Status Updates From The Last Unicorn

"'You are quick for what you are,' Haggard said, 'but slow, I think, for what you were. It is said that love makes men swift and women slow. I will catch you at last if you love much more.'"

"The Lady Amalthea began to sing, and her voice balanced and hovered in the slow, cold air like another sort of bird.

And I grow old within
The prison of my person,
The shackles of my skin.
And I would run away
And beg from door to door--

She did not remember having heard the song before, but the words pinched and plucked at her like children, trying to drag her back to some place that they wanted to see again."

"They seldom heard the hunting roar of the Red Bull at night anymore, but when the hungering sound came to her ears, then she would be frightened, and the walls and the winter would grow up around them again, as though their spring were all of her making, her joy's gift to the prince."

"He seemed to have surrendered, not toward the king but to some far older, crueler enemy that had caught up with him at last, this winter in this place."

"Schmendrick fooled and juggled and flimflammed as the king bade him, hating it, and knowing that Haggard knew he hated it and took his pleasure thereby."

"So the winter whines and crept along, not toward any spring, but toward the brief, devouring summer of King Haggard's country. Life in the castle went on in the silence that fills a place where no one hopes for anything."

"Before she could speak, if she meant to, they heard footsteps below them on the winding stair, and King Haggard's veiled voice saying, 'I hear him singing. What business had he to be singing? Where is she? I knew he was singing of love before I ever heard him, for the very stones shuddered as they do when the Bull moves in the earth. Where is she?'"

"I would enter your sleep if I could, and guard you there, and slay the thing that hounds you, as I would if it had the courage to face me in fair daylight. But I cannot come in unless you dream of me."

okay vampire

"I wait for the one who will see through my seeming,
And I'll know when I love by the way I behave."

"'I wish you wanted something of me. It wouldn't have to be a valiant deed--just useful.'
Then the Lady Amalthea smiled at him for the first time since she had come to stay in King Haggard's castle.
It was a small smile, like the new moon, a slender bend of brightness on the edge of the unseen, but Prince Lír leaned toward it to be warm. He would have cupped his hands around her smile and breathed it brighter."

"'I remember what cannot have happened, and forget something that is happening to me now. People look at me as though I should know them, and I do know them in the dream, and always the fire draws nearer, though I am awake--'
'No more,' he said desperately. 'A witch built this castle, and to speak of nightmares here often makes them come true.'"

"'Lady,' Prince Lír broke in, 'my lady, by your leave, no more.' Her dream was darkening into shape between them, and suddenly he did not want to know what it meant. 'No more,' he said."

"'I cannot tell you all of it,' she said. 'It is never finished.' Fear came back to her eyes like a great stone falling into a pool: all was clouded and swirling, and quick shadows were rushing everywhere."

"If he had even blinked, she would have been gone; but he did not blink, and he held her, as he had learned to hold griffins and chimeras motionless with his steady gaze. Her bare feet wounded him deeper than any tusk or roving talon ever had, but he was a true hero."

"The magician sank back, his face gone as pale and crumpled as a washerwoman's fingers. 'It doesn't really matter, one way or another,' he said, almost to himself. 'She's no unicorn now, but a mortal woman--someone for that lout to sigh over and write poems about. Maybe Haggard won't find her out at all.'"

"'How can we leave, when she has come so far to find the other unicorns, and we know they are here?' Yet one small, tender, treacherous part of her was suddenly eager to be convinced of the quest's failure, and she knew it, and was angry at Schmendrick. 'What about your magic?'"

Never mess with a harpy