The Unicorn Anthology Read online

  Advance Praise for The Unicorn Anthology

  “What a treasure trove! This anthology is filled with stories that will surprise, fascinate, and delight you. From an Arizona ghost town where souls are healed to a medieval European forest to the middle of an elephant herd in Persia, there are so many gems to be found!”

  —Sarah Beth Durst, award-winning author of the Queens of Renthia series

  “This slender but rich anthology compiled by Beagle and Weisman (The New Voices of Fantasy ) centers on the mythical beast for which Beagle is best known, thanks to his classic novel The Last Unicorn . The 15 stories and one poem reinterpret the unicorn myth across genre and style. Caitlín R. Kiernan’s lesbian noir “The Maltese Unicorn” pits a hard-boiled rare book dealer against a sorcerous femme fatale. In Jane Yolen’s delicate “The Transfigured Hart,” a bookish boy and a horse-loving girl bond over a shared obsession with a mysterious white woodland creature. Dave Smeds’s “Survivor” includes elements of horror in its tale of a traumatized Vietnam vet, as does Garth Nix’s “The Highest Justice,” in which a princess and a revenant queen seek revenge with the help of a unicorn. Themes of innocence lost, first love, and yearning for transcendence pervade all of the stories in this collection, giving it a haunting and melancholy feel. Readers who love the mystery and elegance of unicorns will find this a lovely homage.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Unicorns are a rare and wondrous breed; fortunately for us, stories about them are a little easier to find. Peter S. Beagle’s new anthology contains a marvellous collection of stories about the animal that probably never existed, but that we still can’t stop dreaming about. Like the creature itself, the stories are wild and wistful, graceful and glorious, kind and crazy. Everything we need to help us believe . . . in something worth believing in.”

  —Simon R. Green, author of Night Fall and Blue Moon Rising

  “Between these pages you’ll find tales that are as mysterious and arresting as any creature of myth and legend. The Unicorn Anthology returned me to the stories of writers I already loved and introduced me to the stories of writers I know I will come to love.”

  —Kevin Brockmeier, author of A Brief History of the Dead

  “Well worth reading.”

  —NY Journal of Books

  “Unicorns in literature are fascinating, evocative, mysterious, and elusive, and with The Unicorn Anthology , editors Peter S. Beagle—himself of unicorn fame—and Jacob Weisman invite continued appreciation of the legendary beast, drawing it beyond its familiar medieval framework.”

  —Foreword

  Anthologies edited by Peter S. Beagle

  “All 17 stories eschew all or most of the conventions of commercial fantasy. . . . Start reading and expect to enjoy.”

  —Booklist on The Secret History of Fantasy

  “Set[s] out to rewrite our concept of fantasy, and with the help of some of the world’s best writers, succeeds admirably.”

  —The Agony Column on The Secret History of Fantasy

  “The stories are all, in many different ways, pleasures to read.”

  —The Civilian Reader on The Secret History of Fantasy

  “An essential book not only for longtime followers of such intriguing stories but those who thought fantasy only took place in the completely imagined worlds of J. R. R. Tolkien.”

  —Bookgasm on The Urban Fantasy Anthology (with Joe R. Lansdale)

  “An excellent collection of stories that showcases the best of urban fantasy (however you define it). Definitely a must-read!”

  —Interzone on The Urban Fantasy Anthology (with Joe R. Lansdale)

  “This is one of the best reprint anthologies of the year in terms of literary value, and you certainly get more than your money’s worth of good fiction.”

  —Locus on The Urban Fantasy Anthology (with Joe R. Lansdale)

  Anthologies edited by Jacob Weisman

  [Starred]“This volume is a treasure trove of stories that draw equally from SF and literary fiction, and they are superlative in either context.”

  —Publishers Weekly, starred review on Invaders

  “Playful and imaginative.”

  —AV Club on Invaders

  “A superb batch of stories by literary authors who have invaded science fiction—and left distinct footprints behind.”

  —Black Gate on Invaders

  [Staarred]“This is an unbeatable selection from classic to modern, and each story brings its A game.”

  —Publishers Weekly, starred review on The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (with David G. Hartwell)

  “Superbly presented . . . reignited this reader’s interest.”

