil lamps are lit. This night, Cuthbert had received his silver unicorn horn pendant – my sister would correct me, ‘Alicorn, not horn. How Kings and Queens call it. A simple fact. Don’t discredit your education and the wealth by which it was provided. Or you shall never have a unicorn.’

Like hers, Crumpet, a delightful powder blue mare Trish doted on, and should you call her mare she’d dispute, insisting on Crumpet, despite Father declaring it childish. I thought it sweet and she a sweet unicorn and all I desired was my own. Trish was nineteen then and “a fine figure of a lady” (Lord Brimshore’s words). Trish and I gossiped, convinced he fancied her as wife for his Cuthbert. Bold Trish, just like Crumpet. Fiercely uninterested, just like Crumpet. We both loathed the nights the Brimshores came to dine and we’d be pranced around like pageant ponies.

The morning after Cuthbert entered manhood, I would officially embark on the road to womanhood. A young lady by title: no more a yearning. Never again could mother chide me with child. Unfortunately, with this new station came its own shortcomings: not a moment after my bosom had come through was I an object of attention for every lecherous lord attending Father’s Gentlemen’s Club. I vowed if another of those rakes referred to me once more as a ripening fruit, I would revolt. Of course, I never did, following Trish’s example I kowtowed to convention (despite her boldness, Trish was also very shrewd). So much so was this skilled kowtowing of mine, I made a grand error confiding in Mother of my much-anticipated womanly courses.

I should have sought Trish.

The fuss. When I simply required a muslin napkin, the fuss, when all I craved was some remedy for those dreadful cramps, the fuss, when Father was informed and the house summoned: the footmen, butlers, maids, house steward and housekeeper too, the fuss saw the gardeners transforming privet maze hedges into prancing unicorns and the seamstress come with white lace and red ribbons, the hairdresser summoned too.

The poor dears. So thoroughly commanded by Mother on how best to arrange my hair. ‘Like alicorns – yes horns. Not merely a plait. Call yourself a professional? The fine ribbon, not the broad, she’s not a shire horse.’

I felt like one. Poked, prodded, teeth examined. Instructed how to walk despite having been quite the expert for eleven years.

‘Come now, Kirin dear. Shoulders straight. Chin up. Now try with a book. Fool of a child! On your head. Useless. Again. You best smarten up for Him!’

Him. The Unicorn Master. Tomorrow.

He was not as expected. The Unicorn Master had performed rites for all members of the ton. Even King Bertram – now an ancient relic. Yet observing this man, it seemed imaginable only at a stretch. We stood together, both in white, myself an overdressed wedding cake threaded with saffron and He in robes and a tall hat so much part of Him I was pressed to determine where His garments concluded and His living flesh commenced.

To this day, I proclaim a child is much like a wild animal: sensible to the peculiar. Leaping or hiding when startled, howling misgivings – all dismissed as foolish. As was the case when I sought protection from Him.

Yet by my shoulders He whisks me and the following moments tumble into each other.

He asks, ‘What is expected of you?’

I tell Him I must raise it on the purest foods and He nods and something childish in me desperate for an elder’s approval is cheered and encouraged and I explain I must groom and exercise it and when it is grown it must never be ridden and He asks why and I reply that my unicorn is my equal and He smiles and despite all Mother’s drilling I falter … finally I tell Him I must sleep beside it frequently until three days before my twenty-first so it may net my dreams and foretell my fate and fortune and how to secure it and—

‘It is done,’ He announces.

No longer was I an ant beneath an entomologist’s lens. To my parents he said, ‘I sense no impurity. As sure as I know these sacred creatures, I know people.’ Then addressing me, ‘Come now. To the paddock.’ He grinned and all were infected with delight. A house of smiles. Yet when He encouraged me, I could not frolic along as I had been told Trish had, squealing her thrills.

Ours was a timid introduction, the knobbly-kneed yearling and I. Both awaiting our bodies to catch up with our adult aspirations. The colt’s coat: a pure black, myself a gleaming angel in its lustrous surface. His marvellous singular alicorn spiralled like a seashell.

I forgot my entourage.

What I’ll never forget – what seems so clear now – was the expression my parents and He shared. A fleeting conspiratorial glance. Even then, in the summer of my naivety, that animal-knowing of a child urged me.

Take the unicorn – hide.

The year saw us each grow in days filled with joy. We loved to gallop together and trot in the forest. Unicorns attract fairies and imps and brownies –something my sister had kept from me all these years, now Trish’s secret was finally revealed.

‘And how hard it was to bite my lip, dear sis,’ she had exclaimed with a giggle.

Lomuni and I were inseparable and often the under-butler had to retrieve us from beside the tumble-down bridge where we’d recline watching imps goading bathing fairies. The shimmer of their dragonfly wings set me dreaming. My dreams: Lady of the Manor – a successful poet. My manor walls barely seen for awards and commendations for my contributions to literature. Lomuni and I forever friends and, in secret, he would allow me to ride him because he loves me and I him.

It was from a wintered paddock, when I was brushing Lomuni’s fine black coat (now a handsome stallion), I watched His carriage come up the drive to stop between the fountain and steps to Morpeth Manor.

‘He’s here for Trish,’ I whispered in Lomuni’s twitching ear. ‘Twenty-one today. Tonight, she’ll wear red and black. Dear Crumpet will foretell her future.’

It wasn’t fair. After pleas to attend, Mother cautioned me, ‘This night is not for girls your age.’ How she now used this word, girl, like she had once used child, to make me hate it and wish even more dearly for womanhood and the title with which it came. I planned to sneak out when everyone was atop the hill where a ceremonial barn had been erected. I thought myself superbly devious: I would escape via the servants’ entrance while the scullery maids gossiped and—

The house steward apprehended me immediately outside my bedroom door and put an end to that.

