What is it about their faces? Molly wondered. I almost know. The magician sat silently by her, rolling his wineglass in his long hands.

“When those words were first spoken,” Drinn said, “Haggard had not been long in the country, and all of it was still soft and blooming‌—‌all but the town of Hagsgate. Hagsgate was then as this land has become: a scrabbly, bare place where men put great stones on the roofs of their huts to keep them from blowing away.” He grinned bitterly at the older men. “Crops to harvest, stock to tend! You grew cabbages and rutabagas and a few pale potatoes, and in all of Hagsgate there was but one weary cow. Strangers thought the town accursed, having offended some vindictive witch or other.”

Molly felt the unicorn go by in the street, then turn and come back, restless as the torches on the walls, that bowed and wriggled. She wanted to run out to her, but instead she asked quietly, “And afterward, when that had come true?”

Drinn answered, “From that moment, we have known nothing but bounty. Our grim earth has grown so kind that gardens and orchards spring up by themselves‌—‌we need neither to plant nor to tend them. Our flocks multiply; our craftsmen become more clever in their sleep; the air we breathe and the water we drink keep us from ever knowing illness. All sorrow parts to go around us‌—‌and this has come about while the rest of the realm, once so green, has shriveled to cinders under Haggard’s hand. For fifty years, none but he and we have prospered. It is as though all others had been cursed.”

“‘Share his feast and share his fall,’” Schmendrick murmured. “I see, I see.” He gulped another glass of the black wine, and laughed. “But old King Haggard still rules, and will until the sea overflows. You don’t know what a real curse is. Let me tell you my troubles.” Easy tears suddenly glittered in his eyes. “To begin with, my mother never liked me. She pretended, but I knew—”

Drinn interrupted him, and just then Molly realized what was strange about the folk of Hagsgate. Every one of them was well and warmly dressed, but the faces that peered out of their fine clothes were the faces of poor people, cold as ghosts and too hungry to eat. Drinn said, “‘Yet none but one of Hagsgate town may bring the castle swirling down.’ How can we delight in our good fortune when we know that it must end, and that one of us will end it? Every day makes us richer, and brings us one day nearer to our doom. Magician, for fifty years we have lived leanly, avoided attachments, untied all habits, readying ourselves for the sea. We have taken not a moment’s joy in our wealth‌—‌or in anything else‌—‌for joy is just one more thing to lose. Pity Hagsgate, strangers, for in all the wretched world there can be no town more unhappy.”