Unicorn Tracks

By Julia Ember

After a savage attack drives her from her home, sixteen-year-old Mnemba finds a place in her cousin Tumelo’s successful safari business, where she quickly excels as a guide. Surrounding herself with nature and the mystical animals inhabiting the savanna not only allows Mnemba’s tracking skills to shine, it helps her hide from the terrible memories that haunt her.

Mnemba is employed to guide Mr. Harving and his daughter, Kara, through the wilderness as they study unicorns. The young women are drawn to each other, despite the fact that Kara is betrothed. During their research, they learn of a conspiracy by a group of poachers to capture the unicorns and exploit their supernatural strength to build a railway. Together, they must find a way to protect the creatures Kara adores while resisting the love they know they can never indulge.

For the family members, friends, and teachers who read the stories, novel attempts, and bad fan fiction that I wrote as a child and encouraged me to just keep trying.

MUDDY WATER
filled a paw print the depth and width of a soup bowl. I knelt on the red earth, brushing aside leaves and debris. The tracks led from the edge of the path into the brush. A sinuous channel left by the creature’s serpentine tail wound in and out of the prints.

I bit my lip to hide a grin of triumph. Nobody at the camp had spotted a chimera in months. If I managed to find one of the elusive beasts, the other guides would finally have to stop saying that Tumelo only hired me because I was his cousin. Even Oswe would have to admit that a girl tracker had bested him. I almost rubbed my hands with glee, imagining the look on his face. Crawling forward, I used the butt of my rifle to separate the dense bushes like thorny curtains. A steaming pile of manure greeted me, and I sat up, pinched my nose, and wiped red sand on my breeches. We were close.

“What is it, Mnemba?” One of my tourists leaned forward in her saddle to peer down at the ground, adjusting her sweat-soaked skirts. “A lion?”

I shook my head, tracing the twisting line with my finger. “No, see this long mark? It’s a chimera. The snake tail drags behind.”

“A
chimera
, Suzette!” Her husband clapped his hands together. “Mary Ellis told me that when they went on safari—”

I cut him off, mounted up again, and wheeled my horse abruptly off the path. In the three days since I became the Dyers’ guide, I’d heard more than enough stories about “Mary Ellis” and her Nazwimbe adventures. My mare, Elikia, snorted, showing the disdain I felt.

“Stick close behind me,” I instructed, nudging Elikia straight through the knee-high ferns. “We’re near, and the chimera might be hunting. Follow the trail I make with my horse.”

“What do they eat?”

“Anything. Just keep the noise down. We don’t want to startle it.”

“Paul was first regiment. He’ll protect us,” Suzette said, patting her husband’s shoulder proudly. The newlywed Dyers exchanged sickly sweet smiles.

Paul Dyer pulled his rifle over his shoulder and cocked it. His finger hovered over the trigger, and he took mock aim at a tree behind us. A phoenix chattered up in the tree’s heights, preening its magnificent orange and red feathers.

“Right,” I said, trying not to roll my eyes. “Just stay quiet so I can concentrate.”

I scanned the earth, looking for snapped branches and flattened grass. Once off the path, the plants grew too thick for me to see the chimera’s tracks from horseback, but I didn’t dare dismount again. If we stumbled upon the creature, the last place I wanted to be was on the ground. Elikia trudged through the thick foliage, shaking her head as mosquitos buzzed around her nostrils. Behind me, the Dyers swatted at insects on each other’s backs.

A deep rumble shook the ground beneath our horses’ hooves. My heart froze, and I turned in my saddle to face a moss-covered outcrop. Staring down at us from above, the chimera licked her front paws and stretched out in the sun, enormous belly bulging with meat. Her snake-headed tail continued to feed as she rested, gulping down dark strips of red and gray flesh from the tattered elephant carcass lying beside her.

A few hundred feet away, the elephant’s herd milled about in the trees, sadly waiting to venerate their friend’s skeleton once the huge cat had finished her meal.

“Where’s my sketchbook?” Suzette whispered to her husband. “Can you get it out of your saddlebag?”

I shook my head at Paul before he could climb down. As much as I would have loved to shove a drawing of the chimera in Oswe’s smug face, the last thing we needed was to pique the creature’s interest by dismounting.

Paul’s horse stamped at the ground, trying to the shake the bugs off his legs.

The chimera’s purple eyes snapped open. Her pupils dilated with interest, and she sniffed at the air. The snake tail hissed and a low, rocky growl formed in the great cat’s throat. Her lips parted, revealing yellow, stained canines each the length of my index finger.

“Everyone stay still,” I said, keeping my voice as calm as I could.

“Stay still? Are you insane?” Paul Dyer fumbled with his rifle, struggling to brace it. His fingers slipped on the trigger, and the gun’s barrel shook.

The chimera climbed to her feet, staring at us. She crouched low on her haunches and positioned herself to pounce.

I looked around, frantically searching for a way to escape without having to shoot the magnificent creature. As a guide, my first duty was to protect our guests from harm, but how could I shoot something so rare it had almost melted into legend?

Two young bull elephants sparred in the trees, tusks locking together. I whipped my rifle over my shoulder and shot the ground under their feet. The noise spooked the already edgy herd. They trumpeted in alarm, ears fanning as they stampeded. The chimera’s head twisted toward the movement. Looking between the elephants and her half-devoured prey, she tucked her tail, leapt down from the cliff, and sought refuge in the caves below.

