//------------------------------// // The Secret Forest // Story: Emberwolf // by Lucky Dreams //------------------------------// The Emberwolf led the way down the far side of the hill and into a thicket of topaz. Scootawolf kept close. The trees here were untamed, with twisting branches and twiggy claws, and leaves of glinting menace. Scootawolf spied faces in the trunks. They were ghoul faces. They had eyes found more often in nightmares than in real life. “Stay close,” the Emberwolf whispered. “We walk in the country where the shadow snakes sliver, and where the Night Terror lies in wait by the Midnight Marsh. This is no safe place for an emberwolf pup.” Scootawolf huddled nearer to the Emberwolf; she all but glued herself to her side. Here, the air tasted of foul creatures which stalked in the night. The scarlet glow of the earth seemed far duller, almost black. When she glanced to either side, there were places where she couldn’t see the trees for darkness. “I don’t like it,” she said. “Can we turn back?” The Emberwolf shook her head. “Shush, pup. There are voice snatchers nearby, watching us from the branches. Can’t you see them? Do you want to keep your voice? Then be quiet and keep following.” Scootawolf squinted, and through the gloom, she saw eyes, white and beady, staring down from the claw-like branches. There were hundreds of them. They gleamed. She didn’t speak after that – but soon enough, they reached the heart of the thicket and found the entrance to a thin, winding ravine, where the path sloped down, down, deeper and deeper down. The walls were jagged. The floor didn’t glow, for the rock was grown from the same darkness found at the bottom of the ocean. The only light came from their own fiery bodies, and from the glow-worm stars high overhead. When Scootawolf peered up, the top of the ravine resembled a snake of blue-navy-purple. She didn’t dare look behind. What if she saw something more than darkness, there? What if she saw those vicious gleaming eyes again, trailing them, white and hungry in the gloom? Scootawolf couldn’t stand it. She risked another question. “Where are we going?” she whispered. “Home,” came the response. Scootawolf’s heart quivered. Home. She turned the word over in her mind. She examined it from every angle and was surprised to find that she liked the sound of it: a new home, where she would be safe from the horrors of this shadowy country. They walked further along the floor of the chasm. They marched so deep that the sliver of ceiling no longer resembled a snake, but a mere twist of night-coloured cotton. The air was deathly silent. Scootawolf heard a low thumping in her ears, which may have been her own heartbeat, or perhaps the heart of the Earth less than a dozen miles beneath them. Her paws were tired. Her soul was sleep-worn, and her heart yearned for pillows. But still, she didn’t look back, but stuck close to the Emberwolf; and when she glanced up once more, she saw that the walls must have closed in above them, turning the ravine into a tunnel. It was no wider than the Emberwolf, and so dark that Scootawolf couldn’t see the ceiling, even with their fiercely glowing bodies. It was like exploring an artery of the Earth. Silent seconds stretched into noiseless minutes. Just when Scootawolf’s eyelids drooped, and her tail hung limp, the Emberwolf halted. The beast turned and grinned at her. “Welcome,” the Emberwolf said, “to my garden.” The tunnel bent sharply to the left, and there it was: the Emberwolf’s home. Scootawolf had braced herself for a barren cavern, where the air was musty, and where fangs of rock stabbed from the floor and the ceiling. What she hadn’t expected was plants – actual plants, with not a crystal in sight. They covered the walls: thick, heavy vines shaggy with leaves. They were a hundred types of green and a thousand shades of moss. It wasn’t simply a cave, but a hidden forest, and it was huge. Gigantic. The more she looked, the grander the chamber seemed. Ponyville itself could have fitted neatly inside, she thought. The floor was meadow-rich, and the grass was long. The forest was illuminated by a hundred-thousand sparks of fire which were littered all about in the grass, and strewn under oaks and conifers, and tangled in vines and branches. They were everywhere, a million specks of light, like a rain of stardust scattered over the greenery. Strangely enough, the tiny fires didn’t set the grass ablaze, nor scorch the tree trunks. They were harmless. And when Scootawolf walked through the grass herself, although her fur was made from scalding coal and flames, she caused the plant