Yes, This Is Chapter Four: Various Things with Horns

Theo’s first reaction, when informed, was to laugh.
“Oh, come on. That can’t be true. What do you really do?”
Mr Adfair smiled genially. “It’s true, Mr Hunt. I understand your disbelief, but it’s true.”
Seeing that the man appeared utterly serious, Theo stopped laughing and raised an eyebrow.
“You’re asking me to believe that there’s really a whole secret society devoted to hunting down and killing dangerous mythical creatures? Sonofabitch. I thought the whole point of mythical creatures was that they were mythical. The clue’s right in the name.”
Raising his own eyebrows, Mr Adfair gestured to the winged stallion. “There’s proof in front of you, Mr Hunt. This is Lusala, mount of one of the greatest hunters this Society has ever had and father of the best bloodline our pegasi breeders had, have or will ever have. A magnificent beast, don’t you agree?”
“Well, yeah, but…it’s not like those wings couldn’t have been added by the taxidermist…as far as I know it’s not hard to add things to a stuffed animal…”
“That is a very good point,” Mr Adfair said gravely. “Would you like to look around my museum and see if it changes your opinion at all?”
“More stuffed creatures that could easily be faked?”
“Yes,” the man admitted, and then he smiled. “Of course, there is also the zoo…”
“A zoo of…mythical creatures?” Theo said, rather weakly. Either this man and presumably everyone in the whole complex was entirely mad and fond of bizarre taxidermy or there was something very odd going on.
“Indeed. I think we had better start with the museums, though. It may soften the surprise a little. Follow me.”
He moved away at a sedate pace towards another door in the far wall, Theo trailing uncertainly in his wake. Producing an ornate gold key from his pocket, the head of the Mythical Creatures Hunting Society (MyHunt for short) unlocked the door and ushered through his newest recruit.
The room beyond was full of glass cases, which in turn were full of some of the oddest things Theo had ever seen.
It had a very strange atmosphere. It made him feel slightly ill, almost as though he’d been lightly punched in the stomach, but also attracted him in a kind of morbid, ghoulish way. Curious despite himself, he drifted forwards to the first case and peered inside. It held a jackrabbit, with antlers.
“A Jackalope,” Mr Adfair identified it. “Native to America. About as much use as a normal jackrabbit, I’m afraid, and just as pesky.”
Next to the Jackalope was another rabbit, this one with a two-foot horn protruding from its forehead. That one, according to Mr Adfair, was an Al-Miraj, or just a Miraj, and despite the fact that it looked largely harmless it could have eaten both of them and still been hungry had it been alive.
“One of our members used them as hunting beasts once,” he observed. “Very efficient, but unfortunately had to be killed when they got out of their pen and into the Basan enclosure…”
Basan turned out to be in the next glass case. They looked like chickens.
“They breathe fire,” Mr Adfair said dispassionately. “However, they also lay very tasty eggs.”
After a few more cases, in which Theo viewed what looked like big black dogs (“Hellhounds.”), a horse with bulrushes for a mane (“Kelpie.”), a donkey (“Brag.”) and a black cat (“Cat Sidhe.”), Theo had almost had enough. The atmosphere was getting to him, as were the sad glass eyes of the stuffed creatures, and he hadn’t seen anything nearly convincing yet.
“Look, these just look like normal animals. I mean, some have bits stuck on, but stuff that’s easy to fake!”
His guide smiled at him.
“Mr Hunt, if we were showing you faked creatures, at least have the decency to assume we would show you interesting faked creatures…Why would we waste our time showing you ordinary cats and donkeys?”
Theo had no answer for that. Mr Adfair sighed.
“All right. I agree that stuffed creatures are far too easy to deny as trickery. Come with me to the zoo.”
He led the way back past the Cat Sidhe and the Brag and the Kelpie and the Hellhounds and the Basan and the Miraj and the Jackalope (none of which looked any more unusual going the other way), out through his luxurious office (Theo could not meet Lusala’s aching glass eyes), past Mr Loud Voice (who gave Theo a suspicious look) over the beautiful Persian carpet (which once again moved very slightly under their feet, in a way that carpets did not usually move) and out into the main complex. When Theo had come through it with Rowena it had been deserted; now there were a few people passing, looking at him curiously and bowing their heads respectfully to Mr Adfair. They did not look like people who joined a Society to hunt mythical creatures; they looked sensible.
