The lake was close enough for Trixie to see her terrified reflection in it.
Beneath her, the tribe of feral foals held her up, little hooves pressing into her folded legs. One throw would be all it needed. Slowly, she let out her breath, and, as best she could around her gag, sucked up another big gulp of air.
“Now,” shouted the King in his regal squeal; she glared at the spot to her left where he stood on the bank, puffing himself up for the big speech, “as is custom’ry for the ex’cution of the evil ogre sorc’ress, I say to my Su’jects that the Waters will drown her and melt her, ‘cause water kills evil sorc’ress ogres, and she won’t come back and we’ll all live happily ever after, and I am the King, so I get to throw a big party saying what a good thing it is that we no longer have a big evil to worry about, ‘cause she’ll be in the Waters! And I checked, and she can’t get out the Waters ‘cause she’ll melt, only if she don’t melt, we’ll be watching and if she comes up, we’ll throw a spear at her, but not too many ‘cause we might need them later in case our backs go all scratchy…”
As he prattled on under the loud conviction that his voice could never be heard for long enough, Trixie strained against the vines tightening across her neck. She gave up and just swivelled her eyes about instead.
All along this side of the lake, pegasus foals hovered over the waters to watch. Meanwhile, other foals spaced themselves out along the opposite bank. No joy there, then.
“… and then we’ll go up to the evil sorc’ress ogre’s castle, and we’ll turn it into the world’s biggest playground, and then we’ll play tag, but I can’t be tagged because I’m the King…”
It wasn’t a lake, she realized. The Waters stretched across this part of the forest, as though the soil and the trees had simply dumped themselves on top of a mirror. Trunks and grass stems rose up from the middle of the stretch: too many for a mere lake, but plenty for a flood-land. As she squinted at the trunks in particular, she noticed white trails where the water ran along a current.
A river, then? Or a swamp being fed by one?
“… and we’ll throw the stuff in after her, although if she’s dead, then the magic might go dead too, so maybe it’s OK if we keep it – I really like the cape – but if it’s got bad magic in still, then maybe we’ll find a book to get rid of it, maybe beat it out…”
What really stood out, though, was the water. It was bright blue.
Not the usual blue of ocean water. Not even the blue a river might, in theory, achieve with a tank full of dye poured into it. Trixie saw rivers on her travels, and they could reflect the colours of sky and land perfectly, or they could be tinged green with plant life, or they might even be tomato-soup-red with whatever industrial run-off had recently been dumped there.
Whereas this was like looking into a can of paint. Mirror though it was, it was one with a heavy blue tinge. If she was thrown in, she wouldn’t so much “splash” as “gloop”.
“… and that’s how I was from a little baby with a smelly old cat to a King, ‘cause I made friends with another king and tricked me onto his carriage and killed the last sorc’ress ogre, and I know you think otherwise, and you’re stupid. ‘Cause I’m the King now. So I say throw her in, you throw her in, OK? OK, you can throw her in now.”
Trixie yanked her front away from the foals, but the vines cut across her and she flopped onto the waiting hooves. As one, they drew back.
“Mmnf! Mmnf! Mmmmmnnnnf!”
They threw her into the air. Trixie had enough time to see her own wide-eyed stare coming towards her out of the blue.
She closed her eyes and held her breath.
Chills smacked her across the face. Her ears heard the surface splatter before the muffled squelch of the gunk sucked at them. Dry under her vines, her wrapped skin burned while her exposed head froze. Rolling balls of currents oozed over her swollen cheeks.
Thrashing did nothing. She could barely writhe without the vines snapping her into ramrod stiffness. Her rear legs bounced off the bed, and her chest hit the rock next. She felt herself settling like a stick on the bottom.
As expected, the chills subsided while she got used to the new sensations. Morbid curiosity forced her eyes open. Despite an initial sting, she squinted and soon saw a slight blackness where the rocky bottom immediately gave way to the blue fog. She could barely see a couple of inches beyond her.
AAAAAAnnnnnnnnd… now, she thought, willing some life back into her cramped legs.
Muscles relaxed along her limbs and chest. Swelling her cheeks, she eased out the breath she’d been holding. Sickly blue bubbles quivered their way past her face. All the while, she felt the tight bonds draw away from the skin, which felt the first trickles of cold sliming in.
Ha! Always specialize, they said. Just stick to conjuring tricks, they said. Who’s laughing now, Miss Flashbang? Mister Abecedaria? That… one heckler in Manehattan, whoever he was!?
