Unicorns? Get Real!

scanned the room. “Now where is that drab little Slobodk princess?”
    “Recovering, ma’am,” Alicia said. “She’s had a terrible bout of tummy troubles.”
    “Oh dear, I hope they didn’t make her look any pastier than she already is,” the duchess said in a disgustingly sweet voice.
    Kristen rolled her eyes.
    “What are you rolling your eyes about, Princess Kristen? It is not an attractive gesture, particularly for a flame child.” The Snort referred to Kristen as a flame child because of her vivid coloring and intensely red hair. She rapped on the table again with her mascara wand. “Now attention. We have a new hair exercise. Blondes on this side, and others over here, and oh dear, where to put our flame children?” She looked at Princess Maggie of Schottlandia, whose hair was even redder than Kristen’s.
    Then she walked over to Kristen and lifted one of her tresses. “Hmmm.” She pressed her lips together and studied the hair.
    “I’m an other, aren’t I, ma’am, and so is Maggie?”
    “No,” the duchess said sharply. “You and Maggie are in a category all by yourselves. Stand over there, the two of you.” She rang a bell. Fifteen maids with baskets filed into the room. “These are the new attendants of the coiffeuse , the hair maids. They bring with them baskets of additional hair—braids, curls, and cascades. We shall begin by attempting to attain a perfect match between the hair that grows out of your scalp and the hairpieces in the basket.” She paused, then looked from Kristen and Maggie to the woman who appeared to be the chief attendant of the coiffeuse . “Flame children.” She nodded toward Kristen and Maggie. “Always a problem. They flare!”
    “No problem, ma’am,” Kristen said. “I’ve never taken much to fake hair.”
    The Duchess of Bagglesnort’s eyes nearly popped out of her head. “You think this is artificial hair? I would never put a strand of those terrible wooly hairpieces on my head or the head of a princess!” She turned to the hair maids. “Hair maids, remove your mobcaps.” In unison the maids pulled off their puffy white caps. The princesses all gasped in disbelief.
    “Bald!” exclaimed Alicia.
    “Chaume!” whispered Princess Parisiana in Chantillip.
    “Skallet!” croaked a princess from the distant north.
    “Schuben!” said another princess.
    “Gragg!” Kristen said in the ancient language of the Isles of the Salt Tear in the Realm of Rolm.
    “Yes,” trilled the Duchess of Bagglesnort. “They are all bald, bald as billiard balls!” She ran her hand over one of the hair maid’s shiny scalps. “We pay them a good price. Twenty schmilders an inch. We harvested at the end of last session. Then they will grow it out for the rest of the year.”
    Twenty schmilders! Alicia thought. Twenty schmilders is nothing. And their poor heads must get cold .
    There was a sharp little cry and then a thud as Princess Beba, a new camper, collapsed on the floor in a swoon. She had been standing with the blondes, her own luxuriant hair spilling in cascades down her back. “No one ever cuts their hair in the Kingdom of Marlont,” someone whispered.
    “Yes, to have short hair is considered uncivilized.”
    “Loutish.”
    “It’s like going naked in public.”
    “Pay attention! Pay attention. The footmen will remove her,” the duchess said, stepping over the fallen princess. Princess Beba was gone less than ten minutes while the duchess explained the intricacies of blending the various shades of hair.
    When the princess came back into the Salon de Beauté, she walked unsteadily.
    “She’s transparent!” Alicia said in a hushed voice.
    “Well, it was such a shock,” someone else said.
    “Dead, she looks totally dead,” Kristen said.
    “Totally!” Myrella echoed.
    “Gorgeous!” the Snort exclaimed, and rushed to Princess Beba. “Simply gorgeous. Now, Miladies, this is just the pallor we try to attain with our powders and clay. It is the classic swoon pallor—white with a hint of ash!” Princess Beba swayed a bit, and her eyes opened wide. Was she going to faint again? There was a sudden gagging noise, and then from the princess’s mouth something jetted out in a great gush.
    “Holy monk bones!” Alicia exclaimed.
    “She spewed!” said Princess Kinna.
    “She threw up!” said Myrella.
    “She barfed,” said Kristen.
    “ Gutsfop ,” said the princess from the far north.
    The duchess’s face was not the classic pallor, but