“Tell me what you see,” said the magician, as Mommy Fortuna had said it to him. “Look at your fellow legends and tell me what you see.”

Rukh’s iron voice came clanging through the wan afternoon. “Gatekeeper of the underworld. Three heads and a healthy coat of vipers, as you can see. Last seen aboveground in the time of Hercules, who dragged him up under one arm. But we lured him to light again with promises of a better life. Cerberus. Look at those six cheated red eyes. You may look into them again one day. This way to the Midgard Serpent. This way.”

The unicorn stared through the bars at the animal in the cage. Her eyes were wide with disbelief. “It’s only a dog,” she whispered. “It’s a hungry, unhappy dog with only one head and hardly any coat at all, the poor thing. How could they ever take it for Cerberus? Are they all blind?”

“Look again,” the magician said.

“And the satyr,” the unicorn continued. “The satyr is an ape, an old ape with a twisted foot. The dragon is a crocodile, much more likely to breathe fish than fire. And the great manticore is a lion‌—‌a perfectly good lion, but no more monstrous than the others. I don’t understand.”

“It’s got the whole world in its coils,” Rukh was droning. And once more the magician said, “Look again.”

Then, as though her eyes were getting used to darkness, the unicorn began to perceive a second figure in each cage. They loomed hugely over the captives of the Midnight Carnival, and yet they were joined to them: stormy dreams sprung from a grain of truth. So there was a manticore‌—‌famine-eyed, slobber-mouthed, roaring, curving his deadly tail over his back until the poison spine lolled and nodded just above his ear‌—‌and there was a lion too, tiny and absurd by comparison. Yet they were the same creature. The unicorn stamped in wonder.

It was so in all the other cages. The shadow-dragon opened his mouth and hissed harmless fire to make the gapers gasp and cringe, while Hell’s snake-furred watchdog howled triple dooms and devastations down on his betrayers, and the satyr limped leering to the bars and beckoned young girls to impossible delights, right there in public. As for the crocodile, the ape, and the sad dog, they faded steadily before the marvelous phantoms until they were only shadows themselves, even to the unicorn’s undeceived eyes. “This is a strange sorcery,” she said softly. “There’s more meaning than magic to this.”

The magician laughed with pleasure and great relief. “Well said, well said indeed. I knew the old horror wouldn’t dazzle you with her twopenny spells.” His voice grew hard and secret. “She’s made her third mistake now,” he said, “and that’s at least two too many for a tired old trickster like herself. The time draws near.”

“The time draws near,” Rukh was telling the crowd, as though he had overheard the magician. “Ragnarok. On that day, when the gods fall, the Serpent of the Midgard will spit a storm of venom at great Thor himself, till he tumbles over like a poisoned fly. And so he waits for Judgment Day, and dreams about the part he’ll play. It may be so‌—‌I couldn’t say. Creatures of night, brought to light.”