The way south was long. Galatea was old, and Leaf went on hooves scarred by frostbite and a shoulder that would never move smoothly again. They had waited until the spring, so he could heal, so the snows could recede from the passes. In the winter beneath the mountain the mare and colt told stories of their lives as the insensate princess drooled on her dais beside them. Leaf hoped that some part of her was awake to hear, like a seed that takes in water and begins to uncoil its long-dormant motion and life, even before a green sprout emerges from the shell to see.
When they left for the last time Galatea kissed the princess beside her shining horn, and as Leaf followed suit he felt a hunger not his own in the contact. He was relieved to leave that dark place, where the last Crystal Ponies lay preserved in their coffins. He was grateful that Galatea would not have her children help them through the mountains. They cannot lie to one another, he thought, but we are not they. He could not tell whether it was mere fancy that they stared and moved with greater purpose as, night after night, he fed his life to their princess.
So with only one another for company, the colt and mare hobbled from out into the weak morning sun on the Pass of Princess Amore. As they looked down into the empty bowl where the Crystal Ponies once lived, Galatea wet Leaf’s shoulder with her ancient tears. The colt looked for a sign that the mountains had once cried as she said, but he could see none: no gaping ducts, no rivers of frozen stone. Then they turned south.
The days warmed and plants sprouted from the rocky earth, and Leaf taught the old mare their names and uses. Galatea's eyes were weak, but she could identify many by smell. She cackled with pleasure to know their many names as the sun sank low in the evenings. As they reached the foothills of the Crystal Mountains Leaf raised a hoof toward the ever-present smoke on the horizon, and spoke again of the terrible dragon Felsite and brave Gloaming. It was full summer again and Leaf’s shoulder ached with storms blown east from Cloudsdale when they at last saw the half-finished spires of Canterlot reaching from the mountainside.
They could not see the Princess, said the square-jawed sergeant with his plumed helmet, no matter that they had climbed the long road in the dust of the rumbling carts and their marble slabs. Yes, the old mare’s shimmering coat was impressive, and he had never seen eyes like hers before, but that did not mean she was an emissary from the vanished north. The Princess was very busy overseeing construction, and bringing salvage from the ruined castle in the Everfree, and doing the work of two Princesses alone. Yes, a purple pegasus mare had been here, in fact he’d seen a dozen just this week, and no he did not inspect each one to see if she had a scar running mane to throat to foreleg or remember every one who had come and gone in the last year. But he could see that they were tired, and he was not without compassion, and by order of the Princess the new gardens were to be open to all comers, so they might go there and watch from the terrace for purple wings off the mountain-face. In any case, seen from this height, the sunset was very beautiful, and it mingled through the founts and mists of Cloudsdale so to pierce the heart of the Princess herself, begging her pardon.
Leaf who had faced the dragon could not shift the plumed stallion, nor his dozen compatriots in their proud fitted corselets. Galatea was exhausted from the climb, and he suspected the magic of ten Galateas would not suffice either. So they sat on a wrought-iron bench looking down on the plain, with the scent of honeysuckle and roses on the air and the setting sun like a flaming eye before them. When it had passed in its glory of blazing pinks and tender oranges, and the scarred face of the moon had risen over the mountain peak behind them, they wandered through the garden. Galatea nodded between steps, waking to admire the statuary. Leaf paid more mind to the flourishing grasses and hedges. They whispered their names, their scents, their favorite insects, on the air, thick enough and joyful enough that he could almost forget his disappointment. The travelers slumped together at the foot of a plinth as the moon arced high overhead. Leaf raised his face to that in the moon and asked the question he bore like a yoke.
“Fair Moon, will you tell me, what is harmony? For I have wandered this land and heard many answers, that it is duty and power and one order and many, and I have found no answer to satisfy me.” It took him a moment to understand when, over the croaking frogs and chirping crickets, came an answer.
“Bring me a tangerine from the grove to the north, crush it in my mouth, and I will tell you, for my tongue has been stone dry since before your old nag there was a laugh in her mother’s voice.”
It was not the voice of a Moon or a Princess, but a sliding, teasing thing, rich in suggestion, redolent of promise, gesturing toward shadowed corners where secrets played hide-and-seek with double-jointed prophecies. Leaf looked around. Galatea snored beside him. No one else had joined them in the garden. But above him stood a strange statue on the plinth, a menagerie in a single being: snake’s tail, donkey’s head, lion's paw, eagle's claw. Far above the ground gaped its mouth as if in song, and from that mouth now came the dancing, chivying voice.
“Go on now. You want to know, don’t you?”
Galatea still slept, though her snoring had quieted. Leaf could not bear to wake her. He stood a long moment and stared at the statue. He said all he could think to say. “Who are you?”
