It was a starry night. The moon shone full and orange on the horizon, reflecting off the silent tears that covered her milky smooth cheeks. Her blue eyes were dark and empty in the absence of light. Her blond tresses caught the moonlight and flamed around her shoulders in tight little curls. She clutched her arms across her chest as if in pain, but the only pain she felt was the emotional strain of what she was about to do.
The grass tickled her legs as she walked, and she found a nice place to sit next to a crystal stream. The ripples of the stream caught the moonlight and Erin watched, transfixed by the glistening diamonds that danced across the water’s surface. Thin fingers of mist began to rise off the water and pears of dew formed on the blades of grass around her.
She finally heard a noise to her right. She didn’t jerk her head, but slowly turned it so she could see what was approaching. A new burst of tears erupted from her eyes as the ghostly white form approached, and she quietly whispered, “Go away. Please, please go away.”
The unicorn didn’t hear her.
Erin wanted to run.
She had been chosen for her special physical attributes. The main one of which was her virginity. Only a virgin female could catch a unicorn and she had been paid well to capture this one.
The unicorn approached, the tip of its single horn catching a glint of moonlight, sparking briefly, like a star whose birth and death was the equivalent of a blink of an eye.
The unicorn stomped her hoof. It sensed Erin’s fear, but closed the distance between them, overcome by the purity of the human girl before her.
Erin put out her hand and the unicorn put her nose in Erin’s palm. Nostrils flaring as it breathed in Erin’s scent, the unicorn whinnied softly and took another step closer, nuzzling her broad face against Erin’s shoulder.
“You can’t trust me!”
The words were so soft and low that the sound of it could have been a whisper of the wind, but the unicorn heard Erin’s words and jerked away, but too late. Men rushed from the trees with swords and shouts. Two had a large net folded between them as they ran. The unicorn leaped away but had her way blocked, no matter where she turned. Erin stumbled away from the melee of men and rushed from the clearing, afraid to watch the slaughter that was about to happen.
The unicorn screamed behind her, but Erin didn’t turn to look. Several of the men yelled in pain behind her as well, obviously falling victim to the raging creature’s primary weapon.
Erin cried some more, her tears blurring her vision. She didn’t know where she was going and didn’t care, just as long as she could get away from the slaughter behind her.
The sounds of violence suddenly ended, and the men shouted with victory. Erin hoped those men got what they wanted. Kings and noble men had been known to pay up to 40,000 gold pieces for the horn of a unicorn, and this had brought on the slaughter of those poor creatures.
Erin clutched the coin purse hanging on her sash. A person of her stature longed to have just a fraction of the wealth that she now possessed. One hundred gold pieces. It wasn’t enough for what she had done, no price would ever be enough.
She dumped the coins into the grass and walked home. She had no way of knowing that she was directly responsible for the death of the last known unicorn.
Copyright March 2001 by Christopher J. Thomasson
