Theo woke the next morning—whatever her ambitions to keep searching through the night, she’d apparently been far too exhausted to keep working. She yawned and stretched, emerging from the tent a second time. As before, she had no idea how she’d gotten inside, no memory of climbing in the night before.
Sharp Edge didn’t leave me out in the open after I fell asleep. She would’ve loved to thank him for his help, except of course that he wouldn’t understand her if she did.
She rose slowly, wiping away the slime and dirt from her face. The Horizon had a hot shower, and here we are dragging ourselves through the dirt. If only she knew who was responsible for their crashed ship, maybe she could let them live in the dirt for a few days.
Edge wasn’t making breakfast this time—that duty apparently fell on Emerald. The pegasus was humming to herself as she worked, adding bits of carefully measured herbs to the pot along with a single can of some kind of grain. She looked up as Theo approached, waving a wing enthusiastically.
"Uvuka! Ingabe ulale kahle?"
Theo winced. “You didn’t have to stop singing. It was nice.” Even if she didn’t understand the words. She sat down, scanning the area around them for wherever Sharp Edge had gone. He couldn’t have gone far.
Another moment later he emerged from the inside of the Horizon, dumping out another huge bucket of water before dropping down again. What’s the point of bailing something with a huge hole in the bottom?
But Sharp Edge wasn’t stupid. He must be doing it for a reason. Now if only I could ask him what that reason is.
Theo ate, grinding her beak together at the awful repetition of mystery stew. This strange body might be able to digest the mostly-plant things they kept feeding her, but her brain was going to go completely insane. How long are we going to be trapped out here?
Theo rose to her claws as soon as she was done, tossing the empty tin cup onto her log. “I’m going to find the necklace today,” she declared. “I feel like I’ve already searched most of the pond by now. I’ll find it soon if just by elimination.”
She knew it wasn’t true even as she said it—she couldn’t guess what might be happening beneath the surface of the water, couldn’t say whether the necklace had vanished under the mud somewhere and disappeared completely from sight. But what choice did she have?
Theo waded into the chilly mountain water, only barely feeling the ice against her coat. If there was one mercy to her strange transformation, at least the body she had now seemed well-adapted to the water.
With the headlamp in place, she had a view that cut straight to the bottom of the murky pond. Theo watched the little spotlight as it moved slowly forward and back across the mud, eyes scanning for any sign of metal. The necklace hadn’t been particularly bright, but it should still reflect. Too bad we don’t have diving gear. That would make this way easier.
Theo lost track of just how long she was down there. She swam for hours, circling the same small patches of the pond so often that each sunken rock or bit of scrap from the engines was familiar to her.
There was something to be said for a methodical search, as much as she dreaded the requirement. Waterproof paper and a proper grid of the pond would let her be absolutely certain that she wasn’t crossing into areas she had already searched before in vain.
But she didn’t have a grid, she barely had the batteries in her headlamp. With constant use, she would probably only have a few more days of life in the thing before it finally went out too.
"Summer, ungabuka okuthile?" Sharp called, his voice seeming like it came from another world.
Theo blinked, looked away from her swimming, then saw the pony waving to her from the side of the Horizon’s railing. “What is it?” she asked, more by reflex than anything.
"Ulahlekile," he responded "Udinga ukuphumula ngaphambi kokuba uqhubeke ubheka. Usukhathala."
She shook her head. His pointed glances at the deck beside him were enough for her to guess what he meant. “I’m not leaving until I find it!” she called. “Just give me a little longer!”
Theo turned away, ignoring Sharp Edge’s concerned yell from just behind her. He yelled again, a little louder, and this time she turned back, sitting up again in the water. So long as she kept her wings spread, that was a near guarantee she wouldn’t sink. “Stop it! I don’t understand you!”
She glared at him, then past him to the low bushes on the shore, with their swirling cattails. There was something hanging on the edge of one, completely covered with dry mud.
"Uzibulala wena, Summer Ray. Ngokushesha kufanele ushiye."
Theo ignored him, swimming past the edge of the Horizon and over to the shore. She’d searched the pond exhaustively, confident that the water would wash away anything that got stuck to the necklace. But if it hadn’t landed in the water…
One claw closed around metal, and she dunked it down into the pond. There would be tarnished steel, more scrap left over from the crash. It would be another disappointment.
