The Last Unicorn

by Peter S. Beagle

  Schmendrick did not reply quickly. He made a few small sounds of an earnest nature, but not a sensible word was among them. Molly Grue gathered her courage to answer, even though she suspected that it was impossible to speak the truth to King Haggard. Something in his winter presence blighted all words, tangled meanings, and bent honest intentions into shapes as tormented as the towers of his castle. Still she would have spoken, but another voice was heard in the gloomy chamber: the light, kind, silly voice of the young Prince Lír.

  “Father, what difference does it make? She is here now.”

  King Haggard sighed. It was not a gentle sound, but low and scraping; not a sound of surrender, but the rumbling meditation of a tiger taut to spring. “Of course you are right,” he said. “She is here, they are all here, and whether they mean my doom or not, I will look at them for a while. A pleasant air of disaster attends them. Perhaps that is what I want.”

  To Schmendrick he said curtly, “As my magician, you will entertain me when I wish to be entertained, in manners variously profound and frivolous. You will be expected to know when you are required, and in what guise, for I cannot be forever identifying my moods and desires for your benefit. You will receive no wages, since that is certainly not what you came here for. As for your drab, your assistant, whatever you choose to call her, she will serve me also if she wishes to remain in my castle. From this evening, she is cook and maidservant together, scrubwoman and scullery maid as well.”

  He paused, seemingly waiting for Molly to protest, but she only nodded. The moon had moved away from the window, but Prince Lír could see that the dark room was no darker for that. The cool brightness of the Lady Amalthea grew more slowly than had Mabruk’s wind, but the prince understood quite well that it was far more dangerous. He wanted to write poems by that light, and he had never wanted to write poems before.

  “You may come and go as you please,” said King Haggard to the Lady Amalthea. “It may have been foolish of me to admit you, but I am not so foolish as to forbid you this door or that. My secrets guard themselves‌—‌will yours do the same? What are you looking at?”

  “I am looking at the sea,” the Lady Amalthea replied again.

  “Yes, the sea is always good,” said the king. “We will look at it together one day.” He walked slowly to the door. “It will be curious,” he said, “to have a creature in the castle whose presence causes Lír to call me ‘father’ for the first time since he was five years old.”

  “Six,” said Prince Lír. “I was six.”

  “Five or six,” the king said, “it had stopped making me happy long before, and it does not make me happy now. Nothing has yet changed because she is here.” He was gone almost as silently as Mabruk, and they heard his tin boots ticking on the stairs.

  Molly Grue went softly to the Lady Amalthea and stood by her at the window. “What is it?” she asked. “What do you see?” Schmendrick leaned on the throne, regarding Prince Lír with his long green eyes. Away in the valley of Hagsgate, the cold roar sounded again.

  “I will find quarters for you,” said Prince Lír. “Are you hungry? I will get you something to eat. I know where there is some cloth, fine satin. You could make a dress.”

  No one answered him. The heavy night swallowed his words, and it seemed to him that the Lady Amalthea neither heard nor saw him. She did not move, and yet he was certain that she was going away from him as he stood there, like the moon. “Let me help you,” Prince Lír said. “What can I do for you? Let me help you.”

  Chapter 10

  “What can I do for you?” Prince Lír asked.

  “Nothing very much just now,” Molly Grue said. “The water was all I needed. Unless you want to peel the potatoes, which would be all right with me.”

  “No, I didn’t mean that. I mean yes, I will if you want me to, but I was talking to her. I mean, when I talk to her, that’s what I keep asking.”

  “Sit down and peel me a few potatoes,” Molly said. “It’ll give you something to do with your hands.”

  They were in the scullery, a dank little room smelling strongly of rotting turnips and fermenting beets. A dozen earthenware dishes were piled in one corner, and a very small fire was shivering under a tripod, trying to boil a large pot of gray water. Molly sat at a rude table which was covered with potatoes, leeks, onions, peppers, carrots, and other vegetables, most of them limp and spotty. Prince Lír stood before her, rocking slowly along his feet and twisting his big, soft fingers together.

