A Strange Sort of Livestock

Her hands shaking, Martha picked up the beige telephone and somehow managed to dial the number correctly. As the dial tone dragged itself out, she checked herself in the small mirror nailed to the wall. With a grim sort of satisfaction, she saw that she was, indeed, every bit as pale as she felt.

"Hello?" the voice on the other end of the line said.

"Anne, it's me," Martha stuttered, immediately feeling like a fool. She had hoped to sound distraught, but not so much so that she couldn't keep her voice from shaking. After a deep breath, she continued. "You'll never guess what happened this morning."

"Is everything okay?" Anne asked.

"Yes, yes, everything's fine. Anne, do you remember how Joe wanted another horse?"

"He didn't buy one, did he?" Anne asked with more than just a hint of exasperation in her voice.

"No, he didn't buy one."

At that moment, her husband came into view beyond the white-paned kitchen window on the other side of the room. But Martha didn't see him, or even the window; all she could focus on was the unicorn that was now being led about by a frayed blue and yellow lead rope in what had once been a pasture and, apparently, was about to become one again.

"Martha?" Anne asked uncertainly. "Are you still there?"

"What? Oh, yes. I'm still here."

"So what did Joe do?"

Martha took a deep breath. What she was about to say was utter madness, she knew. But the horn, glistening like the inside of an oyster's shell, told her otherwise. "Joe found a unicorn," she said as matter-of-factly as she could manage given the situation.

Silence.

The raucous shouts of small children could be heard faintly in the background, so Martha knew the connection hadn't gone dead. "Anne, are you still there?"

Distracted, Anne replied, "Yeah, I'm still here. One second. Kids! I'm on the phone! Take it outside!" Anne's roar was barely muted by a hand pressed against the speaker. Flinching at the abrupt change in volume, Martha held the phone away from her ear and glanced out the window again. Thankfully, the cursed beast was nowhere to be seen. Maybe it had disappeared, she thought.

A half-heard buzz of conversation from the phone drew her attention back to what she had been doing. "Sorry, could you repeat that?" Martha asked.

"Joe bought a horse, did he?"

"What? No, I said he didn't buy one. He found a... a unicorn, Anne!"

"You mean you weren't joking about that?" Anne asked, finally sounding as shocked as Martha had expected.

"Of course I wasn't joking!"

At that moment, Joe and the unicorn plodded back into view of the kitchen window. Her husband had somehow managed to get a bridle on it and clearly wasn't finished with whatever he had planned.

"Anne," Martha whispered urgently. "Joe has a bridle on the unicorn."

The faint sound of a door slamming punctured the silence that followed. "Here, Richard's home," Anne said weakly. "Tell him about it."

After a faint shuffling sound interspersed with partly-caught snippets of sharp words, a much deeper voice took the place of Anne's somewhat nasally treble. "Is that you, Sis?"

"Rich, Joe has a unicorn."

"So I've heard. What seems to be the problem?"

Martha raised her free hand in exasperation. "I don't want a unicorn here, Rich! Do you have any idea how much a unicorn eats?"

"I can't say I do. How much, Sis?"

"That wasn't a rhetorical question, Rich!" Martha snapped.

Rich sighed. "Alright, walk me through this. What exactly happened?"

Martha pulled up a chair and sat down, being sure to keep an eye on the window in case any other mythical beasts decided to materialize in her yard. "We woke up this morning and Joe went outside right after breakfast. Said something about wanting to get a start on tilling the garden. The next thing I know, he's sticking his head back in and saying, 'Hey Martha. There's a unicorn in the barn.'"

"So what did you do?"

Martha laughed nervously. "What any sane person would do. I told him he was either crazy or playing some practical joke on me."

"And was he?"

"I wouldn't be on the phone with you if that was the case, Rich!"

Martha thought she could hear an ominous jingling coming from somewhere outside but chose to ignore it.

Very slowly, as if speaking to a very young child, Rich said, "And you're certain this wasn't all a dream? You have been known to have vivid dreams, remember."

"I would know if this was a dream, Rich." Martha was about to say more but paused mid-breath and stared in appalled shock out the window. Joe was headed for the garden, with the unicorn pulling a plow ahead of him. "Joe!" she screamed, hanging her head out the window, "what on Earth do you think you're doing?"

"What? What's going on?" she heard Rich ask urgently through the phone, sounding like little more than a fly's buzz at this distance.

With a quiet word, Joe brought the animal and plow to a halt and turned toward the house. "I'm going to do some work in the garden. Nothing to be worried about."

"With a unicorn, no less!"

"Yup."

Martha withdrew from the window. She had seen quite enough. "Rich? Sorry about that. Joe has the unicorn hitched up to the old plow." She couldn't help but laugh at the absurdity of the situation.

Rich was quiet for a long moment. Just as Martha was just about to repeat herself, he said, "Is he, now? I'll be right over, Sis."

"Good. You need to see this at once." Before it vanishes back to Fairy Land, she mentally added.

Martha waited all day, but Rich never showed up. He certainly could have become unexpectedly busy, but given that it was a weekend and he didn't even bother calling her back, she figured he had never truly intended to stop by.

The garden work went flawlessly. The unicorn had proven capable of performing every task asked of it without any hesitation at all, according to Joe. Martha's stomach plummeted as she realized the beast wouldn't be leaving anytime soon.

Before going to sleep, Martha stood at the window in her bedroom facing the barn. The nearly full moon hung heavily on the horizon, its unusually bright light casting everything in pewter. Sure enough, there was the animal, its horn adding its opalescent glow to the mundane phosphorescence of fireflies drifting like dust motes through the field.

"He's a hard worker," Joe said.

Martha sighed. "I suppose that means you're keeping it, then."

"Yup."