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The Dark Unicorn
Published by Royal Fireworks Press

Shortlisted for Best Children's Book,
1999 Saskatchewan Book Awards

Instead, his thoughts drifted back to the letter he'd received from his mother that morning--until he suddenly found himself playing a solo, which ended with an unmusical squeak. Kilrik must have been cold, too; he'd cut off an entire chorus.

Not looking at the musicmaster, but very much aware of his glare, Nels hastily dismantled his flute and tucked it into its padded wooden case as the other four musicians hurried away. He got up to follow, but of course it wasn't going to be that easy.

"I thought you told Strom you were a musician," Kilrik said, his sarcasm more biting than the wind.

Nels kept his eyes down. "I am a musician, Master Kilrik."

Kilrik prodded him in the chest with the tip of his baton. "Musicians keep their minds on their music and their eyes on their conductors! They don't embarrass the ensemble before an audience!"

Nels glanced around the courtyard. The actors had disappeared into their warm wagons the moment they'd finished their bows, and the crowd--if that wasn't too grand a term--had dispersed into the inn and surrounding houses seconds later. They'd been playing for no one but themselves.

Nels knew better than to point that out to Kilrik, though. "I'm sorry, Master."

"And just what were you thinking of?"

"A letter from home, Master." The instant he'd said it, Nels regretted it--but the damage was done.

"From your mother, no doubt. Didn't you say she taught to play the flute? Perhaps that's why you play so badly!"

Nels clenched his fists.

But Kilrik kept on. "Well, boy, this isn't three drunken fisherman banging spoons together. This is a professional ensemble, and I run it. I won't have anyone in it who isn't pulling his weight. Do I make myself clear?"

Nels had made the mistake once of telling Kilrik what he thought of his "professional" ensemble, whose other members were an arthritic harpist, blind in one eye, a drummer who couldn't tell noise from rhythm, a cornet player Nels had yet to see sober, and a tone-deaf fiddler. Now he knew better. Kilrik had never forgiven him, especially since their employer, Strom, had overheard him and laughed uproariously. "Maybe I should make him musicmaster, Kilrik!" he'd shouted.

Since then Kilrik had taken every opportunity to make Nels's life miserable--and had succeeded admirably. He nodded submissively and turned to go.

But Kilrik still wasn't finished. "And when you write back to your fishwife mother, tell her someday I hope to be able to teach you how a flute is really played!"

Nels spun and leaped at him. Kilrik yelped as they crashed to the ground, and cowered beneath Nels's pummeling fists, yelling for help.

Strom shouted from his wagon and Nels suddenly realized what he was doing and jumped up, stumbling back from the fallen musicmaster. Kilrik whimpered, hands covering his face and blood oozing out between his fingers: that must have been his nose Nels had felt squish so delightfully.

Strom shouted again, and the door to his wagon opened. Nels grabbed the flute case from his stool and clattered across the courtyard's cobblestones and out the open gate.

He skidded to a halt in the street, looked frantically right and left, then heard Strom's voice again, furious now, and dashed right, plunging into the first alley he came to and then doing his best to lose himself in the twisting, narrow lanes of Nimgar.

He succeeded only too well; as full darkness descended on the city an hour later he still wandered aimlessly, not knowing how to even begin to make his way back to the Dancing Swan.

And he would have to go back, he knew; running away had only made things worse. His back itched as he thought of facing Strom after having attacked the musicmaster. Not that Strom had any great affection for Kilrik; far from it. But Strom did have great affection for what he called discipline, dispensed with a whip.

Yet Nels had nowhere else to go. Home was a hundred miles away, and the letter from his mother had made it clear he couldn't go back there.

He stopped in the flickering light of a lone torch at the corner of two otherwise pitch-black streets, sat down with his back against the blackened bricks of a boarded-up building, and opened his flute case. From a pocket in the padded lining he drew out the bit of parchment the travelling peddler had delivered that morning, and read it again, imagining his mother's musical voice...

"My dearest son: I hope you are well and happy in the new life you have chosen. I know that you love music; it must be wonderful to be able to perform with others who feel the same way." Nels thought bitterly of Kilrik and the drunken horn player.

