by Beth Hautala
So I took a breath. “I wished for unicorns.” The words came out slowly, like they were testing their wings.
“Unicorns?” Simon squinted at me, sort of disbelieving. “You made a birthday wish on unicorns?”
“Narwhals,” I said, clarifying. “I wished for a narwhal whale.”
He frowned and tossed another rock. It fell shy of his previous throw.
“Why are you wishing for narwhals?” He seemed a little disappointed, like he’d expected me to be wishing for something else.
“Because. Unicorns grant wishes.”
I regretted saying something as soon as the words were out of my mouth. That’s the trouble with talking, you can’t un-say things. Up to this point I hadn’t told anyone about my faith in the whales, not even Dad, and now it sounded stupid, floating through the air and out over the water. Especially now that I was thirteen.
“So, you’re wishing for something that grants wishes?” Simon didn’t look at me as he searched the ground for another smooth stone.
I stared at him, trying to see if he was making fun.
“Something like that,” I said, and I threw a rock as hard as I could.
“What’s up with you and wishing?” he asked.
I just shrugged and stared out at the bay.
On the inside, I was dying to race back to the blue house, drag my jar of wishes from beneath the bed, and empty its contents into Simon’s lap. I wanted him to see them, and I’d never wanted anyone to see my wishes before—at least, no one except Mom. There, I’d say, shaking my wishes into his lap. These are the reason I’m wishing for unicorns. These are the reason I can’t sleep at night, the reason I still have hope, and actually, these are the reason I’m here at all. Because if my wishes can come true, then maybe I will finally get the chance to say good-bye to my mom.
I needed to see her one last time—not in my imagination or my memory, but for real. I needed to touch her face, feel the ends of her hair, hug her hard. I wanted to tell her—to her real, alive, awake face—that I would give anything to have her back. That I missed her. That I would never forget her. Most of all, I wanted to tell her that I loved her.
But I didn’t do any of those things. I didn’t run back to the blue house to show Simon my jar, and I didn’t say anything about my big wish. I didn’t even really answer his question. But Simon didn’t press it, and he didn’t ask me anything else. He didn’t try to make any lame jokes, and he didn’t say I was crazy for wishing for a whale that grants wishes. Instead, he just sat there quietly and waited.
I fingered the smooth stones that lay all around us on the beach. It had taken hundreds of years for a glacier to drag them here, and then many more years for that melted glacier to wash them over sand and silt, and against other rocks until they were smooth and soft. Perfect, without any broken edges. Moraine.
I glanced up at Simon.
“My mom used to say that people make wishes because they want something bad enough to let everything else go—everything except that one thing they’re hoping for.”
Simon ran his hands over the rocks beside him, searching for the perfect stone. He didn’t look at me and he didn’t say anything. He didn’t even ask me what I was hoping for—what I wanted badly enough to let everything else go.
I was beginning to think how dumb I must have sounded when Simon stood up. He held a rock between his fingers, almost completely flat and perfectly smooth.
“Did you know that you can make a wish on a skipped rock?” he asked.
“How do you skip a rock?”
“Like this,” he said, and he arched his arm to the side, the rock held flat between this thumb and forefinger, and threw it across the surface of the bay in that narrow space of open water between the shore and the ice. I watched as it skimmed the water, skipping once, twice, three times before disappearing beneath the surface. Simon smiled slowly and sat back down beside me.
“So, what did you wish for?” I asked.
“I wished for your unicorn,” he said.
And at that moment I decided Simon might just be one of the best people I’d ever known. So for some crazy, unexplainable, golden birthday reason, I leaned over and kissed him. Then, I sprung up and headed for the blue house without a backward glance.
ONCE I GOT BACK TO the house, I had to stand on the porch and catch my breath for a couple of minutes. I couldn’t believe I’d actually kissed Simon, and I was suddenly terrified it might have been a mistake. But it was too late to take it back. Turns out that kissing is sort of like talking. You can’t un-kiss anyone any more than you can un-say something. I’d never kissed anyone before—at least, not the sort of kiss you actually mean. It was probably best just not to think about it too much. The next time I saw Simon, I’d try and explain. Apologize, or something.
Later that night, after all the birthday festivities were over, Sura offered to make whatever I wanted for dinner because it was my birthday. Even though it was late and I was feeling more anxious to talk to Dad than hungry, I suddenly realized I didn’t just want to sit there while Sura cooked for me. I wanted more than that. I wanted to give her something—do something for her, like she had been doing for me all along. Loving me with the things she made. I asked her if I could help.
I think it surprised her, but she quickly agreed, and together we made pizza with a touton crust. It wasn’t like the pizza back home, but I had to admit, it was still pretty good. And cooking with Sura helped keep my mind off waiting for Dad’s call.
Once we finished eating, Sura cleared the dishes and then returned to the table with a tiny wooden box in one hand. She slid it across to me and leaned back, watching.
“What’s this?” I asked. It looked like a jewelry box, covered with intricate Inuit designs.
