The Burial
The unicorn’s purply eye stared up at her from the shallow grave, its pink lid glinting in the moonlight. You don’t have to do this, the unicorn seemed to say. But Wanda wanted to be strong. She dropped a handful of dry earth onto the pale neck and watched it shatter across the face and muzzle. She tossed another and another, then fell to her knees, shovelling dirt with both hands, until the twisting silver-gold of the unicorn’s horn and tail no longer flashed back at her.
It turned out, getting into the top school to save the world came with a sacrifice.
She leaned down to stroke the fine pink hair of the mane, matted with dirt. It felt so real. But the unicorn wasn’t real, it was plastic just like its funeral bed of plastic purses, plastic dolls, plastic beads and plastic candy wrappers. Because Spiral Hall was a plastic-free school. No plastic allowed.
“We’re closing the loop on rubbish on this island,” Principal Halowell had told the initiates that afternoon, “and plastic is not circular. Plastic is forever.”
“What’s wrong with forever?” Wanda had stupidly said.
“Why don’t you ask the sea-life?” the principal had replied coldly.
“Grrrr.” Wanda didn’t like rules. She was a leader, and rules were for followers. Also, the unicorn was really cool. Just the kind of unicorn-look Wanda liked. Somewhere in the grave, there were two plastic pencil cases with the same unicorn. One had a purple body and a blue mane and the other a blue body with a purple mane. Party favours from her eleventh birthday. Wanda scrabbled around in the hole until she found the blue one. Then, wiping the sandy dirt with her hoodie sleeve, she stuffed it into her pocket. The pencil case was reusable plastic, which was way better than single-use, like disposable straws and stuff.
Sitting back on her heels, she stared out from the high cliff across the wide starry sky. Below her, the sea shimmered. Of course, she didn’t want plastic trash to get into the oceans. It was disgusting. But still Wanda wanted to keep her stuff, and even with the ban on plastic she would have kept it too, except that Riva du Lac had just been assigned as her new roommate.
Riva was super judgey and annoying, like the school eco-police; but even so Wanda really wanted Riva to like her. She pulled out her phone to check if Riva had started following her yet on ChattaFox. Still no. Everyone else in their grade was following her, except Peter Blue, but that was only because he was so low-tech. He probably hadn’t even figured out how to turn his device on yet. Wanda had started following Riva on the first day of Orientation, thinking Riva would follow her straight back.
“Grrrr,” Wanda wasn’t sure why she cared so much since she already had 1,582 followers from all around the world and Riva only had about 12.
She stood up and stamped down the hole with her sneakers. Below in the valley, the dorm rooms were dark. But up here, a flock of pelicans was still awake. She could hear them fussing and click-clacking their long beaks from their rocky nests among the reeds. A group of them waddle-walked over to see what she was doing. They were weird-looking birds, a bit like ducks but with yellow things like handbags under their beaks. According to Peter Blue, the pelicans were the soul of this island. Whatever that meant. Even though Peter had sad green eyes and freckles, he was definitely her favourite boy in the class, mainly because his dad was a famous GAIA agent.
Leaning over to pet the pelicans, Wanda was startled by a thin whistling sound that got louder, like a howl. A blast of wind whipped her long blonde hair, hurtling her backwards, and exploding over the plastic grave, spraying sand in all directions.
“Ow!” She crawled over to the rocky shelter where the reeds lashed out at her and pelicans squawked and grunted, hunched over with their beaks tucked into their chest feathers. Then as quickly as the wind had come, it went.
Wanda hurried about gathering back the scattered trash, and reburying it using quick hand movements.
“Grrrr!” Her glow-in-the-dark nail polish was going to be so chipped. “Time to get out here,” she told the pelicans, stamping down the hole again. But the wind was rushing back. Whistling to signal its arrival, it exploded like a grenade right over the plastic grave. It felt even more powerful this time, pelting Wanda with debris and sand, biting her skin like tiny teeth.
She saw pelicans being launched into the air now and tossed around. Wanda herself was only small and having trouble keeping her feet from lifting off. She bent her body away from the cliff edge and off in the direction of the path. Around her, baby pelicans flailed about, caught in the spiralling gusts of wind and plastic trash. One adult pelican made a deep-throated cry as it was dashed into a rock. Screaming, Wanda slammed her own body flat to the ground and clung to a tree root to avoid being dragged over the cliff by a violent gust.
Then like before, the attack stopped suddenly and the world went still. Wanda stood up, spitting sand and sifting it out of her hoodie. All the pelicans were gone. With a thudding heart, she peered over the ledge down to the shoreline, where some of the birds lay about the rocks or floated in shallow pools. Her breath caught. Were they resting? A part of her knew they were not.
“I am so outta here.” The space around the open grave was strewn with plastic again. The unicorn lay half buried on its side. Too bad. She could always sneak back after school tomorrow and clean it up. Wanda headed for the path, then froze at the sound of voices.
“Up here!” a man’s voice said.
Wanda darted behind a rock. Really? Was she going to get busted for plastic possession in the middle of the night? The voices quickly got closer. She saw two GAIA agents, a man and a woman, charging up the path.
“Look, tracks, over there,” said the woman.
Wanda crouched lower. The GAIA agents would see all her plastic trash. This was so bad. Wanda’s breath was coming out in shallow gasps. But the two ran right past her and right past her trash. They were looking up, not down, and they were holding guns.
Squinting into the dimness, Wanda wondered who they were chasing. Their shadowy figures sprinted inland, dodging explosions of earth, like landmines.
Watching the whirling dirt clouds in their wake, Wanda suddenly understood not who but what the GAIA agents were chasing.
They were chasing the wind.
