Nobody had killed each other, which was a start. But there was a corpse, which was a problem.

They heard the argument before they saw what it was about - the words were hard to make out, but Adelaide recognized the tenor of Trish’s anger. She looked at Ray, and they accelerated through the last yards of brush.

When they emerged and saw the campsite, it reminded her of the splash page from one of her old comic books. On the edges were the minor players in the drama — Percy was on the far left, turning over his shoulder to see what the commotion was about after having apparently been reading a book, while Alessio filmed the group from the right. And then, moving closer to the center, she saw the combatants, with Trish on her knees just left of center while Emma and Olivia stared at her from the right. And, in the center was the obvious cause of the commotion — a unicorn corpse, laying on the sand.

Before Adelaide could act, Emma turned, saw her, and yelled, “We didn’t do it!”

Trish didn't’ even turn her head. She looked like she’d been crying as she yelled, “How can you possibly expect anyone to believe you?”

“Because it’s true - we found it like this.”

“You found it in the middle of camp?” Ray asked.

“No,” Emma said, “we were exploring on the ridge, and came across this thing after it had already died. So we brought it here. That was the idea, right? To try to show that these things aren’t magic or intelligent or whatever? And look, now we have one to examine. This was the whole idea, right?”

Trish had walked towards Adelaide, and now addressed her alone. “Do you really believe this story? They just happened to find a dead unicorn after they promised not to kill them but clearly wanted to? And they brought it here rather than having us all go see where it happened?”

Adelaide descended and gave Trish a hug, earning some barely-concealed eye rolls from Olivia. “Hey, Trish, I get it. Breathe. We’ll figure this out.” But, even as she said it, Adelaide was still averting her eyes from the corpse itself. There was no question she’d have to examine it soon.

It wasn’t like Adelaide hadn’t realized that survival and success beyond the Triangle involved hunting and skinning game. She knew that, particularly for long voyages, it was an essentially universal process. She’d even researched it: she’d read books that discussed common organ systems and how to identify them and best practices for avoiding contaminating the meat or yourself. And she’d watched some YouTube videos where men skinned and dressed both terrestrial and Triangle animals step-by-step, before that led the algorithm to start thinking she was the kind of person who built a fallout shelter and wanted to hear people explain who was really controlling the government.

But her preparation hadn’t actually involved touching any, you know, actual animals, and that was beginning to seem like a big oversight.

Jim spared her the need in the immediate term, kneeling down next to the body without apparent concern for the smell that Adelaide was trying to ignore. “Trish, they didn’t kill it.”

“Why do you say that?”

“The way it was killed. I know Emma brought an arsenal, but there’s nothing here that’s like an arrow or a gunshot wound. This thing bled out, but from a lot of very small cuts. Probably a fight with something, although I haven’t seen the animal that could do this. But, unless you think Emma fired a hundred sharpened paper airplanes, it wasn’t them.”

“Oh,” Trish said. “I’m sorry, Emma.”

“I told you! I don’t know why you just assumed I’d lie to everyone!”

Trish closed her eyes for a few seconds. Adelaide had seen this before — it was one of Trish’s signature moves. And it was part of why Adelaide had been comfortable bringing Trish here, and why she’d been willing to leave the camp behind.

“You’re right,” Trish said. “I could have thought to check the way it was killed. But I didn’t really even need to, because you wouldn’t lie. We disagree, but you haven’t done anything to make me think you’re dishonest. And I can tell you’re smart, and it would be dumb to lie in a way that you’d be caught doing. So, again, I’m sorry. I was surprised, and I haven’t been doing this long.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

That was the surprising thing about Trish — she could apologize. Really apologize, not some half-apology, just an unvarnished admission that she was wrong. It was the reason they’d stayed friends, despite all of the ways in which Trish could be — well, all the different ways she could be. And it was why Trish hadn’t just been popular but stayed popular, seeing friends from years before.

