The rabbits stayed hid. There was an uneasiness about the grove. Barbara sank to her knees, and put out her hand. A chipmunk ran to nestle in it.
This time there was a difference. This time it was not the slow silencing of living things that warned of his approach, but a sudden babble from the people on the ridge.
Rita gathered her legs under her like a sprinter, and held the bridle poised. Her eyes were round and bright, and the tip of her tongue showed between her white teeth. Barbara was a statue. Del put his back against his tree, and became as still as Barbara.
Then from the ridge came a single, simultaneous intake of breath, and silence. One knew without looking that some stared speechless, that some buried their faces or threw an arm over their eyes.
He came.
He came slowly this time, his golden hooves choosing his paces like so many embroidery needles. He held his splendid head high. He regarded the three on the bank gravely, and then turned to look at the ridge for a moment- At last he turned, and came round the pond by the willow grove. Just on the blue moss, he stopped to look down into the pond. It seemed that he drew one deep clear breath. He bent his head then, and drank, and lifted his head to shake away the shining drops.
He turned toward the three spellbound humans and looked at them each in turn. And it was not Rita he went to, at last, nor Barbara. He came to Del, and he drank of Del's eyes with his own just as he had partaken of the pool-deeply and at leisure. The beauty and wisdom were there, and the compassion, and what looked like a bright white point of anger.
Del knew that the creature had read everything then, and that he knew all three of them in ways unknown to human beingsThere was a majestic sadness in the way he turned then, and dropped his shining head, and stepped daintily to Rita.
She sighed, and rose up a little, lifting the bridle. The unicom lowered his hom to receive it- -and tossed his head, tore the bridle out of her grasp, sent the golden thing high in the air. It turned there in the sun, and fell into the pond.
And the instant it touched the water, the pond was a bog and the birds rose mourning from the trees. The unicorn looked up at them, and shook himself. Then he trotted to Barbara and knelt, and put his smooth, stainless head in her lap.
Barbara's hands stayed on the ground by her sides. Her gaze moved over the warm white beauty, up to the tip of the golden horn and back.
The scream was frightening. Rita's hands were up like claws, and she had bitten her tongue; there was blood on her mouth. She screamed again. She threw herself off the now withered moss toward the unicorn and Barbara. "She can't be!" Rita shrieked. She collided with Del's broad right hand.
"It's wrong, I teli you, she, you, I…"
"I'm satisfied," said Del, low in his throat. "Keep away, squire's daughter."
She recoiled from him, made as if to try to circle him. He stepped forward. She ground her chin into one shoulder, then the other, in a gesture of sheer frustration, turned suddenly and ran toward the ridge. "It's mine, it's mine," she screamed.
"I tell you it can't be hers, don't you understand? I never once, I never did, but she, but she-"
She slowed and stopped, then, and fell silent at the sound that rose from the ridge. It began like the first patter of rain on oak leaves, and it gathered voice until it was a rumble and then a roar. She stood looking up, her face working, the sound washing over her. She shrank from it.
It was laughter.
She turned once, a pleading just beginning to form on her face. Del regarded her stonily. She faced the ridge then, and squared her shoulders, and walked up the hill, to go into the laughter, to go through it, to have it follow her all the way home and all the days of her life.
Del turned to Barbara just as she bent over the beautiful head. She said, "Silken-swift… go free."
The unicorn raised its head and looked up at Del. Del's mouth opened. He took a clumsy step forward, stopped again.
"You'"
Barbara's face was set. "You weren't to know," she choked. "You weren't ever to know… I was so glad you were blind, because I thought you'd never know."
He fell on his knees beside her. And when he did, the unicorn touched her face with his satin nose, and all the girl's pent-up beauty flooded outward. The unicom rose from his kneeling, and whickered softly. Del looked at her, and only the unicom was more beautiful. He put out his hand to the shining neck, and for a moment felt the incredible silk of the mane flowing across his fingers. The unicorn reared then, and wheeled, and in a great leap was across the bog, and in two more was on the crest of the farther ridge. He paused there briefly, with the sun on him, and then was gone.
Barbara said, "For us, he lost his pool, his beautiful pool."
And Del said, "He will get another. He must." With difficulty he added, "He couldn't be… punished… for being so gloriously Fair-
Wendigo
There are many legends of human beings who. for one reason or another, become animallike in appearance and nature. This may have arisen perhaps because the quiet, settled farmers of agricultural areas may have been horrified (and justly so) at the wild barbarian nomads who occasionally struck at them from the surrounding wilderness. (Even today we hear expressions such as "They're animals" when people describe the criminal denizens of our urban environment.) ft may also be that in the primeval forests, especially at night, human beings, armed with only primitive weapons, ran peculiar dangers, so that exaggerated tales of fearsome and intelligent predators would naturally arise.
Of course, transformations of human beings into animals might be the result of charms or spells. The case of the handsome prince turned into a frog until he is kissed by a princess, or into a fearsome Beast until Beauty falls in love with him. are well known.
Much more frightening are transformations that take place spontaneously and even involuntarily. The best-known case in our own culture is that of the werewolf (actually ' 'man-way,'' since ' 'were'' is an Old English term for "man"). The werewolf is only one variety of this sort of thing, and weretigers etc. are also spoken of. However, thanks to Hollywood, the werewolf ranks above them all.
Among the northeastern Indian tribes, it was thought that any hunter lost in the forest would gradually be forced by hunger to waylay some unwary human being and eat him. The hunter would then develop animal form and become an inveterate man-eater. He was then known as a wendigo, or, more correctly, windigo. It is a pity the, following story was not named "Mood Windigo." for that would have been even better wordplay.
Mood Wendigo
by Thomas A Easton
When did this story begin? It's hard for anyone here in town to say. It looped back on itself and tied its bit of time in a knot. No one is really sure just what happened, though we do know we lost a good boy.
Did it start when Lydia Seltzer told her high school biology class about the wendigo? She was talking about the world's mystery beasts, the Abominable Snowman, the Sasquatch, the Loch Ness Monster and its cousins in other lakes around the world- She told them about all the expeditions, the lack of results, the questions-are the searchers simply crackpots? Or do elusive things still exist in the hidden comers of the world? And then she mentioned the wendigo, a thing that had never been more than a story, a superstition, something no one had ever believed in enough to check it out. Its name was Indian, and it was known across the Northeast, from Maine to Ontario. It screamed in the night, and anyone who sought the screamer disappeared without a trace. If they ever returned, they were mad, too blown of mind even to say what had happened to them. There were no descriptions of the wendigo.
Or did it start the day our town acquired a second Lydia?
Mad she was, and raving, but she was the same Lydia we had all known for a decade. The same wide mouth, the nose a little larger than she liked, the black hair worn short and curled over her collar. Neither was any beauty, but neither were they ugly, and it seemed surprising that she had never married. Or perhaps it was no surprise after all. She was tough-minded as only a woman can be, and she showed it at an unusually young age. Most women wait till their forties and later to show their steel. But not Lydia. She brooked no nonsense, in class or out, and for as long as we had known her she had been given to severely tailored pantsuits, wool for work, denim for evenings and weekends.