Part 6

Part 6 - The Unicorn Queendom and New Atlantis, Bermuda Triangle

Finn watched a dolphin emerge from the portal and recognized Lord Skagen’s feigned gait. It confirmed his suspicion that his mother was setting him up to fail. This had been implied from both the tone of her message and her refusal to allow his subsequent appeal. The phrase “neutral emissary” implied that Finn was anything but. He was experienced enough to reflect on his own feelings and realize that this was true. How strange it was, after cycles spent seeking a cause, he should retire his skepticism to dedicate himself to the future of the two races. Skagen would assess Caroline and reach his pre-destined opinion. With Skagen’s voice added to the Queen’s, the Court would not ratify a request to heal Caroline. 

Yet all was not as dire as it seemed. His mother’s message had given him time to think. As commanded, he had not contacted Caroline, but he had kept track of her. She was still hosteled at the beach accommodation in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea. The family had taken several excursions, but no effort had been made to return Caroline to the ocean. Finn had reflected on the emissary’s arrival. If his mother was aligning against Caroline, she would send someone willing to boost a negative view. So his task was to change the emissary’s opinion. No not his task, Caroline’s. He could not warn her about the emissary, so he would have to rely on her intuition. The task was hard, but not impossible. There was hope.

‘Your Highness,’ Skagen said, his breathing labored.

Finn bowed more deeply than courtesy required. No damage in laying on some flattery. ‘My Lord. I welcome you.’

Skagen looked landward. ‘Indeed? We shall see whether that stands up in time.’

Finn flinched. So Skagen was openly hostile. There would be no subterfuge to his reasoning. He considered pressing Skagen for the real reason his mother had aligned herself against him. Anger, like an invisible jellyfish tentacle, stung him. He must stop! Focus. Caroline was the critical issue. He had to tackle Skagen first. His mother must wait.

Skagen snapped his beak impatiently. ‘I see no reason to dally.’

‘Right,’ Finn said. ‘She sleeps now and is in her dreamworld. Will you follow me in?’

Skagen rolled to indicate approval. They let their bodies sink to the sea floor, eliciting puffs of sand from the silky bottom. The drone of an outboard engine wafted around them. Finn estimated it was two clicks south polar from them, moving sunrise at twenty strokes per lap. Fast. A fishing charter out of Fort Lauderdale. Stay hidden, little brothers and sisters he thought. He slowed his heart rate, quietened his mind and relaxed his soul. He reached out psychically, feeling Skagen’s presence behind him. His presence flew straight and true, out of the sea and over the beach to the window of Caroline’s bedroom. Here he stopped. She lay on the bed, curled in the fetal position her father always placed her in, breathing rhythmic. Her eyelids were closed, but beneath them was movement.

Finn’s essence rotated. He saw Skagen regarding Caroline. He sensed Skagen’s disgust, but also a small amount of pity. Skagen was broadcasting the former (for Finn’s benefit surely), but the later was sub-surface. Good! Pity was something Finn could work with.   

‘Would you like me to go first, my Lord?’

Skagen’s essence bristled like a bloating puffer fish. ‘Absolutely not! She will have no warning from you.’

Finn had anticipated as much. He rotated back to look at Caroline. Skagen’s essence swept past him and dove into Caroline’s head. Finn followed at a gentler pace, not wanting to disturb the sleeping girl with a spine of fright. As his essence began to interface with Caroline’s dream state, he thought May the Great Ocean inspire you, Princess. 

**********

Skagen had always had an acute sense of how the political tide was ebbing. When Lady Rey had tasked him with reducing the human’s psychic explosion to the mere mechanical, he had seen an opportunity to maneuver himself closer to a potential new Regent. This assumed that Rey would be able to mount a revolt against Valeena, but he did not muddy his mind with the ifs and buts of that future. It had been enough that Rey would owe him a favor. Then came Valeena’s offer. How glorious! With one play he could advance himself on both sides of the board at the same time. It was ability meeting circumstance. In accomplishing the task of convincing the Court that the girl was a fake - a lie he was quite comfortable making, since he believed that humans were doomed anyway - he advanced his own agenda. Who would win out of Valeena and Rey he did not know. Before this, he believed Valeena the stronger. With Prince Finn at her side they presented a formidable team. But with a rift between mother and son, the chance for Rey to push her anti-human agenda increased. If Rey was smart, and she was, she would begin to circulate rumors at Court of the heir to the throne’s obsession with this human girl. Stressing that it was a girl was vital. It was Rey’s luck that the human had been female. 