"We are all well, but we miss you deeply. However, I feel perhaps The One has guided you well, for we are hard-pressed to feed and clothe your younger brothers and sisters. Your older brothers are of course helping your father fish, but we really need another boat, and we cannot afford to have one built. Pinna and Kars have talked of building one themselves, but it would take them many weeks, and then who would help your father? And worse, the catches have been very poor this year. Your father is very worried; he says the fish have all fled north.

"Rika is of an age to marry, but Gull Rock is so small; there are no eligible men. She is a comfort to me, however, and works hard; she is now teaching Lila, Biki and Miki to read, and I am teaching Tami, Tisha and Hanissa music.

"I have faith the fishing will recover; I'm sure everything will yet be all right. In the meantime, I am thankful that you, at least, have found a place in the world where you can do what you most want. I pray to the One daily for your safety. Your father sends his love, as do your brothers and sisters. I know it is difficult to find travelers who will come as far out of their way as Gull Rock, but you would make my heart glad if you were to write.

"With utmost love, Mama."

Nels swallowed hard. He swiped his woolen sleeve across his eyes, then carefully folded the letter and put it back in the flute case.

"I have to get some money back to them," he whispered. But how? His allowance from Strom was so meager that he'd saved only a few coppers, and he needed new boots before the winter closed in.

He'd have to ask Strom for more. His back twitched again at the thought. To think he had once liked, even admired the man!

Nels had been one of just a handful of people, mostly children and women, who had come out to see the troupe when it had passed through Gull Rock more than a year ago; there might have been more, but on such a fine day, fisherman had better things to do than idle away hours watching a play.

The actors performed The Wizard Wacundra and the Great Gondwain, a tale of a thousand years ago, when legend said magic still lived in the Heartland. In the play Gondwain, with Wacundra's help, drove back the evil hordes of the Blood Empire, but used up all the magic in the Heartland doing it, which nicely explained why there wasn't any around any more.

Having seen the play a hundred more times since joining Strom's troupe, Nels could barely remember how he had felt that first night, as monsters and demons and warriors came to life and battled before his very eyes. He'd longed to be Gondwain the Great. He remembered looking south, where the Wall was a mile-high black curtain in the sky, and thrilling to think that he had just seen Gondwain create it.

At fourteen, Nels had already known all too well how hard-pressed his parents were to support their large family, and had known, too, that the life of a fisherman was not for him. Pinna and Kars, his older brothers, loved the sea, but Nels found far more interest in his father's tales of far-off parts of the Heartland, where his father had soldiered in the King's service during the Desolation Rebellion, or the things his mother had learned during her days as a servant of a minor noble, before a dashing young soldier swept her off her feet and took her home with him to Gull Rock.

One of the things his mother had learned had been to play the flute; to play it so beautifully that when she left the noble's service, he gave her a beautiful silver flute as a wedding gift. In Nels she found an avid student, and on his tenth birthday she passed the flute on to him. After than there were many days when he should have been helping his brothers mend nets or sails that he'd spent instead seated on the towering stone cliff that gave Gull Rock its name, playing a piping counterpoint to the piercing cries of the seabirds and the bass-drum rumble of the surf below.

Strom's troupe seemed like a door to him, a door to a larger world, a door that might close and never re-open if he didn't seize his chance to go through it. That night he sneaked out of the house through the window of the room he shared with his brothers and set off through the darkness along the road to Petra, the troupe's next destination.

He'd found the troupe the next morning and recognized Strom at once, though out of make-up the burly, bushy-haired giant now harnessing a horse to his wagon would not have been anyone's vision of the great hero Gondwain.

Still glowing with his memory of the play, Nels went straight up to him. "I want to come with you."

Strom didn't stop tightening cinches. "Do you, now."

"Very much."

Strom gave the leather a final tug and leaned his back against the huge horse, which flicked an ear but otherwise ignored him. "And why should I want you?"

"I can play the flute."

"Let's hear you, then."

Fingers trembling, Nels set the flute case on the ground, drew out the instrument and fitted it together. Afterward he could never remember what he played, but apparently it did the trick: after a couple of minutes Strom waved his hand. "That'll do. All right, boy. Happens we could use another musician...but you'll have to do more than that."

