“Would I?”
“Of course.”
Hunter struggled with that for a moment in silence, trying to remember the stories of Mermaids. There were gaps in his knowledge, because his people had lost or forgotten so much of their mythology.
Patiently, Siri said, “I told you about it once before; it must be one of the things you haven’t chosen to think about yet.”
He remembered then that she had told him something about her mother’s race, and agreed silently that either he must have dismissed what she’d said or chosen not to hear. He wanted to hear now, though.
“Mermaids,” she said casually, “are irresistible to men. It’s where the legends of a ‘siren song’ originated; Mermaids sing because they’re almost always happy, and their voices are so beautiful that men are compelled to follow the sounds into the sea. And any man who once beholds a Mermaid will be enchanted and bewitched for the rest of his life. It’s a madness.”
“I could resist that,” Hunter said.
Siri smiled. “Just as Unicorns were born out of gentle dreams of beauty, so Mermaids were born out of man’s primal desire for the perfect enchantress. She’s beautiful with an eerie, compelling beauty. She’s sensual in a way no human woman could ever match.” Siri spoke with detached, analytical certainty, as if she were discussing an immutable law of nature.
Hunter frowned at her. “Who taught you all of this?”
Shrugging gently, Siri turned back to her cooking.
He looked at the graceful lines of her body, feeling his own throb with ever-present desire.
“One day,” she murmured, mincing the seaweed with a large knife, “you’re going to realize that not everything has an explanation. And that sometimes it’s better that way.”
“You mean you?”
She glanced over her shoulder, her eyes still veiled, and her delicate face tightened. “No one asked questions before, you came. I—I understood my life before you came.”
He felt his pulse quicken. “And now?”
Siri watched her working hands again, struggling with the fury of her emotions. “Now…I don’t know.”
“Siri—”
“Will you return to your world?” she asked quickly.
It brought him up short, but after a moment he answered. “I’ve found what I set out to find. And my world needs to know their dreams are real.” There was still some part of him that was unwilling to explain exactly why he’d left his world, about his Quest, about the throne. He hesitated, then said, “Come with me, Siri—”
“Your knowledge won’t help them.”
“I have to believe it will,” he said evenly.
For the first time in her life, Siri was encountering a problem that none of her abilities could solve, and that shook her more than she would have believed possible. Mother, you told me I’d always be strong! Mother? I don’t feel strong anymore.
There was no answer.
“What will you take back to your people as proof?” she asked unsteadily. “A horn you’ll have to kill to claim? A living Unicorn who will die long before you reach your world?”
“No! No, Siri. But there must be a way!”
“There is no way! You ask for proof of dream! And like all men, you’ll destroy to get what you want.”
“I’ll destroy nothing!” He was on his feet suddenly, and the frustration inside him exploded painfully. “I’ve seen destruction, Siri, horrors you can’t even imagine! I’ve seen what happens to worlds when wars tear them apart. I’ve seen plagues, and famines, terrible natural disasters.
“Have you ever been to Marcos III, Siri?” He was taunting her now, but couldn’t stop himself. “You have sand cats here from Marcos III. I’ve walked on that world—what’s left of it. It was a human world once, but their beautiful civilization was shattered by a war with another planet. No one remembers what started the war, but no one could stop it. And Marcos III was laid waste by a war no one wanted!”
She turned to face him, numbed by his outburst and yet mesmerized in a strange way by what he was telling her. He was pacing the small cabin violently, his lean face taut, the vivid green eyes turbulent with memories. And his deep voice was quick and sharp as he talked, edged with the impotent fury of a terrible despair.
“And there’s another world on the far side of the galaxy, near my own. They were an offshoot of my people once long ago. The planet they found was already inhabited by a nonhuman race, extraordinarily intelligent. A dying race. And do you know what they were dying from, Siri? Pleasure. They had devoted all their vast technology to the art of physical pleasure. They had built machines which stimulated their senses, and over the aeons pleasure had become pain. The humans discovered what had happened, but too late. They were already addicted to their host world’s pleasure machines. If you visit that world now, do you know what you’ll find? A dead planet, with a dead race still hooked up to the machines that killed them!”
“Hunter—”
He went on, unhearing. “And then there’s the Tarus system. Not a human system, but then humans aren’t the only fallible beings in the galaxy. The Tarus race on all three of their habitable planets is winged, but they can’t fly. They forgot how, you see. And, too late, they’re grieving over their loss. When their species evolved beyond the primitive, they began to structure their society, and flight became a privilege that was granted to few. By the time they had achieved spaceflight and had spread to three worlds in their system, they could no longer fly without their machines. And now their young are trying desperately to fly, and are killing themselves by the thousands because they don’t know how.
