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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.
It was always spring in her forest, because she lived there, and she wandered all day among the great beech trees, keeping watch over the animals that lived in the ground and under bushes, in nests and caves, earths and treetops. Generation after generation, wolves and rabbits alike, they hunted and loved and had children and died, and as the unicorn did none of these things, she never grew tired of watching them.
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.
But suppose they are hiding together, somewhere far away? What if they are hiding and waiting for me?
Because men have seen no unicorns for a while does not mean they have all vanished.
“I, a horse? Is that what you take me for? Is that what you see?”
If men no longer know what they are looking at, there may well be unicorns in the world yet, unknown and glad of it.
“Say my name, then,” the unicorn begged him. “If you know my name, tell it to me.”
“Over the mountains of the moon,” the butterfly began, “down the Valley of the Shadow, ride, boldly ride.” Then he stopped suddenly and said in a strange voice, “No, no, listen, don’t listen to me, listen. You can find your people if you are brave. They passed down all the roads long ago, and the Red Bull ran close behind them and covered their footprints. Let nothing you dismay, but don’t be half-safe.” His wings brushed against the unicorn’s skin. “The Red Bull?” she asked. “What is the Red Bull?” The butterfly started to sing. “Follow me down. Follow me down. Follow me down. Follow me
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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.”
“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.”
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.”
The unicorn was gray and still. “There is magic on me,” she said. “Why did you not tell me?” “I thought you knew,” the magician answered gently. “After all, didn’t you wonder how it could be that they recognized you?” Then he smiled, which made him look a little older. “No, of course not. You never would wonder about that.” “There has never been a spell on me before,” the unicorn said. She shivered long and deep. “There has never been a world in which I was not known.”
Schmendrick was pushing back his sleeves. “Don’t worry about Rukh. I asked him another riddle, one that has no answer. He may never move again.”
“Okay, Schmendrick, I give up. Why is a raven like a writing desk?”
The unicorn did not see. She was out at the farthest cage, where the manticore growled and whimpered and lay flat. She touched the point of her horn to the lock, and was gone to the dragon’s cage without looking back. One after another, she set them all free—the satyr, Cerberus, the Midgard Serpent. Their enchantments vanished as they felt their freedom, and they leaped and lumbered and slithered away into the night, once more a lion, an ape, a snake, a crocodile, a joyous dog. None of them thanked the unicorn, and she did not watch them go.
“You must never run from anything immortal. It attracts their attention.”
“As for the Red Bull, I know less than I have heard, for I have heard too many tales and each argues with another. The Bull is real, the Bull is a ghost, the Bull is Haggard himself when the sun goes down. The Bull was in the land before Haggard, or it came with him, or it came to him. It protects him from raids and revolutions, and saves him the expense of arming his men. It keeps him a prisoner in his own castle. It is the devil, to whom Haggard has sold his soul. It is the thing he sold his soul to possess. The Bull belongs to Haggard. Haggard belongs to the Bull.”
“Do as you will,” he whispered to the magic. “Do as you will.”
The unicorn made no reply, and Schmendrick said, “She is the last. She is the last unicorn in the world.”
“We are journeying to King Haggard’s country, to find the Red Bull.”
Haggard’s castle was on fire, tossing wildly in a sudden cold wind. Molly said aloud, “But it has to be the sea, it’s supposed to be.” She thought that she could see a window, as far away as it was, and a gray face. Then the Red Bull came.
He was the color of blood, not the springing blood of the heart but the blood that stirs under an old wound that never really healed. A terrible light poured from him like sweat, and his roar started landslides flowing into one another. His horns were as pale as scars. For one moment the unicorn faced him, frozen as a wave about to break. Then the light of her horn went out, and she turned and fled. The Red Bull bellowed again, and leaped down after her.
Ripe, sharp cornstalks leaned together to make a hedge at her breast, but she trampled them down. Silver wheatfields turned cold and gummy when the Bull breathed on them; they dragged at her legs like snow. Still she ran, bleating and defeated, hearing the butterfly’s icy chiming: “They passed down all the roads long ago, and the Red Bull ran close behind them.” He had killed them all.
His nostrils wrinkled and rumbled as he searched for her, and the unicorn realized that the Red Bull was blind.
“I am no princess, no mortal, and I will not go. Nothing but evil has happened to me since I left my forest, and nothing but evil can have become of unicorns in this country. Give me my true shape again, and I will return to my trees, to my pool, to my own place. Your tale has no power over me. I am a unicorn. I am the last unicorn.”
Something rumbled somewhere deep and near. The tower trembled like a ship run aground, and answered with a low, stone wail. The three travelers cried out, scrambling to keep their feet on the shuddering stairs, but their guide pressed on without faltering or speaking. The younger man whispered earnestly to the Lady Amalthea, “It’s all right, don’t be afraid. It’s just the Bull.” The sound was not repeated.
“You are losing my interest,” the rustling voice interrupted him again, “and that is very dangerous. In a moment I will have forgotten you quite entirely, and will never be able to remember just what I did with you. What I forget not only ceases to exist, but never really existed in the first place.” As he said this, his eyes, like those of his son, turned to meet the Lady Amalthea’s eyes.
“What is the matter with your eyes? They are full of green leaves, crowded with trees and streams and small animals. Where am I? Why can I not see myself in your eyes?”
“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.”
“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.”
“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.”
