Peter S. Beagle - The Last Unicorn

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THE LAST UNICORN

by Peter S. Beagle

Flyleaf:

_A Fine and Private Place_, Peater Beagle's first book, was written before he was twenty. "A

most unusual novel," Virgilia Peterson said in her review, "By a young man who seems to be a

genuine nonconformist . . . armed already with the wryness of experience but brave enough still to

venture where many of his elders might well fear to tread." In his second novel this inventive,

original writer -- still under thirty -- ventures still further, into the literally fantastic, literally

fabulous world of fairy tale, myth, dream, nightmare.

True to tradition, _The Last Unicorn_ is the story of a quest, the search by the unicorn --

immortal, infinitely beautiful -- for her lost fellows. Early on, she is joined by Schmendrick the

Magician -- a name pointing to the low comedy that surprisingly (though also traditionally) coexists

here with terror, pathos, tenderness, paradox, and wit, and frequent passages where the prose bursts

into song and into poetry itself. A kind of upside-down Merlin, Schmendrick is looking for

something for himself too, his life perhaps. Molly Grue, the third of the travelers, seems simply to

embody every womanly trait. After a richly entertaining variety of adventures -- with splendid,

quirky characters -- the search reaches its climax at the castle of evil King Haggard, where the

terrifying Red Bull is encountered and where the handsom Prince Lír plays his predestined role.

Like Tolkien's _The Lord of the Rings_, this odd, evocative, and brilliant book utilizes an

imaginary world to connect profoundly with the real questions and aspirations of thoughtful and

sensitive readers. _The Last Unicorn_ may well join that widely read masterpiece as a book that

speaks with a mysterious but tangible resonance to a receptive audience.

First published in 1968 by The Viking Press, Inc. 625 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022

Published simultaneously in Canada by The Macmillan Company of Canada Limited

Library of Congress catalog card number: 68-16075

PRINTED IN U.S.A.

To the memory of Dr. Olfert Dapper, who saw a

wild unicorn in the Maine woods in 1673,

and for Robert Nathan, who has seen

one or two in Los Angeles

THE LAST UNICORN

The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did

not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam, but rather the color of snow

falling on a moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a

shadow on the sea.

She did not look anything like a horned horse, as unicorns are often pictured, being smaller

and cloven-hoofed, and possessing that oldest, wildest grace that horses have never had, that deer

have only in a shy, thin imitation and goats in dancing mockery. Her neck was long and slender,

making her head seem smaller than it was, and the mane that fell almost to the middle of her back

was as soft as dandelion fluff and as fine as cirrus. She had pointed ears and thin legs, with feathers

of white hair at the ankles; and the long horn above her eyes shone and shivered with its own

seashell light even in the deepest midnight. She had killed dragons with it, and healed a king whose

poisoned wound would not close, and knocked down ripe chestnuts for bear cubs.

Unicorns are immortal. It is their nature to live alone in one place: usually a forest where

there is a pool clear enough for them to see themselves -- for they are a little vain, knowing

themselves to be the most beautiful creatures in all the world, and magic besides. They mate very

rarely, and no place is more enchanted than one where a unicorn has been born. The last time she

had seen another unicorn the young virgins who still came seeking her now and then had called to

her in a different tongue; but then, she had no idea of months and years and centuries, or even of

seasons. It was always spring in her forest, because she lived there, and she wandered all day among

the great beech trees, keeping watch over the animals that lived in the ground and under bushes, in

nests and caves, earths and treetops. Generation after generation, wolves and rabbits alike, they

hunted and loved and had children and died, and as the unicorn did none of these things, she never

grew tired of watching them.

One day it happened that two men with long bows rode through her forest, hunting for deer.

The unicorn followed them, moving so warily that not even the horses knew she was near. The sight

of men filled her with an old, slow, strange mixture of tenderness and terror. She never let one see

her if she could help it, but she liked to watch them ride by and hear them talking.

"I mislike the feel of this forest," the elder of the two hunters grumbled. "Creatures that live

in a unicorn's wood learn a little magic of their own in time, mainly concerned with disappearing.

We'll find no game here."

"Unicorns are long gone," the second man said. "If, indeed, they ever were. This is a forest

like any other."

