The magician answered him in a voice almost too soft to be heard. "The touch of a human hand would wake her out of the deepest sleep the devil himself could lay on her. And Mommy Fortuna's no devil."

"She'd like us to think so," the dark man sneered. "Donkey hoofs! Gahhh!" But he thrust his hands deep into his pockets. "Why would the spell be broken? It's just an old white mare."

But the magician was walking away toward the last of the black wagons. "Hurry," he called over his shoulder. "It will be day soon."

It took them the rest of the night to pull down the ninth cage, bars and floor and roof and then to put it back together around the sleeping unicorn. Rukh was tugging at the door to make sure that it was securely locked, when the gray trees in the east boiled over and the unicorn opened her eyes. The two men slipped hurriedly away, but the tall magician looked back in time to see the unicorn rise to her feet and stare at the iron bars, her low head swaying like the head of an old white horse.

II

The nine black wagons of the Midnight Carnival seemed smaller by daylight and not menacing at all, but flimsy and fragile as dead leaves. Their draperies were gone, and they were now adorned with sad black banners cut from blankets, and stubby black ribbons that twitched in the breeze. They were arranged strangely in a scrubby field: a pentacle of cages enclosing a triangle, and Mommy Fortuna's wagon lumping in the center. This cage alone retained its black veil, concealing whatever it contained. Mommy Fortuna was nowhere to be seen.

The man named Rukh was leading a straggling crowd of country folk slowly from one cage to the next, commenting somberly on the beasts within.