U is for Unicorn Maiden

         (My A to Z Blog Challenge theme this year is Beyond Pomegranate & Thorns, my brand-sparkly-new collection of short stories, poems, and art inspired by, reimagining, and riffing on fairy tales, myths, and folklore.  All through the month I’m sharing excerpts of art, stories, and poetry, as well as some reflections on the power of the traditional stories that inspired me.  Plus, be sure to check out all my fellow A to Z bloggers at the Master List of participants.)

        Mythology about unicorns has shifted quite a bit over the centuries.  The ancient Greeks and Romans believed that unicorns lived in India, had black or tri-colored horns, and included elements of not only horse anatomy, but also stag, wild ass, and even feet like an elephant.  To evade hunters a unicorn could throw itself off a cliff and land on its horn to absorb the shock, thus escaping unhurt.  By the middle ages Europeans thought of the unicorn as looking more like a horse or goat, and most often white.  It was now a woodland creature, fiercest of all beasts to be hunted, and it could be caught only with the taming influence of a virgin.  By the late twentieth century the unicorn had become entirely equine, most often white but sometimes with fancier decor such as rainbow mane and tale, gold or silver horn, and general sparkliness.  It was now mystical and sweet instead of fierce, had lost all its medieval and renaissance allegorical symbolism, and by the 21st century had gained instead a special symbolism within queer culture, and more broadly as a symbol of anything incredibly rare and special (and possibly purely fanciful).  You can read a prior blog post about Unicorns here.

        My short story “The Unicorn Maiden’s Tale,” however, is set very firmly within the medieval world of unicorn lore.

        They picked me when I was fifteen, because I looked the part as they imagined it: long blonde hair, pale pink skin, a maidenly blush...  I blush so much that the boys in my town always teased me about it, and sometimes I blush at the mere thought of how much I blush.  But such modesty was perfect for the Duke’s purposes.  His housekeeper dressed me in a long white gown, and his huntsmen sat me down in a mossy glade in the depths of the forest, stuck a garland of flowers on my head, and told me to wait.

        “What shall I do?” I asked.

        “I don’t know,” the captain of the hunt replied.  “How about singing.  Sweetly.”

        In this story the unicorn is the fiercest, most dangerous creature, drawn to the innocence of a virgin.  In the narrator’s culture the unicorn has powerful religious symbolism, serving as an allegory of Christ’s Incarnation through being born to a virgin, only to be killed by humans.  But it simultaneously represents secular ideas of sexual ardor, as well as of base animal passions being tamed by virtue – not to mention the fact that its horn is worth an enormous amount of money.  The medieval and renaissance beliefs about unicorns were complicated, many-layered, and fraught, and so it is for my unicorn maiden, forced to be the bait in the hunt for this rare and valuable – and dangerous – creature.  Content warning: this story includes more violence than is usual for me.  That’s frankly a pretty low bar because my writing it generally quite gentle, but it’s worth noting for my regular readers that when you deal with fairy tale and myth you do inevitably come up against some pretty dark themes.

        Unlike most of my block prints, for this one I haven’t put any twist on the traditional iconography.  For purposes of keeping my story firmly rooted in the medieval mythology about unicorns, this little piece is based closely on a handful of medieval illuminations and renaissance wood block prints from bestiaries.

        The traditional moral of the Unicorn Maiden would be all that allegorical stuff I’ve already described.  But my moral is that sometimes “innocence” may not look the way you expect.

        Let us know: are you a unicorn fan, and do you own any unicorn paraphernalia?  T-shirts, figurines, plush animals, reproduction tapestries, mugs, or any other unicorn-themed items?

[Picture: Taming the Unicorn, rubber block print by AEGNydam, 2025 (Image from NydamPrints.com).]