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The great transparent claimers stood silently, watching, waiting, as if content to allow us our
moments of final decision. But their impatience could be felt in the air, a soft purring, like the death
rattle always in the throat of a cat. “Come back! Not for me...don’t do it for me...it’s not fair!”
Paul’s unicorn turned his head and looked at us.
My friend of starless nights, when we had gone sailing together through the darkness. My
friend who had walked with me on endless tours of empty places. My friend of gentle nature and
constant companionship. Until Lizette, my friend, my only friend, my familiar assigned to an
onerous task, who had come to love me and to whom I had belonged, even as he had belonged to
me.
I could not bear the hurt that grew in my chest, in my stomach; my head was on fire, my eyes
burned with tears first for Paul, and now for the sweetest creature a god had ever sent to temper a
man’s anguish...and for myself. I could not bear the thought of never knowing--as Paul had known
it--the silent company of that gentle, magical beast.
But he turned back, and moved to them, and they took that as final decision, and the great
transparent claimers moved in around him, and their quick glass hands reached down to touch him,
and for an instant they seemed to hesitate, and I called out, “Don’t be afraid...” and my unicorn
turned his head to look across the mist of potency for the last time, and I saw he was afraid, but not
as much as he would have been if I had not been there.
Then the first of them touched his smooth, silvery flank and he gave a trembling sigh of pain.
A ripple ran down his side. Not the quick flesh movement of ridding himself of a fly, but a
completely alien, unnatural tremor, containing in its swiftness all the agony and loss of eternities. A
sigh went out from Paul’s unicorn, though he had not uttered it.
We could feel the pain, the loneliness. My unicorn with no time left to him. Ending. All was
now a final ending; he had stayed with me, walked with me, and had grown to care for me, until that
time when he would be released from his duty by that special God; but now freedom was to be
denied him; an ending.
The great transparent claimers all touched him, their ice fingers caressing his warm hide as
we watched, helpless, Lizette’s face buried in Paul’s chest. Colors surged across my unicorn’s body,
as if by becoming more intense the chill touch of the claimers could be beaten off. Pulsing waves of
rainbow color that lived in his hide for moments, then dimmed, brightened again and were bled off.
Then the colors leaked away one by one, chroma weakening: purple-blue, manganese violet,
discord, cobalt blue, doubt, affection, chrome green, chrome yellow, raw sienna, contemplation,
alizarin crimson, irony, silver, severity, compassion, cadmium red, white.
They emptied him...he did not fight them...going colder and colder...flickers of yellow, a
whisper of blue, pale as white...the tremors blending into one constant shudder...the wonderful
golden eyes rolled in torment, went flat, brightness dulled, flat metal...the platinum hoofs caked with
rust...and he stood, did not try to escape, gave himself for us...and he was emptied. Of everything.
Then, like the claimers, we could see through him. Vapors swirled within the transparent husk, a
fogged glass, shimmering...then nothing. And then they absorbed even the husk.
The chill blue light faded, and the claimers grew indistinct in our sight. The smoke within
them seemed thicker, moved more slowly, horribly, as though they had fed and were sluggish and
would go away, back across the line to that dark place where they waited, always waited, till their
hunger was aroused again. And my unicorn was gone. I was alone with Lizette. I was alone with
Paul. The mist died away, and the claimers were gone, and once more it was merely a cemetery as
the first rays of the morning sun came easing through the tumble and disarray of headstones.
We stood together as one, her naked body white and virginal in my weary arms; and as the
light of the sun struck us we began to fade, to merge, to mingle our bodies and our wandering spirits
one into the other, forming one spirit that would neither love too much, nor too little, having taken
our chance on the downhill side.