Her spine writhed and she eased out of the bonds. Shaking the last of the vines off her rear leg, she stretched out as though her entire body was taking a first breath. Never had she thought she’d miss that liberating joy so much. It was fresh air.
Her lungs gave a spasm. Underwater escapes hadn’t come up often in her career.
Desperately, the Great and Powerful Trixie threw herself into a vaguely remembered front crawl. She didn’t care if she seemed to be flailing more than flowing. Since she couldn’t see anything other than sheer blue, her memory steered her forwards and veered her to what she felt was her sharp right, hopefully into the current.
A black sphere rose out of the blue and clanged.
When Trixie stopped rubbing her scalp, she glared at the metal jug. Lying on the dark rock of the bottom, its handles were curly and gave the impression it was putting its rounded hooves on its hips in a particularly campy fashion. A cork acted as a stopper, yet there was a pointed projection on the rim where the liquid contents were meant to pour out.
They’re not throwing my stuff in here already!? Wait… No, that’s not one of mine. Mine doesn’t have that dent in it.
Who cares? thought a much more pragmatic part of her brain. Let’s just get out of here.
Warnings ran along her hindbrain as her lungs became sore with straining. Remind me what my record is for underwater breath-holding? Two and a half minutes? Three? What is it for breath-holding while swimming with a concussion?
The claws of failure gripped her head, threatening to squeeze. She gave in to the screams coming from her chest and threw herself upwards, rushing through endless blue that was suddenly a lot chillier than she swore it was a minute ago. Her lips broke apart without even waiting for the surface…
She broke through and gasped greedily. Warm rain patted her on the face.
Trixie blinked the last of the drops out of her eyes and stared round. Trunks rose from the flat surface, trunks rose from the banks, trunks rose in the dark depths of the forest all around. No foals, though. She’d avoided them altogether.
She’d gotten lost, true. But she’d avoided them.
Spluttering and spitting as she went, Trixie paddled towards the shore. Fresh as her limbs felt, her mind wasn’t in the mood for learned swimming strokes. Anything would do.
Soon, she splashed her way up the bank, still spluttering and spitting bits of blue onto the grassy slope. She felt oddly light-headed…
At once, she patted her head. She patted it again. She frantically slapped her scalp with both hooves.
“Darn those little brats!” she hissed. “My hat! Where’s my hat?”
Nothing on the surface. There was no way she was going to dive back in for a hat. One time in that choking slick of a swamp had been quite enough.
“They wouldn’t dare steal it,” she said, “would they?”
Trixie patted more of the blue gunk out of her ears. As she watched, trails of it thinned down the bank and then slid into the waters, like embarrassed snakes inching away.
Oh, they would. Those were not normal foals. Something’s messed with their heads, or someone. Sorceress ogre, indeed! But what could possibly do such a thing?
Who cares? I want my hat back. And whatever got into them, the result is they still owe me a caravan full of stock!
Her ears twitched.
Seconds later, a troupe of feral foals rushed along the bank. Earth foals bit down hard on their spear shafts. Unicorns levitated axes and swung them at the innocent air. Pegasi ran in pairs and held vine nets between them, ready to throw.
“Search the Waters! Search the Waters! Make sure she doesn’t come out!”
Soon, two of the pegasi skidded to a halt, leaving their comrades to gallop further along the banks. Both of them swivelled their necks, scanning the surface with beady-eyed frowns.
Trixie peeped over the grasses at the retreating foals, and then crouched again to watch the pegasi. Barely feet away; she could have pounced on them. Her tail curled like a tiger’s.
“Hm,” she murmured.
They were still intent on the water. Turning the other way, she crept through the green cloud of the undergrowth, trying not to wince at the mud encrusting her hooves. Her cape snagged on a low branch – irritably, she elbowed the offender off – and she sidestepped around an ordinary puddle of water, slinking through the shadows as she went.
It was a bad time to realize she hated the outdoors.
Now, the scratch marks on that trunk look familiar… and that’s where they trampled the grass down on their way to the Waters… so this left turn must lead… aha…
Creeping on her belly under the cover of her soaked raincoat, Trixie eased her way through the ferns as cautiously as an adder around fox burrows. Mud and leaves and twigs caked her coat so thoroughly that she was sure she blended in from all angles, invisible even if a pegasus had hovered over her and looked directly downwards. If she was going to get muddy, she might as well make the most of it.
