The Last Unicorn

by Peter S. Beagle

  Lír blushed, and actually tried to pull them to their feet. “Never mind that,” he mumbled, “never mind that. Who are you?” He peered in amazement from one face to the next. “I know you‌—‌I do know you‌—‌but how can it be?”

  “It is true, Your Majesty,” the first of the young men said happily. “We are indeed King Haggard’s men-at-arms‌—‌the same who served him for so many cold and weary years. We fled the castle after you disappeared into the clock, for the Red Bull was roaring, and all the towers were trembling, and we were afraid. We knew that the old curse must be coming home at last.”

  “A great wave took the castle,” said a second man-at-arms, “exactly as the witch foretold. I saw it go spilling down the cliff as slowly as snow, and why we did not go with it, I cannot tell.”

  “The wave parted to go around us,” another man said, “as I never saw any wave do. It was strange water, like the ghost of a wave, boiling with a rainbow light, and for a moment it seemed to me—” He rubbed his eyes and shrugged, and smiled helplessly. “I don’t know. It was like a dream.”

  “But what has happened to you all?” Lír demanded. “You were old men when I was born, and now you are younger than I am. What miracle is this?”

  The three who had spoken giggled and looked embarrassed, but the fourth man replied, “It is the miracle of meaning what we said. Once we told the Lady Amalthea that we would grow young again if she wished it so, and we must have been telling the truth. Where is she? We will go to her aid if it means facing the Red Bull himself.”

  King Lír said, “She is gone. Find my horse and saddle him. Find my horse.” His voice was harsh and hungry, and the men-at-arms scrambled to obey their new lord.

  But Schmendrick, standing behind him, said quietly, “Your Majesty, it may not be. You must not follow her.”

  The king turned, and he looked like Haggard. “Magician, she is mine!” He paused, and then went on in a gentler tone, close to pleading. “She has twice raised me up from death, and what will I be without her but dead for a third time?” He took Schmendrick by the wrists with a grip strong enough to powder bones, but the magician did not move. Lír said, “I am not King Haggard. I have no wish to capture her, but only to spend my life following after her‌—‌miles, leagues, even years behind‌—‌never seeing her, perhaps, but content. It is my right. A hero is entitled to his happy ending, when it comes at last.”

  But Schmendrick answered, “This is not the end, either for you or for her. You are the king of a wasted land where there has never been any king but fear. Your true task has just begun, and you may not know in your life if you have succeeded in it, but only if you fail. As for her, she is a story with no ending, happy or sad. She can never belong to anything mortal enough to want her.”

  Most strangely then, he put his arms around the young king and held him so for a time. “Yet be content, my lord,” he said in a low voice. “No man has ever had more of her grace than you, and no other will ever be blessed by her remembrance. You have loved her and served her‌—‌be content, and be king.”

  “But that is not what I want!” Lír cried. The magician answered not a word, but only looked at him. Blue eyes stared back into green; a face grown lean and lordly into one neither so handsome nor so bold. The king began to squint and blink, as though he were gazing at the sun, and it was not long before he lowered his eyes and muttered, “So be it. I will stay and rule alone over a wretched people in a land I hate. But I will have no more joy of my rule than poor Haggard ever had.”

  A small autumn cat with a crooked ear stalked out of some secret fold in the air and yawned at Molly. She caught him up against her face, and he tangled his paws in her hair. Schmendrick smiled, and said to the king, “We must leave you now. Will you come with us and see us in friendship to the edge of your domain? There is much between here and there that is worth your study‌—‌and I can promise you that there will be some sign of unicorns.”

  Then King Lír shouted for his horse again, and his men searched for it and found it; but there were none for Schmendrick and Molly. Yet when they came back with the king’s horse, they turned at his amazed stare and saw two more horses trailing docilely behind them: one black and one brown, and both already saddled and bridled. Schmendrick took the black for himself, and gave the brown horse to Molly.

  She was afraid of them at first. “Are they yours?” she asked him. “Did you make them? Can you do that now‌—‌just make things?” The king’s whisper echoed her wonder.