  —SF Site on The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (with David G. Hartwell)

  “Hard and fast-paced fantasy that’s strong from the first piece right through to the last.”

  —Shades of Sentience on The Sword & Sorcery Anthology (with David G. Hartwell)

  “A marvelous mix of classics and rarely seen works, bibliophile’s finds and old favorites . . . a treasury in every sense and a treasure!”

  —Connie Willis, author of Doomsday Book and To Say Nothing of the Dog on The Treasury of the Fantastic (with David Sandner)

  THE UNICORN ANTHOLOGY

  Peter S. Beagle & Jacob Weisman, eds.

  The Unicorn Anthology

  Copyright © 2019 by Peter S. Beagle and Jacob Weisman

  This is a collected work of fiction. All events portrayed in this book are fictitious and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form without the express permission of the publisher.

  Cover art copyright © 2018 by Thomas Canty

  Cover and interior design by Elizabeth Story

  Tachyon Publications LLC

  1459 18th Street #139

  San Francisco, CA 94107

  (415) 285-5615

  www.tachyonpublications.com

  [email protected]

  Series Editor: Jacob Weisman

  Project Editor: Jill Roberts

  Print ISBN: 978-1-61696-315-6

  Digital ISBN: 978-1-61696-283-8

  First Print Edition: 2019

  “The Magical Properties of Unicorn Ivory” copyright © 2016 by Carlos Hernandez. First appeared in The Assimilated Cuban’s Guide to Quantum Santeria (Rosarium Publishing: Greenbelt, Maryland).

  “The Brew” copyright © 1995 by Karen Joy Fowler. First appeared in Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn, edited by Peter S. Beagle and Janet Berliner (HarperPrism: New York).

  “Falling Off the Unicorn” copyright © 2008 by David D. Levine and Sara A. Mueller. First appeared in Space Magic, edited by David D. Levine (Wheatland Press: Wilsonville, Oregon).

  “A Hunter’s Ode to His Bait” copyright © 2003 by Carrie Vaughn. First appeared in Realms of Fantasy, February 2003.

  “Ghost Town” copyright © 1992 by Jack C. Haldeman II. First appeared in Unicorns II, edited by Jack Dann and Gardner Dozois (Ace Books: New York City).

  “A Thousand Flowers” copyright © 2010 by Margo Lanagan. First appeared in Zombies vs. Unicorns, edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier (Margaret K. McElderry Books: New York).

  “The Maltese Unicorn” copyright © 2011 by Caitlín R. Kiernan. First appeared in Supernatural Noir, edited by Ellen Datlow (Dark Horse Books: Milwaukie, Oregon).

  “Stampede of Light” copyright © 1995 by Marina Fitch. First appeared in Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn, edited by Peter S. Beagle and Janet Berliner (HarperPrism: New York).

  “The Highest Justice” copyright © 2010 by Garth Nix. First appeared in Zombies vs. Unicorns, edited by Holly Black and Justine Larbalestier (Margaret K. McElderry Books: New York).

  “The Lion and the Unicorn” copyright © 2015 by A. C. Wise. First appeared in Lackington’s, Winter 2015.

  “Survivor” copyright © 1995 by Dave Smeds. First appeared in Peter S. Beagle’s Immortal Unicorn, edited by Peter S. Beagle and Janet Berliner (HarperPrism: New York).

  “Homeward Bound” copyright © 1988 by Bruce Coville. First appeared in The Unicorn Treasury, edited by Bruce Coville (Doubleday: New York).

  “The Unicorn Triangle” copyright © 2017 by Patricia A. McKillip. Originally published as a Humble Bundle e-book exclusive, 3/8/17. First print appearance in The Karkadann Triangle (Tachyon Publications LLC: San Francisco).

  “My Son Heydari and the Karkadann” copyright © 2017 by Peter S. Beagle. Originally published as a Humble Bundle e-book exclusive, 3/8/17. First print appearance in The Overneath (Tachyon Publications LLC: San Francisco).

  “The Transfigured Hart” copyright © 1975 by Jane Yolen (Thomas Y. Crowell Company: New York).

  “Unicorn Series” copyright © 1993 by Nancy Springer. First appeared in Stardark Songs (W. Paul Ganley: Buffalo, New York).

