The Last Unicorn

by Peter S. Beagle

  Prince Lír marveled suspiciously, which is an awkward thing to manage. “I have known for a very long time that the king is not my father,” he said. “But I tried hard to be his son all the same. I’m the enemy of any who plot against him, and it would take more than a crone’s gibbering to make me work his downfall. As for the other, I think there are no unicorns any more, and I know that King Haggard has never seen one. How could any man who had looked upon a unicorn even once‌—‌let alone thousands with every tide‌—‌possibly be as sad as King Haggard is? Why, if I had only seen her once, and never again—” Now he himself paused in some confusion, for he also felt that the talk was going on to some sorrow from which it could never be called back. Molly’s neck and shoulders were listening intently, but if the Lady Amalthea could hear what the two men were saying, she gave no sign.

  “Yet the king has a joy hidden somewhere about his life,” Schmendrick pointed out. “Have you never seen a trace of it, truly‌—‌never seen its track in his eyes? I have. Think for a moment, Prince Lír.”

  The prince was silent, and they wound further into the foul dark. They could not always tell whether they were climbing or descending; nor, sometimes, if the passage were bending once again, until the gnarly nearness of stone at their shoulders suddenly became the bleak rake of a wall against their faces.

  There was not the smallest sound of the Red Bull, or any glimmer of the wicked light; but when Schmendrick touched his damp face, the smell of the Bull came off on his fingers.

  Prince Lír said, “Sometimes, when he has been on the tower, there is something in his face. Not a light, exactly, but a clearness. I remember. I was little, and he never looked like that when he looked at me, or at anything else. And I had a dream.” He was walking very slowly now, scuffing his feet. “I used to have a dream,” he said, “the same dream over and over, about standing at my window in the middle of the night and seeing the Bull, seeing the Red Bull—” He did not finish.

  “Seeing the Bull driving unicorns into the sea,” Schmendrick said. “It was no dream. Haggard has them all now drifting in and out on the tides for his delight‌—‌all but one.” The magician drew a deep breath. “That one is the Lady Amalthea.”

  “Yes,” Prince Lír answered him. “Yes, I know.”

  Schmendrick stared at him. “What do you mean, you know?” he demanded angrily. “How could you possibly know that the Lady Amalthea is a unicorn? She can’t have told you, because she doesn’t remember it herself. Since you took her fancy, she has thought only of being a mortal woman.” He knew quite well that the truth was the other way around, but it made no difference to him just then. “How do you know?” he asked again.

  Prince Lír stopped walking and turned to face him. It was too dark for Schmendrick to see anything but the cool, milky shining where his wide eyes were.

  “I did not know what she was until now,” he said. “But I knew the first time I saw her that she was something more than I could see. Unicorn, mermaid, lamia, sorceress, Gorgon‌—‌no name you give her would surprise me, or frighten me. I love whom I love.”

  “That’s a very nice sentiment,” Schmendrick said. “But when I change her back into her true self, so that she may do battle with the Red Bull and free her people—”

  “I love whom I love,” Prince Lír repeated firmly. “You have no power over anything that matters.”

  Before the magician could reply, the Lady Amalthea was standing between them, though neither man had seen or heard her as she came back along the passageway. In the darkness she gleamed and trembled like running water. She said, “I will go no farther.”

  It was to the prince that she spoke, but it was Schmendrick who said, “There is no choice. We can only go on.” Molly Grue came nearer: one anxious eye and the pale start of a cheekbone. The magician said again, “We can only go on.”

  The Lady Amalthea would not look straight at him. “He must not change me,” she said to Prince Lír. “Do not let him work his magic on me. The Bull has no care for human beings‌—‌we may walk out past him and get away. It is a unicorn the Bull wants. Tell him not to change me into a unicorn.”

  Prince Lír twisted his fingers until they cracked. Schmendrick said, “It is true. We might very well escape the Red Bull that way even now, as we escaped before. But if we do, there will never be another chance. All the unicorns of the world will remain his prisoners forever, except one, and she will die. She will grow old and die.”

