Chapter 3 – The Unicorn…
Anton hesitated outside of his tiny daughter Marcia’s lime-green tent, whose color burned the brightest among all those tents that sprouted upon the muddy fairground like so many mushrooms after the rain. Marcia hummed as she brushed her tiny horse’s mane, and Anton believed his girl never sounded a happier melody than the one she hummed while she tended to the fragile creature Bora entrusted to her care. Anton wasted a moment to simply listen to Marcia’s melody before slipping softly into her tent.
Marcia grinned upon her father’s entrance. “I think my Sparkle grew again last night.”
Anton nodded. “You know, I think Sparkle’s mane looks brighter. Can a little unicorn’s mane turn a different color overnight?”
“Of course. Anything can happen as long as we believe.”
Anton would give anything to make Marcia happy. Happiness should’ve been an easy gift to provide a young girl in a carnival filled with stuffed animals, with cotton candy sweets, with wooden butterflies and cats that moved up and down on the turning carousel. Yet he worried that happiness would grow increasingly rare to Marcia, no matter how long Anton surrounded his daughter with fairgrounds. Anton was proud of his rushing and dizzying rides. He was proud of all of his attractions, for a carnival was a difficult enterprise to build, an even more difficult endeavor to maintain. Yet Anton feared that all of his accomplishment wouldn’t matter the moment he could no longer bring joy to Marcia.
Marcia wouldn’t grow into the woman she deserved to be. A fault in her chromosomes doomed her to a body that would never stretch much taller than the youngest children who visited the fairgrounds, and that affliction would increasingly torment Marcia by aging her so quickly before Anton’s eyes. Wrinkles already covered Marcia’s face, and the girl’s hair was prematurely wispy and gray. Marcia’s spine curved like that of an old woman’s, and Marcia’s vision required increasingly thick glasses as her sight blurred as if she was decades old. Anton always feared he would break down before Marcia each moment he visited her tent. It took all the strength he could summon to maintain his composure so that he didn’t bring further suffering to his child. Yet his strength wavered with each day. Marcia wasn’t even thirteen, and Anton heard how she grunted when she moved, thanks to the arthritis that already settled in her joints. Anton saw how Marcia trembled on her crutches whenever she moved about the tent because of the nervous system that was misfiring through the girl’s muscles. She wasn’t yet a teenager, and Marcia’s body so cruelly deteriorated. The body trapped his child’s mind, and Anton cried so often in the night while thinking of all the joys that disease would deny his Marcia – school dances, joyrides with friends while singing pop songs on the radio, a wedding filled with flowers, a honeymoon filled with lace, and children filled with laughter. What had Marcia done to deserve such sorrow? What had Anton done? Had Marcia’s mother looked upon her newborn babe and foreseen all the travails that Marcia would know before a doctor diagnosed the disease responsible for the symptoms, and had that been the reason why that mother abandoned her sick daughter and left her husband’s carnival?
Yet Marcia so often smiled, and that amazed Anton. How could a young girl, cruelly trapped in an old woman’s body, show such joy? How could she grin when Anton knew she suffered much pain?
Marcie once more turned that smile onto her father. “I want to ask you something.”
“Anything.”
“I want to work the tent on my own tonight.”
Anton swallowed. “Are you sure? Do you feel up to it? Wouldn’t you like at least a little help? Darlena could take a night off from reading fortunes and palms to help you. You like Darlena, don’t you?”
“That’s not the point. I need to do it on my own.”
Anton sighed. How could he deny Marcia? He would give anything to make her happy. He would pay any cost, and when the doctors promised him that there existed no medicine to cure Marcia’s ills, Anton vowed to discover whatever magic it took to save his girl from a child’s death.
He still believed that small horse would transform into a magnificent unicorn, with a horn filled with all the miracle needed to cure Marcia’s sickness. That magic hadn’t yet appeared since Bora first introduced that tiny horse to Marcia, but Anton remained faithful. He would’ve had good reason to suspect that Bora played him for a mark, every reason to think that horse wasn’t at all magical, if Anton hadn’t peeked at the monster swelling within the shuttered house of horrors. Anton’s patience with Bora’s incredible promises had been short the first season Bora came to the carnival, and he had crept into that wagon to look upon the beast Bora claimed accompanied the unicorn. The sight of that poor creature, with its knotted tentacles and its tumorous flesh, convinced Anton that a healing magic had to justify the suffering of that creature as Bora claimed. Anton still shuddered whenever emergency forced him to gaze at the beast kept in the wagon of horrors, and he couldn’t bring himself to meet the gaze of that monster’s dull black eye. If one kind of magical creature could swell within his carnival, why couldn’t a unicorn, with the magic that would wash the years away from Marcia and give her the childhood she deserved?
“I don’t know, Marcia. You worry me. I’m not sure you’re ready to tend to the tent without any help.”
“You’ve let children younger than me pull the lever that turns the Ferris wheel.”
“But, Marcia.”
Marcia’s eyes burned. Her lips trembled. Anton couldn’t read if his girl was angry or sad. Either emotion squeezed his heart.
“But what? But the other children weren’t deformed like me? A lot of folks might not think much of my life, but I’ve lived all of it in this carnival. I deserve the chance to work my tent alone. The unicorn needs me to work this tent on my own.”
“Did Bora tell you that?”
