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I was born as many were in that age: Motherless and penniless, raised by a father trying in vain to pass along a dying trade. For the first ten years of my life I was the "fletcher's boy."
Once I turned eleven, I was a "freak."
My father loved me, bless his soul- no matter the names they called. Held me close when they screamed at him that I should be burnt for my heresy. How my heart aches missing him now.
The fletcher's boy, it turned out, attracted the weirding things. Sprites, ghouls, unsightly and otherworldly things congregated around me. When I grew angry or upset, the windows rattled in their frames and sometimes cups and cutlery would rise on its own power.
The weirding boy, the freak, reduced now to this, I was. Still I toiled to be a good fletcher for my father, his smile the only comfort in my cursed life.
I recall one night, in the woods. I was used to being in the woods by night, checking my traps for the diurnal beasts that fell for the baits I set. Raccoons, squirrels, giant spiders, all lovely specimens to make leathers from for practice, to please father. I set fifteen small traps for the squirrels and such, but on a lark, I always set one massive trap, big enough to catch a bear. My father laughed at this, of course, but in my childish conviction, I thought a bear must surely impress him the most.
In my eleventh year, I ran to the massive trap like always, squinting in the dim light, feet crunching leaves, hoping to hear the massive trap squirming with a quarry exhausted. I would have even have been happy to see the net broken from an escaped beast, just to know my trap worked.
That fateful night, the trap was full, but instead of pleased, I was struck terrified.
Staring at me with utter disdain, hatred and bestial vengeance was the blood-crimson eye of a unicorn. I stopped in my tracks, frozen with icy fear, feeling every molecule of blood turn frigid and sluggish in my veins. The unicorn made a single snort and I started as if struck.
Everyone knows, from the townsfolk to the most esoteric of the woodsmen, never to trap a unicorn. Unicorns, though they seldom speak, are as wise as a man and have ways of their own. My father told me that in the same way we are raised above the apes, the corns are raised above their horse brethren, with great minds and dominion over their surroundings.
I hastened to open the net and free this creature staring so evilly, my knife shaking in my hand, tears in my young eyes. The unicorn sneered as if mocking me, threatening me in its voiceless tongue. To my dismay and shock, my swaying hands slipped and I gashed the unicorn across the front leg, my mistake earning me an ear-splitting yell as the pure-white stallion kicked me to the ground, sloughing off the net, digging into the ground with its hooves, as angry as anything I had ever seen, more furious than a trapped creature, furious with intellect to know how I had wronged it.
"Blood for blood," hissed the Unicorn in its clumsy voice, knowing our words but having seldom used them. It lowered its head and I knew it was going to strike. Unicorns are faster than horses, more lean but more agile, narrow and low to the ground. It ran at me in a white bolt of thunder and I closed my young eyes, expecting to finally meet my mother.
A thud was heard. In the dark, I heard the slump of a body on the ground. Had I fallen? Was I now separated from my body as a ghost? Had I died painlessly, crossing into the etherium of death?
No.
"Blood for blood," the Unicorn hissed, limping away. I heard it go and until I heard no more, I did not open my eyes. When I did, I wished that I were dead.
On the ground before me, lying like a pile of pelts, was my father, his last moments spent thrusting himself before my attacker. He looked ghastly, white and pale, foul-smelling, his face pallid and rictus-pulled into a scowl of fear that I had never seen before on a man. A great hole pierced through his chest, the width of my arm, the unicorn’s volley. Though he was hideous and bleeding, I wept over him, and when I woke, it was day.
To make short a long sordid story, I was thrown into the town's meager jail with even more meager furnishings, the bed and latrine taken away from me in an act of cruelty. I was forced to defecate in the corner and feast on rotting bread. The guards just laughed when I begged for water. Eventually, the bread no longer came and I missed every fetid crust.
They planned to starve me. They thought I killed my father in those woods, and I thought I may as well have, throwing myself in danger like I had. The weight of death hung over an eleven-year-old boy, naked in the dirt on the ground of the cell, the guards no longer even looking at me for entertainment.
I escaped death again when a rattling came at the bars of my cage. A guardsman, perhaps? My mouth was dry and razor-rough, I could only meekly gasp up at the blurry shape. Water poured down from on high and I thought once again they were urinating on me. When instead of acrid urine, I tasted cool water, I began to drink like a dog.
"Get up, boy," came a gruff voice from behind a great beard. A man in brown robes and a pointed hat gazed down at me with sympathy, offering me his hand. I would have taken the hand of a demon in that moment, and from my dingy cell he lifted me into a new life.
