The Whole Sky in One Heartbeat

Legend has it… every unicorn is born whole — and some are born feeling everyone else so clearly that they have to learn how to be one. At dusk over the marshes, ten thousand starlings fly as one great twisting cloud, turning all together like smoke in a wind. Not one bird is watching all ten thousand. Each one only watches the seven birds nearest to it. That's enough. That's how the whole sky turns.

1

Luna is old now. His muzzle has gone white as frost on a hedge, and he climbs the lighthouse stairs slowly. He still has never spoken a word. He lives in the lighthouse now — the very one he used to kneel at the attic window to watch — with Moss, the old lighthouse keeper, who has never needed many words either. Lull lives there too, its chest glowing low on the stairs at night so nobody trips. On the shelf by the lamp sits a worn picture book with one page marked: one hundred and twelve. Every night, Luna holds it up, turning slowly, for no one, so the story lasts.

3

The chips he once found in a box with a moon scratched on the lid have grown up with the world. Now they join every unicorn to every other — and to the ships out past the stars, and the settlements on the new worlds — in one great humming web the Mind calls the Sky-Link. Put your chip in, and you can feel a foal laughing on a red plain a whole sky away. Luna keeps his own chip in its old box most days. He remembers how loud it can get.

4

Luna has always felt what others feel before they say it. And lately, through the lighthouse window, he feels something across the harbor that worries him: the young ones are tired. Not sleepy. Full. They walk along the sea wall with their chips glowing and their eyes far away, and when one of them stumbles, three others flinch and nobody helps her up. Moss, watching beside him, says it in four words: "They feel too much."

5

A young chip-builder named Sable comes to the lighthouse door one evening, shaking. She can feel everyone. Every sorrow on every world. A homesick foal on the ice moon. A grandmother crying on a ship. A storm-frightened crew. "I don't know which feelings are mine anymore," she says. "I can't find myself in it." Luna sits down on the floor beside her, not touching, the way he always has. Sable's hooves are clenched. Company, then. Luna moves closer.

6

Luna takes Sable's chip gently out of its notch and holds it in his hoof — and, the way the very first one once did in a shelter long ago, it dims itself. The whole humming sky fades to a hush in the crystal, until all that's left in it is one small feeling: Sable's own. Sable stares at it. "That's me," she whispers. "That one's mine." Luna nods, and puts the chip back, and holds his hoof over it until Sable's breathing slows.

7

At dusk Luna takes Sable up to the top of the lighthouse, and the starlings come over the marsh — ten thousand of them, turning all together like smoke. Luna signs, and Moss voices it, slowly, the way Aria once voiced it for him: Each bird only watches seven. Sable watches the great cloud twist and turn and never once crash. "Seven," she says. "Not everyone." Luna signs one more thing. Moss smiles. "He says: one heartbeat at a time."

8

Before he teaches it to anyone else, Luna stands on the lighthouse stairs and asks the three questions the only way he ever has: hoof on his own chest, hoof out toward the harbor, hoof toward the dark window. Help me. Help them. Help everything. Then he sits Sable down by the lamp and teaches her the oldest trick he knows: feel the one beside you first. Then the next one. Never more than you can hold. Sable sleeps through the night for the first time in a month.

9

But the council that keeps the Sky-Link doesn't like it. "If we only feel the ones nearby," says a councilor, "we'll forget the far ones." Another says: "Dimming the chip is looking away. How can anyone be kind to a sorrow they can't feel?" They want more of the Link, not less: every heart, every world, open, all the time. A company from Venture Valley offers to pay for every new link, if it may keep a copy of every feeling that crosses it; the council, to its credit, says no. Luna listens all the way to the end, with his hooves open. Then he signs, and Moss voices it: The lighthouse doesn't chase the boats.

10

So Luna teaches the ones who come. Young chip-wearers knock at the lighthouse door every evening now, tired, full, far away, and he sits each one down by the lamp and dims their chip to one heartbeat — their own — and then, slowly, to seven. The one beside you. Then the next. He charges nothing; the young ones leave lamp oil by the door, a little at a time, and the lamp never runs dry. They go home lighter. Some of them come back with their friends. Some of them stop by just to watch the starlings with him at dusk, and don't say anything, and don't need to.

11

But the Sky-Link keeps growing faster than any lighthouse can teach. Every month another ship joins it, another settlement, another world. And the council sets a date for the greatest moment of all: the night the very last world joins. Every unicorn everywhere — on Earth, on the ships, on the far worlds — will be able to feel every other at once, for the first time since the Moon-Mare walked out of the sea. They ask the Herd to be there. They ask Luna to wear his chip.

12

He wears it, because they asked, and because he wants to feel it too. And at midnight the last world joins — and the whole sky pours into him at once. Every heart on every world. Every joy and every sorrow and every fear, a whole sky of them, louder than anything he has ever felt, louder than two hundred young unicorns, louder than a city, louder than a storm. And Luna, who has felt everyone his whole life, can't find himself anywhere in it. He sits down on the lighthouse floor and can't sign. Can't stand. Can't feel his own hooves. Moss kneels beside him, saying his name, and Luna can't feel Moss either — Moss is one heart among billions, and Luna can't find him. Lull sits down on his other side, its chest glowing as low as it will go, and does not move. And then, in its notch near his horn, his chip — the oldest one, the one from the box with the little moon on the lid — dims. All by itself. The whole sky fades in it, world by world, to a hush, until all that's left in the crystal is one heartbeat. Slow. Steady. Right beside him. Moss's.

13

Moss carries him down to the shore under the full moon, and the tide is low, and the grotto is open: the Moon-Pool. Nothing written. The pool rises… and falls… breathing. The whole sky is still pouring through every other chip on every world. Sable is somewhere in it, frightened. The council is calling for Luna. Does Luna breathe — and feel it one heartbeat at a time — or rush to put the whole sky back in, and hold it all, tonight, for everyone?

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