"Then why do the leaves never fall here, or the snow? I tell you, there is one unicorn left in

the world -- good luck to the lonely old thing, I say -- and as long as it lives in this forest, there

won't be a hunter takes so much as a titmouse home at his saddle. Ride on, ride on, you'll see. I

know their ways, unicorns."

"From books," answered the other. "Only from books and tales and songs. Not in the reign of

three kings has there been even a whisper of a unicorn seen in this country or any other. You know

no more about unicorns than I do, for I've read the same books and heard the same stories, and I've

never seen one either."

The first hunter was silent for a time, and the second whistled sourly to himself. Then the

first said, "My great-grandmother saw a unicorn once. She used to tell me about it when I was

little."

"Oh, indeed? And did she capture it with a golden bridle?"

"No. She didn't have one. You don't have to have a golden bridle to catch a unicorn; that

part's the fairy tale. You need only to be pure of heart."

"Yes, yes." The younger man chuckled. "Did she ride her unicorn, then? Bareback, under the

trees, like a nymph in the early days of the world?"

"My great-grandmother was afraid of large animals," said the first hunter. "She didn't ride it,

but she sat very still, and the unicorn put its head in her lap and fell asleep. My great-grandmother

never moved till it woke."

"What did it look like? Pliny describes the unicorn as being very ferocious, similar in the rest

of its body to a horse, with the head of a deer, the feet of an elephant, the tail of a bear; a deep,

bellowing voice, and a single black horn, two cubits in length. And the Chinese --"

"My great-grandmother said only that the unicorn had a good smell. She never could abide

the smell of any beast, even a cat or a cow, let alone a wild thing. But she loved the smell of the

unicorn. She began to cry once, telling me about it. Of course, she was a very old woman then, and

cried at anything that reminded her of her youth."

"Let's turn around and hunt somewhere else," the second hunter said abruptly. The unicorn

stepped softly into a thicket as they turned their horses, and took up the trail only when they were

well ahead of her once more. The men rode in silence until they were nearing the edge of the forest,

when the second hunter asked quietly, "Why did they go away, do you think? If there ever were

such things."

"Who knows? Times change. Would you call this age a good one for unicorns?"

"No, but I wonder if any man before us ever thought his time a good time for unicorns. And

it seems to me now that I have heard stories -- but I was sleepy with wine, or I was thinking of

something else. Well, no matter. There's light enough yet to hunt, if we hurry. Come!"

They broke out of the woods, kicked their horses to a gallop, and dashed away. But before

they were out of sight, the first hunter looked back over his shoulder and called, just as though he

could see the unicorn standing in shadow, "Stay where you are, poor beast. This is no world for you.

Stay in your forest, and keep your trees green and your friends long-lived. Pay no mind to young

girls, for they never become anything more than silly old women. And good luck to you."

The unicorn stood still at the edge of the forest and said aloud, "I am the only unicorn there

is." They were the first words she had spoken, even to herself, in more than a hundred years.

That can't be, she thought. She had never minded being alone, never seeing another unicorn,

because she had always known that there were others like her in the world, and a unicorn needs no

more than that for company. "But I would know if all the others were gone. I'd be gone too. Nothing

can happen to them that does not happen to me."

Her own voice frightened her and made her want to be running. She moved along the dark

paths of her forest, swift and shining, passing through sudden clearings unbearably brilliant with

grass or soft with shadow, aware of everything around her, from the weeds that brushed her ankles

to insect-quick flickers of blue and silver as the wind lifted the leaves. "Oh, I could never leave this,

I never could, not if I really were the only unicorn in the world. I know how to live here, I know

how everything smells, and tastes, and is. What could I ever search for in the world, except this

again?"

But when she stopped running at last and stood still, listening to crows and a quarrel of

squirrels over her head, she wondered, But suppose they are riding together, somewhere far away?

What if they are hiding and waiting for me?

From that first moment of doubt, there was no peace for her; from the time she first

imagined leaving her forest, she could not stand in one place without wanting to be somewhere else.

She trotted up and down beside her pool, restless and unhappy. Unicorns are not meant to make

choices. She said no, and yes, and no again, day and night, and for the first time she began to feel

the minutes crawling over her like worms. "I will not go. Because men have seen no unicorns for a

while does not mean they have all vanished. Even if it were true, I would not go. I live here."