Dark silver metal with intricate etching appeared in her claws, the little symbols and carved bird figures of the necklace. Theo almost dropped it, she was so excited.
Instead she only slumped to one side, hugging it close to her chest and crying with relief. She rocked back and forth, not caring that she was smearing slime and mud all over herself. “It’s not gone… it’s not gone…”
Emerald landed in the shallow water beside her, her head tilting to one side. "Yini engalungile, Summer? Ingabe uzilimazile?"
In answer, she pulled on the necklace. She felt its familiar weight settle around her, so familiar that she had long since stopped noticing it. But she would never fail to notice it again, never take its magic for granted again. This was far more important than any Earth artifact. It was her key to not going insane.
“I’m not hurt,” she answered, wiping the tears away from her face with the back of one leg. “I almost was, but not anymore.”
Emerald grinned back at her, squealing with joy and relief. “Sharp, she found it! Summer found the thing!”
The pony appeared atop the deck of the Horizon a second later, looking in her direction with wide eyes. “She found what?”
“The thing!” Emerald took off, crossing the short distance to the deck and pointing eagerly back. “You know, the thing! You gave it to her to wear so she could…”
“The spell,” he finished for her. “The translation, you mean.” He waved enthusiastically. “I knew you would find it eventually, small as this pond is. We should come up with some way to secure it better in the future.”
He sounded so calm, so collected compared to the way he’d been a few days earlier. She could still see the emptiness in his eyes when he’d told her he was going to burn to death.
Theo wanted to fly over and join him on the deck, but she had to swim over normally. She kept one claw on the artifact with every stroke, not risking even some slight chance that she might lose it again. She made it to the edge of the railing, where a gate opened for docking or makeshift flying lessons. Theo climbed inside, taking Sharp’s offered hoof and clambering up onto the deck.
Sharp Edge didn’t wait for her to say anything, didn’t care that she was soaking wet, just leaned forward and embraced her. “Now I can finally thank you for saving my life,” he said. “I’ve been… wondering how I would tell you, as soon as you could understand.”
Theo didn’t pull away. She was still on the verge of tears, and even a slight perturbation might break down her thin veneer of calm.
“You’re, uh…” She blushed, ears flattening. Just because she wanted to be close to him didn’t mean she wasn’t embarrassed by it. “You didn’t need my help. I’m sure you would’ve figured it out on your own.”
“The only thing I figured out is that I need to start carrying a parachute.” He let go, however reluctantly. His eyes wandered to the blackened entrance below, with its streaks of flame and destruction. Theo hadn’t been inside the wrecked ship since they crashed, but she could guess what would be waiting in there.
“Do you…” She half expected herself to stop understanding him at any moment, or maybe for him to look so confused that there could be no mystery about how little he grasped. But her ability to speak in the pony language hadn’t been taken away. The necklace still worked. “Do you know how it happened?”
“Thanks to you, I’ve got an idea. Maybe missing some of the pieces, but…” He walked a few paces away, then removed a bit of metal from near the helm. It was the melted tube, with its feather company logo on the far side. “I think there was a… fire spell of some kind hidden away in here. I’ve never seen one delayed so long before without activating accidentally, but it clearly worked. When I idled the engines, the spell turned on, and…” He shook his head. “Some unicorn really didn’t want us to leave the Crystal Empire. A unicorn with magic I’ve never seen before.”
“Can I see the damage?” Theo asked. She still had a hard time caring about all this, with the relief of being able to understand them again flooding her so profoundly. But Sharp cared about it, and it was her ride too. “I might know ways that could happen.”
Sharp nodded. “You can swim well enough to look, that’s obvious. I’ve been working on the lower deck… it would be better than camping if we were stuck here long term while I made repairs. But the further I got, the more obvious it is that I can’t repair this. Those engines are bucked.”
At Emerald’s gasp, he winced, ears flattening. “Sorry, sweetheart. I… I shouldn’t use language like that. Anyway Summer, come and see for yourself.”
He led the way under the deck. Even with the ship not completely destroyed, Theo winced at what she saw. The beautiful stained hardwood was already starting to warp. Yet somehow, the lower deck seemed at least partially watertight. The windows were boarded up now, and the water was only halfway up her legs. Only a slow trickle came in through where the windows were. And with each bucket they emptied, the higher the Horizon would lift in the pond.
