Pip Bartlett's Guide to Unicorn Training

by Jackson Pearce

  The doorbell rang, and Callie leaped happily. “That’s the pizza. Put those fire lizards away and come have dinner. We’ve all got a long day tomorrow.”

  A Unicorn criminal and getting Regent Maximus through round two? Callie was right—tomorrow was going to be a really long day.

  The next morning, it was obvious that everyone was a bit nervous in the Unicorn area of the show building, given the events of the night before. Owners were fussing over their Unicorns’ already-perfect manes. Handlers were checking and rechecking halters. Unicorns were speaking faster, more frantically—their steady stream of self-compliments felt more forced than usual.

  Regent Maximus didn’t seem to know what had happened. Thank goodness. He’d never agree to come out of his stall for round two if he thought there was a tail thief on the loose. So now Tomas applied yet more gauze to Regent Maximus’s stall walls while I showed the Unicorn the Trident bulletin.

  The obstacles in round two would be chosen randomly the morning of, but the bulletin detailed all the things they could be, like a number of jumps, a ring search, a shallow pool of water, and even a hoop that had to be jumped through. I was trying to read it out loud slowly and cheerfully, like it was a picture book.

  “Once upon a time there was a Unicorn named Regent Maximus and he saw this first jump and it was pretty low—”

  “I’ll knock my horn on the bar and it will fall off!”

  “No, no, it won’t. And then the brave, beautiful, strong Unicorn went over two jumps! Then he performed a pirouette—”

  “A PIRATE?”

  “A pirouette. It’s just a little turn in a circle.”

  “I’ll fall over and fracture my leg and it’ll be the end!”

  “You won’t fracture your leg.”

  Tomas looked up as he went back to his bag for another roll of gauze. “I read that a Unicorn fractured two legs in the International Cup in Munich.”

  “He won’t fracture his leg,” I said firmly. “Then the Unicorn smiled and pranced—”

  “Hey, guys, how is Regent Maximus today?” Marisol joined us inside the stall. She was wearing a pink EverSun shirt today, and her hair was in a high tidy ponytail. She always managed to look one step tidier than I did.

  “We were just preparing for the next round of the Trident. We’re a little worried about Regent Maximus getting through it.”

  “What?” Regent Maximus wailed in alarm. “You don’t think I’ll survive it?”

  Of course, Marisol just heard a bunch of panicked whinnying. She patted his shoulder and asked, “Hey—did you hear about Silver Stables’s Unicorn?”

  “My cousin told me last night! I can’t believe someone would cut off a—um …” I looked at Regent Maximus and smiled nicely. “I can’t believe something like that would happen.” The last thing I wanted Regent Maximus to hear was that someone had cut off a Unicorn’s tail.

  “They’re really upset. He was a very promising show Unicorn, and tails take a very long time to grow. He might be too old to show by the time it’s all grown out,” Marisol said sadly. “Poor thing.”

  “Maybe he can take the time to relax,” Tomas said helpfully. “I bet it’s pretty stressful to be a show Unicorn, with all the grooming and glitter and competition. Stress is terrible for your health, you know. It causes ulcers.”

  Marisol considered this. “I’m not so sure. These Unicorns are made to show. They love it.” Her eyes drifted to Regent Maximus. There was an ant crawling along the edge of the stall, and the Unicorn was frozen, eyes wide, watching it fearfully. “Well, most of them. Is he afraid of that bug?”

  “Yep,” I said. “Though it might be the wood. He’s afraid of wood too.”

  “Wood is everywhere,” Regent Maximus whispered in response, not taking his eyes off the ant.

  “Hm,” Marisol said. “He’s so high-strung! I guess the honeysuckle bedding can’t fix everything. Wait, I know something that might help. Do you know how he does with other Unicorns?”

  “I think he’s as afraid of them as he is of everything else,” I said with a shrug.

  “I have an idea, then!” Marisol said, a little louder than normal. She looked excited. I could tell that she was in danger of getting carried away, but she reined herself back in. “Sometimes we do it with our own Unicorns, if they’re a little stressed. Let’s go for a walk.”

