He’d said that the unicorn wasn’t from here. Had his grandfather discovered it? Had he built the house around it? Discovered the house, found that a glass world lay inside? And was that why he’d gone crazy? Some new bit of knowledge sent him over the edge? Or was he already fractured?
“Oh, it’s beautiful!” She held it up to the light. It was glass, tinted green. She turned it in the light, watched the rainbows glinting off the facets. “What is it?”
“Sunstone,” her mother said. “A gem. Someone gave it to him from somewhere inside the house.”
“It really would have been worth something,” her father said. “But the way it’s set, it’s not very valuable.” He looked at it mournfully.
“Is that what killed him?” she asked.
Her parents looked at each other, eyebrows raised.
“Who told you that?” Dad asked.
“Jeffrey. He said Grandpa found it in the house. It’s the reason the house is such a mess!” She was excited. “And that means we have to clean it up!”
“You shouldn’t be touching anything,” her mother said. “It could be dangerous.” She looked at it sadly. “Maybe the whole house is broken. If we clean it up, it might get worse.”
“But what’s the point of the sunstone?” she said. “Why did Grandpa give it to us?”
“He didn’t give it to us,” her mother said. “He was going to keep it. He lied about it, said he found it inside. It was wrapped up in a bit of blanket from outside. It’s a message.”
“From where?” she asked. “More than just the forest?”
Her mother nodded. “We’re going to find out.”
“Then we have to clean the house!” she said. “I want to know what’s inside!”
Her father looked at her mother, who nodded. “Let’s get started,” he said, and my aunt snapped her book shut.
“It’s a shame,” her mother said, walking away. “I’ll make sure we get it back to the owner intact.”
My aunt would grow up to become one of the biggest perfumers, a trailblazer in her field, and a brilliant businesswoman. But at that age, she wanted to wear it on her hand. To match her favourite clothes, and make the world just a little better.
Shame wasn’t in her vocabulary.
She was now pursuing a huge collection of perfumes, which had finally begun to pay off, as the profits from her work were strong. Her most recent perfume, she said in one of her university lectures, was “a Christmas story.” She would send a bottle to someone she knew, and they would write back to her about it.
“It really is a great story,” she told her students. “Actually it’s a story I have had to write myself. I told this magical story to a twelve year old American girl. She lives in the city, in a really big house. And she loves this story, but she says she doesn’t have much to do. She likes adventuring, but she’s afraid of going out alone. This story has to make her brave. For when I tell it, it hurts.”
When she told it, her grandniece looked at her with the eyes of her friends at her one horse show. She had the eyes of a young man who would walk a mile to see her ride. And of all her family, she alone looked like my father, amongst all the Swedish visages.
My aunt knew. She knew that each story she told was somehow written on the faces of the people around her. So every story she told was a piece. She was collecting it all together.