His uncle was staring at him. Duke Grayson was putty-colored, like a zombie himself. He looked as if he couldn’t believe his eyes. “But—but—we bound you,” he said, finally. “With salt, and bronze—”
“Bronze can be shattered,” said James, “and locks broken. I stand before you today and demand to see my murderer punished.”
Duke Grayson pointed toward the trembling man with the rope around his neck.
“He’s there, James.”
James smiled a cold, unpleasant smile. “I meant you.”
Now there was chaos. The crowd was screaming and milling. The police officer who had let James go by took me and set me on the steps to the stage, as if worried I would be crushed in the melee.
The Duke was blustering. “I don’t know what you imagine happened, James, but I never harmed you—”
“Never harmed me?” James snarled. It was frightening to see the way he looked, his teeth bared and his black eyes glowing with the low light of the rageful undead.
“You wanted to be the Duke. You never wanted me to live to eighteen. You hired someone to run me down, then found some poor vagrant you could pin the crime on and bribed the judge to make it stick. I heard you, Uncle. I heard you, paying off the murderer you hired. I heard you after I died.”
The Duke spun toward the crowd. “He’s gone mad,” he said. “You know that death can shatter men’s minds.”
My heart was pounding. I had not known what James wanted to do here in the square, but I had not imagined a direct confrontation. Trust me, he had said. And I did. Even knowing there was no way out of this for him now. For us, now. Not unless James knew something I didn’t.
“I am quite sane, nonetheless,” said James, and I saw, from the way that the crowd was looking at him, that they believed him.
“The testimony of a dead man means nothing!” the Duke shouted. “Officers, take him away!”
But the police didn’t move. James was the son of the old Duke, and both had been beloved in Lychgate. They would not move to hurt him, even in death.
“What can you possibly hope to gain by accusing me, boy?” the Duke demanded of James in a low voice that was half snarl and half wail. “You have lost the Dukedom. Accept it. If I die, there will be no one left with Grayson blood to hold the title of Duke of Lychgate. Do you want that?”
“No,” said James.
“Then—”
“I will be the Duke of Lychgate,” said James.
“But you’re dead. A dead man can’t hold a title—”
“Can’t he?” The rage had faded from James’s expression; there was a cool, calm smile on his pale lips instead. He turned to the crowd. “Who here would prefer a dead man to a murderer for their Duke? Who here wants the son of the true Duke Grayson as their ruler?”
The crowd stirred; I could sense their ambivalence. They had adored James when he was alive. I knew how much he had been loved; I had been there with him in the streets when they had stopped us both to wish him good health, or take photographs of him with their phones and cameras. But now he was dead, and the dead were not like us.
Duke Grayson smiled a thin smile. “Don’t you see?” he said. “They don’t want you. Officers, take my nephew—”
There was a rustle then, a sort of wave of sound that went through the crowd. I saw the Duke’s expression change as he looked out over the people of Lychgate, and I stood up myself, to get a better view.
It was the zombies. They were coming forth from the shadows, moving in their slow deliberate way. Without making a sound they pushed through the crowd toward the stage and stood—at least a hundred of them—in a circle around it. The implication was clear. James was not to be touched.
Now it was James who was smiling. “You see,” he said. “They do want me.”
“They’re dead,” said the Duke. “They don’t matter.”
“Don’t they?” said James. “I think it is time that we stopped pretending. Who among us cannot count a family member—a child, a parent, a wife or husband—or a friend who has returned from the dead? We know what they call this place— Zombietown. We know that the Curse follows us. If it is even a curse. Maybe we should stop and ask ourselves if there is any real reason for us to be ashamed. In other towns death is the end. Here we see our dead. We speak to them. And they love us.”
At that, he looked at me.
“Perhaps,” he said, “it is time for Lychgate to have a Duke who represents what the town really is. A union of living and dead.”
