I thought he was probably joking, but I already knew that you couldn’t be sure with Schmendrick. He said, “If Lír comes with a train of followers, there will be no Lír. Do you understand me, Sooz?” I shook my head. Schmendrick said, “It is my fault. If I had made sure to visit here more often, there were things I could have done to restore the Lír Molly and I once knew. My fault, my thoughtlessness.”
I remembered Molly telling me, “Schmendrick has trouble with time.” I still didn’t know what she meant, nor this either. I said, “It’s just the way old people get. We have old men in our village who talk like him. One woman, too, Mam Jennet. She always cries when it rains.”
Schmendrick clenched his fist and pounded it against his leg. “King Lír is not mad, girl, nor is he senile, as Lisene called him. He is Lír, Lír still, I promise you that. It is only here, in this castle, surrounded by good, loyal people who love him—who will love him to death, if they are allowed—that he sinks into…into the condition you have seen.” He didn’t say anything more for a moment; then he stooped a little to peer closely at me. “Did you notice the change in him when I spoke of unicorns?”
“Unicorn,” I answered. “One unicorn who loved him. I noticed.”
Schmendrick kept looking at me in a new way, as though we’d never met before. He said, “Your pardon, Sooz. I keep taking you for a child. Yes. One unicorn. He has not seen her since he became king, but he is what he is because of her. And when I speak that word, when Molly or I say her name—which I have not done yet—then he is recalled to himself.” He paused for a moment, and then added, very softly, “As we had so often to do for her, so long ago.”
“I didn’t know unicorns had names,” I said. “I didn’t know they ever loved people.”
“They don’t. Only this one.” He turned and walked away swiftly, saying over his shoulder, “Her name was Amalthea. Go find Molly, she’ll see you fed.”
The room I’d slept in wasn’t big, not for something in a castle. Catania, the headwoman of our village, has a bedroom nearly as large, which I know because I play with her daughter Sophia. But the sheets I’d been under were embroidered with a crown, and engraved on the headboard was a picture of the blue banner with the white unicorn. I had slept the night in King Lír’s own bed while he dozed in an old wooden chair.
I didn’t wait to have breakfast with Molly, but ran straight to the little room where I had last seen the king. He was there, but so changed that I froze in the doorway, trying to get my breath. Three men were bustling around him like tailors, dressing him in his armor: all the padding underneath, first, and then the different pieces for the arms and legs and shoulders. I don’t know any of the names. The men hadn’t put his helmet on him, so his head stuck out at the top, white-haired and big-nosed and blue-eyed, but he didn’t look silly like that. He looked like a giant.
When he saw me, he smiled, and it was a warm, happy smile, but it was a little frightening too, almost a little terrible, like the time I saw the griffin burning in the black sky. It was a hero’s smile. I’d never seen one before. He called to me, “Little one, come and buckle on my sword, if you would. It would be an honor for me.”
The men had to show me how you do it. The swordbelt, all by itself, was so heavy it kept slipping through my fingers, and I did need help with the buckle. But I put the sword into its sheath alone, although I needed both hands to lift it. When it slid home it made a sound like a great door slamming shut. King Lír touched my face with one of his cold iron gloves and said, “Thank you, little one. The next time that blade is drawn, it will be to free your village. You have my word.”
Schmendrick came in then, took one look, and just shook his head. He said, “This is the most ridiculous… It is four days’ ride—perhaps five—with the weather turning hot enough to broil a lobster on an iceberg. There’s no need for armor until he faces the griffin.” You could see how stupid he felt they all were, but King Lír smiled at him the same way he’d smiled at me, and Schmendrick stopped talking.
King Lír said, “Old friend, I go forth as I mean to return. It is my way.”
Schmendrick looked like a little boy himself for a moment. All he could say was, “Your business. Don’t blame me, that’s all. At least leave the helmet off.”