Enrapturement by a creature of the ocean for a human. The old tale, told by dolphin mothers to frighten their pups; the price she paid for her love. Said to socialize pups to the otherness of humans. The horrible conditions they existed in. To be subjected to gravity’s full force without the encasing support of the Great Ocean. How pups cried and bleated. How he himself shivered at the idea of leaving the ocean’s embrace. Pushing this ancient fear was simplicity itself. Adult dolphins amused themselves at how pups responded to the tale, but deep down (and he knew this, because he felt it) they still believed. They knew the tale held some truth, since it had come from their unicorn ancestors. Accusing Finn of enrapturement, of becoming corrupted, would break his role at Court and leave Valeena alone. Rey was ruthless enough to exploit this to its fullest potential. All that was needed of Skagen was to make the report. What happened now was immaterial. Best get it over with, so he could broadcast the human’s deception and get back to Court. 

Skagen interfaced with the human forcibly. Let her mettle be tested early. If she screamed and woke up, all the better. It saved him from dealing with her dreamworld. But she just made a soft mewing sound. So, it would be done the hard way then. Skagen dropped through typically meagre psychic defenses. 

The sun, curse its blinding light, shone in an azure sky. Skagen looked beneath him at the land: green, forested and lush. Disgusting. He did not bother to check above him for Finn. He descended with the speed of a sinking cannonball. Once on the ground he could concentrate on his form. He was in Caroline’s dreamworld, so his form followed her designation. He was surprised to find himself transformed into one of the legendary fire-breathing bearers of winged destruction. His skin was a mottled green, with gold glistening at the scale joints. He flapped his wings experimentally. Down-draughts of air blew dust as he rose several lengths into the air.

‘How do you like it?’ 

Skagen flexed his neck right. Finn stood to his right, shaped as a black unicorn. 

‘It is an interesting form,’ Skagen said. In truth, he was delighted. Dragon tales had been his favorite stories as a pup, especially ones where humans got roasted. That Saint George had a lot to answer for though. How did she know? Had she read him as he entered her dream? This was a perplexing mystery. He had expected to be a unicorn like Finn. He had shielded himself to the maximum as he entered her. Perhaps his childhood memories had not been sufficiently secured? He would have to practice that. This was a good lesson learned.

‘Where is she?’ Skagen asked.

‘In her castle.’ Finn flicked his head in the direction of a symmetrical blur on the horizon. ‘If you would like to test those wings, I can run and meet you there.’

Skagen felt longing in his wings’ muscles. They desired to fly, required it. An overwhelming urge to lift off flowed through him. He felt his heart (immaterial though it was) quicken. ‘Yes, yes! Very well, I will meet you at the castle.’ He did not wait for Finn’s acknowledgment. He lifted his wings to their full extent and thrust them down, whilst leaping into the air. Gravity be damned, this was marvelous. He beat his wings in rapid succession. No muscle memory aided him, it was just the right thing to do. Up he rose, with increasing speed. A tilt of angle and forward propulsion occurred. He adjusted his tail for balance and aimed in the direction of the castle. Beneath him, he could see Finn picking up speed. So, it was a race. As a dolphin he could never keep up with the Prince. But here he had what he needed: strength and power. Skagen grinned. This Princeling was going to get a foretaste of what it would feel like to lose this war. Skagen thrust his neck out and powered himself forward. Within twenty strokes he had caught up with Finn, and in another twenty had passed him. 

The distance to the castle was not as great as it had appeared. Either that or the human was warping, something even dolphins did in dreams. No-one wanted to spend their dreamtime swimming from one adventure to the next. The precious break from reality needed to be condensed whenever possible. Skagen arrived by a sufficient margin to land by the castle’s gate and arrange himself in a suitably smug posture. Finn blasted into the clearing in front of the castle and skidded to a stop. Motes of dirt landed on Skagen’s tail, completely ruining the effect. 

‘Well run, My Lord,’ Finn said, his flanks heaving.

‘Touché,’ Skagen said, shaking the dust off his tail with a casual flick.

Skagen turned to see a figure approaching from the gateway. From a distance it looked like cluster of jellyfish merged together into a globulous gang. Then, as it approached, it resolved into a sea-cucumber. The animal floated in front of them.

‘Greetings,’ it said. ‘I am Simonale, Princess Caroline’s steward.’ It looked at Finn. ‘Welcome back Prince Finn. It is a pleasure to see you again.’

Finn coughed. 