But at last she woke up in the middle of one warm night and said, "Yes, but now." She

hurried through her forest, trying to look at nothing and smell nothing, trying not to feel her earth

under her cloven hoofs. The animals who move in the dark, the owls and the foxes and the deer,

raised their heads as she passed by, but she would not look at them. I must go quickly, she thought,

and come back as soon as I can. Maybe I won't have to go very far. But whether I find the others or

not, I will come back very soon, as soon as I can.

Under the moon, the road that ran from the edge of her forest gleamed like water, but when

she stepped out onto it, away from the trees, she felt how hard it was, and how long. She almost

turned back then; but instead she took a deep breath of the woods air that still drifted to her, and

held it in her mouth like a flower, as long as she could.

The long road hurried to nowhere and had no end. It ran through villages and small towns,

flat country and mountains, stony barrens and meadows springing out of stones, but it belonged to

none of these, and it never rested anywhere. It rushed the unicorn along, tugging at her feet like the

tide, fretting at her, never letting her be quiet and listen to the air, as she was used to do. Her eyes

were always full of dust, and her mane was stiff and heavy with dirt.

Time had always passed her by in her forest, but now it was she who passed through time as

she traveled. The colors of the trees changed, and the animals along the way grew heavy coats and

lost them again; the clouds crept or hurried before the changing winds, and were pink and gold in

the sun or livid with storm. Wherever she went, she searched for her people, but she found no trace

of them, and in all the tongues she heard spoken along the road there was not even a word for them

any more.

Early one morning, about to turn off the road to sleep, she saw a man hoeing in his garden.

Knowing that she should hide, she stood still instead and watched him work, until he straightened

and saw her. He was fat, and his cheeks jumped with every step he took. "Oh," he said. "Oh, you're

beautiful."

When he tugged off his belt, made a loop in it, and moved clumsily toward her, the unicorn

was more pleased than frightened. The man knew what she was, and what he himself was for: to

hoe turnips and pursue something that shone and could run faster than he could. She sidestepped his

first lunge as lightly as though the wind of it had blown her out of his reach. "I have been hunted

with bells and banners in my time," she told him. "Men knew that the only way to hunt me was to

make the chase so wondrous that I would come near to see it. And even so I was never once

captured."

"My foot must have slipped," said the man. "Steady now, you pretty thing."

"I've never really understood," the unicorn mused as the man picked himself up, "what you

dream of doing with me, once you've caught me." The man leaped again, and she slipped away from

him like rain. "I don't think you know yourselves," she said.

"Ah, steady, steady, easy now." The man's sweating face was striped with dirt, and he could

hardly get his breath. "Pretty," he gasped. "You pretty little mare."

"_Mare?_" The unicorn trumpeted the word so shrilly that the man stopped pursuing her and

clapped his hands to his ears. "Mare?" she demanded. "I, a horse? Is that what you take me for? Is

that what you see?"

"Good horse," the fat man panted. He leaned on the fence and wiped his face. "Curry you up,

clean you off, you'll be the prettiest old mare anywhere." He reached out with the belt again. "Take

you to the fair," he said. "Come on, horse."

"A horse," the unicorn said. "That's what you were trying to capture. A white mare with her

mane full of burrs." As the man approached her, she hooked her horn through the belt, jerked it out

of his grasp, and hurled it across the road into a patch of daisies. "A horse, am I?" she snorted. "A

horse, indeed!"

For a moment the man was very close to her, and her great eyes stared into his own, which

were small and tired and amazed. Then she turned and fled up the road, running so swiftly that those

who saw her exclaimed, "Now _there's_ a horse! There's a real horse!" One old man said quietly to

his wife, "That's an Ayrab horse. I was on a ship with an Ayrab horse once."

From that time the unicorn avoided towns, even at night, unless there was no way at all to go

around them. Even so, there were a few men who gave chase, but always to a wandering white

mare; never in the gay and reverent manner proper to the pursuit of a unicorn. They came with ropes

and nets and baits of sugar lumps, and they whistled and called her Bess and Nellie. Sometimes she

would slow down enough to let their horses catch her scent, and then watch as the beasts reared and

wheeled and ran away with their terrified riders. The horses always knew her.

"How can it be?" she wondered. "I suppose I could understand it if men had simply forgotten

unicorns, or if they had changed so that they hated all unicorns now and tried to kill them when they

saw them. But not to see them at all, to look at them and see something else -- what do they look

like to one another, then? What do trees look like to them, or houses, or real horses, or their own

children?"