life no more harm than if her fur had been as grey and fluffy as a normal wolf’s. Her stomach was where her heart should have been, and her heart was in her mouth. “H-how did you do this?” she whispered. It was all she could think to ask. The Emberwolf flicked her tail. There was a smile in her voice. “Didn’t I say? When you are an emberwolf, you can command fire to do anything you like. In my garden, I simply warn it not to burn the plants.” “But how is this here? There’s not even any sun!” For all that the sparks of fire shone brightly, they were scattered haphazardly, and the shadows between them were deep: they were no substitute for Celestia’s sunlight. The Emberwolf didn’t answer but lay luxuriantly under a gnarled oak tree. Scootawolf sighed then wandered through the forest. The deeper she explored, the larger the trees grew, and the closer they clustered together, until the woods were as dense as the dreaded Everfree Forest on the outskirts of Ponyville. The trees towered over her, their leaves hiding the cavern’s tall ceiling and walls. Even if it hadn’t been over a hundred miles underground, it would have been a strange sort of forest. The grass grew crazily all over the floor. Fireflies drifted between countless flowers of red, yellow and orange. They weren’t like the flowers in Aunt Holiday’s garden, but they were wild, brilliant, and their peppery scents assaulted Scootawolf’s nostrils. These were plants which didn’t feed on water, but on the fires of the Buried Continent. They were pollinated by enormous bumblebees that flew fatly through the air. Scootawolf sniffed at the nearest flower. It smelled of green shadows, of unexpected life. She sat in the grass. She hadn’t noticed before now, but she was shaking. “Guys,” she said, so softly that it barely counted as a whisper. “Rainbow, Apple Bloom, Sweetie Belle. I wish you could see this.” Just then, one of the fire sparks tumbled from out of a conifer tree and landed by Scootawolf’s paws. Startled, she jumped. But then she looked at it, and her jaw dropped open. The fire was shaped like a snowflake. It dawned on her that the fluttering in her chest was her beating heart, trying to pound its way out of her ribcage. The fireflake was about the size of a saucer, and the six sides glowed orange and yellow, six sides chiselled from flames and sculpted to perfection. She tried to pick it up. The instant she touched it, it vanished like the frozen fire in Aunt’s house, leaving her standing in a pool of forest scented darkness. Before she knew what was happening, the Emberwolf appeared from nowhere and loomed over her. “Scootawolf,” she growled. “What have you done?” Steam billowed from her nostrils; her eyes raged. The change in her was as sudden as a crack of magma which splits and races across the ground. Scootawolf backed against the conifer. “I—” “You touched the flake, did you not? Don’t lie to me!” Scootawolf glared at her. Anger mixed with her tiredness, so that everything felt difficult, heavy. Everything felt unfair. “Hey!” she said. “There’s a billion of ’em. Anyway, you never said not to touch ’em, so what’s the problem?” “The problem, Scootawolf, is that I did not think I would need to tell you. Did I do anything to damage your home? Yet here you are, destroying my precious treasures. How dare you.” Scootawolf couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “What are you talking about? You set my house on fire!” “A fire which I was quick to banish!” the Emberwolf retorted. “Did I not summon the flames back into the grate? Did I not restore your living room wall? No harm came to anypony. No damage was done.” This was much too much for Scootawolf to take. But she took care to chain her rage tightly to her heart; for, in the Emberwolf, she sensed the vilest breed of anger, which lies hidden under a web of manners, like how a trapdoor spider waits in its hiding-hole. It was the same anger she had briefly tasted in the living room, when she had offended the beast by mistaking her for an ordinary fire. “Don’t push her further,” whispered a voice in her mind. Perhaps it was Photo Dash. “It might be the last thing you ever do.” The Emberwolf’s fur bristled. Her heckles were raised and her fangs were bared, and her body glowed more brightly than the Sun and the Moon smashed into one. Her voice emerged as a growl. “Do you not realise what you have done, Scootawolf? Do you not comprehend what these fireflakes mean to me? They are irreplaceable. They are the diamonds of my soul. If you are going to live with me, you must never touch them ever again. Swear to me!” “OK, sheesh, I promise!” Scootawolf