With one obvious drawback. They reached the stairwell, and Sharp pointed at her head with a hoof. “If you wouldn’t mind activating that marvelous little light spell, I think it will serve us here. The glowstone I’ve been using as a work light is running on its last spark, as you’ll see.”
Theo reached up, switching it on in its brightest mode. “Lead the way.”
Sharp backed away, eyes lingering momentarily on the headlamp. “That… isn’t a spell, is it? It’s an electrical torch… those Feather designs have little metal cones in front just like that.”
She nodded. “Electrical, yeah. More advanced than anything that stupid place sells. This one is waterproof, obviously. And the battery lasts for months. Unfortunately, I don’t remember the last time I replaced it. Might’ve been months ago.”
“I’m afraid I’m not familiar with batteries,” Sharp said. “But we’re getting off topic. As fascinating as Traveler technology is…”
“Right.” She followed him down the stairs, taking one last huge breath and swimming into the engine room. At one point, it looked like it had dug into the bottom of the pond, not far below them. There was damage to the open section, and huge clumps of mud gathered near the engine.
A little glowing rock hung on a cord in the center of the room, casting the space in dim amber. Barely enough light to see by for any useful purpose. Even the red setting on Theo’s headlamp probably would’ve overpowered it.
They didn’t have long. Sharp swam straight over to one of the two engines, its side panels now fully opened. The interior mechanisms were melted into indistinguishable steel slag, as though a god’s blowtorch had passed straight through from the outside using an extremely precise path.
That was about the point Sharp started running out of air, and she followed him back to the stairs. She surfaced just beside him, and waited patiently while he panted. Ponies weren’t nearly as good at swimming as she was.
“You see… the spell they used. As I said, more powerful than any I know. Steel is particularly resistant to magic, that’s precisely why it’s so useful. But whatever spell this was didn’t seem to care.” He climbed up into the living area, leaning against one wall and panting. “I don’t suppose you… have any insight?”
Theo nodded. “When I was in school, I learned about a simple way to cut through metal like this. It’s so easy we made it ourselves… and when we finished, we lit it on fire and cut straight through an old lawnmower engine.” She pointed up the stairs with a wing. “I wonder if that tube might’ve been filled with thermite. That’s, uh… that’s what it’s called. Or something similar. No magic involved, just chemistry.”
“I’ve never heard of it,” Sharp said. He seemed to be mostly watching her headlamp—expecting it to go out, maybe? “That sounds even harder to turn against us than new magic.”
“I’m more worried about why,” she said. “Why would anyone care enough to try to…” She shivered at the thought, and the words would barely come out. “Kill us.”
“Probably weren’t,” Sharp said, bitter. “If they wanted us dead, they would’ve done it to the gasbag. All that hydrogen, way up there… we’d be feeding the fish in this pond right now. But they didn’t. I almost think… maybe it worked a little too well. Maybe they hoped to disable us, then take us in the air. But why… that I’m having a harder time with. We didn’t travel the Crystal Empire flashing bits on every street corner. The Horizon isn’t a luxury vessel, there isn’t even a cargo compartment. Anyone with the access to our manifest would know we weren’t carrying anything worth stealing.”
“What about this?” She tapped the side of her headlamp with one claw. “This, and a few more bits and pieces. Probably trashed now that they got wet, unfortunately. Most of my possessions aren’t… waterproof.”
She wandered over to the bed, splashing forward until she reached her saddlebags still hanging there. Emerald had emptied these when she searched the ship, though she’d missed a few things. Theo fastened them back up, then slung them over her shoulder.
She was silent for a long time, eyes on the deck. She didn’t want to ask, not really. She was perfectly content to celebrate being able to talk again.
But at the same time, her fear was too strong. “What do we do, Sharp? This… the Horizon… she was everything to you, wasn’t she?”
He looked down, knocking against the deck with one hoof. “Still is. She’s a sturdy old girl. Might be we can get her flying again one day. But not without a proper salvage crew. Those engines might as well be scrap metal at this point, gasbag is empty, we don’t have the acid or the iron to make replacement lift. And we’d need a bucking ton of it now that we’re so waterlogged. That means a professional salvage crew, and probably weeks of refitting at a drydock.”
She winced. Even without knowing the first thing about Equestria, Theo could guess “—we don’t have the bits for that?”