“But we were talking about destruction, weren’t we?” His eyes were glittering. “There’s a plague on Mars. Mars…an old name my race brought with them into space. New Mars, they called it for a while. A red, dusty planet hot as hell. Humans settled there. And they deliberately destroyed the technology that brought them to their new world. They destroyed their spaceships, and since that group was composed of people with few technical skills, they effectively destroyed their ability to leave that planet. And they found out too late they had stranded themselves on a world that would destroy them. When they began having children, they discovered their plague. Ninety out of every hundred children born die within a month. Ten are immune. And it happens with each generation; the immune parents have found that they can’t pass on that immunity to their children. There’s no cure. The plague is indigenous to Mars; the spacegoing worlds nearby have quarantined the planet. Those humans are dying, and there is no way for them to leave the world that is killing them.”
Almost whispering, Siri said, “No wonder you searched for beauty.”
Hunter had stopped pacing, and now leaned forward to grip the table with white-knuckled fingers. “Beauty? Yes, I found beauty here and there. And do you know where I found it? On the worlds where mythology was still valued. Only on those worlds. Human or nonhuman, it didn’t matter. If mythology lived, societies lived and prospered. But on the worlds where the people had abandoned their myths, civilizations were dying. Wars. Plagues. Technology, advancing at a far greater rate than the wisdom to use it.”
“And your world—?”
“I told you.” His face was hard. “My world is losing its myths. Forgetting them. There are a few books, preserved because they’re too delicate to be read or copied. And my people are forgetting. After generations of a simple civilization, some on my world have rediscovered the art of making weapons and making war. There’s a nonhuman world near mine, and we have a peace treaty with them. There hasn’t been a war—yet. But there will be. The young revolutionaries of my planet have begun to resent the greater natural resources on that other world, and they want to conquer it. Our king and Council have tried to hold the society together, but the young aren’t interested in remembering ancient heroes and daring quests; they want to experience greatness firsthand. They want the excitement and glory of war.”
Hunter slammed both hands down on
the table, and the sound was like a thunderclap. “Glory!” He laughed harshly. “They’ve known nothing but peace all their lives, and yet they want war. They want something that will destroy them. I have to show them the beauty of dreams, Siri. I have to help them to remember their mythology.” I have to claim a throne.
After a moment, she said very quietly, “I think there’s something you haven’t considered, Hunter. What if you’re wrong? What if your culture isn’t dying because myth has been forgotten? What if myth has been forgotten because your culture is dying?”
Slowly he sank back down in the chair, gazing at her with an arrested expression in his eyes. “No. Myth will save my world. It has to.”
Out of her own pain, out of her own need to find some sense in this new confusion, Siri discovered a possibility. Should she tell him? Yes. He had to know. “You said that some catastrophe sent your people out into space.”
“Yes.”
“And that they abandoned their history, and claimed their mythology.”
“Yes. So?”
“Then perhaps what’s happening to your race is natural. Perhaps there’s a cycle which must be completed again and again while they evolve.”
“What are you talking about?” He was taut, impatient. Still unsettled by the possibility that in discovering myth alive and breathing he was no closer to helping his people, his world.
“What sent your people out into space was the eve of their own destruction. They stood on the brink of an extinction they had brought on themselves, and out of that horrible moment, they brought their mythology. Perhaps they must face that again to reclaim myth. Each time their technology advances, they begin to lose myth. Only when they nearly destroy themselves as a race do they reclaim it.”
Hunter was frowning. “I tell you, we don’t know why they left their home world. Probably a natural disaster of some kind—”
“No.”
“How can you know? It was thousands of years ago—”
“More than ten thousand years ago. And I can know, Hunter. Because I know the dawn of your history. It’s as much a part of me as the Unicorns are, because the Unicorns were born long before your race left the world they all but destroyed.”
“Siri—”
“Don’t you see?” She seemed to be gazing into something very far away, and an odd little laugh escaped her. “No, of course not. How could you? Your people abandoned all that they were along with their blasted world.”
“See what? What are you talking about?”
She looked at him with sadness in her lovely eyes. “Climb The Reaper and look out over this planet, Hunter. See what your people did to their Earth.”
“What?” It was a breath of sound, shocked.
“You’ve come home. Did you never wonder why the Unicorns lived here in Summer? Why they mate and give birth here? Here on this blasted, barren world? It’s because this is their home. Their roots are here, their origins. This is Earth, Hunter.”
He sat in a numb silence, his mind whirling, hardly conscious that she had returned to her cooking as if aware that he needed to absorb this.
Earth? He remembered all the desolation he had seen on his trip overland from the coast, the pitted wasteland of this world. Long-dead cities moldering in silence, ancient buildings little more than rubble. This planet was virtually a wasteland, and after ten thousand years…How must it have looked on the eve of its destruction? What vicious progression had led humans to turn their very world into the hell they had feared for all their thinking history?
Siri set a plate piled high with little golden cakes on the table, then went over to the water keg. She carried two cups back to the table, saying nothing. A jar of golden honey, forks, and plates were brought. She fixed her own plate, pouring honey over the cakes, then retreated to the hearth with her meal.
Automatically, Hunter began to eat. After a few bites, some unnumbed part of his mind realized what he was doing. “I’ve been eating these cakes every morning; I never realized they were made from seaweed. They’re delicious.”
She looked at him, hearing the lingering shock in his voice. Should she have told him? He deserved to know that he had come home, she thought wearily. He had found his myths and his roots on a world all but destroyed and abandoned by his people ten thousand years ago.
