The Last Unicorn

by Peter S. Beagle

  For an instant the icy wings hung silent in the air, like clouds, and the harpy’s old yellow eyes sank into the unicorn’s heart and drew her close. “I will kill you if you set me free,” the eyes said. “Set me free.”

  The unicorn lowered her head until her horn touched the lock of the harpy’s cage. The door did not swing open, and the iron bars did not thaw into starlight. But the harpy lifted her wings, and the four sides of the cage fell slowly away and down, like the petals of some great flower waking at night. And out of the wreckage the harpy bloomed, terrible and free, screaming, her hair swinging like a sword. The moon withered and fled.

  The unicorn heard herself cry out, not in terror but in wonder, “Oh, you are like me!” She reared joyously to meet the harpy’s stoop, and her horn leaped up into the wicked wind. The harpy struck once, missed, and swung away, her wings clanging and her breath warm and stinking. She burned overhead, and the unicorn saw herself reflected on the harpy’s bronze breast and felt the monster shining from her own body. So they circled one another like a double star, and under the shrunken sky there was nothing real but the two of them. The harpy laughed with delight, and her eyes turned the color of honey. The unicorn knew that she was going to strike again.

  The harpy folded her wings and fell like a star‌—‌not at the unicorn, but beyond her, passing so close that a single feather drew blood from the unicorn’s shoulder; bright claws reaching for the heart of Mommy Fortuna, who was stretching out her own sharp hands as though to welcome the harpy home. “Not alone!” the witch howled triumphantly at both of them. “You never could have freed yourselves alone! I held you!” Then the harpy reached her, and she broke like a dead stick and fell. The harpy crouched on her body, hiding it from sight, and the bronze wings turned red.

  The unicorn turned away. Close by, she heard a child’s voice telling her that she must run, she must run. It was the magician. His eyes were huge and empty, and his face‌—‌always too young‌—‌was collapsing into childhood as the unicorn looked at him. “No,” she said. “Come with me.”

  The harpy made a thick, happy sound that melted the magician’s knees. But the unicorn said again, “Come with me,” and together they walked away from the Midnight Carnival. The moon was gone, but to the magician’s eyes the unicorn was the moon, cold and white and very old, lighting his way to safety, or to madness. He followed her, never once looking back, even when he heard the desperate scrambling and skidding of heavy feet, the boom of bronze wings, and Rukh’s interrupted scream.

  “He ran,” the unicorn said. “You must never run from anything immortal. It attracts their attention.” Her voice was gentle, and without pity. “Never run,” she said. “Walk slowly, and pretend to be thinking of something else. Sing a song, say a poem, do your tricks, but walk slowly and she may not follow. Walk very slowly, magician.”

  So they fled across the night together, step by step, the tall man in black and the horned white beast. The magician crept as close to the unicorn’s light as he dared, for beyond it moved hungry shadows, the shadows of the sounds that the harpy made as she destroyed the little there was to destroy of the Midnight Carnival. But another sound followed them long after these had faded, followed them into morning on a strange road‌—‌the tiny, dry sound of a spider weeping.

  Chapter 4

  Like a newborn child, the magician wept for a long time before he could speak. “The poor old woman,” he whispered at last. The unicorn said nothing, and Schmendrick raised his head and stared at her in a strange way. A gray morning rain was beginning to fall, and she shone through it like a dolphin. “No,” she said, answering his eyes. “I can never regret.”

  He was silent, crouched by the road in the rain, drawing his soaked cloak close around his body until he looked like a broken black umbrella. The unicorn waited, feeling the days of her life falling around her with the rain. “I can sorrow,” she offered gently, “but it’s not the same thing.”

  When Schmendrick looked at her again he had managed to pull his face together, but it was still struggling to escape from him. “Where will you go now?” he asked. “Where were you going when she took you?”

  “I was looking for my people,” the unicorn said. “Have you seen them, magician? They are wild and sea-white, like me.”

