The Unicorn Hunters Quotes

“the brave do not tolerate bondage forever. And it is the work of a whole nation to save itself.”
― Katherine Arden, The Unicorn Hunters

“I lived in France for a year at age sixteen, and went seven months of that year, with a teenager’s charming obliviousness, before I realized that I was living not an hour from that forest of Brocéliande. I hadn’t, up until that point, known it was real. It existed in my heart as a place of fantasy, unicorn-haunted and faerie-ruled.
Naturally, I made straight for it, as quickly as I could work out how to get there.
I met no unicorns on that day, or on any other day I spent beneath the boughs of Brocéliande. But at least it is a forest to make you believe in them. Brocéliande is a place of rills and secret water, boasting every shade of green and every sound of stillness, complete with a medieval castle and a mysterious abbey standing stark beside a great still lake, with rings of standing stones half-hid in the depths just to complete the air of enchantment.”
― Katherine Arden, The Unicorn Hunters

“Spread before them was a white causeway, paved with oyster shells that glimmered in the last of the moonlight. The water lapped it on either side, and beyond was a walled city, with the sea moving lazy as a loving hand against the base of its walls.
It looked like a heap of stars rising massively toward a crown of gold-tipped towers, lit as though for a festival night. Windows and streets shone, fires flickered in the tiers of the spiraling street, perfect as jewel-work. Even in that fading light, she could make out colors, as though those firelit roofs contained hidden places: gardens, perhaps, or painted chapels.
For a breath she was sure she dreamed.
Then the smell of salt and bladder-wrack and something fishy came to her nose and faintly she saw the masts of ships, a black forest starred with lanterns, in the sea beyond the walls. It was real. It was all piercingly real. This was Keris, the drowned jewel of Brittany. But it was not drowned. It stood shining in the Lost Lands, where no man had seen it for a thousand years. It was larger than Nantes, and more beautiful.
It was the loveliest thing she had ever seen.”
― Katherine Arden, The Unicorn Hunters

“She glimmered like foxfire in their eyes. Her gown was sea-blue as her blazon had been, sewn with diamonds. But it was an unknown style of gown, open in front, with long, bell-shaped sleeves and an underskirt of silver. Her hair was not up in a crespine but plaited down her back, loosely veiled, and they could see more diamonds, in ropes, woven through. She wore the fillet of unicorn hair.”
― Katherine Arden, The Unicorn Hunters

“Not a maiden sacrifice now, she thought, but an aspiring queen, who would preserve the unicorn’s grace and with it the way into the land of twilight.
In a breathless instant she thought all these things.
In a breathless instant a legend was born.”
― Katherine Arden, The Unicorn Hunters

“She raised her eyes to the edge of the wood. "Lady of the forest, you have come to me twice before," Anne said. "You have waited for me and I did not know why. But now I think I know. Will you come again?"
Gralon Meur drew in a sharp breath.
The unicorn stepped soundlessly out from between the trees, with snow tangled in her mane, a cold winter light like silver-gilt on the horn. Then she shook the snow away and was in the same dawn as they. She arched her neck.
"Lady," whispered Gralon Meur. He was silent a long moment, like a man dazzled or dreaming.”
― Katherine Arden, The Unicorn Hunters

“The courage of the body— the courage of a tree-climbing child or a hunter coursing neck-or-nothing after a stag— had never been Anne’s. Isabeau had always been bolder in that way. When she was old enough, perhaps she would pursue the stag from the front of the galloping pack, heedless of danger, reveling in her speed and skill.
Anne preferred facing dangers that could be bested with the mind alone.
But some courage is born of wild necessity.”
― Katherine Arden, The Unicorn Hunters

“Louis had seen renderings of unicorns, of course. Deer-headed, goat-footed, a lion’s tail, a curling mane. But a drawing could not capture this. A tapestry could not render it.
A stillness louder than cries of wonder fell over the group.
The unicorn walked as though in a summer’s day, with the light pouring through the horn, though there was only moonlight. Though it was dark, the white of her coat seemed to carry faint color, a trace of pink, lavender, green. An absent sun glowed on her skin.”
― Katherine Arden, The Unicorn Hunters

“You will die here if you cannot get out. The unicorn cannot make its way into the houses of men."
"What?" whispered Anne.
"The unicorn, girl. Why do you think she came to you in Brocéliande? Gave you a piece of herself, so she could find you again? For your pretty mortal virtues— no. They guard the boundary, do the unicorns, and they do not favor virtue, they favor people who can help them. She saw you and knew you, and I think she might save you from this folly of dragon's blood. If you will only go outside."”
― Katherine Arden, The Unicorn Hunters

“A sea-drake had appeared on dry land and answered the commands of the duchess of Brittany. The duchess had touched a unicorn. She was dangerous in ways that Marguerite didn’t understand.”
― Katherine Arden, The Unicorn Hunters