The sea-cucumber turned to Skagen. ‘Lord Skagen I presume.’

A knot of worry formed inside Skagen; right where knots of worry enjoyed tying themselves; somewhere he could not untie them. He tried to ignore it. ‘As advertised, it seems. Please take me to Caroline.’ He deliberately dropped the honorific to see what effect it would have. 

‘This way My Lord,’ Simonale said, and started back towards the castle’s entrance.

Skagen turned back to see Finn regarding him. 

‘What?’ Skagen said.

‘Manners do not cost you anything. I trust you will be more deferent to our hostess.’

Skagen ignored the remark and walked after Simonale. The dragon’s body moved with a prancing gait that belied its bulk. Such was the power of dreams. He passed beneath the gate, noting the portcullis suspended above him. Perhaps this was a joke, and it would come crashing down on this neck. This would throw him out of the dreamworld with a shock worse than the one he had caused when he’d entered her. Revenge perhaps. But nothing happened. He stepped into the courtyard and was joined by Finn. 

The Simonale construct grew a miniature arm and beckoned them towards steps on the opposite side of the courtyard. ‘This way, My Lord. Her Highness awaits.’

Skagen took the lead, crossed the courtyard and moved up the steps. The doors were closed. They were made of rough-hewn oak, dotted with metal studs. The wood had seen action. Perhaps someone had attempted to breach these defenses in the past. He knew he could blast them open but that would be bad form, so he raised one a front leg and knocked. The doors rang not with the resonant boom of wood and air but a chime, lighter than a ship’s bell - more akin to struck crystal. How fickle the girl was.

The doors swung open with a mousey squeak. 

Skagen stepped inside. Beams of light angled down to the stone floor through narrow, arched windows. The odd banner hung here and there; single-colored decorations. Tables and benches were pushed back against the walls, leaving a clear path. He looked to the end of the hall. There he saw a grand staircase, with its dais at the top. On the dais was a reclining throne and draped over the throne was a white unicorn.

**********

The presence of a thirty-foot dragon in her reception hall bothered Caroline not as much as the sensation she felt on seeing the black unicorn, Finn stride in behind it. There was a confused fluttering somewhere in her southern regions; a new feeling, strange and unwelcome. She needed to concentrate on receiving the dragon. Mysterious feelings triggered by Finn would have to wait. 

Caroline arose and descended the steps. 

Finn said, ‘Caroline, may I present Lord Skagen.’

She dipped her head to the dragon, allowing her horn to touch the floor. ‘You are welcome in my house,’ she said, not wishing to inflect with honorifics until she was aware of his status. She waited, head bent, eyes lowered. 

Nothing happened. 

Why she did not move she could not judge. Something told her that this was a test of sorts, that whoever broke first must somehow be prepared to give way to the other. A test of wills was something she was good at. She took it every time she wanted to do something that her disability dictated she should not. Coming to the ocean was the latest in a series of battles won. Each time she had used the magic to influence them. Now she had to repeat the process, but from inside her stronghold. Surely this was a position she could manipulate. She gathered her strength and channeled it down her horn. She let a glow out, examining the room in its light. She could see the forms of Finn and Skagen, but their shapes were blurred as if being looked at through a gauze. Connected to each shape was a pulsing line. These were sinewy and flexed out of time with each other. Mostly they glowed with a wan light, but every few seconds a pulse would travel from beyond into the two forms. She pushed herself into the pale stream of Skagen’s connection.

Caroline rested on the bottom of the ocean. She felt the pressure of water; it encased and pressed her from all sides. Her first instinct was panic. She made to clamp her hand over her mouth. She discovered her hand was a fin, and her mouth was a snout. Then she realized that she did not feel the building vacuum that came from holding your breath. She knew this sensation well. At times she had fancied to end her life by self-asphyxiation. But even if she forced every piece of her will, even used the magic on herself, she could not defeat the explosion of her lungs as they overrode her mind.

‘Ahem.’

The voice came from behind her. She rotated half a turn and saw a dolphin floating a few feet away. It was old, even she could tell that, with scars over many parts of its body. Where she would picture a healthy dolphin as all clicks and antics, this one looked like it would fall apart if she poked it.

The dolphin regarded her.

She opened her beak and pushed a tentative word out. Nothing happened except she emitted a sound not dissimilar to her mother gargling mouthwash. 

The dolphin cocked its head. ‘If that is an attempt at humor, it is in very bad taste.’

She shook her head, hoping that this signal at least would be understood. 

‘So?’ the dolphin said. ‘Are you going to just hang there and gawk?’