  * * *

  Marisol took the three of us—me (holding a lead rope), Tomas (applying lotion around his own nostrils), and Regent Maximus (wearing Prince Temujin’s scarf over his eyes)—to a very sturdily fenced area near the center ring labeled EVERSUN UNICORN NURSERY.

  “Baby Unicorns?” Tomas asked, putting the lid back on the lotion.

  “Sometimes high-strung animals do better around babies,” Marisol said.

  “Oh!” I said. “Regent Maximus, I think you might like this!”

  Marisol pushed open the gate, and the Unicorn nursery came into view. The ground was covered in a combination of lavender, hay, and honeysuckle. The wooden walls were painted pale purple, and there were signs hung up on the sides: ANDERSON BRAND HONEYMILK: ONLY THE BEST FOR YOUR BOTTLE-FED UNICORN! and ADDITIVE-FREE HOOF POLISH: SAFE FOR GROWING HOOVES! There was a long, low trough full of honeycomb that’d been cut into tiny pieces, and a few fluffy blankets wrapped up like nests in one corner.

  And there were baby Unicorns!

  Baby.

  Unicorns.

  Six of them, playing some sort of tag-prance-wrestling game with one another.

  “Aren’t they cute?” Marisol said, lighting up. She bit her lip excitedly. “That one there, the blue-purple one? I bottle raised her. I’m going to show her next year! And I think we might try to do therapy work with her too, if we can just get her permitted so hospitals will let her in. Visiting with Unicorns is proven to strengthen people’s immune systems!” Marisol said all this so fast that I could barely understand her. She was like a completely different person than she had been in school, where she always spoke distinctly and politely, as if she had thought through every word. I liked carried away Marisol so much better than school Marisol.

  “I didn’t know that!” I said, delighted to have something so great to add to the Unicorn page of the Guide.

  “If that’s true, I’m gonna visit a lot of Unicorns,” Tomas said.

  Marisol waved her arms so enthusiastically that I was glad Regent Maximus was still blindfolded. “It’s true! It’s where the myth about Unicorns being able to heal illness comes from. They can’t do that exactly, but they definitely help. Did you know the larger varieties of Unicorns can be trained for high-altitude search and rescue? They’re teamed up with a Pegasus, and the Unicorn works on the ground while the Pegasus is in the air!”

  Whoa—I’d known there were a few different varieties of Unicorns, but I’d never heard about the search-and-rescue thing. I made a mental note to add that to the Guide too.

  “What’s going on?” Regent Maximus muttered to me.

  “We’ve found you some friends,” I told him. “Should I take off his blindfold, Marisol?”

  “Yep yep!” Marisol replied, unclipping Regent Maximus’s lead as I removed the scarf.

  Regent Maximus was so startled by the sudden brightness that he fell back and sat down like a dog. This attracted the attention of the baby Unicorns, who abandoned their game. They raced over to stand in a semicircle around us, staring at Regent Maximus with giant, questioning eyes as he clambered to his feet again.

  “Hello!” one said, stamping a fuzzy foot on the ground. It pranced down in a play bow. When Regent Maximus didn’t return the move, it tilted its head to the side. “Hey? Hello! Greetings! Hi!”

  “Maybe he can’t hear us,” a watermelon pink baby Unicorn suggested.

  “Or maybe he doesn’t speak our language! Maybe he only speaks Griffin! Maybe he was raised by Griffins!” a blue one said excitedly, and they all cheered at the prospect.

  I wanted to assure the baby Unicorns that Regent Maximu
s could hear them and had not been raised by Griffins, so far as I knew. But I wasn’t so sure about talking to magical creatures in front of Marisol. Regent Maximus, thankfully, spoke up.

  “Hello,” he said in a low voice.

  “Hi! Were you raised by Griffins?” the pink one asked.

  Regent Maximus looked shocked. “Griffins? Griffins eat chicken cutlets. Unicorns can’t chew chicken cutlets. You could choke on them.”

  The baby Unicorns looked perplexed. Regent Maximus looked at me somewhat desperately.

  I cleared my throat and said, “Regent Maximus met a baby Grim this year.”

  Marisol was impressed, if a bit confused, by this sudden announcement. “Really?”

  The baby Unicorns also shouted, “Really?” all at the same time. Impressed, they gathered up close around Regent Maximus, who seemed a little bewildered. He nodded.

