Unicorns

"Wings" by Josephine Wall

             “Gavin Turner says there’s no such thing as unicorns,” Fiona Connelly announced one day.

            Lorcan craned his neck to peek around around the hood of a ’94 Silverado and considered the little golden-haired figure.  Kicking idle legs from the height of a plain stool, his guest looked as if she had been plucked from a park bench or ice cream parlor, and accidentally deposited in this oil-streaked garage.  She was a living china doll–all pale skin, curls and big, bright eyes– and seemed comically out of place in her current surroundings. 

Every inch of the square, cinder-block building was a dirty, ashen grey.  Streaks and specks of grime were mercilessly revealed by two bare, sixty-watt bulbs hanging from the ceiling, their harsh illumination softened at the edges by mead-colored sunlight pouring into the open bay.  Even Lorcan’s office, viewable through a large square window, was plain.  Walls that had once been white framed a press board desk, an ancient soda machine, and a shabby green sofa. 

By comparison, Fiona’s My Little Pony t-shirt and brightly-patched blue jeans seemed to glow.  Nonetheless, she was at home here.  She’d been visiting nearly every afternoon since her first day of elementary school three years earlier.  Originally these sojourns were made to see Georgie, her grandfather and Lorcan’s mentor, on her way home.  When a heart attack ended the old man’s life, little Fiona just kept showing up.  Lorcan had pitied girl, assuming her regular reappearance was habitual– a remaining glimmer of normalcy in the confused mind of a grieving child.  Eventually he realized that it was not merely an effect of sorrow, but largely the manifestation of boredom and loneliness.  Fiona was an only child with no one but toys and books at home for company.  Funnily enough, the longing for casual companionship was something she and Lorcan shared.  He’d probably never admit it, but he looked forward to Fiona’s visits.  Her cheerful energy brightened even his darkest moods.

            Perhaps it should have been obvious that one day Fiona would assail Lorcan with one of these difficult childhood questions.  Unfortunately, he wasn’t at all certain how to explain the hard facts, or even if he should.

            “Why don’t you ask your mom and dad?” he suggested, returning to his task.  Seamus Greenbriar was leaving on a camping trip Friday morning, and– for reasons Lorcan could only assume involved a girl– he wanted time to wash his truck before he left.

            Fiona sighed melodramatically.  “They won’t be home from work until six-thirty,” she said, as if describing an endless span of centuries.  “Besides, I want to ask you.”

            This was an important issue for Fiona, who believed in unicorns with more fervor than most children her age believed in Santa Clause.  Lorcan was touched that she had trusted him enough to come to him with this concern, but he equally nervous.  When, exactly, had he signed up to be the guardian of the emotional well-being of a child?

            “This belt needs replacing,” he said, hoping to distract her.  “Will you get me that 15 millimeter wrench from the tool box, Little Bit?”  Fiona’s visits were advantageous to both parties:  Lorcan got a much-needed extra set of hands while his little helper learned about different tools and their applications.  Fiona’s mother wasn’t sure she approved of something so dirty and dangerous, but letting her daughter visit Lorcan was cheaper than sending her to daycare.

            Fiona was, of course, too tenacious for her friend’s ruse.  She delivered the requested item then said insistently: “Uncle Lorcan, you’re not listening to me.  Gavin Turner said there’s no such thing as unicorns!”

            “Yeah, well, Gavin Turner’s face looks like a baboon’s… ah… face.”

            “You were going to say ‘ass,’ Uncle Lorcan.”

            “I was not, and don’t you ever say that word again!”

            “Why not?”

            “Because,” Lorcan adlibbed as he strained to loosen a particularly tight bolt, “princesses don’t use that kind of language.  Only wicked old hags, nasty goblins, and the meanest dragons say stuff like that.”

            “Dragons don’t talk.”

            “Some of them do.”

            “Do not!”

            Lorcan looked back at her impetuous frown.  “I’ll have you know I met a talking dragon up in Jerry’s Diner just last week!  Nearly singed my hair off when he sneezed!”

            “You’re silly!” Fiona chortled, and for a moment Lorcan thought he’d won.  She sobered quickly, however, and asked:  “Hey, Uncle Lorcan, if unicorns aren’t real, does that mean dragons and fairy princesses aren’t real either?”

            “Who says their not real?”

            She rolled her eyes in a display of long-suffering tolerance.  “I told you, Gavin Turner does.”

            “Well, who died and made him king of the world?  If Gavin Turner told you eating pickled roaches could make you fly, would you believe that too?”

            “EWWW!” squealed Fiona.

            “Well, would you?”

            She considered the idea momentarily.  Lorcan could almost hear the levers and scales in her mind clicking as she weighed the possibility of flight against her distaste for both Gavin Turner and cockroaches.  At last she answered: “No, I guess not.”

            “Then who cares what he says?”

            “Miss Ferrell said it, too.  She said that unicorns are an ideal and not a real animal.”

            “I’ll give Miss Ferrell an ideal,” Lorcan growled.

            “What?”

            “Nothing.”

            “So are unicorns real?”

            There it was.  The fearful question had been asked outright, and now there was no escape.  Lorcan felt as if he was trapped in the path of a speeding freight train.  He had no time to develop a plan, but he had no idea which way to turn.  The responsible, adult thing to do, of course, was to hold her hand and gently tear her lovely fantasies away from her mind.  Lorcan, however, realized that this wasn’t merely a matter of a child believing in mythical creatures.  It was a question about innocence– not merely because of the sweet, childish ignorance that allowed Fiona to believe in unicorns, but because unicorns had become her representation for everything good and beautiful in the world.  That faith, under closer consideration, was little different from other concepts held by adults.  After all, didn’t everyone need to believe in something?  Didn’t most people cling to a determined conviction that there was something greater and nobler in the world than the petty meanness of daily life?  Did it really matter whether this idea was labeled morality, religion or unicorns?

            In a way, Lorcan supposed that unicorns were Fiona’s ideal, though he doubted Miss Ferrell had assigned the same connotation to the word as he did.  He wondered why he’d never noticed how like a unicorn Fiona was– pure, creative and kind.  Fairytales and unquestioning beliefs clung to her like a starry aura, and she glowed against the dull backdrop of the grimy world like a moonlit myth glittering in the depths of some lightless wood.  It could almost be said that the unicorn was Fiona’s totem.

            “Are they real, Uncle Lorcan?” Fiona’s sunny face was clouding with dread, like a mother waiting to hear her child’s fate confirmed.  “Are unicorns real?”

            “You know what I believe in, Little Bit?  I believe in possibilities.  You know, once upon a time people thought elephants weren’t real, but then someone proved that they were.  There are lots of things we haven’t discovered yet.  Scientists find more of them all every day, and we may never know everything.  Saying that unicorns can’t be real is like… like putting limitations on God.”

            “So… Gavin’s wrong, right?   And it’s okay to believe in unicorns, right?”

            “Little Bit, as long as someone– even just one person– believes in unicorns with their whole heart, they’ll always be real.”

            She beamed at him, and somewhere in his mind’s eye, Lorcan saw a moonlit shape flitting among primeval trees.