The Gift of the Unicorn and Other Stories

The sun returned hazily to earth, drawing in its wake a shroud of clouds red and purple, tinged orange at the trailing edges. Gonard stepped closer to her, shifting his large body across the ledge until their wing-leathers rasped together. The last rays of sunlight glittered a rainbow across her eyes, and picked tiny points of light from her red scales. He took a deep breath, filling his lungs with the far away scent of pine trees. This was the best part of the day, when he could stand beside her as darkness came.

  But he did not feel his usual peace tonight. Some thing was not right... He twisted his head to meet her eyes, as the air was suddenly filled with the dusty scent of warning. ‘Vomer?’

  She turned her wedge-shaped head away from him. ‘Gonard, the Master is going to unmake me tomorrow.’

  Breath hissed between his teeth. His claws dug deep into the rock, his body stilling in horror. Only his tail moved, slamming painfully against the cliff before falling limply to his side. Vomer moved away from him, to stand alone on the ledge.

  Without thinking, Gonard whirled, and dove into the Master’s cave. The slope down to the laboratory was almost vertical; his claws left deep marks in the rock as he ran-slid down its length. He swept his wings out and back, opening them to break his speed. The long folds brushed against the dark walls as he landed heavily on the polished floor.

  ‘Yes, Gonard?’

  The Master’s sharp voice brought him to his feet. The man was bent over the long work table, fingers deep in some delicate object. A hand moved suddenly, first to flick an errant strand of brown-grey hair behind an ear, then to lift an instrument from the table. The bright thing growled, and Gonard averted his eyes from its bright beam.

  ‘There must be a reason for your sudden entrance.’ The Master did not look up as he spoke. ‘Tell me, or I shall dismiss you.’

  ‘Vomer--is she to be unmade tomorrow?’

  The Master placed his glowing rod to one side. He finally raised his head. Gonard retreated a step. The bright, sourceless light which filled the cavern sparkled on the greying hairs. The black eyes bore into his. Gonard turned his own head aside, not daring to face such power. ‘Yes.’

  The question came out before he could stop it. ‘Why?’ Then Gonard cringed.

  But the Master’s answer was calm, unangered. ‘I need a dragon for a forthcoming Hunt. The Lord Citizen has demanded a green dragon, and she holds materials which I require. You know as well as I that I rarely maintain a spare creature for more than a few months. I’ve forgotten why I have allowed her to exist for so long.’ The deep voice dropped. ‘I have also forgotten why I’ve kept you.’

  Gonard lowered his head, puzzled by the Master’s thoughtful tone. He shuffled his feet uncomfortably. One of his claws screeched against the floor, and he stopped. ‘Sorry,’ he rumbled.

  ‘You have never protested before when I’ve unmade a creature. Why now?’

  Don’t you understand? Gonard wanted to ask. Don’t you see? She hasn’t Awakened yet. All her thoughts are slow thoughts, metal thoughts, bubbling up and bursting and leaving nothing behind. Nothing more. Gonard closed his eyes, words piling up in his throat. He had only recently Awakened himself. ‘We have been together for over two years--’

  ‘Which can mean nothing to you. You are no more than a dragon, created by my own hands and the tools at my command.’ The Master swept an arm at the many things of power which filled the cavern. ‘It is impossible for you to feel an attachment to any thing. Dragons can’t feel. Dragons can only rust.’

  Gonard dipped his snout in agreement. The Master knew. He understood things better than a mere dragon. The man went back to his work, dismissing him. Gonard turned carefully, folding his wings onto his back as he limped to the comforting darkness of his burrow.

  Vomer came to his side some time later. She lowered herself to her belly, tucking hindlegs underneath. Their eyes reflected the light stretching down the passageway from the laboratory, casting four bright ovals onto the rough walls. Gonard draped his good wing over her, ignoring the small pricks of pain as she shifted and her body spines dug into the leathery flaps.

  Vomer closed her eyes. He felt her breathing still as she discontinued consciousness for the night. For a moment he envied her. Since his Awakening, sleep had become a dangerous realm, from which he might not safely emerge. Sleep gave the metal bubble thoughts a change to re-establish themselves, take over again. Perhaps it would have been better if he had never Awakened...

  A shiver started at his nose and trembled its way down to his tail, slapping the flattened end against the ground. No. He could lose himself that way as well.

  He was never far from losing himself. He must always guard his thoughts. To be unAwakened was to be nothing more than a complex body, organs thumping and bones clicking. To be Awake was so much more... Would Vomer ever have a chance to realise that?