He was about to turn away and stalk out of the room, but Molly came up behind him and said, “Oh, Majesty—Lír—how grand! How beautiful you are!” She sounded the way my Aunt Zerelda sounds when she’s carrying on about my brother Wilfrid. He could mess his pants and jump in a hog pen, and Aunt Zerelda would still think he was the best, smartest boy in the whole world. But Molly was different. She brushed those tailors, or whatever they were, straight aside, and she stood on tiptoe to smooth King Lír’s white hair, and I heard her whisper, “I wish she could see you.”
King Lír looked at her for a long time without saying anything. Schmendrick stood there, off to the side, and he didn’t say anything either, but they were together, the three of them. I wish that Felicitas and I could have been together like that when we got old. Could have had time. Then King Lír looked at me, and he said, “The child is waiting.” And that’s how we set off for home. The king, Schmendrick, Molly, and me.
To the last minute, poor old Lisene kept trying to get King Lír to take some knights or soldiers with him. She actually followed us on foot when we left, calling, “Highness—Majesty—if you will have none else, take me! Take me!” At that the king stopped and turned and went back to her. He got down off his horse and embraced Lisene, and I don’t know what they said to each other, but Lisene didn’t follow anymore after that.
I rode with the king most of the time, sitting up in front of him on his skittery black mare. I wasn’t sure I could trust her not to bite me, or to kick me when I wasn’t looking, but King Lír told me, “It is only peaceful times that make her nervous, be assured of that. When dragons charge her, belching death—for the fumes are more dangerous than the flames, little one—when your griffin swoops down at her, you will see her at her best.” I still didn’t like her much, but I did like the king. He didn’t sing to me, the way Schmendrick had, but he told me stories, and they weren’t fables or fairytales. These were real, true stories, and he knew they were true because they had all happened to him! I never heard stories like those, and I never will again. I know that for certain.
He told me more things to keep in mind if you have to fight a dragon, and he told me how he learned that ogres aren’t always as stupid as they look, and why you should never swim in a mountain pool when the snows are melting, and how you can sometimes make friends with a troll. He talked about his father’s castle, where he grew up, and about how he met Schmendrick and Molly there, and even about Molly’s cat, which he said was a little thing with a funny crooked ear. But when I asked him why the castle fell down, he wouldn’t exactly say, no more than Schmendrick would. His voice became very quiet and faraway. “I forget things, you know, little one,” he said. “I try to hold on, but I do forget.”
Well, I knew that. He kept calling Molly Sooz, and he never called me anything but little one, and Schmendrick kept having to remind him where we were bound and why. That was always at night, though. He was usually fine during the daytime. And when he did turn confused again, and wander off (not just in his mind, either—I found him in the woods one night, talking to a tree as though it was his father), all you had to do was mention a white unicorn named Amalthea, and he’d come to himself almost right away. Generally it was Schmendrick who did that, but I brought him back that time, holding my hand and telling me how you can recognize a pooka, and why you need to. But I could never get him to say a word about the unicorn.
Autumn comes early where I live. The days were still hot, and the king never would take his armor off, except to sleep, not even his helmet with the big blue plume on top, but at night I burrowed in between Molly and Schmendrick for warmth, and you could hear the stags belling everywhere
all the time, crazy with the season. One of them actually charged King Lír’s horse while I was riding with him, and Schmendrick was about to do something magic to the stag, the same way he’d done with the crow. But the king laughed and rode straight at him, right into those horns. I screamed, but the black mare never hesitated, and the stag turned at the last moment and ambled out of sight in the brush. He was wagging his tail in circles, the way goats do, and looking as puzzled and dreamy as King Lír himself.
I was proud, once I got over being frightened. But both Schmendrick and Molly scolded him, and he kept apologizing to me for the rest of the day for having put me in danger, as Molly had once said he would. “I forgot you were with me, little one, and for that I will always ask your pardon.” Then he smiled at me with that beautiful, terrible hero’s smile I’d seen before, and he said, “But oh, little one, the remembering!” And that night he didn’t wander away and get himself lost. Instead he sat happily by the fire with us and sang a whole long song about the adventures of an outlaw called Captain Cully. I’d never heard of him, but it’s a really good song.
