Nobody knew where it had come from, or what it wanted. Not even Jaive, the sorceress, could fathom the mystery of the fabled beast. But Tanaquil, Jaive's completely unmagical daughter, understood it at once. She knew why the unicorn was there: It had come for her. It needed her.

Tanaquil was amazed because she was the girl with no talent for magic. She could only fiddle with broken bits of machinery and make them work again. What could she do for a unicorn?

With her talent for mending things, sixteen-year-old Tanaquil reconstructs a unicorn which, brought to life, lures her away from her desert fortress home and her sorceress mother to find a city by the sea and the way to a perfect world.