Rising from the Ashes: A Unicorn’s Magical Legacy
A Story for My Granddaughter from Grandmama, Christmas 2024
Many cultures have attributed magical powers and mythical characteristics to the unicorn. Nowhere is the unicorn more celebrated than in Scotland, where the Scots awarded the unicorn to stand as their national animal. Your great-great-grandmother, Catherine Kelly, was born in Scotland, and she must have witnessed the depictions of the unicorn in the country’s towns and cities. Celtic mythology has produced many enchanting stories about this creature with a horn. This story is based on actual events, a retelling of your Grandmama’s recollection of a mystifying encounter with a unicorn.
The tiny village hugged Old Limestone Road, once a busy thoroughfare for wagons and trucks transporting sedimentary rock across the county. Most homes were built over a hundred years ago in this farming community. Some houses were residences for farm workers, and others were Victorian-styled residences, with gingerbread-trimmed porches. Years ago, one of these houses served as the village post office, and behind that structure, tucked among a few trees, an old clapboard house, worn and in disrepair, stood in an overgrown field. Several windows were cracked, and paint peeled away from the door. Tree branches hung low over the roof, where some of the missing shingles had fallen to the ground. Cast-off possessions peaked through the weeds, littering the yard. Inside the house, a clutter of objects, surrounded by well-worn furniture and faded rugs, covered the floors. Resting in a wooden cupboard among a small collection of figurines, a white porcelain unicorn stood upright on the top of a bell. One could imagine that the bell would have been rung occasionally, perhaps bringing a moment of happiness.
One night, the usual quiet scene erupted into chaos. An uncontrolled fire began to engulf the house. The woman who lived there fled from the flames barefoot, dressed only in her nightgown. She pounded on her neighbor’s back door for help, but the intensity of the fire was too great for them to do anything. Together, they could only watch in disbelief while the orange glow of the flames lit the darkness as the suffocating smoke blew into their faces. They heard the crackling of the structure as the house began to disintegrate while glowing embers fell into the weeds, igniting patches of the earth. The fire department finally arrived in a cacophony of sirens and flashing red lights, and the house was doused with water. To extinguish the flames, the firefighters tore down what the fire had left. By morning’s light, the smoldering remains revealed the blackened shell of the house, the smell of acrid smoke still in the air. The firefighters had carelessly tossed a few chairs, tables, and dishes into the surrounding weeds. The unicorn bell fell into the ashes.
The woman had no choice but to start a new life somewhere else, leaving behind the scattered remains of her possessions. The cement walls of the basement were all that remained. Over the years, brambles, vines, and nettles covered the landscape. Decades passed as snowstorms, rain, and summer heat pummeled the unicorn bell. Season after season, the unicorn, covered in black soot, rested in muddy soil, surrounded by burned timbers and broken glass.
On one warm day in late spring, I visited a friend who lived in the Old Limestone Road neighborhood and passed through the abandoned property where the house once stood. Catching my clothes with their thorns, the prickly blackberry bushes stretched over the yard. Butterflies danced among the spiky lavender thistles, standing tall in the overgrown grasses. As I looked at the ground, broken pieces of colorful plates lay in a little pile. I paused when I noticed a glimmer of white on the ground. As I pushed the moist dirt away, I uncovered a delicate figurine. While lifting the object from the soil, the little bell jingled its note into the wind. To my amazement, the unicorn, still covered in black-speckled soot, remained in near-perfect condition.
I brought the unicorn home and cleaned off the sticky ash, revealing a shiny porcelain finish. During the cleaning process, I had time to think about unicorns, prompting me to research the subject. I learned that a bond exists between the Scottish people and the mythical unicorn, considered a symbol of strength and power.
Grandmother Catherine raised seven children in a small apartment in a brownstone tenement building in a working-class neighborhood of Clyde Bank. Sometimes their family had to beg for food, and at Christmastime, the children received one orange in their stocking. One child became blinded in one eye, another suffered a leg injury from being hit by a cart, and another came down with rickets from lack of sunlight caused by pollution. Undeterred by these hardships, Catherine persevered, saving her pennies to bring her children to America to lift them out of their dark and impoverished surroundings.
I wondered if the unicorn magically survived adverse circumstances to become a symbol of the family connection that we share with our Scottish Great-grandmother and the value of resilience. With the sound of the bell, we can imagine the impossible.
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