  Schmendrick shook his head gravely. “I have never seen anyone like you, not while I was awake. There were supposed to be a few unicorns left when I was a boy, but I knew only one man who had ever seen one. They are surely gone, lady, all but you. When you walk, you make an echo where they used to be.”

  “No,” she said, “for others have seen them.” It gladdened her to hear that there had still been unicorns as recently as the magician’s childhood. She said, “A butterfly told me of the Red Bull, and the witch spoke of King Haggard. So I am going wherever they are to learn whatever they know. Can you tell me where Haggard is king?”

  The magician’s face almost got away, but he caught it and began to smile very slowly, as though his mouth had turned to iron. He bent it into the proper shape in time, but it was an iron smile. “I can tell you a poem,” he said.

  Where all the hills are lean as knives,

  And nothing grows, not leaves nor lives;

  Where hearts are sour as boiled beer—

  Haggard is the ruler here.

  “I will know when I get there, then,” she said, thinking that he was mocking her. “Do you know any poems about the Red Bull?”

  “There are none,” Schmendrick answered. He rose to his feet, pale and smiling. “About King Haggard I know only what I have heard,” he said. “He is an old man, stingy as late November, who rules over a barren country by the sea. Some say that the land was green and soft once, before Haggard came, but he touched it and it withered. There is a saying among farmers, when they look on a field lost to fire or locusts or the wind: As ‘blighted as Haggard’s heart.’ They say also that there are no lights in his castle, and no fires, and that he sends his men out to steal chickens, and bedsheets, and pies from windowsills. The story has it that the last time King Haggard laughed—”

  The unicorn stamped her foot. Schmendrick said, “As for the Red Bull, I know less than I have heard, for I have heard too many tales and each argues with another. The Bull is real, the Bull is a ghost, the Bull is Haggard himself when the sun goes down. The Bull was in the land before Haggard, or it came with him, or it came to him. It protects him from raids and revolutions, and saves him the expense of arming his men. It keeps him a prisoner in his own castle. It is the devil, to whom Haggard has sold his soul. It is the thing he sold his soul to possess. The Bull belongs to Haggard. Haggard belongs to the Bull.”

  The unicorn felt a shiver of sureness spreading through her, widening from the center, like a ripple. In her mind the butterfly piped again, “They passed down all the roads long ago, and the Red Bull ran close behind them and covered their footprints.” She saw white forms blowing away in a bellowing wind, and yellow horns shaking. “I will go there,” she said. “Magician, I owe you a boon, for you set me free. What would you have of me before I leave you?”

  Schmendrick’s long eyes were glinting like leaves in the sun. “Take me with you.”

  She moved away, cool and dancing, and she did not answer. The magician said, “I might be useful. I know the way into Haggard’s country, and the languages of the lands between here and there.” The unicorn seemed very near to vanishing into the sticky mist, and Schmendrick hurried on. “Besides, no wanderer was ever the worse for a wizard’s company, even a unicorn. Remember the tale of the great wizard Nikos. Once, in the woods, he beheld a unicorn sleeping with his head in the lap of a giggling virgin, while three hunters advanced with drawn bows to slay him for his horn. Nikos had only a moment to act. With a word and a wave, he changed the unicorn into a handsome young man, who woke, and seeing the astonished bowmen gaping there, charged upon them and killed them all. His sword was of a twisted, tapering design, and he trampled the bodies when the m
en were dead.”

  “And the girl?” the unicorn asked. “Did he kill the girl too?”

  “No, he married her. He said she was only an aimless child, angry at her family, and that all she really needed was a good man. Which he was, then and always, for even Nikos could never give him back his first form. He died old and respected‌—‌of a surfeit of violets, some say‌—‌he never could get enough violets. There were no children.”

  The story lodged itself somewhere in the unicorn’s breath. “The magician did him no service, but great ill,” she said softly. “How terrible it would be if all my people had been turned human by well-meaning wizards‌—‌exiled, trapped in burning houses. I would sooner find that the Red Bull had killed them all.”

  “Where you are going now,” Schmendrick answered, “few will mean you anything but evil, and a friendly heart‌—‌however foolish‌—‌may be as welcome as water one day. Take me with you, for laughs, for luck, for the unknown. Take me with you.”

