THE LAST UNICORN

There was no sound when he was gone but crickets, and Schmendrick's soft chuckling to the tree. The fire faded, and Cully turned in circles, sighing as each ember went out. Finally he sat down on a stump and addressed the captive magician.

"Haggard's son you may be," he mused, "and not the collector Child, as you claim. But whoever you are, you know very well that Robin Hood is the fable and I am the reality. No ballads will accumulate around my name unless I write them myself; no children will read of my adventures in their schoolbooks and play at being me after school. And when the professors prowl through the old tales, and scholars sift the old songs to learn if Robin Hood ever truly lived, they will never, never find my name, not till they crack the world for the grain of its heart. But you know, and therefore I am going to sing you the songs of Captain Cully. He was a good, gay rascal who stole from the rich and gave to the poor. In their gratitude, the people made up these simple verses about him."

Whereupon he sang them all, including the one that Willie Gentle had sung for Schmendrick. He paused often to comment on the varying rhythm patterns, the assonantal rhymes, and the modal melodies.

VI

Captain Cully fell asleep thirteen stanzas into the nineteenth song, and Schmendrick – who had stopped laughing somewhat sooner – promptly set about trying to free himself. He strained against his bonds with all his strength, but they held fast. Jack Jingly had wrapped him in enough rope to rig a small schooner, and tied knots the size of skulls.

"Gently, gently," he counseled himself. "No man with the power to summon Robin Hood – indeed, to create him – can be bound for long. A word, a wish, and this tree must be an acorn on a branch again, this rope be green in a marsh." But he knew before he called on it that whatever had visited him for a moment was gone again, leaving only an ache where it had been. He felt like an abandoned chrysalis.

"Do as you will," he said softly. Captain Cully roused at his voice, and sang the fourteenth stanza.

"'There are fifty swords without the house, and fifty more within,
And I do fear me, captain, they are like to do us in.'
'Ha' done, ha' done,' says Captain Cully, 'and never fear again,
For they may be a hundred swords, but we are seven men.'"

"I hope you get slaughtered," the magician told him, but Cully was asleep again. Schmendrick attempted a few simple spells for escaping, but he could not use his hands, and he had no more heart for tricks. What happened instead was that the tree fell in love with him and began to murmur fondly of the joy to be found in the eternal embrace of a red oak. "Always, always," it sighed, "faithfulness beyond any man's deserving. I will keep the color of your eyes when no other in the world remembers your name. There is no immortality but a tree's love."

"I'm engaged," Schmendrick excused himself. "To a western larch. Since childhood. Marriage by contract, no choice in the matter. Hopeless. Our story is never to be."

A gust of fury shook the oak, as though a storm were coming to it alone. "Galls and fireblight on her!" it whispered savagely. "Damned softwood, cursed conifer, deceitful evergreen, she'll never have you! We will perish together, and all trees shall treasure our tragedy!"

Along his length Schmendrick could feel the tree heaving like a heart, and he feared that it might actually split in two with rage. The ropes were growing steadily tighter around him, and the night was beginning to turn red and yellow. He tried to explain to the oak that love was generous precisely because it could never be immortal, and then he tried to yell for Captain Cully; but he could only make a small, creaking sound, like a tree. "She means well," he thought, and gave himself up for loved.

Then the ropes went slack as he lunged against them, and he fell to the ground on his back, wriggling for air. The unicorn stood over him, dark as blood in his darkened vision. She touched him with her horn.

When he could rise she turned away, and the magician followed her, wary of the oak, though it was once again as still as any tree that had never loved. The sky was still black, but it was a watery darkness through which Schmendrick could see the violet dawn swimming. Hard silver clouds were melting as the sky grew warm; shadows dulled, sounds lost their shape, and shapes had not yet decided what they were going to be that day. Even the wind wondered about itself.

"Did you see me?" he asked the unicorn. "Were you watching, did you see what I made?"

"Yes," she answered. "It was true magic."