“Where you are going now,” Schmendrick answered, “few will mean you anything but evil, and a friendly heart‌—‌however foolish‌—‌may be as welcome as water one day. Take me with you, for laughs, for luck, for the unknown. Take me with you.”

The rain faded as he spoke, the sky began to clear, and the wet grass glowed like the inside of a seashell. The unicorn looked away, searching through a fog of kings for one king, and through a snowy glitter of castles and palaces for one built on the shoulders of a bull. “No one has ever traveled with me,” she said, “but then no one ever caged me before, or took me for a white mare, or disguised me as myself. Many things seem determined to happen to me for the first time, and your company will surely not be the strangest of them, nor the last. So you may come with me if you like, though I wish you had asked me for some other reward.”

Schmendrick smiled sadly. “I thought about it.” He looked at his fingers, and the unicorn saw the halfmoon marks where the bars had bitten him. “But you could never have granted my true wish.”

There it is, the unicorn thought, feeling the first spidery touch of sorrow on the inside of her skin. That is how it will be to travel with a mortal, all the time. “No,” she replied. “I cannot turn you into something you are not, no more than the witch could. I cannot turn you into a true magician.”

“I didn’t think so,” Schmendrick said. “It’s all right. Don’t worry about it.”

“I’m not worrying about it,” the unicorn said.

A blue jay swooped low over them on that first day of their journey, said, “Well, I’ll be a squab under glass,” and flapped straight home to tell his wife about it. She was sitting on the nest, singing to their children in a dreary drone.

Spiders and sowbugs and beetles and crickets,
Slugs from the roses and ticks from the thickets,
Grasshoppers, snails, and a quail’s egg or two—
All to be regurgitated for you.
Lullaby, lullaby, swindles and schemes,
Flying’s not near as much fun as it seems.

“Saw a unicorn today,” the blue jay said as he lit.

“You didn’t see any supper, I notice,” his wife replied coldly. “I hate a man who talks with his mouth empty.”

“Baby, a unicorn!” The jay abandoned his casual air and hopped up and down on the branch. “I haven’t seen one of those since the time—”

“You’ve never seen one,” she said. “This is me, remember? I know what you’ve seen in your life, and what you haven’t.”

The jay paid no attention. “There was a strange-looking party in black with her,” he rattled. “They were going over Cat Mountain. I wonder if they were heading for Haggard’s country.” He cocked his head to the artistic angle that had first won his wife. “What a vision for old Haggard’s breakfast,” he marveled. “A unicorn coming to call, bold as you please, rat-tat-tat on his dismal door. I’d give anything to see—”