So, I pouted on my sill, awaiting the bonfire on our hill this time. I was an owl of wakefulness despite eagerness for sleep to hurry the morning along for Trish’s tales of events. I nodded, of course, yet awoke to the hysterical sobbing of poor Trish, returned with Mother passing beneath my window. Trish held her hands, dressed in long red gloves, ahead as though they horrified her. It was not the reason for the sobbing that perplexed me but the mystery of these before unmentioned gloves. So perfect, gleaming in the moonlight.

I instantly desired them for my night.

Trish declined breakfast the next day and, not hiding my disappointment, I ate with my parents, enduring the night’s events dictated by Father. ‘All went well. Your sister’s destiny is secure. Don’t bother her. The mare has taken ill. Likely to be retired. She is delicate about the matter. No mention – am I clear?’

The mare. Had Trish not insisted she was to be called Crumpet? Trish, of whom there was no sign the subsequent days. Trish, who ignored my whispered beckoning through her chamber door. All I required was the particulars of her future, instead, I could only speculate with Lomuni, wishing I could understand unicorn.

It was a summer’s eve, the wheat golden in the fields beyond our country estate and the fairies particularly mischievous when a duet of summersaulting fey led Lomuni and I along a shadowy path to the meadowed hill and Crumpet’s barn.

It was gone.

Scorched timbers and that lingering scent of burnt wheat stubble and lit oil lamps was all that remained. Crumpet’s passing was known to me, but a burned barn …

‘Why?’

Lomuni whickered in reply and I sensed this place unnerved him, so after leading him to his paddock I returned to the manor brimming with questions only to discover the Unicorn Master had been and Trish was now the owner of a stunning silver alicorn-shaped pendant matching Mother’s and Father’s. Such a relief was her smile that queries of razed barns and Crumpet’s fate fluttered away like the fairies who’d led us to the hill.

Many seasons later, Morpeth Manor was a dreary place since Trish, now Doctor Brimshore, had been married off as foretold. Trish’s success stories, often expounded by Father, had become the incessant topic of evening meals until the seamstress visited for my measurements and it was Mother who dominated dinner talk thereafter with her needs for how my gown was to be fashioned and, seeing as I was a woman approaching my twenty-first, I should perhaps eat like one and save on the cost of silk.

The seamstress, a timid shrew, would not give when I pressed for fine elbow-length red gloves. I could not fathom her nerviness and hurry to vanish at the mere sight of me. In fact, the servants had taken to avoiding me on the approach to my twenty-first and even the gardeners clipping reclining unicorns into the privet mazes abandoned their work at sight of my questioning approach. I’d grown bold, so I suppose retreat was their only recourse.

When He came, all notions of interrogation left me and all I could do was listen to Father’s greetings, gawping at the sight of the Unicorn Master.

‘Why Sir, youth favours you eternally, I see.’

‘Tis the blessing of the unicorn’s heart.’

‘Of course,’ Father coughed, glancing to me for but a moment, ‘such loving creatures. Speaking of such ­– excited dear?’

‘Indeed Father.’ I curtsied. ‘A pleasure, Unicorn Master. Father is correct – you are as handsome as the day we first met.’

‘Too kind. Please, allow your father and I a moment, we have much to discuss.’

My place reaffirmed as elsewhere, I drifted off and I do believe (perhaps in the ignorance of powerful men) they seemed to think I was unable to hear their conversation on the breeze.

‘The barn is erected?’

‘Yes. Kirin and Lomuni have been apart, three days.’

‘Good. The oil is placed and barbiturates … dissolved in the trough?’

‘As you asked, as before, as it always is, and will be.’

Come evening, those words had established the most turbid concern within me. At least I would see Lomuni again. My parents brought me arm in arm into the night and up the hill, yet my sister was nowhere to be seen.

‘Where’s Trish?’

‘Feeling … delicate,’ replied Father.

‘She sends her apologies,’ Mother added.

Upon hearing this news, I’m eleven again.

Drawing in on myself, senses heightened, I tumble

in many

ways

I tumble from

what I thought

was and

what

I thought would

be

I tumble to

what was in front

of me

this whole time

I tumble.

‘Kirin? Whatever’s the matter?’ says Mother and there’s a glance to Father which leaves me cold. From beneath his cloak, Father presents me a trembling silvered blade, yet all I can ponder is why in the world I would need such a thing.

‘Take it … please.’

I do so as in a dream, yet this dream is tainted with the bitterness of looming nightmares. I’m at a barn door. Then suddenly in a candle-lit barn. He stands over my unicorn. 

‘No harm has befallen him,’ He says.

‘And this?’ I heft the blade.

‘You wish to assure your dreams?’

It is then my eyes, led by my nose, are drawn to the oil barrels stored in the barn. ‘And those?’

‘Flesh to ashes and ashes to dust.’

I lower the obscene blade. My gaze falls on Lomuni.

‘His death for my future?’

‘The bitter-sweet truth of adulthood, my dear. Slaughter your dreams. Dissect the unicorn. Plunge in your hands and arrange the innards for me to scry.’

A shudder takes me.

‘I shall remove the alicorn, grind it to dust and in a pretty silver pendant you’ll receive this coveted powder. The heart … is mine.’

‘Why?’

‘Payment and my own business … are you prepared to become Lady Kirin?’

And it is here, in time’s heartbeat, on a night I’d rather forget, I held two fates in hands I was loathe to imagine red to the elbows.

Art and story by M F Alfrey