The Virgin and the Unicorn

For a small town in Maine, the sighting of a unicorn is a rare event. Even Beeny Gardner, with 18 years of experience of life, knew that; so did his junior-college classmate, Elias Denton. But how do you argue with a photograph, in black and white, depicting a familiar clearing in the woods not far from town-and there, emerging from the trees, the impressively horned, pure white beast, prancing toward the camera?

"Fact is, I'm lucky to be standing here," said Dick Lane, gesturing with the photograph at the small campus green. They were standing under the big pine trees at the edge of the green. Dick, one grade ahead of Beeny and Elias, and almost 21, had an authoritative way about him. "These beasts are notoriously dangerous," he said, leaning closer to the others. Hunters used to be pinned to a tree by that horn, right through the chest. And that's the end of you."

"But unicorns don't even exist," said Beeny uncertainly, studying the picture. "They're mythical."

"Correction," said Dick. "Correction, Beeny. They are thought to be extinct-maybe ever since the time of Noah's ark. Because Noah screwed up. But are we sure that the flood covered the whole world, even here in America? Even Canada? Are you sure, Beeny? And exactly what is in this picture?"

"Well, a photograph is a photograph," said Elias.

"Right, I didn't draw this," said Dick patiently. "Is this a drawing?"

The two younger men shook their heads.

"But okay," said Dick. "Okay, people will ask all these questions, won't they? That is exactly why I'm showing this to you, and only to you, because we have to capture this thing. Then: bang! No more questions."

It sounded like an order. "Why should we do it ourselves?" asked Elias. "Isn't it dangerous?"

Dick ruefully shook his head. "Why? Only because if we capture this unicorn we'll be about the most famous guys in the whole country. We'll be on television. We'll be totally rich. We'll be in history."

"It's too big," said Beeny doubtfully. "It's as big as a horse. It could horn us right through." He tapped his chest.

"It could," said Dick. "It will, if you don't know how to catch a unicorn. Did you know that there are books about how to catch a unicorn? I'll show you. Right after classes."

Elias shook his head. "We can't do it ourselves."

"No," Dick said agreeably. "No, we can't. We need a virgin to help us."

Elbows on the big oak table, the three leaned forward over the open book. Dick had had to tell Beeny twice to keep his voice down, and stop giggling, although Dick had chosen a table way at the end of a long aisle at the back of the library, far from the checkout desk.

"How come she has no clothes on top?" asked Beeny, again almost starting to wheeze with suppressed laughter.

Dick gave him a solid thump between the shoulder blades. "Shut up, Beeny!" he whispered. "That's just the way it is. Don't you see what it says? A 'bare bosom'-that's her breasts. Unicorns are very unusual. Look, it says they might suck on them. It's like a baby. It's like the baby Jesus, for God's sake. Do you laugh at the Virgin Mary, Beeny?"

Elias was studying the lush, full-color photograph. In the somber, dark-paneled halls of knowledge, surrounded by books and the musty perfume of old paper and wood polish, Elias had become quieter still. Finally, Dick prodded him: "Elias, who does that remind you of, that virgin?"

"Well, maybe of Melanie Frost—a little, anyway. But not the hair all wrapped on top of her head that way, with gold hairpins."

"Yes!" It was a whispered shout. Dick seized Elias's arm in his excitement. "Poor crazy Melanie! It looks just like Mad Melanie, doesn't it?"

Elias was still looking at the photograph. "My dad says it's cruel to call her 'Mad Melanie.' He says she has an illness."

"She's goes to a mental hospital," said Beeny. "Of course she's crazy. Why doesn't she go to college? She was real smart in high school."

"It's still an illness," said Elias patiently. "It's a mental illness. And she goes to school at the hospital."

Dick cut in: "But listen, Elias, you know her, right? Do you think you could get her to help us?"

"Oh, my God!" moaned Beeny, earning another thump from Dick.

"Would she, Elias?" Dick asked.

"Like this?" Elias nodded at the picture. The fair-skinned girl, a heavy skirt in richly patterned reds and blues about her hips, was naked above the waist. Apparently serene, she stood against a tree, arms and shoulders pulled back, maidenly bosom uplifted, as though her hands might be bound behind the tree.

"Elias," Dick said, "Elias, this summer...at Quarry Hole...you saw, right? You said."

"What?" asked Beeny? "What are you talking about?" Another thump from Dick.

Elias looked at Beeny, then at Dick. Dick nodded as though he understood. "But you saw, right? And she didn't mind?"

"You saw her actual breasts?" asked Beeny.

