Lore of the Unicorn (9): The Virgin Capture · 2:32pm July 6th

We had been on the trail of the unicorn for days, and found ourselves in an underground ruin. Actually, we were back in Connecticut—in the wine cellar belonging to the former manor of Odell Shepard himself; who, besides being the world’s foremost unicorn scholar, became Lieutenant Governor here in the forties. It was the same area where I had grown up, and it turned out that Shepard’s place was only a short ride from where I had found the same book of his which began our Grail quest.

It was an unsettling coincidence to me. We had been researching literary history, after all, and not one of us had thought to ask the greatest chronicler of that history about the truth of it—we had, as it were, merely followed his indications. But, as Forcalor pointed out to us, this backwards forensic strategy—that is, of consulting a dead man, rather than his living legacy—was perfect for our present purpose of capturing a unicorn.

“Not like séance,” he had insisted with his dry, mysterious accent, in reply to Hoofprintz—who had, as always, religious objections to our methods; “that kind of ‘corny stuff’ belong to Crazy Uncle Rasputin—part of old, dead world, yes?”

“Old—yes. Dead—yes,” said Hoofprintz, tizzying his hind-fin in an excited humor. “So tell me, then—what’s the difference? Why should I be going into this without the expectation that you’re going to pull out a crystal ball and some head wrappings? It sounds like you’re planning a séance to me.”

We were reaching the end of the cellar. The brick corridor began to give way to earth-stone, which cragged the pathway and scented the air with mildew and cobweb; the bones of human remains could just be made out hiding in the crevices of dimming torchlight that receded behind us while we advanced, though it seemed as though none of this terror had yet occurred to my companions. “Later, later,” said Forcalor, “you will see.” When Hoofprintz persisted in getting an answer, he said, with some reluctance, “Hunting unicorn is imaginary problem. So solution is also imaginary… This is the way of science, like Vernadsky, you know—”

“So this is imaginary to you?” spouted Hoofprintz. “See… That’s where you lose me. I just…” He did a flip in the air and landed back in his bowl. “Maybe this is just an experiment to you. But some of us here actually need an alicorn, and in my opinion we’ll have much better luck scouring the anterooms of Old Florence than we will wandering around a crypt.”

These were my friends on this Quest, and here I think it is worth saying a little bit about them.

Forcalor had been the first to respond to my advertisement. He had arrived at the doorstep with every pouch and pocket laded for an adventure, and that day was carrying with him a gnarled walking stick, which recommended that he had already been on many of his own. He was of unknown national origin—and refused to give clues to it under any circumstances. He was, perhaps, a true ‘man of the world’; all that I can say is that, wherever he might have come from had given him a peculiar taste for the spiritual reality embedded in problems of engineering—quite in contrast to the obsession with machines that prevailed in the United States. He was, like a TRIZ mechanic, invested in unsolvable dilemmas, which had, yet, in principle, an answer—and it was by virtue of this obsession that he was so passionately drawn to the unicorn.

I had been trying hard to make my case to him one night, in my air-headed habit, whence he smiled so as to dismiss all my preoccupation with ‘credibility’. “Well, let’s drop into that void, for sure,” he said, quieting me. “It calls to us to strip away the veil that barely covers it, and gaze deeper into the horrible, but beautiful, truth that awaits.”

As for Hoofprintz—well, Hoofprintz was a fish, so it will be best if I attempt to describe his species.

He was, as I have said, about the size of a softball, and could be somewhat accommodated into a household fishbowl; but when his temper ran, he would inflate much larger, and would barely have room to turn around. He was covered in cactus spines, from his back fin to his slightly parted fish mouth—for he had acquired the ability to breathe underwater. His dorsal side was marked with brown mottle which enhanced his yellow and un-resting eyes, in a way uncanny of how the darkness beneath a jungle canopy makes fearsome the redoubting stare of the jaguar.

He had not always been a fish. He had been, at one point (as Ben Shapiro might say), a “human male”; but even he seemed to be unaware of when the transformation had taken place. He had studied at a theological seminary and became fluent in Ancient Greek and Latin (it was thanks to him that we were able to pursue otherwise indecipherable leads), where he would argue against the merits of the Vulgate with his fellow cenobites. He suspected that his condition might have been an act of revenge; for in any case, the Simpsons episode where Homer eats a poisonous pufferfish, and only has a short time to live, had always been his favorite, for its weighty moral implications.

He was the Felix to Forcalor’s Oscar—or if you like—the Celestia to his Luna; for he knew that life did not work out as glibly as on The Simpsons—and so he sought, with a sometimes grating vigor, the real horn of a unicorn—not for any ‘creative’ value it might possess, but for its well-documented alexipharmic promises, that might restore him to human form.

My friends were arguing thus, and all the while the tunnel under the house of Shepard had gotten smaller and smaller; at last, realizing the situation, Forcalor drew a stick and lit it like a torch. “By warmth of the stars,” he said, “looks like we have something here!”

On the face of the rock there was a large relief with ancient writing on it. Forcalor held the torch up to it, and Hoofprintz, leaning his fins on the edges of his bowl, translated for us as follows:

There is an animal called dajja, extremely gentle, which the hunters are unable to capture because of its great strength. It has in the middle of its brow a single horn. But observe the ruse by which the huntsmen take it. They lead forth a young virgin, pure and chaste, to whom, when the animal sees her, he approaches, throwing himself upon her. Then the girl offers him her breasts, and the animal begins to suck the breasts of the maiden and to conduct himself familiarly with her. Then the girl, while sitting quietly, reaches forth her hand and grasps the horn on the animal’s brow, and at this point the huntsmen come up and take the beast and go away with him to the king.

