Have You Ever Seen a Unicorn?
by bailey loveless
Sighting I / III:
Misty,—as in Chincoteague—the unicorn plushie, sits in my eight-year-old self’s lap, the shiny silver paint of her hooves and horn rubbing away. Go ahead, do it, Misty tells me as I hover the pair of scissors near her forehead. No one will even notice, no one will even know. I nod. After one long, crooked snip, the horn falls into my lap. Foam stuffing pokes out. I wasn't expecting that—Misty, why didn't you tell me?
I try to arrange the hair of her forelock to cover it. But the foam is as yellow as a highlighter. Misty the unicorn plushie did not transform into a horse—as in Chincoteague. She is now just Misty with a massive, oozing head wound.
Misty and I go into the kitchen. "Mom, can you help me fix this?"
“What have you done?” Mom shrieks. "That was a gift from your father!"
I startle. By father, Mom doesn't mean Dad. She means a man more elusive than unicorn.
You didn't know? says Misty.
Sighting II / III:
Summer at Grandma and Grandpa's means exactly one movie on video cassette. The 1982 animated film The Last Unicorn has been playing on a loop for an endless amount of days—or at least three. A bright purple butterfly flutters around the old television box set, adjusting his spectacles. He sings, "Your name is a golden bell held in my heart."
What kind of answer is that? The unicorn trotting around beside the butterfly only asked the butterfly to recognize her. Is that so hard, butterfly?
As I watch the film, I fill the pages of the spiral notebook in my lap with sketches of the butterfly, the unicorn, and Schmendrick the Magician.
Schmendrick is a bumbling fool of a wizard—sarcastic, silly, and prone to egotism. So of course I love him. I squint at the screen from Grandpa's recliner, my no. 2 pencil copying the shape of Schmendrick's distinct beaked nose, the slight downturn tilt of his sad, puppy-dog, baby blue eyes.
"A fabulous animal resembling a horse with one horn," says the butterfly, finally getting it, "Visible only to those who search and trust and generally mistaken for a white mare. Unicorn."
Why do you love me? says Schmendrick, privately, in my ear. Because I see you, I whisper back. I know you're lying when you say you can't see the unicorn. You can't lie. Not to me.
Some eternity later, maybe twenty years, I'm sitting on my couch at home, wrapped in a blanket. I’ve gotten past the beginning of the film. The unicorn has already spoken to the butterfly, and now she quests with Schmendrick the Magician at her side. It’s all going very well. Then my favorite idiot of a wizard raises his arms, blue magic whirring in the air, as he transforms the immortal unicorn into a human woman.
“What have you done?” the unicorn cries. “What have you done to me?”
I'm squinting at the screen. Then I startle. I’ve seen Schmendrick the Magician before. Not just on the television screen. The beaked nose, his downturned puppy dog eyes. This face—I saw this face the first time I fell in love. It belonged to a boy who still appears in my dreams from time to time.
Sighting III / III:
My little boy wants to dress up as My Little Pony characters for Halloween, but nobody makes My Little Pony costumes for little boys like mine. As a family, we decide on matching baby blue onesies instead, and all dress up: a unicorn, a unicorn, and a narwhal. I take his picture in front of the house. He's prancing, he's flying, he's working that cotton candy pink tail.
"Did you know that a group of unicorns is called a blessing?" I say when we come home with pillowcases full of sugar.
October, a year later but it feels too soon, he’s in the second grade at a new school. He wins a contest and picks out a unicorn keychain with rainbow hair as a prize, clipping it to his bright yellow backpack. You better protect him, I say to the keychain. It gives me a cheeky wink.
Too soon, too soon, he comes home howling, carrying an oozing wound, as he throws the backpack to the ground.
As my little boy tears the unicorn keychain off, I imagine the kids leering around the long plastic cafeteria table, their careless cackles—Unicorns are for girls! Unicorns are for girls!
Inside, I am screaming, What have you done?
bailey loveless (she/they) is a reclusive collector of ghosts—literal and figurative—haunting a far forest ledge of the Washington coastline. Compelled by insomnia, moss, and other unruly things, they are currently completing an MFA in Nature Writing at Western Colorado University with a thesis exploring magic and deconstruction. They write in between bouts of brooding, gardening, playing D&D, and conspiring with her many familiars. Dispatches from the hedgerow, the crypt, and the desk occasionally appear on Instagram (@bailey.loveless).