“It’s your birthday gift,” she said. “From your father.”
“From Dad? Really?”
“You didn’t think he would forget, did you Talia? Your father loves you—you must know this.”
“I do, I—I just—” I shrugged. “I just didn’t think he’d plan things.”
But he had. And whatever leftover traces of bitterness I might have felt over his absence today slowly broke apart and floated away, leaving me with only hopeful expectation as I waited for Dad’s voice to come crackling over the radio airwaves.
Dad had taken the time to tell Sura about my birthday, and he’d also taken the time to get me a gift, leaving it behind so I was sure to have it today. He could have waited and given it to me himself after he got back. Or he could have given it to me before he left, I guess. But he didn’t. He made sure I had it today so I knew he remembered. It was important. I was important. Even though Mom was gone, and he was out on the ice, and absolutely everything was different, I still mattered.
I lifted the lid on the little wooden box. Inside was a pendant necklace with a delicate silver chain.
I laid it across my palm, cradling it like a living, breathing thing. The charm strung on the chain was no longer than the first knuckle of my little finger, and as white as bone, intricately carved and spiraling to its tiny pointed tip. I knew exactly what it was. I just couldn’t get over the fact that Dad knew how much this would mean to me.
It was a tiny horn.
And not just any horn. A unicorn horn.
“It’s made from the ivory of a narwhal tusk,” Sura said.
I swallowed hard, the lump in my throat rising again. I’d been fighting it off a lot today.
I fumbled with the clasp for several seconds, my hands shaking, and then finally held it out to Sura for help. She lifted the hair off my neck and secured the clasp. I laid my hand over the charm, pressing its tiny weight against my chest.
How had he known?
“It’s a good gift, then?” Sura was watching me, her head tilted to one side.
I nodded. “It’s a good gift,”
I said, the words almost stuck in my throat. “Really good.”
She smiled, and then slid something else across the table. A flat package wrapped in brown paper.
“From me,” she said.
I blinked. I hadn’t expected anything from Sura. She’d already thrown me a party and made me a cake. Now she was giving me a gift on top of all that.
“Thank you.” I smiled across the table.
At first I thought it was a book. Maybe a field guide of my own. I’d been using the Birdman’s Field Guide to Canadian Birds so often that the pages were starting to look even more ragged than when he’d first loaned it to me. But I couldn’t have been more wrong.
It was a picture in a carved wooden frame. I pulled it free from the paper and studied the face of the girl in the photograph.
She was smiling—a dimple showing on only one side, same as me. Her nose was wrinkled like she thought whoever was taking the picture was being silly.
I glanced up at Sura. I didn’t know what to say.
Sura’s gift to me was a picture of my mom as a young woman, before I was ever born, maybe before she and Dad were married, and long, long before cancer. She was beautiful, and I pressed her cheek to my lips and kissed her, just like I did with my wishes every time I pulled them from their jar.
I studied my mom’s face, remembering her nose and the shape of her eyes, the way her eyelashes curled up, and how the little hollow above her upper lip was shaped exactly like a tear. I placed my finger in the hollow above my own lip.
I’d never seen this picture before. The most amazing difference between this one and all the pictures I’d seen of my mom until now was her hair. It wasn’t long like it was when I knew her. It was shorter, bobbed at her chin like I used to wear mine when I was younger. Almost exactly as she used to cut it for me.
In all of the other pictures I had of Mom, her hair was long, thick, and dark.
That’s how I remembered her. Until she got sick.
I’d come home from school late one afternoon because I was working on an after-school English project. Mom made us peanut butter and honey sandwiches for dinner, without the crusts, and we curled up together in the library. It was much cozier than sitting at the kitchen table.
Mom was doing research and I was brushing out her hair. She let me do this sometimes, and I loved pulling a thick-handled brush until not a single strand was tangled. She looked like a queen.
“You know, Tal, the medicine I’m on is very strong,” she said. “It might make me sick.”
“Is it strong enough to kill the cancer?” I asked her.
She was quiet for a long time. “I hope so,” she said. “It’s going to try. But it’s going to kill some good things, too.”
“What kind of good things?” I asked. I was scared, because being sick is bad enough, but the thought that even the medicine would make her sick terrified me. That’s not how it was supposed to work.
“It’s going to make my hair fall out,” she said.
I stopped mid-stroke as the weight of that brush grew impossibly heavy. I wanted to throw it out the window—through the glass. It wasn’t fair. There were tears running down my face before I realized I was crying. But Mom didn’t cry. She was brave.
“I’ll tell you what,” she said, turning around and cupping her hands around my face. “Let’s not let the cancer or the chemotherapy take it.”
I looked at her, unsure of what she meant. She reached over and pulled a pair of scissors from the drawer in her desk.
“Let’s cut it,” she said to me, and she smiled, wiping tears from my face as I stared at her in shock, trying to decide if she was serious.
She was.
“How about you cut it for me, Tal,” she said. “Would you?” She placed the scissors in my hands.
