Macie and the Real Unicorn

Once upon a long time ago, there was a big girl named Macie who loved science and wanted nothing more in the world than to have a real unicorn as a friend. Macie tried all the ways she could think of to get a real unicorn friend. She wished for a real unicorn with all her heart as she blew out her birthday candles. She wrote to Santa. She wrote to Glenda the good witch. She even wrote to her senator. When one of her eyelashes fell out and landed on her cheek, she wished on that. She stayed up very late watching the sky until she could wish on a shooting star. She spent long afternoons searching through clover and when she found one with four leaves on it, wished as ardently as any girl has ever wished, for a real unicorn to be her friend. The wishes and the letters did not seem to be working, so Macie changed her strategy. 

Macie began to look for a real unicorn.  She read through all of her books about unicorns, magical creatures, magical places and even horses searching for a clue to where she might find a real unicorn. She looked in majestic forests when the dew was on the ground and the birds were singing. She searched in horse barns in evenings when grooms fed and blanketed the horses for the night, checking the little swirls on the horse’s foreheads for any sign of a horn. She looked on the beach in the morning when the tide had washed the beach clean of footprints. She looked behind pristine mountain waterfalls and in enchanted looking valleys hung with low fog. Macie saw many beautiful things and even many creatures - a turtle, a baby fawn, an impossibly blue dragonfly, a bird with the most mesmerizing song - but she did not find her unicorn.

On her next birthday when she received not a unicorn but a robotics kit, Macie decided it was time to take matters into her own hands: she would make a unicorn. She took her materials from wherever she could find them. The body of her horse was made from an old ottoman that had long been stored disused in the attic. The legs she made from some old bits of 2x4s, which she hinged together to form the horse’s knees. These she bolted to all four sides of the ottoman, loosely enough that they could swing back and forward at the top while also bending at the knee just like a real unicorn’s legs would. She shaped the unicorn’s neck from a tomato cage and its head from a bit of leftover styrofoam which she wired securely to the neck. Now she had the basic shape of the unicorn, but she wanted it to be able to move on its own just like a real unicorn. This is where the robotics kit came in. From the robotics kit she took eight spinning motors - four for knees, two for shoulders, and two for hips, and attached them at the moving parts of her unicorn’s body with string. She fashioned the string so that when the motor spun it would pull the legs forward and allow the unicorn to “walk.” Then she connected each motor by wires to a battery pack that would live in the unicorn’s chest. There she also placed a tiny computer which she attached to sensors on the front and sides of the unicorn, so that it would not bump into anything. Now the unicorn could move, but it did not look real (it did not, for that matter, lool like a unicorn - more like a robot horse!).

The project needed finishing touches. To make the unicorn soft, Macie she gathered rags and bits of outgrown clothing which she draped, tied, and taped all around the frame. She found a piece of twisted driftwood which she whittled to a point and painted gold to be the unicorn’s horn, and glued to its forehead. Lastly, She took a plush white blanket and cut and sewed it to cover the unicorn, carefully hiding the seams on the inside of its legs and, under its belly. For the eyes she added two beautiful amethyst gemstones from her own collection, and made a flowing mane and tail from yarn. And to make her sparkle, Macie sprinkled the unicorn with a lovely gold and silver glitter that made her shimmer. The effect was so lovely that Macie decided to name her unicorn Sparkie. 

Macie loved Sparkie and played with her often. She loved to create obstacle courses for Sparkie to test the ability of her sensors and motors to get her through, and when she found an obstacle that stymied Sparkie she would look for ways to make Sparkie’s sensors and motors work even better so that she could go anywhere. After learning some programming in junior highschool Macie created programs that would allow Sparkie walk in a set pattern almost like a dance. She made other changes that made Sparkie look more real, eventually making a head that could turn, adding a speaker with Sounds Sparkie could make. With each improvement, Macie learned more and Sparkie appeared more real. But as much as she loved Sparkie and as much as she enjoyed the work, Macie knew that Sparkie wasn’t real. 

