Unicorn Power!

by Mariko Tamaki

  April dropped down onto her bed and curled up under her fluffy covers.

  Molly slipped under her covers and whispered, “Good night.”

  “Good night,” Mal whispered back.

  “Good night,” Jo called to the cabin. She leaned down so her head was hanging over April’s bunk. “Dream about amazing things,” she said.

  April nodded. “I will.”

  CHAPTER 11

  The next day was a whir that started with a breakfast of fresh-baked scones and then poured out into a day of Lumberjanes hardcore getting stuff done!

  Barney and Ripley took off after breakfast to tap dancing class, in the new Lumberjanes dancercise studio, taught by the funky and flexible Mrs. Penelope P’Tattatattat.

  Jo headed to the workshop to take apart various pieces of equipment and then put them back together to form new and astounding inventions (she also had to check on her vases that had recently come out of the kiln, in order to complete her View to a Kiln badge).

  Mal and Molly were taking their second try at their Peace and Quilt badge, although Mal was getting a little sick of sticking her thumb with a needle every fifteen seconds.

  “I am not a pincushion, I am a person!”

  Then they were facing off against Woolpit cabin in volleyball doubles.

  April was on her way to the library to grab some maps when Rosie spotted her from the porch of her cabin. “Hey there!” she hollered. “Come in here and lend me a hand?”

  It took April less than two and a half seconds to get to Rosie’s porch. ZIP! “How can I help?”

  “I need a scout with steady hands.” Rosie adjusted her glasses. “Game?”

  April gave a sharp nod. “No problem.”

  Inside, Rosie’s cabin was a comfy but very robust room full of books and other stuff both recognizable and cryptic. The room was actually a mishmash of tastes: baroque stuffed velvet chairs with gold frames—fancy filigree frames—mixed with flowery curtains and Rosie’s own taste for plaids and heavy rustic furniture (most of which Rosie made herself). There were bookshelves up against every wall, stuffed with books and also boxes, some padlocked, and one secured with several locks and chains, which glowed faintly.

  On one wall hung Rosie’s impressive and diverse ax collection, which ranged in size from splitting hairs to splitting trees. One ax was currently wedged into the top of Rosie’s desk, the biggest piece of furniture in the room. The desk was covered in wood shavings and a mess of wires and springs, topped with an old, curled-up piece of parchment with a gooey-looking red wax seal.

  It’s like a mystery sundae, April marveled.

  Behind Rosie’s desk was a series of portraits of the former camp directors, who ranged in style from stiff and colonial, with high collars and big hair, to scruffy and covered in little bits of forest.

  Miss Qiunzella Thiskwin Penniquiqul Thistle Crumpet, with her thick mane of black curls piled on top of her head like a soft-serve ice cream cone, looked out imperturbably from her portrait, her sharp green eyes focused on April. Every time she visited Rosie’s cabin, April spent a moment memorizing its incredibleness for future reference.

  Rosie strode over to the far wall, her thick boots shaking the floor slightly, and grabbed what was actually a giant carving of a cat-like face with huge sprawling antlers as long as April.

  Rosie picked up the carving and handed it to April. “Just hold ’er against that wall for me for a second.”

  April raised the carving above her head and leaned it against the wall. “Here?”

  “Yup!”

  April looked up. “What is this?”

  Rosie seemed to consider the placement for a moment before answering. “A beast that’s not to be tangled with. Especially after a long rain. Or a rough artistic interpretation thereof. Which . . . I’m going to hang right . . . there.”

  Pulling a massive silver peg from under the handkerchief holding down her thick red hair, Rosie closed one eye, concentrating on her target. “Hold still.”

  With keen accuracy, Rosie tossed the peg, like a dart, threading the small loop at the top of the carving and embedding it into the wall.

  Rosie stepped back, pleased. “Perfecto!”

  April stepped away. The wooden creature swayed slightly on the peg, its eyes diamond shaped, its lips curled up in a satisfied smile.