“And so,” Hoofprintz concluded, exaggerating a sigh, “Likewise the Lord Christ has raised up for us a horn of salvation in the midst of Jerusalem, in the house of God, by the intercession of the Mother of God—a virgin pure, chaste, and full of mercy—” he groaned—“immaculate, inviolable, blah blah blah.”

“Eh… But what is the meaning, fish boy?” asked Forcalor.

“It’s total apocrypha,” Hoofprintz replied, keeping his softball size. “The confused musings of Marion allegorizers. I’ve seen it more times than a King of the Hill rerun. The maiden is Divine Mercy, the hunter is Man—and Jesus, somehow, a gullible, solicitous beast—a bimbo.”

“It’s the virgin-capture story,” I interceded. “It comes from the Hebraic tradition, which, as you know, became mixed with the Greek scientific one for various reasons. This inscription appears to be a meticulous reproduction of a passage from a Medieval encyclopedist.”

Forcalor removed a pair of orange shades. “And the king…? In the allegory,” he asked with a degree of concern unaccustomed for him.

Hoofprintz shrugged. “God…? It’s a mess, like I said.”

Forcalor removed another pair of orange shades. “Sweet Rurik… This is no mess, comrades. I’m afraid we may be knee-deep in cold borscht, with not enough appetite to make way out—”

Just then, there was a rock slide behind us, and the entrance to the recess by which we came was sealed. The three of us were stuck in a cave no larger than a motel bedroom. “What’s going on?” I said, sloshing Hoofprintz’s bowl with my backwards steps. “Don’t tell me this is a trap.”

“I am afraid so,” said Forcalor, steely, removing another pair of orange shades. “You see, unlike famous U2 song, we have indeed found what we have come to look for. Mr. Shepard wants unicorn, too—only to acquire power of God, by obtaining divine mercy of so many virgins.”

Debris began to fall from the ceiling as the walls of the cave shook.

“Are you crazy?” I said. “Even if it was true… Do you realize how many virgins you would need to win that kind of godly favor?”

“Yes, yes… I don’t know,” he replied. I could see him attempting to sort something out behind his orange spectacles. “Maybe he is… eh, madman, you know? Not too uncommon thing, where I come from—”

“Uh, guys…?” Hoofprintz interrupted us. “I just realized. Odell Shepard? It’s an anagram. It spells Head Doll Reps.”

We puzzled over his discovery. “Head Doll Reps… As in, lead representatives of a department for… dolls? I don’t get it,” I said.

“Lauren Faust,” he replied. “It’s her anger about Equestria Girls, or whatever.”

“Darn it!” Forcalor cried, punching a mark into the wall with his fist. “Eech ee double-hockey sticks! Why does it always come back to her?” Then, calming himself: “…But of course! What precision! What cunning! How else can you cultivate the greatest source of virgins on planet Earth?”

My heart sank. Of course, the book had been a set-up, meant for me the whole time. There was no “Odell Shepard”; Faust had simply understood my weakness for fanciful analysis, and laid the snare. The rumbling stopped as a door slid open next to the massive glyph. We heard steam and dripping water coming from a latrine; then slowly, even cautiously, in a slippery sports undergarment which barely retained her bobbing hips and breasts, emerged Twilight Sparkle in buxom glory—the same one I had found in my researches, now standing before us in the dinted alcove.

“You said Cstesias didn’t want to fuck his unicorn!” I turned and cried at Forcalor.

“Eh… You know, I can be wrong about some things,” he admitted.

“Relax, guys,” said Hoofprintz. “It’s a virgin capture story. She has no power over us.”

“Heh… True! You know, I was what you call ‘bad boy’ back in academy days,” said Forcalor, giving a friendly turn to his rival.

“Fish sex is weird,” replied the latter. “You basically fertilize the ground. But, it is what is.”

“I guess life of fish… not all it’s cracked up to be.”

I didn’t think it was possible, scientifically speaking—but I swear I didn’t simply imagine it—the faintest blush on Hoofprintz’s prickly scales. “Yeah, well… Maybe it’s not so easy being a vagabond in a strange land, either.”

The pleasure of their truce would be short-lived; for mega-babe Sparkle continued to advance on us, making an unrealistically nerdy number of adjustments to her oversized frames. “Oh! Anon… I didn’t mean for you to see me like this… I mean, not that I mind… They’re just breasts, after all…”

Forcalor folded his arms. “Not understanding. Surely Twilight Shlyukha should turn and run in presence of our ‘virile manliness’… Yet here she is more friendly than Yeltsin at NATO conference. What is giving?”

I tried, in desperation, as the shower steam crept toward us, to come up with a way out; I did. But I deemed that it would be irresponsible to jeopardize my friends, having first brought their unlike personalities together on this venture, and then putting them in harm’s way after their having finally reached accord with one another.

She was getting closer; I could sense my soul leaving me.

I said, “Look… I’m saving my body, okay.”

“Save body… What that mean?” asked Forcalor. “Save for what? Olympic games?”

“No, I mean… See, everyone has their own tempo. And sometimes, things… don’t work out when you’re busy looking for unicorns. No shame in that, right?”

I trembled as the damp heave of her bosom pressed into me, numbing my senses at the extremities.

“Oh… you know I’ve always had a crush on you,” she said.

“Okay, still not understanding,” said Forcalor, inching me back from her and readying himself in a fighting stance. “But now is time we make Miss Twilight same continuity as The Queen of the Dark—if you get my drift, comrades.”

Hoofprintz had blown up to fill his bowl. “God, I hate anon fics.”

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