How Not to Poach a Unicorn

Twenty-One

The boy was very happy. Every day he learned something new.

The nice wagon people taught him new words and new songs all the time. He liked singing; it was his favourite. They also ate different things almost every night. He liked trying new foods; it was his favourite. He also liked to travel, too. The world kept changing as they moved. He liked to see new things; it was his favourite. Another fun thing was when Kish and Kazé taught him to hunt. He liked hunting with them; it was his favourite.

Tonight, though, Kish and Kazé stayed with the wagons to talk to Cari. He was happy that she wasn't dead anymore, but it wasn't as fun to hunt alone. He forgot his loneliness when he found a new kind of track to follow. It looked a lot like a bird track, but it was bigger and deeper than the bird tracks he had seen. He was excited to find a new kind of bird and eat it. He knew that not all birds were good to eat, like pigeons, but most were very tasty.

He stalked it through the darkening jungle, just like Kish had shown him. He listened to the noises of the bugs and the birds to tell him where the big animals were, just like Kazé did. The noises were strange, they were quieter than normal. Usually things got noisy when they were scared, warning everyone of the danger. He made the face that Prag did when he noticed something unusual, but he didn't know what to do with it so he kept stalking.

The tracks were so easy to follow that he hardly needed to track by scent, which was good, because the scent was faint and strangely more like a sword than any bird that he knew. Slowly he crept through the vines and ferns, growing excited as he neared his prey.

He caught sight of it through the tangle of leaves and froze. It hadn't noticed him yet, or it wasn't afraid of him. It was a strange bird, or maybe it wasn't a bird at all. It was grey and shiny and smooth and as tall as a man. It was awkward, though, like a bug he had eaten once. It had two knees on each of its legs and four arms, each with one long, curved claw as big as Kish's swords for hands. Its head didn't have ears or a nose or a mouth, just two large domed eyes on the sides of it.

He was pretty sure that it wouldn't taste good. Well, not any better than any other metal that he'd eaten. But there might be something tasty on the inside, so he went in for the kill. He lowered his body, shifted his feet, and pounced.

The metal bug-bird was fast. It managed to get all four of its saber hands between the boy and its head before his sword landed. The boy's blade sliced straight through the metal, though, and the head slid from the thing's shoulders.

Turning to glory in his latest kill, he found that the bug-bird hadn't fallen down like it was supposed to. It had turned and it started beating the boy frantically with its blunted hands. He had seen this happen before so he stepped back and waited for it to finish thrashing. It didn't slow down at all, though. It kept on trying to hit him and walking after him in its strange and jerky way. He grew frustrated with the thing and beat it until its torso was little more than a crumpled pile of scrap. Only then did it relent and go silent.

He decided that it was the sort of thing that the others might want to see even if it wasn't good to eat, which he had verified that it wasn't. So he carried the bits back to the wagons. He was sad at the reaction. Usually everyone was very happy when he brought a thing back or sad when it wasn't good to eat. This time they were scared and worried, but not like the time he had brought them an alligator that wasn't all dead, more like something very bad was going to happen.

The boy stood holding the twisted remains of his trophy for all to see. Each observer in turn sorted out the mangled bits in their mind and reassembled the pieces into their original form. As they finished the mental jigsaw, an unpleasant wave of recognition washed over the onlookers.