  “Thanks for the assist!” Rosie called out, as she headed into a back room off the main cabin. “I’m sure you’ve got tons to do!”

  April had tons of questions for Rosie, about whether the carving of the creature was to scale and where it lived and all that, but Rosie was busy so . . .

  April froze. There, hanging on the wall, next to a comfy chair covered in books and blankets, was a pair of green Lumberjane sashes. Sashes. Covered. In. Badges.

  “Oh my GOSH,” April breathed, reaching out to touch the faded edge of a sash with a careful hand.

  Here, slung on a wooden peg over what looked like a raincoat, was every possible accomplishment a Lumberjane could earn. I mean, probably it was. There were so many! Rosie even had the bronze, silver, and gold double-ax badges, which were super hard to get, and . . . April blinked. What was that?

  “It’s the Extraordinary Explorers medal,” Rosie said, returning with a silver bucket. “For extraordinary exploratory skills. They engrave your names on the back too. Kind of nifty.”

  April flipped the medal over. It was heavy, made of something that felt like rock but looked like gold. There, engraved in fine lettering, were the names Rosie and Abigail.

  “That’s—”

  “Looking pretty good up there,” Rosie said, nodding at the wall with the carving as she grabbed her ax. “All right then! Lots to do!”

  And with that, Rosie scooted April out of the cabin and strode off to go wherever it is someone like Rosie goes with an ax and a silver bucket. “Thanks for the help, scout!”

  “The Extraordinary Explorers medal,” April whispered. It felt like every word linked together in a perfect chain. April leapt off the steps and ran all the way to the library.

  CHAPTER 12

  The sun was shining. April had the whole day in front of her. By Lumberjane standards, that meant anything was possible.

  By lunchtime, April was hunkered down at the picnic tables with handfuls of maps, a compass, her notebook, and a modest mass of snacks.

  April had spread the maps out over the table with the help of a few rocks. The thing about maps is, there’s never just ONE map, not even of a single area. One of the spread out maps was a more recent map that showed all the different elevations around camp. One was a more old-timey-looking map that had a bunch of drawings of little trees where the forest was and little fish swimming in the lakes and rivers. Another map showed the various wildlife, with different dots representing different animals.

  Plus April had her Lumberjanes Flora and Fauna Guide map, with its weird diamond pencil scribbles done by who knows who.

  All around her, the camp bustled with Lumberjanes doing what Lumberjanes do, but April barely noticed as she pored over the maps, tracing Roanoke cabin’s steps through the woods, over the stream, to the meadow of Clow Bells.

  After two granola bars, an apple, a juice box, and a bag of potato chips, one thing was clear: The mountain they saw the day before wasn’t on any of the maps.

  The maps did show the forest they’d run through, the babbling brook that Jen fell into when she went looking for them, and the meadow of Clow Bells. But in every map, on the edge of that meadow was . . . nothing.

  Not nothing, obviously, although that would be interesting, but no mountain.

  A MASSIVE mountain just . . . not there?

  April squitched her face up in deep thought.

  No mountain. OR. A mountain that no one knew about.

  April could feel her heart beating faster, the way your heart beats faster when something amazing is about to happen.

  Because your heart is the first to know.

  Maybe it meant
no one had ever climbed it before? And if no one had ever climbed it before, that meant that this was an opportunity to be . . . an extraordinary explorer!

  April sprang up from her picnic table and galloped, through a flock of Lumberjanes doing tai chi, over to the workshop.

  The closer she got to the workshop, the bigger and better the idea felt inside her, like a burst of light that starts out sparkler big and a few moments later it’s a firecracker, that starts out like a good idea and a few moments later . . . it’s the best plan anyone ever had.

  Of course of course of course! April thought.

  The mountain!

  CHAPTER 13

  “JO!” April called as she crashed through the doors, flooding the dusty workshop with light. “JO! GUESS WHAT?”

  Flipping up her welding mask, which looked very cartoon villian and intimidating, Jo switched off her blowtorch. “What?”

  “Extraordinary!” April hopped around the workshop. “And it’s going to be awesome.”

