Suddenly, the little mouse acrobat started to wonder what was concealed beneath the white surface of the snow, the pale blue and pearly sheen of the ice that clung to these peaks. Who else, beguiled by their own solitary ambitions, led on by creatures as appealing and winning as the white snow rabbit and the snow leopard, had tried to pass this way and failed? How many were concealed in the snow, unable even to bear cautionary witness to others who were tempted? There and then, clinging and trembling on the Unicorn's back, the little mouse acrobat felt a surge of gratitude towards her great mouse Aunt Viva.

With this surge of appreciation came shame at her own attitude. High up there in the night in the Allalonaya Mountains, far beyond the reach of any maps, the little mouse acrobat's face turned bright red beneath her tawny fur. The rush of shame brought warmth to her cheeks, so that the muscles about her lips, which had been so thin and tight, thawed a bit. She was able to smile, a very little smile, tentative and hesitant in the ring of golden light cast by the Unicorn's horn. How good it felt, in a soft, private way, not the kind of good at all that a mouse might wish to talk about, but at once nearer and dearer.

So she wasn't such a grand creature as she had thought. Once again, as before the battle when she had joined the army, she had lost her way. She was not so bold, nor capable of such vast feats of imagination and vision, but rather more of fear and terror. She was not so unique or special, but rather only a little mouse who was good at flips and twists and the like, but perhaps not so good at knowing who and when and how to trust. This little circle of golden light was all they had now. Who knew where it fit in the larger scheme of things? Who knew where they fit in the larger scheme of things? Who knew either where they were or where they were going?

Since the little circle of light, this golden glow emanating from within was all they had, they would have to trust it. It would have to be enough, even if it wasn't very much, even if there was no authority to vouch for it. They would have to go on, simply for the sake of going on and getting wherever they might get. The little mouse acrobat clung and trembled and sobbed, tears of fear and worry and remorse and repentance. They were the tears of a little creature returning to scale, shuddering and shrinking down to meet herself more or less as she actually was.

She knew as she sobbed and felt the cables of her face begin to relax after being so painfully and silently taut for so long that she would never see that white rabbit again. Whether this was because she at last had enough good sense to be too frightened of him to get near him or because he was now too frightened to show himself and practice his deadly wiles around her she could not tell.

However, she missed the snow leopard, who seemed, although somehow like the white rabbit, yet also somewhat different. How she had enjoyed his antics as he tried to imitate her flips and twists! But perhaps it was the combination of the snow leopard and the white snow rabbit that was so dangerous, each one so appealing that together they enticed you to let your guard down, to stop trusting yourself and give them a terrible power over you. Where had they come from in the first place? This was as much a mystery as where they had gone to when the bear awakened and she had felt such a desperate need for them.

Who had been there at that nightmarish moment? Only the Unicorn, who had looked so worried and drawn and tired for so long. Now she understood why he had looked so bad. It was because of her, because of his concern for her that had worn on him so terribly day after exhausting day. He had kept on without any assurance that she would ever come to her senses. She had felt so great, so grand, so exceptional that she could not even conceive that a fellow creature could be concerned about her. What kind of greatness was that?

Was it not only the greatness of feeling like less than nothing, of demanding the impossible of yourself and using that demand to seek your own destruction? Had she conjured the white snow rabbit and the snow leopard from within herself? If she had, then from where within herself? Was it possible that there could be vast territories even within a little mouse such as she was herself of which that little mouse knew next to nothing? Were these territories perhaps even as vast and forbidding as these same Allalonaya Mountains in which they now journeyed?

If there were such territories, how much did a little mouse such as she was wish to know of them? In the midst of her sobs, the answer came clear as a bell, clear as a Unicorn's laughter into her mind: "No more than absolutely necessary."

She caught her breath and reached forward to pull herself up the Unicorn's neck until she was able to kiss him on the ear.

"I'm sorry, so sorry, dear Unicorn," she whispered.

"Ah," said the Unicorn, "you've begun to forgive yourself."

"But I won't be able to forgive myself if I'm the cause of your being lost up here forever," said the mouse, beginning to sob again.

"If I remember correctly," answered the Unicorn, after a long pause in which he made certain of his footing at a particularly treacherous step, "the stories I heard from my great-grandfather and great-grandmother long long ago before my horn had found its glow, the pass that leads out of the Allalonaya Mountains lies between Ruin and Desolation."

"The key," continued the Unicorn, in his voice as soft as a moonbeam and as resolute as a star's unquenchable spark, "is to stay on the side of Desolation so that you can avoid Ruin. Of the two mountains, Ruin is the loftier, the grander. Perhaps even it is the most gorgeous peak in a certain way in the whole range. Its aspect changes and shifts with the light, so that it stays looking young and fresh and alluring, as if it had a thousand secrets, when its only secret is revealed by its name, Ruin."

The progress through the pass was hard and tedious, the descent much harder than the ascent. Always, there was the fear of falling. How the little mouse clung to the Unicorn and worried about him! How many times she kissed his ear, making her lips as soft and tender and encouraging as she possibly could! If he fell, then she would fall with him.

If that were to happen, she felt, the principal sorrow would be for him, not for such a foolhardy mouse as she was herself, first rushing after one lofty and exciting goal and then after another. She was, after all, the mouse who had decided to go to war, for the sheer excitement of it, yes, she had to admit, for the sheer fun of it. But what kind of fun was that, she wondered now in these long difficult days, as chasms of blue and white yawned beneath her, beneath the unicorn's so careful, so steady hooves? Wasn't it just exactly the wrong kind of fun, the fun that wasn't really fun at all, any more than the white rabbit had been really friendly?

A thousand times as they groped their way along so slowly, without any help from outside, the little mouse acrobat heard snatches of her great mouse aunt Viva's song in her mind:

"Up is easy
but down is hard,
the wheel must turn
from hope to woe

from friend to foe
and back again
as snow is white
and night is black..."

The song was a comfort, but also a warning. There was no knowing if they would make it. Yet, they were together again, the mouse acrobat and the Unicorn. This was the real consolation as they sought to find their way down the Mountain of Desolation and so out of the Allalonayas. The little mouse acrobat knew she wasn't the same mouse that had set off on this journey, not so foolhardy, not quite so blind as to what a Unicorn was.

How she longed for a place flat enough so that she could dare even to do a simple single flip! How long it had been since she had tried! The fear entered her mind that she had totally lost her acrobatic ability. Maybe she would never be able to do another flip in her whole life.

"Well," she thought, without even a trace of bitterness, "it would serve me right and I shouldn't even mind, really, if I couldn't, so long as I knew that the Unicorn was safe and happy, neither locked up in a toy cabinet, nor subject to the silly and dangerous whims of a foolish little mouse."

And she kissed him on the ear with such great tenderness that his laugh rang out again and was heard in the air that was now not quite so thin as it had been before.