"So would she help us, Elias? When can we ask her?" Dick had stepped between Beeny and Elias, leaning very close to Elias, his back shutting out Beeny. "But listen, Elias, there's one thing. We have to know or it's very dangerous. Do you know what a virgin is?"

"Oh, God. Of course I do," whispered Elias. "I'm eighteen."

"Okay," said Dick gravely. "Because if she isn't, then..." He placed the tip of his index finger against his solar plexus and gave a sharp push, pretending to convulse his torso as he did.

"What?" asked Beeny urgently, plaintively, straining to peer around Dick's rude back.

"This is amazing, fabulous, unbelievable," said Dick. He kept shifting his weight from foot to foot, back and forth, rocking, as though marching in a dream. Almost as rhythmically, he slapped the canvas bag against his leg. Beside him, Elias was motionless, leaning against a tree. As for Beeny, Dick had told him that there was nothing doing because Melanie wasn't interested.

It was a perfect early September afternoon, warm and calm with the soft, filtered sunlight of autumn in northern Maine. The trees had begun their long, infinitely gentle precipitation of leaves, a red and yellow shower that flickered in the sunlight, then winked out on the woodland floor.

They had been waiting 15 minutes, well back from the road. They could see the bus stop, but only just, and no passing driver would see them, Dick was certain. He turned to Elias. "You're sure her parents don't expect her home? No one does?"

"Nope," said Elias. "They both work. She's home alone a lot. She is eighteen."

"Yes, but..."

"Dick, she isn't that way. Haven't you seen her around town? For years, right?"

"Sure, but never smiling or anything. Like hypnotized. Does she talk to anybody? Except to ask for a milkshake, that sort of thing?"

"My dad says that's part of her illness."

"And so she can't go to college, even junior college?"

"Well, sometimes she hears scary voices. Angry like. Melanie told me not very often. But that's why she goes to school at the hospital, not with us."

"When is her bus?"

"Afternoons at 2:45, it's supposed to be. It's late today."

Dick rocked a little harder. "I hope she comes. I hope to hell." Then he asked, "Elias? Do you think she'll like me? I'm older, but she was in my classes at school until sophomore in high school."

"She doesn't talk, that's all." He suddenly heaved away from the tree and took a step forward. "I hear it."

A few seconds later, they saw the bus flash orange and black across the openings between tree trunks. There was a quieter interval, then the growl of acceleration. Elias whistled once, sharply, a swift dart of sound.

Bright patches of clothing appeared and disappeared several times among the black tree trunks. She seemed to come slowly, almost sauntering. Once, Dick started forward, but Elias laid a hand on his arm, and whispered: "She's coming."

Then she was coming toward them, as though out of the sea, each step stirring the ocean of yellow leaves. She wore a plain cream-colored dress, hemline high, her legs bare above low boots. Her chestnut hair, tied with a black ribbon, fell to her waist. Like the girl in the book, she was fair, eyes blue, the skin of her face almost translucent. Because she wore no makeup, her lips, too, were pale and her eyelids bluish. It was an indoor look, a look of inside places, inside worlds. She gazed toward them: not at them, but not away, not really anywhere. But when Elias waved, she raised her hand, palm out, and let it drop.

"Hello, Melanie," said Dick. She did not look at him. "Hello, Richard."

"Now, he's called 'Dick,'" said Elias.

"It's all right, it's all right," said Dick. "Hello, Melanie," he repeated. And she said, again: "Hello, Richard."

Elias looked uneasy. "All right," he said abruptly. "Are we ready?"

"Wait," said Dick. "For God's sake! How are you, Melanie? What's your summer been like?"

"Why?"

"Nothing, just wondering."

"Why?"

"We should get going," said Elias.

"Okay," said Melanie.

They walked swiftly, Dick leading, Melanie next, Elias last. Dick traveled confidently, sometimes on worn paths, sometimes through the trees. They no longer heard traffic, just the whispering, crackling, chirping, sighing concert of sounds that is silence in the woods. They said almost nothing, except, once, Dick asked: "Okay? It's pretty far in the woods."

"Okay," said Elias, from the rear.

For a few hundred yards, the underbrush thickened, nearly barring their passage. But Dick kept surging against the tangled branches, striving to open a way for Melanie. Elias reached forward to catch the branches, preserving the passage that strained to whip shut.

Then, with a last surge, they broke through, Dick holding the brush till Melanie and Elias were in the clearing. It was no bigger than a good-sized living room, sunlit, open to sky. At its far side, the clearing's edge was free of brush. Between the big trees, like sentries around the clearing, they could see open forest, the dappled sunlight on the autumn carpet.