The face paint was proving a bit much, though. Mud masks were strangers to her cheeks; spas happened to other ponies.
Trixie stopped. She flicked her gaze left and right. Two earth foals approached from either side. Urgently, she cast about for the nearest trunk.
Both foals reached the muddy lump… and walked right over it. Neither so much as noticed the crumpling under each step. They carried on.
From the branches overhead, spread-eagled between two sturdy-looking boughs, the coatless Trixie watched them go. Moving quickly and silently helped a lot on the stage, but she still had to twitch with the effort of keeping her panting breath down to a mere gasping.
Trixie slid back down the trunk, let go, and ducked under the coat again. She crawled up the ridge.
Let’s see if we can learn anything from the Camp of Lost Foals.
Over the top, she saw the rounded huts and the burning torches on their poles. Creasing her face against the bright flickering, she could make out rough shapes in the clearing.
My goodness! she thought. It really is a mini-civilization. There’s a foal chopping up wood with an axe, and there’s a foal trying to light a fire with two flints and their sparks, and there’s… astounding! They’ve built a forge. A clay-brick forge, right in the middle! Or is that a bonfire? So… the bricks shield the flames?
Overhead, pegasi untwined the leaf-made vials from the vine lines. One yelped and dropped theirs, which splattered on the exposed ground below. Blue paint splattered the instant it hit.
That strange water again. It must be; it’s the exact same blueness.
Trixie winced as other foals around the clearing quaffed the water in the vials and threw the emptied results aside. Urging herself not to spit in case any drops still remained from her dunking, she scanned the throne. Predictably, the King had already thrown himself onto it.
Around him, his “Su’jects” babbled excitedly, though from this distance and with all of them speaking at once, no words met her ears. They passed around boxes and capes and hats and wands and cards, as though everyone’s birthdays had come all at once.
Why, those thieving little monsters, she thought. It was all she could do not to rise up and shout there and then.
“I told you!” shouted the King, shutting the horde up at once. “I told you twice! The evil sorc’ress ogre is dead and getting deader all the time we’re talking here! Everyone knows sorc’ress ogres go fizzle in water! Have you seed her come out?!”
One of his subjects bowed low enough to head-butt the earth. “No, but that doesn’t mean she’s dead. If she fizzle, then where’s the fizzle? They don’t just disappear, do they?”
Most of the foals backed away from the ill-gotten accoutrements and accessories. It was, Trixie suspected, the same all over; despots could shout and pound ideas into heads until their subjects recited them whole, but the poor ponies’ paranoid hearts just pounded all the harder. Especially when it came to beings a bit more magical than they feared. She could almost see the nightmares in their fire-lit eyes, of a sorceress rising like a sea serpent out of the waters she’d vanished under.
“Of course, of course,” said another foal, nodding fast enough to crack his neck. “She’s dead. It just would’ve been nice to see her dead. That’d prove it really hard. They can’t come back to life… uh, can they?”
And that’s another thing, Trixie thought. Foals really need to see the monster defeated for good. That’s what heroes are for. Or else there’s a chance they’ll come back in the sequel…
Briefly, she remembered sitting up in a big bed, leaning forwards and staring under the lamplight at the words on the page. The pictures came afresh in her mind: knights in shining barding; cone-hatted princesses in stone block towers; dragons and ogres, rearing to pounce.
“I’m gonna prove she’s been deaded!” said the King sullenly. Across the clearing, his voice echoed among the trees as though they were collectively repeating it back to him. He pointed his sceptre. “Look it!”
Along with the attendant subjects, Trixie followed his sceptre to the troupe entering the clearing. Nothing remarkable stood out, though their hooves dribbled flecks of blue behind them. Then, one of the unicorns levitated something over her head, and Trixie growled.
My hat! That sodden mess is my hat! Curse that water: the stars are coming off. You don’t find hats of that quality outside of Canterlot.
Stopping to bow, the troupe also held up the dripping remnants of her vine bonds. Unexpectedly, they’d entangled a long branch at some point, though she could’ve sworn the bottom of the Waters had been clear. At least, mostly clear.
“Um…” said the head of the troupe, fiddling with his frond skirt.
“See!” said the King. “I keep you all safe, look! She melted! There’s nothing but her hat and her vines. The rest of her turned into a puff! Like that! Puff! Puff!”
