much belated thanks to Chester Anderson and T. A. Waters for their friendship, both in the pages of this book and in that other fictional construct we call “real life”; to Jake Holmes for his lyrics and Carol Hunter for the frog letter; to William Lindsay Gresham for having written Nightmare Alley and to the ancient invisible Chinese sage on the other side of the I Ching, who provided so much of the direction of this, you should excuse the expression, plot.
And so, as you will soon see, “It was a year after the butterflies....”
—Michael Kurland
2002 / 2011
PROLOGUE
This is the story of how Chester Anderson and I saved the world for the second time. Chester wrote a book about the first time (The Butterfly Kid, adv.), so it’s my turn. We both hope that it ends here, as saving the world gets to be a bit hard on the nerves.
I have been accused of writing this book to get even with Chester for his picture of me in The Butterfly Kid. I have also been accused of being a dinosaurian spy.
These accusations are equally true.
It was the year after the butterflies....
CHAPTER ONE
It was a year after the butterflies. Things had sort of quieted back to normal. The reality pill, along with its audio-visual hallucinations, was a thing of the past; the supply gone, except for an odd one or two that Chester seemed to come up with whenever he felt creative. But then, when Chester felt creative, there was no telling what he’d come up with.
The only puzzle in my life at the moment was the two-week-old disappearance of a close friend and cohort of ours, Tom Waters. But then, Tom was a sometime professional magician, and given to disappearances. Usually he’d pop up after a few days and complain bitterly about the lack of civilization wherever he’d gone. Civilization, to Tom, was measured only by the relative abundance of peanut butter, cupcakes and cola; that being the scope of what he allowed to be food and drink.
Chester the Barefoot Anderson was on stage playing electronic harpsichord with his new group, the Elven Five. I was sitting at a table toward the back of the Trembling Womb, trying to ignore the music well enough to compose a sonnet to a lady I had recently become rather fond of. Somehow the music was making its way across well-worn synapses from the ear part of my brain to the hand part without stopping anywhere at the conscious level. When I saw that I had just written You are lovely as a tweedle and you diddle pam my heart as the third line, I gave up and put the notebook away.
Then I saw the girl.
She was standing just inside the doorway, not ten feet away, talking to Overly-Friendly Phil, the manager. I’d never seen her before, I was sure of that, but my subconscious told me I knew this girl. She had large, dark eyes, set in the kind of oval face Flemish masters put only on the finest angels. Her hair was dark, color indeterminate in the coffeehouse’s dim light, and folded gently about her neck and shoulders, reaching somewhere around the small of her back. She was dressed in a sort of tunic that made her boyish figure look awfully girlish. After a few seconds I realized where I knew her from.
In my youth, during an extended period of reading romantic literature, I had rescued this girl from everything from evil knights to fearsome dragons in many a half-remembered dream. This was the Girl Who Talked to Unicorns: the symbol of purity and grace I had sworn to serve when I took my oath of fealty and stood vigil over my sword one long night. Ivanhoe had nothing on me when I was twelve years old. This, by Loki, was the girl of my dreams.
I couldn’t help it. I got up and walked over to where they were standing. Their conversation stopped as I approached, but I, unabashed and unabashable, plunged on. I bowed low to the girl, knowing that in a few seconds I’d feel as silly as I probably looked, but living only for the moment “Fair damsel,” I heard myself saying, “how may I serve you?”
If she had giggled, I would have stalked back to my table and sulked for days. If she had giggled, none of this would have happened.
She smiled. “Good sir,” she said, with a voice like ripples in a silver stream, “I would that you aid me. I search for my unicorn.” She had a distinctly Cockney accent.
* * * *
There were, of course, several possibilities. It might be a put-on. It could be a humorous response to my greeting. It might have deep psychological meaning, given the old unicorn legends. But somehow, I knew she was serious; This girl of my dream needed help finding her unicorn.
“Where did you lose it?” I asked.
Overly-Friendly Phil gave me a dirty look. “You know what she’s talking about?” he demanded.
“Godfrey Daniel!” I explained, waving my arms and speaking above the level of the music to make myself heard. “What is there to know? The girl needs help. A damsel in distress. Surely that should be sufficient.”
“Calm down,” Phil said, patting me on the shoulder, a gesture I am not fond of. “Take her over to your table and talk to her. I’ll send over some coffee, compliments of the house. I got enough troubles.”
Taking his advice, and his free coffee, I led the unicorn girl back to my table and sat her down across from me. “Now,” I said, “Tell me all about it.”
The music, I noticed, had stopped. A bearded, plumpish figure was approaching the table. “Ah, Michael,” the figure said in a stage murmur that carried over the intervening tables. “This Bach and Rock is hard work. Credo. I must rest.” He sank into a chair up to his elbows, which he rested on the table. “Good evening,” he said to the girl. “Are you one of Michael’s, or may I scratch your back?”
“Chester,” I told the girl. “Glerph. Anderson. This is.”
“Glerph?” Chester asked, raising one eyebrow. He used to practice that in front of a mirror.
“And I...my name is Michael. Mike. Kurland.” I was flustered.
“You’re flustered,” Chester told me. “I have a back fetish,” he said to the girl, “but we’ll forget it for now, since it seems to fluster Michael the Theodore Bear to hear about it.”
“I am Sylvia,” the girl said, looking slightly amused.
“Ah, Sylvia. From Sylvian. Creature of the wood. A delightful name. Tell me, Sylvia, what are you doing out of your enchanted wood?”
“I have lost my unicorn,” she told him. “And Michael is going to help me find him.” She sounded very positive.
“Glerph?” Chester asked.
“You heard the lady,” I told him.
“Indeed? Ah, humph. Unicorn.” Chester had often told me of his firm belief in unicorns; now he was getting a chance to prove it.
Sylvia looked at me, and then at Chester, and then back at me. “I do not understand you people. You behave very strangely. Ever since I got off the train everyone has been behaving very strangely. Perhaps it’s just that I am not used to this part of the country.”
“Yes,” Chester assured her. “You’re from Liverpool, of course.” He was very proud of his ability to place different accents.