  “Everything dies,” she said, still to Prince Lír. “It is good that everything dies. I want to die when you die. Do not let him enchant me, do not let him make me immortal. I am no unicorn, no magical creature. I am human, and I love you.”

  He answered her, saying gently, “I don’t know much about enchantments, except how to break them. But I know that even the very greatest wizards are powerless against two who keep to each other‌—‌and this one is only poor Schmendrick, after all. Don’t be afraid. Don’t be afraid of anything. Whatever you have been, you are mine now. I can hold you.”

  She turned to look at the magician at last, and even through the darkness he could feel the terror in her eyes. “No,” she said. “No, we are not strong enough. He will change me, and whatever happens after that, you and I will lose each other. I will not love you when I am a unicorn, and you will love me only because you cannot help it. I will be more beautiful than anything in the world, and live forever.”

  Schmendrick began to speak, but the sound of his voice made her cower like a candle flame. “I will not have it. I will not have it so.” She was looking back and forth from the prince to the magician, holding her voice together like the edges of a wound. She said, “If there is left a single moment of love when he changes me, you will know it, for I will let the Red Bull drive me into the sea with the others. Then at least I will be near you.”

  “There’s no need for all that.” Schmendrick spoke lightly, making himself laugh. “I doubt I could turn you back if you wished it. Nikos himself never could turn a human being into unicorn‌—‌and you are truly human now. You can love, and fear, and forbid things to be what they are, and overact. Let it end here then, let the quest end. Is the world any the worse for losing the unicorns, and would it be any better if they were running free again? One good woman more in the world is worth every single unicorn gone. Let it end. Marry the prince and live happily ever after.”

  The passageway seemed to be growing lighter, and Schmendrick imagined the Red Bull stealing toward them, grotesquely cautious, setting his hooves down as primly as a heron. The thin glimmer of Molly Grue’s cheekbone went out as she turned her face away. “Yes,” said the Lady Amalthea. “That is my wish.”

  But at the same moment, Prince Lír said, “No.”

  The word escaped him as suddenly as a sneeze, emerging in a questioning squeak‌—‌the voice of a silly young man mortally embarrassed by a rich and terrible gift. “No,” he repeated, and this time the word tolled in another voice, a king’s voice: not Haggard, but a king whose grief was not for what he did not have, but for what he could not give.

  “My lady,” he said, “I am a hero. It is a trade, no more, like weaving or brewing, and like them it has its own tricks and knacks and small arts. There are ways of perceiving witches, and of knowing poison streams; there are certain weak spots that all dragons have, and certain riddles that hooded strangers tend to set you. But the true secret of being a hero lies in knowing the order of things. The swineherd cannot already be wed to the princess when he embarks on his adventures, nor can the boy knock at the witch’s door when she is away on vacation. The wicked uncle cannot be found out and foiled before he does something wicked. Things must happen when it is time for them to happen. Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.”

  The Lady Amalthea did not answer him. Schmendrick asked, “Why not?
Who says so?”

  “Heroes,” Prince Lír replied sadly. “Heroes know about order, about happy endings‌—‌heroes know that some things are better than others. Carpenters know grains and shingles, and straight lines.” He put his hands out to the Lady Amalthea, and took one step toward her. She did not draw back from him, nor turn her face; indeed, she lifted her head higher, and it was the prince who looked away.

  “You were the one who taught me,” he said. “I never looked at you without seeing the sweetness of the way the world goes together, or without sorrow for its spoiling. I became a hero to serve you, and all that is like you. Also to find some way of starting a conversation.” But the Lady Amalthea spoke no word to him.

  Pale as lime, the brightness was rising in the cavern. They could see one another clearly now, each gone tallowy and strange with fear. Even the beauty of the Lady Amalthea drained away under that dull, hungry light. She looked more mortal than any of the other three.

