THE LAST UNICORN

"I don't care about that," King Lнr said. He was silent for so long that Schmendrick thought he had fallen asleep, but presently he said, "I wish I could see her once more, to tell her all my heart. She will never know what I really meant to say. You did promise that I would see her."

The magician answered him sharply. "I promised only that you would see some sign of unicorns, and so you have. Your realm is blessed beyond any land's deserving because they have passed across it in freedom. 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. Think of that, and be still." The king spoke no more after that, and Schmendrick repented of his words.

"She touched you twice," he said in a little while. "The first touch was to bring you to life again, but the second was for you." Lнr did not answer, and the magician never knew if he had heard or not.

Schmendrick dreamed that the unicorn came and stood by him at moonrise. The thin night wind lifted and spilled her mane, and the moon shone on the snowflake crafting of her small head. He knew it was a dream, but he was happy to see her. "How beautiful you are," he said. "I never really told you." He would have roused the others, but her eyes sang him a warning as clearly as two frightened birds, and he knew that if he moved to call Molly and Lнr he would wake himself, and she would vanish. So he said only, "They love you more, I think, though I do the best I can."

"That is why," she said, and he could not tell what she was answering. He lay very still, hoping that he would remember the exact shape of her ears when he did wake in the morning. She said, "You are a true and mortal wizard now, as you always wished. Does it make you happy?"

"Yes," he replied with a quiet laugh. "I'm not poor Haggard, to lose my heart's desire in the having of it. But there are wizards and wizards; there is black magic and white magic, and the infinite shades of gray between – and I see now that it is all the same. "Whether I decide to be what men would call a wise and good magician – aiding heroes, thwarting witches, wicked lords, and unreasonable parents; making rain, curing woolsorter's disease and the mad staggers, getting cats down from trees – or whether I choose the retorts full of elixirs and essences, the powders and herbs and banes, the padlocked books of gramarye bound in skins better left u

The unicorn said, "That is true. You are a man, and men can do nothing that makes any difference." But her voice was strangely slow and burdened. She asked, "Which will you choose?"

The magician laughed for a third time. "Oh, it will be the kind magic, undoubtedly, because you would like it more. I do not think that I will ever see you again, but I will try to do what would please you if you knew. And you – where will you be for the rest of my life? I thought you would have gone home to your forest by now."

She turned a little away from him, and the sudden starlight of her shoulders made all his talk of magic taste like sand in his throat. Moths and midges and other night insects too small to be anything in particular came and danced slowly around her bright horn, and this did not make her appear foolish, but them most wise and lovely as they celebrated her. Molly's cat rubbed in and out between her forefeet.

"The others have gone," she said. "They are scattered to the woods they came from, no two together, and men will not catch sight of them much more easily than if they were still in the sea. I will go back to my forest too, but I do not know if I will live contentedly there, or anywhere. 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 ca

Schmendrick hid his face like a child, though he was a great magician. "I am sorry, I am sorry," he mumbled into his wrist. "I have done you evil, as Nikos did to the other unicorn, with the same good will, and I can no more undo it than he could. Mommy Fortuna and King Haggard and the Red Bull together were kinder to you than I."

But she answered him gently, saying, "My people are in the world again. No sorrow will live in me as long as that joy – save one, and I thank you for that, too. Farewell, good magician. I will try to go home."

She made no sound when she left him, but he was awake, and the crook-eared cat was miaowing lonesomely. Turning his head, he saw the moonlight trembling in the open eyes of King Lнr and Molly Grue. The three of them lay awake till morning, and nobody said a word.

At dawn, King Lнr rose up and saddled his horse. Before he mounted, he said to Schmendrick and Molly, "I would like it if you came to see me one day." They assured him that they would, but still he lingered with them, twisting the dangling reins about his fingers.

"I dreamed about her last night," he said.

Molly cried, "So did I!" and Schmendrick opened his mouth, and then closed it again.

King Lнr said hoarsely, "By our friendship, I beg you – tell me what she said to you." His hands gripped one hand each of theirs, and his clutch was cold and painful.

Schmendrick gave him a weak smile. "My lord, I so rarely remember my dreams. It seems to me that we spoke solemnly of silly things, as one does – grave nonsense, empty and evanescent -" The king let go of his hand and turned his half-mad gaze on Molly Grue.

"I'll never tell," she said, a little frightened, but flushing oddly. "I remember, but I'll never tell anyone, if I die for it – not even you, my lord." She was not looking at him as she spoke, but at Schmendrick.

King Lнr let her hand fall as well, and he swung himself into the saddle so fiercely that his horse reared up across the sunrise, bugling like a stag. But Lнr kept his seat and glared down at Molly and Schmendrick with a face so grim and scored and sunken that he might well have been king as long as Haggard before him.

"She said nothing to me," he whispered. "Do you understand? She said nothing to me, nothing at all."

Then his face softened, as even King Haggard's face had gone a little gentle when he watched the unicorns in the sea. For that moment he was again the young prince who had liked to sit with Molly in the scullery. He said, "She looked at me. In my dream, she looked at me and never spoke."

He rode away without good-by, and they watched after him until the hills hid him: a straight, sad horseman, going home to be king. Molly said at last, "Oh, the poor man. Poor Lнr."

"He has not fared so badly," the magician answered. "Great heroes need great sorrows and burdens, or half their greatness goes u

By and by, he put her as far from him as his fingers' ends and asked her, "Now will you tell me what it was she said to you?" But Molly Grue only laughed and shook her head till her hair came down, and she was more beautiful than the Lady Amalthea. The magician said, "Very well. Then I'll find the unicorn again, and perhaps she will tell me." And he turned calmly to whistle up their steeds.

She said no word while he saddled his horse, but when he began on her own she put her hand on his arm. "Do you think – do you truly hope that we may find her? There was something I forgot to say."