  The rain faded as he spoke, the sky began to clear, and the wet grass glowed like the inside of a seashell. The unicorn looked away, searching through a fog of kings for one king, and through a snowy glitter of castles and palaces for one built on the shoulders of a bull. “No one has ever traveled with me,” she said, “but then no one ever caged me before, or took me for a white mare, or disguised me as myself. Many things seem determined to happen to me for the first time, and your company will surely not be the strangest of them, nor the last. So you may come with me if you like, though I wish you had asked me for some other reward.”

  Schmendrick smiled sadly. “I thought about it.” He looked at his fingers, and the unicorn saw the halfmoon marks where the bars had bitten him. “But you could never have granted my true wish.”

  There it is, the unicorn thought, feeling the first spidery touch of sorrow on the inside of her skin. That is how it will be to travel with a mortal, all the time. “No,” she replied. “I cannot turn you into something you are not, no more than the witch could. I cannot turn you into a true magician.”

  “I didn’t think so,” Schmendrick said. “It’s all right. Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’m not worrying about it,” the unicorn said.

  A blue jay swooped low over them on that first day of their journey, said, “Well, I’ll be a squab under glass,” and flapped straight home to tell his wife about it. She was sitting on the nest, singing to their children in a dreary drone.

  Spiders and sowbugs and beetles and crickets,

  Slugs from the roses and ticks from the thickets,

  Grasshoppers, snails, and a quail’s egg or two—

  All to be regurgitated for you.

  Lullaby, lullaby, swindles and schemes,

  Flying’s not near as much fun as it seems.

  “Saw a unicorn today,” the blue jay said as he lit.

  “You didn’t see any supper, I notice,” his wife replied coldly. “I hate a man who talks with his mouth empty.”

  “Baby, a unicorn!” The jay abandoned his casual air and hopped up and down on the branch. “I haven’t seen one of those since the time—”

  “You’ve never seen one,” she said. “This is me, remember? I know what you’ve seen in your life, and what you haven’t.”

  The jay paid no attention. “There was a strange-looking party in black with her,” he rattled. “They were going over Cat Mountain. I wonder if they were heading for Haggard’s country.” He cocked his head to the artistic angle that had first won his wife. “What a vision for old Haggard’s breakfast,” he marveled. “A unicorn coming to call, bold as you please, rat-tat-tat on his dismal door. I’d give anything to see—”

  “I suppose the two of you didn’t spend the whole day watching unicorns,” his wife interrupted with a click of her beak. “At least, I understand that she used to be considered quite imaginative in matters of spare time.” She advanced on him, her neck feathers ruffling.

  “Honey, I haven’t even seen her—” the blue jay began, and his wife knew that he hadn’t, and wouldn’t dare, but she batted him one anyway. She was one woman who knew what to do with a slight moral edge.

  The unicorn and the magician walked through the spring, over soft Cat Mountain and down into a violet valley where apple trees grew. Beyond the valley were low hills, as fat and docile as sheep, lowering their heads to sniff at the unicorn in wonder as she moved among them. After these came the slower heights of summer, and the baked plains where the air hung shiny as candy. Together she and Schmendrick forded rivers, scrambled up and down brambly banks and bluffs, and wandered in woods that reminded the unicorn of her home, though they could never resemble it, having known time. So has my forest, now, she thought, but she told herself that it did not matter, that all would be as before when she returned.

  At night, while Schmendrick slept the sleep of a hungry, footsore magician, the unicorn crouched awake waiting to see the vast form of the Red Bull come charging out of the moon. At times she caught what she was sure was his smell‌—‌a dark, sly reek easing through the night, reaching out to find her. Then she would spring to her feet with a cold cry of readiness, only to find two or three deer gazing at her from a respectful distance. Deer love and envy unicorns. Once, a buck in his second summer, prodded forward by his giggling friends, came quite close to her and mumbled without meeting her eyes, “You are very beautiful. You are just as beautiful as our mothers said.”