  CONTENTS

  Introduction

  Peter S. Beagle

  The Magical Properties of Unicorn Ivory

  Carlos Hernandez

  The Brew

  Karen Joy Fowler

  Falling Off the Unicorn

&nb
sp; David D. Levine and Sara A. Mueller

  A Hunter’s Ode to His Bait

  Carrie Vaughn

  Ghost Town

  Jack C. Haldeman II

  A Thousand Flowers

  Margo Lanagan

  The Maltese Unicorn

  Caitlín R. Kiernan

  Stampede of Light

  Marina Fitch

  The Highest Justice

  Garth Nix

  The Lion and the Unicorn

  A. C. Wise

  Survivor

  Dave Smeds

  Homeward Bound

  Bruce Coville

  Unicorn Triangle

  Patricia A. McKillip

  My Son Heydari and the Karkadann

  Peter S. Beagle

  The Transfigured Hart

  Jane Yolen

  Unicorn Series

  Nancy Springer

  About the Editors

  INTRODUCTION

  Peter S. Beagle

  THE GREAT IRISH POET and novelist, James Stephens, whose work influenced my own far more—with every possible due respect—than Professor Tolkien’s ever did—got so damn tired of being remembered only for his classic The Crock of Gold (which I discovered in high school) that he simply stopped writing novels at all. Spent the last twenty-five years of his life writing poetry and broadcasting on the BBC. Of Robert Nathan’s thirty-odd novels, the only one still in print (thanks to Tachyon) is Portrait of Jennie, just as you’d likely have to dig to find any of Charles Jackson’s books but The Lost Weekend—and that only because, like Jennie, it was made into a successful movie. Joe Haldeman continues to write just as notably as ever, but has told me that he’s resigned to being recognized always as the author of The Forever War. My late Santa Cruz friend Jim Houston, who wrote several splendid novels about California and Hawaii (one day, surely, someone will film his Snow Mountain Passage , about the Donner Party), equally accepted having Farewell to Manzanar—written with his wife Jeanne, about her childhood years in the Japanese-American internment camps—as what he called “the family franchise.” Farewell to Manzanar remains an award-winning TV movie (easily available online), and has been required reading in the majority of American high schools and colleges since its publication. I can’t imagine it ever falling out of print.

  Actors in a particularly popular role, in some ways, have it worse, of course. At least Eugene O’Neill’s father, an actor who fed his family touring The Count of Monte Cristo across the country almost until he died, didn’t have to deal with endless reruns. Leonard Nimoy’s laudable denial, I am not Spock, was followed, some decades later—after a celebrated career as actor and director spent equally between movies, television and the theatre—by I am Spock. Christopher Lee was very proud of having played not only Sherlock Holmes but also Sherlock’s “smarter brother” Mycroft (not to mention Dr. Fu Manchu); but to most viewers and fans he was forever Dracula. And glad to get it, as he said himself, “No Dracula . . . who knows?”

  So it’s become for me. The Last Unicorn isn’t my favorite of my own books—for that matter, there will always be people who feel that I never wrote anything better than my first one, A Fine & Private Place—but without that damn unicorn, would so many people have discovered my ghosts, my poetic wanderers, my woman warriors, my ragtag wizards? To quote Christopher Lee, who knows?

  I’ve tried to shuck off the beasts over the years, telling people about my longstanding offer to the late blessed Ursula Le Guin to trade my unicorns en masse even-up for her magnificent dragons. It was a mock-serious joke between us, on the rare occasions when we ran into each other, but it was serious enough as far as I was concerned. In 1968, when The Last Unicorn was published, I still didn’t really think of myself as a career fantasist, even with A Fine & Private Place, “Come Lady Death,” and “Lila the Werewolf” constituting my entire oeuvre to that point. And The Last Unicorn had been such an exhausting, frustrating horror to write (the only bits I remember enjoying were the incidental song lyrics, because writing songs is always a joy) that there was no way in the world that I was going back, ever, to that fairytale nightmare. Not a bloody chance, boy.