Sparkie, for her part, wanted desperately to be real for Macie. Every day when Macie played with her she did her best to stand tall and proud like a real unicorn would, and of course, to sparkle like a real unicorn would as well. But as time went on and Macie played with Sparkie she saw that her back began to sag in the middle, her mane grew thinner, and even her beautiful glitter began to fade. In Macie’s room there was a velveteen rabbit that Macie had had since she was a baby, and that had belonged to Macie’s mother before that. The rabbit was very worn, but he was also very wise. Sparky asked the velveteen rabbit how a toy could become real and the velveteen rabbit said that if a child loves the toy well enough, typically to the point that it becomes quite worn out, the toy becomes real. It’s a long process, he says, and it can hurt. But it’s worth it. After that Sparky still did try to stand extra tall and to sparkle, but she didn’t worry to much about her glitter or her sagging back. These things came to her through being loved and she trusted the velveteen rabbit that some day, maybe someday soon, they would help to make her a real unicorn. 

As the years went by Macie’s interest in robotics, which had taken root through the process of making Sparkie, only grew. Macie shared Sparkie in her first grade science fair, and went on to do ever more complex projects for each year’s fair. It was Macie’s dream to become a robotics engineer making robots that help people and bring delight like Sparkie did for her. Those dreams meant going off to college, and a day came when Macie packed up the things she would need - her clothes, her books, some personal items - and said goodbye to many of her childhood things, including Sparkie. With the expense of Macie’s college, her parents decided to sell their house and move into a smaller place. Sparkie heard Macie’s mom saying that these childhood things would be packed up and put into storage and after Macie left that’s what happened. Macie’s mom came into the room and packed up Macie’s childhood things and loaded them into a trailer. Sparkie, because she was so big, had to be tied to the back. It was great fun! The storage unit was a few towns away and to get there Macie’s mom drove the trailer through some of the places where Macie had gone looking for unicorns as a very young girl. They drove past a majestic forest, by a sparking waterfall, and through an enchanted looking valley, and that’s where Macie’s mother drove over a big pothole in the road. The trailer tipped for a moment, everything in the trailer rattled and the string that was holding Sparky broke. Poor Sparky, whose switch had been turned on in the fall, walked away from the road and deeper into the enchanted looking valley until her battery ran out and she stopped standing in a thick patch of four leaf clovers. Sparky was disconsolate. She felt sure that Macie’s mom would notice her missing and come looking for her but she had walked so far that the road was completely out of sight. Macie’s mother would never find her, and Sparky would not be there to greet Macie when she came back from college, and she would never get to see Macie fulfill her dream of becoming an engineer.

Sparky stood, because that’s the only thing she could do now that her battery was out, a thought about her situation. She could see no way out. She was just a robot, she had no program for getting back to Macie, and even if she had her battery was out. As the sun set and the stars came out Sparky grew so sad that as she watched a star shoot across the sky, for the first time ever she did something she wasn’t at all build or programmed to do - she shed a tear, which fell to the ground. As Sparky stood and thought about Macie, about everything Macie had done for her and all they had learned together and the fun they had had, a strange thing happened. From where that tear had fallen grew a mysterious flower, not at all like any that grew in the valley. It had slender green leaves the colour of emeralds, and in the centre of the leaves a blossom like a golden cup. It was so beautiful that Sparky forgot to cry, and just stood

there watching it. Presently the blossom opened, and out of it there stepped a fairy.

She was quite the loveliest fairy in the whole world. Her dress was of pearl and dew-drops, and there were flowers round her neck and in her hair, and her face was like the most perfect flower of all. And she came close to Sparky put her hang to Sparky’s cheek and kissed the damp spot where the tear had rolled down.

"Little unicorn," she said, "don't you know who I am?"

Sparky looked up at her, and it seemed to him that he had seen her face before, but he couldn't think where.

"I am the childhood magic Fairy," she said. "I take care of all special things that the children have made from their imaginations. When they break, or are lost, or children don't need them any more, then I come and take them away with me and turn them into Real."

“I’ll be real? I can find Macie? She can see that I’m finally real?”

“She can’t see that you’re real,” said the fairy.

“Why not?” Sparky asked. “Macie has always wanted me to be real. It’s what inspired her to learn robotics.”

“Childhood magic things must stay hidden once they become real,” the fairy explained, “That way there are still things for children to search for, imagine and create. If they saw that you were real, there would be no reason for them to build you from their imaginations, and then where would we be?”

Sparky asked, “So I can never show myself to Macie, and she can never know that I was real?”

The fairy answered, “She can’t see that you’re real. But she will feel it, and that will be enough. It always has.”

And it was. Sparky, when she wasn’t rolling in clover, bathing in waterfalls and sliding down rainbows, often went to watch Macie and see how she was. And she was pleased to see that Macie thrived. And Macie, though she could not see Sparky, whenever Sparky came to visit would happen to think back to her first robot friend and smile.