  “Grims are supposed to be very dangerous, you know. You can’t just be friends with any old Grim,” Regent Maximus warned them.

  “Then how did you become his friend?” a sage-green baby Unicorn asked breathlessly.

  “Oh, well, I—” Regent Maximus began, but then glanced at me. I motioned for him to go on. “Well, you see, it started when my barn turned into a blazing inferno! I was trapped in my stall, with no escape in sight …”

  The eyes of the baby Unicorns went wide and, one by one, they each plopped onto the ground, eager to hear Regent Maximus’s rather overdramatic version of the story. Marisol and I slowly backed out of the pen, nearly crashing into Tomas, who, to my surprise, was already waiting outside, looking at a bulletin for the Rockshine show classes.

  “What?” he asked when I pointed at the bulletin, mouth hanging open.

  “There are baby Unicorns right there, and you’re looking at Rockshine pictures?”

  “Unicorns are fine, but Rockshines are my favorite. Can we go see them again now?”

  Marisol glanced at me. I could tell she wasn’t any more interested in Rockshines than I was. “I can’t go with you. I have to meet up with my sisters. We have to take care of our Unicorns because Dad was out so late last night at the barn, working on the truck and trailer or something. But maybe we can talk later? I’ve got a few ideas for getting Regent Maximus through round two of the Trident.”

  “We’ll take all the help we can get,” I said. I felt bad, though, because the first thing I’d thought of after she said the part about her dad was how someone had been cutting Unicorn tails off the night before, and it wasn’t too far from the truck parking lot to where the Unicorns were kept. After she left, I asked, “Tomas, before we go see the Rockshines, would you mind a short detour? An investigative detour.”

  “What are we investigating?”

  “A Unicorn got his tail cut off last night, Tomas. So we’re going to go ask him who did it.”

  First stop: Unicorns.

  “Let’s see, Forever Sunshine, Forever Sunshine, where is Forever Sunshine,” I said, walking down the hall and reading names off the stall doors. “Porcelain Promise, Little Miss Jupiter, Lavender Loyalty …” Tomas trailed behind me with a notebook and pen, prepared to take notes on our findings. He had immediately warmed to our task: If there was anything Tomas liked, it was a job.

  “Here!” I stopped by the name plaque and peered in the stall. Empty!

  The pale green Unicorn in the next stall over was sharpening his horn on the metal track of his stall door, but he stopped when I said, “Excuse me—I’m looking for Forever Sunshine. Do you know where he is?”

  “Oh! It was terrible. So terrible!” the green Unicorn said. “Sunshine was so beautiful!”

  “I’m sure he’s still beautiful,” I said. “Where is he? I wanted to talk to him, to see if he knows who cut his tail.”

  The green Unicorn turned in a little nervous circle. “He’s home, hiding his shame. He left this morning.”

  I gave Tomas a frustrated look. He scribbled went home in his notepad. I asked, “Did he say anything about who cut his tail?”

  The Unicorn shook his head, a frenzy of bright blue mane. “He didn’t see. We were all getting our beauty sleep! Just between you and me, he needed it. Do you see how much sleep I’ve gotten? Do you see how beautiful I am?”

  The Unicorn stuck his head over the stall door and shoved his nose in my face.

  “Oh, yes. Um. Very beautiful. Anyhow—do you know anything about the person who cut his tail?”

  The Unicorn pulled his head back in and turned to look in his water bucket, where he could see his own reflection. “The person ran off toward the Griffins. You there. Small boy. Do you think I’ve gotten enough beauty sleep? Ask him if he thinks I’m beautiful.”

  Tomas didn’t understand, of course. He just stood there with his pencil hovering over his paper.

  “Tell him to draw a picture of me,” the Unicorn continued. “My left side. That’s my most beautiful side.”

  “Maybe later,” I said. “Thanks for your help.”

  * * *

  Second stop: Griffins.

  I thought Standard Griffins were pretty cool, but I could tell right away that Tomas was nervous. I didn’t blame him. He was very short, and they were very tall. And they squeaked and snapped and cawed at one another through the stall doors and walls, shouting things like “You there!” and “I’m twice the eagle you are!” and “We’ll settle this with fisticuffs!”

