The Last Unicorn

The Last Unicorn

The document is the text of the novel ‘The Last Unicorn’ by Peter S. Beagle, first published in 1968 by The Viking Press. It tells the story of a unicorn’s quest to find her lost kin, exploring themes of beauty, loss, and the passage of time, and is structured as a fantasy narrative with rich prose and lyrical elements.

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THE LAST UNICORN
by Peter S. Beagle
Flyleaf:
_A Fine and Private Place_, Peater Beagle's first book, was written before he was twenty. "A
most unusual novel," Virgilia Peterson said in her review, "By a young man who seems to be a
genuine nonconformist . . . armed already with the wryness of experience but brave enough still to
venture where many of his elders might well fear to tread." In his second novel this inventive,
original writer -- still under thirty -- ventures still further, into the literally fantastic, literally
fabulous world of fairy tale, myth, dream, nightmare.
True to tradition, _The Last Unicorn_ is the story of a quest, the search by the unicorn --
immortal, infinitely beautiful -- for her lost fellows. Early on, she is joined by Schmendrick the
Magician -- a name pointing to the low comedy that surprisingly (though also traditionally) coexists
here with terror, pathos, tenderness, paradox, and wit, and frequent passages where the prose bursts
into song and into poetry itself. A kind of upside-down Merlin, Schmendrick is looking for
something for himself too, his life perhaps. Molly Grue, the third of the travelers, seems simply to
embody every womanly trait. After a richly entertaining variety of adventures -- with splendid,
quirky characters -- the search reaches its climax at the castle of evil King Haggard, where the
terrifying Red Bull is encountered and where the handsom Prince Lír plays his predestined role.
Like Tolkien's _The Lord of the Rings_, this odd, evocative, and brilliant book utilizes an
imaginary world to connect profoundly with the real questions and aspirations of thoughtful and
sensitive readers. _The Last Unicorn_ may well join that widely read masterpiece as a book that
speaks with a mysterious but tangible resonance to a receptive audience.
Copyright 1968 by Peter S. Beagle. All rights reserved.
First published in 1968 by The Viking Press, Inc. 625 Madison Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10022
Published simultaneously in Canada by The Macmillan Company of Canada Limited
Library of Congress catalog card number: 68-16075
PRINTED IN U.S.A.
To the memory of Dr. Olfert Dapper, who saw a
wild unicorn in the Maine woods in 1673,
and for Robert Nathan, who has seen
one or two in Los Angeles
THE LAST UNICORN
I
The unicorn lived in a lilac wood, and she lived all alone. She was very old, though she did
not know it, and she was no longer the careless color of sea foam, but rather the color of snow
falling on a moonlit night. But her eyes were still clear and unwearied, and she still moved like a
shadow on the sea.
She did not look anything like a horned horse, as unicorns are often pictured, being smaller
and cloven-hoofed, and possessing that oldest, wildest grace that horses have never had, that deer
have only in a shy, thin imitation and goats in dancing mockery. Her neck was long and slender,
making her head seem smaller than it was, and the mane that fell almost to the middle of her back
was as soft as dandelion fluff and as fine as cirrus. She had pointed ears and thin legs, with feathers
of white hair at the ankles; and the long horn above her eyes shone and shivered with its own
seashell light even in the deepest midnight. She had killed dragons with it, and healed a king whose
poisoned wound would not close, and knocked down ripe chestnuts for bear cubs.
Unicorns are immortal. It is their nature to live alone in one place: usually a forest where
there is a pool clear enough for them to see themselves -- for they are a little vain, knowing
themselves to be the most beautiful creatures in all the world, and magic besides. They mate very
rarely, and no place is more enchanted than one where a unicorn has been born. The last time she
had seen another unicorn the young virgins who still came seeking her now and then had called to
her in a different tongue; but then, she had no idea of months and years and centuries, or even of
seasons. It was always spring in her forest, because she lived there, and she wandered all day among
the great beech trees, keeping watch over the animals that lived in the ground and under bushes, in
nests and caves, earths and treetops. Generation after generation, wolves and rabbits alike, they
hunted and loved and had children and died, and as the unicorn did none of these things, she never
grew tired of watching them.
One day it happened that two men with long bows rode through her forest, hunting for deer.
The unicorn followed them, moving so warily that not even the horses knew she was near. The sight
of men filled her with an old, slow, strange mixture of tenderness and terror. She never let one see
her if she could help it, but she liked to watch them ride by and hear them talking.
"I mislike the feel of this forest," the elder of the two hunters grumbled. "Creatures that live