  “The Bull is coming,” Prince Lír said. He turned and set off down the passageway, taking the bold, eager strides of a hero. The Lady Amalthea followed him, walking as lightly and proudly as princesses are taught to try to walk. Molly Grue stayed close to the magician, taking his hand as she had been used to touch the unicorn when she was lonely. He smiled down at her, looking quite pleased with himself.

  Molly said, “Let her stay the way she is. Let her be.”

  “Tell that to Lír,” he replied cheerfully. “Was it I who said that order is all? Was it I who said that she must challenge the Red Bull because it will be more proper and precise that way? I have no concern for regulated rescues and official happy endings. That’s Lír.”

  “But you made him do it,” she said. “You know that all he wants in the world is to have her give up her quest and stay with him. And she would have done it, but you reminded him that he is a hero, and now he has to do what heroes do. He loves her, and you tricked him.”

  “I never,” Schmendrick said. “Be quiet, he’ll hear you.” Molly felt herself growing light-headed, silly with the nearness of the Bull. The light and the smell had become a sticky sea in which she floundered like the unicorns, hopeless and eternal. The path was beginning to tilt downward, into the deepening light; and far ahead Prince Lír and the Lady Amalthea went marching along to disaster as calmly as candles burning down. Molly Grue snickered.

  She went on, “I know why you did it too. You can’t become mortal yourself until you change her back again. Isn’t that it? You don’t care what happens to her, or to the others, just as long as you become a real magician at last. Isn’t that it? Well, you’ll never be a real magician, even if you change the Bull into a bullfrog, because it’s still just a trick when you do it. You don’t care about anything but magic, and what kind of magician is that? Schmendrick, I don’t feel good. I have to sit down.”

  Schmendrick must have carried her for a time, because she was definitely not walking and his green eyes were ringing in her head. “That’s right. Nothing but magic matters to me. I would round up unicorns for Haggard myself if it would heighten my power by half a hair. It’s true. I have no preferences and no loyalties. I have only magic.” His voice was hard and sad.

  “Really?” she asked, rocking dreamily in her terror, watching the brightness flowing by. “That’s awful.” She was very impressed. “Are you really like that?”

  “No,” he said, then or later. “No, it’s not true. How could I be like that, and still have all these troubles?” Then he said, “Molly, you have to walk now. He’s there. He’s there.”

  Molly saw the horns first. The light made her cover her face, but the pale horns struck bitterly through hands and eyelids to the back of her mind. She saw Prince Lír and the Lady Amalthea standing before the horns, while the fire flourished on the walls of the cavern and soared up into the roofless dark. Prince Lír had drawn his sword, but it blazed up in his hand, and he let it fall, and it broke like ice. The Red Bull stamped his foot, and everyone fell down.

  Schmendrick had thought to find the Bull waiting in his lair, or in some wide place with room enough to do battle. But he had come silently up the passageway to meet them; and now he stood across their sight, not only from one burning wall to the other, but somehow in the walls themselves, and beyond them, bending away forever. Yet he was no mirage, but the Red Bull still, steaming and snuffling, shaking his blind head. His jaws champed over his breath with a terrible wallowing sound.

  Now. Now is the time, whether I work ruin or great good. This is the end of it. The magician rose slowly to his feet, ignoring the Bull, listening only to his cupped self, as to a seashell. But no power stirred or spoke in him; he could hear nothing but the far, thin howling of emptiness against his ear; as old King Haggard must have heard it waking and sleeping, and never another sound. It will not come to me. Nikos was wrong. I am what I seem.

  The Lady Amalthea had stepped back a pace from the Bull, but no more, and she was regarding him quietly as he pawed with his front feet and snorted great, rumbling, rainy blasts out of his vast nostrils. He seemed puzzled about her, and almost foolish. He did not roar. The Lady Amalthea stood in his freezing light with her head tipped back to see all of him. Without turning her head, she put her hand out to find Prince Lír’s hand.

