by Lisa Mangum
Maryella crawled behind the sofa as we argued, whimpering softly.
You’d think after that, Katie would’ve have done better, but she didn’t, and eventually I quit asking, although I wasn’t happy about it. And I tried. I tried to follow the directions, tried to think of it like following the directions to Grandmother’s rhubarb pie.
I drove across town to buy fresh-picked berries, got them home, and then left them out in the car. By the time I remembered two days later, they were half-covered in mold. I ended up giving Maryella some frozen berries that she eyed dubiously before delicately crushing them between her teeth.
And while I didn’t forget the water, I overlooked the feeding schedule at times, especially after a long, hard day. When I forgot, Maryella would make a piteous sound the next morning, and guilt made me add a bit extra to her food—overfeeding in compensation for my sins.
The long nights at the office began to multiply. I went in straight after taking Katie to school at seven thirty, and by the time I left work, I was already exhausted. After picking up Katie from the after-school care—whose owner I had to pay extra to keep her until almost eight o’clock—sometimes I barely got her clothes changed before I put her straight to bed.
And since she wasn’t playing as much with Maryella, sometimes I forgot the unicorn completely.
No matter how hard I tried, life seemed to get in the way of any sort of organization I’d try to achieve. Worse, Katie began having problems at school, particularly with math. English was okay, because she liked words and word play, but numbers of any sort, as she would continually tell me, were “boring.”
Eventually, the inevitable school conference resulted. Katie’s math teacher, solemn and concerned, kept his voice in a monotone, his pale, round face neither smiling nor frowning. At the end of the meeting, all I had really been able to gather was that he was unhappy about something.
Next came a far more serious meeting with the principal, who said that Katie paid little attention in class and had failed to turn in several assignments. She asked if there were problems at home. Her soft, motherly face reminded me of nothing so much as my own mother lecturing me as a child. When we got home and I asked Katie why she couldn’t pay attention in class, trying to be sympathetic, she screamed at me and ran to her room in tears. That night she wet the bed.
It was about this time that Maryella began to change. She had never grown, or hardly at all, her tiny, delicate horn polished and shiny but small and delicate. Abruptly, Katie told me, “Maryella isn’t pretty anymore.”
I hadn’t been paying attention to our pet, and as I did, I saw she was no longer a light, baby-girl pink, but a darker fuchsia. Her horn had grown as well, no longer shiny white with a trace of pink, but matte-surfaced, the color a deep cream or maybe ecru. Maryella kept to herself more as well, hiding behind the bed or under the sofa in the den.
Once when Katie fed her, she barked a harsh neigh, almost a snarl, and struck out at Katie with her horn. It was too dull to do any harm, but I yelled at Maryella, and she looked angrily at me and fled her food bowl. Later, I tried to make it up with soft words and a sugar cube, but she hid behind the sofa making a noise that sounded almost like a growl.
Then Grandma Nettie, she of the rhubarb pie, and my last living relative, died. I got the call on my way to work and pulled over to the side of the road and sat there for an hour before I managed to make myself go on in.
Somewhere between the teacher meetings, the hours at work, the funeral plans, and trying to find a second tier of childcare because the after-school daycare owner was tired of staying open so late, my feeding schedule for Maryella cratered completely. I’m not sure if Maryella had four meals in five or six days. When we came back that awful day from the funeral, I piled on the oats and sugar and threw in a handful of wilted nasturtiums for good measure.
I hadn’t looked at the manual in a long time.
A few days later, when I had been delinquent in attending to her, I found that Maryella had somehow slipped from the house and through the fence and was eating the neighbor’s cat food. When the cat, a big pumpkin-colored blob named Orange Crush, objected, Maryella, not half her size and weight, turned her horn on Orange Crush and brought blood to one paw.
Orange Crush fled with indignant cries, and I ran frantically toward them, scooping up Maryella and retreating to our yard before the neighbors came to the scene.