  “I read that Standard Griffins can take a man’s arm off,” Tomas whispered to me. “I don’t have anything in my bag for that.”

  “Can’t you just keep your arms out of their stalls?” I asked.

  “In the Middle Ages, they ate children,” Tomas said, a little louder to be heard over their noisy sparring.

  “We’re not in the Middle Ages,” I replied. “And these are domesticated. Do you have any mint in your bag? I heard that mint makes them calm down.”

  “I have a menthol rub in case I get a chest cold before tonight,” Tomas said. He dug the little pot of mint-scented cream out of his bag. The moment he opened the lid, all of the Griffins slowly fell quiet, turning their attention to us.

  I had to admit that even I felt a little anxious with all of their stern faces suddenly turned to me.

  “Well then,” I said, clasping my hands together. “We just need a moment of your time. Last night a Unicorn’s tail was cut off—someone was trying to sabotage his show chances. One of the Unicorns said he saw the culprit run this way. Did any of you see anything?”

  “Last night?” echoed the largest of them. His plaque said that his name was General. He clicked his beak in thought. “You know, I did see something. A man. Around the time Felix and Transistor were talking about arm wrestling?”

  “But … Griffins don’t have arms, really,” I pointed out.

  “As if that could stop us!” one of the other Griffins said.

  “What did he look like?” I asked.

  “He was dressed in black,” General replied.

  Tomas wrote this down, his handwriting a little wobbly and nervous.

  “I saw him too!” a Griffin shouted from another stall. “He was very tall. Almost as tall as long-legs Lucretia over there.”

  “What did you just call me?” Lucretia barked from yet another stall. “Say it to my face—oh, wait! You can’t reach my face, stub-legs!”

  This set off another round of shouting and tussling and yet more shouting. Feathers flew from stalls and Griffins laughed and cajoled and kicked at their stall walls. Tomas waved the pot of menthol with a nervous hand, but it had no effect whatsoever.

  I turned to Tomas. “Let’s get out of here.”

  * * *

  Third stop: Exhibition Hall.

  If I were running from the Unicorn Hall through the Griffin stables, it would be the next step on the journey. We hadn’t yet been to the Exhibition Hall, even though I’d marked it as a “Definite Priority!” on our list of things to see. It contained all of the noncompeting magical creatures—creatures like Flowerbea
sts or Gipybieras, who were fascinating, but not common enough to have enough animals for a contest.

  The hall was packed with people. It would be difficult to have a real conversation with any of the creatures here. We tried to pick a pen without too many spectators and found ourselves by the Dillopods.

  The Dillopods had been all rolled up on themselves, but as we approached, one unwound. Its body was pale yellow and soft-looking.

  “Hi there,” I said cheerfully. “I’m Pip, and this is my friend Tomas. I was wondering—late last night, did you happen to see a tall man dressed in black around here after everyone else was gone?”

  The Dillopod curled back into a ball. I thought this meant the conversation was over, but he merely rolled over to the others, knocking into them like pool balls until they all uncurled and looked up at me.

  “She wants to know if we saw a tall man dressed in black?” the first asked.

  “We did!” another said. “We saw him last night, late, right after we finished our exercises.”

  “Oh, that’s right! We did four laps and push-ups and then stacks,” another said.

  “Stacks?” I asked.

  The Dillopods responded by curling up again, then rolling into and over one another, until they were arranged in a perfect little pyramid of spheres. Tomas stuck the notepad under his arm so he could clap for them; he obviously vastly preferred them to the Griffins. The Dillopods trilled in appreciation before collapsing neatly back to the floor.

  “Yes, we saw him,” one—the first one? They all looked just alike—told us. “He was carrying a big orange thing—”

  “The Unicorn tail!” I explained. “Tomas, they saw him!”

  The Dillopods continued. “He had shiny shoes. Like our backs.”

  I turned to tell Tomas this and discovered that he was glowing. He was now the same pale yellow color as the Dillopods’ skin and twice as bright. He was a Tomas lightbulb.

  “I guess my allergy pill doesn’t cover Dillopods,” Tomas said, turning his hand back and forth in front of his face.

  “Does it hurt?” I asked.