Peter Beagle: The Last Unicorn

Inside the cage, it was darker than the evening, and cold stirred behind the bars like a live thing. Something moved in the cold, and the unicorn saw Elli — an old, bony, ragged woman who crouched in the cage rocking and warming herself before a fire that was not there. She looked so frail that the weight of the darkness should have crushed her, and so helpless and alone that the watchers should have rushed forward in pity to free her. Instead, they began to back silently away, for all the world as though Elli were stalking them. But she was not even looking at them. She sat in the dark and creaked a song to herself in a voice that sounded like a saw going through a tree, and like a tree getting ready to fall.

"She doesn't look like much, does she?" Rukh asked. "But no hero can stand before her, no god can wrestle her down, no magic can keep her out — or in, for she's no prisoner of ours. Even while we exhibit her here, she is walking among you, touching and taking. For Elli is Old Age."

The cold of the cage reached out to the unicorn, and wherever it touched her she grew lame and feeble. She felt herself withering, loosening, felt her beauty leaving her with her breath. Ugliness swung from her mane, dragged down her head, stripped her tail, gaunted her body, ate up her coat, and ravaged her mind with remembrance of what she had once been. Somewhere nearby, the harpy made her low, eager sound, but the unicorn would gladly have huddled in the shadow of her bronze wings to hide from this last demon. Elli's song sawed away at her heart.

The show was over. The crowd was stealing away, no one alone but in couples and fews and severals, strangers holding strangers' hands, looking back often to see if Elli were following. Rukh called plaintively, "Won't the gentlemen wait to hear the story about the satyr?" and sent a sour yowl of laughter chasing their slow flight. "Creatures of night, brought to light!" They struggled through the stiffening air, past the unicorn's cage, and on away, with Rukh's laughter yapping them home, and Elli still singing.

This is illusion, the unicorn told herself. This is illusion — and somehow raised a head heavy with death to stare deep into the dark of the last cage and see, not Old Age, but Mommy Fortuna herself, stretching and snickering and clambering to the ground with her old eerie ease. And the unicorn knew then that she had not become mortal and ugly at all, but she did not feel beautiful again. Perhaps that was illusion too, she thought wearily.

"I enjoyed that," Mommy Fortuna said to Rukh. "I always do. I guess I'm just stagestruck at heart."

"You better check on that damn harpy," Rukh said. "I could feel her working loose this time. It was like I was a rope holding her, and she was untying me." He shuddered and lowered his voice. "Get rid of her," he said hoarsely. "Before she scatters us across the sky like bloody clouds. She thinks about it all the time. I can feel her thinking about it."

"Fool, be still!" The witch's own voice was fierce with fear. "I can turn her into wind if she escapes, or into snow, or into seven notes of music. But I choose to keep her. No other witch in the world holds a harpy captive, and none ever will. I would keep her if I could do it only by feeding her a piece of your liver every day."

"Oh, that's nice," Rukh said. He sidled away from her. "What if she only wanted your liver?" he demanded. "What would you do then?"

"Feed her yours anyway," Mommy Fortuna said. "She wouldn't know the difference. Harpies aren't bright."

Alone in the moonlight, the old woman glided from cage to cage, rattling locks and prodding her enchantments as a housewife squeezes melons in the market. When she came to the harpy's cage the monster made a sound as shrill as a spear, and spread the horrid glory of its wings. For a moment it seemed to the unicorn that the bars of the cage began to wriggle and run like rain; but Mommy Fortuna crackled her twiggy fingers and the bars were iron again, and the harpy sank down on its perch, waiting.

"Not yet," the witch said. "Not yet." They stared at each other with the same eyes. Mommy Fortuna said, "You're mine. If you kill me, you're mine." The harpy did not move, but a cloud put out the moon.

"Not yet," Mommy Fortuna said, and she turned toward the unicorn's cage. "Well," she said in her sweet, smoky voice. "I had you frightened for a little while, didn't I?" She laughed with a sound like snakes hurrying through mud, and strolled closer.

"Whatever your friend the magician may say," she went on, "I must have some small art after all. To trick a unicorn into believing herself old and foul — that takes a certain skill, I'd say. And is it a twopenny spell that holds the Dark One prisoner? No other till I —"

The unicorn replied, "Do not boast, old woman. Your death sits in that cage and hears you."

"Yes," Mommy Fortuna said calmly. "But at least I know where it is. You were out on the road hunting for your own death." She laughed again. "And I know where that one is, too. But I spared you the finding of it, and you should be grateful for that."

Forgetting where she was, the unicorn pressed forward against the bars. They hurt her, but she did not draw back. "The Red Bull," she said. "Where can I find the Red Bull?"

Mommy Fortuna stepped very close to the cage. "The Red Bull of King Haggard," she muttered. "So you know of the Bull?" She showed two of her teeth. "Well, he'll not have you," she said. "You belong to me."

The unicorn shook her head. "You know better," she answered gently. "Free the harpy, while there is time, and set me free as well. Keep your poor shadows, if you will, but let us go."

The witch's stagnant eyes blazed up so savagely bright that a ragged company of luna moths, off to a night's revel, fluttered straight into them and sizzled into snowy ashes. "I'd quit show business first," she snarled. "Trudging through eternity, hauling my homemade horrors — do you think that was my dream when I was young and evil? Do you think I chose this meager magic, sprung of stupidity, because I never knew the true witchery? I play tricks with dogs and monkeys because I cannot touch the grass, but I know the difference. And now you ask me to give up the sight of you, the presence of your power. I told Rukh I'd feed his liver to the harpy if I had to, and so I would. And to keep you I'd take your friend Schmendrick, and I'd —" She raged herself to gibberish, and at last to silence.

"Speaking of livers," the unicorn said. "Real magic can never be made by offering up someone else's liver. You must tear out your own, and not expect to get it back. The true witches know that."

A few grains of sand rustled down Mommy Fortuna's cheek as she stared at the unicorn. All witches weep like that. She turned and walked swiftly toward her wagon, but suddenly she turned again and grinned her rubbly grin. "But I tricked you twice, anyway," she said. "Did you really think that those gogglers knew you for yourself without any help from me? No, I had to give you an aspect they could understand, and a horn they could see. These days, it takes a cheap carnival witch to make folk recognize a real unicorn. You'd do much better to stay with me and be false, for in this whole world only the Red Bull will know you when he sees you." She disappeared into her wagon, and the harpy let the moon come out again.

Schmendrick came back a little before dawn, slipping between the cages as silently as water. Only the harpy made a sound as he went by. "I couldn't get away any sooner," he told the unicorn. "She's set Rukh to watching me, and he hardly ever sleeps. But I asked him a riddle, and it always takes him all night to solve riddles. Next time, I'll tell him a joke and keep him busy for a week."