Five miles north, at the royal castle, the King's Sorcerer had heard tell of the weirding boy and his abilities. What I had taken as a curse I learned was my gift, what my countrymen had once threatened to kill me for turned into a great skill to be fostered.
That day, I gained a new father. The Sorcerer, my mentor, my master.
I grew to be a boy of Sixteen, my magic growing by the day, my master impressed beyond words with me, yet always pushing me to be more, to do more. He laid all the expectations of his post at my feet, telling me one day I would be the King's sorcerer myself. My pride and apprehension swelled in tandem.
The King, however... Was odd.
To be kind, he was a portly and stately man. To be unkind, he was fat and bossy. To be truthful, he was a monster. I had met the unicorn and seen the scorn in its eyes, and in those beady black eyes of the King's, I saw the same malice.
I had met fat people before, the portly head guard, the kindly washer woman, but their roundness had been pleasant and sweet, belying a joviality or an importance of post. The King's obesity was born of gluttony, ravenous and unnatural appetites. Appetites that it was the Sorcerer, my master's job to sate.
Often, the Sorcerer would vanish for weeks, leaving me with his assistant, a kind young lady a few years my senior to study the ways of the potions and tinctures. She would explain to me that the King had requisitioned an exotic meal of magical quality and my master had to travel to gain its access. My master was his errand-boy.
I asked her "Why does the King use our master's boundless skill for trivialities?" To which she laughed bitterly, more bitter than the herbs we ground in the mortar.
"He hungers," she finally said.
I accepted this nervously. I noticed how the peasantry, of which I used to call myself one, scraped and bowed before him, begged for help, for miracles my master could furnish. Always the King refused them.
"The Sorcerer is too busy for you," he would always hiss from his throne, spilling from its sides as he groaned.
In my twentieth year, nine years after my father's death, my master fell ill. I had long surpassed his teachings and in his eyes I was his greatest treasure. I knew how far I had come and how far I had gone from that night in the woods and I shed grateful tears.
"I am already two-hundred-and-six, my boy. Don't weep for a life well lived," he said. So he did, but I wept anyway. How cruel to lose two fathers in one life.
After his death, the King came to see me. Before that moment, I was an ant to him, an insect not worth a second glance, but now I was his new meal ticket.
"Are you worth anything?" the King asked. I did not know how to respond, stupefied.
"I know all my master knew," I managed to reply.
"A test, then," the King said with a cruel smile, stroking his beard, caked in rotting food. "Bring me the head of a pixie."
In my great power, in my wonderous new art, I was to furnish the King with new exotic foods as before my master had. I felt angry, but seeing the sharpness of the guardsmens' blades about me, I stilled my tongue. I set off on an expedition for pixies the very next day.
I did not know the land as well as my master, so finding pixies was a difficult task. It took me a fortnight to return to the king, a fortnight spent in tents in the woods, magic fire licking my hands for warmth, staking out mushroom rings for pixies to appear. They were wily, avoiding my traps and tricks for days. Mocking me. Eventually, in my desperation, knowing not how to capture them, I wildly reached out my hands to catch them from the air, finally squeezing my grip around a squirming, swearing blue nude little creature. In triumph, I snapped its neck, silencing it.
It felt ghastly to carry the tiny corpse with me, preserved as it was with ice magics in my pack. When I returned to my liege, he grinned a sordid smile and when I gave him the broken corpse, he grinned wider, his slavering maw unhinging as he ate the pixie raw, hissing in grim satisfaction. His satisfaction was always so short-lived. Seeing him chaw, I gagged. I nearly evacuated my own lunch, seeing the dead creature vanish as sustenance into his unreal jaws.
"Good," he sighed simply after finishing his meal. "I shall call again upon you."
Pixies, fairies, nuckelavee, chimeras, griffons, all I sought for my King over the coming years. Each time I killed one, I grew more and more ill, more sick to death of his appetite. I thought many times of fleeing, but my lover, the Sorcerer's potion brewer, warned me of the King's wrath. I feared him. I felt as if I had been spared the fear of my father in order that I may experience it fresh at the hands of this monster, eating monsters.
One day, I grew so sick of my King, I could no longer keep it within. I screamed at him, pointing and nearly crying, demanding and begging I be allowed to use my powers for something other than as a magnet for his next supernatural meal. First, he laughed, but as I continued ranting and raving about the misery and poverty of the peasants, he grew more and more angry and grim.
He struck me across the cheek and with astonishing speed I had never seen him exhibit, he beat his Sorcerer bloody of face. I gagged and choked on my teeth as I didn't dare fight back, his guards looking on, unflinching.