Many of them carried weapons.
“The zoo is where the Society keeps its hunting animals and those that are useful workers,” Mr Adfair explained as they reached the sturdy, reinforced door that led into it. “Mythical pets are forbidden, and we have strict rules about where these creatures can be taken…it would not do for the rest of the masses to discover that their myths are reality. Good heavens, it would be anarchy!”
To Theo, his swift and easy entry into the Society now made even less sense. But he didn’t have time to brood about it, because Mr Adfair had opened the door and the first thing he was confronted with was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
“Sonofabitch,” he breathed, moving slowly forwards to stare. It was elegant, dazzlingly white, gorgeous…
And it was absolutely definitely impossibly a unicorn.
It stared at him with a suspicious, nervous eye and shook its head, the pearly horn catching the light and gleaming briefly rainbow. As Theo got closer it began to paw the ground in nervousness and then abruptly turned and fled to the other side of the paddock it was installed in, leaving him blinking and breathless in disbelief.
Mr Adfair made no comment beyond “We don’t often capture unicorns, but our horsemaster believes he can break it to ride. We shall see.”
Theo opened and shut his mouth a couple of times, and then said, “That was a unicorn.”
“Indeed it was.”
“But…they…don’t…exist?”
“Tell that to him,” Mr Adfair said with a flash of humour, indicating the unicorn who was watching them cautiously from the far end of the enclosure. “Would you like to see more?”
“More unicorns?”
“Well, we have no more unicorns. But we have other mythical creatures. Come along.”
Theo, too stunned to do anything else, came along to what looked like a large henhouse where a cockerel watched them haughtily, perched on the roof. He was a magnificent bird, and somehow the hens pecking about in the yard beneath contrived to be equally magnificent, with none of the usual fussiness and general air of stupidity chickens usually possessed. They pecked with dignity.
“Basan,” Mr Adfair said unemotionally. “I told you about them earlier.”
“So…they really breathe fire?”
“Indeed. They are quite a pest to keep enclosed. We would not keep them if it weren’t for their eggs.”
Fascinated, Theo went up to the sizeable metal fence and peered through. The Basan cockerel eyeballed him and preened his wings ostentatiously, asserting his authority. The nearest Basan hen fixed him with a sharp eye and half-opened her beak in warning, allowing a wisp of flame to escape. Theo jerked back, and grinned ruefully.
“Another one you’re right about…”
Mr Adfair smiled benignly at him.
“I don’t lie, Mr Hunt. Now…would you like to see the Jackalope hutches?”
“You keep Jackalope?”
“For meat. They’re very good in pies.”
“…Like rabbit pies?”
“Indubitably. They are essentially rabbits, after all.”
The Jackalope twitched their noses inquisitively at Theo, their antlers clicking against each other as they jostled at the front of their pen to get a better view of the stranger. Theo found them rather cute, especially one; a big male, fatter than the others, who didn’t join the curious scrum at the front of the pens but rather sat at the back and gave him a knowing look. Theo couldn’t help feeling that it was probably, in some odd way, cleverer than him.
Mr Adfair, seeing the direction of his gaze, gave a small smile.
“The girl who looks after these creatures calls that one Socrates. Presumably she believes he is…fairly intelligent.”
“He looks it,” Theo said with a faint grin. “Um…is he going to be put in a pie?”
“Probably. Now…over here we keep the hellhounds.”
Trailing after his new boss, Theo glanced back at the Jackalope pens to see that, although the rest of them had dispersed, Socrates had hopped forwards and was watching them go with his ears pricked.
The hellhounds rather scared him.
They paced back and forth in their kennels staring at him with red eyes and slobbering jaws. There were a startling variety of them; some where pitch-black and malevolent, some were white with red ears and their kennels seemed colder than the others, and there were at least two with three heads. Funnily enough, these ones were the friendliest, and all three heads seemed eager to sniff and lick and otherwise make his acquaintance. In fact, they were so friendly they occasionally argued amongst themselves about who would get to lick first.
Mr Adfair watched him play with them with a tiny smile on his face, and once Theo extricated himself from their enthusiastic goodbyes and rejoined him outside the pens, he gave him a swift glance and enquired,
“Do you believe me now?”
Theo grinned.
“Definitely. When do I start?”