THE UNICORN’S PHYSICIAN

THE UNICORN’S PHYSICIAN

Episode One: The Impossible Patient

The storm reached Farthing Farm shortly after eight.

Dr. Edwin Farthing knew the hour because the clock in the hall had struck eight times before the wind tore a branch from the old elm beside the house and threw it against the kitchen window.

Edwin looked up from his supper.

“Wonderful.”

Rain hammered the glass. The shutters on the western side of the house knocked against their catches, and somewhere outside a horse complained loudly.

Edwin placed his fork beside his plate.

“I heard you, Bess.”

The mare answered with another nervous whinny.

Edwin pushed himself from the table.

At forty-one, he had learned that animals rarely complained without reason. People complained because they enjoyed hearing themselves do it. Animals generally had the courtesy to require something first.

He pulled on his coat, took the lantern from beside the kitchen door, and stepped outside.

The rain immediately soaked his trousers.

“Wonderful,” he said again.

Farthing Farm occupied forty acres of rolling pasture bordered on the north by woodland. It had once been a handsome property. Edwin remembered Isidora insisting upon that description when they first purchased it.

Handsome.

She had refused to call it old.

Old meant failing.

Handsome meant someone ought to repair the roof.

Edwin had repaired the roof.

Eventually.

The barn stood fifty yards from the house. Edwin lowered his head against the rain and crossed the yard.

Bess stood inside her stall with her ears pressed back.

“There now.”

He approached her carefully.

The mare pushed her nose against his shoulder.

“You have survived rain before.”

She snorted.

“So have I, though neither of us seems pleased about it.”

Edwin ran his hands along her neck and checked her eyes. Nothing appeared wrong. The other animals were restless as well.

All of them were looking toward the northern pasture.

Edwin noticed that at once.

He raised the lantern.

“What is it?”

Something cried beyond the barn.

Edwin stopped.

It was not a horse.

He knew horses.

He knew cattle, sheep, pigs, dogs, foxes, deer, and most of the creatures that had reason to wander onto an English farm. Twenty years spent treating animals had given him an extensive education in the sounds they made when frightened, mating, angry, hungry, injured, or simply determined to prevent a veterinarian from enjoying his evening.

The cry came again.

Longer this time.

Pain.

Edwin took his medical bag from the shelf.

“You stay here.”

Bess stared at him.

“An excellent suggestion for both of us.”

He went anyway.

The northern pasture had become mud beneath his boots. Rain blew sideways across the lantern glass. Edwin followed the fence until he found a section broken inward.

He crouched.

Something large had crossed it.

He lifted the lantern.

There was blood on the wood.

Fresh.

Edwin touched it with two fingers.

Warm.

The cry came again.

Closer.

He climbed through the damaged fence.

“Easy!” Edwin called. “Whatever you are, I have no intention of making matters worse.”

He immediately considered the stupidity of reassuring an unidentified animal during a thunderstorm.

Lightning flashed.

For an instant the pasture became white.

Edwin saw something lying near the hedgerow.

He hurried toward it.

The animal struggled when he approached.

“Easy.”

Edwin lowered the lantern.

“Easy now.”

Then he stopped.

His medical bag slipped from his hand.

The animal was white.

Not the dirty cream of an old mare or the pale gray commonly mistaken for white. Its coat was white even beneath the mud and blood covering its body.

It had the build of a horse, though more delicate through the legs and heavier through the chest.

There was a horn growing from its forehead.

Edwin stared at it.

The rain continued falling.

The creature breathed hard.

Edwin did nothing.

For perhaps the first time in his professional life, Dr. Edwin Farthing had encountered an animal and possessed absolutely no idea what to do next.

“No.”

The creature tried to rise.

Its front legs buckled.

Edwin moved instinctively and caught its neck before its head struck the ground.

“Easy!”

The unicorn shuddered beneath his hands.

Edwin stared at the horn.

He touched it.

Solid.

He ran his fingers to the base where it emerged naturally from the skull.

“No.”

The unicorn released a weak breath.

“I agree.”

Edwin examined it.

