The Gift of the Unicorn and Other Stories Read online

Richard straightened, panting but pleased with his performance over the last few minutes. He was more out of breath than he would have liked, and his knuckles hurt from the punch he’d thrown. However, there was a deep, masculine satisfaction in coming out the better in a fight.

  ‘There, that ought to do it.’ David finished tightening the twine around the arms of their intruder, binding him firmly to the old chair. ‘Let’s see what we’ve got here.’

  Richard stepped back to switch on the main overhead lights. Disappointment punctured his pleasure. An old man sat blinking under the brightness, his old skin almost as pale as the fossilised bones spread over the nearby worktables. ‘My bonds are disrupting my circulation,’ he told them petulantly.

  ‘Serves you right,’ David grunted. ‘You’re the one who broke into the museum.’

  ‘You should not be here,’ the old man continued in an English accent. ‘You leave promptly at five o’clock, and that other ruffian departs equally promptly at six. I have timed you for months. You should be at home now.’

  ‘Tell me about it.’ Richard snagged a chair and sat down. Georgie, David’s long-haired dachshund, who had been more of a hindrance than a help during the scuffle, came over for a scratch. ‘I was looking forward to a couple of beers and a night in front of the box. You just picked the wrong night, fella.’

  ‘You should not be here.’

  ‘Paleontologists prerogative.’ David leaned back against a worktable. ‘So, mister, what did you break in for? There’s nothing valuable in here, just a lot of dinosaur bones.’

  The man’s glasses had been knocked during the struggle, and he had to cock his head to look through them properly. ‘I have no desire to provide you with any information.’

  ‘Sure you don’t.’ Richard yawned. It was late. He and David had just about finished tagging the new skeleton when the sound of a lock being jimmied had made them turn out the lights and lie in wait. What had been a prank turned, momentarily, into something far more thrilling. But now the excitement was over, and he wanted to head home. ‘We’ll just call the police and let them deal with you.’

  ‘No, not the police.’ The man’s hands twitched helplessly under the packing twine. ‘They would certainly confiscate my collection, and then I would be forced to begin anew.’

  ‘Collection?’ Richard followed the man’s reluctant nod to a small backpack, lying to one side of the door.

  ‘Be careful, Rich,’ David warned.

  ‘Come off it, Dave.’ Richard picked the bag up by the straps. It was a lot heavier than he’d expected. ‘Who’d want to blow up this place?’

  ‘I understand minor municipal museums are all the rage with terrorists.’ 

  ‘I am not a terrorist.’ The man glanced down. ‘And perhaps you could ask your hound to cease chewing my shoelaces.’

  Richard grinned. ‘One of his favourite habits.’ He put the bag down on a clear table. ‘Anything in here bite?’

  ‘Please be careful. Many of the items are fragile.’

  David joined him as Richard pulled out one cloth-wrapped object. He unfolded the silk to reveal a small, finely decorated china teacup.

  ‘Victorian,’ the old man said helpfully.

  David reached next into the backpack. This time the canvas revealed a plate, covered in blue symbols. ‘Ming dynasty,’ the man said. ‘Please be careful.’

  ‘I don’t know much about china,’ David mused, ‘but I bet this is worth something. Where did you steal this from, Jack?’

  ‘My name is not Jack,’ the man answered primly. ‘You may call me Lord Reims, and subsequently Sir, but not Jack.’

  ‘Right, Sir Jack.’ David held the plate up between two fingers. ‘See plate. See floor. See plate drop on floor. See many pieces of plate on floor. Ready to answer some questions now?’

  Reims took a deep breath, the noise loud in the quiet room. ‘I reclaimed it from a museum in Taiwan. Please do be careful.’

  David shrugged. ‘Keep talking and we’ll be careful.’

  Richard let him retrieve the next few objects. A silver fork, a wooden cross, a small book of poetry. When it was Richard’s turn again, he found something hard and dry against his fingertips. What he pulled was short, dark, and strangely familiar. ‘A bone of some kind?’ he asked David.

  ‘Phalange,’ said the old man. ‘Human finger.’

  Richard felt his stomach squelch. ‘That’s it, Dave. You can unload the rest of his bag of tricks. I’m not interested in grave robbers.’