She didn’t know what “gawk” meant but got the feeling that it wasn’t a polite to do it. Damn this! The dolphin could speak to her, she should be able to speak back. Perhaps her skill could help her. She reached inside and felt the light, it was still there. In this place it still existed, even though she knew she was not in her Queendom anymore (or perhaps she still was). She drew on it, as if she were one of the carousel doctors slipping a needle into a phial and drawing out the liquid. She pulled it out, just enough to make her nerves tingle. She looked at the dolphin and projected to it, willing the light to link them.

Every time she had projected the skill before, she’d had to aim by line of sight. This time, a neon-orange filament went straight for the dolphin, who did not flinch at its approach. 

The dolphin cocked its head. ‘Old school eh? Well I can relate to that.’ It pushed its head forward, so that the beam intersected with the melonic head. 

She entered a dream within a dream within a dream. 

She was a girl, perhaps fourteen years old, perched on a rock. Her legs hung over one side like damp seaweed. The water of a shallow bay lapped at the rock, making slap slap sounds in rhythmic time to the beat of her heart. So she had a heart in this place, or was it a figment of her imagination? 

‘Well?’

The voice was behind her. She rotated so that she could see who it was. Her mouth dropped. She felt herself sliding backwards and thrust her hands down, wincing at streaks of pain. 

On a beach behind the rock was a many-tentacled kraken. It was least thirty feet tall and twice as long. Slimy arms waved, as if some wary wind was co-operating with its wishes. Its beak was the color of turgid mustard, and two eyes - malevolent and maniacal - regarded her with alien scorn. She tried to summon the skill. Nothing.

‘You’re in my world now, girl,’ the kraken said, contempt lashing the final word as if one of its tentacles had struck her. ‘Nothing to protect you here. No magic, no Prince of the Realm, no fraudulent tears.’ The kraken slithered towards her. 

Now she could smell it, a stench of decaying fish like some of that rotten herring that her father’s cousin would bring from Sweden. She gagged. It smiled, really it did. The corners of the beak, where cartilage should have attached to flesh, bent upwards. The beak cracked open. 

‘Are we scared?’ it asked. ‘Pooping our pants? Going to cry for mother to come and save you from the sea monster?’ It laughed heartily. 

She realized that this creature had no desire to even allow her to plead for the right to be denied aid. It was incarnate, of singular mind, immovable. Yet Caroline had not lived with her disability without developing a stubborn streak as wide as the Pacific. 

Caroline suspected that her condition had been diagnosed in utero, and her father had wanted an abortion. This suspicion bore out several times when he was being intransigent. A nuanced reference to how sorry she was she wasn’t perfect would make him flinch; not a lot, but just enough that she could see the twitch in his forehead. This was one of her main tactics when things got really tough with him. The b*****d could dig his heels in, that was for sure. When he didn’t want to do something, he had to be dragged by his proverbial balls - mumbling and cursing all the way. She had learnt how to do this from a mistress of the art. Now she looked at the Kraken and realized that this tactic would not work here. This thing was not to be cajoled, not to be worked upon. If she wanted its help, she would have to use a skill that was as foreign to her as her magic was to the people she used it on. It was all you needed, at least according to The Beatles.

Caroline took a deep breath. 

‘When I was born,’ she said, ‘I had no understanding of what I was. I cried all the time. But when I was older, old enough to comprehend what my life would be like, I wanted to die.’ She tried to relax, and her back hunched (her mother would have  disapproved). ‘As I grew, I mean got more accustomed to the prison of my body, I realized that I didn’t want to die. At least not without having lived at least a little. So I hardened myself to the jokes and jibes. I thought I would never love anything. I thought I’d go through my life, I mean my life out there,’ she pointed straight up, ‘hating everyone who was whole whilst I saw the world through a perspective they could never get.’ 

She felt some positive reassurance that the Kraken had not interrupted her yet. 

‘So,’ she continued, ‘I think my imagination felt distraught. I never fed it, never gave it any attention. I was so focused on the negativity of my existence in the real world. Somehow my dreams began to form a cohesive pattern. Threads, woven together night after night to create a tapestry I could play in. The Unicorn Queendom became the place I could really exist. In there I could love. I loved the land, the animals and, yes, myself. In there, I mean here, s**t wherever we are now, I came alive. Outside was my shell, the body my Unicorn looked at the world through. When I came to my Queendom it was like my body was looking inside me, kind of like a reverse mirror. It could peer in, the light from outside could come in, but that was it. Only I could enter through the door and exist here. Then I discovered the magic.’