I discovered two things that day. First, Maryella’s horn was two inches longer, razor sharp, and now the color of moss. It smelled a bit like it as well. Second, her color had also continued to change, evolving through violet to a much darker purple. She had grown no larger, but considerably more aggressive, and I began to worry if it was safe for Katie to be around her anymore.
For all my worry, my care grew even more shoddy. Maryella’s hair grew tangled in knots; my daughter stopped playing with her. Maryella began sneaking outside, and once, when I went to fetch her, I caught her following Orange Crush, who stood on the opposite side of the fence, as though she were stalking him.
For a few days, I managed to get it right with her. But then I forgot about the next meeting with Katie’s teacher. Katie’s attention had gone from terrible to worse, and my boss, his black eyes and Hitleresque moustache vibrating with anger whenever I didn’t arrive at my desk an hour early, had progressed from simply overbearing to abusive. Layoffs were in the air.
By the time I met with Katie’s math teacher, swearing to my boss I’d work that night and be in on the weekend, I was huffily informed that with support like mine, it was no wonder that Katie continually had troubles. He had a picture on his phone of Katie the day before, hair greasy and tangled, wearing the same clothes as the previous day. He wondered aloud if perhaps he or the principal ought to contact child protective services.
My whole body froze, and when it thawed, I put on a fraudulent smile and poured out simpering, bootlicking words. I went home instead of back to work. After putting Katie to bed, I pulled out a half-bottle of Irish whiskey father had bought fifteen years ago and drank myself into a maudlin crying jag.
Life should be easier, I told myself as I watched an old soap opera on cable, bleary-eyed. Just understand the rules, follow them, and everything should turn out okay. Like making a rhubarb pie. You measure the ingredients, mix them properly, and bake. And there you have a pie. Don’t forget the hint of strawberry, of course.
In the morning, Katie off to school with two coiled braids and a freshly washed dress I’d woken at four to iron, I arrived at work and sat down at my desk only to realize that Maryella had not eaten in twenty-four hours and I had left her no food.
The sudden feeling of nausea surprised me—the fact that I’d eaten far too little and drunk way too much had not completely registered—and the retching onto the carpet by my desk occurred too rapidly for me to reach the restroom down the hallway.
My tyrant surprised me by his reaction. Instead of screaming at me for throwing up at work and damaging his carpet, he shooed me out, telling me, “I don’t want to get whatever that is. Go home and don’t come back ’til you’re well.”
I drove home slowly. Once there, I collected the current bag of oats, some sugar, the carry case, and finally Maryella. My mind had made itself up sometime between the office and home. Maryella wasn’t turning out the way she was intended, and if I didn’t do something quickly, the poor animal had no hope. I resolved not to say a word that evening. Katie noticed Maryella so little any more, I wasn’t sure she’d miss her.
When the shop owner saw me enter with the carrier, his eyes narrowed, and he shook his head slightly. Then he came to meet me at the front of the store.
“I’m sorry,” I told him. “I did my best. I really did. Especially at first. Then things got—complicated. My daughter is having trouble in school, and my job is a nightmare, and—and—” My eyes teared up, and I tried to explain about Grandmother Nettie, and her death, and the pie instructions, and how the recipe just didn’t
seem to work, all the words flooding out at once so that it wasn’t making much sense. I stumbled to a halt, my hands in a prayerful grip in front of me.
“I’ll pay you to take her back,” I said. “She just doesn’t look good anymore, and Katie won’t feed her, and I’m so busy, and I’m worried about her.” Meanwhile, in the carrier, Maryella had begun to whimper and make anxious little noises.
I remembered how he had treated the customer in front of me on my first visit, and I shrank back, expecting a stream of invective accusations about everything from my lifestyle to my IQ.
Instead, he took the case, staring through the holes in the side, sizing up little Maryella. His face had a strange look, a bit sorrowful, and pitying, perhaps even with a tinge of sympathy. Maryella continued to whimper, and he whispered soft words that I couldn’t understand until finally she fell silent.