Sometimes she thought, "If men no longer know what they are looking at, there may well be

unicorns in the world yet, unknown and glad of it." But she knew beyond both hope and vanity that

men had changed, and the world with them, because the unicorns were gone. Yet she went on along

the hard road, although each day she wished a little more that she had never left her forest.

Then one afternoon the butterfly wobbled out of a breeze and lit on the tip of her horn. He

was velvet all over, dark and dusty, with golden spots on his wings, and he was as thin as a flower

petal. Dancing along her horn, he saluted her with his curling feelers. "I am a roving gambler. How

do you do?"

The unicorn laughed for the first time in her travels. "Butterfly, what are you doing out on

such a windy day?" she asked him. "You'll take cold and die long before your time."

"Death takes what man would keep," said the butterfly, "and leaves what man would lose.

Blow, wind, and crack your cheeks. I warm my hands before the fire of life and get four-way relief."

He glimmered like a scrap of owl-light on her horn.

"Do you know what I am, butterfly?" the unicorn asked hopefully, and he replied, "Excellent

well, you're a fishmonger. You're my everything, you are my sunshine, you are old and gray and full

of sleep, you're my pickle-face, consumptive Mary Jane." He paused, fluttering his wings against the

wind, and added conversationally, "Your name is a golden bell hung in my heart. I would break my

body to pieces to call you once by your name."

"Say my name, then," the unicorn begged him. "If you know my name, tell it to me."

"Rumpelstiltskin," the butterfly answered happily. "Gotcha! You don't get no medal." He

jigged and twinkled on her horn, singing, "Won't you come home, Bill Bailey, won't you come

home, where once he could not go. Buckle down, Winsocki, go and catch a falling star. Clay lies

still, but blood's a rover, so I should be called kill-devil all the parish over." His eyes were gleaming

scarlet in the glow of the unicorn's horn.

She sighed and plodded on, both amused and disappointed. It serves you right, she told

herself. You know better than to expect a butterfly to know your name. All they know are songs and

poetry, and anything else they hear. They mean well, but they can't keep things straight. And why

should they? They die so soon.

The butterfly swaggered before her eyes, singing, "One, two, three o'lairy," as he whirled;

chanting, "Not, I'll not, carrion comfort, look down that lonesome road. For, oh, what damned

minutes tells he o'er who dotes, yet doubts. Hasten, Mirth, and bring with thee a host of furious

fancies whereof I am commander, which will be on sale for three days only at bargain summer

prices. I love you, I love you, oh, the horror, the horror, and aroint thee, witch, aroint thee, indeed

and truly you've chosen a bad place to be lame in, willow, willow, willow." His voice tinkled in the

unicorn's head like silver money falling.

He traveled with her for the rest of the waning day, but when the sun went down and the sky

was full of rosy fish, he flew off her horn and hovered in the air before her. "I must take the A

train," he said politely. Against the clouds she could see that his velvet wings were ribbed with

delicate black veins.

"Farewell," she said. "I hope you hear many more songs" -- which was the best way she

could think of to say good-by to a butterfly. But instead of leaving her, he fluttered above her head,

looking suddenly less dashing and a little nervous in the blue evening air. "Fly away," she urged

him. "It's too cold for you to be out." But the butterfly still dallied, humming to himself.

"They ride that horse you call the Macedonai," he intoned absent-mindedly; and then, very

clearly, "Unicorn. Old French, _unicorne_. Latin, _unicornis_. Literally, one-horned: _unus_, one,

and _cornu_, a horn. A fabulous animal resembling a horse with one horn. Oh, I am a cook and a

captain bold and the mate of the _Nancy_ brig. Has anybody here seen Kelly?" He strutted joyously

in the air, and the first fireflies blinked around him in wonder and grave doubt.

The unicorn was so startled and so happy to hear her name spoken at last that she overlooked

the remark about the horse. "Oh, you do know me!" she cried, and the breath of her delight blew the

butterfly twenty feet away. When he came scrambling back to her, she pleaded, "Butterfly, if you

really know who I am, tell me if you have ever seen anyone like me, tell me which way I must go to

find them. Where have they gone?"

"Butterfly, butterfly, where shall I hide?" he sang in the fading light. "The sweet and bitter

fool will presently appear. Christ, that my love were in my arms, and I in my bed again." He rested

on the unicorn's horn once more, and she could feel him trembling.