Emma reacted to Trish the way most people did: she blinked three times and then sort of swallowed and said, “Oh. Well, it’s ok. I get it.”

And then Ray said, “Well, if that’s settled, why don’t we see what we’ve got here?”

***

Having been spared the dissection, Adelaide tried to pay particular attention to the presentation, and not to get distracted by the bits of blood and gore clinging to the bones on display.

Ray, Jim and Emma had taken the afternoon to do a dissection which, if not necessarily up to medical standards, was certainly better than anything Adelaide could have managed. She had done a dissection project in high school and had sworn off biology forever.

Ray was holding the skull as he said, “Well, we can say that these things are predators. It’s clear from the teeth — sharp canines in front. Nothing like horse teeth, nothing that suggests they are eating grains or moss or whatever. And when we opened the stomach, we found bone fragments..”

Jim pointed to the teeth in the back of the mouth. “These things that look a bit like molars are actually closer to the teeth a hyena has to crush bone. I’d bet these things hunt something smaller and eat every bit of it.”

“And that also seems to be consistent with the way this horn works,” Emma continued. “If you look closer, it’s clear that it isn’t really like a “unicorn” horn at all, or even the horns of a gazelle or a rhino. Those are like long spikes, yeah? This is like a knife - flat and sharp. It’s even serrated.”

Adelaide walked up and examined what she was probably going to continue thinking of as a horn, even though it really was unlike any horn she’d seen back home. The comparison with a knife was undeniable. And it was oriented sideways, so it wouldn’t work for attacking something right in front of the creature. “It certainly doesn’t look like a dueling weapon.”

Ray nodded. “That’s our feeling as well. Even if they used some sort of weird sideways fighting style where you’d want it oriented this way, there’s no reason to make it serrated like this. That’s just inviting it to be broken.”

“And this was a female, and it’s rare for a species to have female dueling behavior,” Jim said.

Adelaide thought back to the gashes in the tree-things she’d seen when collecting firewood after their arrival. “I’m sure we’ve all seen the cuts in the trees — that must be what these are for, right?”

Percy spoke up, approaching to see the horn. “But why would they want to chop at trees? They don’t eat plants at all, remember?”

Adelaide nodded. “There could be a lot of reasons — but as long as we are seeing cuts in trees and animals with saws on their faces, I feel like it’s not a coincidence. Ray, what else did you see?”

“I mena, we aren’t biologists. We probably missed more than we noticed. But, in terms of other stuff that stood out, Emma thinks they are really more like big goats than horses.”

“What do you mean?”

Emma answered. “It’s about the leg and hoof structure. The legs aren’t actually that long. I know, it looked majestic when we saw it, but it’s actually pretty squat. And the hooves are split and flexible, like goat hooves. Horses have one-part hooves so they can go faster. We cook enough different kinds of weird goats and horses that I’ve learned the difference, trust me.”

Adelaide considered asking if she’d been fed horse meat at Salt and Water, but thought better of it — it wasn’t like she was going to draw a distinction like that anymore anyway. “I guess that makes sense — there’s so much rocky terrain here. So we have a goat with a saw on its head that eats meat. Anything else?”

Ray exchanged a glance with the others before accepting he had apparently drawn some sort of short straw. “One other thing. We looked at the brain and, look, none of us are neurologists, but it’s really small. Like less than a horse, if I had to guess. You can see it in the skull: the support for the horn takes up most of the room.”

Olivia smiled. “So there we go. They aren’t smart, and there’s no reason not to hunt with the time we have left.”

Everyone looked at Trish, who had been sitting quietly. Adelaide was surprised to see how calm she looked. Not the “trying-to-stay-chill” look she sometimes had, but a sort of unworried look of someone who knows she has what she needs. So she knew something was coming, even before Trish started speaking.

“That’s really interesting, and I think it explains a lot. But I think you’re wrong to focus on brain size. There are smaller animals, like cats, who are smarter than animals with much larger brains. And I think your focus on that has made you overlook what they do with their horns.

“They use them for writing.”