  “Great,” Jo said, leaning back against the giant metal table in the middle of the shop, prepared for this to take a while, “That doesn’t really make sense, but when you’ve caught your breath, I’m all ears.”

  “Okay okay okay.” April was so excited it was hard to talk or stand still or both of those things at the same time, so she jogged in place in the workshop, in front of Jo, for a bit, saying, “Okay.”

  “Okay. Okay. Okay so . . . okay.”

  April closed her eyes; she could see the mountain in her mind’s eye now, as clear as anything. She pictured herself gripping the side of the rocky face, the wind in her hair.

  AND! When they got their Extraordinary Explorers medals, they could all have their names carved in them!

  It was perfect. It was Lumberjanes-errific. It was probably even destiny, since what else do you call something you get to by way of UNICORN CHASE?

  THAT’S DESTINY, BABY!

  “Okay,” she said again. It was hard to think with all these voices jumping up and down in her head.

  Jo removed her gloves, familiar with April’s moments of “OH MY GODDESS, GUESS WHAT?!” She probably even had time to go get a quick drink of water before—

  April shook her hands out. “Okay.”

  “Whenever you’re ready,” Jo added. “Really no rush.”

  “Okay.” April stopped moving. Possibly finally out of okays.

  “You know the oath we took when we became Lumberjanes?” she asked.

  “Obviously I do,” Jo said.

  April and Jo put their hands on their hearts: April on her sweater and Jo on her leather welder’s apron.

  “Once again with feeling, because I’m the only one who has it memorized . . . I solemnly swear to do my best,” Jo said, pressing a leather glove over her heart. “Every day, and in all that I do . . .”

  “Tomorrow,” April said, hitting her palm with her fist, “we are going to go back and climb that mountain!”

  “Which mountain?”

  “The one from yesterday! By the unicorns!”

  “Oh, right! Any particular reason?” Not that there needed to be a reason, Jo was just curious.

  April put her arms up the air, fingers outstretched, reaching toward the stars. “Because it’s there but I can’t find it on any of the maps.” Holding up the maps she still had squished in her hand, she added, “Because there’s this medal that Lumberjanes get when they do something extraordinary and Rosie has one . . . I mean she has all the badges but she has this medal too and when you get it they engrave all your names in it and if we climb a mountain that’s not on any maps that no one has climbed . . . ”

  Sometimes there is just too much to say and not enough oxygen to say it.

  April’s cheeks glowed pink.

  “Well,” Jo said, thinking as she spoke, “I do have some new equipment I want to try out.”

  April punched up into the air. “Yes yes yes!”

  Jo watched April, who was now actually jumping up and down with excitement. There was a speed to April’s speech that made Jo, who knew April very well, realize that this thing April was excited about was something she was going to do no matter what. It was no-matter-what big now. Mountain big.

  Back in the regular, non-camp world, in April’s regular house where she lived with her dad, April’s room was full of trophies and ribbons and medals. Jo once slept over at April’s and spent the whole night transfixed by her walls of medals for skiing and arm wrestling, her trophy for chess, her gold cup for high jump, and her black belts for karate. In the regular, non-camp world, some of April’s classmates called her an overachiever, which is another way of saying “intense,” which is another way of saying “too intense.”

  Jo knew that April wasn’t an overachiever, or too intense. She was someone who got an idea in her head, like winning the Mermaid Magic Fan Fiction Contest, or solving a mystery, and then she did it.

  Jo also knew April long enough to know that her mom, when she was alive, was the same way. When she was alive, April’s mom attacked the day in a way that made everyone exhausted but April.

  April was someone who was only really being herself when she had a big idea in her heart that made her talk real fast until she was out of breath.

  Jo didn’t think that was a bad thing.

  “Okay then,” Jo said, picking up her welding equipment so she could put it away properly, because that was something that made Jo, Jo. “I’m in. I’ll just get my stuff ready while you convince everyone else that it’s a good idea.”

  April rubbed her hands together. “No problem!”