He turned for the stairs, then headed back towards the sun. “No. The Horizon was the last thing of real value I had left. Always thought I’d retire on her, when I got sick of traveling from place to place. Guess she… didn’t quite make it.”
“Maybe I can help you earn the bits,” she said, following behind him. “I guess the job I did before isn’t close to being invented here, but… there might be other things. I could… wash dishes maybe. Sweep floors. Crap jobs.”
Sharp turned, reaching up and resting a hoof on her shoulder. He held suddenly firm, preventing her from leaving up the stairs. “Summer Ray, I see where this is going. Whatever else happens, I need you to promise me you aren’t going to blame yourself for this.”
I’m not sure why I shouldn’t. I’ve got to be the reason we were attacked.
“I’m alive thanks to you,” he went on. “I would’ve stayed in that engine room to burn. As terrible as all this is… so far as I’m concerned, I’m the one who owes you. Don’t start offering to spend your life sweeping floors to pay me back. That isn’t how this works.”
“I…” She looked away. “I’m not sure it’s that simple. Maybe I saved you, maybe. But I’m also the only reason you were away from Sleighsburg in the first place. You’d still be there if I’d never showed up. And Emerald’s mom would still be alive.”
He let go, turning back for the stairs and climbing back to the deck ahead of her. “Responsibility is pointless. There’s no way either of us is saving the Horizon right now. We’ll just have to… hope she lasts, and that we can find her again. A salvage team might still be able to save her a year from now, if I can… somehow find the bits to pay them by then. Maybe the hippogriff embassy can give us a loan.”
She looked away, as much because she was still self-conscious as because he was as dressed as she was. If pony nudity ever showed its weaknesses most of all, it was in close quarters like this.
Emerald waited for them near the exit, watching the passage down with intense skepticism. Theo now had a guess about why she hadn’t salvaged all her stuff from down there. “Are we going to fly again, now that Summer can talk?”
Sharp shook his head once, visibly pained. “I’m afraid not, apprentice. The Horizon is… grounded until further notice. The engines can’t be fixed, and we don’t have enough lift to fly.”
Emerald winced at the news. Child though she was, she wasn’t ignorant about the consequences. “So… how do we get out? If we can’t fly…”
“We walk,” Sharp Edge said simply. “There are many pony villages across Equestria. I salvaged a map from the crash, and it says we’re only three days walk from a place called Agate. We should be able to ride a cart from there to Neighagra, and then a train to Canterlot. What happens after that…” He looked away. “Honestly Emerald, I’m not sure. We can’t afford to repair the Horizon right now, and travel down to the hippogriff city is expensive.”
“Master, you’re trying to fix every problem at once again,” Emerald interrupted him, raising a wing to shut his mouth. “How about we just get to Canterlot and figure it out from there?”
“That sounds…” He trailed off, then looked away from her. “Yes, I suppose that’s acceptable. There are a few more items I’d like to gather first. Preparations I would like to make to prepare the Horizon to winter here, if we don’t arrive back in time. It’s possible to modestly increase her chances. Summer, would you be willing to help me? And… maybe let me borrow your torch?”
She nodded. “Of course, Sharp. Just tell me what to do.” It sure beat searching the pond for lost jewelry.
They didn’t get on the road until the next morning. Theo helped Sharp Edge pack their saddlebags as best they could, though their supplies hadn’t been meant to last more than the length of the flight. “That’s why we’ve been eating so much of the local herbs,” Sharp explained, as they left the pond behind. “We didn’t know how far we had to stretch our food.”
“I did a good job finding things, didn’t I?” Emerald asked, beaming up at Theo. “My mom taught me to know the difference between what’s safe to eat and what isn’t. It’s, uh… one of the things I remember from her.”
“You did great,” Theo said, patting her once on the head. She would’ve praised her cooking skills if she’d given them cups of dirt, just then.
All three of them wore heavy saddlebags, the best they could manage to pack in their supplies. Sharp Edge carried twice as much as the other two of them combined. He didn’t seem to mind, or be the least bit slowed down by the heavy canvas filled with supplies.
“Will you be able to find the Horizon again when we… get the money to get a salvage crew out here?” she asked, checking the necklace with one claw. She’d come to checking to make sure it was there every few minutes, a single touch to remind her of the thin line between understanding and alienation.
