“And where were you twenty years ago? Ten years ago? Where were you when I was new? When I was one of those innocent young maidens you always come to? How dare you! How dare you come to me now, when I am this!”
The Last Unicorn (1982)
Art by Morcante
I am sorry. I have done you evil and I cannot undo it.
No. Unicorns are in the world again. No sorrow will live in me with that joy—save one. And I thank you for that part, too. Farewell good magician. I will try to go home.
“I will go back to my forest too, but I do not know if I will live contently there, or anywhere. I have been mortal, and some part of me is mortal yet. I am full of tears and hunger and the fear of death, though I cannot weep, and I want nothing, and I cannot die.”
““It’s a rare man who is taken for what he truly is,” he 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.””
— The Last Unicorn by Peter S. Beagle
“Heroes know that things must happen when it is time for them to happen. A quest may not simply be abandoned; unicorns may go unrescued for a long time, but not forever; a happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story.”
— Peter S. Beagle, The Last Unicorn
The Last Unicorn by Peter Beagle
Avelera 