  How could the Hunt claim Vomer? He gazed at her, his eyes following the long curve of her neck to her head, the long muzzle pillowed on her outstretched forelegs. A strange pain settled in his chest. He shifted his position on the floor, but the pain remained, puzzling in its lack of physical cause.

  He finally dug his claws into the rough rock and pulled himself to his feet. The passageway was well lit with laboratory light. Head bent, he watched his feet carry him forward, their dark-blue nearly matching the dark rock, the crippled form of his left forefoot a suitable companion to the claw-scarred ground.

  The sourceless light of the laboratory seemed brighter than ever, and he blinked as he left the passageway. Instruments driven by the Master’s power flashed and gleamed from their wall panels. A dull, steady throb filled the air. The sound made Gonard’s legs twitch uncomfortably, and he had to fight the sudden urge to curl into a tight ball around his head. The Master was creating the Hunt dragon’s brain.

  The Master snapped one sharp, impatient word, and the power dissipated. He tore off his black eye-covering. Gonard cowered at his glare. ‘What are you doing here?’

  Gonard stood still for a moment in the room of his creation. How many years had he lived? Nearly ten. Ten years--and Vomer had only had two. ‘Master, let me be the Hunt dragon.’

  ‘You?’ The man walked around the table, coming towards him in slow, powerful steps. He is not just a man, he is the Master, Gonard reminded himself, backing away. The Master’s head might only reach the height of a dragon’s first knee joint, but the power surrounding him made the man seem too large for even the cavern to contain comfortably. ‘Look at yourself. The Lord Citizen demands a perfect dragon. You were twisted from your making, and deformed you will always be. What would he say if I offered you to him? He would spit in my face. That is what he would do.’

  The pain was hardening in Gonard’s chest. ‘Then use me to build the Hunt dragon.’

  ‘Gonard. Enough of this.’ The mocking tone cut through his protest. Gonard lowered his head until his snout touched the warm floor. ‘Listen to me, dragon. You are merely a creation, something brought to existence by my own hands. I can name every item I used to give you movement.’ Gonard glanced up. The Master’s eyes flashed blue-black, and Gonard’s nostrils flared as the heavy smell of angered power dusted them with fire. ‘Vomer is equally nothing more than one of my creations. You are both nothing more than extensions of myself. I can make or unmake you at will. Without me, you are nothing. On your own, all you can do is rust.’

  ‘Dragons can only rust,’ Gonard repeated.

  ‘And do you comprehend what that means?’

  ‘Without a Master, I will return to the nothing from which I came.’

  ‘Precisely.’ The Master’s stern expression suddenly softened. He leaned back against the table. ‘But you can be useful to your Master. You usually show great interest in my creating, and I have valued your contributions to my designs. Does this Hunt dragon not interest you?’

  Gonard paused. The Master was right. In fact, it had been Gonard who had convinced him that a gryphon’s wings should spring from the shoulders, not from
the back. He enjoyed the exploration of ancient, decaying texts for illustrations of long extinct beasts, suggesting that in the preliminary sketches the Master add a tooth here, remove a claw there. But the Hunt dragon--no, he could not enjoy that. ‘You don’t need much preparation, Master. You don’t have to do much more than alter the dragon drawings you already have. And I’m not allowed to help you design the interior of a creation.’

  ‘I will not force you,’ the Master said stiffly. ‘You are dismissed.’

  Gonard turned, climbed slowly up the slope to the cool night outside. He stretched out long, golden wings. The right wing had slim, straight lines and a proud expanse of leathery skin. The left sagged, skin wrenched apart, twisted. The night breeze pulled at both. One wing billowed, the other swung loosely, like a collection of rags. He wondered what they were for. Sometimes, as now, when the wind blew against them, he almost knew.

  His ears twitched at the scrape of claws upon rock. Vomer pulled herself onto the ledge. Gonard shifted to make room for her, surprised at her presence. She should not have returned to consciousness until the morning. ‘I tried to change the Master’s mind,’ he said, ‘but he wouldn’t listen to me.’

  ‘It is unimportant,’ she replied calmly. ‘I belong to the Master. He is entitled to do with me as he wishes. Dragons can only rust.’

  ‘I once believed as you do,’ Gonard said slowly. ‘That was before I Awakened.’

  She cocked her head, moonlight trickling down her neck scales. ‘I do not understand this “Awakening”.’

  How could he explain? How could he make her understand? Gonard looked up at the dark sky, saw a cloud silvered by the half moon. ‘What is that, by the moon?’