I was eleven years old, but I knew she was telling me something important. She trusted me to do this for her. So I nodded, biting my lip as tears ran down my face.
Running my shaking hands through her hair, I lifted it from her neck and placed the open blade of the scissors against the strands.
“Here?” I asked. “This short?”
She shook her head. “Shorter.”
I moved the blades up higher until they were just below her ears.
“There,” she said. “Right there.”
I closed the blades, again and again, until her hair, long and dark, lay all around us and covered the floor.
When I was finished, both our faces were wet with tears. Mom wrapped her arms around me, and we sat there, rocking back and forth on the floor as she kissed my face over and over again. She reached up to hold the ends of her hair, cropped short and choppy around her face as though she were saying good-bye to an old friend.
“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” I cried.
But she shook her head and held me tighter.
“Talia Lea,” she said, “this is the most beautiful haircut I have ever had.”
And I knew she was really saying she loved me.
When Dad came home later that evening, he stopped short when he saw Mom. His eyes got very wide, but he didn’t say a word. He just reached out and ran his hand through her hair. And when his fingers met the cropped ends, he just cupped his hand against the back of her bare neck like it had always belonged there.
“Talia cut it for me,” Mom said softly, wrapping her arms around me, sandwiching me between the two of them. “Isn’t it beautiful?”
Dad smiled at down me, his eyes swimming.
“Nice job, Tal,” he said to me. “You’re beautiful.”
The last part he said to her.
I clasped the picture to my chest and looked up at Sura.
“Thank you,” I breathed. “Thank you so much.”
Sura smiled. “You are so like her,” she said. “And I don’t mean just the way you look. You are like her here, too.” And she pressed her hand over her heart. “She was only six years older than you are now.” She nodded at the picture in my hands. “It was her first summer in Churchill and she was working as an intern at the CNSC. But rather than stay at the science center, she insisted on staying in town with someone who lived here. ‘I want to be a part of the culture,’ I can remember her saying. ‘I want to live it, to breathe it, and taste it and hear it. And I can’t do that if I’m away from everything.’”
“So she stayed with you?”
“Me and my mother.” Sura nodded. “And she lived this place and our people. The Inuit. She breathed our air, and tasted our food, and listened to our language and our stories.”
“My dad said you two were friends.”
“Yes. Though not at first. We were very different. But before the summer was over, we were close. She promised to come back. And she did. She came back for two more summers before she met your father.”
“And then I was born.”
“I imagine so,” Sura said, her eyes crinkling at the corners when she smiled. “I did not hear from your mother very much after that. But your father came back to Churchill many times, and he stayed with my mother and me as well. So you see, Talia, your family has been here for a long time.”
I looked around the room. The kitchen with its brown linoleum floors and green cupboards. The front room, lit by the light of the fire in the big old wood stove and one lonely table lamp. It was a warm place. Friendly. Like it knew you might need to stay a while and warm up before you faced the frozen world outside the front door. I thought of how this house had kept my mom warm so many years ago.
I stared down at the face of the girl in the picture, soaking her up. Memorizing my mom’s younger face. Her short hair. Her fearless eyes.
“Thank you, Sura,” I said. “I think this might be the best birthday gift ever.”
I glanced at the clock that hung on the kitchen wall, shocked to see it was already ten fifteen. My bir
thday was almost over and I still hadn’t heard from Dad. His usual call-in time was eight P.M., but more than two hours had passed and the radio remained silent. It wasn’t like him and we both knew it. Why hadn’t he called? Had something happened? Had he forgotten?
Sura must have noticed the worried look on my face.
“I’m sure you’ll hear from him soon, Talia,” she said. “Maybe he had a long day and just fell asleep.”
“Maybe,” I said. But I wasn’t so sure. I was about to head to bed when Sura stopped me.
“There is one last thing.” Sura stood up, nodded toward the window. “Come outside with me,” she said.
“Why?”
“Just come.”
I pulled my coat from its hook and followed Sura out onto the porch. We were so far north—so far from the equator—that the closer we got to spring, the longer the daylight lasted. But the hours had ticked quietly by while we made dinner and sat at the table opening presents, and now darkness had drawn over everything like a heavy blanket.
Sura stood at the rail looking up into the night sky. At first I couldn’t see anything because my eyes were used to the light of the kitchen. But after a minute they adjusted to the darkness and the sky came alive.
“It’s like magic,” I whispered, and Sura smiled.
“Of course,” she said. “Churchill is magic. And it’s putting on a show tonight. In honor of your birthday.”
It was spring and the perpetual darkness of winter was fading into the light. But even so, the aurora borealis, the northern lights, danced like pale ghost flames above us. Red and green and white, they shivered and sashayed over the night sky. They began in a straight line across the horizon and stretched upward toward the highest point in the sky—that point where a globe would have spun on its axis. I knew a little about them from my science classes back home. Something about sun storms and the earth’s magnetism. I couldn’t remember it all, but even if I did, no scientific explanation could have prepared me for the light display that night over Churchill, Manitoba.