Waiting for Unicorns by Beth Hautala

kitchen counter and wiping my mouth.
    â€œWhat does that mean?” I asked.
    She didn’t say anything for a minute, and then sat down.
    â€œWould you like to hear the story?”
    I nodded and joined her at the table. Fast. Too fast. But my knees had gone all wobbly and the tips of my fingers were tingling.
    â€œThere are a couple different versions of this story,” Sura began. “But I will tell you my favorite.”
    As Sura spoke, I was certain I heard the wishes in my jar start to shift and rustle around.
    â€œMany, many years ago there was an Inuit girl who fell in love with the sea,” Sura said. “Every day she would go out on the water with her father, who was a hunter, and beg him to spare the whales. And because he loved his daughter, he did. But the Inuit people needed the whales,” Sura said, “and without them, they began to starve.”
    I remembered Dad telling me about all of the ways the Inuit people used the whales they hunted. They would eat the whale meat of course, but they would also eat the fat, or blubber, because it is so rich in nutrients. Other times they would melt down the blubber into oil to use as fuel for light. They even used the bones, boiling them into glue and grinding them down for fertilizer. In fact, bones and teeth can be carved into tools and shaped into special hooks for fishing nets.
    I knew this was a way of life for the Inuit, but it was a lot different from mine. Different than what I was used to. It seemed cruel. I understood why that girl didn’t want her dad to kill those whales.
    â€œEven though the people were going hungry and growing ill,” Sura continued, “the hunter’s daughter still begged her father to spare the whales. And so he spared them, until his daughter also grew weak and sick for lack of food. And then, because he loved her more than he loved her happiness, the girl’s father took his harpoon and went out to hunt the whales.
    â€œBut the girl, who did not understand either the sea she loved or her father who loved them both, tied herself to his harpoon. Her father never knew, and when he cast it out, his daughter was dragged into the sea.
    â€œThe father’s grief was so great that the sea took pity on him, and the girl did not drown. Instead, with the harpoon held tightly in her hands, she was bound to a beluga whale. Tangled in the ropes of the harpoon, and wrapped around one another, together they became the unicorn of the sea. Today, they are known as narwhals.”
    Sura paused.
    â€œBut unicorns break your heart, Talia,” she said, and this time she said it firmly, like a warning. “The girl loved what she could not have. She was permanently changed, more creature than human. And it broke her father’s heart. They were separated from each other forever.”
    Sura looked sad.
    â€œBut she saved the whales, didn’t she?” I sat in my chair, thinking about the story and listening to my wishes rustle in their jar. “That was what she wanted more than anything.”
    Sura nodded thoughtfully.
    â€œSo maybe that was enough for her. Maybe it didn’t matter that she was separated from her father. Maybe they were already kind of separated before she was changed because they were so different, and maybe she was actually happier with the whales.” In my mind, all I could see was the gray mottled body of a narwhal whale and the single spiraling horn that rose up out of the water like the lance of a jousting knight.
    â€œPerhaps she was.” Sura smiled. “There is a piece of truth in all stories. Including this one. Those pieces make stories magic, which is part of the reason the Inuit tell them over and over, generation after generation. The pieces we choose to keep, to make our own, change us. They change the way we live and think, and what we believe. Perhaps the girl was happier as one of the whales. Or perhaps she wished she could return to her