Homeward Bound and Other Stories.indb
Bruce Coville
Praise for The Unicorn Chronicles
“Briskly paced, emotionally moving, and featuring compelling female characters, this traditional fantasy will leave listeners longing for the next book in the series.”
—School Library Journal
“A popular subject and author, plus intriguing characters, combine with a good chase plot to make a galloping good beginning to The Unicorn Chronicles. Coville’s fans, unicorn lovers, and fantasy readers will all be pleased.”
—VOYA
“Coville propels his multiple plotlines to a riveting cliff-hanging conclusion.”
—Booklist
“[Readers] will be swept along to the grand, hard-fought resolution.”
—Kirkus
Selected Titles by Bruce Coville
The Unicorn Chronicles
Into the Land of the Unicorns (1994)
Song of the Wanderer (1999)
Dark Whispers (2008)
The Last Hunt (2010)
My Teacher Is an Alien
My Teacher Is an Alien (1989)
My Teacher Fried My Brains (1991)
My Teacher Glows in the Dark (1991)
My Teacher Flunked the Planet (1992)
Magic Shop Books
The Monster’s Ring (1989)
Jeremy Thatcher, Dragon Hatcher (1990)
Aladdin (1992)
Jennifer Murdley’s Toad (1993)
The Skull of Truth (1999)
Juliet Dove, Queen of Love (2003)
Shakespeare Retellings
The Tempest
A Midsummer Night’s Dream
Macbeth
Romeo and Juliet
Hamlet
Twelfth Night
The Winter’s Tale
Anthologies
A Glory of Unicorns (1998)
The Unicorn Treasury (1991)
Oddly Enough (1994)
Odder Than Ever (1999)
Odds Are Good (2006)
Oddest of All (2008)
Homeward Bound and Other Stories
Copyright © 2017 by Bruce Coville
This is a collected work of fiction. All events portrayed in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to real people or events is purely coincidental. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form without the express permission of the author and publisher.
Tachyon Publications LLC
1459 18th Street, #139
San Francisco, CA 94107
www.tachyonpublications.com
[email protected]
Introduction copyright © 2017 by Bruce Coville
Cover illustration and design copyright © 2011 by Jerry Russell
Interior design by James DeMaiolo
E-book ISBN: 978-1-61696-286-9
First E-book edition: 2017
“Homeward Bound” copyright © 1987 by Bruce Coville (under the pseudonym Beatrice Farrington). First appeared in The Unicorn Treasury, edited by Bruce Coville (Doubleday: New York).
“The Boy with the Silver Eyes” copyright © 2008 by Bruce Coville. First appeared in Oddest of All (Harcourt Children’s Books: San Diego).
“The Guardian of Memory” copyright © 1998 by Bruce Coville. First appeared in A Glory of Unicorns (Scholastic: New York).
“Ragged John” copyright © 1987 by Bruce Coville (under the pseudonym Beatrice Farrington). First appeared in The Unicorn Treasury, edited by Bruce Coville (Doubleday: New York).
For more information about the author and his works, please visit
http://www.brucecoville.com/.
Table of Contents
Introduction
Homeward Bound
The Boy with the Silver Eyes
The Guardian of Memory
Ragged John
Introduction
SO, here’s how the unicorn thing started for me.
In 1977 my wife, illustrator Katherine Coville, and I had sold our first picture book. Filled with youthful exuberance, I wrote a follow-up book called Space Brat, which we sent to our editor.
She rejected it, saying “I don’t think children will be interested in a noseless green humanoid from outer space” (five years before the noseless brown E.T. became one of the biggest money-making films of all time) and, even better, “Besides, I don’t think this Star Wars craze is going to last.”
Sitting around bemoaning this rejection, my wife said to me, “Write me a story about a boy and a unicorn.”
Well, I loved unicorns, of course. Who, having read The Last Unicorn, could not? Though I did point out that unicorns primarily come to females in the wood. Regardless of that, the next morning I sat down and wrote the first draft of what became Sarah’s Unicorn. Which we duly sent to the same editor . . . who promptly turned it down, saying, “There are too many books about unicorns. Focus on the girl and the witch instead.”
Now, it is well known that it is a mug’s game to try to convince an editor that a rejection is mistaken. But in this case the rejection wasn’t a matter of opinion about the quality of the book—it was a matter of having the facts wrong. At that point the culture was indeed rife with unicorn posters, stickers, coffee mugs, and (probably) toilet paper. But as far as I have been able to determine, there were no unicorn picture books at all. So I wrote back asking her to take another look, saying, “I can pretty much walk into the library, close my eyes, and put my hand on a picture book about a little girl and a witch. But there just aren’t any picture books about unicorns.”
Which is the root of how I became, in children’s literature, the unicorn guy.
Some years later, I was working with an editor at Doubleday, who told me she had long been wanting to put together an anthology of unicorn stories and thought I would be the right guy to edit it. I heartily agreed and started work on the project. Her original intent was that it would be a collection of previously printed stories and poems, but after some research, I convinced her that there was a dearth of that material, and we should make it a mix of previously published and original material. Happily, she agreed.
