Peter Beagle - The Last Unicorn

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

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

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 Rather, the winter had sharpened her beauty until it invaded the beholder like a barbed arrow that could not be withdrawn.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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

She turned her face to Molly Grue, and her eyes were not the unicorn's eyes. They were lovely still, but in a way that had a name, as a human woman is beautiful. Their depth could be sounded and learned, and their degree of darkness was quite describable. Molly saw fear and loss and bewilderment when she looked into them, and herself; and nothing more.

"Unicorns," she said. "The Red Bull has driven them all away, all but you. You are the last unicorn. You came here to find the others, and to set them free. And so you will."

Slowly the deep, secret sea returned to the Lady Amalthea's eyes, filling them until they were as old and dark and unknowable and indescribable as the sea. Molly watched it happen, and was afraid, but she gripped the bowed shoulders even more tightly, as though her hands could draw despair like a lightning rod. And as she did so, there shivered in the scullery floor a sound she had heard before: a sound like great teeth — molars — grinding together. The Red Bull was turning in his sleep. I wonder if he dreams, Molly thought.

The Lady Amalthea said, "I must go to him. There is no other way, and no time to spare. In this form or my own, I must face him again, even if all my people are dead and there is nothing to be saved. I must go to him, before I forget myself forever, but I do not know the way, and I am lonely." The little cat switched his tail and made an odd sound that was neither a miaow nor a purr.

"I will go with you," Molly said. "I don't know the way down to the Bull either, but there must be one. Schmendrick will come too. He'll make the way for us if we can't find it."

"I hope for no help from the magician," the Lady Amalthea replied disdainfully. "I see him every day playing the fool for King Haggard, amusing him by his failures, by blundering at even the most trifling trick. He says that it is all he can do until his power speaks in him again. But it never will. He is no magician now, but the king's clown."

Molly's face suddenly hurt her, and she turned away to inspect the soup again. Answering past a sharpness in her throat, she said, "He is doing it for you. While you brood and mope and become someone else, he jigs and jests for Haggard, diverting him so that you may have time to find your folk, if they are to be found. But it cannot be long before the king tires of him, as he tires of all things, and casts him down to his dungeons, or some place darker. You do wrong to mock him."