  “I killed another dragon this morning,” he said presently.

  “That’s nice,” Molly answered. “That’s fine. How many does that make now?”

  “Five. This one was smaller than the others, but it really gave me more trouble. I couldn’t get near it on foot, so I had to go in with the lance, and my horse got pretty badly burned. It was funny about the horse—”

  Molly interrupted him. “Sit down, Your Highness, and stop doing that. I start to twitch all over just watching you.” Prince Lír sat down opposite her. He drew a dagger from his belt and moodily began peeling potatoes. Molly regarded him with a slight, slow smile.

  “I brought her the head,” he said. “She was in her chamber, as she usually is. I dragged that head all the way up the stairs to lay it at her feet.” He sighed, and nicked his finger with the dagger. “Damn. I didn’t mind that. All the way up the stairs it was a dragon’s head, the proudest gift anyone can give anyone. But when she looked at it, suddenly it became a sad, battered mess of scales and horns, gristly tongue, bloody eyes. I felt like some country butcher who had brought his lass a nice chunk of fresh meat as a token of his love. And then she looked at me, and I was sorry I had killed the thing. Sorry for killing a dragon!” He slashed at a rubbery potato and wounded himself again.

  “Cut away from yourself, not toward,” Molly advised him. “You know, I really think you could stop slaying dragons for the Lady Amalthea. If five of them haven’t moved her, one more isn’t likely to do it. Try something else.”

  “But what’s left on earth that I haven’t tried?” Prince Lír demanded. “I have swum four rivers, each in full flood and none less than a mile wide. I have climbed seven mountains never before climbed, slept three nights in the Marsh of the Hanged Men, and walked alive out of that forest where the flowers burn your eyes and the nightingales sing poison. I have ended my betrothal to the princess I had agreed to marry‌—‌and if you don’t think that was a heroic deed, you don’t know her mother. I have vanquished exactly fifteen black knights waiting by fifteen fords in their black pavilions, challenging all who come to cross. And I’ve long since lost count of the witches in the thorny woods, the giants, the demons disguised as damsels; the glass hills, fatal riddles, and terrible tasks; the magic apples, rings, lamps, potions, swords, cloaks, boots, neckties, and nightcaps. Not to mention the winged horses, the basilisks and sea serpents, and all the rest of the livestock.” He raised his head, and the dark blue eyes were confused and sad.

  “And all for nothing,” he said. “I cannot touch her, whatever I do. For her sake, I have become a hero‌—‌I, sleepy Lír, my father’s sport and shame‌—‌but I might just as well have remained the dull fool I was. My great deeds mean nothing to her.”

  Molly took up her own knife and began to slice the peppers. “Then perhaps the Lady Amalthea is not to be won by great deeds.”

  The prince stared at her, frowning in puzzlement.

  “Is there another way to win a maiden?” he asked earnestly. “Molly, do you know another way? Will you tell it to me?” He leaned across the table to seize her hand. “I like being brave well enough, but I will be a lazy coward again if you think that would be better. The sight of her makes me want to do battle with all evil and ugliness, but it also makes me want to sit still and be unhappy. What should I do, Molly?”

  “I don’t know,” she said, suddenly embarrassed. “Kindness, courtesy, good works, that sort of thing. A good sense of humor.” A small copper-and-ashes cat with a cro
oked ear jumped into her lap, purring thunderously and leaning against her hand. Hoping to change the subject, she asked, “What about your horse? What was funny?”

  But Prince Lír was staring at the little cat with the crooked ear. “Where did he come from? Is he yours?”

  “No,” Molly said. “I just feed him, and hold him sometimes.” She stroked the cat’s thin throat, and it closed its eyes. “I thought he lived here.”

  The prince shook his head. “My father hates cats. He says that there is no such thing as a cat‌—‌it is just a shape that all manner of imps, hobs, and devilkins like to put on, to gain easy entrance into the homes of men. He would kill it if he knew you had it here.”

  “What about the horse?” Molly asked.