The Kraken opened its beak, showing the torrid insides, then closed it again. It waved a tentacle. Caroline took this as permission to continue.

She said, ‘When I realized I could take the magic from in here and put it to work in the outside world I was astounded. The first time I used it was at school. I think I was in 5^th grade. A group of girls were making fun of me. Oh, not to my face of course. The school had a strict anti-bullying policy, and I was watched by teachers for any sign of being bullied. But adults can be so narrow, seeing what they want to see, not how things are. These girls were huddled in a corner of our classroom. They never even looked at me. But I could tell. I could tell! Their body language; I’m an expert at reading that. The snickering whispers. I couldn’t hear them, but I knew the pattern:

“She’s sooo ugly, who’s going to want to kiss her?”

“She can’t even wipe her own butt!”

“She’s just a vegetable on wheels.”

 Oh yes, I knew what they were saying and thinking.’ Caroline felt tears coming. Normally she suppressed them, but now she let them come. Racking sobs made her chest heave. Looking down, she saw the tears dripping off her nose. She sniffled and wiped the back of her hand across her face. ‘I imagined them inside my Queendom, imagined what I would do to them. The horrors I would inflict: volcanic pimples on their perfect complexions, or eternal head lice. Then I felt it for the first time, the pressure in my head. It wasn’t bad like a headache, more like just before you sneeze, when you feel that whoosh of air coming up. Back then I couldn’t control it. It just leaked out all over the place. But I noticed its effect. Some papers ruffled on the teacher’s desk, and one of the girls, her name was Veronica, jumped in her chair like she’d been given an electric shock. It was seeing that which made me realize I could use the magic on people, like I did in my Queendom. So I used it and perfected it. But it was so hard to make the magic come out, just a little bit took a truck load more effort than the most stupendous magic in here. So I trained my mind, worked it hard to make sure I could project when I needed to.’ She waved her hand in no particular direction. ‘I guess you could say that’s how we’re in this situation.’

The Kraken yawned. It sounded like a cello being played with a metal ruler. One tentacle came up to cover the gaping maw. It did a bare job of covering the massive gorge. Caroline realized she had to jump forward to attract its attention. 

‘I’ve been living in my Queendom where I’m safe from the outside world. That is my reality now. Life outside, that’s the nightmare I have when I go to sleep here. That was until I met Finn. He has changed everything.’

The eye closest to her opened, its lid pulling back like water departing from a beach. ‘Changed?’ the Kraken asked. ‘How changed?’

Caroline could feel the crux approaching, as if it were a train halfway through a railway tunnel. 

Caroline took a deep breath. ‘I think,’ she said, ‘that Finn wants me to do something important. Something in the real world. And to do that thing, I have to be….well, whole I guess is the word. As I am now, I am useless.’ She spat the last word out.

‘Nothing that lives is useless,’ the Kraken said. ‘All things may contribute to the matrix of life in one way or another. That may be for good or for bad. The Great Ocean does not care, it endures. What matters is how we conduct ourselves about it.’

Caroline nodded. ‘I’ve tried to behave like a human, but it’s easier to be a unicorn.’

‘What know you of unicorns?’ The Kraken snapped. ‘Nothing. You humans have no idea what they sacrificed! You treat their memory as something to be paraded around in fairytales. We dolphins�"’

‘I see no dolphins here,’ she shot.

The Kraken moved a fraction towards her. She flinched, afraid that it was tensing for a strike. The beast relaxed. 

‘Yes,’ it said. ‘We are both wearing masks in this place. But you are right, I apologize. Here I am this creature of the deep. Perhaps this is more to your liking.’ 

The Kraken’s body shriveled, like a foil wrapper thrown on a fire. When it was not much bigger then her avatar, it morphed into the old dolphin. She looked into its eyes and recognized a familiar friend; the lack of a will to live.

The dolphin said, ‘I am Skagen, uncovered.’

She flinched. Never, ever in her dreams had she appeared as her outward self. The pain, the embarrassment of how she was in real life could not be allowed to permeate. To be seen so weak, so crippled. It could not be borne. To rule was to be strong. She was not strong outside. Her spindle arms, with nothing to show but string muscles good for nothing but flexing pity out of others. Her warped legs, tucked into her wheelchair like embarrassing fronds from an unwanted house plant. Her whole body, riven of ambition and crushed as a receptacle of love. 

Yet…

To convince this dolphin who had bared himself. How could she not reciprocate?

