Midnight Carnival
Disclaimer: The Last Unicorn is none of mine. It and all characters are property of Peter S. Beagle. The song at the beginning of the story is real, it's author unknown, and long dead, besides.
A/N: This is from the book, but you certainly don't need to read it to understand the story. It was supposed to take a slightly different angle, but that would have caused a plot hole between the fic and the book, so it didn't happen.
*****
An eight year old girl was hoeing in the kitchen garden. The stones in the earth did not trouble the hard soles of her bare feet, nor did the hot august sun beating down on her bare head bother her. Her tangled locks fell into her face as she worked, and she would brush them away again, leaning into the hoe. Her hands were as rough as a man twice her age, and the hard work did not faze her.
She worked her way between the rows of sorry tomatoes and wilting peas. A warm breeze blew around her ankles and ruffled the hem of her unkempt and too-short dress. Despite the hardship of her work, and the heat of the day, she sang:
Come listen to me,
you gallants so free,
All you that love mirth for to hear,
And I will tell of a bold outlaw,
That lived in Nottinghamshire.
As Robin Hood in the forest stood,
All under the green-wood tree,
There was he ware of a brave young man,
As fine as fine might be.
Her voice was not sweet, and the heavy breathing of her work broke the words, but the joyfulness of the tune pushed its way to the surface.
The garden was behind the large Dancing Cat Inn, wedged between the main building and the stable. She worked there for food and the clothes on her back, as well as a pile of hay in the loft over the stables to sleep at night. Many travelers came through, and she would hear the songs minstrels played and the stories told by the bards. The innkeeper's wife had taught her how to read and write, and she would commit them to memory long enough to write them down (badly spelled and a bit smeared) on scraps of paper, which she kept bundled together with her good hair ribbon.
The girl, Molly was her name, sang all of the songs about Robin Hood—the ones in which Maid Marion was mentioned twice over—as she pulled young carrots for the stew simmering away in the kitchen. The girl preferred working outdoors in the summer. The air moved around her with a cooling effect, all the while the innkeeper's wife moaned to her husband about being too cheap to build a summer kitchen.
As she stood the innkeeper's hired boy lead a horse around the corner of the inn. "You there, girl!" he shouted. "Take this animal. I've two more out front.
Molly's heart jumped at the sight of the horse—a snow-white mare. But that was all it was. A perfectly lovely white mare, as far as white mares went, but that was all. It wasn't what she was looking for, wasn't a unicorn.
She took care of the creature, then made her way back to the kitchens, where her mistress and the maid were waiting patiently for her.
*****
That evening Molly was on her knees scrubbing a large kettle resting on the floor. She was half inside of it, rubbing briskly with an old cloth and sand, trying to remove the caked on slime of lunch. Even from inside the kettle, her ears were focused on the partially opened kitchen door.
"…Mommy Fortuna's Midnight Carnival," she heard a man say loudly over the crowd. "See the greatest living wonders of the world. Creatures of night, brought to light! The Midgard Serpent, the whole world in its coils; Cerberus, the three-headed monster that guards the depths of Hell! Creatures of night, brought to light," he said again. "And many more fantastic creatures await you, for a small fee. Three days only!"
Molly had stopped scrubbing the pot, and listened closely to the disembodied voice. Fantastic creatures…magical things. Scouring dishes seemed meaningless at that very moment. "Girl!"
She snapped back to reality. "Ma'am?"
"You think I feed you for my health? Earn your keep, child. Honestly! I should have left you in the woods to die. But I didn't, did I? I gave you my name, treated you like a daughter. Don't I treat you like a daughter?" Molly didn't reply, but again started scrubbing at the pot furiously.
When the Inn was closed for the night, the guests asleep, and the dishes washed, Molly finally spoke again to the innkeeper's wife. "Ma'am?" she asked timidly. "Might I go to the Midnight Carnival?"
The innkeeper's wife frowned. "What Midnight Carnival? Never mind, I don't care to know. Don't I do enough for you, you little wench? My husband and I feed and clothe you, give you a place to sleep at night. Don't I give you a copper and let you go to the fair on Mid-summer's Eve? You could use a good hiding, you could. You take more than you give around here."
The innkeeper's wife, pleased with her rant, left Molly to sweep the floors and close the windows. The other maid had gone to bed as well in her own room. Molly gave the floor a few angry sweeps. She sighed, staring down at the broom, then out the window past the stable, where lights shone through the dark woods. She threw down the broom in defiance and, not caring about the whipping she would receive, pounded out the back door.