“Yeah.” Sharp patted one of his pockets. “I made pretty good notations about this place. It wasn’t on any maps, but that’s a good thing. If we were closer to civilization, somepony else might take her for themselves. I can’t stay here to wait for someone…”
He was putting on a brave face, but Theo could see the pain under the surface. Sharp Edge had started out by giving away a precious artifact, then lost his home, and now his ship. What else could he lose? “I’ll make it up to you, somehow,” she promised. “I don’t know… but somehow.”
Sharp glared at her again, but didn’t argue.
They hiked through the wilderness, through lush evergreen trees never touched by New England loggers. Maybe it was just being half as tall, but the forests here seemed more like visiting the Earth’s past than visiting an alien planet. It was the forest primeval.
“Should we have a gun?” she asked, around their campfire that night. “It sounds like there are wolves out there.”
Emerald tilted her head to one side. “What’s that?”
Sharp sipped at his tea. “The translation spell hasn’t done that before. Curious.”
“Hasn’t done what?”
Sharp stared at the necklace for a few seconds, as though inspecting it for damage. “Could you say the word again? What is it we should have?”
“A gun?” she repeated, raising an eyebrow. “On the other side of the Doorway, I was working in a place a little like this. Nobody was allowed to leave base unless one member of the group had one. Wolves, polar bears…”
“Gun,” he repeated. “It’s not going untranslated, but I don’t know what it means.”
“Then you don’t have one,” she said, slumping back against the tree. “I was hoping maybe it was tucked into your saddlebags or something. But now that I think about it, I don’t know how you’d use it without fingers. It’s, uh... a weapon. It throws pieces of metal fast enough to kill predators.” And people.
“Oh, you mean a crossbow.” As he said it, his frown deepened. “Except those don’t sound the same at all.”
“It isn’t right,” she said. “Crossbows are… different. They’re from the middle ages, ancient primitive weapons that use mechanical tension. What I’m thinking of use the gas laws and pressure, and…” She trailed off. “You have electricity and chemistry, but not guns?”
“Guess so,” Sharp said, refilling his tea. He offered the metal pot to Theo, but she shook her head. She could only drink so much boiled pine needles. “Maybe we have fewer predators than you. Emerald, how big a problem were they for Sleighsburg?”
She shook her head once. “I think a polar bear visited a few years ago. She seemed nice. I remember my mom worried that she was going to eat all our fish, but after a few days she got bored and left. She didn’t seem that dangerous. Just, uh… big.”
What? Theo might not be a native to the north, but she’d met plenty who were living in Barrow. She had heard horror stories from the locals, of the bears that hunted humans for pleasure, then left their bodies to freeze on the ice.
“It’s even more pronounced in Equestria,” Sharp said. “I can’t remember the last time I heard of a pony being hurt by an animal intentionally. There are, uh… some places sensible folk don’t travel. Maybe we just stay away from danger?”
She sighed. There was of course a much bigger reason for having weapons, one that she barely even wanted to mention around Emerald. Whatever this planet’s history, she would’ve bet all the money of her winter paycheck that they didn’t have world wars.
But they’d almost been killed once. She couldn’t keep quiet, even if it would be better for the child if she did. “There’s another reason to carry weapons. We were sabotaged, Sharp. What happens if those people come back for us?”
He shrugged, though she could see his jaw clenching as he looked away from her. “Then I’ll ask them very politely when they intend to reimburse me for the damage they caused.”
So you’re not hopeless pacifists.
There was a long way to walk, and one forest looked much like another. Theo didn’t know for sure just how much walking in circles they ended up doing. Whenever they got turned around, Emerald could fly above the trees to look scout, comparing what she saw to the landmarks on Sharp’s map.
But the map was obviously nautical in purpose, and so it didn’t have the level of precision meant to guide travelers walking on the ground. They had to do an awful lot of trial and error. There were no other creatures on the trail, and true to Sharp’s suggestions they weren’t attacked.
It would be nice to live somewhere this safe. Just walk out into the forest without having to worry. But then, animal attacks were rare. They hadn’t been the real reason she wanted to have a gun.
Eventually, after walking for what felt like ages, Theo saw the first thin lines of smoke rising from somewhere through the tree line. It was Agate. They’d reached civilization at last.