And by the time the sun set he would be standing quiet by a hedge that
ran right down into the frontier of twilight, with his hounds all
gathered close in under the hedge, with his eye on them all lest one of
them dared to move. And the pigeons would come home to trees of the
fields we know, and twittering starlings; and the elfin horns would
blow, clear silver magical music thrilling the chilled air, and all the
colours of clouds would go suddenly changing; it was then in the failing
light, in the darkening of colours, that Orion would watch for a dim
white shape stepping out of the border of twilight. And this evening
just as he hushed a hound with his hand, just as all our fields went
dim, there slipped a great white unicorn out of the border, still
munching lilies such as never grew in any fields of ours. He came, a
whiteness on perfectly silent feet, four or five yards into the fields
we know, and stood there still as moonlight, and listened and listened
and listened. Orion never moved, and he kept his hounds silent by some
power he had or by some wisdom of theirs. And in five minutes the
unicorn made a step or two forward, and began to crop the long sweet
earthly grasses. And as soon as he moved there came others through the
deep blue border of twilight, and all at once there were five of them
feeding there. And still Orion stood with his hounds and waited.
Little by little the unicorns moved further away from the border, lured
further and further into the fields we know by the deep rich earthly
grasses, on which all five of them browsed in the silent evening. If a
dog barked, even if a late cock crew, up went all their ears at once
and they stood watchful, not trusting anything in the fields of men, or
venturing into them far.
But at last the one that had come first through the twilight got so far
from his magical home that Orion was able to run between him and the
frontier, and his hounds came behind him. And then had Orion been toying
with the chase, then had he hunted but for an idle whim, and not for
that deep love of the huntsman's craft that only huntsmen know, then had
he lost everything: for his hounds would have chased the nearest
unicorns, and they would have been in a moment across the frontier and
lost, and if the hounds had followed they would have been lost too, and
all that day's work would have gone for nothing. But Orion led his
hounds to chase the furthest, watching all the while to see if any hound
would try to pursue the others; and only one began to, but Orion's whip
was ready. And so he cut his quarry off from its home, and his hounds
for the second time were in full cry after a unicorn.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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