  CHAPTER 14

  April had to wait until after dinner, mushroom meatball night, to convince Ripley.

  Actually, it was even longer than that because they were showing a Famous Female Directors retrospective after dinner, which was packed and also chock-full of films that made really interesting character choices.

  By the time April, who was pretty much exploding with her awesome idea, got to her, Ripley was crashed out on her bunk after a night of movie popcorn and movie chocolate chip cookies and movie milkshakes and Nora Ephron.

  “How do you feel about another round of unicorn and then a gigantic mountain climb tomorrow, Rip?” April asked, her words mashing together in her excitement.

  Ripley was tucked in tight with her stuffed unicorn, Mr. Sparkles, wedged under her chin.

  “Mmmmm, unicorn,” she mumbled, turning over in her bed. “Yeah, let’s unicorn.”

  “Excellent,” April said, with a little fist pump. She turned to face Jo, who was standing by her bags with a twist of rope in one hand and a metal-looking thing in the other. “Okay, Ripley’s in.”

  “Yeah. Let’s unicorn dance,” Ripley continued groggily, kicking off her blanket. “Turn up the music. Hey! Those aren’t your tap shoes. Gimme those! Doughnut.”

  “I don’t know if that’s an actual yes, given she’s clearly talking in her sleep,” Jo noted, coiling up a very very long rope.

  “Let’s call it a definite maybe,” April said, walking out of the cabin. “Two to go!”

  “Guess what we’re doing tomorrow!” April said, vaulting over to Mal and Molly, who were sitting at a picnic table getting Band-Aided up after quilting day.

  “Uh,” Mal said.

  “We,” April said, “drum roll, please, are going to go climb the mountain we saw by the unicorns yesterday!”

  “Wait,” Mal said, squinting as though she were trying to picture it but having great difficulty. “We’re going to climb a mysterious, supertall and probably very perilous to climb mountain?”

  “Absolutely.” April bobbed her head vigorously.

  “Hmmmm,” Mal said, “interesting. So. That sounds pretty dangerous.”

  April considered, her voice getting higher as she spoke. “Would I call it dangerous?”

  “Um, it sounds at least a little risky,” Molly proposed. “You know, not dinosaur dangerous but at least a little dangerous.”

  D
inosaurs being an 8 out of 10 on the average “How dangerous is this?” scale.

  “And we’re doing this why?” Mal raised an eyebrow.

  Molly waited to see what April would come up with.

  April always came up with something!

  “Because it will be transcendent!” April trumpeted. “Because there isn’t no mountain too high for a Lumberjane!”

  “I’m pretty sure that’s not the original lyric.” Molly scratched her chin. “I think it’s supposed to be—“

  “Because Jo has a new invention she wants to try out.” April interrupted. “Also there’s this thing called the Extraordinary Explorers medal, which we would totally get if we manage this stupendous feat, which we can totally do because FRIENDSHIP TO THE MAX!”

  That was at least three very solid reasons, April reasoned.

  Over at Zodiac cabin, the members were practicing their accordion for their That’s Accordion to You badges. The music switched from polka to something of a modern interpretation of polka, providing what could be described as the perfect soundtrack for the excitingness of the adventure to come.

  Mal wondered what it would be like to spend your evenings not plotting to do dangerous things. You know? Just hangin’? Chillin’? Mal wondered when was the last time Roanoke cabin was chillin’. No memory came to mind.

  “Fine,” she grumbled. “At least we’re not diving into a lake.”

  “I’m in too. I bet Ripley’s excited to see the unicorns again,” Molly said.

  “Yes yes yes!” April cheered and then skipped back to the cabin to pack for their next adventure. There was so much to do! What did Rosie say? Be prepared! Something like that. Okay, so there were snacks, and a change of clothes in case it was cold at the top of the mountain, and more snacks to pack.

  “Jo!” she called, flinging the cabin door open. “Everyone’s in!”

  On the picnic bench, Mal turned to look at Molly, who was enjoying the feeling of the night air on her face.