3.
Now a thing about bouncing – it is a highly technical process when you actually try to do the calculations. Some of the factors involve the interaction of real and imaginary numbers. It is the kind of math that unicorns were born to do.I followed his instructions and ended up standing next to Larry on the roof. The humans on the street only continued standing pointing at the spot I had been before my cross-continental adventure.
“Nice job, kid,” Larry said. He speared a fat pink cake with his horn and tossed his head towards me. I opened my mouth to catch it and the whole thing went straight down my throat, no joke.
I busied myself with scraping the sugar crystals left behind in my cheeks and teeth for a while. When I finished everything I looked down again and saw the crowd still staring at the spot I had been and talking loudly. I asked Larry why they there.
“You turned invisible.” When he saw my wide eyes he said, “Hey, relax, it means you’re growing your horn.”
I asked him what horn. He told me to look in the mirror sometime.
Then he said, “You gave your first ride, huh, kid?”
“There was this girl who jumped on my back.” I told him how much I didn’t like it.
“You don’t have to like it,” Larry replied. “You just have to do it. Look, where do you think magic comes from? Do you think it grows out of your mane?”
I told him I didn’t know. I supposed that we were just born with it.
“See here, kid,” he said. “Magic isn’t free. Our kind’s only born with a potential for magic. We don’t get to use it unless we help a less fortunate.”
And then he whinnied like a horse. Most of the people on the people on the street did not look up, but a toddler did.
I wasn’t what you’d call “real talkative” back then. Instead of telling Larry that the girl was a brat, or asking why he thought that was funny I said, “Why is that?”
He stopped making a commotion and glared at me. “That’s just the way it is. A unicorn is a transport species. Our livelihood depends on how many passengers we can get from Point A to Point Z, so you’ve just got to suck it up. Take the first person who asks. Don’t be a Prima Lilyhoof, for crying out loud, like one of those medieval unicorns.”
I have learned since then that this is not entirely true. A lot of random passengers will supply a unicorn with magic for weeks – allowing us to be invisible, to bounce, to culture elaborate gardens – but the right passenger can also bring an extra blessing for their unicorn. Power, no, Speed, no. Apples…sometimes.
What it really boils down to is kindness. Things in general go a lot smoother with kindness, especially unicorn magic. The little ones are more likely to take the ride with a kind spirit. Young humans feed us cookies, pet us, and love us. They are faster to spot us that anyone else. Our theorists say it is because they, too, can mix the real and imaginary.
Kids also make the best riders. The older riders have entire complicated agendas they actually try to lie to my kind about.
By the way, never lie to a unicorn. Under no condition is it a good idea. Someone is just going to get hurt. Usually it’s us, but it could be humans, too. I mean, look at this horn.
We try to ask all our riders, “Why are you going where you are going?” The question helps us define the parameters of the calculations, besides telling them to think – really think – about where they need to be the most. Little humans might not have a specific destination in mind, but when they do we have got to get them there as a matter of the utmost importance. It’s probably a matter of life and death.
Larry grudgingly became my first bounce mentor. He took me to the Rose Bowl and made me practice bouncing from one side of the stadium to the other. This was Larry, so of course there was a concert going on. Instead of watching me practice he tossed his mane in time to the music and sassayed in front of the gates, checking every so often if anyone was inebriated enough to see him. He made me stop when he had a passenger.
“Hey, Eight.” He knew my name by then, but he thought Octavian was too pretty, even for a unicorn. “This is Ned. Say hi, Ned.”
The long-haired man giggled and swayed. “Hi, Ned.”
I said, “Larry, did he even ask you for a ride?” Kidnapping a human only lends a few days of magic, but that was not why I was concerned. He looked like the kind who would fall off halfway across the 405.
Larry ignored me and said, “Now, he’s not the sharpest tool in the shed, but he’s a passenger. Hey, Ned.” He jiggled his back a bit, waking the man. “Where do ya wanna go?”
Ned thought about it for a minute. “I want to be in a giant bucket of fried chicken. I saw one in the car on the way over here. I wanna see how big the chicken is in there. Maybe it’s bigger than it is on T.V.”
“Sure, buddy, I hope you won’t be disappointed.” Larry began to raise his front hoof in preparation for the first bounce.
“Wait,” I said, “where am I supposed to go?”
Larry laughed and shook his head as if he couldn’t believe my question. He craned his neck and said to the passenger on his back, “Ned, buddy, do you mind if we take my friend here somewhere else first?”
“Oh, boy, another pony.” The man stretched out both of his hands to grab my mane. I started to pull away, but then he said “Pretty pony” and I just about melted beneath his sticky palms. Sometimes unicorns are worse than dogs when it come to having attention.
“Keep him up, Eight.” Larry barely gave this warning before he bounced us straight out of there.
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