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“Remember,” says Tammy. “We’re not going there to kill anything or fight a big scary monster. This is basically just us giving our new friend a ride home after an extended sleepover.”
Paxton giggles.
“There will be some danger.” Anthony eats half his cupcake in one bite. “The unicorn is vulnerable to attack as long as she’s away from that island. Any magical being of light that dies makes the other side stronger. If the shadows get strong enough, they could spill out into the world and completely reshape reality.”
We all stare at him.
He shrugs. “What can I say? I know stuff, too.”
“Hurry.” Maple flails her arms. “More time unicorn spends here, more crazy things become.”
“Crazy how?” asks Tammy.
“If the unicorn stays here too long, the world is going to have a… magic-pocalypse. All technology stops working. Magic and creatures go everywhere. Humans will have to fight to survive. Lots of violence and chaos. Nightmare creatures in the darkness everywhere.”
Tammy’s expression is a little disconcerting. It’s an ‘ooh, that sounds like fun’ vibe. Yeah, probably be a cool movie, but I wouldn’t want to live it for real.
Paxton looks frightened—shocking, I know.
Anthony finishes off his cupcake and wipes his mouth on a napkin. “That would have a negative effect on my morning Starbucks. We should probably prevent it.”
I chuckle. No, my son doesn’t have a Starbucks every morning.
One thing is obvious: we’ve got some planning to do...
Chapter Twelve
A Problem Most Unusual
I’m being irresponsible.
It’s Monday and I haven’t gotten out of bed. Awesome thing about technology… I can temporarily close the office from the comfort of my blankets, thanks to my phone. Website and a neat little electronic sign in the window connected to the internet via Wi-Fi so I can make it say ‘Sorry, Closed’ remotely. At least we’ve finished the background checks. Nothing super pressing work wise that I’m shoving aside.
Preventing an invasion of nightmare creatures spreading across the globe seems like it ought to take priority over figuring out if Mr. Random is cheating on Mrs. Random. Mrs. Random might not agree, but it’s my call.
How the heck am I going to transport a horse to the middle of the ocean without teleportation? I suppose I could transform into Talos and carry her. Something tells me that’s probably not a good idea. My brain needles at some mostly gone memory, stories of giant birds that used to swoop out of the sky and catch wild horses much the same way as modern hawks prey on mice.
Oh. Now I remember. They called those birds Rocs. R-o-c. That’s what Tammy meant when she said ‘let’s roc.’ Ugh. She’s not old enough to make dad jokes like that. Hmm. The unicorn didn’t lose its mind when she shapeshifted into the huge bird. Either it knew the creature was still Tammy and had no fear of it… or the stories about rocs are fiction. Maybe unicorns aren’t their natural prey. Just because something looks kinda like a horse doesn’t make it a horse. Last time I checked, common wild horses can’t turn themselves invisible or teleport.
Sadly, in our case, teleport one way.
Apparently, she’d been with us too long. And how long is too long? I didn’t know. Not sure even Maple knew. When Pax asked her if she could, indeed, teleport back, the answer was no. Some window had come and gone, one that even the unicorn hadn’t known too much about. Had she, she could have mentioned it before it closed. Apparently, this was her first sojourn from the magical island of Thelmora. Best we could tell, the window had closed within hours, but that was only a guess.
Grr. Damn technicalities.
While the unicorn is a little bit smaller than an average horse, she’s still far too big to pick up and carry like a dog. We’re talking like adolescent foal here, three-quarters of the way to full grown. A substantial animal still. Carrying her as Talos would be technically possible, if uncomfortable for her. It would be one thing if the trip was short. Thousands of miles out into the ocean? Not so much. Hell, I’d probably get tired before we made it there anyway… and with no place to land, that’s just asking for disaster.
Worst case scenario is somewhere between the unicorn dying of fear while being clutched in the talons of a dragon… and me falling out of the sky from exhaustion and the creature drowning in the ocean.
So, no. Talos is not a viable option.
Obviously, teleportation is out.
The only sensible answer I can come up with after two hours of staring up at the ceiling is the same one Ant had suggested last night: a boat. And not just any boat: a big one. Not only would we need a vessel sizable enough to handle having a horse on board, we’re going to need a few days’ worth of provisions, as well as something hardy enough to tolerate bad weather.
Might not be too difficult to sneak the horned wonder onto a cruise ship. She can, after all, turn herself invisible. Problem there is invisibility is not the same thing as intangibility. People might not be able to see her, but she still takes up space. She’d bump into everyone and everything on a cruise ship. The passageways there are not built for large quadrupedal animals. Unfortunately, unicorns cannot shapeshift into humans like the one in the movie did. Even Maple’s faerie magic can’t shrink her to pocket size.
That would’ve made it easy. Paxton could’ve carried her and pretended she had a unicorn figurine.
