The Last Unicorn

by Peter S. Beagle

To the memory of Dr. Olfert Dapper, who saw a wild unicorn in the Maine woods in 1673, and for Robert Nathan, who has seen one or two in Los Angeles

I always made sure I had two paperbacks in my backpack. They weren’t the book I was reading—THAT book was always in my hand or my coat pocket. The books in my backpack were for when I finished that one. That way, I always had a backup

“We are raised to honor all the wrong explorers and discoverers—thieves planting flags, murderers carrying crosses. Let us at last praise the colonizers of dreams.”

But in my experience, an introduction rarely stops at that point. More often you get someone desperate to make sure you read the book in the proper way. Which is to say, the way they read it. And before you know it, you’re knee-deep in their hot take about how obviously the whole thing is an attempt to recontextualize Heidegger’s phenomenology through a Marxist lens or something like that. Personally, I find this as appealing as the thought of someone chewing up my lunch for me before I eat it.

A story might come from a book, but the story doesn’t live there. The story lives in you. And that version of the story is different than any other version in the world because of what you bring. Because of what you think and feel. That’s unique. It’s rare and wonderful. So there. Books aren’t ramen. You heard it here first.

The sight of men filled her with an old, slow, strange mixture of tenderness and terror. She never let one see her if she could help it,

She almost turned back then; but instead she took a deep breath of the wood’s air that still drifted to her, and held it in her mouth like a flower, as long as she could.

Time had always passed her by in her forest, but now it was she who passed through time as she traveled.

“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.”

“It’s a rare man who is taken for what he truly is,” he said. “There is much misjudgment in the world. Now I knew you for a unicorn when I first saw you, and I know that I am your friend. Yet you take me for a clown, or a clod, or a betrayer, and so must I be if you see me so. The magic on you is only magic and will vanish as soon as you are free, but the enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes. We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream.

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

“How terrible it would be if all my people had been turned human by well-meaning wizards—exiled, trapped in burning houses.

“But you could never have granted my true wish.” There it is, the unicorn thought, feeling the first spidery touch of sorrow on the inside of her skin. That is how it will be to travel with a mortal, all the time.

“Saw a unicorn today,” the blue jay said as he lit. “You didn’t see any supper, I notice,” his wife replied coldly. “I hate a man who talks with his mouth empty.” “Baby, a unicorn!” The jay abandoned his casual air and hopped up and down on the branch.

What ails ye, that ye sigh so deep? Is it for the loss of your lady fair? Or are ye but scabbit in your greep?’ ‘I am nae scabbit, whatever that means, And my greep is as well as a greep may be,

He tried to explain to the oak that love was generous precisely because it could never be immortal,

Schmendrick drew near to listen to the answer, though he stayed on his side of the unicorn. He never walked on Molly’s side.

“I know the birth of a hero when I see it,” he said. “Omens and portents, snakes in the nursery. Had it not been for the cats, I might have chanced the child, but they made it so obvious, so mythological. What was I to do—knowingly harbor Hagsgate’s doom?”

‘My son, your ineptitude is so vast, your incompetence so profound, that I am certain you are inhabited by greater power than I have ever known. Unfortunately, it seems to be working backward at the moment, and even I can find no way to set it right. It must be that you are meant to find your own way to reach your power in time;

Whatever can die is beautiful—more beautiful than a unicorn,

you have performed whatever miracle I required of you, and all it has done has been to spoil my taste for miracles.

It must be that great power cannot give me whatever it is that I really want. A master magician has not made me happy. I will see what an incompetent one can do.

Prince Lír took him by the arm. “Come on, old man,” he said, not unkindly. “This way out, granddad. I’ll write you a reference.”

“If she had touched me,” he said very softly, “I would have been hers and not my own, not ever again. I wanted her to touch me, but I could not let her. No cat will. We let human beings caress us because it is pleasant enough and calms them—but not her. The price is more than a cat can pay.”

Like everyone else, I lived in a house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year’s Days, and I never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. Now I know that I could have walked through the walls.”

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.” The Lady Amalthea did not answer him. Schmendrick asked, “Why not? Who says so?” “Heroes,” Prince Lír replied sadly. “Heroes know about order, about happy endings—heroes know that some things are better than others.

Woman or unicorn, he will hunt her into the sea this time, as he was bidden, and no magic of mine will turn him from it.

I did not know that I was so empty, to be so full.

The tip of the prince’s tongue stuck out of one corner of his mouth, making him look as serious as a child taking something apart. Long years later, when Schmendrick’s name had become a greater name than Nikos’s and worse than afreets surrendered at the sound of it, he was never able to work the smallest magic without seeing Prince Lír before him,

His voice was the end of her: she vanished when he cried her name, as though he had crowed for day.

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.

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.

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.”

When I was four years old, my mother—who was an elementary school teacher—brought me into her classroom one day and I wound up telling her students a story about unicorns. When I was done, according to her, I very formally said to all of them, “Thank you. I will come back and tell you more about unicorns someday.” I like to think that when I wrote The Last Unicorn, two decades later, I was finally keeping that promise.