The Last Unicorn

by Peter S. Beagle

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.

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.

“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.”

“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.”

If men no longer know what they are looking at, there may well be unicorns in the world yet, unknown and glad of it.

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

“Farewell,” she said. “I hope you hear many more songs”—which was the best way she could think of to say good-bye to a butterfly.

“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.

“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.”

What is sea-born dies on land, Soft is trod upon. What is given burns the hand— What is gone is gone.

“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.”

She burned overhead, and the unicorn saw herself reflected on the harpy’s bronze breast and felt the monster shining from her own body. So they circled one another like a double star, and under the shrunken sky there was nothing real but the two of them.

“You must never run from anything immortal. It attracts their attention.”

“I was looking for my people,” the unicorn said. “Have you seen them, magician? They are wild and sea-white, like me.”

Where all the hills are lean as knives, And nothing grows, not leaves nor lives; Where hearts are sour as boiled beer— Haggard is the ruler here.

“All for one and one for all, united we stand, divided we fall.”

The sea is greater than anyone’s greed.”

Let me tell you my troubles.” Easy tears suddenly glittered in his eyes. “To begin with, my mother never liked me. She pretended, but I knew—”

This fucking weirdo omfg

Whatever can die is beautiful—more beautiful than a unicorn, who lives forever, and who is the most beautiful creature in the world. Do you understand me?”

“I am what I am. I would tell you what you want to know if I could, for you have been kind to me. But I am a cat, and no cat anywhere ever gave anyone a straight answer.”

The Red Bull gathered them for me, one at a time, and I bade him drive each one into the sea. What better place could there be to keep unicorns, and what other cage could hold them?

that’s the way life was meant to be. You’re supposed to be too late for some things.

“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.”

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.”

He thought, or said, or sang, I did not know that I was so empty, to be so full.

Suddenly the unicorn screamed. It was not at all like the challenging bell with which she had first met the Red Bull; it was an ugly, squawking wail of sorrow and loss and rage, such as no immortal creature ever gave.

Molly looked closely at him, as she had not done for a long time, and she saw that he had come at last to his power and his beginning. She could not say how she knew, for no wild glory burned about him, and no recognizable omens occurred in his honor, just at that moment. He was Schmendrick the Magician, as ever—and yet somehow it was for the first time.

She turned and vanished; but Molly Grue saw their voices thump home into her like arrows, and even more than she wished the unicorn back, she wished that she had not called.

She rode beside Schmendrick, watching the gentle advent of the spring and thinking of how it had come to her, late but lasting.

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.”

I have been mortal, and some part of me is mortal yet. I am full of tears and hunger and the fear of death, though I cannot weep, and I want nothing, and I cannot die. I am not like the others now, for no unicorn was ever born who could regret, but I do. I regret.”

“My people are in the world again. No sorrow will live in me as long as that joy—save one, and I thank you for that, too. Farewell, good magician. I will try to go home.”