She looked at him. Nothing. No expression, at least not one she could recognize. Alien he was. A creature of the Earth, but not of her Earth. Same, but different.

F**k it, she thought.

Her subconscious bucked and refused at the fence of exposure. She was unicorn, not human wreckage. But she bore down on it, pressed with her will and brought the power to bear on her id’s reticence. She changed. 

‘Am I horrible?’ she asked

To his credit, Skagen did not pause.

‘You are mostly unbearable,’ he said. ‘Had you been born a dolphin you would have been culled immediately.’

‘Just like the Spartans,’ she murmured.

Skagen flicked forward. ‘The Spartans had their reasons. Do not criticize them for their selection process. Are you alive, or are you cast aside?’

Caroline shrugged. ‘I am neither alive nor asunder. On the outside, I am.’

‘Trueness,’ Skagen said. ‘What of us is anything but existing from moment to moment. I, in my long life, have seen humankind descend beyond a level even I did not think it was capable.’

Caroline sensed an opportunity. ‘And dolphins?’

Skagen nodded. ‘Yes, we have withdrawn. Removed ourselves from the equation. The policy of ‘do nothing’ has become our creed. We have become satisfied to let humankind reap its own reward, and we will bear the failure.’ He sank to the beach, closed his eyes and said, ‘Time. It is always about time.’ 

Then he said nothing forever.

Caroline was worried that he had died. Was that even possible in a dream? What was the correct resuscitation method for a dolphin having a dream-stroke? She willed herself forward, until her limp foot rested only a few inches from Skagen’s outstretched fin. 

‘Will you not help me restore the balance?’ she said.

Skagen opened one eye. ‘Balance? Do you understand what that means in this context?’

‘Well…no not really,’ Caroline said.

He rose up to float in front of her, his beak close to her nose. She thought she could smell peaches, but that was fancifully ridiculous wasn’t it?

Skagen said, ‘When the last unicorn left this world, do you know what thought he transmitted to humankind?’ He didn’t wait for her reply. ‘As he used the last of his magic to submerge Atlantis, he sold his mind’s voice to scream one last sentence. Even now, there are descendants of his who are born mute. The price of that magic is still being paid. Magic is like that. Nothing is free. It’s practically energetic, like one of your physical laws.’

‘What did he say?’ Caroline’s voice was quiet, as if a timid rabbit that the answer would scare back down her throat.

Skagen backed off and rose to stand on his tail. ‘As the water rose over his haunches, the King’s mane flared, and his horn shone like a bolt of rebel lightening. What exactly he said is lost in translation from the ancient Greek, but the gist of it echoed the loss his entire race felt. 

Skagen paused, apparently for dramatic effect.

‘And?’ Caroline said.

‘His final words to humankind were,’ Skagen said, ‘“You bunch of total a******s!”’

Caroline burst out laughing.

***On Unicorns***

What you must understand about the unicorns, is that they weren’t that much different from the people they shared the Earth with. Well, perhaps not all the people, but certainly the most educated of the Greeks, those that they considered suitable as friends. Unicorns were as vain as cats, but as malleable as dogs. A perceptive mind inside a horse’s body. They lived and ate and fornicated. Yes, they even got drunk (cider being the elixir of choice). In those respects they resembled their human counterparts. But where the two species differed was in their consideration of Mother Earth. 

Unicorns regarded the earth as a fragile system; treated it with respect and desired to please it. They modified it, true - but those changes were always incorporated inside already existing features. Floods, earthquakes and eruptions were seen as opportunities to amend the world, improve it. Humans however were all for the brute force of bending the earth to their new will. Dams, excavations and construction were humankind’s way of stamping its authority on the planet. The unicorns didn’t want that. They wanted a symbiosis with the Mother; humans (the unicorns perceived after a few thousand centuries) wanted to kill her. 

Thus came about conflict. Increasingly the unicorns voiced their disapproval. The politics of the polis turned from harmonious discourse to acrid argument. 

Eventually of course it led to war. 

War (as von Clausewitz discovered) is just another name for politics. Pointing a finger (or hoof) and pointing a weapon are metaphysically the same action. The difference is in the mechanics of the reaction. The pen may be mightier than the sword when it signs a declaration of war, but for the soldier having a six-foot broadsword swung at your neck is a damn sight more deadly. 

