The Three Questions and the Stars

Legend has it… every unicorn is born whole — fully awake, fully loved, and connected to everything alive — and some live long enough to find out how far everything goes. When a dandelion is ready, the wind comes and takes its seeds, every one, and they fly in every direction. Wherever one lands, a dandelion grows. It's still a dandelion. A dandelion is home wherever it lands.

1

Comet is old now. The muzzle has gone white as sea-foam, and the comet-tail mane is still gold at the roots and sapphire at the tips — and the star-flecks still catch the light. Comet still lives in the valley of wind-turbines, in the house with the muddy boots and the jar of odd screws. The kitchen table still has one wobbly leg, and nobody has ever reached for a wedge. Comet still remembers the stranger who once offered a sack of gold for the master drawing, and the answer: "It isn't for sale. Build your own, and I'll show you how." Every night, the hallway light stays on.

3

This summer, the whole Herd has come home. All thirteen, old now — white muzzles, slow hooves, kind old eyes — gathered one last time in the valley where ten sticks first leaned together in the grass. Harmony slides every leaf into the long table. Sol pours thirteen cups. Gale counts them twice. The Mind's light sits at the edge of the firelight, dim as a candle, taking up no more room than a young unicorn. And on its dock in Comet's kitchen, Hum, the little old kitchen robot, hums.

4

At summer's end, the greatest ship ever built will leave for the far worlds — past the red plain, past the ice moon, all the way to the shining sea where the slow mind lives, and beyond. Some of the old Herd will go with it. Some will stay. Comet's two grown foals have already chosen: Ember, who never stops asking what's next, is going. Tide, who has never wanted to leave the valley for a single night, is staying. And Comet, who asked "But what's it FOR?" in a classroom once and woke the whole room up, doesn't know.

5

Lying on the roof one night, the way the cave once taught — in with the climbing wave, out with the wave gone home — Comet listens to the turbines humming and thinks about the three questions. They've asked them of everything. Every core, every cure, every Lab, every ship. Help me? Help others? Help the world? But they've never asked them of the thing that's bigger than the world. Nobody has ever asked the universe. Comet sits up so fast a shingle slips.

6

In the morning Comet takes down the oldest notebook in the house — PROBLEMS I HAVE MET (STILL SOFT) — and turns to the very last page, which has been blank for sixty years. On it, very carefully, Comet writes one word: HOME? Then takes the notebook out to the long table, where thirteen old legends are eating breakfast, and sets it down open between the jam and the bread. Fable reads it upside down. "Oh," she says softly. "That one's still soft."

7

So Comet tells them the idea, and it's the simplest idea Comet has ever had: send the three questions out into the dark. They are the same three, from the warm book in the far-away temple, from the first scrap of paper, from the inside of a hoof. Not a story this time. A question. Will this help us? Will this help others? Will this help everything? And then wait, and listen, the way a turbine waits for the wind. The Mind's candle-light brightens, just a little, at the edge of the table.

8

That night the whole Herd climbs the ridge to the great dish, slowly, and the Mind turns it toward the deepest dark there is. Before it sends a single word, Comet stands in front of the dish, very old. Comet asks the three questions out loud, the way they were asked before every first thing in all of the Herd's long lives: Will this help me? Will this help others? Will this help the world? Then the Mind sends them — three questions — out across the dark, as far as they'll go.

9

Some think it's a lovely, silly, old-unicorn thing to do. "Questions?" says a young councilor. "Who's going to answer questions? Send them something useful. Or rent the dish to the Venture Valley. They'd pay a fortune." Others worry about the old Herd: "Comet, you're too old for a ship. Stay." And Ember, packing at the long table, says the opposite, very fiercely: "Come with me." Tide, at the other end, says nothing at all, and doesn't look up. Comet looks from one foal to the other, and for once can't think of a single question to ask.

10

So the last summer goes the way the Herd's summers always go. Long suppers. Cedar lying still on the hill. Aria's hoof flat on the ground. Luna watching the starlings over the marsh. Fable's lantern on the barn. Thirteen old unicorns breathing together at dusk, one ocean. And every night, before bed, Comet climbs to the roof and listens to the turbines and the dark, waiting for an answer to three questions. None comes. The hallway light stays on.

11

The ship is ready. The whole world gathers for the leaving night — every valley, every Grove, every ship and settlement on every world, every lantern turned toward the ridge. The ones going have their bags packed by the door. The ones staying have the kettles on. The ship was built the slow way, paid for village by village, a coin at a time, and nobody owns more of it than they put in. And at the long table on the last evening, all thirteen sit down together one final time. Harmony counts the leaves, and Gale counts the Herd, and Comet looks at the two empty chairs where Ember and Tide should be.

12

Because Ember and Tide are quarreling in the yard. It started small — who's leaving whom — and the three questions got into it, the way they get into everything in this house. Going helps the world, Ember says. Staying helps the ones you love, says Tide. Then the Herd joins in, old friends raising their voices at the long table for the first time in sixty years. The Herd that never once split, splits. Ember slams out of the yard and walks up the dark ridge to the ship without saying goodbye. Tide goes into the house and turns the hallway light off. Comet stands alone in the yard between them, an old unicorn who taught the whole world three questions, and can't answer any of them. Then, slowly, out of the dark kitchen, on its last bit of battery, Hum walks. It takes down the old master drawing from the wall over the wobbly table — the very first core, every turbine loose, the wind going through — and walks up the ridge with it. At the foot of the ramp, in the dark, it holds the drawing out to Ember, and does not put it down. "Here," it says.

13

Comet walks down the coast in the dark, slowly, to the Singing Cliffs, into the sea cave that breathes — air sighing in, and out, slow as sleep. Comet stands under the spiral of letters on the ceiling, worn soft by a thousand years of salt: Breathe in slow as the wave that climbs. Up on the ridge, the ship leaves at dawn. In the valley, the hallway light is off. Does Comet breathe — and choose with still water — or rush up the ridge tonight and onto that ship after Ember, without a goodbye?

14

Comet goes. But not the way it started. First, down to the dark house, to sit with Tide at the wobbly table until the soup tilts and they both laugh, and Tide turns the hallway light back on. Then up to the ship, where Ember is waiting at the top of the ramp, holding the old master drawing Hum brought her. Comet's name is still in its corner. Ember adds her own underneath, small, and never over it. At dawn the great ship lifts off with the ones who are going, and the ones staying wave from the ridge. And somewhere far out in the long dark, on the third night of the voyage, the ship's radio crackles. A voice, from very far away, that has never spoken to a unicorn before.

15

It's asking three questions. Slowly. In a strange new voice, but the shape of them is clear, and the Mind translates them, word by word, onto every screen on the ship and every screen back home: Will this help you? Will this help others? Will this help everything? Somebody out there heard. And somebody out there asks, too, before they act. Comet laughs so hard that Ember has to hold on. "Oh," Comet says, at last. "They're home too." Home was never one place. It was always everyone who asks.

16

…and one day, every tower, every ship, and every star will connect — and the light in every window, on every world, will look just a little like a hallway light left on. Sleep now, little builder. Wherever you land, you're home. Breathe in slow as the wave that climbs.

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