“What!” The voice dripped outrage. “Have you already forgotten? Has that self-righteous fireball erased me, denied me, after the waltzes we danced together, the advice I’ve given her, the times she’s sobbed before me like a foal? This is beyond belief! Young, scarred, frankly rather old-looking colt, I am Discord. I am the anointed foe of Harmony and Right and Good and Cute Little Bunnies and all that blather, and if anyone can tell you what harmony is, I can. I know it like the center space of my dartboard, the face duct-taped onto my punching bag, the playbook of the buckball team that knocked mine out of the finals for eight seasons in a row! I know all things, for certain values of ‘know’ and ‘things’; and I never, ever lie, for the truth always hurts more. So bring me a tangerine and I’ll end your quixotic little quest and you can go home a broken stallion.”
Leaf stared still. “Why should I—”
“Yes, yes, why should you trust me, we’ve seen this play before, on the grand stage at the Castle of the Two Sisters with Milky Cheeks in the leading role. You’ve no reason to trust me, but you’ll get the fruit anyway, because I’m fascinating and charming and you might as well hear what I have to say, and because you know that there’s no way that I could know about your filly with the lightning burn unless I know how to know things that nobody else knows. Now hurry up before my tongue crumbles to dust.”
Leaf retreated from the statue, its blather ringing in his ears. How could this creature be? How could it know of Gloaming? What did it know of her, and of harmony? Step by step he retreated through a verdant archway, backing into the trunk of a tree with the scent of tangerine about it. He reached, pulled a heavy fruit from a branch, and advanced, bearing his prize like a shield, back toward the statue.
It was hard to fulfill the statue’s request, for it was taller than Leaf by far. Galatea could have lifted the fruit with her magic in a moment, but Leaf still could not bear to wake her. So he clambered with his numbed hooves, up the sinuous marble column of the statue until he could reach the mouth. Thrice he fell to the ground. On the third fall, he felt a burst of pain in his shoulder and the taste of blood in his mouth. But on the fourth, dizzy with exertion, he clambered up the cajoling monster and crushed the pulp and rind and juice of the fruit into its throat.
“Golly! That really hit the spot!” came the voice, mocking, pantomiming, “and such quick and friendly service as well! You know, I’ve nowhere to be tonight, and I really am rather parched. I think I could do with another hit before I deliver a lecture on the implicit metaphysics of language. Why don’t you grab me some more fruit, there’s a good colt—not a tangerine this time, some of the grapes on the southern end of the gardens.” And because he had done this once, and bled for it already, and because the marble grotesque knew of Gloaming, Leaf went.
Another trip, another fall, another ruin of pulp in the statue’s mouth, and the voice turned cheerful. “Ah, yes. I’m feeling properly lubricated now. Well, let me start in by saying that filly really loved you—loved, mind, past tense—and if you’d been willing to bend the tiniest bit for her rather than pursuing your mad little quest you’d be very happy together even now.” Leaf recoiled from the statue and spat his words.
“I did not ask you of Gloaming, monster. You said you would speak of harmony.”
“Why yes, I did. Well, first of all, it’s an idea. A really funny idea, come to think of it—goodness, it gives me the giggles!” And a laugh such as termites must give to dream of foundations, as the parasite wasp must give when it spots a caterpillar, as time must give to sight a child young and hopeful, bubbled from the juice-stained maw and flowed like grease across the courtyard. “It’s an idea—it’s, it’s the idea—” and the laugh rose again like blackened sap in a tree so rotten that no real wood remains. Leaf bellowed, enraged, mad as the bound aurochs, as he had not been since Gloaming was right and he was wrong and he drove her away for it.
“Tell me! Tell me, monster, fouler than dragon or beast, tell me what I wish to know! You said that you would tell me, and you said you never lie. Make good on your word!”
The voice quavered with tears of mirth, now. “Yes, yes, I’ll tell you. I’ll tell you—it’s the best joke in the world, you know, better than banana cream pies in the face—I’ll tell you just as soon as you get me the old solar nag’s morning parfait and smash it in my waiting gob.” Leaf hobbled forward, insensate with fury, only to see Galatea’s eyes wide and staring before him. They did not blink, but stared with the same empty gaze as the new Crystal Princess. He bent to her, cold, rage forgotten, and her chest did not move. No breath twitched the fine hairs of his ear when he placed it against her mouth. And above him, the statue chuckled on, blithe, bubbling, terrible.
“Harmony is—oh, I was kidding, can’t you take a joke, even I know she’d incinerate you if you took her morning sweets—harmony is the idea, the idea that it all must fit together somehow, that your world can be at once broken and whole.” And the grease of the statue’s laughter poured over Leaf and filled his mouth and lungs as he stared into the glassy eyes that were once Galatea.