Humans drove the pesky horses further and further down through Europe until they were encircled around what is modern day Mystras. Here the unicorns held the conclave which agreed on the Atlantis Decision. It is notable that there was not one dissenting vote. Every remaining unicorn agreed with the decision to separate from the world of humans, the terrestrial world, and transform into dolphinkind. To a foal they stuck two proverbial fingers up to humankind and let them set on themselves. It is undeniable that humankind rid itself of a valuable ally, one which could have chained the excesses of the years to follow. 

The unicorns, for all their stuck-up pretense, were sad to escape. They loved terra firma. To feel no more the run of hoof on plain, the feeling of manes flowing in the wind. This was a true sacrifice. But they traded in good faith, taking the new adventure as well as any species taking to the stars. 

No human witnessed their exit. When the Greek forces stormed Mystras all they found was a deserted city, minus a large chunk of its land. The swirling waters contained a clue to the monstrous burial that had occurred, but the scale of magic exercised was beyond human comprehension. One at a time the unicorns had turned each other into dolphins. Until the last one remained; the strongest, the King. 

**********

Finn felt the connection resolve. The ephemeral quality of its corporeality increased. The figures of Caroline and Skagen, frozen seemingly until now, resumed life. He glanced from one to the other. Their facial expressions revealed nothing. Templates were always hard to read in a dream; the more you concentrated on someone’s face the more abstract their features became. Often it was better to look to one side, let your peripheral vision supply the cracks and crevices that gave so much away.

Skagen let out a bellow of such ferocity that Finn jumped. Mid-air he tensed himself to thrust his body between Skagen and Caroline. As his hooves touched the ground Skagen raised a wing and pointed at Caroline.

‘She has…what do the humans say? Balls!’ Skagen exclaimed.

Finn relaxed. Coming from Skagen, this was akin to foreplay. He turned to face the dragon. ‘So you approve. Will you help us?’ There was no point in dancing with Skagen. He was too campaigned to be coddled.

Skagen looked at Caroline. ‘Do you realize what you’re asking me to do, girl?’ The final word sounded like he was spitting out a seed. ‘To take your case to the dolphin Court. To plead for you to be healed. To propose you bridge a rift so wide that you could stitch the followers of every Earthly religious savior head to toe, and they wouldn’t come close to spanning it.’ He laughed.

Caroline said, ‘I do not presume to tell you what to do. But for my part I am willing to try. Finn has explained to me something of the hurt that separates us, although I think he has kept the worst of it from me.’ 

Caroline looked at Finn. He could not meet her gaze.

Skagen said, ‘Try…hmmmm. Yes perhaps trying is all you are good for. Doing, that requires something more. But for now trying is enough.’ The dragon sat back on its haunches, a maneuver which made the scales on its flanks ripple like a fish being waved in the sun. ‘Do you know why I was sent here?’

Finn sensed the danger. He said, ‘I �"‘

Caroline cut him off. ‘I know. Finn’s mother wishes to prevent our relationship. She wants to keep him on the pure path. For this, she will sacrifice the future of your people.’

‘Our future?’ Skagen shook his head. ‘Our future is brighter than yours. In the ocean we are as safe from the debauchery of your kind as we can be. Filthy as it is becoming, it is cleaner than the toxic dump you inhabit. Most dolphins see the future as nothing more than a waiting game. “Give humans enough economic rope, and they will militarily hang themselves,” the saying goes. You understand?’

‘Yes,’ Caroline said. ‘We ruin the planet for the sake of money.’

‘Not the planet,’ Skagen said. ‘Our planet. But yes: ruin, ravage, pillage, rape even. Taking without giving, destroying without creating, burning without planting. The lack of these ideals is what drove the unicorns into the sea. Bitter pangs of guilt they felt for their decision, missing their homelands every day. Even now the memory of running free pushes every dolphin who crests a wave. It is a social memory passed down through each generation. This was denied us.’

Caroline opened her mouth.

‘Yes I know,’ Skagen said. ‘The unicorns were not forced; it was a choice. But it was the lesser path, to be eradicated or transform and survive as less. The woe they felt. It is much to bear.’

Caroline moved next to the dragon and placed a hoof on one of his clawed feet. ‘I cannot undo what was done, but I will command all my magic to repair what I can in the real world. Or die trying.’

Skagen’s head snapped round. ‘Is this a bargain you are willing to make? Do not say such things likely. I know in your world words and meaning have become detached from each other. But know this, dolphins take great store in what is said. If you pledge your life to a cause you had better be sure that it is something you are prepared to give. No greater debt can be surrendered.’