"Please," she said. "All I want to know is that there are other unicorns somewhere in the

world. Butterfly, tell me that there are still others like me, and I will believe you and go home to my

forest. I have been away so long, and I said that I would come back soon."

"Over the mountains of the moon," the butterfly began, "down the Valley of the Shadow,

ride, boldly ride." Then he stopped suddenly and said in a strange voice, "No, no, listen, don't listen

to me, listen. You can find your people if you are brave. They passed down all the roads long ago,

and the Red Bull ran close behind them and covered their footprints. Let nothing you dismay, but

don't be half-safe." His wings brushed against the unicorn's skin.

"The Red Bull?" she asked. "What is the Red Bull?"

The butterfly started to sing. "Follow me down. Follow me down. Follow me down. Follow

me down." But then he shook his head wildly and recited, "His firstling bull has majesty, and his

horns are the horns of a wild ox. With them he shall push the peoples, all of them, to the ends of the

earth. Listen, listen, listen quickly."

"I am listening," the unicorn cried. "Where are my people, and what is the Red Bull?"

But the butterfly swooped close to her ear, laughing. "I have nightmares about crawling

around on the ground," he sang. "The little dogs, Tray, Blanche, Sue, they bark at me, the little

snakes, they hiss at me, the beggars are coming to town. Then at last come the clams."

For a moment more he danced in the dusk before her; then he shivered away into the violet

shadows by the roadside, chanting defiantly, "It's you or me, moth! Hand to hand to hand to hand to

hand . . ." The last the unicorn saw of him was a tiny skittering between the trees, and her eyes

might have deceived her, for the night was full of wings now.

At least he did recognize me, she thought sadly. That means something. But she answered

herself, No, that means nothing at all, except that somebody once made up a song about unicorns, or

a poem. But the Red Bull. What could he have meant by that? Another song, I suppose.

She walked on slowly, and the night drew close about her. The sky was low and almost pure

black, save for one spot of yellowing silver where the moon paced behind the thick clouds. The

unicorn sang softly to herself, a song she had heard a young girl singing in her forest long ago.

"Sparrows and cats will live in my shoe,

Sooner than I will live with you.

Fish will come walking out of the sea,

Sooner than you will come back to me."

She did not understand the words, but the song made her think longingly of her home. It

seemed to her that she had heard autumn beginning to shake the beech trees the very moment that

she stepped out into the road.

At last she lay down in the cold grass and fell asleep. Unicorns are the wariest of all wild

things, but they sleep soundly when they sleep. All the same, if she had not been dreaming of home,

she would surely have roused at the sound of wheels and jingling coming closer through the night,

even though the wheels were muffled in rags and the little bells wrapped in wool. But she was very

far away, farther than the soft bells could go, and she did not wake.

There were nine wagons, each draped in black, each drawn by a lean black horse, and each

baring barred sides like teeth when the wind blew through the black hangings. The lead wagon was

driven by a squat old woman, and it bore signs on its shrouded sides that said in big letters:

MOMMY FORTUNA'S MIDNIGHT CARNIVAL. And below, in smaller print: _Creatures of

night, brought to light_.

When the first wagon drew even with the place where the unicorn lay asleep, the old woman

suddenly pulled her black horse to a stop. All the other wagons stopped too and waited silently as

the old woman swung herself to the ground with an ugly grace. Gliding close to the unicorn, she

peered down at her for a long time, and then said, "Well. Well, bless my old husk of a heart. And

here I thought I'd seen the last of them." Her voice left a flavor of honey and gunpowder on the air.

"If he knew," she said and she showed pebbly teeth as she smiled. "But I don't think I'll tell

him." She looked back at the black wagons and snapped her fingers twice. The drivers of the second

and third wagons got down and came toward her. One was short and dark and stony, like herself; the

other was a tall, thin man with an air of resolute bewilderment. He wore an old black cloak, and his

eyes were green.

"What do you see?" the old woman asked the short man. "Rukh, what do you see lying

there?"

"Dead horse," he answered. "No, not dead. Give it to the manticore, or the dragon." His

chuckle sounded like matches striking.

"You're a fool," Mommy Fortuna said to him. Then, to the other, "What about you, wizard,

seer, thaumaturge? What do you see with your sorcerer's sight?" She joined with the man Rukh in a

ratchety roar of laughter, but it ended when she saw that the tall man was still staring at the unicorn.

