“What do you mean, what have I done?” he demanded of the moaning Molly. “Only saved her from the Bull by magic, that’s what I’ve done. By magic, woman, by my own true magic!” Now he was helpless with delight, for he wanted to dance and he wanted to be still; he shook with shouting and speeches, and yet there was nothing that he wanted to say. He ended by laughing foolishly, hugging himself until he gasped, and sprawling down beside Molly as his legs let go.

“Give me your cloak,” Molly said. The magician beamed at her, blinking. She reached over and ungently pulled the shredded cloak from his shoulders. Then she wrapped it around the sleeping girl, as much as it would wrap. The girl shone through it like the sun through leaves.

“Doubtless you are wondering how I plan to return her to her proper shape,” Schmendrick offered. “Wonder not. The power will come to me when I need it‌—‌I know that much now. One day it will come when I call, but that time is not yet.” Impulsively he seized Molly Grue, hugging her head in his long arms. “But you were right,” he cried, “you were right! It is there, and it is mine!”

Molly pulled away from him, one cheek roughed red and both ears mashed. The girl sighed in her lap, ceased to smile, turned her face from the sunrise. Molly said, “Schmendrick, you poor man, you magician, don’t you see—”

“See what? There’s nothing to see.” But his voice was suddenly hard and wary, and the green eyes were beginning to be frightened. “The Red Bull came for a unicorn, so she had to become something else. You begged me to change her‌—‌what is it frets you now?”

Molly shook her head in the wavering way of an old woman. She said, “I didn’t know you meant to turn her into a human girl. You would have done better—” She did not finish, but looked away from him. One hand continued to stroke the white girl’s hair.

“The magic chose the shape, not I,” Schmendrick answered. “A mountebank may select this cheat or that, but a magician is a porter, a donkey carrying his master where he must. The magician calls, but the magic chooses. If it changes a unicorn to a human being, then that was the only thing to do.” His face was fevered with an ardent delirium which made him look even younger. “I am a bearer,” he sang. “I am a dwelling, I am a messenger—”

“You are an idiot,” Molly Grue said fiercely. “Do you hear me? You’re a magician, all right, but you’re a stupid magician.” But the girl was trying to wake, her hands opening and closing, and her eyelids beating like birds’ breasts. As Molly and Schmendrick looked on, the girl made a soft sound and opened her eyes.

They were farther apart than common, and somewhat deeper set, and they were as dark as the deep sea; and illuminated, like the sea, by strange, glimmering creatures that never rise to the surface. The unicorn could have been transformed into a lizard, Molly thought, or into a shark, a snail, a goose, and somehow still her eyes would have given the change away. To me, anyway. I would know.