The Last Unicorn, books in English
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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, thexe 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 the minutes
crawling over her like worms. "I will not go. Because men have seen no unicorns for a while does not
mean they have all vanished. Even if it were true, I would not go. I live here."
But at last she woke up in the middle of one warm night and said, "Yes, but now." She hurried
through her forest, trying to look at nothing and smell nothing, trying not to feel her earth under her
cloven hoofs. The animals who move in the dark, the owls and the foxes and the deer, raised thek
heads as she passed by, but she would not look at them. I must go quickly, she thought, and come
back as soon as I can. Maybe I won't have to go very far. But whether I find the others or not, I will
come back very soon, as soon as I can.
Under the moon, the road that ran from the edge of her forest gleamed like water, but when she
stepped out onto it,
away from the trees, she felt how hard it was, and how long. She almost turned back then; but
instead she took a deep breath of the woods air that still drifted to her, and held it in her mouth like
a flower, as long as she could.
The long road hurried to nowhere and had no end. It ran through villages and small towns, flat
country and mountains, stony barrens and meadows springing out of stones, but it belonged to none
of these, and it never rested anywhere. It rushed the unicorn along, tugging at her feet like the tide,
fretting at her, never letting her be quiet and listen to the air, as she was used to do. Her eyes were
always full of dust, and her mane was stiff and heavy with dirt.
Time had always passed her by in her forest, but now it was she who passed through time as she
traveled. The colors of the trees changed, and the animals along the way grew heavy coats and lost
them again; the clouds crept or hurried before the changing winds, and were pink and gold in the sun
or livid with storm. Wherever she went, she searched for her people, but she found no trace of them,
and in all the tongues she heard spoken along the road there was not even a word for them any
more.
Early one morning, about to turn off the road to sleep, she saw a man hoeing in his garden. Knowing
that she should hide, she stood still instead and watched him work, until he straightened and saw
her. He was fat, and his cheeks jumped with every step he took. "Oh," he said. "Oh, you're beautiful."
When he tugged off his belt, made a loop in it, and moved clumsily toward her, the unicorn was
more pleased than frightened. The man knew what she was, and what he himself was for: to hoe
turnips and pursue something that shone and could run faster than he could. She sidestepped his
first lunge
as lightly as though the wind of it had blown her out of his reach. "I have been hunted with bells and
banners in my time," she told him. "Men knew that the only way to hunt me was to make the chase
so wondrous that I would come near to see it. And even so I was never once captured."
"My foot must have slipped," said the man. "Steady now, you pretty thing."
"I've never really understood," the unicorn mused as the man picked himself up, "what you dream of
doing with me, once you've caught me." The man leaped again, and she slipped away from him like
rain. "I don't think you know yourselves," she said.
"Ah, steady, steady, easy now." The man's sweating face was striped with dirt, and he could hardly
get his breath. "Pretty," he gasped. "You pretty little mare."
"Mare?" The unicorn trumpeted the word so shrilly that the man stopped pursuing her and clapped
his hands to his ears. "Mare?" she demanded. "I, a horse? Is that what you take me for? Is that what
you see?"
"Good horse," the fat man panted. He leaned on the fence and wiped his face. "Curry you up, clean
you off, you'll be the prettiest old mare anywhere." He reached out with the belt again. "Take you to
the fair," he said. "Come on, horse."
"A horse," the unicorn said. "That's what you were trying to capture. A white mare with her mane full
of burrs." As the man approached her, she hooked her horn through the belt, jerked it out of his
grasp, and hurled it across the road into a patch of daisies. "A horse, am I?" she snorted. "A horse,
indeed!"
For a moment the man was very close to her, and her great eyes stared into his own, which were
small and tired and amazed. Then she turned and fled up the road, running so swiftly that those who
saw her exclaimed, "Now there's a
horse! There's a real horse!" One old man said quietly to his wife, "That's an Ayrab horse. I was on a
ship with an Ayrab horse once."
From that time the unicorn avoided towns, even at night, unless there was no way at all to go around
them. Even so, there were a few men who gave chase, but always to a wandering white mare; never
in the gay and reverent manner proper to the pursuit of a unicorn. They came with ropes and nets
and baits of sugar lumps, and they whistled and called her Bess and Nellie. Sometimes she would
slow down enough to let their horses catch her scent, and then watch as the beasts reared and
wheeled and ran away with their terrified riders. The horses always knew her.
"How can it be?" she wondered. "I suppose I could understand it if men had simply forgotten
unicorns, or if they had changed so that they hated all unicorns now and tried to kill them when they
saw them. But not to see them at all, to look at them and see something else—what do they look like
to one another, then? What do trees look like to them, or houses, or real horses, or their own
children?"
Sometimes she thought, "If men no longer know what they are looking at, there may well be
unicorns in the world yet, unknown and glad of it." But she knew beyond both hope and vanity that
men had changed, and the world with them, because the unicorns were gone. Yet she went on along
the hard road, although each day she wished a little more that she had never left her forest.
Then one afternoon the butterfly wobbled out of a breeze and lit on the tip of her horn. He was
velvet all over, dark and dusty, with golden spots on his wings, and he was as thin as a flower petal.
Dancing along her horn, he saluted her with his curling feelers. "I am a roving gambler. How do you
do?"
The unicorn laughed for the first time in her travels. "But-
terfly, what are you doing out on such a windy day?" she asked him. "You'll take cold and die long
before your time."
"Death takes what man would keep," said the butterfly, "and leaves what man would lose. Blow,
wind, and crack your cheeks. I warm my hands before the fire of life and get four-way relief." He
glimmered like a scrap of owl-light on her horn.
"Do you know what I am, butterfly?" the unicorn asked hopefully, and he replied, "Excellent well,
you're a fishmonger. You're my everything, you are my sunshine, you are old and gray and full of
sleep, you're my pickle-face, consumptive Mary Jane." He paused, fluttering his wings against the
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