“Can you decide anything without Bora anymore?” Marcia sighed, and Anton saw how that small horse dropped its eyes toward the ground, apparently sensing sorrow running through the brush Marcia pulled through its mane. “Darlena doesn’t believe in the unicorn like we do. She thinks the unicorn’s only a gimmick, nothing more than a way to take money from people. She’s nice enough, but she doesn’t really believe my pony is going to turn into a unicorn. Anyone you ask to help isn’t going to share our belief. Who knows? Maybe it will help the unicorn grow if we remove more of the doubt.”
Anton took a long look at the small horse pushing its nose into Marcia’s shoulder as his daughter continued grooming the animal. Very little seemed magical about the animal, whose withers just reached Marcia’s chin. The horse’s white flanks seemed to dim with ash no matter how many times Marcia dragged her brush across its coat. The horse was insistently devouring sweets, and yet Anton could always count the animal’s ribs, as if neglect starved and shunted the creature. The horse’s tail was haggard, and it would’ve been knotted if not for Marcia’s attention.
Anton couldn’t imagine a creature ever receiving more affection than that horse. Marcia tied colorful, plastic beads into the mane. She painted watercolor sunbursts on the horse’s forehead, purple flowers on its shoulders and hips. She tied ribbons around the horse’s legs and tail. Marcia rarely left the animal’s side. That horse was Marcia’s best friend as well as her potential medicine, and Anton often heard Marcia creep out of their trailer in the middle of the night to trudge to her lime-green tent so that she might sleep on the straw next to her unicorn.
He often reminded himself that he couldn’t harbor any resentment against that horse, for such sentiments, if allowed to fester within Anton’s heart, would only float to that monster kept in that wagon secluded on the carnival’s outskirts. Still, it wasn’t easy for a father to dismiss his anger towards that horse for failing to change into the healing unicorn Bora said it might. Marcia gave that animal the love of a hundred girls. She poured her complete attention into the creature. She pampered it. She would do anything to protect her Sparkle from harm, and she devoted herself entirely
to its care. Yet the horse remained a miniature, stunted thing, while that monster locked within the wagon continued to swell. He couldn’t understand how so much love, given from such a sick girl, wasn’t enough to summon the miracle and magic needed to nurture that horse.
“You’re right, Marcia. I’m worrying too much again. I’ll let your work the tent on your own if you think that’s going to help your unicorn. You’re just going to have to forgive a father for the way he worries over you.”
A grin again stretched across Marcia’s face. “I promise this horse is going to shine. You’ll wake up one morning and see a unicorn standing in this tent, and its magic will heal us, and set everything right.”
The fabric shifted, and old Bora, whose bark-like skin appeared more wrinkled than even Marcia’s, pushed into the tent, his arms laden with cotton candy and cheddar popcorn that nightly appeased the animal’s appetite.
Bora winked at Marcia, and his hands lifted that metallic voice box to his throat. “Bigger.”
Marcia beamed. “That’s just what I told daddy, Bora. I told him Sparkle grew during the night. I have a feeling this is going to be the season when Sparkle finally turns into the unicorn.”
“It only takes a wink,” Bora buzzed.
Marcia giggled as she offered a caramel-covered apple to Sparkle. “And daddy’s going to let me work the tent on my own tonight, Bora. I’m going to show Sparkle without anyone else’s help. That way, I can better protect Sparkle from anyone’s doubt.”
“We must believe,” nodded Bora.
Anton pulled at Bora’s elbow, and the men departed Marcia’s tent. Anton waited until they drifted closer to the carousel before speaking to his friend, hopeful that the organ would keep his words from drifting to Marcia’s ears.
“Watch her tonight, Bora. Promise me you’ll keep a close eye on her while she works that tent. Don’t worry about supervising the game vendors. Don’t worry about keeping the customers happy. Just watch out for Marcia. I know I have to let her try everything she can to help her nurture the unicorn, but I’m frightened for her all the same. I’m as frightened as I’ve ever been.”
“You must not be afraid,” buzzed Bora.
Anton’s eyes turned sad. “It’s not fair to ask that of me, even if a monster grows in that wagon.”
Anton left his friend and attempted to concentrate on the numerous duties the carnival required of him. He took turns pulling the lever that made the Ferris wheel turn, and he tried to remember how that first kiss a girl had given him had felt when their car swayed at that ride’s pinnacle so very long ago. He tried to laugh at the young boys as he watched their clumsy attempts to swing a mallet and make a bell chime. He chomped on a pork burgher and shared a warm draft with old, townie farmers in the beer gardens. Anton loved his world of music and lights, but he would sacrifice it all if that payment would realize the unicorn, whose horn would magically heal his girl. He would silence the organ and live in quiet darkness if that was what it took to make miracle grow.
Anton attempted to resist it, but the monster moaning within that wagon of horrors nonetheless pulled him to the outskirts of the carnival grounds, where wagons and rides waited for repair. The house of horrors sat a little beyond those broken implements, its axels sinking a little deeper into the mud by the hour. Anton counted the winged monkeys and the snarling gremlins painted on that wagon’s exterior walls, and for the not the first time, wondered if he had been better off before Bora arrived at his carnival, when he possessed no hope that magic might smooth away the years that wrinkled his girl’s skin. Would the unicorn save his girl, or would the monster crush them all? He couldn’t guess how the world would tip, and so he stood silently outside that wagon and put his ear to its walls, so that he could hear the monster within moan whenever the carousel organ paused.
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