  “I found them,” the magician answered. “But what I mean by finding is not what you mean. Ask me no more.” He lifted her into the saddle, and then leaped up himself.

  So the three of them rode away, and the men-at-arms followed on foot. No one looked back, for there was nothing to see. But King Lír said once, without turning, “It’s strange to have grown to manhood in a place, and then to have it gone, and everything changed‌—‌and suddenly to be king. Was none of it real at all? Am I real, then?” Schmendrick made no reply.

  King Lír wished to go swiftly, but Schmendrick held them to a leisurely pace and a roundabout road. When the king fretted for speed, he was admonished to consider his walking men‌—‌though they, marvelously, never tired for all the length of the journey. But Molly soon understood that the magician was delaying in order to make Lír gaze long and closely at his realm. And to her own surprise, she discovered that the land was worth the look.

  For, very slowly, spring was coming to the barren country that had been Haggard’s. A stranger would not have noticed the change, but Molly could see that the withered earth was brightening with a greenness as shy as smoke. Squat, snaggly trees that had never yet bloomed were putting forth flowers in the wary way an army sends out scouts; long-dry streams were beginning to rustle in their beds, and small creatures were calling to one another. Smells slipped by in ribbons: pale grass and black mud, honey and walnuts, mint and hay and rotting applewood; and even the afternoon sunlight had a tender, sneezy scent that Molly would have known anywhere. She rode beside Schmendrick, watching the gentle advent of the spring and thinking of how it had come to her, late but lasting.

  “Unicorns have passed here,” she whispered to the magician. “Is that the cause, or is it Haggard’s fall and the Red Bull’s going? What is it, what is happening?”

  “Everything,” he answered her, “everything, all at once. It is not one springtime, but fifty; and not one or two great terrors flown away, but a thousand small shadows lifted from the land. Wait and see.”

  Speaking for Lír’s ear, he added, “Nor is this the first spring that ever has been in this country. It was a good land long ago, and it wants little but a true king to be so again. See how it softens before you.”

  King Lír said nothing, but his eyes roved left and right as he rode, and he could not but observe the ripening. Even the valley of Hagsgate, of evil memory, was stirring with all manner of wildflowers‌—‌columbine and harebell, lavender and lupine, foxglove and yarrow. The rutted footprints of the Red Bull were growing mellow with mallow.

  But when they came to Hagsgate, deep in the afternoon, a strange and savage sight awaited them. The plowed fields were woefully torn and ravaged, while the rich orchards and vineyards had been stamped down, leaving no grove or arbor standing. It was such shattering ruin as the Bull himself might have wrought; but it seemed to Molly Grue as though fifty years’ worth of foiled griefs had struck Hagsgate all at once, just as that many springtimes were at last warming the rest of the land. The trampled earth looked oddly ashen in the late light.

  King Lír said quietly, “What is this?”

  “Ride on, Your Majesty,” the magician replied. “Ride on.”

  The sun was setting as they passed through the overthrown gates of the town and guided their horses slowly down streets that were choked with boards and belongings and broken glass; with pieces of walls and windows, chimneys, chairs, kitchenware, roofs, bathtubs, beds, mantels, dressing tables. Every
house in Hagsgate was down; everything that could be broken was. The town looked as though it had been stepped on.

  The people of Hagsgate sat on their doorsteps wherever they could find them, considering the wreckage. They had always had the air of paupers, even in the midst of plenty, and real ruin made them appear almost relieved, and no whit poorer. They hardly noticed Lír when he rode up to them, until he said, “I am the king. What has befallen you here?”

  “It was an earthquake,” one man murmured dreamily, but another contradicted him, saying, “It was a storm, a nor’easter straight off the sea. It shook the town to bits, and hail came down like hooves.” Still another man insisted that a mighty tide had washed over Hagsgate; a tide as white as dogwood and heavy as marble, that drowned none and smashed everything. King Lír listened to them all, smiling grimly.