in a unicorn's wood learn a little magic of their own in time, mainly concerned with disappearing.
We'll find no game here."
"Unicorns are long gone," the second man said. "If, indeed, they ever were. This is a forest
like any other."
"Then why do the leaves never fall here, or the snow? I tell you, there is one unicorn left in
the world -- good luck to the lonely old thing, I say -- and as long as it lives in this forest, there
won't be a hunter takes so much as a titmouse home at his saddle. Ride on, ride on, you'll see. I
know their ways, unicorns."
"From books," answered the other. "Only from books and tales and songs. Not in the reign of
three kings has there been even a whisper of a unicorn seen in this country or any other. You know
no more about unicorns than I do, for I've read the same books and heard the same stories, and I've
never seen one either."
The first hunter was silent for a time, and the second whistled sourly to himself. Then the
first said, "My great-grandmother saw a unicorn once. She used to tell me about it when I was
little."
"Oh, indeed? And did she capture it with a golden bridle?"
"No. She didn't have one. You don't have to have a golden bridle to catch a unicorn; that
part's the fairy tale. You need only to be pure of heart."
"Yes, yes." The younger man chuckled. "Did she ride her unicorn, then? Bareback, under the
trees, like a nymph in the early days of the world?"
"My great-grandmother was afraid of large animals," said the first hunter. "She didn't ride it,
but she sat very still, and the unicorn put its head in her lap and fell asleep. My great-grandmother
never moved till it woke."
"What did it look like? Pliny describes the unicorn as being very ferocious, similar in the rest
of its body to a horse, with the head of a deer, the feet of an elephant, the tail of a bear; a deep,
bellowing voice, and a single black horn, two cubits in length. And the Chinese --"
"My great-grandmother said only that the unicorn had a good smell. She never could abide
the smell of any beast, even a cat or a cow, let alone a wild thing. But she loved the smell of the
unicorn. She began to cry once, telling me about it. Of course, she was a very old woman then, and
cried at anything that reminded her of her youth."
"Let's turn around and hunt somewhere else," the second hunter said abruptly. The unicorn
stepped softly into a thicket as they turned their horses, and took up the trail only when they were
well ahead of her once more. The men rode in silence until they were nearing the edge of the forest,
when the second hunter asked quietly, "Why did they go away, do you think? If there ever were
such things."
"Who knows? Times change. Would you call this age a good one for unicorns?"
"No, but I wonder if any man before us ever thought his time a good time for unicorns. And
it seems to me now that I have heard stories -- but I was sleepy with wine, or I was thinking of
something else. Well, no matter. There's light enough yet to hunt, if we hurry. Come!"
They broke out of the woods, kicked their horses to a gallop, and dashed away. But before
they were out of sight, the first hunter looked back over his shoulder and called, just as though he
could see the unicorn standing in shadow, "Stay where you are, poor beast. This is no world for you.
Stay in your forest, and keep your trees green and your friends long-lived. Pay no mind to young
girls, for they never become anything more than silly old women. And good luck to you."
The unicorn stood still at the edge of the forest and said aloud, "I am the only unicorn there
is." They were the first words she had spoken, even to herself, in more than a hundred years.
That can't be, she thought. She had never minded being alone, never seeing another unicorn,
because she had always known that there were others like her in the world, and a unicorn needs no
more than that for company. "But I would know if all the others were gone. I'd be gone too. Nothing
can happen to them that does not happen to me."
Her own voice frightened her and made her want to be running. She moved along the dark
paths of her forest, swift and shining, passing through sudden clearings unbearably brilliant with
grass or soft with shadow, aware of everything around her, from the weeds that brushed her ankles
to insect-quick flickers of blue and silver as the wind lifted the leaves. "Oh, I could never leave this,
I never could, not if I really were the only unicorn in the world. I know how to live here, I know
how everything smells, and tastes, and is. What could I ever search for in the world, except this
again?"
But when she stopped running at last and stood still, listening to crows and a quarrel of
squirrels over her head, she wondered, But suppose they are riding together, somewhere far away?
What if they are hiding and waiting for me?
From that first moment of doubt, there was no peace for her; from the time she first
imagined leaving her forest, she could not stand in one place without wanting to be somewhere else.
She trotted up and down beside her pool, restless and unhappy. Unicorns are not meant to make
choices. She said no, and yes, and no again, day and night, and for the first time she began to feel
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