“The cold eyes watched her and she saw an intelligence. Like the unicorn. Perhaps, like the unicorn, it slipped dreamlike between the mortal world and the Lost Lands.
She stepped forward and took hold of the spear and pulled it from the sea-dragon’s mouth. It had not gone in so deeply. The blood flowed out suddenly in a cold silver wave, smelling of the sea. Ichor covered her palm, her silk sleeve. Spattered her face. She tasted it, felt it sparkling in her eyelashes. She let the spear fall.
The serpent flicked its tongue at her again, and when she focused her eyes, the shadows had become a terrible jumble. As though the blood on her skin had opened her senses to a truth her mind could not grasp: dawn and day and dusk and night all tangled together. There were layers in the world.
“Can you go home?” she whispered.
How had the light been when the monster came? Silver-lucent, like that upon the noonday sea. That light was still there, mixed with the rest, clear to her suddenly opened eyes.
It set the sea-drake glimmering. Anne smelled salt. All around her was the silver of the sea, another daylight altogether. It felt as though she could take one step and the rest of it would be real: cold water and wind; she would be somewhere else. Her heart was racing. A spike of pain went through her head.
“Go,” Anne whispered to the sea-drake, covered in its blood.
It turned and plunged back into the light of its own day. A gout of water mingled with the blood on her, and when the wave subsided, the sea-drake was gone.
Anne's knees gave way, her dress drenched in silver blood and the world wavering like water in her hazy vision, a wild mingling of daylight and starlight and winter shadows, as though all the days and nights of the world were happening at once and she had just been granted the eyes to see them.”
― Katherine Arden, The Unicorn Hunters

“Where is the unicorn?” demanded La Trémoille again. “The hounds lost the scent.”
“It fled,” said Anne.
Tell them the rest? Yes. For no one in Christendom will ever wonder why I tarried in Brocéliande if I emerge with a lock of a unicorn’s mane.
In her open hand it lay like raw silk, loosely knotted, luminous with a moonstone light. Murmurs became exclamations. Henri whistled low between his teeth. She said, “The unicorn is a holy creature. It gave me a lock of its mane and I have put my hands upon it. I do not think it right that we should kill it.”
La Trémoille said, “God has given us all the beasts of the field to kill.”
Almost she said, Just as he gave you my lands to pillage?”
― Katherine Arden, The Unicorn Hunters

“Water streamed from Anne’s skirt and the unicorn’s mane, flicked like sparks from her horn.
“You must go,” Anne said.
The unicorn didn’t move.
“What is it you want of me?” Anne hardly recognized her own voice. She was soaked and shivering.
As if she’d been waiting for the question, the unicorn stepped forward. The horn came to a point like a lance without a coronel. Jonquil shied back. Anne slid down from the saddle.
The unicorn laid her neck lightly across Anne’s shoulder. She smelled like wild animal and unfamiliar flowers and even, a little, of the sea.
“What do you want of me?” Anne asked again, very softly now.
The unicorn lowered her head so that the mass of her mane filled Anne’s fingers. After a bewildered moment, Anne got out her belt-knife and cut a long, thick lock of it. The unicorn didn’t move. The hair lay sparkling in her palm. She sheathed her knife, reached to touch the horn. She expected it to be cold, but it was silky and warm.”
― Katherine Arden, The Unicorn Hunters

“The beast's neck seemed too slender to support the weight of the horn, as long as a broadsword and glowing like fine-carved alabaster. The eyes were dark as winter water, the coat raw white silk, stretched tautly over her panting ribs. She was like the first snow of a bright winter, unsullied and charming.
The unicorn saw Anne and raised her head, nostrils flared red like a horse's. Anne realized that the glow in the horn was not some inner light. It was a strong sunlight shining through the ivory. But what sun? That day was all ragged clouds and mist, veiled still after that night's storm. She was reminded of anaon, of a room with impossible moonlight.”
― Katherine Arden, The Unicorn Hunters

“If years on her wobbling throne had taught her one thing, it was that the power of good governance was beyond most men's gifts, however high their birth.”
― Katherine Arden, The Unicorn Hunters

“The light was gray near the windows, rosy near the fire, wavering in places from the interplay of rain and firelight.”
― Katherine Arden, The Unicorn Hunters

“The bells overhead rang loud enough to shake the raindrops crooked”
― Katherine Arden, The Unicorn Hunters

“In those days, Keris was at its height, an enchanted city of gold and sorcery. They kept not a fleet of ships but rather a fleet of sea-dragons, who went all around the world, and brought back wonders. And they also bred horses, whose sires were gifts of the korriganed, for Queen Malgven to ride. And these horses could run upon the sea as swiftly as destriers run upon the earth.”
― Katherine Arden, The Unicorn Hunters

“To hunt a unicorn required two things. The first was a virgin of high birth and unimpeachable virtue, for bait. And the other was a hunt so extravagant that the mere dazzle of it would tempt the vain beast near.”
― Katherine Arden, The Unicorn Hunters

“All around the table, voices seemed to drop; the name Brocéliande itself breathed out dark mystery. Men told wild tales of that ancient forest. That the fair-folk, the korriganed, had lived long in its shadows. That an unwary traveler might stray into the Lost Lands, only to vanish forever, or return a century hence, still young while his whole world had spun out from under his feet. And they also did say, with more force than mere rumor, that Brocéliande was one of the last, best places for men to hunt unicorns.
A unicorn was the noblest and rarest prey in Christendom. The fire-drakes, if ever they had lived, had not been seen in living memory, and one could not hunt sea-drakes. Sea-drakes hunted men. At least, that's what seamen said when ships did not come back. But now and again, one heard credible tales of a unicorn.”
― Katherine Arden, The Unicorn Hunters

“At the heart of the crowd walked a girl with merry eyes, a floating violet in a sea of cut-velvet and silk hose, cloth-of-silver and the smell of myrrh, concentrating as she held her skirt clear of puddles. This was Anne, duchess regnant of Brittany, her hair caught back in a diadem and a pearl-studded crespine, though she wore no other jewels. They had all been sold to pay her garrisons.”
― Katherine Arden, The Unicorn Hunters