  ‘A cloud.’

  ‘No. Look at it closely. What else is it?’

  She studied it a moment longer. ‘A visible mass of condensed watery vapour floating high above the ground.’

  ‘No, look again,’ he urged. ‘What does it remind you of? Think hard.’

  ‘It reminds me of the cycle of evaporation and precipitation.’

  Gonard sighed, defeated. ‘To me, it looks like one of the dogs the Master created for the Lord Citizen. The cloud looks like a dog trying to swallow the moon.’

  ‘A cloud is a mass of condensed watery vapour,’ Vomer repeated. ‘How can this be regarded as a four-legged carnivorous animal of family akin fox and wolf?’

  ‘To be Awakened is to be more than a mass of muscle and organs.’ Gonard glanced at the cloud, now more like a cat, claws outstretched. ‘I only Awakened slowly. A few more moments each day when I was more than the inward processes of existence, when I could think on my own. I had hoped that you would also Awaken.’

  They stood in silence for a long moment. Then Vomer said, ‘You once explained to me that all things eventually leave their existence. Even beings like our Master. How do they approach this?’

  ‘They believe that death is only a step to a new beginning.’ The teachings of the books he had been permitted to read came back to him. ‘They have souls--something beyond the body and mind which holds all that is themselves. And it continues to exist even after they die, taking all that is themselves to somewhere else.’

  ‘So they never cease to exist?’

  ‘So they believe.’

  ‘Then, believe the same for me.’

  He studied her, the pain in his chest tightening. She had never spoken thoughts like these before. Was she close to Awakening? If only she had more time, if only he could convince the Master... But the Hunt. The Hunt most go on. The vision of a dragon galloping across a green valley, chased by men and women on horseback, filled his mind. It was the Hunt which allowed the Master to continue creating. The Hunt must go on.

  He hung his head over the ledge, gazing down to where the ground and cliff embraced, hundreds of meters below. ‘Dragons have no souls,’ he said softly.

  ‘Why not?’

  Dragons can only rust. She knew that as well as he did. ‘Souls come from the Ultimate,’ he retorted, ‘Who is as far beyond the Master as the Master is beyond us. It is not within the Master’s power to give us souls.’

  Vomer’s sigh made him raise his head. She sat down, her long tail curling around her thin, graceful body. Gonard thought to himself suddenly, She is very beautiful. And he swallowed as she said, ‘I know very little about these things. I do know that your breathing is out of rhythm and you are holding yourself away from me as if I were already gone. I have no concern for myself--I only wish to serve my Master. But you--’ she faltered. ‘I believe it would ease you if you believed that I do have a soul. Believe that I will continue to exist after the Master has used me.’

  Gonard nodded, unable to speak.

  ‘Now, please stand beside me. The night is cold.’

  He obeyed, covering her with his right wing. They stood together until dawn, when the Master’s voice called Vomer away.

  The morning turned to afternoon, the sun carrying its light over to Gonard’s ledge. He listened to the throb of the Master’s instruments, knowing that they were following the Master’s commands and building the Hunt dragon.

  Despite his ache of loss, Gonard found himself wondering exactly how the Master would take Vomer apart. He had seen pictures of human anatomy. Dragons could not be very different. How would the Master remove the blood, lift out the heart, separate lungs from ribs? Or would he go further in his unmaking, reducing Vomer to the basic stuff of flesh from which she had been made? He wanted to watch--the more of Vomer the Hunt dragon held, the more the hope that some part of her lived on. But he was forbidden to witness the actual building of a creature.

  The throb disappeared, replaced by low rumbles. Now he would be allowed to watch. He opened his eyes, saw the Master working over the Hunt dragon. The green body gleamed. He wondered if anything of Vomer remained.

  But, he reminded himself, the mist. As the Master had cut into Vomer’s body, a thin mist had arisen, dimming red scales and darker skin. Then the harsh sound and bitter smell of the Master's power had forced him to shut his eyes. His head trembled against his forefeet, draped uncomfortably over the edge of the slope. Could that mist have been Vomer’s soul?

  The Master stepped back from the table. He spoke to his panel of instruments. The table began to glow, a high-pitched hum surrounding the dragon body. Gonard trembled again. As often as he had heard the sound, whether hiding himself in his cave or gazing down from the ledge, he always trembled. The hum became a whistle, high-pitched notes forming the unique birth-song of a new creature. A similar song had brought him into existence. This was the moment of the Master’s ultimate power.