He held his hand out then. I stood. It was not as I had always imagined it would be. I had thought I would marry James before the entire town, with a carpet of white flowers spread out at my feet and James, handsome in a tuxedo, waiting for me in the gardens of the Duke’s palace. Now he was asking me to stand up with him in front of everyone while there was grave dirt under my nails and clinging to the soles of my shoes. It flaked off in clumps as I made my way across the platform and took his hand.
It was as cold as ice.
We turned to face the crowd, together. I saw them. The faces of the town. They had never smiled when they’d looked at me, but now they smiled at us. We were young and in love. We were living and dead. The faces of the zombies shone as they gazed at us.
The crowd began to clap. Slowly at first, then fast, a sound like thunder. I heard the Duke cry out. He turned to run, but the zombies were there, blocking his way, encircling the stage. They looked to James for instruction.
He gave it.
“The Duke is yours,” he said.
The dead swarmed up the steps like driver ants. They took hold of Duke Grayson and dragged him, struggling and screaming, to the trapdoor. The executioner released the innocent prisoner, who fled. The Duke was gagged and the rope placed about his neck. It was one of the zombies who pulled the lever that opened the trapdoor and dropped the Duke, twisting and kicking, into necksnapping space.
So the town had its Hanging Day after all.
After the Duke’s death, the officers led James and me to the limousine and helped us in. We drove slowly through the crowd, who watched us go—some cheering, some looking on with silent, stunned faces. I passed my parents, who were standing hand in hand, gawking like the rest. I rolled down the window to wave at them, but they looked at me as if they had never seen me before in their lives. I had become someone else to them.
I have not been home since. I live in the palace now, where there is a room made up for me. Because he is the Duke, my parents don’t object to me living here. They know we have to stay together. The town accepts that their Duke is dead, because I am alive. I am the symbol. I am what proves that though James is dead, he is still human.
He has even found a priest to marry us. It used to be illegal, the marriage of the living and the dead. After this, I don’t know. Everything is different now. Everything is changing. Because I am the betrothed of the Duke, I don’t have to endure the curious stares of the townsfolk when I go out to the market, or to the square, or up to the cemetery to put salt on the graves of my ancestors. I ride in the town car, and I keep the tinted windows rolled all the way up so I don’t have to see their faces when they look at me. I know they wonder what it is like, to love and be loved by the dead.
I would tell them it is much like it is to be loved by the living. James is not like he was when he was alive. He is quiet now; he talks very little, and does not share his thoughts with me. He does not sleep at night, and cannot dream. But many men are quiet, and most don’t share their thoughts even with the ones they love. In many ways he is just like the James I always knew.
Except that when he touches me, even now, I can’t help but shiver. If only the dead did not have such cold hands.
“The Third Virgin”
Holly: Unicorns are thought to possess healing powers. In particular, their horn is believed to remedy everything from bad breath to serious disease. Goblets inlaid with unicorn horn will purify poison poured into them, and candlesticks of the horn itself hold candles that burned especially brightly and very long.
But in addition to the much-coveted horn, other parts of the unicorn are also useful. Shoes made from unicorn skin will keep feet from having sores and bunions, a pelt of unicorn fur will cure fever, and ground-up unicorn innards will cure leprosy. Unicorns are useful creatures, hence all that creepy hunting of them.
Kathleen Duey’s “The Third Virgin” explores what it means to have those healing powers—what the cost is, both to those who are healed and to the unicorn itself. I love this story; it still haunts me.
Justine: Wow. Obviously, I am anti-unicorn, but this story gives me ammunition I never even thought of. Who knew that unicorns are massive whingers? (For the Americans: A whinger is someone who complains constantly and lives in the land of half-empty glasses. It is not the same as being a whiner; it’s much, much worse.) You don’t see zombies standing around moaning about the awesome cost and responsibility of eating brains, do you?
This story also answers the question, “Unicorns? What are they good for?” with an emphatic, “ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.”
The anti-unicorn case rests covered in glory.
