The Unicorn stopped drinking only long enough to smile at the little mouse and nod his head in agreement. How lovingly she had clung to his back all through the night and how her presence had warmed him after all that time stuck in the toy cabinet! How much distress he had felt trembling through her body as she dreamed! How it had moved him!

He seemed to recall a little girl with warmth in her eyes like that. What was her name? Was it Marie? Or Rachel? Or Julia? Or Nora? Or Ann? Or Sara? Or Doris? Or Suzanne? Or Tamar? Or Nancy? Or Emily? Or Kate? Or Carly? Or Joan? Or Clara? Or Elise? Did it matter? It was the loving warmth that was the promise and the comfort that had sustained him for so long. For the sake of this, a Unicorn was prepared to go to the ends of the earth or even beyond.

The Unicorn finished drinking. The little mouse scurried about and found a few tufts of grass to nibble at. Then she went down right to the edge of the water and stuck her little pink tongue out fifteen, sixteen, seventeen, even three times seventeen times until she had gotten her fill of the clear cold water. Then she climbed back up on the Unicorn's back and, despite the fact that she had intended to start talking right then, fell asleep for another nap, because she was still exhausted from her dream of the babbling brook, of the trees with the thousands of faces in their bark and of the truly horrid classroom and the strange little man with his candies that were the spoils of war.

While the little mouse acrobat napped, the Unicorn stood with his left front leg bent back at the knee and looked out over the frozen lake. He closed his eyes from time to time, but not to sleep. It was only so that, in this darkness of his own making, he could feel the fresh cold breeze ripple over his skin. This was so different from the cabinet that he felt sure he must be dreaming, but if this weight on his back, this cold in his nostrils that were jet black in contrast to the whiteness of his coat was a dream, he had no desire to wake up. It was enough just to enjoy the moment.

When the little mouse woke, she kissed the Unicorn once more, just to make sure. He did not turn into a prince. She was still a little mouse. So she was reassured and began to talk.

"Just as I was waking up, Unicorn, I remembered a spinning song that my old Great Aunt Viva used to sing when I was just a little mouse. She was a gentle and noble old mouse who had lived through three terrible famines back in the reign of Czar Whosososevevever-It-Was The Second Or Third Or Fourth. She was my father's favorite sister. When she was young they said she was a terror of a tumbler, so perhaps it was from her that I got my acrobatic urge.

"I used to sit and listen to her sing it, even though I did not understand a word. I liked the way the wheel went "Whir-whir-whir" and the spun thread came off and she sat there with a smile playing around her lips and eyes. This is how the song went:

'What's wrong is wrong
and can't be fixed
without a song,
without a dream."

For need is need
and greed is greed
and the two are twins
born of poverty.

The seeds of grief
are born in greed,
because too much
is never enough.

What's still and deep
is sweeter than sweet.
As the wheel turns
so the heart yearns.

Up goes down as
down comes up, luck's
less than it seems,
less than good seams.

The thread that's true
makes the dress warm
against the storm.
So turn, turn, turn

So turn, turn, turn,
let the wheel work
and make what's you
come to be true.

What's wrong is wrong
and can't be fixed
with song alone,
without a dream.'

"She would sit and sing this for hours and hours, so that, afternoon after afternoon, when I was little I would fall asleep to it. As I was waking up, I heard her singing and all the words came back to me, as if a gentle wind had brought her voice to me from ever so far away.

"I remember once my mother asked my Great Aunt Viva where she'd learned her spinning song. I was very little, Unicorn, and also very sleepy, but I pricked up my ears so as to hear what she said.

“I was a curious little mouse. I didn't want to miss out on the moment. She said she'd learned it from a spirit or Queen or wise woman or mouse named Blanche who lived beyond the farthest mountains but was in snow and silence and clouds and wind and apple and cherry blossoms, if only you knew how to listen and see and touch and smell and taste.

"She said this Blanche knew more even than the wise old owl because she knew enough to know less. I confess that part made no sense to me, either, but then triple back flips don't necessarily make sense.