  “Listen,” he said when they were done. “King Haggard is dead, and his castle has fallen. I am Lír, the son of Hagsgate who was abandoned at birth in order to keep the witch’s curse from coming true, and this from happening.” He swept an arm around him at the burst houses. “Wretched, silly people, the unicorns have returned‌—‌the unicorns, that you saw the Red Bull hunting, and pretended not to see. It was they who brought the castle down, and the town as well. But it is your greed and your fear that have destroyed you.”

  The townsfolk sighed in resignation, but a middle-aged woman stepped forward and said with some spirit, “It all seems a bit unfair, my lord, begging your pardon. What could we have done to save the unicorns? We were afraid of the Red Bull. What could we have done?”

  “One word might have been enough,” King Lír replied. “You’ll never know now.”

  He would have wheeled his horse and left them there, but a feeble, roupy voice called to him, “Lír‌—‌little Lír‌—‌my child, my king!” Molly and Schmendrick recognized the man who came shuffling up with his arms open, wheezing and limping as though he were older than he truly was. It was Drinn.

  “Who are you?” the king demanded. “What do you want of me?”

  Drinn pawed at his stirrups, nuzzling his boots. “You don’t know me, my boy? No‌—‌how should you? How should I deserve to have you know me? I am your father‌—‌your poor old overjoyed father. I am the one who left you in the marketplace on that winter night long ago, and handed you over to your heroic destiny. How wise I was, and how sad for so long, and how proud I am now! My boy, my little boy!” He could not quite cry real tears, but his nose was running.

  Without a word, King Lír tugged at his horse’s reins, backing him out of the crowd. Old Drinn let his outstretched arms drop to his sides. “This is what it is to have children!” he screeched. “Ungrateful son, will you desert your father in the hour of his distress, when a word from your pet wizard would have set everything right again? Despise me if you will, but I have played my part in putting you where you are, and you dare not deny it! Villainy has its rights too.”

  Still the king would have turned away, but Schmendrick touched his arm and leaned near. “It’s true, you know,” he whispered. “But for him‌—‌but for them all‌—‌the tale would have worked out quite another way, and who can say that the ending would have been even as happy as this? You must be their king, and you must rule them as kindly as you would a braver and more faithful folk. For they are a part of your fate.”

  Then Lír lifted his hand to the people of Hagsgate, and they pushed and elbowed one another for silence. He said, “I must ride with my friends and keep them company for a way. But I will leave my men-at-arms here, and they will help you begin to build your town again. When I return, in a little time, I also will help. I will not begin to build my new castle until I see Hagsgate standing once more.”

  They complained bitterly that Schmendrick could do it all in a moment by means of his magic. But he answered them, “I could not, even if I would. There are laws that govern the wizard’s art, as laws command the seasons and the sea. Magic made you wealthy once, when all others in the land were poor; but your days of prosperity are ended, and now you must start over. What was wasteland in Haggard’s time shall grow green and generous again, but Hagsgate will yield a living exactly as miserly as the hearts that dwell there. You may plant your acres again, and raise up your fallen orchards and vineyards, but they will never flourish as they used to, never‌—‌until you learn to take joy in them, for no reason.”

  He gazed on the silent townsfolk with no anger in his glance, but only pity. “If I were you, I would have children,” he said; and then to King Lír, “How says your Majesty? Shall we sleep here tonight and be on our way at dawn?”

  But the king turned and rode away out of ruined Hagsgate as fast as he could spur. It was long before Molly and the magician came up with him, and longer still before they lay down to sleep.

  For many days they journeyed through King Lír’s domain, and each day they knew it less and delighted in it more. The spring ran on before them as swiftly as fire, clothing all that was naked and opening everything that had long ago shut up tight, touching the earth as the unicorn had touched Lír. Every sort of animal, from bears to black beetles, came sporting or shambling or scurrying along their way, and the high sky, that had been as sandy and arid as the soil itself, now blossomed with birds, swirling so thickly that it seemed like sunset most of the day. Fish bent and flickered in the whisking streams, and wildflowers raced up and down the hills like escaped prisoners. All the land was noisy with life, but it was the silent rejoicing of the flowers that kept the three travelers awake at night.