  Reims gave him a thin-lipped smile. ‘Pray tell, what is your occupation?’

  ‘That’s different,’ Richard retorted. He hurried to a sink and washed his hands. ‘All these bones are dead, fossilised. Not fresh.’

  ‘The finger was my own.’

  David looked up from his perusal of the remaining items. ‘You’ve got ten fingers, Jack. I counted.’

  The man sighed. ‘The finger was my own, in a previous lifetime. All that you have spread before you are possessions from my former lives.’

  Richard gave David a look and mimed a bottle of beer hitting his lips. ‘That’s it. Call the police and let’s get out of here.’

  ‘Wait a moment, Rich.’ David fingered the teacup. Richard recognised the intense look creasing his forehead, and groaned inwardly. His partner was intrigued. ‘Let me get this right, Jack. You’ve stolen all these things because they were yours originally?’

  ‘Indeed.’

  ‘So what do you want from here?’ David swept his arms wide. ‘All we’ve got are bones.’

  Reims leaned forward. ‘You have something more in your collection. Did you not return from Montana last year with the fossilised remains of the excrement of a Mammuthus primigenius?’

  ‘We did,’ Richard said with a shrug. ‘They’re boxed up somewheres.’

  ‘I need a piece of the excrement. Then will my collection be complete.’

  ‘Don’t tell me.’ Richard sighed. ‘You were that mammoth.’

  ‘How do you know it’s the right mammoth?’ David cut in, too eagerly for Richard’s liking.

  ‘It was my last memory from that life.’ Reims sounded wistful. ‘I recall studying the nearby mountains as I finished. There was a lake cradled by one crater, the shape of a horseshoe, and a long waterfall scattered down the cliff. In my entranced state, I stepped wrongly, and plunged down the slope to my death. Your expedition was in that area. I have seen the maps of your finds. I am convinced that I am right.’

  David pulled Richard to the back of the room. ‘I remember that lake. It was like a horseshoe. Do you think--’

  ‘No, I don’t think.’ Richard jerked his arm free. ‘You heard him, he’s seen the maps.’

  ‘We didn’t sketch the rest of the mountain range on them, only our excavation site.’ David raised his voice. ‘Why do you want a lump of mammoth crap, Jack?’

  The man studied them for a long moment. ‘What I tell you must never be repeated. The ramifications are--immense.’

  ‘We won’t tell a soul. Right, Rich?’

  Richard shrugged. ‘I get the feeling no one would believe us anyway.’

  When Reims spoke again, it was in such a low voice that Richard had to strain to hear him. ‘It is souls of which we speak, gentlemen. For I have discovered that it is possible to regress to an earlier incarnation. To do this, an intimate possession from each previous body must be collected and assembled in a precise order. I have spent decades on this quest, and you have within your possession the last link to my rebirth. I request your assistance. You have it within your power to allow me to exchange this pitiful personality for one more suitable to my personal aspirations.’

  ‘Now you ask,’ Richard pointed out. ‘Only because you weren’t able to steal it.’

  The man’s eyes suddenly glittered under the flickering lights. ‘Necessity is the mother of invention.’

  ‘So,’ David said, his calm voice breaking through the tension, ‘you want us to let you walk away with a vita
l paleontological specimen so you can be reincarnated as a--what?’

  ‘A Buddhist Monk, sixteenth century.’ The man’s face softened. ‘He was a wonderful man, a saint, a healer. I want to become him again, for the rest of this lifetime.’

  ‘To be reincarnated as a Buddhist monk.’ David sucked air in between his teeth. ‘I don’t know, Jack, it’s not the dung thing.’

  Richard groaned good-naturedly. ‘You heard the man, Jack. This is not a mammoth library service.’

  ‘Then allow me to use the item here, now.’ Reims’ hands were clenched into white fists. ‘It will not be damaged by the ceremony.’

  ‘And how long will it take?’ Richard glanced at his watch. ‘I’ve got a life, you know.’

  ‘Actually, Professor Branagan, you have no life.’ Georgie raised his head and growled at the man’s tone. ‘You left your wife three years ago and now, when you are not engrossed in your research, your time is spent consuming fast food and alcohol whilst watching meaningless television programmes.’

