The Last Unicorn

by Peter S. Beagle

“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.”

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.

The sight of men filled her with an old, slow, strange mixture of tenderness and terror.

Would you call this age a good one for unicorns?” “No, but I wonder if any man before us ever thought his time a good time for unicorns.

What could I ever search for in the world, except this again?”

Unicorns are not meant to make choices.

“I’ve never really understood,” the unicorn mused as the man picked himself up, “what you dream of doing with me, once you’ve caught me.”

Fish will come walking out of the sea, Sooner than you will come back to me.

It’s not much of a job, but I’ve had worse, and I’ll have better one day. This is not the end.”

What is plucked will grow again, What is slain lives on, What is stolen will remain— What is gone is gone.

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

“It’s a rare man who is taken for what he truly is,” he said. “There is much misjudgment in the world.

I’ll change your heart into green grass, and all you love into a sheep. I’ll turn you into a bad poet with dreams.

The unicorn whispered, “Weaver, freedom is better, freedom is better,” but the spider fled unhearing up and down her iron loom.

The magic knows what it wants to do, he thought, bouncing as the horse dashed across a creek. But I never know what it knows. Not at the right time, anyway. I’d write it a letter, if I knew where it lived.

“Unicorns are for beginnings,” he said, “for innocence and purity, for newness. Unicorns are for young girls.” Molly was stroking the unicorn’s throat as timidly as though she were blind. She dried her grimy tears on the white mane. “You don’t know much about unicorns,” she said.

Their villages lay bald as bones between knifelike hills where nothing grew, and they themselves had hearts unmistakably as sour as boiled beer. Their children stoned strangers into town, and their dogs chased them out again.

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.

She was treated politely and referred to the proper authorities, whereupon she flew into a fury and screamed that in our eagerness to make no enemies at all, we had now made two.”

“I was born mortal, and I have been immortal for a long, foolish time, and one day I will be mortal again; so I know something that a unicorn cannot know. Whatever can die is beautiful—more beautiful than a unicorn, who lives forever, and who is the most beautiful creature in the world.

For only to a magician is the world forever fluid, infinitely mutable, and eternally new.

If I danced with my feet As I dance in my dreaming, As graceful and gleaming As Death in disguise— Oh, that would be sweet, But then would I hunger To be ten years younger, Or wedded, or wise?

“When you are old, anything that does not disturb you is a comfort. Cold and darkness and boredom long ago lost their sharp edges for us, but warmth, singing, spring—no, they would all be disturbances.

“If she had touched me,” he said very softly, “I would have been hers and not my own, not ever again.

I am a king’s daughter, And I grow old within The prison of my person, The shackles of my skin.

“I have time,” the skull replied reflectively. “It’s really not so good to have time. Rush, scramble, desperation, this missed, that left behind, those others too big to fit into such a small space—that’s the way life was meant to be. You’re supposed to be too late for some things. Don’t worry about it.”

“When I was alive, I believed—as you do—that time was at least as real and solid as myself, and probably more so. I said ‘one o’clock’ as though I could see it, and ‘Monday’ as though I could find it on the map; and I let myself be hurried along from minute to minute, day to day, year to year, as though I were actually moving from one place to another. 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.”

But 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.”

“I love whom I love,” Prince Lír repeated firmly. “You have no power over anything that matters.”

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

For, very slowly, spring was coming to the barren country that had been Haggard’s. A stranger would not have noticed the change, but Molly could see that the withered earth was brightening with a greenness as shy as smoke. Squat, snaggly trees that had never yet bloomed were putting forth flowers in the wary way an army sends out scouts; long-dry streams were beginning to rustle in their beds, and small creatures were calling to one another. Smells slipped by in ribbons: pale grass and black mud, honey and walnuts, mint and hay and rotting applewood; and even the afternoon sunlight had a tender, sneezy scent that Molly would have known anywhere. She rode beside Schmendrick, watching the gentle advent of the spring and thinking of how it had come to her, late but lasting.

I do not think that I will ever see you again, but I will try to do what would please you if you knew.

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.”