~ The Sorrow of Joy ~
"...For nothing makes me happy but their shining and their grace."
That was what he had said to the Red Bull, that fateful morning in the woods. Haggard looked down upon the sea from the window in his tower. He could see them dancing underneath the waves, fearful of emerging but desperate to try.
As he was desperate to keep them.
Haggard watched them, and his glacial eyes softened as they would for nothing and no one else. The unicorns, even in their fear, were beautiful. They took his breath away. An elflike delicate step here, the silvery flash of a tail there. He never tired of them.
It is a poor man that cannot feel unless he possesses all there are of such creatures.
Nothing, no love, no hate, no emotion stronger than a whisper had touched his heart in many, many years, but for the unicorns. Their joy was ageless and deathless, and struck him like a spear when nothing else could reach him. It was an ecstasy of pain that made him feel alive again. He had to have every one - and he did.
All but one - and she, too, would be his for a time. He kept her here as he did the others, though she walked as a woman and not a magical beast. He pretended amusement at the tricks of the inept wizard and affected pleasure at Molly's meals, merely to have Amalthea. Her woman's body was beginning to forget its original shape even now. The radiance of the unicorn was a paling shadow in her human eyes. Still, she was beautiful. While the unicorn lasted, he would look at her. Even afterward, when it was gone completely, he thought he could look at her.
He did not love her. It was nothing like love. Nor was it the foolish, boyish adoration of his adopted son. Lir knew nothing of Amalthea's origins. He saw only the woman-shape before him. Haggard saw the unicorn shimmering underneath, just as her fellows shimmered under the ocean waves. When the unicorn had gone and left only the human behind, Haggard would still see her and remember what she'd been.
Even if that fool of a wizard did manage to change her back, Haggard would drive her into the sea just as he had the others. It mattered not.
The tide was turning now. Haggard watched the unicorns sway with the waves, hundreds of them. The arch of a neck, the brilliant blue gleam of an eye. Haggard's heart skipped, and he felt tears burn down his cheeks. Was there ever anything so beautiful? He gripped the window ledge, white-knuckled, as if he could hold onto the emotion with both gnarled hands. Oh, to feel like that again about anything!
Anything other than unicorns.
- End