ren’s Reviews > The Last Unicorn > Status Update

"But King Haggard, who was quite real, fell down through the wreckage of his disenchanted castle like a knife dropped through clouds. Molly heard him laugh once, as though he had expected it. Very little ever surprised King Haggard."

"The unicorns sprang up the cliff and flowed around them, exactly as though they had been made out of sand. The castle came down in great cold chunks that turned thin and waxen as they swirled in the air, until they disappeared. It crumbled and vanished without a sound, and it left no ruins, either on land or in the memories of the two who watched it fall. A minute later, they could not remember where it had stood."

"She stood very still, neither weeping nor laughing, for her joy was too great for her body to understand."

"For they were mad with freedom. But Schmendrick spoke, and they streamed to the right and left of them and himself--some even springing over them--as the sea shatters on a rock and then comes whirling together again. All around Molly there flowed and flowered a light as impossible as snow set afire, while thousands of cloven hoofs sang by like cymbals."

"Then the unicorns came out of the sea.
Molly never saw them clearly--they were a light leaping toward her and a cry that dazzled her eyes. She was wise enough to know that no mortal was ever meant to see all the unicorns in the world, and she tried to find her her own unicorn and look only at her. But there were too many of them, and they were too beautiful. Blind as the Bull, she moved to meet them."

"He strode out a long way before he began to swim. The hugest waves broke no higher than his hocks, and the timid tide ran away from him. But when at last he let himself sink into the flood, then a great surge of the sea stood up behind him: a green and black swell, as deep and smooth and hard as the wind. It gathered in silence, folding from one horizon to the other, until for a moment it actually hid the Red Bull."

"The unicorn lowered her head one last time and hurled herself at the Red Bull. If he had been either true flesh or a windy ghost, the blow would have burst him like rotten fruit. But he turned away unnoticing, and walked slowly into the sea. The unicorns in the water floundered wildly to let him by, stamping and slashing the surf into a toiling mist which their horns turned rainbow."

"But they would not come to land while the Bull was there. They rolled in the shallows, swirling together as madly as frightened fish when the nets are being hauled up; no longer with the sea, but losing it. Hundreds were borne in with each swell and hurled against the ones already struggling to keep from being shoved ashore, and they in their turn struck out desperately, rearing and stumbling."

"And in the whiteness, of the whiteness, flowering in the tattered water, their bodies aching with the streaked marble hollows of the waves, their manes and tails and the fragile beards of the males burning in the sunlight, their eyes as dark and jeweled as the deep sea--and the shining of the horns, the seashell shining of the horns! The horns came riding in like the rainbow masts of silver ships."

"The world hung motionless in that moment. As though she were standing on a higher tower than King Haggard's, she looked down on a pale pairing of land where a toy man and woman stared with their knitted eyes at a clay bull and a tiny ivory unicorn. Abandoned playthings--there was another doll, too, half-buried; and a sand castle with a stick king propped up in one tilted turret.
The tide would take it all."