  Good, good. There is nothing I can do, and I am glad of it. The Bull will let her by, and she will go away with Lír. It is as right as anything. I am only sorry about the unicorns. The prince had not yet noticed her offered hand, but in a moment he would turn and see, and touch her for the first time. He will never know what she has given him, but neither will she. The Red Bull lowered his head and charged.

  He came without warning, with no sound but the rip of his hooves; and if he had chosen, he could have crushed all four of them in that one silent onslaught. But he let them scatter before him and flatten themselves into the wrinkled walls; and he went by without harming them, though he might easily have horned them out of their shallow shelters like so many periwinkles. Supple as fire, he turned where there was no room to turn and met them again, his muzzle almost touching the ground, his neck swelling like a wave. It was then that he roared.

  They fled and he followed: not as swiftly as he had charged, but quickly enough to keep each one alone, friendless in the wild dark. The ground tore under their feet, and they cried out, but they could not even hear themselves. Every bellow of the Red Bull brought great slides of stones and earth shuddering down on them; and still they scrambled along like broken insects and still he came after them. Through his mad blaring they heard another sound: the deep whine of the castle itself as it strained at its roots, drumming like a flag in the wind of his wrath. And very faintly there drifted up the passageway the smell of the sea.

  He knows, he knows! I fooled him once that way, but not again. Woman or unicorn, he will hunt her into the sea this time, as he was bidden, and no magic of mine will turn him from it. Haggard has won.

  So the magician thought as he ran, all hope gone for the first time in his long, strange life. The way widened suddenly, and they emerged into a kind of grotto that could only have been the Bull’s den. The stench of his sleeping hung so thick and old here that it had a loathly sweetness about it; and the cave brooded gullet-red, as though his light had rubbed off on the walls and crusted in the cracks and crevices. Beyond lay the tunnel again, and the dim gleam of breaking water.

  The Lady Amalthea fell as irrevocably as a flower breaks. Schmendrick leaped to one side, wheeling to drag Molly Grue with him. They brought up hard against a split slab of rock, and there they crouched together as the Red Bull raged by without turning. But he came to a halt between one stride and the next; and the sudden stillness‌—‌broken only by the Bull’s breathing and the distant grinding of the sea‌—‌would have been absurd, but for the cause of it.

  She lay on her side with one leg bent beneath her. She moved slowly, but she made no sound. Prince Lír stood between her body and the Bull, weaponless, but with his hands up
as though they still held a sword and shield. Once more in that endless night, the prince said, “No.”

  He looked very foolish, and he was about to be trampled flat. The Red Bull could not see him, and would kill him without ever knowing that he had been in the way. Wonder and love and great sorrow shook Schmendrick the Magician then, and came together inside him, and filled him, filled him until he felt himself brimming and flowing with something that was none of these. He did not believe it, but it came to him anyway, as it had touched him twice before and left him more barren than he had been. This time, there was too much of it for him to hold: it spilled through his skin, sprang from his fingers and toes, welled up equally in his eyes and his hair and the hollows of his shoulders. There was too much to hold, too much ever to use; and still he found himself weeping with the pain of his impossible greed. He thought, or said, or sang, I did not know that I was so empty, to be so full.

  The Lady Amalthea lay where she had fallen, though now she was trying to rise, and Prince Lír still guarded her, raising his naked hands against the enormous shape that loomed over him. The tip of the prince’s tongue stuck out of one corner of his mouth, making him look as serious as a child taking something apart. Long years later, when Schmendrick’s name had become a greater name than Nikos’s and worse than afreets surrendered at the sound of it, he was never able to work the smallest magic without seeing Prince Lír before him, his eyes squinted up because of the brightness and his tongue sticking out.

  The Red Bull stamped again, and Prince Lír fell on his face and got up bleeding. The Bull’s rumble began, and the blind, bloated head started down, lowering like one half of the scales of doom. Lír’s valiant heart hung between the pale horns, as good as dripping from their tips, himself as good as smashed and scattered; and his mouth buckled a little, but he never moved. The sound of the Bull grew louder as the horns went down.