"Answer me, you juggler!" she snarled, but the tall man did not turn his head. The old woman

turned it for him, reaching out a crablike hand to yank his chin around. His eyes fell before her

yellow stare.

"A horse," he muttered. "A white mare."

Mommy Fortuna looked at him for a long time. "You're a fool too, magician," she snickered

at last, "but a worse fool than Rukh, and a more dangerous one. He lies only out of greed, but you

lie out of fear. Or could it be kindness?" The man said nothing, and Mommy Fortuna laughed by

herself.

"All right," she said. "It's a white mare. I want her for the Carnival. The ninth cage is empty."

"I'll need rope," Rukh said. He was about to turn away, but the old woman stopped him.

"The only rope that could hold her," she told him, "would be the cord with which the old

gods bound the Fenris-wolf. That one was made of fishes' breath, bird spittle, a woman's beard, the

miaowing of a cat, the sinews of a bear, and one thing more. I remember -- mountain roots. Having

none of these elements, nor dwarfs to weave them for us, we'll have to do the best we can with iron

bars. I'll put a sleep on her, thus," and Mommy Fortuna's hands knitted the night air while she

grumbled a few unpleasant words in her throat. There was a smell of lightning about the unicorn

when the old woman had finished her spell.

"Now cage her," she said to the two men. "She'll sleep till sunrise, whatever racket you make

-- unless, in your accustomed stupidity, you touch her with your hands. Take the ninth cage to pieces

and build it around her, but beware! The hand that so much as brushes her mane turns instantly to

the donkey's hoof it deserves to be." Again she gazed mockingly at the tall, thin man. "Your little

tricks would be even harder for you than they already are, wizard," she said, wheezing. "Get to

work. These's not much dark left."

When she was well out of earshot, sliding back into the shadow of her wagon as though she

had just come out to mark the hour, the man named Rukh spat and said curiously, "Now I wonder

what's worrying the old squid. What would it matter if we touched the beast?"

The magician answered him in a voice almost too soft to be heard. "The touch of a human

hand would wake her out of the deepest sleep the devil himself could lay on her. And Mommy

Fortuna's no devil."

"She'd like us to think so," the dark man sneered. "Donkey hoofs! Gahhh!" But he thrust his

hands deep into his pockets. "Why would the spell be broken? It's just an old white mare."

But the magician was walking away toward the last of the black wagons. "Hurry," he called

over his shoulder. "It will be day soon."

It took them the rest of the night to pull down the ninth cage, bars and floor and roof and

then to put it back together around the sleeping unicorn. Rukh was tugging at the door to make sure

that it was securely locked, when the gray trees in the east boiled over and the unicorn opened her

eyes. The two men slipped hurriedly away, but the tall magician looked back in time to see the

unicorn rise to her feet and stare at the iron bars, her low head swaying like the head of an old white

horse.

The nine black wagons of the Midnight Carnival seemed smaller by daylight and not

menacing at all, but flimsy and fragile as dead leaves. Their draperies were gone, and they were now

adorned with sad black banners cut from blankets, and stubby black ribbons that twitched in the

breeze. They were arranged strangely in a scrubby field: a pentacle of cages enclosing a triangle, and

Mommy Fortuna's wagon lumping in the center. This cage alone retained its black veil, concealing

whatever it contained. Mommy Fortuna was nowhere to be seen.

The man named Rukh was leading a straggling crowd of country folk slowly from one cage

to the next, commenting somberly on the beasts within. "This here's the manticore. Man's head,

lion's body, tail of a scorpion. Captured at midnight, eating werewolves to sweeten its breath.

Creatures of night, brought to light. Here's the dragon. Breathes fire now and then -- usually at

people who poke it, little boy. Its inside is an inferno, but its skin is so cold it burns. The dragon

speaks seventeen languages badly, and is subject to gout. The satyr. Ladies keep back. A real

troublemaker. Captured under curious circumstances revealed to gentlemen only, for a token fee

after the show. Creatures of night." Standing by the unicorn's cage, which was one of the inner

three, the tall magician watched the procession proceeding around the pentacle. "I shouldn't be

here," he said to the unicorn. "The old woman warned me to stay away from you." He chuckled

pleasantly. "She has mocked me from the day I joined her, but I have made her nervous all that

time."

