Unicorn Point

“But how can we be sure? If we set up to play, and it worked not—”

“Aye,” Clip said. “Needs must we verify the effect, privately, lest we run great risk.”

“I will go ahead and play for one!” Fleta said eagerly. She changed form, and pranced as she played her pan-pipe horn, two melodies in counterpoint.

Clip paused. It had been years since he had heard her play.  He had forgotten her unusual talent: one horn, two tunes! It was a very pretty effect. She might have done well in the Unilympics, had she not been barred because of her miscegenation with the rovot.

Then he returned to the serious business at hoof. “Not thou, niece. Thou be too inexperienced to risk thyself thus.  I will do it.”

“But we seek to know the effect o’ a chorus,” she protested, returning to girlform. “At least let me go with thee, so we can play together. That be a fairer test.”

How neatly she had diverted his decision! She had not opposed it, merely modified it. He could not have tolerated the former, for as Herd Stallion he had a position to maintain, but could accept the latter. “Aye, then. But stray thou not far from me, an we hit ogre country.”

“Nary a hoofprint!” she promised.

“Cover for us,” he told Neysa, who nodded. If anything occurred that required his attention, she would handle it with out revealing his absence. The Herd could continue grazing undisturbed. Of course there were lookouts posted; nothing would come upon the Herd by surprise.

They started out, trotting side by side. He was fatigued from the days of constant travel, but the notion of finding a way to distract the ogres invigorated him, and he stepped right along. Fleta, younger, kept pace. He had had little to do with her, because she had been absent from the Herd most of the time, but unlike Neysa, he had not condemned her association with the rovot. In fact, he had been privately un derstanding. The rovot looked just like Bane, and she had always been Bane’s friend, and more than a friend. Animals were not supposed to have sexual encounters with human beings, but there was always a certain amount of experimentation that occurred, particularly among the young.  He himself, in his youth, had encountered a human village girl who had required cheering; she had shied away from him at first, until he showed her that he was a unicorn. His problem had been that he was a stallion cast out of the Herd, a “lesser male” who was denied sex with mares of the Herd until such time as he became strong enough and bold enough to challenge a Herd Stallion for dominance. Her problem had been that she loved a village lad who did not love her; she had not wished to be unfaithful to him, test he change his mind and return to her. But she did not regard a relationship with a unicorn to be significant in that manner. In addition, she was inexperienced, and wished to gain a better notion what it was all about, so that she could acquit herself well if the opportunity arose. So there had been an affair, and they had learned much together. Unicorn mares were interested in sex only when they came into heat, whereas human girls could do it anytime. It had been most interesting.

Then the man of her interest had returned, and Clip had departed speedily and quietly. It was understood that neither of them would ever tell others of this matter; it had been purely a private thing, of no larger significance. He had never had a relationship with another human girl, but he remembered that one with fondness. Of course it had not been as good with her as with any true mare, but it had been good enough, and he had liked her. So now he respected his niece for having the courage to do openly what was normally done secretly, and to fight for her right to her relationship despite the condemnation of her dam and most others.  Neysa, of course, had been far more straight-maned about it. It was not the fact of interspecies action that bothered her, for she herself had had an affair with the Adept Stile before he married the Lady Blue. It had been the openness of it, and the insistence that it be legitimized. Fleta had wanted to marry the rovot: a deed virtually unknown among unicorns, and certainly not appropriate miscegenously. That was the difference between Clip and his sister: she was more conser vative, and held more closely to the old values, flawed as they might be. It was understood that a stallion would take whatever sexual experience he could get, but that a mare would indulge outside of heat only for extraordinary reason, and then would be discreet. Indeed Neysa had been discreet; among unicorns, only he, her brother, knew for certain how close she had been to Stile.