I researched the bejeezus out of unicorns at that point and as a result, one night when I was sitting alone in a restaurant prior to a speaking gig the next day, poured out “Ragged John.” The research also led to my writing “Homeward Bound.” I was just filled to the brim with unicorn material!
That anthology was one of the things that led Scholastic to invite me to create the four-book series that became “The Unicorn Chronicles.” I had no idea when I started what this project would lead to. The original contract was for a three-book series, a book a year, of somewhere between 150 and 200 pages. As it turned out, it took me 16 years to complete it (for a while, I was in danger of becoming the George R. R. Martin of children’s books), and the third volume became a thousand-page opus that had to be split in two in order to be published.
Unicorns will do that to you.
Two of the stories included here—“The Guardian of Memory” and “The Boy with Silver Eyes”—are offshoots from that series, the latter first written to perform with the Syracuse Symphony.
So, why this obsession with unicorns?
Well, the truth is, I have loved the idea of unicorns for as long as I can remember, imagined them, dreamed of glimpsing one, or, even better, befriending it.
I know, too, that I am not alone in this, since wherever I go, I meet fellow unicorn lovers.
But why is this so? Why do so many of us yearn for unicorns?
My guess is that we seek them not merely for their beauty, even though they are more than beautiful enough. I think they call to our hearts so strongly because they represent something
sadly lost; their very presence sings of the ancient wonder pervading the natural world, a sense of wonder hard to hold in these modern times.
So, until I actually get to meet one, I will keep writing about them. It’s the next best thing.
—Bruce Coville
Homeward Bound
JAMIE stood on the steps of his uncle’s house and looked up. The place was tall and bleak. With its windows closed and shuttered, as they were now, it was easy to imagine the building was actually trying to keep him out.
“This isn’t home,” he thought rebelliously. “It’s not home, and it never will be.”
A pigeon fluttered onto the lawn nearby. Jamie started, then frowned. His father had raised homing pigeons, and the two of them had spent many happy hours together, tending his flock. The sight of the bird now, with the loss of his father still so fresh in his mind, only stirred up memories he wasn’t ready to deal with yet.
He looked at the house again and was struck by an odd feeling: while this wasn’t home, coming here had somehow taken him one step closer to finding it. That feeling had to do with the horn, of course; of that much he was certain.
Jamie was seven the first time he had seen the horn hanging on the wall of his uncle’s study.
“Narwhal,” said his uncle, following the boy’s gaze.” It’s a whale with a horn growing out of the front of its head.” He put one hand to his forehead and thrust out a finger to illustrate, as if Jamie were some sort of an idiot. “Sort of a sea-going unicorn,” he continued. “Except, of course, that it’s real instead of imaginary. I’d rather you didn’t touch it. I paid dearly to get it.”
Jamie had stepped back behind his father without speaking. He didn’t dare say what was on his mind. Grown-ups, especially his uncle, didn’t like being told they were wrong.
But his uncle was wrong. The horn had not come from a narwhal, not come from the sea at all.
It was the horn of a genuine unicorn.
Jamie couldn’t have explained how he knew this was so. But he did, as surely—and mysteriously—as his father’s pigeons knew their way home. Thinking of that moment of certainty now, he was reminded of those stormy nights when he and his father had watched lightning crackle through the summer sky. For an instant, everything would be outlined in light. Then, just as quickly, the world would be plunged back into darkness, with nothing remaining but a dazzling memory.
That was how it had been with the horn, five years ago.
And now Jamie was twelve, and his father was dead, and he had been sent to live with this rich, remote man who had always frightened him so much.
Oddly, that fear didn’t come from his uncle. Despite his stern manner, the man was always quiet and polite with Jamie. Rather he had learned it from his father. The men had not been together often, for his uncle frequently disappeared on mysterious “business trips” lasting weeks or even months on end. But as he watched his father grow nervous and unhappy whenever his brother returned, Jamie came to sense that the one man had a strange hold over the other.
It frightened him.
Yet as scared as he was, as sad and lonely over the death of his father, one small corner of his soul was burning now with a fierce joy, because he was finally going to be close to the horn.
Of course, in a way, he had never been apart from it. Ever since that first sight, five years ago, the horn had shimmered in his memory. It was the first thing he thought of when he woke up, and the last at night when he went to sleep. It was a gleaming beacon in his dreams, reassuring him no matter how cruel and ugly a day might have been, there was a reason to go on, a reason to be. His one glimpse of the horn had filled him with a sense of beauty and rightness so powerful it had carried him through these five years.
Even now, while his uncle was droning on about the household rules, he saw it again in that space in the back of his head where it seemed to reside. Like a shaft of neverending light, it tapered through the darkness of his mind, wrist thick at its base, ice-pick sharp at its tip, a spiraled wonder of icy, pearly whiteness. And while Jamie’s uncle was telling him the study was off-limits, Jamie was trying to figure out how quickly he could slip in there to see the horn again.