Finn could not move. He could not speak. Would Caroline be prepared to make this sacrifice? He knew the answer. This girl, confined to a world not of her own making. Redundant and alone. Tied to the movement of others. Relying on her parents to do even the simplest tasks. As her parents aged, who would help her? Who would care for her after they died? Who would create meaning in her life? Understanding came to him. Meaning was what Caroline yearned for. To work for a higher purpose. To be someone that meant something. Like looking at the sun with her eyes closed, when she opened them what she wanted to be was the fading unicorn. The meaningful light of existence. 

Caroline knelt before Skagen, her horn touching the ground in front of him. She said, ’I swear my life to the reunification of sea and earth.’ 

Skagen nodded. ‘So be it. For my part, I pledge to present your case favorably. But you must understand, you cannot sway each of them as you have me. My voice is one, albeit more powerful than most. However I am old, and there will be those,’ he looked at Finn, ‘his mother amongst them, who will discredit me. Yet I rise above such pettiness; choose to bequeath a legacy that my descendants can be proud of.’

Finn swung to face Skagen. ‘Bequeath? I don’t understand.’

Skagen shrugged, as well as a dragon could. ‘I am dying,’ he said. ‘It matters not my Prince. The old get sick, and my sickness has been advancing faster this past season. Soon it will consume me. But in the meantime I have my faculties and intend to use them. I want to attempt the task I believe the last King of the Unicorns, may his name be forever sacred, placed as a burden when he went to the depths with Atlantis. If we are able to do nothing more than make the renewal of the bond between our races a possibility, I will consider my life to have not been wasted.’

Skagen rose and looked down at Caroline. ‘I suppose if we’re going to propose something akin to humankind meeting its alter ego, the situation warrants their representative being respectable.’ He sighed. ‘The young have no meter for how difficult it is to move the opinion of the majority. Better to try and move a mountain with your snout. They resist, they dig in, they contradict. It is a challenge. But I accept it, as I must. Who else will fight for the cause? Would that I were fifty cycles younger. I’d show them what I’m capable of.’

Skagen walked in a circle and came back to face them. ‘Yes, a cure. Why not. But one step at a time. First the case must be presented to the Court. I will call enclave when I return and plead for The Restoration. Fair warning, I see less hope of its success without the Queen’s support. But we proceed.’

Skagen bowed to Caroline. ‘If you’ll excuse me Your Highness, I will begin to attend to matters.’

Caroline nodded. 

Skagen turned to Finn. He didn’t know what to say to the old dolphin, for so long his worth adversary.

‘I know,’ Skagen sighed. ‘No words are necessary. Until later, adieu my Prince.’ Skagen’s form dissolved. 

 ‘So,’ Caroline said after a while, ‘he seems confident.’

Finn stepped forward to stand in front of her. ‘To be honest I’m amazed he agreed.

‘Well thanks!’ she said.

‘No, sorry…look it was what you would call a long shot. Skagen has been anti-human for as long as I have known him. I worried that he wasn’t sincere, but from what I can tell he really is going to support us.’

Caroline lifted a hoof and touched Finn’s shoulder. She felt tired. Exertions in the dreamworld did little to rest her. Confined as she was in the waking world she had no stamina, no physical reserves to rely on. Only her mental powers meant anything here. Her body, supposed to be resting during sleep, was staved of the life force it needed by virtue of her disability. 

Could the dolphins really make her whole? Not some immobilized daemon, neither alive nor dead. She had to be honest with herself (if not Finn), this was what she wanted. Some sort of fantastical union between people and dolphins was no more real to her than the mysteries of sex. But if she could stand out of her prison, engage with the world �" defy it? Do more than scream silent obscenities at it. What would she do with a life like that? Mange some manifest destiny that would bring dolphins to the UN? That was too big, too incongruous, too insane. But bringing the banished dream out of the well of her mind, that was something worth investigating. 

‘Finn,’ she said. ‘I’m tiring quickly. I must return to the world of normality. What do I do now?’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘Skagen will represent you to the Court. That is where the power lays. My mother has the most of it of course, so it will also fall to me to represent you there. But Skagen is a seasoned manipulator of the hoi polloi. I knew that, if you could win him over, our cause would gain a magnificent ally.’

The sunlight began to wane. Silently the beams fell out of favor, listing to port and starboard as their course became disrupted by a greater power. Caroline was waking. Even Finn’s form began to transduce. She could begin to see the outline of the rusty banners on the other side of the hall. 

His voice was still strong. ‘I await our next contact, hopefully with positive news from Skagen.’

She demurred and expired from her Queendom.