  The folk of the villages greeted them cautiously, and with little less dourness than they had shown when Schmendrick and Molly first came that way. Only the oldest among them had ever seen the spring before, and many suspected the rampaging greenness of being a plague or an invasion. King Lír told them that Haggard was dead and the Red Bull gone forever, invited them to visit him when his new castle was raised, and passed on. “They will need time to feel comfortable with flowers.” he said.

  Wherever they stopped, he left word that all outlaws were pardoned, and Molly hoped that the news would come to Captain Cully and his merry band. As it happened, it did, and all the merry band immediately abandoned the life of the greenwood, saving only Cully himself and Jack Jingly. Together they took up the trade of wandering minstrels and were reported to have become reasonably popular in the provinces.

  One night, the three slept at the farthest frontier of Lír’s kingdom, making their beds in high grass. The king would bid them farewell in the morning and return to Hagsgate. “It will be lonely,” he said in the darkness. “I would rather go with you, and not be king.”

  “Oh, you’ll get to like it,” Schmendrick replied. “The best young men of the villages will make their way to your court, and you will teach them to be knights and heroes. The wisest of ministers will come to counsel you, the most skillful musicians and jugglers and storytellers will come seeking your favor. And there will be a princess, in time‌—‌either fleeing her unspeakably wicked father and brothers, or seeking justice for them. Perhaps you will hear of her, shut away in a fortress of flint and adamant, her only companion a compassionate spider—”

  “I don’t care about that,” King Lír said. He was silent for so long that Schmendrick thought he had fallen asleep, but presently he said, “I wish I could see her once more, to tell her all my heart. She will never know what I really meant to say. You did promise that I would see her.”

  The magician answered him sharply. “I promised only that you would see some sign of unicorns, and so you have. Your realm is blessed beyond any land’s deserving because they have passed across it in freedom. As for you and your heart and the things you said and didn’t say, she will remember them all when men are fairy tales in books written by rabbits. Think of that, and be still.” The king spoke no more after that, and Schmendrick repented of his words.

  “She touched you twice,” he said in a little while. “The first touch was to bring you to l
ife again, but the second was for you.” Lír did not answer, and the magician never knew if he had heard or not.

  Schmendrick dreamed that the unicorn came and stood by him at moonrise. The thin night wind lifted and spilled her mane, and the moon shone on the snowflake crafting of her small head. He knew it was a dream, but he was happy to see her. “How beautiful you are,” he said. “I never really told you.” He would have roused the others, but her eyes sang him a warning as clearly as two frightened birds, and he knew that if he moved to call Molly and Lír he would wake himself, and she would vanish. So he said only, “They love you more, I think, though I do the best I can.”

  “That is why,” she said, and he could not tell what she was answering. He lay very still, hoping that he would remember the exact shape of her ears when he did wake in the morning. She said, “You are a true and mortal wizard now, as you always wished. Does it make you happy?”

  “Yes,” he replied with a quiet laugh. “I’m not poor Haggard, to lose my heart’s desire in the having of it. But there are wizards and wizards; there is black magic and white magic, and the infinite shades of gray between‌—‌and I see now that it is all the same. Whether I decide to be what men would call a wise and good magician‌—‌aiding heroes, thwarting witches, wicked lords, and unreasonable parents; making rain, curing woolsorter’s disease and the mad staggers, getting cats down from trees‌—‌or whether I choose the retorts full of elixirs and essences, the powders and herbs and banes, the padlocked books of gramarye bound in skins better left unnamed, the muddy mist darkening in the chamber and the sweet voice lisping therein‌—‌why, life is short, and how many can I help or harm? I have my power at last, but the world is still too heavy for me to move, though my friend Lír might think otherwise.” And he laughed again in his dream, a little sadly.