For once again his uncle was wrong. No place that held the horn could be off-limits for him. It was too deeply a part of him.
That was why he had come here so willingly, despite his fear of his uncle. Like the pigeons, he was making his way home.
Jamie listened to the big clock downstairs as it marked off the quarter hours. When the house had been quiet for seventy-five minutes he took the flashlight from under his pillow, climbed out of bed and slipped on his robe. Walking softly, he made his way down the hall, enjoying the feel of the thick carpet like moss beneath his feet.
He paused at the door of the study. Despite his feelings, he hesitated. What would his uncle say, or do, if he woke and caught him here?
The truth was, it didn’t matter. He had no choice. He had to see the horn again.
Turning the knob of the door, he held his breath against the inevitable click. When it came, it was mercifully soft. He stepped inside, and flicked on his flashlight.
His heart lurched as the beam struck the opposite wall and showed an empty place where the horn had once hung. A little cry slipped through his lips before he remembered how important it was to remain silent.
He swung the light around the room, and breathed a sigh of relief. The horn, the alicorn, as his reading had told him it was called, lay across his uncle’s desk.
He stepped forward, almost unable to believe that the moment he had dreamed of all these years was finally at hand.
He took another step, and another.
He was beside the desk now, close enough to reach out and touch the horn.
And still he hesitated.
Part of that hesitation came from wonder, for the horn was even more beautiful than he had remembered. Another part of it came from a desire to make this moment last as long as he possibly could. It was something he had been living toward for five years now, and he wanted to savor it. But the biggest part of his hesitation came from fear. He had a sense that once he had touched the horn, his life might never be the same again.
That didn’t mean he wouldn’t do it.
But he needed to prepare himself. So for a while he simply stood in the darkness, gazing at the horn. Light seemed to play beneath its surface, as if there was something alive inside it—though how that could be after all this time he didn’t know.
Finally he reached out to stroke the horn. Just stroke it. He wasn’t ready, yet, to truly embrace whatever mystery was waiting for him. Just a hint, just a teasing glimpse, was all he wanted.
His fingertip grazed the horn and he cried out in terror as the room lights blazed on, and his uncle’s powerful voice thundered over him, demanding to know what was going on.
Jamie collapsed beside the desk. His uncle scooped him up and carried him back to his room.
A fever set in, and it was three days before Jamie got out of bed again.
He had vague memories of people coming to see him during that time—of a doctor who took his pulse and temperature; of an older woman who hovered beside him, spooning a thin broth between his lips and wiping his forehead with a cool cloth; and most of all, of his uncle, who loomed over his bed like a thundercloud, glowering down at him.
His only other memories were of the strange dream that gripped him over and over again, causing him to thrash and cry out in terror. In the dream he was running through a deep forest. Something was behind him, pursuing him. He leapt over mossy logs, splashed through cold streams, crashed through brambles and thickets. But no matter how he tried, he couldn’t escape the fierce thing that was after him—a thing that wore his uncle’s face.
More than once Jamie sat up in bed, gasping and covered with sweat. Then the old woman, or the doctor, would speak soothing words and try to calm his fears.
Once he woke quietly. He could hear doves cooing outside h
is window. Looking up, he saw his uncle standing beside the bed, staring down at him angrily.
“Why?” wondered Jamie. “Why doesn’t he want me to touch the horn?”
But he was tired, and the question faded as he slipped back into his dreams.
He was sent away to a school, where he was vaguely miserable but functioned well enough to keep the faculty at a comfortable distance. The other students, not so easily escaped, took some delight in trying to torment the dreamy boy who was so oblivious to their little world of studies and games, their private wars and rages. After a while they gave it up; Jamie didn’t react enough to make their tortures worth the effort on any but the most boring of days.
He had other things to think about, memories and mysteries that absorbed him and carried him through the year, aware of the world around him only enough to move from one place to another, to answer questions, to keep people away.
The memories had two sources. The first was the vision that had momentarily dazzled him when he touched the horn, a tantalizing instant of joy so deep and powerful it had shaken him to the roots of his being. Hints of green, of cool, of wind in face and hair whispered at the edges of that vision.
He longed to experience it again.
The other memories echoed from his fever dreams, and were not so pleasant. They spoke only of fear, and some terrible loss he did not understand.
Christmas, when it finally came, was difficult. As the other boys were leaving for home, his uncle sent word that urgent business would keep him out of town throughout the holiday. He paid the headmaster handsomely to keep an eye on Jamie, and feed him Christmas dinner.
The boy spent a bleak holiday longing for his father. Until now his obsession with the horn had shielded him from the still raw pain of that loss. But the sounds and smells of the holiday, the tinkling bells, the warm spices, the temporary but real good will surrounding him, all stirred the sorrow inside him, and he wept himself to sleep at night.