He lifted his eyes, placing the case on the counter, the same expression on his features. “You did okay, I guess,” he told me. “They’re hard to care for. Everybody’s busy nowadays. I’m sure you … did the best you could.”
I left him there, standing beside Maryella’s case on the counter, looking after me with that sad-solemn face, seeming to sense things inside me that I hadn’t said. On the drive home, I wondered—or hoped?—if everyone had secrets like mine. If they tried an exotic adventure like going to a far-off tropical island, or hiking across a foreign land, or perhaps just trying to raise a toy hydra or a miniature griffin or a small, fireless dragon—doing something, anything, to get away from the failures and frustrations of this life.
Perhaps none of us has the time for such frivolities anymore. Maybe no one has time to bake a pie properly, to remember the sugar crust at the top and bottom of the fruit, to cut the butter in cold, to make the slits in the crust for venting. Maybe we don’t have room for that simple kind of magic in our cluttered, chaotic, desperate modern lives.
Katie was still at school when I got home. At first, I just sat at the kitchen table, staring at nothing and trying to make my mind blank as well.
Finally, I rose and stepped to the drawers in the kitchen counter, digging slowly through each, exploring the contents. I found it finally under a pile of pots and lids, beside an odd collection of tongs and dull bread knives and an old hand-propelled eggbeater. Grandma Nettie’s recipe book, with the rhubarb pie recipe on the very first page, and tiny notes on almost every line in her small, even hand. Sitting at the table, I laid it in front of me to read. I started with the ingredients, and then the directions, and finally Grandma’s notes, absorbing every word.
Then I stood up and went to check the pantry.
***
Gateway Blood
Ezekiel James Boston
“Pa?” Mother called. Dressed for the ball, she hiked her long baby blue dress carefully as to not cause wrinkles. “Pa?”
Still in my smoking robes, I leaned on the fireplace. It crackled with soothing blue freeze-fire chilling the room nicely. My gaze returned to the trophies of hunters long since past. For some reason, Kam’s silver stake kept my attention. “Yah, Mother?”
“Oh, good. You’re not in your suit.”
That was strange. Normally she’d be griping up a blue streak. The change brought me from my thoughts as she shuffled closer. I set down my pipe with the fine Turkish blend old Carl had sent me and turned away from the jars of moonshine. After two hundred years with her, I knew the source of the matter and shook my head.
“What’d Junior done now?”
“Oh, Pa.” She pressed me with a hug. “It’s horrible. Just horrible.”
I embraced her wonderful satin-clad, grave-cold body. Our first century had been dictionary definition perfect. Then we decided to have a child. The following decades had grown steadily worse. “Just tell me what he done.”
“Little Kev, he’s—” Whatever the thought, it made her fangs retract. She slap-covered her mouth. I looked elsewhere in the room while she composed herself. She did soon enough. Her incisors relaxed back into full extension, she continued. “He’s—”
And whoop, up they went again. “Where is he?”
She kept her mouth covered. “Down to the mill.”
I rubbed her back until her fangs eased back out. She helped me out of my smoking robes, and I went to find my boy.
* * *
Taller than me now, he stood on the mossy side of the water mill between the waterwheel and where the crick kinked. I couldn’t help but pause to admire his dead pale complexion in the moonshadows. A smile crept to my face. He was a chip off the old block. One day, he was gonna give some lucky girl a real fright.
“Don’t, Dad.”
He didn’t turn or glance over his shoulder. Impressive. I approached along the crick to see what had him so transfixed. “Don’t what, son?”
Though I hadn’t seen it before, now, in the moonshadows, all wrought with inner-conflict, I finally understood why the judges gave him top honors in both Pensive and Brooding. While both traits had their merits, it would’ve been nicer if he would’ve placed in Lurking or Creep.
He shook his head. “Just, don’t.”
“Fine, son. Fine,” I said and eased along the bank. “I—” My incisors shot up into my gums.
