The way the Traveller tells it, he was making his way across the border with his companion when he first saw it: the creature emerging from a forest clearing.
“It was skittish, small—perhaps a mere bairn. Had I not seen it with my own eyes I would have thought it a hoax, too.”
The Scribe stays his hand; pen poised, breath held.
The Traveller describes the beast in meticulous detail. A svelte, equine body with lithe limbs. A coat so pristine that it glistened like the rippling body of a clearwater lake. Pearlescent, taut skin that hinted at the powerful musculature hidden beneath. The Scribe lowers his pen and exhales. Of course.
“You saw a horse.” He levies the words like an accusation at the Traveller’s feet. But there was something else atop the creature’s head, solid and protruding between its doe-like eyes. A diaphanous bone, spiraling to a fine and deadly point. With each tentative step it took, climbing vines, blooming flowers, and even the stems of hardy weeds emerged from under its cloven hooves. They burst from the earth, bannerlike and proud, rising to drink in the dewy air with a speed and grace that defied belief.
“A true marvel, it was. Breathtaking—”
“Did you approach it?” The Scribe interjects, having now resumed his note taking with considerable fever.
“I started to. But my companion stopped me before I got too close.”
“And then?”
The beast had flicked its tail, reared on its haunches and retreated back into the thicket, leaving behind only the memory of its presence—permanently burned into the men’s minds like a shimmering sunspot. They were captivated, the glorious pelt already consuming their every thought. And so, they returned to the clearing sometime later with a handful of local hunters and one of their maiden daughters in tow. The plan was set into motion. The Scribe puts the Traveller’s words to parchment thus:
The unicorn is a little beast with a horn in the middle of its brow. It can be caught in the following fashion: a virgin girl is led to where it dwells and is left there alone in the forest. As soon as the unicorn sees her, it leaps into her lap and goes to sleep there, then the hunters can act.
Needless to say, the Traveller’s own account is less dry. He recalls watching from behind a nearby blackberry bush, crouching silently with the other men. Seeing the animal’s chest rise and fall in slumber. He matched his own breath to the languid rhythm. He saw the lovely, little body curled in the young girl’s lap, so trusting and tranquil. He was, he realises now, in awe of the unicorn, hoping somehow to hold the delicate moment unfolding before him eternally in his heart, as though it were a flower forged from glass.
He tells of the sound that the poor thing made when it was brutally awoken. Pierced by their long, cowardly blades—his own among them. How he saw the horror in its eyes and the maiden who had betrayed it alike. He saw the all too mortal trails of crimson stain its ethereal hyde. As the beast’s eyelids fluttered closed it gave a low, mournful groan.
“It cried. Like a child! A harrowing sound.” He winces at the cruelty surfacing from the murky depths of his memory.
“I saw our hands slick with the blood of the divine.” He mutters.
“I fear this was the only one of its kind we will ever see. I have slaughtered something celestial. Pointed my sword at the heavens themselves. How can I ask forgiveness, knowing what I have done?”
The Scribe weighs the man’s words with the utmost care before choosing his own. “Each beast hitherto contained in the bestiary is a moral entity. A herald of potential redemption. I believe that is exactly what this may yet be for you,” he says. The Traveller nods, relief flooding his features at last.
The unicorn appeared in the manuscript’s next iteration some weeks later, alongside an illustration which the Scribe spent significant effort rendering. He did his best to soften the look on the unicorn’s face. He put the trust back into its large eyes. Curved its mouth upwards ever so slightly at its corners. Its front legs returned the maiden’s tight embrace, placed in her silken lap like a benediction. He could not avoid depicting the blood or the blades, but he did paint the man at the front of the charge carefully, his face solemn and heavy with regret—the very picture of penitence.
This piece was loosely inspired by the ‘unicorn’ entry in a medieval bestiary manuscript that was translated back in 1992!
E. L. McKee is a poet and storyteller from England. They love reading and writing about folklore native to the UK (in verse and prose alike). More of their work can be found on Instagram @e.l.mckee
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