THE LAST UNICORN

A blue jay swooped low over them on that first day of their journey, said, "Well, I'll be a squab under glass," and flapped straight home to tell his wife about it. She was sitting on the nest, singing to their children in a dreary drone.

"Spiders and sowbugs and beetles and crickets,
Slugs from the roses and ticks from the thickets,
Grasshoppers, snails, and a quail's egg or two –
All to be regurgitated for you.
Lullaby, lullaby, swindles and schemes,
Flying's not near as much fun as it seems."

"Saw a unicorn today," the blue jay said as he lit.

"You didn't see any supper, I notice," his wife replied coldly. "I hate a man who talks with his mouth empty."

"Baby, a unicorn!" The jay abandoned his casual air and hopped up and down on the branch. "I haven't seen one of those since the time -"

"You've never seen one," she said. "This is me, remember? I know what you've seen in your life, and what you haven't."

The jay paid no attention. "There was a strange-looking party in black with her," he rattled. "They were going over Cat Mountain. I wonder if they were heading for Haggard's country." He cocked his head to the artistic angle that had first won his wife. "What a vision for old Haggard's breakfast," he marveled. "A unicorn coming to call, bold as you please, rat-tat-tat on his dismal door. I'd give anything to see -"

"I suppose the two of you didn't spend the whole day watching unicorns," his wife interrupted with a click of her beak. "At least, I understand that she used to be considered quite imaginative in matters of spare time." She advanced on him, her neck feathers ruffling.

"Honey, I haven't even seen her -" the blue jay began, and his wife knew that he hadn't, and wouldn't dare, but she batted him one anyway. She was one woman who knew what to do with a slight moral edge.

The unicorn and the magician walked through the spring, over soft Cat Mountain and down into a violet valley where apple trees grew. Beyond the valley were low hills, as fat and docile as sheep, lowering their heads to sniff at the unicorn in wonder as she moved among them. After these came the slower heights of summer, and the baked plains where the air hung shiny as candy. Together she and Schmendrick forded rivers, scrambled up and down brambly banks and bluffs, and wandered in woods that reminded the unicorn of her home, though they could never resemble it, having known time. So has my forest, now, she thought, but she told herself that it did not matter, that all would be as before when she returned.

At night, while Schmendrick slept the sleep of a hungry, footsore magician, the unicorn crouched awake waiting to see the vast form of the Red Bull come charging out of the moon. At times she caught what she was sure was his smell – a dark, sly reek easing through the night, reaching out to find her. Then she would spring to her feet with a cold cry of readiness, only to find two or three deer gazing at her from a respectful distance. Deer love and envy unicorns. Once, a buck in his second summer, prodded forward by his giggling friends, came quite close to her and mumbled without meeting her eyes, "You are very beautiful. You are just as beautiful as our mothers said."

The unicorn looked silently back at him, knowing that he expected no answer from her. The other deer snickered and whispered, "Go on, go on." Then the buck raised his head and cried out swiftly and joyously, "But I know someone more beautiful than you!" He wheeled and dashed away in the moonlight, and his friends followed him. The unicorn lay down again.

Now and then in their journey they came to a village, and there Schmendrick would introduce himself as a wandering wizard, offering, as he cried in the streets, "to sing for my supper, to bother you just a little bit, to trouble your sleep ever so slightly, and pass on." Few were the towns where he was not invited to stable his beautiful white mare and stay the night, and before the children went to bed he would perform in the market square by lantern light. He never actually attempted any greater magic than making dolls talk and turning soap into sweets, and even this trifling sorcery sometimes slipped from his hands. But the children liked him, and their parents were kindly with supper, and the summer evenings were lithe and soft. Ages after, the unicorn still remembered the strange, chocolate stable smell, and Schmendrick's shadow dancing on walls and doors and chimneys in the leaping light.