“I love you,” Willow said suddenly. She didn’t look at him, facing straight ahead as she spoke the words.
Ben nodded. He was quiet a moment. “I’ve been meaning to say something to you about that. You tell me you love me all the time, and I can never say it back to you. I’ve been thinking lately about why that is, and I guess it’s because I’m afraid. It’s like taking a chance you don’t have to take. It’s easier to pass it by.”
He paused. “But I don’t feel that way right now, right here. I feel altogether different. When you say you love me, I find I want to say it back to you. So I guess I will. I love you, too, Willow. I think I always did.”
They walked on, not speaking. He was aware of the increased pressure of her arm about his. The day was still and restful, and everything was at peace.
“The Earth Mother made me promise to look after you, you know,” Ben said finally. “That’s part of what started me thinking about us. She made me promise to keep you safe. She was most insistent.”
He could feel Willow’s smile more than see it. “That is because the Earth Mother knows,” she said.
He waited for her to say something more, then glanced down. “Knows what?”
“That one day I shall bear your child, High Lord.”
Ben took a deep breath and let it out slowly
“Oh.”
Epilogue
It was two days before Christmas.
Southside Chicago was chill and dreary, the snowfall of the previous night turned gray and mushy on walks and streets, the squarish highrise projects and tenements vague shadows in a haze of smoke and mist. Steam rose out of sewer grates in sudden clouds as sleet pelted down. Not much of anything was moving. Cars crawled by like prehistoric beetles, headlights shining their luminous yellow eyes. Pedestrians ducked their heads against the cold, their chins buried in scarves and collars, their hands jammed into coat pockets. Late afternoon watched an early evening’s approach in gloomy silence.
The corner of Division and Elm was almost deserted. Two boys with leather jackets, a commuting businessman, and a carefully dressed woman, headed home from shopping, stepped from a bus, and started walking in different directions. A shop owner paused to check the locks on the front door of his plumbing business as he prepared to close up for the day. A factory worker on the seven-to-three shift ducked out of Barney’s Pub after two beers and an hour of unwinding to begin the trudge two blocks home to his ailing mother. An old man carrying a load of groceries shuffled along a sidewalk path left in the snow by a trail of icy footprints. A small child engulfed by her snowsuit played with a sled by the steps other apartment home.
They ignored each other with casual indifference, lost in their own private thoughts.
The white unicorn flew past them like a bit of strayed light. It sped by as if its sole purpose in being was to circle the whole of the world in a single day. It never seemed to touch the ground, its graceful, delicate body gathering and extending in a single fluid motion as it passed. All the beauty in the world — all that was or could ever be — was captured by its movement. It was there and gone in an instant. The watchers caught their breath, blinked once, and the unicorn had disappeared.
There followed a moment of uncertainty. The old man’s mouth dropped open. The child put down her sled and stared. The two boys ducked their heads and muttered urgently. The businessman looked at the shop owner and the shop owner looked back. The carefully dressed woman remembered all those magical stories of fairies she still enjoyed reading. The factory worker thought suddenly of Christmas as a child.
Then the moment passed, and they all moved on. Some walked more quickly, some more slowly. They glanced over at the misted, empty street. What was it they had seen? Had it really been a unicorn? No, it couldn’t have been. There were no such things as unicorns — not really. And not in cities. Unicorns lived in forests. But they had seen something. Hadn’t they seen something? Hadn’t they? They walked on, silent, and there was a warmth within each of them at the memory of what they had experienced. There was a feeling of having been a part of something magical.