THE LAST UNICORN

The unicorn began to walk toward the harpy's cage. Schmendrick the Magician, tiny and pale, kept opening and closing his mouth at her, and she knew what he was shrieking, though she could not hear him. "She will kill you, she will kill you! Run, you fool, while she's still a prisoner! She will kill you if you set her free!" But the unicorn walked on, following the light of her horn, until she stood before Celaeno, the Dark One.

For an instant the icy wings hung silent in the air, like clouds, and the harpy's old yellow eyes sank into the unicorn's heart and drew her close. "I will kill you if you set me free," the eyes said. "Set me free."

The unicorn lowered her head until her horn touched the lock of the harpy's cage. The door did not swing open, and the iron bars did not thaw into starlight. But the harpy lifted her wings, and the four sides of the cage fell slowly away and down, like the petals of some great flower waking at night. And out of the wreckage the harpy bloomed, terrible and free, screaming, her hair swinging like a sword. The moon withered and fled.

The unicorn heard herself cry out, not in terror but in wonder, "Oh, you are like me!" She reared joyously to meet the harpy's stoop, and her horn leaped up into the wicked wind. The harpy struck once, missed, and swung away, her wings clanging and her breath warm and stinking. She burned overhead, and the unicorn saw herself reflected on the harpy's bronze breast and felt the monster shining from her own body. So they circled one another like a double star, and under the shrunken sky there was nothing real but the two of them. The harpy laughed with delight, and her eyes turned the color of honey. The unicorn knew that she was going to strike again.

The harpy folded her wings and fell like a star – not at the unicorn, but beyond her, passing so close that a single feather drew blood from the unicorn's shoulder; bright claws reaching for the heart of Mommy Fortuna, who was stretching out her own sharp hands as though to welcome the harpy home. "Not alone!" the witch howled triumphantly at both of them. "You never could have freed yourselves alone! I held you!" Then the harpy reached her, and she broke like a dead stick and fell. The harpy crouched on her body, hiding it from sight, and the bronze wings turned red.

The unicorn turned away. Close by, she heard a child's voice telling her that she must run, she must run. It was the magician. His eyes were huge and empty, and his face – always too young – was collapsing into childhood as the unicorn looked at him. "No," she said. "Come with me."

The harpy made a thick, happy sound that melted the magician's knees. But the unicorn said again, "Come with me," and together they walked away from the Midnight Carnival. The moon was gone, but to the magician's eyes the unicorn was the moon, cold and white and very old, lighting his way to safety, or to madness. He followed her, never once looking back, even when he heard the desperate scrambling and skidding of heavy feet, the boom of bronze wings, and Rukh's interrupted scream.

"He ran," the unicorn said. "You must never run from anything immortal. It attracts their attention." Her voice was gentle, and without pity. "Never run," she said. "Walk slowly, and pretend to be thinking of something else. Sing a song, say a poem, do your tricks, but walk slowly and she may not follow. Walk very slowly, magician."

So they fled across the night together, step by step, the tall man in black and the horned white beast. The magician crept as close to the unicorn's light as he dared, for beyond it moved hungry shadows, the shadows of the sounds that the harpy made as she destroyed the little there was to destroy of the Midnight Carnival. But another sound followed them long after these had faded, followed them into morning on a strange road – the tiny, dry sound of a spider weeping.

IV

Like a newborn child, the magician wept for a long time before he could speak. "The poor old woman," he whispered at last. The unicorn said nothing, and Schmendrick raised his head and stared at her in a strange way. A gray morning rain was begi

He was silent, crouched by the road in the rain, drawing his soaked cloak close around his body until he looked like a broken black umbrella. The unicorn waited, feeling the days of her life falling around her with the rain. "I can sorrow," she offered gently, "but it's not the same thing."

When Schmendrick looked at her again he had managed to pull his face together, but it was still struggling to escape from him. "Where will you go now?" he asked. "Where were you going when she took you?"

"I was looking for my people," the unicorn said. "Have you seen them, magician? They are wild and sea-white, like me."

Schmendrick shook his head gravely. "I have never seen anyone like you, not while I was awake. There were supposed to be a few unicorns left when I was a boy, but I knew only one man who had ever seen one. They are surely gone, lady, all but you. When you walk, you make an echo where they used to be."

"No," she said, "for others have seen them." It gladdened her to hear that there had still been unicorns as recently as the magician's childhood. She said, "A butterfly told me of the Red Bull, and the witch spoke of King Haggard. So I am going wherever they are to learn whatever they know. Can you tell me where Haggard is king?"

The magician's face almost got away, but he caught it and began to smile very slowly, as though his mouth had turned to iron. He bent it into the proper shape in time, but it was an iron smile. "I can tell you a poem," he said.

"I will know when I get there, then," she said, thinking that he was mocking her. "Do you know any poems about the Red Bull?"

"There are none," Schmendrick answered. He rose to his feet, pale and smiling. "About King Haggard I know only what I have heard," he said. "He is an old man, stingy as late November, who rules over a barren country by the sea. Some say that the land was green and soft once, before Haggard came, but he touched it and it withered. There is a saying among farmers, when they look on a field lost to fire or locusts or the wind: 'As blighted as Haggard's heart.' They say also that there are no lights in his castle, and no fires, and that he sends his men out to steal chickens, and bedsheets, and pies from windowsills. The story has it that the last time King Haggard laughed -"

The unicorn stamped her foot. Schmendrick said, "As for the Red Bull, I know less than I have heard, for I have heard too many tales and each argues with another. The Bull is real, the Bull is a ghost, the Bull is Haggard himself when the sun goes down. The Bull was in the land before Haggard, or it came with him, or it came to him. It protects him from raids and revolutions, and saves him the expense of arming his men. It keeps him a prisoner in his own castle. It is the devil, to whom Haggard has sold his soul. It is the thing he sold his soul to possess. The Bull belongs to Haggard. Haggard belongs to the Bull."

The unicorn felt a shiver of sureness spreading though her, widening from the center, like a ripple. In her mind the butterfly piped again, "They passed down all the roads long ago, and the Red Bull ran close behind them and covered their footprints." She saw white forms blowing away in a bellowing wind, and yellow horns shaking. "I will go there," she said. "Magician, I owe you a boon, for you set me free. What would you have of me before I leave you?"