Returning her gaze to her plate as she ate silently, Siri tried to make sense of it all. I love him. Why? He was a man, like all the men who had hunted Unicorns for so long. And if his search was for a different reason, the results would still be the same. They would die. She would die. And his myth would die on the world that had seen its birth.
For the sake of the Unicorns, she wished for Fall, and yet she had never before dreaded the approaching loneliness of Winter as she did now. She felt so cold.
She rose and began clearing away and cleaning up after the meal, and Hunter got up to help. Obviously searching for something casual to say, he finally commented, “I saw that pool in the woods.” He sounded preoccupied.
“The Crystal Pool. It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” She welcomed the unthreatening topic.
“Yes. Especially with all the flowers around it.”
Siri went very still for a moment. She turned slowly and looked at him where he leaned against the rough stones. “You’ve been exploring at night.”
“How did you know that?”
“The flowers. They’re Moonflowers; they only bloom at night.”
He held her gaze steadily. “I saw them at night. Last night.”
Siri didn’t change color or expression. “I see. You didn’t announce yourself.”
“I…didn’t want to intrude.”
She nodded almost imperceptibly. Siri wasn’t the least embarrassed that Hunter had seen her unclothed; it wasn’t an emotion she was familiar with in regard to clothing, because that was a learned rather than instinctive emotion and her minimal contact with humans had spared her that. Siri knew only that her body was hers just as Hunter’s was his—clothed or unclothed made no difference.
She couldn’t help but wonder, though, what she would have done last night if he had announced his presence. If he had touched her, held her. Her body ached with new feelings, and she wanted to cry out against them.
“I have to patrol,” she said abruptly. “I’ll return before midday.”
“May I come along?”
She shook her head. “I’d rather you didn’t.”
Hunter stood in silence and watched her leave the cabin, hoping she’d look back but knowing she wouldn’t. And he was right.
He felt drained by his earlier outburst and by the shock of her revelation, holding on to his growing love for her as the only thing that was certain. Having found her and the unicorns, he couldn’t now feel that his Quest had been in vain, and yet he grappled with the possibility that he might not be able to help his people.
The Council of Elders had been wise in sending their princes on a Quest, Hunter had come to realize these last years. Were he to return to Rubicon and occupy the throne, he would be a better king now for the experiences of the Quest. And he had seen enough to be utterly certain that his world was slowly dying, and that their only hope was the resurrection of myth and dream. But how could he return to them something so elusive?
And what of Boran? He had not seen his half brother since both had left their planet years before, though he had often sensed—or thought he had—Boran’s intensity in unguarded moments. Had Boran found a trail to follow to this valley? Could both of them have found their way here in the vastness of the galaxy? And if Boran did come, would he remain only long enough to take a dying unicorn’s horn before returning to Rubicon and the throne?
Hunter pushed that question away, knowing that it could not be dealt with unless and until Boran came. He knew only that he wanted the throne, wanted to help his people. And with every day spent in this valley he was less and less certain that he could help them.
Perhaps one man could not, after all, summon the
future.
But even with that leaden knowledge within him, he had to believe that he could summon his own future. And his heart told him that his future lay with Siri.
The unicorns stood between them.
He was dimly aware that there was an alertly waiting part of his mind—or his heart—just beyond his reach, a part that held some key to understanding her, this valley, mythology. Memory, instinct, deeply buried racial knowledge—he couldn’t see it clearly enough to define it. But it existed within him; he knew it, and she knew it because she kept trying to help him understand.
Some germ of truth. Some innate ability to see, to realize what it all meant. Some reason that the Council had sent him away from his home and the responsibilities he’d been born to, in search of myth. Something more than a throne.
What was it?
Frustration gnawed at him relentlessly. He had a sense of standing at the edge of a precipice, with dark emptiness around him. There was a chasm, a gulf of ignorance and blindness and lost knowledge to cross, and she waiting for him on the other side. He felt that. He had to build a bridge with the understanding that was locked elusively inside him, but it remained tauntingly just out of his grasp. His mind remained stubbornly dark. He hadn’t yet learned to reach with his heart and use that true sword to pierce the blind layers. His heart yearned for dream, but his mind, his educated, inflexible mind, denied any need for dream to exist as dream.
He was angry, rudderless. He couldn’t help his people, couldn’t even help himself. The future of his life’s happiness hinged on his own understanding, and it eluded him cruelly.
He was still standing there long moments later when a unicorn’s impatient baby hoof scratched at the door. Hunter smiled faintly despite himself; it had become a habit of little Rayne’s to come in for a visit each morning after Siri left to patrol. She had apparently realized that Hunter was a soft touch when it came to saving tidbits from breakfast.
He went to the door and let Rayne in, leaving the door open behind her in case one of her occasional panics came over her. But she was happy and affectionate this morning, even more so than usual, perhaps because of the new addition to the herd. The newborn filly—the herd had christened her Joy, Siri had told him—was much the center of attention, and Rayne must have felt slightly eclipsed.