  Prince Lír’s face grew glum again. “That was strange. When she took no delight in the gift itself, I thought she might be interested to hear how it was won. So I told her about the view and the charge‌—‌you know‌—‌about the hissing and the naked wings and the way dragons smell, especially on a rainy morning; and the way the black blood jumped at the point of my lance. But she heard none of it, not a word, until I spoke of the rush of fire that nearly burned my poor horse’s legs from under him. Then‌—‌ah, then she came back from wherever she goes when I talk to her, and she said that she must go and see my horse. So I led her to the stable where the poor brute stood crying with the pain, and she put her hand on him, on his legs. And he stopped moaning. That’s a terrible sound they make when they’re really hurt. When they stop, it’s like a song.”

  The prince’s dagger lay glittering among the potatoes. Outside, great gusts of rain growled round and round the castle walls, but those in the scullery could only hear it, for there was not a single window in the cold room. Nor was there any light, except for the meager glow of the cooking fire. It made the cat dozing in Molly’s lap look like a heap of autumn leaves.

  “And what happened then?” she asked. “When the Lady Amalthea touched your horse.”

  “Nothing happened. Nothing at all.” Prince Lír suddenly seemed to become angry. He slammed his hand down on the table, and leeks and lentils leaped in all directions. “Did you expect something to happen? She did. Did you expect the beast’s burns to heal on the instant‌—‌the crackling skin to knit, the black flesh to be whole again? She did‌—‌by my hope of her I swear it! And when his legs didn’t grow well under her hand, then she ran away. I don’t know where she is now.”

  His voice softened as he spoke, and the hand on the table curled sadly on its side. He rose and went to look into the pot over the fire. “It’s boiling,” he said, “if you want to put the vegetables in. She wept when my horse’s legs did not heal‌—‌I heard her weeping‌—‌and yet there were no tears in her eyes when she ran away. Everything else was there, but no tears.”

  Molly put the cat gently on the floor and began gathering the venerable vegetables for the pot. Prince Lír watched her as she moved back and forth, around the table and across the dewy floor. She was singing.

  If I danced with my feet

  As I dance in my dreaming,

  As graceful and gleaming

  As Death in disguise—

  Oh, that would be sweet,

  But then would I hunger

  To be ten years younger,

  Or wedded, or wise?

  The prince said, “Who is she, Molly? What kind of woman is it who believes‌—‌who knows, for I saw her face‌—‌that she can cure wounds with a touch, and who weeps without tears?” Molly went on about her work, still humming to herself.

  “Any woman can weep without tears,” she answered over her shoulder, “and most can heal with their hands. It depends on the wound. She is a woman, Your Highness, and that’s riddle enough.”

  But the prince stood up to bar her way, and she stopped, her apron full of herbs and her hair trailing into her eyes. Prince Lír’s face bent toward her: older by five dragons, but handsome and silly still. He said, “You sing. My father sets you to the weariest work there is to do, and still you sing. There has never been singing in this castle, or cats, or the smell of good cooking. It is the Lady Amalthea who causes this, as she causes me to ride out in the morning, seeking danger.”

  “I was always a fair cook,” Molly said mildly. “Living in the greenwood with Cully and his men for seventeen years—”

  Prince Lír continued as though she had not spoken. “I want to serve her, as you do, to help her find whatever she has come here to find. I wish to be whatever she has most need of. Tell her so. Will you tell her so?”

  Even as he spoke, a soundless step sounded in his eyes, and the sigh of a satin gown troubled his face. The Lady Amalthea stood in the doorway.

  A season in King Haggard’s chill domain had not dimmed or darkened her. Rather, the winter had sharpened her beauty until it invaded the beholder like a barbed arrow that could not be withdrawn. Her white hair was caught up with a blue ribbon, and her gown was lilac. It did not fit her well. Molly Grue was an indifferent seamstress, and satin made her nervous. But the Lady Amalthea seemed more lovely for the poor work, for the cold stones and the smell of turnips. There was rain in her hair.

  Prince Lír bowed to her; a quick, crooked bow, as though someone had hit him in the stomach. “My lady,” he mumbled. “You really should cover your head when you go out, this weather.”