The unicorn hardly heard him. She turned and turned in her prison, her body shrinking from

the touch of the iron bars all around her. No creature of man's night loves cold iron, and while the

unicorn could endure its presence, the murderous smell of it seemed to turn her bones to sand and

her blood to rain. The bars of her cage must have had some sort of spell on them, for they never

stopped whispering evilly to one another in clawed, pattering voices. The heavy lock giggled and

whined like a mad monkey.

"Tell me what you see," said the magician, as Mommy Fortuna had said it to him. "Look at

your fellow legends and tell me what you see."

Rukh's iron voice came clanging through the wan afternoon. "Gatekeeper of the underworld.

Three heads and a healthy coat of vipers, as you can see. Last seen aboveground in the time of

Hercules, who dragged him up under one arm. But we lured him to light again with promises of a

better life. Cerberus. Look at those six cheated red eyes. You may look into them again one day.

This way to the Midgard Serpent. This way."

The unicorn stared through the bars at the animal in the cage. Her eyes were wide with

disbelief. "It's only a dog," she whispered. "It's a hungry, unhappy dog with only one head and

hardly any coat at all, the poor thing. How could they ever take it for Cerberus? Are they all blind?"

"Look again," the magician said.

"And the satyr," the unicorn continued. "The satyr is an ape, an old ape with a twisted foot.

The dragon is a crocodile, much more likely to breathe fish than fire. And the great manticore is a

lion -- a perfectly good lion, but no more monstrous than the others. I don't understand."

"It's got the whole world in its coils," Rukh was droning. And once more the magician said,

"Look again."

Then, as though her eyes were getting used to darkness, the unicorn began to perceive a

second figure in each cage. They loomed hugely over the captives of the Midnight Carnival, and yet

they were joined to them: stormy dreams sprung from a grain of truth. So there was a manticore --

famine-eyed, slobber-mouthed, roaring, curving his deadly tail over his back until the poison spine

lolled and nodded just above his ear -- and there was a lion too, tiny and absurd by comparison. Yet

they were the same creature. The unicorn stamped in wonder.

It was so in all the other cages. The shadow-dragon opened his mouth and hissed harmless

fire to make the gapers gasp and cringe, while Hell's snake-furred watchdog howled triple dooms

and devastations down on his betrayers, and the satyr limped leering to the bars and beckoned young

girls to impossible delights, right there in public. As for the crocodile, the ape, and the sad dog, they

faded steadily before the marvelous phantoms until they were only shadows themselves, even to the

unicorn's undeceived eyes. "This is a strange sorcery," she said softly. "There's more meaning than

magic to this."

The magician laughed with pleasure and great relief. "Well said, well said indeed. I knew the

old horror wouldn't dazzle you with her twopenny spells." His voice grew hard and secret. "She's

made her third mistake now," he said, "and that's at least two too many for a tired old trickster like

herself. The time draws near."

"The time draws near," Rukh was telling the crowd, as though he had overheard the

magician. "Ragnarok. On that day, when the gods fall, the Serpent of the Midgard will spit a storm

of venom at great Thor himself, till he tumbles over like a poisoned fly. And so he waits for

Judgment Day, and dreams about the part he'll play. It may be so -- I couldn't say. Creatures of

night, brought to light."

The cage was filled with snake. There was no head to it, and no tail -- nothing but a wave of

tarnished darkness rolling from one end of the cage to the other, leaving no room for anything but

its own thunderous breathing. Only the unicorn saw, coiled in a corner, a baleful boa; brooding,

perhaps, over its own Judgment on the Midnight Carnival. But it was tiny and dim as the ghost of a

worm in the Serpent's shadow.

A wondering gawk stuck up his hand and demanded of Rukh, "If this big snake do be coiled

around the world, as you say, how come you to be having a piece of it in your wagon? And if it can

shatter the sea just by stretching of itself, what's to keep it from crawling off wearing your whole

show like a necklace?" There were murmurs of agreement, and some of the murmurers began to

back warily away.

