The hand which was nearest him was my right. Holding on to the cliff with my left, I took from my pocket, with my right, the thread which the sorcerer had given me, and cleared the loop so that I could drop it over the creature’s head without tangling. I leaned across the bowlder toward him, keeping very quiet, and brought my right hand with the loop so close to him that I could have touched him. With that hand I held the loop above his head and began to lower it. It came down closer and closer; it reached the top of his head; I held my breath; my eyes were fixed on his; I lowered the loop another inch or two, until it came to his curved beak, without touching him; and I was about to drop it over his neck,—when suddenly he flapped his wings and fluttered his feathers all together; and all the little metal plates on his body striking one another gave off a rattling discharge of sharp reports, so violent that I thought the cliff was being blown to pieces. I jumped with fright, and scarcely refrained from uttering a cry; but I held my tongue, and dropped the loop around his neck.
Instantly the metal feathers were still and the noise ceased, and the owl turned his head slowly toward me and stared straight into my face; and as he gazed at me, all at once it came to me that I had dropped the noose with my right hand instead of my left. I was aghast at my mistake. I tugged at the thread frantically, but the owl did not budge. I began to grow dizzy. My arm tingled and grew numb. Everything turned black before my eyes. I could not remember where I was. I swayed and lost my balance; I felt myself falling; I clutched wildly for support, but touched nothing; I felt myself falling through space, falling, falling, as a person falls in a dream, for hours as it seemed, sick and dizzy. Only once did I touch anything, and then I felt in my knee a sharp pain, and was conscious that I was bleeding from a cut; and then I knew no more.
When I came to myself, I was standing at the foot of the cliff, where I had commenced my ascent. I looked upward, and wondered that I was alive after such a fall. As my eye traveled downward and rested on the circle of white stones above me I noticed in their center a little splotch of blood, evidently from my knee where it had been cut in my fall; and as I continued to look, the splotch grew into a blood-red flower, waving on a long stem. I felt a strange desire to take the flower in my teeth and tear it.
Alb Sees in the River the Reflection of a Unicorn
I wondered whether anything had happened to the hair in the middle of my head. I went to the river, and looked down at myself in a clear pool near the bank. I was surprised to see there the reflection of a small white horse’s head. I turned round, to see the animal which must have been looking over my shoulder. No animal was there. I could not understand it. I looked again at the surface of the water; the same head met my gaze; a small white horse’s head, and in the center of it a sharp, white horn. I looked behind me again, and again into the river. I stood in the water, and saw there the full image of the little white horse. It was myself.
Thus (said the young man, sitting in the half-moon pasture of Korbi, by the river Tarn), you know my story. I have kept count of the days since my enchantment, and they now amount to two years; the age of my little son when he was drowned. You have taken from me the third black hair, and I shall now fly back to my beloved Princess, cured of the curse of perpetual happiness, to spend with her the remainder of my days in blessed light and shadow, peace and storm, laughter and tears.
“I wonder,” said Bojohn thoughtfully, after a moment’s silence, “who the old man was who gave him the curse in the first place.”
“Did Alb tell you,” said Bodkin, “who the old man was?”
“No,” said Solario; “I don’t believe he ever knew. But I happen to know, myself, because it was revealed to me in the course of the story which was told me by—”