"Now I think, Unicorn, you and I must go to cross the farthest mountains and find Blanche and ask her if there is a way beyond battles and hurts and hates, beyond greed and revenge, beyond the candy that is too sweet and the anger that is only sour and bitter and burns like fire. If there is, then we must ask her to try to teach us at least a little bit of it."

This idea made much more sense to her than joining the army had. She felt like herself again, but then in an instant her face fell.

"Oh, Unicorn, I think the noise of the battle came to me again in the night in my dream of a terrible schoolroom. I realized that no matter how far we go, no matter even if we fly as fast as moonbeam and wind, we can not escape that noise. I think of all the wounded mice and those that are beyond fixing, not to mention all the toys that will never be the same again. I think of all the slain smiles. Is a toy really so very different than a mouse, a mouse from a man? Or do we all come from the thread that is spun from the same spinning wheel with the same stillness at its center? I tell you, Unicorn, the noise of that battle did frighten me, even if I seemed so calm at the time. It's enough to make a mouse or a toy or even a little girl sick.

"So, Unicorn, will you come with me? I know I must go and seek and ask and see if I can bring back some message from some far off place that may be even as near as the heart although we have to cross the highest mountains to reach it. I know I must go, but I also know better than ever that I am only a very small creature, a little mouse and more timid than I ever suspected."

Here she recalled the noise of the battle, the dreadful schoolroom, the little man with the gleaming candy and the owl's eyes. She shuddered. Her eyes were bright, so that the Unicorn feared that she might be coming down with a fever.

"Of course, Mouse," he said, "I will go with you to the ends of the world or even, if need be, to the beginnings. I can not tell you how long I had spent in the toy cabinet under the spell of that owl eyed toy-maker, the one who thinks so much of his own ingenuity that he believes that he has the right to keep a Unicorn trapped in darkness and dust and, worst of all, immobility. How strange he was, how twisted, how unhappy! I always felt sad for him as if what he did not understand, for all his understanding, was only everything and yet I could not explain, neither to him, nor to myself. You know, Mouse, we Unicorns are creatures more of leaps than of speech."

The little mouse acrobat hopped gracefully back up onto the Unicorn who rather enjoyed the very small jolt of her very little weight. Just as the little mouse landed, however, a gleam in the snow, a special sparkle, quite different than the sparkle of the candy in her dream attracted her eye.

Was it gold or silver that sparkled so? She tugged on the Unicorn's mane, so that he looked, too. He pawed with his hoof at a little bank of snow. Soon were revealed there eight skates, two sets of four each, one set larger and one set smaller. The mouse acrobat leaped from the Unicorn's back with a double flip with a twist, because she was feeling better than she had in a long time.

"It's clear, Unicorn," she said, "We must cross this very frozen lake to get to Blanche. These skates in the snow say so."

Without further ado, she fastened the four little skates about her own paws and the four larger skates about the Unicorn's hooves and they set out. Sometimes the mouse acrobat was on the Unicorn's back. At other times, she would slide and glide at his side. After a while she figured out she could take two of her skates off, so as to have two paws free to use in acrobatic tricks. She glided by his side, lifted herself up on his mane, did flips off the end of his long golden horn and landed whirling on her feet.

For three days, they skated around the curve of this great frozen lake, pausing to rest for a few hours each night while they waited for the moon to rise. The wind piped tunes to their ears and they slid and glided together to these tunes. Sometimes, the mouse acrobat would sleep on the Unicorn's back while he skated gracefully along. Her dreams were peaceful and gentle. In them her great Aunt Viva often appeared with her spinning wheel. Blanche turned into white feathers and snow and cherry blossoms and then finally to a silence that was indescribable as the peace in a smile of joy that has lost all awareness of itself.

As she skated along beside the Unicorn on the fourth day, she found herself sometimes looking down into the ice, past the twinkling of her silver skates. As she got into the rhythm of the skating, into its arc and glide and slide, it started to seem to her that she was standing still and the ice was moving past her. As the ice moved past her, she started to see farther and farther into its depths. At first she saw mice, with faces that seemed almost familiar, only dreadfully still there in the ice.

