The Last Unicorn

by Peter S. Beagle

The rain faded as he spoke, the sky began to clear, and the wet grass glowed like the inside of a seashell.

Men have to have heroes, but no man can ever be as big as the need, and so a legend grows around a grain of truth, like a pearl.

Then she would run until morning to ease the ache; swifter than rain, swift as loss, racing to catch up with the time when she had known nothing at all but the sweetness of being herself.

“Any woman can weep without tears,” she answered over her shoulder, “and most can heal with their hands. It depends on the wound. She is a woman, Your Highness, and that’s riddle enough.”

the important thing is for you to understand that it doesn’t matter whether the clock strikes ten next, or seven, or fifteen o’clock. You can strike your own time, and start the count anywhere. When you understand that—then any time at all will be the right time for you.”

Yet even when the wonder blossomed where she had been—sea-white, sea-white, as boundlessly beautiful as the Bull was mighty—still the Lady Amalthea clung

And in the whiteness, of the whiteness, flowering in the tattered water, their bodies aching with the streaked marble hollows of the waves, their manes and tails and the fragile beards of the males burning in the sunlight,