Speared
By Kate Guerrero
“He gored another rabbit,” Paul said.
“No!” Mira said.
She leapt up. The screen slapped against the graying frame. Outside, Einhorn whinnied.
Their mother snorted, justified. “Is that the third one?”
“Three rabbits and a squirrel,” Paul said. “This one's a doozy. Speared.”
“Like a kebab.” Their mother pressed her lips together. “I knew it,” she said, pious in her accuracy.
She watched Mira through the starched curtains, hands on Einhorn’s glacier-white neck. He shook his mane, penitent, the rabbit carcass dangling from the horn glinting just above his eyes.
“It happened again?” Their father was ready to go to work, jacket on and travel mug in hand.
Jordan snickered over his Froot Loops. “She’s out there bawling over it now.”
Their father was already in motion before he spoke. “She can’t deal with it by herself.” He set down the mug and picked up a plastic bag and thick yellow gloves.
In the backyard, Mira’s face was swollen with tears, freckles like cinnamon on spilled cream, hair a wispy halo. Einhorn’s eyes were placid, but the rabbit’s were wide, frozen in perpetual terror, its body swinging on the horn like a macabre Christmas ornament.
“Dad,” Mira swiped at her nose, “why does this keep happening?”
“I think the horn gets in his way,” her father said. He coaxed Einhorn to bend his head, lifting the furry mess up, off, and into the plastic bag. Mira covered her eyes.
“He doesn’t mean to do it, Dad,” she hiccuped.
“I know,” he said, knotting the handles of the bag together. “The horn’s just not very practical.”
Mira couldn’t believe that a creature as beautiful as Einhorn would have come to her – the third child, the leftover. She crept through the trees around their property, bare feet on moss, full of mourning. Her brothers called her fairy dresses ridiculous, and her mother tut-tutted over the snags the forest made in the tulle – but they didn’t see the thin-limbed girl underneath.
Einhorn had appeared in a clearing, all snowy flanks and golden horn. When she stood near him, she felt that surely this was the answer. People would consider the owner of such a creature remarkable, indeed – and worthy of a second glance.
Mira did her research. She lugged a Rubbermaid tub full of water into just the right spot in the yard to catch the moonlight, then left it for Einhorn to drink until Jordan dumped it over. She propped a delicate piece of cut glass in the sunshine and let Einhorn stand in its light, colorful stripes arching across his flank. Rainbows were supposed to be good for his coat.
“She’ll see,” her mother said, and launched into a cautionary tale about the mermaid she’d once tried to befriend and who “was nothing but a disappointment.”
But the rabbits weren’t the only problem. One day Einhorn showed up in the yard with a tangle of poison ivy around his horn, tickling his eyes. Red welts rose up angrily through his milky coat. Mira’s father made a mummy of himself in snow gear and a ski mask and snipped the leaves away with a shears.
After the third rabbit, Mira’s mother put her foot down. “Enough is enough,” she said.
But Mira’s father said, “Not yet. Let her wait a little longer.”
It took one more thing; this time a jagged slash along Mira’s bare shoulder. She needed stitches; Einhorn had just been trying to nuzzle her hand.
“It’s that blasted horn,” her mother said.
The attending doctor gently suggested that the animal be “dealt with,” and Mira went white. Her father shook his head.
“I have an idea.” He stood with Mira in the backyard, Einhorn’s whiteness dazzling against the backdrop of the trees. “It won’t hurt him,” her father said. “It’ll be like cutting a toenail.”
Mira put her arms around Einhorn’s neck and made soft sounds, coaxing him to bend forward. Her father took the horn in one hand and the hacksaw in the other. Einhorn was quiet.
When her father was done, Einhorn raised his head like a shaved lion.
Mira gasped, “No! He’s ruined.”
Einhorn pawed the ground lazily. He seemed unperturbed.
“It doesn’t seem as if he needed it,” her father said.
Mira felt hollow, as if the words she needed to explain herself had fallen down a well. “But how will anyone know what he is?”
Her father put down the hacksaw. “The right kind of person always recognizes magic.” He looked into her eyes and put out a hand to squeeze her shoulder. “Horns are neither here nor there.”
“Are you sure?”
“Absolutely.”
Her father lifted his faded cap to reposition it against the sun. His hair, recently cut, exposed the strip of white skin above his ear. His ear.
Mira squinted. Had she never noticed it? Had it always looked that way? Like one of the thin-tipped mountain peaks in her Fairies of the World Treasury?
Her father caught her eye. He nodded, almost imperceptibly, and Mira shivered with sudden revelation. She grabbed his hand, shy and smiling in their shared knowing.
Together, Mira and her father watched the gnats land on Einhorn’s milky coat. As they looked, the insects slowed and wheeled, coordinating their fragile bodies into an intricate dance. Above them, through the tree leaves, dust motes glittered in the air. In the sunshine, they looked as if they were glowing.
THE END
Author Bio: Kate is an emerging fiction writer and artist living in the Chicago suburbs. She believes in creativity, passion, and a willingness to fail, and that trying something new is always worth the mess.