Once she felt a pang of terror as she thought she saw her own mother's face, then her own face frozen in the ice. In the very next instant, she realized that the sun was starting to set. Fingers of rose and gold were reaching out from the horizon. The ice was darkening and becoming reflective. The little mouse acrobat was skating on a mirror, tracing patterns on it, finding patterns in it, both interwoven in the smooth glide she did at the Unicorn's side.

It was not only mice that she saw in the ice, but also toys of all varieties, bright colored frozen rank of toy soldiers after bright colored frozen rank of toy soldiers, toy horses, toy camels, toy elephants like those fabled Hannibal of old used to cross the Alps, toy ships with toy sails and toy sailors, dolls waiting at home, cooking, cleaning, singing, playing the piano, taking care of baby dolls, dolls dressed in party dresses, anxiously waiting for their escorts, frozen dolls who took care of the sick, even dolls dressed like acrobats. All this and more was in the ice that passed beneath her feet, in the mirror that passed beneath her eyes.

There were not only toy soldiers and animals and dolls. There were people, too. There was something uncannily familiar about these people whose faces bloomed like flowers from deep within the miraculous mirror of the ice. They were at once familiar and frightening. The little mouse acrobat felt that perhaps she had seem them before and ought to be able to greet them. She worried that they might be frightfully put out with her for being impolite.

With this thought came a memory of her so distressing dream of the schoolhouse. Now she knew. The faces that bloomed deep in the ice, behind the mice and the toy soldiers and the dolls were the faces of the children she had encountered in the dream in which she had been turned into a little girl. The little mouse acrobat felt a chill in her bones. She skated faster and moved closer to the Unicorn, so that she could take comfort in the steadiness of his breathing, the way his chest moved so reliably in and out.

She remembered the babbling brook and how happy she had been at first in her dream of being a little girl as she ran alongside it and listened to its song. Perhaps there were many such babbling brooks. Perhaps there were so many as to be beyond count. Perhaps, she wondered, a brook like that ran through each and every heart. How many of them flowed into this very enchanted frozen lake on which she and the Unicorn now skated? Surely it would take many brooks to fill up such a great lake.

How sad, thought the little mouse acrobat, that they should be frozen so, turned to ice, prevented from moving, just like the poor Unicorn had been for so long in that toy cabinet. How thick was the ice? How far down did it go? Perhaps beneath the ice there was something that was not still, not frozen, something liquid and lively that resisted the cold and remembered the babbling of the brook and waited always for the kindness of spring. As she thought these thoughts and felt these feelings, she seemed to see even deeper into the ice, behind the faces that bloomed there like the faces of the children in the classroom in the dream in which she herself had been turned into a little girl.

First it seemed she saw dark looming waves in the deep of the ice and then, as she began to see more clearly, she saw large dark wings that beat slowly and steadily. There were owls in the ice, thousands and thousands of them. If there were owls in the ice, which way was up and which way was down? Had she herself been caught and frozen in the midst of a backward flip? If so, what claws had caught her? So frightening was this vision she had of owls coming at her from an unfamiliar direction, that she might have slipped and fallen, if the Unicorn had not been so nearby that she could steady herself up against him.

The owls came nearer and nearer, sweeping their huge wings faster and faster, but still completely silently, until she started to be able to make out their features, the glittering grey green eyes set in the midst of feathers with a regular pattern of bars, black on white, black on white, black on white. The black was so black and the white was so white. The eyes glittered and seemed at once so mean and so desparate. They were coming closer and closer. The little mouse acrobat felt her heart beating faster and faster. Even though she was gliding along the ice and knew she was gliding along the ice, she also felt that she was still, transfixed.

She was caught in a prison whose bars were black. The glittering grey green eyes held her. Suddenly the eyes reminded her of the face of the peculiar little man who had hopped out of the drawer of the teacher's desk in her dream in which she had been turned into a little girl. Were those candies he had given out actually made of ice, cold on the tongue? How glad she was that, even in her dream, she had never tasted one. Just at the last possible second, she grabbed hold of the Unicorn's mane and swung herself up on his back. She buried her face in his mane and was soon fast asleep.

Her Great Mouse Aunt Viva's face rose up out of the mists that formed on the ponds of sleep.