He sees the mountain. It is a grim edifice of black rock embalmed in hoarfrost, so immense that it penetrates the pale sky like a blade. Ice winter clouds float over its onyx face, and iron mist hovers inches above the sluggish crystal waters of the silver marsh at the mountain’s base.
Women sit on the brittle grass and dip their bare feet into the ice-laden stream. They are fair and pale, their skin the color of milk or moon. They live in this prison of sleeping trees, whose branches lay across the ground like spent lovers. The scents of dying lilacs and corroding hyacinths drift up to heaven on a chill and cracked wind. The jet mountain looms over them, a silhouette that eclipses the glade. The wind blows through the clearing and ripples their dresses and hair; they are caressed by it, as if by a lover’s hands. When they speak, he can’t hear them, but he can see their words, like platinum ghosts. Leaves float over the ground, and the wind causes the trees to stir like skeletons.
The women share memories of their home. They recall dark buildings slick with black rainfall and streets thick with armor and smoke. Statues of tall men eclipse the city with their shadows, and the air is heavy with fear.
But this, this glade, is a better place for them. They sit near the waters and quietly laugh, knowing their presence here is ever in flux. They dream of the present, and though he knows they must be freezing they look like they are comfortable and at ease. Gossamer branches sway behind them, and beyond the lavender trees hangs a cold and empty moon, a portal through the clouds.
A sound like thunder approaches. It is the unicorns, whose hooves splash in the water and whose whinnies echo through the mists in an inhuman dirge.
The women run. Their thick wool dresses have been made heavy with moisture, and the marshy forest conspires against them with sodden earth and thick tendrils of silver smoke.
He tries to help them, but he can only watch. He isn’t really there.
The unicorns emerge from the silver fog like a chain of nightmares. Their skin is black and coarse, and thick dark blood oozes from their nostrils and hooves. Their eyes are white and their horns are jagged and covered in scratches. Their teeth are fanged.
They descend on the girls and kill one of them in an instant. Her terrified face is reflected back in the unicorns’ eyes as their horns rend her fragile body apart. Her mangled remains fall up into the sky, where she is swallowed by rain that falls like inverted tears.
The other girls run through the marsh, slowed every step of the way by thick vines and walls of foliage. Fog cages them.
Again, he sees their memories of the place they once called home. Black rain falls onto steep stone steps that ascend to a grim palace, the heart of the black city. Silhouettes of soldiers surround them, men and women determined to keep their realm safe from the faceless advance of a distant enemy. White fires burn in great pits at the outskirts of the city, dank beacons to light the soldiers’ return. Armor grinds against stone as they march out of the city and onto fields wet with blood and rain.
The soldiers die in battle and fall in waves, face down in the mud where they swallow earth and grime before their lives are crushed from their bodies.
The unicorns are persistent hunters, and they show no mercy. The women are exhausted, and their bodies are covered in silver ice. Their hair and dresses have been soaked through with water, and they huddle together in the shadow of tall rocks shaped like broken fingers.
The unicorns smell of brimstone and blood. Their horns are bloody and their manes have gone white. They feed on these women, these souls without mates.
She is alone now, and she is no longer needed. He reaches for her, and for a moment see sees him, and she wants to reach back.
Her mind returns to the creeping shadows over the fields of war. Her memories bleed to recollections of the glade, her small paradise filled with silver haze and the girls with white skin.
She falls up. Even as the unicorns come for her, all that she can think of is how the worst days are behind her. She falls into air filled with tears and leaves.
The sky freezes as she ascends into its embrace, and she remains there, held in gray stasis, forever frozen at the edge of death.