The Unnamed Country by Jeffrey Thomas

Author:Jeffrey Thomas
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Word Horde
Published: 2019-10-20T00:24:26+00:00

***

On her thin mattress that night, with Ti having cried herself to sleep beside her after confiding that it was Ghip she loved, Nah dreamed of the unicorns.

She was in the theme park after closing hours…maybe after midnight…and there was no one, not even a security guard. Though distantly she heard—along with the faraway cry of a peacock—the shuffling rustle of a broom working ceaselessly and futilely to keep the labyrinthine pathways clean.

She walked past the mountainous bulk of the Tenth Demon Lord of Hell, a silhouette against the night sky, blotting out whole constellations. She was afraid to look in that direction but couldn’t help herself, and saw a figure standing just inside the tusked jaws beckoning to her with slow scoops of his arm. She couldn’t see his face in the darkness but somehow she knew it was Ghip. Ghip wanted her to go with him into the depths of the demon’s guts, to hold her hand so they could search for Ti together, as when Cholukan searched the netherworld for his kidnapped love. But Nah couldn’t go there with him, couldn’t help him retrieve Ti, so she quickened her pace. She had another destination and purpose.

She arrived at the zoo, again with no security guards to be found at its entrance arch. She walked its paths feeling unnerved, imagining that the gate to every cage and enclosure had not only been left unlocked and open, but that every restraining barrier had dissolved entirely; that the animals all roamed freely in the darkness just beyond the irregularly-lighted pathways.

Yet she came to the pen of the twelve ni-liq unharmed, to find the delicate antelopes all outside their little barn structure, though resting on the ground with their legs folded beneath them. Hearing her approach, their single-horned heads all raised in unison alertly, their black eyes wary, nostrils snorting.

Somehow Nah had a single stolen key in the pocket of her pants, and she moved around to the side of the enclosure and unlocked the gate’s large padlock. The gate squealed as she hauled it open. She left it standing wide open behind her as she stepped inside the Unicorn Farm.

The animals all rose to their hoofed feet, still wary but also hopeful for feeding. They watched Nah lower and cross the little wooden bridge over their dirty moat. They shifted back from her a little, but she put her hand out slowly, gently, and stroked one animal along its graceful neck with its coarse, bristle-like coat.

“Stop! Wait!” a voice boomed. It was a voice over a loudspeaker, crackling and distorted, like the recording that during open hours emanated from the mouth of the Tenth Demon Lord of Hell ghost train ride. Dazzling spotlights blasted into the Unicorn Farm from every direction.

The animals panicked, but somehow they knew enough to flee toward the wooden bridge…and the open gate in their high chain-link fence.

Nah panicked, too. Before it could bolt along with its fellows, she flung her arms around the neck of the ni-liq she had caressed and, slinging one leg over its side, vaulted up onto its back.

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