  The unicorn looked silently back at him, knowing that he expected no answer from her. The other deer snickered and whispered, “Go on, go on.” Then the buck raised his head and cried out swiftly and joyously, “But I know someone more beautiful than you!” He wheeled and dashed away in the moonlight, and his friends followed him. The unicorn lay down again.

  Now and then in their journey they came to a village, and there Schmendrick would introduce himself as a wandering wizard, offering, as he cried in the streets, “to sing for my supper, to bother you just a little bit, to trouble your sleep ever so slightly, and pass on.” Few were the towns where he was not invited to stable his beautiful white mare and stay the night, and before the children went to bed he would perform in the market square by lantern light. He never actually attempted any greater magic than making dolls talk and turning soap into sweets, and even this trifling sorcery sometimes slipped from his hands. But the children liked him, and their parents were kindly with supper, and the summer evenings were lithe and soft. Ages after, the unicorn still remembered the strange, chocolate stable smell, and Schmendrick’s shadow dancing on walls and doors and chimneys in the leaping light.

  In the mornings they went on their way, Schmendrick’s pockets full of bread and cheese and oranges, and the unicorn pacing beside him: sea white in the sun, sea green in the dark of the trees. His tricks were forgotten before he was out of sight, but his white mare troubled the nights of many a villager, and there were women who woke weeping from dreams of her.

  One evening, they stopped in a plump, comfortable town where even the beggars had double chins and the mice waddled. Schmendrick was immediately asked to dinner with the Mayor and several of the rounder Councilmen; and the unicorn, unrecognized as always, was turned loose in a pasture where the grass grew sweet as milk. Dinner was served out of doors, at a table in the square, for the night was warm and the Mayor was pleased to show off his guest. It was an excellent dinner.

  During the meal Schmendrick told stories of his life as an errant enchanter, filling it with kings and dragons and noble ladies. He was not lying, merely organizing events more sensibly, and so his tales had a taste of truth even to the canny Councilmen. Not only they, but all manner of folk passing in the street leaned forward to understand the nature of the spell that opened all locks, if properly applied. And there was not a one but lost a breath at sight of the marks on the magician’s fingers. “Souvenir of my encounter with a harpy,” Schmendrick explained calmly. “They bite.”

  “And were you never afraid?” a young g
irl wondered softly. The Mayor made a shooing noise at her, but Schmendrick lit a cigar and smiled at her through the smoke. “Fear and hunger have kept me young,” he replied. He looked around the circle of dozing, rumbling Councilmen and winked widely at the girl.

  The Mayor was not offended. “It’s true,” he sighed, caressing his dinner with linked fingers. “We do lead a good life here, or if we don’t, I don’t know anything about it. I sometimes think that a little fear, a little hunger, might be good for us‌—‌sharpen our souls, so to speak. That’s why we always welcome strangers with tales to tell and songs to sing. They broaden our outlook…set us to looking inward…” He yawned and stretched himself, gurgling.

  One of the Councilmen suddenly remarked, “My word, look at the pasture!” Heavy heads turned on nodding necks, and all saw the village’s cows and sheep and horses clustered at the far end of the field, staring at the magician’s white mare, who was placidly cropping the cool grass. No animal made a noise. Even the pigs and geese were as silent as ghosts. A crow called once, far away, and his cry drifted through the sunset like a single cinder.

  “Remarkable,” the Mayor murmured. “Most remarkable.”

  “Yes, isn’t she?” the magician agreed. “If I were to tell you some of the offers I’ve had for her—”

  “The interesting thing,” said the Councilman who had spoken first, “is that they don’t seem to be afraid of her. They have an air of awe, as though they were doing her some sort of reverence.”

  “They see what you have forgotten how to see.” Schmendrick had drunk his share of red wine, and the young girl was staring at him with eyes both sweeter and shallower than the unicorn’s eyes. He thumped his glass on the table and told the smiling Mayor, “She is a rarer creature than you dare to dream. She is a myth, a memory, a will-o’-the-wish. Wail-o’-the-wisp. If you remembered, if you hungered—”