"This is where I saw it," said Dick. They glanced around the clearing, as though the unicorn might still lurk there. Dick said, quickly, "It probably comes here a lot. We're deep in the woods, so people haven't seen it."

Elias was still looking around. Finally, he said: "Well, it's good you got that photograph, otherwise... Did you print that on your computer, Dick?"

"Sure, all my photographs. What else?"

Elias shrugged. Then, he said, "I showed Melanie the photograph -right, Melanie?"

"What do we do?" asked Melanie, her voice toneless.

"Well," said Dick, hastily, "Elias and I have to be out of sight. Completely. But not far away, okay?" He slapped the canvas bag against his thigh. "We have a rope, for when the unicorn falls asleep. You told her, Elias?"

"I told her everything."

"And about the picture in the book?"

"I told her."

"I take my clothes off," said Melanie. It was a statement. Dick watched fascinated as she quickly pulled down the zipper at the back of her dress, leaned forward, and tugged the dress over her head. As she bent forward, her hair touched the ground. She had straightened up, now in her bra and panties, before Dick could interject: "Just the top."

Melanie was folding her dress with considerable care. She leaned over to place it beside a tree. "Well, it's a dress," she said. "That's what I wear to the hospital. We have to. No jeans or anything."

"It won't matter," said Elias.

Dick was staring fixedly at Melanie, who briefly reached behind her back, head lowered, and then lifted off her bra. She bent to put it on top of the dress. When she straightened up, Dick stared at her breasts. She looked back at him, now, for the first time.

He reached into the canvas bag. "We have a rope. We have to tie you. And another rope, for the unicorn, when it comes." He walked to a large tree at the edge of the clearing. Its bark was dark gray, rough. He held out the rope. "Okay?"

When Melanie did not answer, he took one of her wrists, tying the rope with competent, quickly executed knots—snug, but not tight enough to hurt. Melanie leaned back against the tree while Dick walked around it with the rope, arrived at her other side, and took her unbound wrist. He pulled the rope until her arm was tugged back against and around the truck, then pulled back the other arm and tied that wrist.

He came to stand beside Elias in front of Melanie. She seemed outrageously naked, her brief panties no more than a swatch of white at the apex of her thighs. She was tall, with long legs, willowy and delicate. In the sunlight, her body was achingly pale. Dick's hands were shaking slightly; he clutched the canvas bag in both hands. When he had finished tying Melanie, he had quickly put the bag over his belly and held it there.

"Look, Elias, I've got to ask. You know why. It's my responsibility."

"Elias turned to him. "What, Dick?" he asked, frowning.

"Have you touched her? Is she?"

Melanie said, abruptly, "He's touched my breasts..."

"Melanie!" Elias said, expostulating.

"But I'm a virgin, absolutely." She added: "I have a hymen, too." She looked at Dick. "Do you want to touch my breasts, Richard?"

Dick moved forward as though entranced, the bag clutched over his crotch. Only when he was near her, almost touching, did he drop the bag and lift his hands. He cupped her breasts. His eyes were closed, as though awaiting her scream. When it did not come, he just stood there. As though unconsciously, his hips swayed forward until he was pressed against her. It lasted only a second; he eyes opened and he jerked back, stepping away. At the same instant, he ducked down to seize the bag. When he straightened up, he saw that Melanie's gaze was right where he hoped it would not be. But her face was expressionless.

It felt as though they had been lying in the leaves all day. Dick kept shifting, squirming to reposition himself; just as often, he whispered to Elias not to move or make noise. They were out of sight of the clearing. Elias had insisted, and Dick had had to agree. If they could see Melanie, then the unicorn could see them. That was too dangerous. But how would Melanie alert them if the unicorn came, and if it fell asleep, perhaps after sucking her breasts, as myth had it?

"But only pregnant women have milk in their breasts," Melanie had protested. She looked down at her nipples.

Dick had had no reply, but Elias said, confidently, "It doesn't matter. The unicorn is like male energy. It likes virgins."

"You read that?" asked Dick. "That's true?"

"I read it," said Elias.

That settled, the best plan they could devise for a signal from Melanie was that she would begin to sing-softly, at first, like a lullaby-when the unicorn had fallen asleep. Gradually, she would sing louder, if the unicorn didn't awaken. Elias and Dick would have to listen carefully.

Now, Elias looked at his watch, turned to Dick, and said: "That's it. It's five. Melanie has to be home by six, latest. And that's if her parents aren't early."