  The Lady Amalthea sat down at the table, and the little autumn-colored cat immediately sprang up before her, purring swiftly and very softly. She put out her hand, but the cat slid away, still purring. He did not appear frightened, but he would not let her touch his rusty fur. The Lady Amalthea beckoned, and the cat wriggled all over, like a dog, but he would not come near.

  Prince Lír said hoarsely, “I must go. There is an ogre of some sort devouring village maidens two days’ ride from here. It is said that he can be slain only by one who wields the Great Axe of Duke Alban. Unfortunately, Duke Alban himself was one of the first consumed‌—‌he was dressed as a village maiden at the time, to deceive the monster‌—‌and there is little doubt who holds the Great Axe now. If I do not return, think of me. Farewell.”

  “Farewell, Your Highness,” Molly said. The prince bowed again, and left the scullery on his noble errand. He looked back only once.

  “You are cruel to him,” Molly said. The Lady Amalthea did not look up. She was offering her open palm to the crook-eared cat, but he stayed where he was, shivering with the desire to go to her.

  “Cruel?” she asked. “How can I be cruel? That is for mortals.” But then she did raise her eyes, and they were great with sorrow, and with something very near to mockery. She said, “So is kindness.”

  Molly Grue busied herself with the cooking pot, stirring the soup and seasoning it, bustling numbly. In a low voice, she remarked, “You might give him a gentle word, at the very least. He has undergone mighty trials for you.”

  “But what word shall I speak?” asked the Lady Amalthea. “I have said nothing to him, yet every day he comes to me with more heads, more horns and hides and tails, more enchanted jewels and bewitched weapons. What will he do if I speak?”

  Molly said, “He wishes you to think of him. Knights and princes know only one way to be remembered. It’s not his fault. I think he does very well.” The Lady Amalthea turned her eyes to the cat again. Her long fingers twisted at a seam of the satin gown.

  “No, he does not want my thoughts,” she said softly. “He wants me, as much as the Red Bull did, and with no more understanding. But he frightens me even more than the Red Bull, because he has a kind heart. No, I will never speak a promising word to him.”

  The pale mark on her brow was invisible in the gloom of the scullery. She touched it and then drew her hand away quickly, as though the mark hurt her. “The horse died,” she said to the little cat. “I could do nothing.”

  Molly turned quickly and put her hands on the Lady Amalthea’s shoulders. Beneath the sleek cloth, the flesh was cold and hard as any stone of King
Haggard’s castle. “Oh, my lady,” she whispered, “that is because you are out of your true form. When you regain yourself, it will all return‌—‌all your power, all your strength, all your sureness. It will come back to you.” Had she dared, she would have taken the white girl in her arms and lulled her like a child. She had never dreamed of such a thing before.

  But the Lady Amalthea answered, “The magician gave me only the semblance of a human being‌—‌the seeming, but not the spirit. If I had died then, I would still have been a unicorn. The old man knew, the wizard. He said nothing, to spite Haggard, but he knew.”

  Of itself, her hair escaped the blue ribbon and came hurrying down her neck and over her shoulders. The cat was all but won by this eagerness; he lifted a paw to play with it, but then he drew back once more and sat on his haunches, tail curled around his front feet, queer head to the side. His eyes were green, speckled with gold.

  “But that was long ago,” the girl said. “Now I am two‌—‌myself, and this other that you call ‘my lady.’ For she is here as truly as I am now, though once she was only a veil over me. She walks in the castle, she sleeps, she dresses herself, she takes her meals, and she thinks her own thoughts. If she has no power to heal, or to quiet, still she has another magic. Men speak to her, saying ‘Lady Amalthea,’ and she answers them, or she does not answer. The king is always watching her out of his pale eyes, wondering what she is, and the king’s son wounds himself with loving her and wonders who she is. And every day she searches the sea and the sky, the castle and the courtyard, the keep and the king’s face, for something she cannot always remember. What is it, what is it that she is seeking in this strange place? She knew a moment ago, but she has forgotten.”