  As usual, it was David’s grip on his shoulder that kept Richard from doing something he might later regret. ‘Half an hour,’ his partner said. ‘You’ve got half an hour to do this thing, and then we’re calling the men in white coats to take you away. Got it?’

  ‘I understand perfectly.’ Reims smiled suddenly, exposing bright white teeth. ‘You will like my previous self far more, Professor Branagan. You will see.’

  ‘Sure,’ Richard muttered. ‘Do you want to find his mammoth while I untie him?’

  ‘So long as that’s all you do,’ David said firmly. ‘If he gets out of hand, set Georgie on him.’

  Richard glanced at the dachshund. The dog was lying under a lab table, looking bored with the entire proceedings. ‘I would prefer,’ Reims said icily, ‘not to have any further contact with that creature.’

  ‘You should be grateful to Georgie,’ David’s voice floated back from the storeroom. ‘He’s the one who found your mammoth droppings. Barked and barked at me until I came over to them.’

  ‘That’s right,’ Richard told the man as he cut the twine. ‘He always goes on our expeditions.’

  Reims made a great show of rubbing his wrists after Richard had released him. ‘I will need room to work. Move those three tables to one side of the room.’

  Richard folded his arms across his chest. ‘Move them yourself.’

  ‘Indeed.’ The man nodded. ‘And should I, in my haste, destroy one of your specimens, will you exhibit your customary good humour?’

  Muttering something short and dirty under his breath, Richard carefully moved the tables. Despite his best efforts, the bones slid out of their careful arrangements. By the time he had reorganised them, the man had spread his collection in a large circle on the concrete floor.

  ‘It is not complete,’ the man told him. ‘I am missing an item in addition to the mammoth excrement.’

  ‘Oh, you mean this?’ David reappeared, a box under one arm, the piece of finger bone on his palm. ‘I thought you might need a hand.’

  The man scowled. David placed bone and box on the ground within the circle. ‘Are you certain,’ the man demanded, ‘that this is from the site which I mentioned?’

  Richard bent down, studied the notes on the cardboard. ‘It is. We keep good records. Comes from not having a life.’

  The man placed the finger between the plate and a small doll. His hands caressed a flattened stone as he lifted it from the box. ‘It is beautiful.’

  ‘Only because it isn’t fresh.’ David took a seat on a empty table. ‘Now what happens?’

  ‘Now I shall begin the ceremony.’ The man took the last space in the circle. ‘I must not be disturbed for any reason. Do you understand me? The energies which I draw on are powerful and must be carefully balanced. Nothing must touch the circle.’

  Richard cleared a chair for his own seat. ‘Right. You’ve got ten minutes left.’

  The man smiled. ‘It will not take that long.’

  From one of his pockets he produced three candles and a box of matches. The candles were placed in a triangle in front of him. As he lit them, the man chanted in a language Richard couldn’t recognise. Nothing happened. He suppressed a yawn, waiting for the embarrassing moment when nothing continued to happen.

  Then he jumped from his chair as a band of golden light started at the man’s right. It spread around the circle, leaping from object to object. The glass jar glowed, the plate lifted several inches into the air, the doll’s hair blazed with sudden fire. The man lifted his eyes to Richard’s, smug, triumphant. He continued his chanting, lifting his palms outwards to cup the light as it flowed towards him.

  Then Georgie dashed from his hiding place. David shouted at the dog, but the dachshund ignored his owner. Ears flopping, he galloped into the circle, and bit the nearest candle.

  The man’s form flickered, thickened. Georgie backed out of the circle, his brown hairs glowing as he passed through the light. Richard was surprised to see that the dog’s tail was wagging furiously.

  A loud scream drew his attention back to the man. The golden fire flared high, then died away, leaving the room lit by normal lights again. The objects around the circle were blackened, burnt. And the man was gone. In his place stood a mammoth, its head nearly touching the ceiling, small eyes rolling in panic above the curling trunks. ‘I think he’s made a mistake,’ Richard said into the sudden silence.

  ‘Yes.’ David smirked. ‘A mammoth one.’

  ‘For him, yes.’ They whirled. Georgie was gone, and a tall, naked man met their gaze. The man spat a piece of candle from his mouth, and twirled a dog’s collar idly in his hand. ‘Personally, I think it all went rather well.’

  UNNAMING THE BEASTS