said quickly, before the Emberwolf could work itself into a rage. She pointed at another fireflake lying nearby in the grass. “But what even are they?” “What they are,” the Emberwolf replied, “is Never-You-Mind, and Never-Ask-Again. There are rules for living here. Three rules. The first, you have already broken: never touch the fireflakes. The second too you have managed to break: never question me. Yet the third is the most important of all.” With her fiery head, the beast gestured to the right and through the trees, Scootawolf spied a glade amongst a ring of ancient oaks. They walked closer and stood on the clearing’s edge. In the centre of the glade was a large wooden box, like a treasure chest. The chest was coated in frost. Scootawolf’s eyes widened. The Emberwolf took a soothing breath. The fires in her eyes dulled from yellow to red – but, although she spoke softly, infinite danger lurked in the corners of the words. “The third rule,” the Emberwolf said, “is that you must never, under any circumstances whatsoever, open the chest. If you can help it, then do not even look at it.” More than this, the beast didn’t explain. She didn’t say what treasures were hidden in there, or why they were locked away. Yet, already, Scootawolf knew that it would be safer to taunt dragons than to so much as touch the lid of the chest. For a moment, Scootawolf thought of the secret tin under the floorboards of her bedroom. She thought of photographs, and of her friends. Then she shook the thought from her head and watched the Emberwolf slink through the grass towards the chest. “Wait,” Scootawolf called, for there was something more she had to know. “I don’t care if you don’t wanna talk to me about stuff – I mean, about what the fireflakes are or what’s in the chest. But if you want me to live with you, you’ve gotta at least tell me this.” Scootawolf paused, hardly believing what she was about to whisper. “Were – were you a pony like me, once? What happened to you?” The Emberwolf stopped walking but didn’t answer. Scootawolf stepped nearer. “Please! Tell me.” The Emberwolf shook her head. When she spoke, her tone was one of locked chests and bolted doors: a voice crammed with secrets. “Do you want to know what happened, Scootawolf?" she said, turning back around to face her. "Do you want to know why I am the way that I am? Everyone deserves help. But not everyone is willing to give help when needed, not even my own wolf pack.” Scootawolf gulped. “I don’t get what you mean. Why did your pack—” Before she could finish, the Emberwolf bared her fangs and snapped, “Rule two – don’t question me! Tomorrow is a busy day. I will show you how to walk between fireplaces, and how to transform yourself into a being of pure flames. But now, it is time for sleep.” Then she turned her back again, leaving Scootawolf trembling on the edge of the glade. “Where am I sleeping tonight?” Scootawolf called after her. “You are an emberwolf, and emberwolves do as they please. Sleep where you want.” But Scootawolf stayed put: because just then, totally, completely, and absolutely, she didn’t want to be an emberwolf pup anymore. She was sick of it. Photo Dash’s words rang in her head. How utterly exhausting it felt, trying to feel angry all the time, even if it was the smallest smouldering back-of-her-mind kind of anger – and how exhausting it was to be in the Emberwolf’s presence. True, the beast had shown her a new way of living – yet the way the Emberwolf spoke to her now was unacceptable. Scootawolf hated it. She hated how scared she suddenly felt of the Emberwolf’s rage… Then Scootawolf wondered: what did it matter that she had argued with Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle? With a longing that reached deep into her heart, she wanted them. She didn’t care anymore that they had fought. She longed to be with her friends – and with her family too, and with Rainbow Dash. She sobbed. She wanted sheets, blankets and pillows, and for Aunt Holiday to tuck her into bed with a kiss and a story (never mind that years had passed since either of her aunts had kissed her goodnight). She wanted hooves instead of paws. She ached to have her old mane and old tail back. She would have given anything to feel the softness of her old orange coat, rather than the burning coals which now covered her fiery body. By Celestia, by sweet Luna, she wanted to be Scootaloo again. “I live with the sky in my heart,” she whispered in a broken voice. “I live with Rainbow in my soul…” With that, Scootawolf lay under an oak tree and curled into a ball. Sleep claimed her, and she thought no more.