//------------------------------// // Chapter 38 // Story: The Haunting // by Admiral Biscuit //------------------------------// The Haunting Admiral Biscuit I hadn’t bothered to check the weather schedule—I still thought of it in my head as a prediction, even though it was always what it said it was going to be—and so I hadn’t expected snow. Either Milfoil didn’t know, either, or didn’t mind snow. My bet was on the latter. ••••• We all met at my house so that I could change into appropriate forest exploration clothes, and then we headed into the woods. We didn’t talk. I didn’t have a lot to say, and I thought that it would be best to leave the old stallion alone with his thoughts. Milfoil was in the lead, and she needed to concentrate on finding her marks—whatever those were. I hadn’t seen anything obvious. Even though I knew intellectually it wasn’t all that far, it felt like a doomed expedition that had overestimated its abilities. Especially for me—once Haywards Heath disappeared behind a curtain of snow, I realized that if the ponies somehow abandoned me in the woods, I wouldn’t be found. I’d have to shelter up somewhere until the snow stopped. If I was lucky, I’d still be able to see our footprints; if not, I’d have to estimate by the position of the sun and hope that I could find my way back. Perhaps I could find a tree on a bit of a rise, and climb that high enough to see town. I did my best to look for landmarks, even though I knew deep inside that it wouldn’t do any good. I wouldn’t recognize them later; wasn’t the fact that I couldn’t lead Milfoil to Windflower’s resting place proof enough of that? I suppose there was a chance that Windflower would find me. Hopefully while I was still alive. ••••• I had one advantage over the ponies—the snow was only up to my thighs in drifts. It was up to their chests, and they either had to bulldoze their way through it or sort of hop up and crash through. And the old stallion . . . I got colder just watching him plow through the snow. Why hadn’t ponies invented some kind of knitted underwear for this exact circumstance? Every now and then, Milfoil would hesitate, looking for her next trail marker. He’d look around, too, and every now and then he’d spot it before she did. He wore a small frown and his ears were far more active than hers. I wondered if that was because he couldn’t hear as well any more, or if he was feeling whatever it was in the forest that she hadn’t told me about. Was he looking for it, whatever it was? Surely he felt it. I had the idea that ponies got wiser in the ways of nature as they got older. “We’re getting close,” Milfoil said. I jerked in alarm—it was the first thing she’d said since we’d left town. “I think from here on out we should be quiet. We don’t want to scare her.” What would Windflower think? I hadn’t seen her when I’d found her resting place, but she might have been hiding under the log, too frightened to come out. I’d probably sounded like a herd of elephants trampling through the woods, and she would have had plenty of time to hide. Of course, maybe she didn’t stay there all the time. Maybe she roamed the woods. That was her forest home, but when she wasn’t there she might go around and watch the trees or chase bunnies or who knows what. Maybe she was sometimes out during the day but just couldn’t be seen because it was light out. I didn’t think that was the case; I could see her just fine when she was in my house, and while lamplight and a fire weren’t as bright as the sun, she didn’t seem any more translucent than when she’d been in my attic. ••••• I saw it first. Milfoil was still in the lead, but I had the advantage of height. I almost called out, and then just in time remembered that we were supposed to be silent. If we’d been closer together, I would have signaled to them that I was going to hold back, but we weren’t. Part of my hesitation was that I didn’t want to be the one to give us away. I thought that I was likely the most clumsy one when it came to moving through the forest. Overriding even that was the realization that it wasn’t right to be there with them. It would have been even better if the old stallion had gone alone. That couldn’t be helped; Milfoil knew the way. She must have thought the same thing, though, because she stopped and when he drew abreast of her, she pointed to the hollow and whispered in his ear, and then she slowly retreated back to where I stood. We didn’t say anything—we didn’t need to. I sat down on the snow and she sat beside me and we watched Windflower’s great uncle have his heart broken again. I could have told him that it was even worse when there wasn’t any snow on the ground and you could see her bones scattered on the leaves. ••••• We sat and we waited. I was getting cold but that didn’t bother me at all. Occasionally, a gust of wind would obscure him behind a cloud of snow, and then it would clear again and he was still standing there, head down. It was practically silent in the woods. The wind blew gently through the trees