"If you don't get me my meals," he hissed, "I will make you my next one."
From that day forth, there was a guard stationed outside my quarters by night. I was miserable, unable to fight against him, even in my otherworldly power. I had not been able to practice, run so ragged by his dreadful chores, reduced from noble philosopher to less than a cook.
In my thirtieth year, years after being browbeaten and bullied into silence, I was summoned to his quarters as usual for my orders. I had grown used to my task by now, jaded to its horrors, but what he asked me made me pale even so.
"I want to drink the blood of a unicorn," he said.
I swallowed thickly, shuddering with grim familiarity. I tried to dissuade him to no effect, he simply laughed. I told him the horrors, the way they were intelligent, their wise, evil eyes and shrewd ways. I warned that angering them would be tantamount to angering the neighboring lands, to angering the gods above.
"I have heard tell unicorn blood can make a man immortal. Surely that would interest you, a man of natural philosophy?" He laughed, knowing his words were but a pretense. He wanted to be King forever, an undying master of fate. I saw his eternal life spreading before me and I was chilled more than ever.
The King no longer left his chair. He was obese beyond measure, his grotesque body swelling and pulsing with odd diseases he would not let me nor the witch treat, wearing each boil and pustule obtained like a badge of honor, proud of the way his appetite had scorned his body. I didn't disobey any more, hanging my head and packing for the trip, after so long, back to my hometown.
Those in my hometown didn't recognize the grown-up weirding boy, bowing deep before me, peculiar expressions on their faces. Fearful as before but reverent now, the innkeep waiving my fee for a night’s stay in a mumbled apology. I selected a room looking out at my old abandoned house, the maw of the forest behind it looking as dark as the King's.
That night, I crept from the inn and into the woods, silently setting my trap, putting my boyhood net to shame. Magic circles on the ground beneath a piece of choice cooked beef on a silver platter, the scent wafting through the woods, sure to draw the carnivorous equines from their hiding places. I made myself invisible on the branch of a tree and waited solemnly.
I waited three nights, and on the third, I finally saw it. The white flank of a unicorn, its horn glistening like fine steel in the dim light of the moon. With a seizure of my heart, I took note of the heavy scar on its leg. No- Impossible! This was the same specimen who had felled my father. In the branch of the tree, I was horrified. In that branch, I was once again eleven, sobbing sorrow-tears for my father. It wasn't until the unicorn stood up from its meal to go that I gained my wits and activated the magical barriers, trapping it in an ephemeral cube of my own design.
I leapt down from the tree, making myself known and his rage was clear. I levitated the beast closer, letting myself stare it in the eyes. From within its shimmering prison, it couldn't hurt me any more. The townsfolk had not recognized me, but oh, *he* did. He stared at me with a grinning vindication, as if he did not fear his own capture, as if letting himself be taken was a grand prank upon me.
I was to take the creature home alive, of course, so its blood would be fresh, so I took it back to the castle, floating high above in its prismatic prison, townsfolk coming from all over to witness the Sorcerer and his levitating unicorn. All the while, the unicorn simply stared cruelly at me with that equine grin.
News reached the King, and as soon as I came home, he was there to greet me, standing and ambulating for the first time in years, animated by his hunger, drooling in great puddles on the floor. The unicorn didn't take his eyes off me as I was ordered to release the beast. I was not even fully in the castle's foyer before the king dove like a panther at the unicorn, his teeth tearing flesh from bone as soon as they were able.
Watching this sordid display, I took note that the unicorn didn't so much as flinch. In fact- It laughed. It laughed and laughed, its voice mingling and gagging as the King devoured him alive, lapping his blood from the carpets, rendering his tongue flecked with viscera and soil.
In its final breath before my King got to its lungs, the unicorn wheezed:
"Blood for blood."
Sleep didn’t come that night, only images on the back of my eyelids of the King on hands and knees, crunching bones in his teeth.
When the sun rose and shook me from my waking nightmare, I was summoned to the King's quarters. What there I witnessed shocked me but did not slake my terror. The King, his face unrecognizable. He was no longer fat, but thin- Healthy! Younger-looking than me. The way I gazed in awe pleased him, though his eyes remained beady and evil
He thanked me for my service and told me for my great skill, he would grant me one wish within his power. Jewels, riches, land... I wanted none of it. I begged him to free myself and my lover, free us from his service and live off the land, left alone. He agreed, saying now that he was immortal, I, his sorcerer, had no use. With a wave of his hand, I fled with my witch-wife without packing. We settled in a cottage together, tending a field and growing herb-cures as physicians for the nearby town.
