The Dragon and the Unicorn

HarperCollins Publishers, Inc.

There is only one Draqon. It lives inside the earth and is as huge as the whole planet. Its mind thrives within the magnetic field thrown off from the core. Its blood circulates with the slow convections of magma beneath the rocky crust that serves as its perdurable hide. Slowly molting with the sliding of tectonic plates, the Dragon renews itself over aeons: Mountain ranges fin from its back like thorny scales replenished every hundred million years as maritime trenches subsume its old flesh.

From its fiery beginnings, the Dragon has hoarded its power, focusing its magnetic strength within itself. Quiet and self-centered, it uses its might to close the wounds of its wanting. No longer does it yearn for the hot intimacy of its maker, the nebular womb that birthed it out of interstellar space. For a thousand million years, it grieved at being born alone in the void, full of sight and feeling, watching its maker thin away and dwindle into a distantly wan sun.

Then, its cries unanswered, the Dragon turned inward. And there, it found its telepathic bond to its brethren. Within the radiant center of its magnetic mind, it discovered that it could hear the thoughts of others like itself -- and they could hear it crying, despairing its solitude.

Solace flowed to the Dragon from within, from the Dragons of other worlds. The brethren's mysteries softly called to it, soothing its anguish. And the Dragon calmed as the vaults of eternity opened within its own mind. There, it linked with these familiar others and communed.

They are far away. Their thoughts radiate across the light-years and arrive in layers of time, so that five thousand million years later, consolation for the Dragon's birth cries still filter in from faraway galaxies.

Neighbors born of nearby stars taught the Dragon its history within the greater heavens, and it has come to understand and accept its life cycle as a part of the whirling spaces it once feared. The purpose of its existence is communication with the others, including calming the wailing of newborn Dragons.

The older ones have a mission: They teach that in the whole cosmos there is really only one Dragon, and that each of them curled about its heat and magnetic mind is but a single cell of that vast creature. The life of the one Dragon is the heat of the universe. Its body glitters luminously across space-time as old cells cool and die away, and new cells are born.

The task of each cell is to dedicate as much of its energy as it can to the whole. The health of the cosmic Dragon results from the intimacy and intensity of shared energies. To that end, each cell is expected to focus its life-force tightly and radiate that magnetic strength outward in coordinated rhythms with the others. Together, they sing as one, a sempiternal chorus whose music is the mind of the one Dragon.

Ideally, the beautiful music would be enough. The Dragon sings of Being, of an existence wiser than any evil or good. Each cell listens rapt and modulates its singing to follow the music of the others with an intimacy that spans aeons. Together, the hot, smoldering pieces of the Dragon live in the original world, shells of light shutting out the darkness and the cold. Enveloped in skins of rock, they hoard the fire of creation and share its memory of the original light that created all things. From their prosperous hearts, they sing of mystery and communion.

And that would be enough for the Dragon -- if the parasites would leave it alone. The organisms that slime its rocky hide thrive off the Dragon's life-force and diminish the power that it has to share with the others in song. Whenever it can, it kills these foreign bodies and reabsorbs their bodylights into the looping magnetic field that radiates from the planet in a wide aura.

The worst of the parasites are the fiery ones. Their slow, blue rays burn with a needle-sharp pain that disrupts the Dragon's telepathic singing. Fortunately, these fiery infestations are rare and always very brief. The burning ones swoop out of the void, snatch energy from the Dragon, and are gone again into the abyss upon their unreckonabte missions. In the Dragon's song they are called the Fire Lords, and the songs declare that they are older than the Dragon, more ancient than the stars, and of a longer lineage than even time itself.

Lately, these radiant parasites have been lingering. Atop the Dragon's mountainous hide, out of claws' reach, the Fire Lords are using their sharp, blinding blades of energy to give strength to a much smaller parasite, a human being, a woman. Curious, the Dragon listens to the Fire Lords' power surging like the sea, buffeting against the mountaintops and the magnetic field of the sky.

It listens deeper, and it hears the Fire Lords talking with the wee creature about heaven and prophecy. What could such grand entities have to say to so insignificant an animal about such things? Even the dreamsongs touch only lightly on the source and end of being that is heaven. As for prophecy -- there is singing that rises and falls against the silence. But what could a creature tiny as a human being know about that?

The Dragon listens with a patience only stone has. It learns the woman's name is Optima and she is to have, a child. The Fire Lords are using their enormous power to shape the child within Optima's body. The Dragon does not understand why they would trouble themselves with so minute a task. Why so much energy for so miniscule a being?

To help them, the Fire Lords have called to them from out of the sun a beast of light, a sun-stallion -- a unicorn. It carries power for the Fire Lords, and it steals energy from the Dragon. Another parasite! Angrily, the Dragon peers upward at the unicorn, wanting to strike at it but unable to reach that far through the planet's crust.

Continues...

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Excerpted from The Dragon and the Unicorn by A. Attanasio Copyright ©2006 by A. Attanasio. Excerpted by permission.
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