  The mass on the table twitched. The body firmed, muscles knitting together underneath the thin skin. Then the scales grew into place, hardening under the lights, small ones on head and toes, larger on the body. Two long, black wings fanned open and draped onto the floor.

  The Master strode to the head of the Hunt dragon. Gonard saw the large eyes open, blink in the strong light. ‘Dragons can only rust,’ the Master said into one of the fur-rimmed ears. ‘That is the only thing you can do without me.’ Then he backed away, and commanded, ‘Stand.’

  The Hunt dragon’s head jerked from the table. The rest of the body followed stiffly, shuddering as the dragon struggled to establish control over the existence which had been suddenly granted to her.

  ‘Move your left forefoot and wing forward,’ the Master snapped.

  The dragon obeyed. Then her head snapped back. With a screech that shook the cavern, she toppled from the table, her foot and wing twisting and writhing. Gonard found himself straightening with the same scream, as his own foot and wing remembered the pain which had deformed them at his own birth. Sometimes, even the Master’s power went wrong.

  ‘Gonard, come!’

  The Master’s command broke through his memory. Gonard skidded down the slope, halting beside the fallen Hunt dragon. He glanced at the green body. When the power went wrong, the kindest action to take was
to remove existence from the creature. This time, the Master had been kind.

  ‘What a nuisance,’ the Master muttered. ‘Now I must attempt to salvage enough for one healthy dragon from between two. Get on the table.’

  Gonard dropped his snout to the floor, then surprised himself by hesitating to obey. One eye watched the man go to his gleaming walls. The other drifted back to the Hunt dragon. The neck had twisted in the fall, breaking the skin open. A thin, white-blue mist swirled over the slit. Something glittered underneath.

  Glitter? What could glitter in a dragon's body? Gonard drew back his lips, used his long canines to pull the skin away from the neck. A silvery structure was exposed, filaments of metal arranged to slide easily past each other. One of the head plates had slipped aside, revealing a mass of intricately laced fibres. The brain of a dragon.

  Now he understood. Now he knew why he could rust. Blood and meat and skin--no. Now he saw what a dragon really was, a thing of metal and rubber and plastic, strung together and given the semblance of existence. So convincing that even the machine could begin to believe that it was alive. The mist was followed by a clear liquid, beading on the exposed metal, protecting it from rust.

  Vomer was gone. A dragon could not have a soul. And soon he would be gone as well.

  The Master turned around. ‘I commanded you to get on the table.’

  Gonard merely stared at him. A pain was thickening in his chest, behind which something shifted, expanded. ‘Why?’

  ‘There is no why,’ the Master growled. ‘I command. You obey.’

  ‘No. Why--’ Gonard shuddered. ‘Why did you let us think that we were alive? Why did you create such a lie of existence? Why?’

  The Master’s eyes narrowed. ‘Obey me. Get on that table.’

  The ache was building in his chest, his muscles trembling as if something were attempting to move, to grow. Images swirled in his mind. A dog-shaped cloud. Vomer silhouetted against the sunset. A drawing of a human heart. The metal connections of the Hunt dragon’s neck crackled under foot as he moved forward. In a corner of the cavern, he could see the red mass which had once been Vomer, now torn apart and discarded. ‘She is not alive, and she never was alive.’ He fixed his gaze upon the small man before him, and howled, ‘Why did you kill her?’

  The thing in his chest growled, snapped, exploded. His jaws were forced open as a gush of flame blazed from his throat. Red-yellow fire leapt into one of the Master’s instrument panels, the metal bubbling and twisting under the heat.

  The Master’s face paled. Gonard glanced at the scorched cabinet, then turned his gaze back to the man. ‘Now I remember,’ the man whispered. ‘Now I remember what I created you for.’

  ‘You killed her,’ Gonard growled, his mind spinning.

  Fear brightened the man’s eyes. A long instrument appeared in his hand--the same with which Gonard had seen him remove a hippogryph’s leg with one sweep of red light. The man lifted it, aiming the end at Gonard’s head. ‘She is not important. You are not important.’

  The man’s words were cut off in a second blaze. The flames surrounded him, burrowing into his coat, dancing along his unruly hair. The black eyes teared, then melted to bone. And then, flesh gone, the bones themselves crisped, until all that was left to slump to the ground was a few bits of gristle and gutted muscles.

  The remaining fire blasted into the floor, the hard material smoking and receding from the heat. Finally the chamber in his chest was empty, its deed done. The Master was dead.