We thought we were through with our King… We were wrong by miles.
In the coming years, the realization of the curse I wrought became clear. Crops in the kingdom withered inexplicably. Rain no longer came. Rivers dried. The castle crumbled. Great wagons gathered the dead each week, carrying them to chalk-covered graves. The immortal king ignored every sign, caring not that his own kingdom dwindled, cursed by his own ingestion of forbidden flesh. The unicorns, in their power, knew what I had done and were cursing the Kingdom for it.
Each night, I was too wary to sleep, hearing hooves on the roof of our cottage, seeing red eyes in the night. All with that wailing warning on the wind:
"Blood for blood."
Eventually, the King's staff came to me. One by one, they begged me to break the curse on the Kingdom, to undo the eternal life given to the King. Defying him, they implored me one-by-one, his advisors, his diplomats, his begging and pleading guardsmen, kneeling at my feet. Moved by their plight, I agreed, to make right the crime I had a hand in.
I steeled my nerves and from my cottage one night under the full moon, I walked with willingness into the woods, letting my feet lead me, until I was lost intentionally. Soon enough, silver-white shapes shimmered about me, unicorns appearing in numbers I had never surmised were possible. They settled around me, making my escape impossible. They all had eyes for me and bore the same dreadful smirk that their fallen comrade wore.
"Blood for blood," they whispered in tandem. A singleton emerged from the cattle and regarded me, his voice more clear and practiced than his brothers. Their leader, perhaps? Their ways alien to me, the frontrunner spoke further.
"You have killed one of our own," it said unto me, hundreds of eyes freezing me in place. "In return, we have cursed your kingdom."
"How may I undo this curse?" I begged, falling to my knees, the weight of guilt starving me of courage.
"Blood for blood," it promised, lowering its head. Its brethren nickered and howled halfway between man and wolf, rendering me immobile with shameful fear.
"Take mine," I wheezed breathlessly, closing my eyes. I felt the debt my father once had paid me- His life for mine. I knew I owed the world my life, in exchange for taking his. I was at peace, perhaps for the first time in my entire lowly life. The weirding boy repaying this great debt not just to these creatures, but to life itself. It is against a man’s nature to give up his own life, but I knew it must be done. I knew I was to die that day.
Yet… To my shock, the unicorns laughed. Their leader raised its head and spat at me, a cold saliva on my cheek running down to my robe.
"We don't care for your blood," the unicorn sneered. "You, the killer of fairies and sprites, you the murderer and slave to your despot… Hunt for us, now. Do you understand?”
I did. I felt a sudden chill, a great horrid realization passed over me, a realization far worse than my own death. I nodded my head and stood, and once again, I was that boy cowering before his trap in the woods. The flanks of the unicorns parted and I ran. I ran past my home, a madman now, barefoot running across hill and vale, eyes wild and unfocused, my life a cold shadow only. I ran and ran and ran. That night, the dark days would end…
The kingdom's misfortune changed overnight. The crops returned, the warm rains came in great lovely sheets, and before long, there was more bread and more spice to go around. The advisors and the guards invited me back to the castle and I came happily. Months passed and it seemed that things were brighter now than ever. A curse lifted and then some.
Through their fortune, no one asked where the king had gone. The advisors never looked into his vanishment, the guards never questioned it, the diplomats took over the statecraft henceforth, as our everlasting King had no heirs nor even a wife.
The question "where had the King gone" remained unspoken on the lips of all but the most naive children. When asked, their parents would only laugh with lighthearted happiness and say, "Everlasting life is not the blessing he thought it would be."
Some nights, in the pale full moon, silver-white shapes are seen dashing from tree to tree in the woods, their horns dripping bloody. Though they don't hunt, the unicorns are always well-fed. Though they keep to themselves, they seem happy with their woodland lives. They want for nothing, their blood feud sated, crimson-red blood dripping from their maws, no matter how the rains fall or how sparse the deer in the woods grow.
Some nights, in the pale full moon, silver-white shapes are seen kneeling over a howling, screaming figure, blood catching in his lungs, a man with everlasting life, naked and horrified on the forest floor, carried from place to place on great parades of unicorns, their horns holding him aloft, piercing his soft organs. The unicorns' everlasting meal, his body repairing itself just in time to be consumed again by their blunt, dull teeth. Everlasting life- Everlasting prey.
Decades, centuries after his name had been forgotten, those who heard his howls knew not to pity the man screaming and crying for death to come. When asked why he was held in such a state, the solemn answer came without sympathy:
Blood for blood.