The two rose quickly, as though relieved to be moving, and crept toward the clearing. They bent low and stepped with exaggerated caution; but there was no walking silently through the leaves.

At their first sight of Melanie, they panicked. She was slumped at the waist, head hanging forward, hair almost touching the ground, only her bent neck and back bright in the sun.

Dick reached her first, but hesitated. Then Elias ran up, panting. He knelt and lifted her head. Her face was drawn, jaw slack; dirty rivulets stained her cheeks. She had been drooling, a little, too.

Dick fell to one knee in front of her. He pushed at her shoulder, lifting her further. "Melanie!" he called, urgently. "What happened? Did you freak? We were right near the whole time."

Melanie slowly shook her head. Her eyes were open, but unseeing; the lids were swollen. Her tongue moved over her lips, licking the spittle. A little strength seemed to return to her body. She slowly straightened up. Dick couldn't help it; he stared again at her breasts. "What, then?" he asked.

"It came," she said.

Dick and Elias looked at each other as though she had claimed that a choir of angels had transported them, woods and all, to the Holy Land.

"Oh, Melanie," said Elias, dubiously.

Dick frowned and asked, "What did it do?"

Melanie began to cry, adding new tears to the dried channels of dirt on her cheeks. She seemed to gasp for breath. Then she said. "It spoke to me. It was awful."

"You didn't see it?" Elias asked, gently, wonderingly.

Melanie shook her head. "Its voice was like...like a drum, maybe...horrible. Like a gong. It shook my whole body." Then, she said, quickly, "Let's go. Get out of here."

Dick jumped up to untie her. When her wrists were free, she sank to her knees, head forward. Dick stared at the pattern left by the bark in the soft flesh of the bent back. He said, hesitantly: "You don't have to tell us what it said."

"I can't," said Melanie dully. She began to straighten up. "It said horrible things to me. Told me to do horrible things." She groped for her clothes; Elias darted over to pick them up. "But I can't," she said. "I can't do them."

When she had dressed. Dick said, "What will you do about your face?"

Melanie absently ran a hand across her face. "Wash, when I get home. Wash, I guess."

Dick took her arm, sliding his hand beneath her upper arm, then taking hold of her wrist, supporting her. He walked slowly, as though with an invalid. Even so, the walk back to the road seemed shorter than the walk to the clearing. Still in the woods, but in sight of the bus stop, Dick asked: "Can you go on from here? We should let you go."

Melanie nodded, but did not start walking. Finally, Dick asked: "Will you tell your parents about this? Or the hospital?"

Melanie looked at him. Her eyes focused a moment on his. She spoke as though offended. "No," she said. "No." She went on shaking her head.

Dick's body slumped as though heaving a great sigh of relief. "That's great, Melanie," he said. He added, "Remember, you'll never see that place again. It's all as though nothing ever happened, right?"

Melanie was staring straight ahead. Her words came heavily, as though against a weight. "I have to," she said. "It told me. I have to go back."

Dick sat with his back against a tree, knees bent up, forehead resting on them. At his feet was the canvas bag. He listened for the bus-half listened. She would find him; it was the same place as last time. He rolled his forehead slowly on his knees. Elias had not come. Their conversation had been short, Dick standing with Elias at the end of the latter's driveway.

"We've got to do it, Elias! You heard her. We go back with her, or she tells the hospital—the whole thing."

Elias had doggedly shaken his head. "You go back. You. It was your unicorn." He looked at Dick. "Did you ever believe in the unicorn?"

"Now, what do you mean, Elias?" Dick took a threatening step closer.

"Okay, but you printed it from the computer, didn't you?"

"So?"

Elias looked away. "You were awfully interested in Melanie. I saw, for God's sake."

"So, we don't go. She tells, and you know what happens?"

"Yup," said Elias. He had turned and walked up the driveway. Without turning, he had said: "That's why you're going."

Dick's head jerked up. The bus! He rolled to his knees and stood up, grabbing the canvas bag. He tugged up his blue jeans, but that didn't help. That wasn't his problem.

She wore a different dress, light blue and summery, its hem at mid-thigh. The boots were gone. "Hello, Richard," she said.

"They called me that back in grammar school."

"I know," said Melanie. "I always liked it."

"Melanie..."

"We should hurry. If I get home late..." It was last thing she said. They walked in silence to the clearing. The day was lovely, with soft sunlight, the odor of nuts in the air. Leaves dropped in serene unhaste, like grains of sand in an hourglass.