"Anything, sir!"

"I also need someone to keep my wagon clean and look after my horse. Can you handle that?"

"Yes, sir!"

"Then climb in back. We've a long day ahead."

For a week Nels had enjoyed the time with the troupe as much as he'd thought he would; Strom made him work hard but seemed affable enough, and Nels had not yet played enough with Kilrik's "orchestra" to recognize its (and Kilrik's) incompetence.

But at the end of the week, the troupe stopped in a village fifty miles up the coast from Gull Rock, a village with, as Strom himself put it, the personality of a pickle. Few people came to see them; fewer still paid.

Around midnight the door to Strom's wagon crashed open, jolting Nels from deep sleep on his pallet at the back. Strom stormed in, bringing with him a strong smell of sour wine. Nels, heart pounding, lay perfectly still as Strom rummaged around in the chest under his bed for a few minutes, then suddenly swore and strode over to Nels. He grabbed Nels's arm with meaty, vice-like fingers, and snarled into his face, "I had a bottle of brandy in my chest, boy. Where is it?"

Nels almost gagged. Whatever vintage Strom had been imbibing, its stale bouquet didn't go well with the garlic sausage and onions Strom must have had for supper. "I--I don't know, sir!"

"Liar!" Strom threw him to the floor and reached for the horsewhip hanging over his bed. "I'll teach you!"

The whip descended, hissing, and Nels suddenly jerked awake, staring around at the darkened streets for a moment in complete confusion, still lost in the memory that had somehow become a dream. He wiped icy sweat from his face with a shaky hand, then got up and started walking again, knowing it was only too likely the dream would become reality when he returned to the Dancing Swan.

He had moved out of Strom's wagon the next day, but he still had to keep it clean, and any time Strom had been drinking and found the slightest thing out of order--and sometimes even when he didn't--Nels could expect a beating. His back was scarred from repeated "lessons," and he wondered if Strom had ever been a slavemaster. He grimaced. "He's a slavemaster now," he muttered.

He smelled a sour, gassy stench, and a moment later emerged from the alley onto the bank of the river, which slid by dark and oily in the starlight. At once Nels regained his bearings. Somewhere off to his left had to be the bridge they'd crossed on their way to the inn; once on that road he knew he could find his way back.

He walked slowly along the bank, listening to the gurgle of the sewage-fouled water and thinking of the clean waves of the ocean pounding against the Gull Rock cliff. Suddenly light flared on the far bank. A man shouted hoarsely; another answered; then the light vanished.

Nels stared at the spot where it had been. Strom, searching for him? Surely not, not on that side of the river. "Nothing to do with me," he murmured.

He walked on, and, all too soon, reached the bridge. There he paused, gazing up at the stars. At least they were the same here as at home.

Footsteps pounded across the bridge toward him, uneven, stumbling. Out of the darkness loomed a man, panting for breath. He crashed into Nels, who grabbed him instinctively, and felt something warm and sticky on the man's back. "You're bleeding!"

"Crossbow bolt...went right through." The man coughed, then drew a bubbling breath. "Help me, hide me!"

"What?"

"For the One's sake, you've got to--to--" He choked, and sagged to his knees.

"I'll go get help," Nels said desperately. "The city guard..."

"No time!" The stranger reached up and pulled Nels down to him with surprising strength. Even in the darkness, Nels could see dark blood dripping from his mouth. "Take this, take it and run!" He jerked something from a string around his neck and thrust it into Nels's hand: a leather pouch with something hard and angular inside.

"But what..."

"He must have crossed the bridge!" someone suddenly cried. "There's blood on the stones!"

"Run!" the wounded man pleaded. "Keep that safe. Someone will come for it. Now go!" A spasm gripped him, and he doubled over, choking.

"But..."

Footsteps clattered on the bridge, and Nels gave up arguing and fled, wondering as he did so if he shouldn't have stayed behind, tried to help the hurt man...

But then he heard a gurgling scream behind him, cut short, and knew it was too late. Whoever had been chasing the man had found him.

Nels wondered how long it would be before they found him.

#

Updated November 29, 2001