We reached my village late on the afternoon of the fourth day, and Schmendrick made us stop together before we rode in. He said, directly to me, “Sooz, if you tell them that this is the king himself, there will be nothing but noise and joy and celebration, and nobody will get any rest with all that carrying-on. It would be best for you to tell them that we have brought King Lír’s greatest knight with us, and that he needs a night to purify himself in prayer and meditation before he deals with your griffin.” He took hold of my chin and made me look into his green, green eyes, and he said, “Girl, you have to trust me. I always know what I’m doing—that’s my trouble. Tell your people what I’ve said.” And Molly touched me and looked at me without saying anything, so I knew it was all right.
I left them camped on the outskirts of the village, and walked home by myself. Malka met me first. She smelled me before I even reached Simon and Elsie’s tavern, and she came running and crashed into my legs and knocked me over, and then pinned me down with her paws on my shoulders, and kept licking my face until I had to nip her nose to make her let me up and run to the house with me. My father was out with the flock, but my mother and Wilfrid were there, and they grabbed me and nearly strangled me, and they cried over me—rotten, stupid Wilfrid too!—because everyone had been so certain that I’d been taken and eaten by the griffin. After that, once she got done crying, my mother spanked me for running off in Uncle Ambrose’s cart without telling anyone, and when my father came in, he spanked me all over again. But I didn’t mind.
I told them I’d seen King Lír in person, and been in his castle, and I said what Schmendrick had told me to say, but nobody was much cheered by it. My father just sat down and grunted, “Oh, aye—another great warrior for our comfort and the griffin’s dessert. Your bloody king won’t ever come here his bloody self, you can be sure of that.” My mother reproached him for talking like that in front of Wilfrid and me, but he went on, “Maybe he cared about places like this, people like us once, but he’s old now, and old kings only care who’s going to be king after them. You can’t tell me anything different.”
I wanted more than anything to tell him that King Lír was here, less than half a mile from our doorstep, but I didn’t, and not only because Schmendrick had told me not to. I wasn’t sure what the king might look like, white-haired and shaky and not here all the time, to people like my father. I wasn’t sure what he looked like to me, for that matter. He was a lovely, dignified old man who told wonderful stories, but when I tried to imagine him riding alone into the Midwood to do battle with a griffin, a griffin that had already eaten his best knights…to be honest, I couldn’t do it. Now that I’d actually brought him all the way home with me, as I’d set out to do, I was suddenly afraid that I’d drawn him to his death. And I knew I wouldn’t ever forgive myself if that happened.
I wanted so much to see them that night, Schmendrick and Molly and the king. I wanted to sleep out there on the ground with them, and listen to their talk, and then maybe I’d not worry so much about the morning. But of course there wasn’t a chance of that. My family would hardly let me out of their sight to wash my face. Wilfrid kept following me around, asking endless questions about the castle, and my father took me to Catania, who had me tell the whole story over again, and agreed with him that whomever the king had sent this time wasn’t likely to be any more use than the others had been. And my mother kept feeding me and scolding me and hugging me, all more or less at the same time. And then, in the night, we heard the griffin, making that soft, lonely, horrible sound it makes when it’s hunting. So I didn’t get very much sleep, between one thing and another.
But at sunrise, after I’d helped Wilfrid milk the goats, they let me run out to the camp, as long as Malka came with me, which was practically like having my mother along. Molly was already helping King Lír into his armor, and Schmendrick was burying the remains of last night’s dinner, as though they were starting one more ordinary day on their journey to somewhere. They greeted me, and Schmendrick thanked me for doing as he’d asked, so that the king could have a restful night before he—
I didn’t let him finish. I didn’t know I was going to do it, I swear, but I ran up to King Lír, and I threw my arms around him, and I said, “Don’t go! I changed my mind, don’t go!” Just like Lisene.
King Lír looked down at me. He seemed as tall as a tree right then, and he patted my head very gently with his iron glove. He said, “Little one, I have a griffin to slay. It is my job.”