  So I wrote The Folk of the Air , eighteen years later. It took me four drafts, and really should have gone through a fifth. There aren’t any unicorns in that one; but by then I was living primarily off film and television screenwriting jobs, and I can tell you without the slightest fear of contradiction that there are no unicorns in Hollywood. Dragons, yes—unicorns no. None.

  But I did at last go back to my unicorn and her world of kings and magicians and plain countryfolk, and beasts as legendary as herself. I went in the company of a valiant, aggravating nine-year-old girl named Sooz. And I’ll be going back there again, because Sooz is seventeen now, and she has a journey to make—which I dread far more than she does, because she doesn’t know any better. She never does. She just goes on.

  It was Sooz who led me to embrace my Inner Unicorn Guy: that four-year-old who stood in front of his mother’s elementary-school class (so family legend always had it) and told them all about unicorns. When the class ended, he said politely, “Goodbye—I’ll come back sometime and tell you more about unicorns.” Anyway, that’s what my mother always told me.

  Because of Sooz, who has only once taken no for an answer (that was from an aged, near-senile King Lir, whom she fell in love with), I’ve written stories about Chinese and Persian unicorns, a pregnant unicorn choosing to give birth on a rundown little farm in Calabria, a five-inch-high unicorn liberated from an ancient tapestry by Japanese magic, and trapped in an art gallery; even a unicorn in colonial Maine—a vision vouchsafed to a career con-artist named Olfert Dapper, who knows that he has no right in the world to the sight of it. Dr. Dapper (as he shamelessly titled himself) happens to be one of the two people to whom The Last Unicorn is dedicated. So I knew something back then, fifty years ago, even though I wasn’t about to acknowledge it.

  I’ve written about mermaids as well, not to mention giants and spooks and dybbuks—and even two dragons: one permanently pissed-off (at me, as it happens), and one soft-hearted dragon, who loves a princess as chivalrously as any knight. I have an old tenderness for all manner of shapeshifters (always wanted to be one, I guess); and a particular being of my own, called a chandail. And then there’s the Shark God, his human wife, and his two troubled, demigod children. I’m proud of them all (especially Mrs. Eunice Giant, who declares indignantly to Jack, “I’m not either a monster! I’m big, yes, and I’ve got dietary needs, like you or anyone else!”) Looking back, I love them all.

  But the unicorns are . . . not special to me, not exactly, but something I’ve never had a word for. Olfert Dapper, of all people, hears it—or something as close to it as I can come—from a Puritan woman named Remorse Kirtley, citizen of a colonial settlement called No Popery, who has held a unicorn’s head in her lap, and looked into its eyes.

  “The unicorn set me free, can you understand me? Freed me from the world I have always been taught, and always believed, was the only world for a Christian soul. While I sat there and held him, he came into me—how else should I put it, dear Doctor?—he came into me and showed me the magic beyond poor, crabbed No Popery, the beauty beyond the sour singsong God of my worship . . .”

  They are beautiful and mysterious, far past our understanding of either word. They have been, over the endless millennia, sometimes curious—even fatally so—about humans; sometimes—rarely, and only according to their own imagining of that word—generous. But they do not know love, and they are incapable of regret. Only one unicorn was ever born who could regret. It cannot be said to have served her well.

  And perhaps that is why—speaking as a human being old enough to envy unicorns’ freedom from such things—they still haunt the corners of my failing eyes, and of my dreams. Of all the beloved shadows, they remain, to paraphrase, of all things, the poignant old Rodgers & Hart song, “too beautiful to be true,” leaving us all, as in the song, fools for beauty.

  It’s a little difficult for me to present an unbiased view of the stories included in this anthology, because so many are either by old friends of mine, like Patricia McKillip, Karen Joy Fowler and Nancy Springer, or people whose work I’ve admired for years, such as Garth Nix and Caitlín R. Kiernan. (I think “The Maltese Unicorn” just might be my favorite story of the collection. And I’m particularly delighted that its publication has raised money for Boon Lott’s Elephant Sanctuary, among other wildlife charities. Elephants may not be unicorns, but they are magical in their own right, and splendid as well. Unicorns aren’t splendid, or any other such word. As I’ve been trying to say through this foreword—indeed, through my entire odd career as the Unicorn Guy—at the last, there is no word to describe what a unicorn is. No word that I know, anyway.