THE LAST UNICORN

The magician turned away to keep Molly from seeing his face. He did not look directly at the unicorn, but stole small sights of her as stealthily as though he could be made to put them back. White and secret, morning-horned, she regarded him with piercing gentleness, but he could not touch her. He said to the thin woman, "You don't even know where we are bound."

"Do you think it matters to me?" Molly asked. She made the cat sound once more.

Schmendrick said, "We are journeying to King Haggard's country, to find the Red Bull."

Molly's skin was frightened for a moment, whatever her bones believed or her heart knew; but then the unicorn breathed softly into her cupped hand, and Molly smiled as she closed her fingers on the warmth.

"Well, you're going the wrong way," she said.

The sun was rising as she led them back the way they had come, past Cully, still slumped asleep on his stump, across the clearing, and away. The men were returning: dead branches cracked close at hand, and brush broke with a splashing sound. Once they had to crouch among thorns while two of Cully's weary rogues limped by, wondering bitterly whether the vision of Robin Hood had been real or not.

"I smelled them," the first man was saying. "Eyes are easy to deceive, and cheats by nature, but surely no shadow has a smell?"

"The eyes are perjurors, right enough," grunted the second man, who seemed to be wearing a swamp. "But do you truly trust the testimony of your ears, of your nose, of the root of your tongue? Not I, my friend. The universe lies to our senses, and they lie to us, and how can we ourselves be anything but liars? For myself, I trust neither message nor messenger; neither what I am told, nor what I see. There may be truth somewhere, but it never gets down to me."

"Ah," said the first man with a black grin. "But you came running with the rest of us to go with Robin Hood, and you hunted for him all night, crying and calling like the rest of us. Why not save yourself the trouble, if you know better?"

"Well, you never know," the other answered thickly, spitting mud. "I could be wrong."

There were a prince and a princess sitting by a stream in a wooded valley. Their seven servants had set up a scarlet canopy beneath a tree, and the royal young couple ate a box lunch to the accompaniment of lutes and theorbos. They hardly spoke a word to one another until they had finished the meal, and then the princess sighed and said, "Well, I suppose I'd best get the silly business over with." The prince began to read a magazine.

"You might at least -" said the princess, but the prince kept on reading. The princess made a sign to two of the servants, who began to play an older music on their lutes. Then she took a few steps on the grass, held up a bridle bright as butter, and called, "Here, unicorn, here! Here, my pretty, here to me! Comecomecomecomecome!"

The prince snickered. "It's not chickens you're calling, you know," he remarked without looking up. "Why don't you sing something, instead of clucking like that?"

"Well, I'm doing the best I can," the princess cried. "I've never called one of these things before." But after a little silence, she began to sing.

"I am a king's daughter,
And if I cared to care,
The moon that has no mistress
Would flutter in my hair.
No one dares to cherish
What I choose to crave.
Never have I hungered,
That I did not have.
"I am a king's daughter,
And I grow old within
The prison of my person,
The shackles of my skin.
And I would run away
And beg from door to door,
Just to see your shadow
Once, and never more."

So she sang, and sang again, and then she called, "Nice unicorn, pretty, pretty, pretty," for a little longer, and then she said angrily, "Well, I've done as much as I'll do. I'm going home."

The prince yawned and folded his magazine. "You satisfied custom well enough," he told her, "and no one expected more than that. It was just a formality. Now we can be married."

"Yes," the princess said, "now we can be married." The servants began to pack everything away again, while the two with the lutes played joyous wedding music. The princess's voice was a little sad and defiant as she said, "If there really were such things as unicorns, one would have come to me. I called as sweetly as anyone could, and I had the golden bridle. And of course I am pure and untouched."

"For all of me, you are," the prince answered indifferently. "As I say, you satisfy custom. You don't satisfy my father, but then neither do I. That would take a unicorn." He was tall, and his face was as soft and pleasant as a marshmallow.