Molly climbed into her loft and changed into her best dress, which had a hole under the sleeve, a stain on the skirt, and smelled of horses. She had no money, and was not sure exactly what a small fee would be. She knelt before an old wooden box, which held her songs. She lifted up the papers. All of her treasures were stashed underneath them: a pendant she had made from clay and strung on a coarse string, two stubs of the good candles used to light the main room of the Inn, and a ring made of tin that she had found on the floor.
She snatched up the ring and placed it in her pocket, then hurried off into the night.
*****
In a clearing in the woods there were cages arranged in a pentacle form, three more in the center, a one lone wagon in the center of that. The place was lit with bright torches spaced even between the wagons. A group of people was forming right off the road, whispering to each other as an aging man sang and played the mandolin. They weren't paying any attention to him, however, trying to see into the light and the cages.
A short time later a short man approached the crowd. "Creatures of night, brought to light. Six coppers please." It was the man from the Inn.
Molly was at the back of the crowd and as she neared the man she caught the musician's eye and he winked. She smiled back shyly. When it came her turn, the small man laughed. "Go home, little girl. It's too late for children to be out alone." She saw that this was true. Most of the crowd was made up of adults.
"Please, sir. I want to see the Midnight Carnival. I-I don't have money, but I do have this." She placed the ring in his outstretched hand.
He took one look at it and laughed, tossing it over his shoulder. It glinted in the torchlight and rolled under one of the wagons. "Worthless," he remarked. "Go home, before I get angry."
The minstrel stepped over to them. "Give the kid a break, Ruhk. Who really cares?"
The man, Ruhk, gazed at her for a few moments. "Fine. Just stay to the back and out of my way." Molly nodded once and beamed. Ruhk scowled and stomped away.
He was the tour guide as well as cashier, and started leading the group around the outside ring of cages. "A manticore. Man's head, lion's body, scorpion's tail…." From the back of the crowd, Molly could see very little, but it didn't matter much. There was only one creature that she wished to see.
"Cornish Pixies," he said of the second cage, which was covered in a fine wire mesh. A dozen bright red lights zipped about the cage. Molly again frowned. She wanted to see! "Here." She turned around to find the minstrel. "Let me lift you up." She was light, and no burden on the man's shoulders. Upon closer inspection, they were tiny humanoid creatures, whose bodies were emitting the lights. They flitted from one side of the cage to another, laughing with high-pitched voices at the crowd.
Rukh glanced up, but said nothing, and continued on. "Don't touch, Madame. They may look pretty, but the little buggers bite something fierce. I should know. Had a hand in catching them."
They went from one cage to the next. The stunning dragon, the satyr, the Midgard Serpent, who lived on another plane of existence, something the eight year old had difficulty grasping.
When they reached the cage of Cerberus Molly first saw the three-headed monster. Thn she blinked, and thought she saw something else, something…less. Looking down at the minstel, and back again, it was Cerberus, then…a dog?"
"That's not a monster," she whispered softly to the minstrel. He put her down, then knelt to her level.
"What was it?"
"It-I don't know. First it was Cerberus, then it was…a mastiff. A dog. But how can that be?" The tour was starting to move on, Ruhk droning on in the background. "What's wrong?"
The man smiled sadly at her. "That's how I saw this carnival at first too. Mommy Fortuna gave me this job to shut me up. It's magic. Illusion. They are not what they seem, any of them." He paused. "Look again."
Molly did look. The satyr, an ape. The pixies, fireflies. "She can't turn cream into butter," she agreed. "Who is this Mommy Fortuna, who knows magic?"
"You'll see." He led her to catch up to the group approaching the middle cage. There was a small, bent figure in the cage. A great fear washed over Molly at the sight of it. The figure was human, yes, but there was something wrong, something different.
What is plucked will grow again,
What is slain lives on.
What is stolen will remain,
What is gone is gone.
The figure sang. But this was not a song that Molly wished to remember. It filled her with dread. She felt old, tired.
What is sea-born dies on land,
Soft is trod upon.
What is given burns the hand,
What is gone is gone.
Here is there, and high is low;
All may be undone.
What is true, no two men know—
What is gone, is gone.
Who has choices need not choose,
We must, who have none.
We can love but what we lose—
What is gone is gone.
She buried her face in the minstrel's leg. "This one is different. What's wrong with this one? This place was wrong. All of these creatures. They aren't magic, not real. Why did I come here? This isn't what I was looking for."
The man touched the top of her head gently. "What are you looking for?"
"The unicorns…"
He nodded sadly.
*****
The next morning Molly woke from a terrible nightmare, where old age had taken every unicorn in the world. She had no idea where it had come from, and couldn't quite remember where she had gone the night before. Except for a song, rooted deep into her brain.
Who has choices need not choose,
We must, who have none.
We can love but what we lose—
What is gone is gone.