The impossibility of the animal would have to wait.

It was bleeding.

That he understood.

Three deep wounds ran across its right flank. Another cut crossed its shoulder. The flesh around the injuries was swollen, and the animal had lost enough blood to make its weakness dangerous.

Edwin opened his bag.

“All right.”

The unicorn watched him.

Its eyes were dark and intelligent.

“You may be impossible tomorrow.”

He removed a cloth.

“Tonight you are a patient.”

Getting the creature to the barn required nearly forty minutes.

Edwin used a rope loosely around its chest and supported as much of its weight as he could. Twice it collapsed. Twice he waited for it to recover.

When they finally reached the barn, Bess went silent.

Every animal did.

Edwin brought the unicorn into an empty foaling stall and closed the doors behind them.

“There.”

He removed his coat.

“Now we determine whether mythical animals object to stitches.”

The unicorn watched him.

“That was humor. Isidora claimed I was poor at it.”

The name escaped before Edwin could stop it.

His hands became still.

For a moment there was only rain against the roof.

He looked toward the empty doorway.

Six years.

It had been six years since Isidora had come through that door carrying a basket of apples and complaining that Edwin cared more for a lame donkey than he did his own supper.

Six years since another evening.

Another walk.

Another storm threatening beyond the trees.

Isidora stumbling from the woods.

Blood on her dress.

Edwin closed his eyes.

“No.”

He returned to his patient.

Science required attention to what was present.

The past was not present.

He cleaned the unicorn's wounds.

They troubled him.

Three cuts.

Parallel.

Deep.

Not bites.

Claws.

“What did this to you?”

The unicorn turned its head toward the closed barn doors.

Edwin followed its gaze.

“Something out there?”

Its nostrils widened.

Edwin looked again.

Only rain.

He worked for two hours.

He cleaned each wound, stitched the worst of them, wrapped the shoulder, and examined the fractured horn. A section near its tip had cracked but remained attached.

Edwin resisted the temptation to remove it.

He had no idea what consequences that might produce.

By midnight, the unicorn was resting.

Edwin sat on an overturned bucket and opened his journal.

Unknown equine specimen. Female. Approximately fifteen hands.

He stopped.

Then crossed out unknown equine specimen.

He stared at the page.

Finally he wrote:

Unicorn.

Edwin almost laughed.

“There. I have officially lost my mind.”

The unicorn closed its eyes.

“You might at least object.”

It did not.

Edwin remained beside it until sleep finally overtook him.

He dreamed of the woods.

Isidora stood between the trees.

She wore the blue dress he remembered from their first summer at the farm. Her red hair hung loose around her shoulders.

“Isidora?”

She looked at him.

Edwin stepped toward her.

“Isidora.”

Her lips moved.

He heard nothing.

He moved closer.

“What are you saying?”

She whispered again.

A word.

A name.

The trees groaned around them.

“Say it again.”

Isidora's expression changed.

Fear.

Not for herself.

For him.

She looked beyond Edwin.

Something moved between the trees.

Edwin turned.

Two eyes opened in the darkness.

He woke.

The lantern had nearly burned out.

Edwin sat upright.

The unicorn was standing.

Its entire body was rigid.

Its ears pointed toward the barn doors.

Then Edwin heard it.

A slow scrape against the outside wall.

He stood.

Another scrape.

Heavy.

Deliberate.

Edwin took the lantern and approached the doors.

“Who's there?”

Silence.

He opened one door several inches.

Rain had stopped.

Moonlight covered the pasture.

Nothing moved.

Then Edwin saw something near the distant fence.

Large.

Too large for a dog.

Too low for a horse.

It stood motionless in the darkness.

Watching the barn.

Edwin raised the lantern.

The creature moved backward.

For one brief moment, he saw two eyes reflecting the flame.

Then it disappeared into the woods.

Behind him, the unicorn trembled.

Edwin closed the door and slid the heavy bolt into place.

He stood there listening.

Something roared deep within the forest.

Edwin looked toward the unicorn.

The animal stared back at him.

Whatever had wounded it had followed it to Farthing Farm.