She came out of the heart of winter. We cowered around our dying fire, starving and dangerously tired. The wind howled like wild, hungry animals around our cottage. In the ultimate darkness between midnight and dawn, the wind grew very still and quiet before bursting with one final fury. A great finger of wind came down our chimney and smothered our last flame. We shivered. My brother cried. In the grey light before dawn we fell asleep.
I reluctantly woke when she crashed through the door. My dreams were warm. I knew I was dying, but it was the only way I could get warm again. I took her to be a spirit of winter, all glowing-white with flowing silver hair and icy green eyes. The rising sun behind her dazzled me. She touched her golden, spiraled horn to our sodden fire, bringing the hearth-flame back to life and warmth instantly. We cried warm, salty tears as life clawed it's way back into our frozen bodies. That was the first lesson we learned about keeping company with a unicorn.
Her name, she told us, was El.
Every day, as the morning star rose to herald the sun, El would wake me. She would rub my face with her soft cheeks and blow on my face if I was lazy. She didn't care if I had school or not. For El, it was the dawn that was important and we should always greet it.
El stayed with us after winter though we were poor and often busy with chores and repairs from winter's harsh hand. Her reluctance to leave soon became apparent. As winter waned into muddy spring, El grew wider and wider. Her stomach was impossibly huge and I worried that she would be hurt if her babies grew too much more inside of her. El assured me that everything was perfectly normal. On that stormy first night of spring, moonless and so dark, El gave birth to three sweet and gangly unicorn foals. They had eyes as blue as very deep water and golden nubs where their horns would one day grow. They were so white they glowed.
One of her foals was a son named Mica. Mica with his crystal blue eyes and proud nub of a horn; his gangly yet always graceful way of running to me when I came into sight. Mica and I spent the endless days of summer riding, running, and hiding in Hunt's Forest. I fed him my laughter and he shared his unicorn kisses. Time made Mica bold. He listened to songs I could not hear and dreamed dreams that made him wild. Wild like any other unicorn. El watched us. I could not tell what she was thinking but I wondered if she would ever stop Mica and I.
On the first day of autumn,
the sun was hot, but a chilly breeze blew in from the north. In it
I caught the scent of ice and as I brushed my hair back from my face, I
felt wetness on my cheeks.
There was no warning.
No chance, even, to say farewell. I saw the hunter a split second
before his arrow pierced my beloved Mica's heart. Mica twisted in
pain, and then was gone . . . forever. Only frost-charred grass marked
the place where he had last been.
Like a mother, El folded my grief into her own, then took it all away before the first snow. Such is the way of unicorns, to seek the heart of winter. To leave. This calloused earth is not really a home to them.
I still live by Hunt's Forest.
I look for unicorns in the blizzards of winter and the golden dawns of
summer. I can no longer see them but I am sure they are there.