This is Not a Fairy Tale Read online

My eldest daughter has a thing for unicorns. She loves them. It’s not just a childish fixation. She’s always adored them, and now that she’s older, she not only collects them in every shape and form, she also has become a font of unicorn lore. It’s uncanny but some days she even looks like a unicorn. Minus the horn, of course.

  She’s tall and colt-like, in the way that only pre-teens can be, and with amazingly large dark-blue eyes that stand out all the more against her pale skin and white-blonde hair, a throwback to some Icelandic gene lurking in our family pool. There’s something otherworldly about her, accentuated by adolescent hormones and the faint aura of tragedy that has surrounded her since her father left.

  All of which to say that I am used to seeing unicorns about the place, granted, usually in a two-dimensional format, so when I saw a horse-sized unicorn standing proudly in the corner, its breath as sweet as hay from across the room, I didn’t think anything of it. I was more interested in what the old man had to say.

  But it wasn’t the old man who spoke.

  The unicorn eyed me suspiciously and then nodded.

  “Yes, you’re right. It’s her.”

  The unicorn looked at me again and I could have sworn I saw a flash of disdain.

  “All the signs are there, including those buffoons who hang around outside all of the time. Three bearded beasts bearing the mark of the wanderer, Ulysses.”

  Its voice was soothing, like waves on the shore at night, even though I felt that it did not approve of me but that wasn’t helping me with the idea – yes, I’m a little slow sometimes but it had taken me a moment to realize that I was listening to a talking mythical creature.

  The unicorn shook his head despairingly and whinnied, a sound like tinkling silver bells that sent shivers down my spine.

  “I must go and warn the others. You know what to do.”

  Another whinny and he was gone. I turned to the man.

  “How do you do that? Was it a hologram? And why all of this trouble for me?”

  The man laughed briefly, gestured to a chair and told me to sit down. Once I was seated, he wheeled his cart of inks and needles over and sat down on a stool, opposite me.

  My voice had lost a little of its resolve; I was less than certain that this circus was the right place to get the tattoo that would show my ex-husband that I was still wild and young and carefree, and that my body still had some mystery to it.

  “You will not be tattooed today. First you must embark upon the quest. If all goes well, then you will join the brotherhood of the ink, but not before.”

  I hadn’t asked a question but this was clearly an answer of some kind.

  His words swirled around my head and for a moment I thought that I might have been dreaming. Or maybe I’d had an aneurism and was in fact lying in a medically induced coma, in a nice firm hospital bed with clean white sheets. But the old man laughed and poked me in the arm, none too gently, and offered me a cigarette.

  I took it and breathed deeply when he held a flame to the tip.

  “Look,” I tried to sound like the kind of woman who knew her mind. “This is all very amusing and I’m sure that your other clients get it. But I don’t, and all I really want is a small tattoo on my back.”

  I shook my head and stood up, dropping the cigarette on the floor and grinding it under my heel.

  “And now I’m not even sure I really want that.”

  As I reached the door, the old man coughed gently. I turned around and saw that he was standing, seemingly taller than he had been only a moment ago. In his left hand, he held a set of scales of a kind, not unlike those used by penny dealers in gang movies. His right hand, however, held a smallish television set that appeared to be showing my life. I took a step closer, suddenly breathless.

  “That’s me, that’s my family…but how? What did…?”

  He waited patiently while I tried to finish a sentence. A million thoughts rushed through my mind, not the least of which was that I had finally flipped my lid and gone crazy. How on earth did this strange little old man happen to have a video of my whole life, and why was he running it backwards? As the images flashed before my eyes, I could see myself becoming younger and happier. When had I stopped smiling so much, laughing so freely?

  The old chap let his arm slide and the television disappeared into thin air. I sank heavily onto the rustic old lounge behind me, my head spinning. I sneezed as the old man sat down next to me, raising another cloud of dust.

  “Confusion is the first step towards clarity.”

  He nodded as if his words of wisdom could be of some assistance to me but all I really wanted was to go home and have a large glass of wine, and forget what was clearly an episode of drug-induced paranoia, sadly without the drugs.

  He patted me softy on the arm and continued.

  “Otherwise said, you haven’t lost your marbles; you have only misplaced your life. And now you are being given the gift of finding it, and yourself, again.”

  None of this was making sense, but he wasn’t finished.

  “Do you know what déjà vu is?”

  I nodded. I might only be a lowly advertising copywriter and frustrated housewife, but I had spent one of the most amazing years of my youth working as a software writer in Paris. So, in addition to destroying large chunks of my liver in the semi-permanent happy hour of Café Monparnasse and stocking any number of wild memories to keep me warm during the last days of my life in some gray nursing home somewhere, I’d also accumulated a reasonable bit of French.

  The old guy interrupted my musings.

  “Not the literary definition,” he said impatiently. “Any fool knows that. I mean the true sense, the meaning behind the words.”

  He shook his head when he saw the look of incomprehension on my face.

  “Déjà vu is that which is already seen, in this life or others. It is a gift from those who know you best, to remind you of that which you have forgotten.”

  He smiled at me suddenly, and I began to feel warm again.

  “That you saw the parts of your life that were shown to you a moment ago is the final sign, the signal that you must begin your quest. Had you not seen, then we would know that you are not ready to go forth.”

  It seemed as if I were in some kind of surreal psychological maze, a place where information kept arriving, only serving to lose me further.

  “You keep mentioning this quest. It seems like a lot of hassle, just to get a tattoo.”

  My voice sounded petulant and I looked at him suspiciously.

  “You don’t have any tattoos. For a man who runs a tattoo shop, that’s not a very good sign.”

  He smiled sadly at me.

  “Not everyone is worthy. Many people seek the true ink, very few receive it. It is my destiny to assure the decoration of others when they have completed their journeys. That is my journey. Perhaps one day I shall be blessed, but until then, I must guide people like you, as I am instructed. Now come.”

  He picked up a small book from the table beside the couch.

  “Follow me. I have much to show you before you can begin.”

  I crossed my arms and refused to budge.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” I insisted stubbornly, “until I know what all of this is about.”

  He stared at me and I stared back. With one husband and two kids behind me, I was good at staring and by now the fires of righteous anger were well stoked. I wanted to run but there was an undeniable force keeping me there, a strange and enticing energy that made me want to find out exactly what was going on. I’d stomped out of my house in a fit of fury, now, I realized, not only directed at my ex-husband but also at the absolute frustration of a life spent putting out fires and making beds, and yes, raising children, but doing nothing exceptional, nothing worthy, it seemed, of a life well lived.

  “Seriously, you’d better sit back down and tell me what the hell all of this mystical blah blah is about or I’m going to go home and skip the tattoo. Or better still
, go find another tattoo artist.”

  The old man raised his wrinkled hands to the sky and muttered “why me?” under his breath and then looked at me and nodded, and I exhaled slowly, not realizing that I’d been holding my breath.

  3

  Commandments, sins

  and signs