Which was what I’d said myself, though it seemed like years ago, and that made it so much worse. I said a second time, “I changed my mind! Somebody else can fight the griffin, you don’t have to! You go home! You go home now and live your life, and be the king, and everything…” I was babbling and sniffling, and generally being a baby, I know that. I’m glad Wilfrid didn’t see me.
King Lír kept petting me with one hand and trying to put me aside with the other, but I wouldn’t let go. I think I was actually trying to pull his sword out of its sheath, to take it away from him. He said, “No, no, little one, you don’t understand. There are some monsters that only a king can kill. I have always known that—I should never, never have sent those poor men to die in my place. No one else in all the land can do this for you and your village. Most truly now, it is my job.” And he kissed my hand, the way he must have kissed the hands of so many queens. He kissed my hand too, just like theirs.
Molly came up then and took me away from him. She held me close, and she stroked my hair, and she told me, “Child, Sooz, there’s no turning back for him now, or for you either. It was your fate to bring this last cause to him, and his fate to take it up, and neither of you could have done differently, being who you are. And now you must be as brave as he is, and see it all play out.” She caught herself there, and changed it. “Rather, you must wait to learn how it has played out, because you are certainly not coming into that forest with us.”
“I’m coming,” I said. “You can’t stop me. Nobody can.” I wasn’t sniffling or anything anymore. I said it like that, that’s all.
Molly held me at arm’s length, and she shook me a little bit. She said, “Sooz, if you can tell me that your parents have given their permission, then you may come. Have they done so?”
I didn’t answer her. She shook me again, gentler this time, saying, “Oh, that was wicked of me, forgive me, my dear friend. I knew the day we met that you could never learn to lie.” Then she took both of my hands between hers, and she said, “Lead us to the Midwood, if you will, Sooz, and we will say our farewells there. Will you do that for us? For me?”
I nodded, but I still didn’t speak. I couldn’t, my throat was hurting so much. Molly squeezed my hands and said, “Thank you.” Schmendrick came up and made some kind of sign to her with his eyes, or his eyebrows, because she said, “Yes, I know,” although he hadn’t said a thing. So s
he went to King Lír with him, and I was alone, trying to stop shaking. I managed it, after a while.
The Midwood isn’t far. They wouldn’t really have needed my help to find it. You can see the beginning of it from the roof of Ellis the baker’s house, which is the tallest one on that side of the village. It’s always dark, even from a distance, even if you’re not actually in it. I don’t know if that’s because they’re oak trees (we have all sorts of tales and sayings about oaken woods, and the creatures that live there) or maybe because of some enchantment, or because of the griffin. Maybe it was different before the griffin came. Uncle Ambrose says it’s been a bad place all his life, but my father says no, he and his friends used to hunt there, and he actually picnicked there once or twice with my mother, when they were young.
King Lír rode in front, looking grand and almost young, with his head up and the blue plume on his helmet floating above him, more like a banner than a feather. I was going to ride with Molly, but the king leaned from his saddle as I started past, and swooped me up before him, saying, “You shall guide and company me, little one, until we reach the forest.” I was proud of that, but I was frightened too, because he was so happy, and I knew he was going to his death, trying to make up for all those knights he’d sent to fight the griffin. I didn’t try to warn him. He wouldn’t have heard me, and I knew that too. Me and poor old Lisene.
He told me all about griffins as we rode. He said, “If you should ever have dealings with a griffin, little one, you must remember that they are not like dragons. A dragon is simply a dragon—make yourself small when it dives down at you, but hold your ground and strike at the underbelly, and you’ve won the day. But a griffin, now…a griffin is two highly dissimilar creatures, eagle and lion, fused together by some god with a god’s sense of humor. And so there is an eagle’s heart beating in the beast, and a lion’s heart as well, and you must pierce them both to have any hope of surviving the battle.” He was as cheerful as he could be about it all, holding me safe on the saddle, and saying over and over, the way old people do, “Two hearts, never forget that—many people do. Eagle heart, lion heart—eagle heart, lion heart. Never forget, little one.”
The Last Unicorn Page 24