By his feet, bound in some sort of trap made of ropes and leather straps, a unicorn lay on its side, legs kicking weakly. Where the moonlight touched it, its coat shone a glittery lilac. “Now, son—”
He turned a palm toward me. “I said don’t.”
I froze. His fangs were out, but they trembled. He was scared, and he had all rights to be. While that kid down the way bragged about juicing mythicals, one look at ’em and anyone over one-fifty knew the brat was just spouting words. “Did I ever tell you—”
Little Kev cut me off to finish my sentence. “‘’Bout the time I drank werewolf blood?’” His dead eyes—so very dead—rolled. “Yeah, Dad. Dozens of times.”
“Well.” My voice came out muffled. Reflexively, I’d cover my fangless mouth. “I wasn’t bragging about it none. No, I told ya so much as a warnin’.”
Kev didn’t say anything. Just kept staring at it.
My fangs refused to come down. The whole thing got me that deep. “Sometimes, some creatures just seem to want to be bitten, and you can’t help but wonder, what kind of power lies in their blood? Am I right, son?”
He nodded absently.
“To this day, I regret drinking from that wolfman.” I spied my wife easing along the mill roof. We both began to creep closer to him. “And you know what? So does Mother.”
“Ma?” He turned. His gazed passed over me. “Ma drank werewolf?”
“Yah,” I answered.
He found me and stared with great intensity as not to lose me as I slunk along the gurgling waterline.
“We both did when we were dating.” Ready to spring, Mother crouched on the mill’s pitch. “Was good fun for a bit. We were stronger. Our fangs, thicker. Good fun in all.”
His brooding eased. He remained pensive. “What happened then?”
“A full moon.”
“You mean.” His own gasp surprised him. I’d told him about the drawbacks hundreds of times. Realizing the potential curse in our blessing, he softly spoke, “Drink the blood, gain the flesh.” He gulped. “You mean, Mother goes all hairy, too?”
“Yah, every full moon, which comes faster than yah’d think.” I could see nerve building in his eyes. His fangs extended further. “Mother!” I yelled.
Kev sprung.
Mother blocked him from the unicorn.
He tried to move around her, and the moment’s hesitation was all we needed.
I sped up the bank, drove him through the water mill’s stone wall, and we rolled on the dusty wooden planks.
“Let me go!” he wailed. “I’ll risk it.”
Mother dropped on us in a flash. She knocked me away and had him pinned before I could fully recover. Having drank more wolfman, she’d always been stronger and faster.
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“Let me go! Let me go! Let me go!”
I hustled over to the unicorn and undid the major binding.
It heaved to its hooves and sped away.
“Nooooo!”
It pained my unbeating heart to hear my son wail like that. Still, I picked up one of the lengths of leather and tested its strength. “First, unicorns. Then what? Griffins?” It’d hold out through a whippin’. I had to set him straight or he’d become a no good shine-head like my brother. “Let that Eddie Cullen kid drink all the unicorn he wants.” My fangs eased back down. I sounded the belt across my hand. “But ain’t no son of mine’s gonna sparkle.”
***
The Monoceros
Lou J Berger
My initial mistake was going to the employee lunchroom to heat up my noodle soup.
McDavity was holding the door of the staff refrigerator open, staring at the contents, and grimacing. It isn’t that I don’t like McDavity … Well, it is, actually. He’s my supposed “boss” and although I don’t believe that I actually need a boss—I can come up with research assignments myself, without being prompted by sub-intellectual cretins like McDavity—I do admit that he dealt with the upper-level non-technical people for me.
So I sidled over to the microwave, shoulders hunched and creeping silently, hoping he would ignore me. No such luck.
“Johnson!” he barked, without even turning his head in my direction. “Who’s Mary Sue?”
I straightened up.
“She works in the chemistry lab. She’s the department chair?” I shook my head in disgust, opened the microwave door, popped my soup on the glass tray, slammed the door, and pushed the large number “3” on the keypad. The microwave whirred to life and the light lit up, displaying my soup turning in a slow pirouette. I faced McDavity.