Excerpt: Unicorns in Winter

The air here smells like leaves and rotting pumpkin. It's a soothing smell - even the earth herself is giving up, moving on, accepting that her season for joy has passed. Last night's rain is pooled in the streets, fallen leaves glued to pavement and silly string floating in puddles like dying worms. Our porch was draped in toilet paper when I left, I recollect passively as I pace outside the bus station, anxious to be off and running again. Halloween has come and gone. At least someone had a good night.

The sun this morning is bright, shining golden on what's left of the foliage, on the roofs and the sidewalks and glinting on the rain-soaked asphalt. Few people are out in the streets this early - all sleeping off the festivities or nursing their hangovers, I'm sure. My own hangover is throbbing, twisting like snakes in my stomach, but I ignore it best I can. Nothing will get in my way now, certainly not a little bit of nausea. I have better things to do.

It was a day like this when we met, wasn't it? No, it was summer, but the day had the faintest smell of autumn, of crisp morning air and frost on windshields. I remember thinking, Ah, even now the seasons are preparing for winter. There's always a bit of winter in this town, every day, even when the sun is scorching the lawns and drying the leaves to a tired July green. Every season is preparing for the snow, dropping petals, pollen, seed pods, or leaves, practicing for blizzards with whatever it has on hand. Every season knows that falling is the natural state of things. Not exaltation, but resignation. I knew that, and somehow I thought I could escape it with him, could live forever in that high place of long drunken-high conversations and greasy diner breakfasts the day afterwards. Fool I was, I thought I could cheat time. But now I am running to find a place that knows the truth, that understands that at the heart of everything lies whiteness, blankness, silence.

They say that in the land of Fae, you can live for hundreds of years and only moments will pass, and when your fairie lover tires of you, and lets you pass back through the mists, no one you knew will be left alive. No one will understand why you wander the streets aimlessly, looking past everyone as if you could see into another, better world. They say that the Fae are cruel and dangerous, but I can't imagine anything more dangerous than living in the world of Men, with their heartfelt lies and their enthusiastic self-destruction. No, Fae would be much better. At least there, the people are honest that they're playing games, that they're simply acting on whims and following the course that Nature set for them when She first materialized out of the aether.

But here, it's hard to not take things too seriously, to not grasp to moments and memories and daydreams and hopes and fears, to hold on to them desperately for fear of drowning in the present moment. We cast them into our souls like anchors. Like this one: it was summer when I met him. Summer with a whiff of snow, and our eyes met just for a moment as we passed in the streets. My heart began falling even then, leaving dusty flakes of itself all over the crosswalk.

* * *
I traveled with the Nowhere People, as I began to think of them, for some time. I couldn't say how long, since time had no meaning in that place. Sometimes they would wander aimlessly, and I would follow them. They had no destination - there were no landmarks to distinguish one place from another, after all. Sometimes they stopped, for no apparent reason, and I stopped too. That was when I slept and ate. The Nowhere People had long ago left behind the need for sleep or food, but no matter how I tried, I could not leave behind that part of my old life.

I tried, of course - the little girl, who I started to think of as "Lucy", even though she would not respond to it, told me that if I stopped trying to sleep or find food to eat, I would stop needing it. After the first few days, I was nearly unconscious and mad with the craving. Fortunately, even though nothing grew in that world, and so few animals lived there, I could summon up food any time I wanted it, and of any sort I desired. The Nowhere People looked at me strangely, though, so I mostly snuck it when they were distracted. Which was frequently.

Sometimes they would dance - a slow, aimless swaying to noises only they could hear. I'm not sure they did it because they enjoyed it. They did it because something in them still remembered music, and because being lost in this world of nothingness was like being trapped in an endless, beautiful, melancholy melody. It was eerie to watch. They never asked me to join in, but I tried, once. I closed my eyes and just listened. Even though there was no wind, the absolute stillness of the air served to amplify the music of the blood rushing through my body, the air rushing in and out of my lungs, the miniscule, vital movements of molecules and cells and RNA and mitochondria. I swayed to the sound of my heart sighing in relief, to the sound of dead cells skin falling away and new skin growing in its place.

The Nowhere People didn't notice me often, but when they did, it was to give me a questioning glance, or a look of disapproval. I still didn't fit in. I danced too joyfully. I ate food. I changed things that didn't suit my needs, and this disturbed them, who had gone so long in an environment that never changed. Lucy was my only constant friend, and even she began to fade into the background. She stopped asking me about the outside after that encounter so long ago with the old man, and as I relaxed into my new life, the glow in her eyes faded. But it never disappeared completely, and her clinging curiosity kept me tethered, very slightly, to the world behind me, like a string winding through the labyrinth of King Minos.