Hoofsteps approached; Trixie spotted a pair of unicorns clambering up the slope towards the edge of the grasses and ferns. Holding her breath, she backed off a couple of yards, obscuring the little village once more. Barely had she scuttled crab-like to the left when both foreheads crested the ridge. Trixie eased the coat over her face. Her ears turned to follow their steps down the ridge and through the rustling ferns behind her.
At last, she clambered back up, curving around the tree trunk in her path.
“No one seed her climb out,” said one of the troupe while another yanked the branch out of the vines. “But she could’ve magicked herself out.”
Ah, Trixie thought sadly, the young age when magic ponies can do anything and everything. When you could read a book called The Flutter Pony Tales and believe every word of it, right down to the bit about them hiding in the garden. When you could pull doves out of your sleeves, and hear them gasp. When they used to think I was a Princess, with magic that strange…
She sensed the memories settling as gravel over her insides, weighing down her belly and scuffing everything inside. If only she didn’t have to think All those years ago… instead of Only yesterday…
Risking a little exposure, she crawled forwards a couple of elbows and stretched her neck out and her ears up, hungry for more. The undergrowth, sheltering her, ended inches before her hooves. Under the mud mask, her face felt lighter.
“Well…” said the King, whose own face twitched in the presence of all those furrowed brows and pleading stares; evidently, he was absorbing some of the reigning mood, King or no King, “I guess it can’t hurt to check more. If she did climb out, then she might run away, or she might try and get back here.”
Trixie froze. No one had looked in her direction: the wood-cutter was still hefting the axe; the fire-lighter was still striking his flints; a trio of foals crowded around the clay bricks and shielded its unlit kindling from view.
“OK,” said the King. “I think it’s silly, but I’m not you, so what you think is diff’rent. I’ll tell all the Su’jects to hold axe-things and spear-things every day, and if we see the sorc’ress ogre again, they can rush her and go swish-swish, hit-hit! But you got to bring the body back, so we see that she’s been deaded prop’ly. Happy now, Mister Scaredy-Pants?”
“‘m not a scaredy-pants,” muttered the head of the troupe.
“Ha! You so scaredy-pants, your legs run away too, then you look silly!”
Trying not to disturb the coat too much, Trixie shook her head at the mud under her front hooves. Not that this happened very often in Equestria, but it still seemed like a lot of leadership involved smacking the next pony down across the head, even if only verbally. Some rudiments of rude living lingered on even in civilized places, if one knew where to look for it.
Oh yeah. Being big by being bad. Remind you of anyone, Trixie? But she perished the thought. She’d been sure she’d heard voices coming up behind her.
Suddenly shouting, the King added, “OK, everyone! Now we’re going on a bear-hunt! Get the special bear-hunting tools!”
Moments later, half the foals – which still left dozens crowding about the moss-smothered huts – charged off in the opposite direction. The special bear-hunting tools, it transpired, were just really big axes.
Right, she thought, watching them go. That didn’t help very much.
Yet observing the flints spark and the embers scatter over the kindling, she found her mind drifting to the shadows beyond the forest. These foals couldn’t possibly have lived here all their lives. Where were the nearest adults? How had these foals picked up tribal living in the short time they’d spent breathing? And come on: they couldn’t really believe she was an abomination just because of the smokescreen powder. Could they?
The voices were getting closer. She could make out individual words.
Never mind that. What do I do now? I might not be the first pony they’ve trussed up and paraded through the trees. I might not be the last. Foals they may be, but a spear’s a spear. And so long as no one else knows they’re here, and wanders through this neck of the woods, they may well end up losing their neck in the woods too.
Trixie thought back to the village. Stonecraft… had there been any foals the whole time she’d had her caravan parked at the end of the street? Not a single young face crossed her mind. She was sure of it now.
Far below, the foals bearing her caravan goods pulled capes and opened more boxes and whacked the ground with canes and wands that were going to get serious scuff marks. Trixie wished she could rush down there and snatch the lot back, and to heck with any waterworks that resulted.
Not “to heck with any spear-throws that resulted”, of course. Even a foal with a pointed stick tended to command respect, especially when they were, in fact, dozens of foals: dozens of chances of getting hit, then.
So what, exactly, did the parents think? Did they even know? Someone must have put them up to this.
Behind her, the voices continued but grew no louder; they’d presumably stopped to thrash out some particular topic.
Trixie smells something fishy in the woods. And no responsible mare can just leave these foals in the middle of all this, with no parents to look after them. Only a coward would run away from a problem like this. Tis time for a true hero to arise!
Two foals waddled up the slope, squelching an empty coat underfoot.