I can’t
believe I only read this book recently: I probably should have found it and
loved it long ago. In any case, Peter Beagle’s fantasy classic The Last Unicorn is a wonderful story
about a unicorn in search for her missing people and two humans who accompany
her on her journey. The first part of the story focuses on the unicorn’s point
of view, which is important to help us understand at least a glimmer of how the
unicorn thinks and understands the world, but the majority of the story follows
the magician Schmendrick and the woman Molly. The story was written
beautifully, and many of the descriptions held me in awe, making me read them
again and again. It’s not a predictable story either, although it has the feel
of a heroic adventure story, Prince Lir being the hero, though he comes into
the story quite late and in many ways is not a typical hero. I’m not going to
summarize the book, but I’ll point out some of my favourite parts and some
interesting themes the story evokes.
First off
is the magic within the story. Besides magical creatures such as the unicorn,
magic is possessed only by magicians who study it or who have a particular gift
for connecting to its powers. The unicorn is the embodiment of pure magic and
eternity, not aging and not affected by the turmoil in the world around her (for
the most part). Her magic is more subtle than that of humans, who have to study
it rather than having it outflow from them naturally. However, it is also
possible for humans to have a direct connection to magic in vision-like bouts
of power. Schmendrick is usually unable to perform real magic (he performs
tricks and illusions mostly), yet there a true power comes through him at times,
and instead of letting him direct the magic himself, uses him as a vehicle. The
magic works through him rather than being directed by him. This is interesting
because it shows that the most powerful magic lies in magical beings who use it
naturally as well as a higher power that can work magic through others as is
deemed fit. Yet as to the identity of this power, we can only speculate.
A further
consideration of magic lies in the manipulation of time. The talking skull in
King Haggard’s castle speaks about this when he says:
“When I was
alive, I believed — as you do — that time was at least as real and solid as
myself, and probably more so. I said 'one o'clock' as though I could see it,
and 'Monday' as though I could find it on the map; and I let myself be hurried
along from minute to minute, day to day, year to year, as though I were
actually moving from one place to another. Like everyone else, I lived in a
house bricked up with seconds and minutes, weekends and New Year's Days, and I
never went outside until I died, because there was no other door. Now I know
that I could have walked through the walls.”
This is what the greatest magicians can accomplish, to be
able to sidestep time itself. As Schmendrick says, the essence of being a
wizard is “seeing and listening,” and so it is necessary to see and listen to
the world in order to go beyond the bounds of time. Normally everyone, no
matter how great their powers are, is bound by the forward motion of time. It
is a train we are all confined to, taking us from the past to the future. Yet
what if we could step off the train and go backward to another time along the
tracks? Or forward? This is not the natural spontaneous magic of the unicorn,
but another dimension of magic. Though with the unicorn’s healing powers, it
may very well be that she is also tapping into this magic of time: restoring
someone’s body to a time before they were injured. She is not entering a
different time herself, but the person she is healing might be imperceptibly
travelling back in time. Likewise, her agelessness could also tie in to this
power of time, for although her memories accumulate from the past to the
present, her body exists in some eternal state unbounded by the moving train of
time. She “walks through the walls” and is not bound by this “house bricked up
with seconds and minutes,” for she can enter and exit it at will.
Yet despite the unicorn’s powers, King Haggard’s Red Bull
still proves to be a formidable enemy that has trapped many of her kin. We
never find out what the Red Bull really is, though I take it to be a
manifestation of fear and hate in contrast to the unicorn’s pure magic. It’s
not that she has the magic of love and the Red Bull that of hate, because, as
we see in the story, apart from the time that the unicorn becomes human, she is
not a force of love, but is beyond human emotions and concerns. This is
expressed clearly when she says, “How can I be cruel? That is for mortals…so is
kindness.” This might seem callous from a human’s point of view, but for an
eternal being, it is inevitable that they see things from a more remote
viewpoint since they are essentially outside of the endless cycles of life and
death. This is a very different take on unicorns than we normally see in
fiction: it isn’t until the unicorn becomes (part) human that these sorts of
sentiments arise in her, and this seems more realistic.
But back to the Red Bull: since the unicorn is not
omnipotent, he still has an effect on her by evoking a deep fear in her,
forcing her under his sway, as he did with the other unicorns before her. It is
a more primal force on par with the unicorn’s own powers, not the “parlour
trick” magic of humans such as Schmendrick, but the manifestation of a deep
power, the only kind that can threaten a unicorn. We also see this with the
harpy, which is another ancient creature with great powers that the unicorn
fears. It is fear that these evil creatures evoke in the unicorn, yet when she
can overcome this fear, she is able to realize that she is more powerful than
they are. And this, surprisingly, was only possible after she had turned into a
human: even after returning to unicorn form, she retains some human aspects,
one of which is the love for someone else and a passion to pursue her mission
to save her kin. This allows her to overcome her fear, something she was unable
to do while in a purely “unicorn frame of mind.”
And lastly, to give you a sense of the amazing descriptions
in the story, some of the particularly good ones are:
“The sky was low and almost black, save for one spot of
yellowing silver where the moon paced behind thick clouds.”
“The thin night wind lifted and spilled her mane, and the
moon shone on the snowflake crafting of her small head.”
“the murderous smell of it seemed to turn her bones to sand
and her blood to rain.”
“Fear came back to her eyes like a great stone falling into
a pool: all was clouded and swirling, and quick shadows were rushing
everywhere.”
“The horns, the seashell shining of the horns! The horns
came riding in like the rainbow masts of silver ships.”
And one of the many humorous quotes:
“Prince Lir bowed to her; a quick, crooked bow, as though
someone had hit him in the stomach.”
There are lots of others, but you’ll have to read the book
to see!
Although I’ve only touched on a few themes, the book is much
richer than this and I’d highly suggest reading it.
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