I let out a sigh of relief. The Dyers’ pale skins had taken a greenish tinge with fright. A tuft of the chimera’s mane stuck to the rocks above us. Pins of adrenaline made my fingers tremble as I stood in my stirrups, untangling the silky hair and hiding it in my saddlebag.

I slowly turned Elikia back toward the path, intent on finding a creature my tourists could approach with a little less danger.

“I HAVE
a gift for you, Mnemba,” Tumelo called out to me as I passed the wooden shack he used as an office. He sat with his bare feet up on his desk, puffing deeply on a luxury cigar one of the tourists had given him as a parting gift. Smoke billowed out toward me. He beckoned me with the crook of his finger. “Come in.”

I stumbled over to the hut on tired legs and sat in the chair opposite him, helping myself to a mango from his bowl of fruit. Tumelo’s “gifts” weren’t always things I appreciated—a frightened new horse to train up, breakfast shifts so early the sun hadn’t even thought about coming up—so I helped myself to other little things from him to make up for it. I’d grown up bouncing in the saddle behind him, poking him in the ribs, trying to make him fall, so I felt more at ease with him than some of the other guides did.

Rolling my eyes, I braced myself. “What is it?”

He brandished an open envelope, with a thick letter crumpled and stuffed back inside. Like everything else he owned, the white paper was smeared with tobacco dust. Tumelo beamed. “A naturalist from Echalend is visiting us here for field research. And I have decided to assign him to you.”

“A naturalist?” I dug my safari knife into the mango’s tough skin. “For what? And why would I want one?”

“You’re always complaining your guests don’t know enough and almost get killed. Well, now’s your chance to show an expert around.”

“Then he’ll know too much!” I protested. How could I work my usual strategies with a bona fide nature expert? He would know the difference between the hoof prints of a wildebeest and an abada. And he definitely wouldn’t believe that a nightingale was a baby caladrius. On days when I couldn’t find the tracks of the beasts the tourists paid big money to come and see, I relied on those tricks to keep them happy and believing in my skills. “Why can’t you ever give me a good present? Like a pair of riding gloves or a new rug for my hut or something?”

“Never satisfied.” Tumelo heaved a dramatic sigh, but he was smiling. “Well, it doesn’t matter. Mr. Harving and his daughter will be here within the day. They wrote to me from Ekwaga a few days ago.”

“So, you’re saying I have no choice? Send Oswe, he’s itching for a challenge.” Since I’d found the chimera two days before and presented her hair to the entire camp as proof, Oswe had stomped about in a huff, avoiding all eye contact with me. Victory was sweet.

“When you’re not being a lazy cow, you’re my best tracker, so if anyone can find whatever it is they want to study, you can.”

“If I’m your best, you should treat me with more respect.”

“As a person, I respect you loads. But I can’t always respect your wishes. If I did, we’d be out of business.”

I stuck my tongue out at him.

“You’d better wash up, braid your hair, and get ready to receive them.”

“Today’s my day off. I haven’t had a day off in weeks. I’m totally burned out,” I grumbled, biting into the fruit. A trail of juice trickled down my chin.

The Dyers had left that morning, bursting with stories of animal sightings to tell their friends at home. As exhausting as they had been, at least the scatterbrained couple had left me much better presents than the one Tumelo offered now. The bar of white chocolate from their home in Frecklin called to me from my hut. I could almost feel the ghost of its creamy sweetness melting on my tongue. Chocolate was rare here and expensive. It almost made putting up with them worth it.

Suzette had also given me a beautiful woven dress from the market they explored on an excursion to town. I would wear it the next time I visited home. Whenever I got up the courage.

“You can have four days off after they leave,” Tumelo said, handing me another mango from his cracked bowl. “Time enough to be a dutiful daughter and go home to see your mama. She keeps writing me letters about you. She said if you don’t come home to celebrate your seventeenth birthday with them, I’m to deliver you—slung over a pack mule.”

“You’d never do that.”

“I would so. I bet they’d even pay me for your safe delivery.”

I sighed, pocketing the second mango for later. He
would
do it, especially if money was involved. Mama always wrote directly to him, knowing I wouldn’t tell her the truth of how I was. My hand traveled to my stomach, hovering over the scars hidden by my linen shirt. “You know why I don’t go back.”

Tumelo drew a long breath from his cigar, taking in the smoke as greedily as a drowning man getting his first gulp of fresh air. “You can’t avoid home forever. What happened wasn’t our family’s fault. Don’t punish them for it.”

I nodded, my back stiffening. Changing the subject to something that didn’t hurt quite so much, I pointed my finger at him. “Fine, I’ll get ready for the new guests, but I want those four days off, even if all I do with them is bum around here. Doesn’t matter how lazy I’m being; you don’t get to ask me to do anything. No exercise rides, kitchen shifts, nothing. Deal?”

“Deal,” Tumelo agreed. He spat in his palm, and we shook on it.

I picked up the rest of his fruit bowl, winking. “And this. I’m taking this back to my hut to enjoy.”

Tumelo just laughed. His hand bounced on his great belly as it rumbled.

I WAS
still submerged up to my chin in water, with a white, sugary moustache, when Bi Trembla, the camp’s housekeeper, burst through the mpacasa-hide flap into my hut. I popped the last of the chocolate into my mouth, peering guiltily up at her through wet lashes.

She put both hands on her hips, her lips quirking sternly when she glanced down at me. “Mnemba, you lazy
msichana
. Your guests have arrived. Get out at once and get your clothes on. I’ll do your hair.”