and very occasionally I heard a distant bird call. I suppose most birds hunker down for snow storms. As we sat, I began to grow aware of a faint humming noise. It was right on the edge of audibility; whenever I tried to concentrate on it, it vanished again. It was like a magic eye picture, and I was never very good at those. I peeled one glove off and put my bare hand on Milfoil’s back. I had to slide it through the snow that had accumulated on top of her coat and I did briefly wonder if I was disturbing the insulating layer of air that was trapped under her coat, but she didn’t move to stop me. Her skin was warm, warmer than my hand. If I was going to turn into an earth pony, the first thing I wanted was a coat like hers to keep me warm in the winter. The humming noise got a bit louder, and it also changed slightly. In the past, I would have scoffed at myself for having such a thought, but I knew it was true. And I also knew it for what it was, and I listened as we waited. ••••• It never got louder. I wished that it had gotten louder. I wished that I had understood it, although I knew that some understanding might come in time. More importantly, it didn’t completely disappear when the old stallion finally came back, tears frozen to his cheeks, and it didn’t come back when we got up and I brushed the snow off my butt and legs and then off Milfoil. The song was still there. It was quiet, it was faint, but it was still there. Our own passage out of the woods mostly drowned it out. The false wind of our breath, the noise of my clothes, the sound of their hooves and my feet crunching through the snow, all of those things covered it but it was still there and now that I could hear it faintly, I noticed that as we got closer to town, it changed ever so slightly. This made perfect sense. Haywards Heath had a different song than the forest. ••••• The light was fading fast when we finally crossed out of the forest and back into town, and there was still plenty to do before Windflower arrived. Too much to do, and not enough time. Sometimes that helps push along difficult decisions. Of course, decisions made in haste aren’t always the best ones, but sometimes it works out. I built up the fire as quickly as I could, while Milfoil talked to the old stallion in the kitchen. They kept their voices low and I tried not to eavesdrop but I couldn’t help overhearing them. Even if I hadn’t known what she was going to ask me, I would have agreed anyway. ••••• “I heard it again,” I said quietly. “Really?” I nodded. “When we were sitting in the woods.” “Is that why you put your bare hand on my back?” “I wasn’t sure at first. It was like a song that I knew but whenever I focused on it, it was gone again. And I thought that maybe you could strengthen it.” Had I known that song once? I’d thought about that on our way back home. It hadn’t felt right to talk on the way back either. “When I was a kid, I believed in a lot of things that weren’t true. Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny and the Tooth Fairy. And at some point as I grew up, I learned that they weren’t real. I learned that magic wasn’t real. That’s a human lesson, that magic isn’t real.” “Magic is real.” “Not for humans. Not magic like you have. Unless—have we blinded ourselves?” “I don’t know many humans,” Milfoil said. “In fact, you’re the only one that I really know. I’ve seen a few before, and I remember once thinking that they had wide-eyed looks, and I thought it was like a foal who’s trying to figure out the world.” “I suppose there’s some truth to that,” I said. “When I was a kid, I heard the story of Saul who was on the road to Damascus and the scales fell off his eyes and he saw and I don’t think I ever really understood that before coming to Equestria.” “Do you understand now?” “Not exactly,” I admitted. “Hearing about ponies and reading about ponies and then being around ponies, there was a lot of culture shock for me, but humans are pretty good at taking things in stride and we get jaded after a while and just accept the new reality and deal with it the best we can. “This feels different. Like it’s a whole new part of me that I’m only just discovering, or else it’s something I did know and then forgot about. And I can’t help but wonder what would happen if there was some kind of magic potion that made me suddenly able to see and hear and feel what you do?” “I don’t know. I think it would be too much, all at once.” “Yeah.” ••••• From her kitchen table, I could see my backyard and just a corner of my house. If I’d sat on her side of the table, I might have been able to see more, but even then I wouldn’t have been able to see through the wall. “I hope we did the right thing,” Milfoil said. “I think we did.” I didn’t know—neither of us knew. We wouldn't know until tomorrow. “I hope she wasn’t excited for the next chapter of Stranger on a Train.” Milfoil bopped me lightly with her hoof. “I think it will be the last thing on her mind.” “Yeah.” I glanced out her kitchen window again. “I think so, too.”