"I'm glad you asked me that, friend," Rukh said with a scowl. "It just so happens that the

Midgard Serpent exists in like another space from ours, another dimension. Normally, therefore,

he's invisible, but dragged into our world -- as Thor hooked him once -- he shows clear as lightning,

which also visits us from somewhere else, where it might look quite different. And naturally he

might turn nasty if he knew that a bit of his tummy slack was on view daily and Sundays in Mommy

Fortuna's Midnight Carnival. But he don't know. He's got other things to think about than what

becomes of his belly button, and we take our chances -- as do you all -- on his continued

tranquillity." He rolled and stretched the last word like dough, and his hearers laughed carefully.

"Spells of seeming," the unicorn said. "She cannot make things."

"Nor truly change them," added the magician. "Her shabby skill lies in disguise. And even

that knack would be beyond her, if it weren't for the eagerness of those gulls, those marks, to believe

whatever comes easiest. She can't turn cream into butter, but she can give a lion the semblance of a

manticore to eyes that want to see a manticore there -- eyes that would take a real manticore for a

lion, a dragon for a lizard, and the Midgard Serpent for an earthquake. And a unicorn for a white

mare."

The unicorn halted in her slow, desperate round of the cage, realizing for the first time that

the magician understood her speech. He smiled, and she saw that his face was frighteningly young

for a grown man -- untraveled by time, unvisited by grief or wisdom. "I know you," he said.

The bars whispered wickedly between them. Rukh was leading the crowd to the inner cages

now. The unicorn asked the tall man, "Who are you?"

"I am called Schmendrick the Magician," he answered. "You won't have heard of me."

The unicorn came very near to explaining that it was hardly for her to have heard of one

wizard or another, but something sad and valiant in his voice kept her from it. The magician said, "I

entertain the sightseers as they gather for the show. Miniature magic, sleight of hand -- flowers to

flags and flags to fish, all accompanied by persuasive patter and a suggestion that I could work more

ominous wonders if I chose. It's not much of a job, but I've had worse, and I'll have better one day.

This is not the end."

But the sound of his voice made the unicorn feel as though she were trapped forever, and

once more she began pacing her cage, moving to keep her heart from bursting with the terror of

being closed in. Rukh was standing before a cage that contained nothing but a small brown spider

weaving a modest web across the bars. "Arachne of Lydia," he told the crowd. "Guaranteed the

greatest weaver in the world -- her fate's the proof of it. She had the bad luck to defeat the goddess

Athena in a weaving contest. Athena was a sore loser, and Arachne is now a spider, creating only

for Mommy Fortuna's Midnight Carnival, by special arrangement. Warp of snow and woof of flame,

and never any two the same. Arachne."

Strung on the loom of iron bars, the web was very simple and almost colorless, except for an

occasional rainbow shiver when the spider scuttled out on it to put a thread right. But it drew the

onlookers' eyes -- and the unicorn's eyes as well -- back and forth and steadily deeper, until they

seemed to be looking down into great rifts in the world, black fissures that widened remorselessly

and yet would not fall into pieces as long as Arachne's web held the world together. The unicorn

shook herself free with a sigh, and saw the real web again. It was very simple, and almost colorless.

"It isn't like the others," she said.

"No," Schmendrick agreed grudgingly. "But there's no credit due to Mommy Fortuna for

that. You see, the spider believes. She sees those cat's-cradles herself and thinks them her own

work. Belief makes all the difference to magic like Mommy Fortuna's. Why, if that troop of witlings

withdrew their wonder, there'd be nothing left of all her witchery but the sound of a spider weeping.

And no one would hear it."

The unicorn did not want to look into the web again. She glanced at the cage closest to her

own, and suddenly felt the breath in her body turning to cold iron. There sat on an oaken perch a

creature with the body of a great bronze bird and a hag's face, clenched and deadly as the talons with

which she gripped the wood. She had the shaggy round ears of a bear; but down her scaly shoulders,

mingling with the bright knives of her plumage, there fell hair the color of moonlight, thick and

youthful around the hating human face. She glittered, but to look at her was to feel the light going

out of the sky. Catching sight of the unicorn, she made a queer sound like a hiss and a chuckle

together.

The unicorn said quietly, "This one is real. This is the harpy Celaeno."

Schmendrick's face had gone the color of oatmeal. "The old woman caught her by chance,"

he whispered, "asleep, as she took you. But it was an ill fortune, and they both know it. Mommy

Fortuna's craft is just sure enough to hold the monster, but its mere presence is wearing all her spells

so thin that in a little time she won't have power enough left to fry an egg. She should never have

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Peter S. Beagle - The Last Unicorn

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