Transformation - Final Piece

The Finished Pages

 

I planned on making them into a book, but due to time pressure (That and I wasn't confident enough in my book making skills that I felt that I could make a neat enough one for my final piece) I decided to instead print each page on glossy paper and mount them onto black card. These (essentially) are my final pieces (Along with a short version of the story, written by me; edited from the original book by Peter S. Beagle).

 



Official Cover

 

1.      Deep in an ancient forest, there were once two hunters; the elder one spoke of the beauty of the forest and how it was the way it was because of the presence of a unicorn… the last one in the world. Unbeknownst to them, the unicorn of the forest was hidden in the trees, listening to every word.

 

2.      The unicorn began to wonder if she truly was the last in the world. One day a traveling butterfly appeared in the forest, and she asked him what he knew of the unicorns in the world.

3.      The butterfly tells her a horrible story of a fiery beast called the red bull; who had hunted down all the unicorns of the world. Spurred on by this frightful tale, the unicorn leaves her forest, determined to find the truth.

4.      The unicorn travelled for many days and nights, entering vaster, darker lands filled with humans.

5.   One night, the unicorn was captured by a cruel old witch who kept mystical creatures on display in her wicked carnival. There, the Unicorn befriends a clumsy but kind and talented young magician named Schmendrick.

6.      Schmendrick released the Unicorn, who then set every other creature in the carnival free. As the unicorn and Schmendrick escaped, the cruel old witch was devoured by one of the creatures she had held captive.

7.      Soon the pair came cross a woman named Molly, who used to be visited by unicorns when she was a girl. She decides to join them on their quest for she could not bear to live in a world where there were no unicorns.

8.      Finally the three of them entered the land of King Haggard, who was rumoured to be the master of the mysterious red bull. He ruled in his castle by the sea for fifty years; from the moment he took the throne, the land became a dark, barren place where almost nothing grew.

9.      Out of nowhere fire appeared before them, and it then took the shape of a monstrous blood-red bull. It caught sight of the unicorn, she ran and it chased her.

10.      The bull was drove her towards King Haggard’s castle, but suddenly Schmendrick desperately used his magic to save her; and she transformed into a human. The red bull could no longer tell she was a unicorn, and so it returned to its master.

11.      The three of them continued to make their way to the castle where they offered their services to the king and his son Prince Lir, so they could secretly search for the lair of the red bull, and find out what happened to the unicorns.

12.      For many moons Schmendrick performed magic to entertain the king. The unicorn slowly began to forget who she was the longer she stayed human; she even fell in love with the prince. Eventually Molly is told the whereabouts of the entrance of the red bull’s cavern by the castle cat.

13.      One night the four of them made their way to the great hall, to go through the secret magical entrance to the cavern, inside the giant broken clock. A skull sitting on a pedestal in the hall cries out “Unicorn! Unicorn!” Alerting the King who had the clock destroyed after they entered the cavern. They couldn’t go back.

14.      The clock transported them to a dark dank cavern, which suddenly lit up bright red as the monstrous Red-bull once again appeared; only this time it recognised the unicorn in her human form. It chased her through tunnels; leading her to the same place it drove the others.

15.      Schmendrick cast his magic upon her again and the Unicorn tried to reach for her love one last time before returning to her true form forever.

16.      The bull drove her out of the tunnels, onto the beaches that surrounded the castle’s cliff. The Prince made one final attempt to protect the Unicorn, but the Red Bull trampled him to death. The unicorn saw this, and emitting a horrible, sorrowful cry that no immortal creature had ever made before, she swung about and charged towards the bull.

17.      Using her magic, she drove the bull into the sea and the moment its hooves touched the water there was a burst of dazzling light as every unicorn in the world was set free from their prison in the sea.

18.      Thousands of Unicorns ran up the cliffs and the force of their movement made the castle crumble into the sea, along with its king.

19.      As the unicorns ran through the land, it erupted into fifty years worth of springs and once again became beautiful, as though its dark king had never existed.

20.      The last Unicorn remained on the beach, where she touched the fallen prince with her horn, and he awoke fully healed. Prince Lir would become king, and Molly and Schmendrick his loyal subjects, but the unicorn would not stay with them.

21.      The Unicorn returned to her forest, forever burdened with the knowledge that she was be the only unicorn in the world who had ever loved and lost, but she was content none the less, for unicorn’s were in the world again and all was as it should be.