Holly: I’m not going to even touch what Team Zombie is covered in. Sores, maybe? Goo of some kind? Whatever that is, I wouldn’t call it “glory.”
The Third Virgin
By Kathleen Duey
I need a virgin.
I know, I know. But I do.
So I am hiding in the woods near a high school.
Pathetic, yes. But necessary. The virgin can’t be an old man or a wee slip of a child or a man with a child’s wits this time. I need strength and resolve. Am I the first to try this? More likely I am the ten thousandth. It hardly matters. I continue to starve myself. I don’t know if I can keep it up—or if it will help. I can only hope that this is the last conundrum of my endless life.
I have no idea when or if I was born, nor what spawned me. I know when my memories began, because I still have every single one of them. It was a warm morning back in Cymru—the place they decided to call Wales, eventually—when I saw the sun rise for the first time. After that, I wandered.
Always alone.
Always hungry.
I was often frightened, and I envied the fawns and the fox kits their graceful mothers and watchful fathers. I coveted the way they all knew what they were meant to eat. I didn’t. I tried everything. I spat out twigs and flesh, and vomited up berries, and had no idea what would still my hunger. And in spite of it, I grew.
When my body changed, my dapples faded into the silk white coat of adulthood.
Then the horn split the skin of my forehead. It scared me, this long, sharp spike shoving its way outward. I had to walk differently, allow more breadth of passage in the forest. And I began to feel something beyond my constant hunger. It was a separate ache. A need. For what, I had no idea.
I was very young when I discovered I could not hurt myself beyond my ability to heal. There was no cut, no bruise, no broken bone that did not quickly repair itself.
The first time, I watched the magic, both sides of the gash straining to touch, to cling, to erase the damage I had done. I thought all pain passed quickly, that all wounds healed in the course of a morning—until I followed a grounded bird flopping with a ruined wing. I began to watch. None of the other creatures healed like I did.
The first human I ever saw was nearly naked and filthy. She was running, screaming, bleeding. I understood her cries, but had no idea how to help. I hid as her pursuers passed me. I don’t know if she died or lived, or what happened to her.
The First Virgin:
One drizzling gray morning a farm girl spotted me through the trees. She ran toward me, pleading with me to save her father, a coal miner nearly crushed when his bell pit collapsed. Her heart was a roiling mass of emotion that both excited and scared me. I bolted, but I could hear her behind me, shouting, begging, heartbroken. I stopped and looked back. Her desperation—even at that distance— felt sweet. As she came closer, I lowered my horn by instinct, even though I had no idea what I should do with it.
But she knew. She lay one trembling hand on my neck, and guided me through the trees to a cottage. She coaxed me gently, waiting for me to puzzle my way through the open door, then to clop across the smooth wooden planks. Her father was dying. I could feel it. She stood close to me and showed me what to do, with gestures and words that made it clear she understood my fear and my inexperience.
I bent to touch her father’s brow with my horn. The jolt I felt nearly buckled my forelegs. Something coursed through me, and I transmuted it into something I could give back to him, but not in full. I stole some of his life, without thinking, and my hunger was instantly stilled. For the first time in my life, I felt the strength that comes from eating. But was the man healed? Had I done it correctly?
He sat up. He flexed his legs. His weeping daughter was whispering, her hands light on my skin, thanking me, assuring me that I had done everything perfectly. And I only then realized that she could hear me; she was understanding my thoughts. I had lived all my life as silent as stone, hungry, aching, confused. All that was gone for a while. It was intoxicating.
There are legends about unicorns. I have heard—or overheard—most of them. I know there are paintings and tapestries that depict us looking love-daft, kneeling, staring up at a pretty girl. I am sure I looked as silly as any of them that first time.
But the virgins I have sought ever since cannot be defined in the narrow, idiotic way most people use the word. There are older, deeper meanings. Virginity means unmarred wonder, belief, new green grass, continuous rebirth. And even that is not enough for me to be able to talk, to be heard. There must also be a need so sharp that I feel loved, at least for a while.