Unicorns? Get Real!

brings me out!” She paused. “But what brings you out? Upon my brother’s wand! What a sight you are, scampering about in your smallclothes.” She began to cackle madly. “Oh my, if your parents could see you! They’d ask for a tuition refund. And what in the world are those things hanging around your shoulders?”
    “Uh…snowshoes, ma’am. Alicia lent them to me. You see, it was winter when I left,” Gundersnap said in a quavering voice. She took a deep breath and tried to begin. “So…”
    Berwynna merely grunted in response. “So what? So you mean so so? Or sew sew?”
    Gundersnap was becoming more flustered. She’d forgotten how Berwynna often spoke in riddles and tossed words about so that they seemed to take on multiple meanings and become as slippery as a wet frog.
    “What have you come for?” the old woman barked.
    “Information,” Gundersnap blurted out.
    “What kind of information?” The old lady screwed up her face and, squinting her eyes, looked fiercely at Gundersnap.
    “I have a problem, a big problem.” Her eyes began to tear up. I must not cry! I must not cry.
    “Cry if you want. Tears are free.”
    Oh darn! thought Gundersnap. She had also forgotten how Berwynna could sometime read one’s mind, just step into one’s thoughts softly and pick up little fragments and bits and pieces of things.
    “I didn’t think,” Berwynna continued, “that it was a big problem, but a small one, a pony and not a horse.”
    “You know? What should I do? How can I rescue him before he is killed in battle?”
    “Him, just him? Him could be anything. I like to give a problem its proper name.”
    “Menschmik.”
    “Ah yes, your mum had no business taking him off like that.”
    “But what should I do?”
    “Do? Dew?” Suddenly sparkling drops of water appeared to settle on her tangled pile of hair, which resembled more than anything an ill-made bird’s nest.
    Berwynna stepped closer to the squat princess. Gundersnap felt as if the old lady’s oddly colorless eyes were looking straight through her and could see to the bottom of her very soul, could know everything about her, every sadness, every joy, every fear. The owl perching on Berwynna’s shoulder shifted its weight and then, as owls can do, spun its head nearly all the way around. Berwynna cocked her own head to look at the owl.
    “Uthmore here thinks I should give you a bit of a hint.”
    “Oh yes, please do!” Gundersnap pleaded. Berwynna raised up on her tiptoes, looked straight into Gundersnap’s eyes, and began to speak in a singsongy voice that was as creaky as a door on rusty hinges.
“She thought she saw a horse at first,
The stitches not quite there,
And then she looked again and thought,
A unicorn—beware!
Your mama said that none exist ,
These fancies of our dreams .
And yet the stitches left unsewn
Seem to almost gleam .
The heart insists, the mind rebels
And says it can’t be so.
But listen to your heart I say,
And sew and sew and sew.”
    The tiny woman took a step closer to Gundersnap and rose up on her tiptoes again. The colorless eyes seemed to spit the fire of the stars. Then Berwynna sank down from her tiptoes, rocked back a bit on her heels, and gave Princess Gundersnap a smug little grin.
    Gundersnap was frustrated.
    “But I don’t give a fig about unicorns.”
    “A fig! A fig!” exclaimed Berwynna, and pulled one from her ear. A wasp swooped out as well and began buzzing madly about. “They love figs, don’t you know. Lay their eggs in them,” Berwynna explained.
    “In your ear?” Gundersnap felt a churning in her stomach.
    “If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times: I am a friend of all creatures. If they find my earwax comfy, why not? I’m a decent sort of a landlady. I evict no one.”
    “But I don’t understand what a unicorn has to do with Menschmik.”
    Berwynna merely shrugged. “How should I know?”
    She’s impossible! thought Gundersnap.
    “Of course I’m impossible,” Berwynna replied. “What fun is there in being possible?”
    “Were you speaking about my mudder in the poem?” Gundersnap asked. “Empress Maria Theresa?”
    “Every kid tries to blame her parents. How unoriginal! So don’t be getting a bee in your bonnet about mothers.” Just then a large bee flew out from a tangle of hair. Gundersnap blinked and suppressed her surprise. I should be used to this by now, she thought. Nevertheless, a bee flying out of someone’s hair and a wasp from her