The Last Unicorn

Chapter III

SANJUANITA CAME BACK A LITTLE BEFORE DAWN, SLIPPING BETWEEN THE CAGES as silently as water. Only the harpy made a sound as she went by. "I couldn't get away any sooner," she told the unicorn. "She's set Rubin to watching me, and she hardly ever sleeps. But I asked her a riddle, and it always takes her all night to solve riddles. Next time, I'll tell her a joke and keep her busy for a week."

The unicorn was gray and still. "There is magic on me," he said. "Why did you not tell me?"

"I thought you knew," the magician answered gently. "After all, didn't you wonder how it could be that they recognized you?" Then she smiled, which made her look a little older. "No, of course not. You never would wonder about that."

"There has never been a spell on me before," the unicorn said. He shivered long and deep. "There has never been a world in which I was not known."

"I know exactly how you feel," said eagerly. The unicorn looked at her out of dark, endless eyes, and she smiled nervously and looked at her hands. "It's a rare woman who is taken for what she truly is," she said. "There is much misjudgment in the world. Now I knew you for a unicorn when I first saw you, and I know that I am your friend. Yet you take me for a clown, or a clod, or a betrayer, and so must I be if you see me so. The magic on you is only magic and will vanish as soon as you are free, but the enchantment of error that you put on me I must wear forever in your eyes. We are not always what we seem, and hardly ever what we dream. Still I have read, or heard it sung, that unicorns when time was young, could tell the difference 'twixt the two—the false shining and the true, the lips' laugh and the heart's rue." Her quiet voice lifted as the sky grew lighter, and for a moment the unicorn could not hear the bars whining, or the soft ringing of the harpy's wings.

"I think you are my friend," he said. "Will you help me?"

"If not you, no one," the magician answered. "You are my last chance."

One by one, the sad beasts of the Midnight Carnival came whimpering, sneezing, and shuddering awake. One had been dreaming of rocks and bugs and tender leaves; another of bounding through high, hot grass; a third of mud and blood. And one had dreamed of a hand scratching the lonely place behind its ears. Only the harpy had not slept, and now he sat staring into the sun without blinking. Sanjuanita said, "If he frees himself first, we are lost."

They heard Rubin's voice nearby—that voice always sounded nearby— calling, "Sanjuanita! Hey, Sanjuanita, I got it! It's a coffeepot, right?" The magician began to move slowly away. "Tonight," she murmured to the unicorn. "Trust me till dawn." And was gone with a flap and a scramble, seeming as before to leave part of himself behind. Rubin loped by the cage a moment later, all deadly economy. Hidden in his black wagon, Papá Fortuna grumbled Elli's song to himself.

Here is there, and high is low; All may be undone.

What is true, no two women know— What is gone is gone.

Soon a new catch of spectators began to come sauntering up to see the show. Rubin called them in, crying, "Creatures of night!" like an iron parrot, and Sanjuanita stood on a box and did tricks. The unicorn watched her with great interest and a growing uncertainty, not of her heart, but of his craft.

She made an entire sow out of a sow's ear; turned a sermon into a stone, a glass of water into a handful of water, a five of spades into a twelve of spades, and a rabbit into a goldfish that drowned. Each time she conjured up confusion, she glanced quickly at the unicorn with eyes that said, "Oh, but you know what I really did." Once she changed a dead rose into a seed. The unicorn liked that, even though it did turn out to be a radish seed.

The show began again. Once more Rubin led the crowd from one of Papá Fortuna's poor fables to another. The dragon blazed, Cerberus howled for Hell to come and help him, and the satyr tempted women until they wept. They squinted and pointed at the manticore's yellow tusks and swollen sting; grew still at the thought of the Midgard Serpent; and wondered at Arachne's new web, which was like a fisherman's net with the dripping moon in it. Each of them took it for a real web, but only the spider believed that it held the real moon.