//------------------------------// // Chapter Five // Story: The Parable of the Toymaker // by Jarvy Jared //------------------------------// The storm was what awoke me. A boom, distant but throbbing, sounded off from across the bay.  I sat up with a start, confused at first until I glanced sharply out the window. The rain was pelting the window in a thick sheet of percussion notes, and a gray sky, vast like a single cloud, covered everything.  Then came another sound—the front door swinging open and crashing against one of the shop’s walls. Something stomped through, and because the floor was wooden and the house all quiet, their hoofsteps echoed resoundingly throughout the little area. There was a brief pause where no sound save for the rain occurred, and then I heard something like metal groaning. By then I’d already gotten out of bed, confusion transforming into dread, because I’d realized that the latter sound was unmistakably the workshop door being pried open.  I raced out of the room, only pausing briefly to look through my father’s bedroom door. Somehow he was still consumed by a deathlike sleep, as though our conversation from the night before had thoroughly exhausted him.  I left him and galloped down the stairs, not caring if anyone heard. The front door caught my attention first. It had been forced open, and now dangled on its hinges, fluttering in the wind. Outside lay shrouded in gray and rain, and the wind was shrill and scared. I saw a trail of muddy hoofprints leading from the door, around the counter, and into the workshop, and from inside I heard a male pony’s voice shout, “I knew it!” There was no time to hesitate. I burst through the workshop door. Almost as quickly as I’d entered, I came to a startling stop. “Easel?!” Easel Chisel whipped around. His raincoat was soaked to the quick, and his unkempt mane spilled out of his hood. The rain dripped off of the rim of his hood and landed on his muzzle, which was twisted up into a wild snarl. In one hoof he had his bag. In the other, taken from an open toolbox, was a hammer, flashing dangerously in the copper light of the room, poised for striking. Behind him were the wooden figurines—all six of them, even the unpainted Twilight Sparkle. I looked at them, then the hammer, and realized that my father and I had completely forgotten to put them away; we’d been too wrapped up in our conversation about my mother.  I swallowed. “Easel, what are you doing?” He scoffed. “What am I doing? I should be asking you that! What on Equestria are these supposed to be?!” He pointed the hammer at the figures. I cringed when the tip nearly toppled Fluttershy. “They’re… they’re just toys.” “Just toys? Are you insane? You’ve got two pegasi, a unicorn, and some weird… hybrid monster in the whole lot of them!” “E-even so, they’re just toys, Easel!”  He stared at me. His bewilderment was enough to make me dizzy, as was his disbelief. “Do you really take me for an idiot, Maple?!” “N-no, o-of course not, I just—” Without thinking, I looked past him at the six figures, afraid. He caught my gaze and returned to looking at them. I could almost hear the gears in his head working overtime in order to piece together the whole mystery. And with a snarl, he arrived at the answer. “This is what that Argyle creep was asking for, isn’t it?” Seeing no way out, I could only affirm.  “Your father… I thought he knew better than to listen to that garbage. Don’t tell me I was wrong!” “What are you even doing here, Easel?” I said, trying to divert the conversation. “You’re not even set to work today! And it’s definitely too early for you to be here!” Yet he wouldn’t look at me. He continued to glare at the figures, his hoof holding the hammer shaking. “I knew something was up,” he muttered. Then in a louder voice, he said, “It didn’t make any sense why your father kept hiding away in the workshop for these past several weeks. I wouldn’t have thought anything about it had he not kept at it, and had not a few customers started asking some questions. And then there was you.” Here, he finally looked at me. What I saw made me flinch. Unbridled contempt billowed out of him, but it was so vast in scope that I could not tell if it was directed at me, my father, both of us, Argyle, the figures, or everything. “Something was off about you, too. The way you behaved, like you wanted to rush through every order, and how you’d sometimes just stare at the workshop door, never going in. Surely, I thought, you’d noticed it, too, that your father was acting strangely? But you never did anything about it. At first I thought that was because you didn’t want to pursue the matter, but then I realized there was an even greater possibility that you were actually aware of whatever was going on.  “Yesterday, when I was in Maretime Bay grabbing some food, I overheard something equally strange. One of the sailors was talking about having to make a weekly trip to our shop in the evening.” I almost asked what Easel meant by “our” shop. “It didn’t take me long to figure out somepony was stopping by, and had been doing so for quite some time… and notably, in the hours when I wasn’t working. It couldn’t have been a coincidence. “So, I decided that I’d stop by before anypony else was awake and see if I could discover anything. Just my luck it decided to storm today! Those hinges to the front door were rusted over, so I had to force it open just to let myself in.” Inwardly I was cursing myself. I had been foolish; now that Easel had laid it out, I recognized our behavior as painfully obvious.   He took an advancing step forward, his head slightly bowed, and I stepped involuntarily back. Something hit my hind leg, and a quick glance behind me revealed it was one of the brooms.  “So. What gives?” Easel demanded. “If this is that Argyle’s creep’s doing, how’d he get your father to work on it? Was it money? Blackmail? Did he threaten somepony? Threaten you?” “Threaten me?” I said incredulously. “He’d never!” “Then why? Why are these… these monsters… in the workshop?” “They’re not monsters!” I hated how I sounded, how petulant, childish, woefully insistent. But for whatever reason, that declaration caught Easel off-guard. He stepped back, the hammer momentarily drooping. “What are you talking about?” Sensing a potential opening, I decided to lay everything out. “I’m sorry we kept this a secret from you, Easel, but honestly, with how you reacted when Argyle first came here, how could we not? You were already hostile to the existence of unicorns and pegasi—how would you react to what Argyle had uncovered about them, how they really were?” “What are you…” “We weren’t always so divided. We used to be friends. Something happened, something made us all afraid of each other. But unicorns and pegasi aren’t the monsters you make them out to be. They never were.”  I looked at him, trying to feel whether my words were having any kind of impact. But the storm was so loud and distracting that I could barely focus on what I was saying. “Argyle believes we could one day be friends again. And I believe him. And so does my father. That’s why these are in the shop. Because we believe. Can you, Easel? Put aside what you think you already know and tell me: do you really want to go on thinking that this is how things have to be?” He was quiet, unable to keep an even gaze with me. Slowly he turned to regard the figures, but the hammer was no longer held ready. I thought that I’d succeeded, and let out a breath. Thunder shook the whole shop, and the light bulb above us flickered and wavered. Craning my neck, I tried to hear if my father had awoken, but he didn’t seem to have. A coolness settled in me, one that was disarmingly calm. When Easel next spoke, however, that coolness evaporated under the heat of barely restrained fury. “You believe that nonsense?!” It was like I’d actually been physically struck—I’d never felt him so strongly before. “I-it’s not nonsense!” I protested. “I-it’s true, every word of it!” He slammed his hammer down on the table, missing the figures by a breath and causing them to jump and teeter. A startled gasp escaped me. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing,” Easel spat. “The Maple I knew would never let some two-bit stranger’s ideas infect her. Us? Friends with unicorns, with pegasi? Only the mad would think that would be ever possible!” “Easel, wait—” He glared at me. “That Argyle guy must have put you and your father under some kind of deep delusion for you to defend him like this. It must be the fault of these figures, I’ll bet. Some powerful magic’s taken hold of you both.” His lips had curled into a twisted, triumphant smile, like a coyote’s. “Well, don’t worry. I’ll free you in a jiffy. Just as soon as I do this!” “Easel, no!” He raised his hammer, ignoring my cries. But I couldn’t let him do this—I wouldn’t! Without thinking, I twisted around, grabbed the broom, and threw it. Easel turned just in time to see it fly towards him. With a startled cry, he ducked, but the broom still succeeded in knocking the hammer from his hoof. “Are you crazy, you stupid—” I didn’t let him finish. I charged  and threw my body against him with all my might. Carrying all of those heavy paint cans day-in and day-out had resulted in a fair bit of strength in my limbs, and I managed to knock him to the ground. We rolled away from the table, and I began to wail on him with reckless abandon. I wasn’t even aware I was crying. But Easel was strong. He managed to kick me in the stomach, driving the air from my lungs. My balance now upset, I couldn’t prevent him from throwing me off. I landed against one of the shelves, pain erupting across my back. Stars swirled in my vision. He was moving to stand, shaking all over. The hammer was gone, and Easel looked for it in vain. He let out a disgusted snort. “Fine! Then I’ll—” As I struggled to stand, Easel grabbed the six figures and shoved them into his bag. Shooting a withering glance my way, he turned and galloped out the door. “No!” I forced myself to my hooves and ran after him. Once outside, I soon realized that this was the worst storm I’d ever seen. The wind battered down the trees and shook the leaves and branches loose like a foal hitting a piñata over and over again. Spears of rain soaked through my fur and muddied the entire land, making it difficult to run without slipping. All was dark and gray, but the ocean was perhaps in the worst state. Pillars of waves rose up like behemoths from an untold time and slammed against the beaches and cliffs, spewing frothy breaths of foam and roaring with a fury unmatched, and each hit, it seemed, risked slicing our outcropping off from the mainland. Easel was a faint silhouette struggling to run through it all, and I was similarly unable to find my footing. Water seemed to come from all sides; I regretted not having the foresight of grabbing a coat. As I swiped at my face, trying to continue after Easel, I remembered something Argyle had told me: in Equestria of old, the pegasi had controlled the weather. Storms rarely were this bad, and only the scattered accounts of a certain Storm King invasion revealed any similarly chaotic weather phenomena. The memory was so absurd, I would have laughed. But instead, I coughed; I sputtered; I gasped for breath—and pressed onward. I didn’t bother shouting; Easel would not have heard me, and even if he did, he would not have listened.  Just as I feared I would lose him, a tree, on the verge of collapse, was finally struck down by a mighty burst of air. It landed in front of Easel, slowing him down long enough for me to close the distance. “Easel, stop!” I cried. He whipped his head around, saw me, then darted away before I could grab him. The tree had blocked off the road that eventually led to Maretime Bay, forcing Easel to instead take a path that led him to the edge of the outcropping. It seemed that the storm picked up, then—the wind screamed in my ear, and the rain gushed and throbbed in some terrible, spastic, percussive dance. I began to shiver so uncontrollably, I nearly lost my balance. Exhaustion quickly crept up on me. And it must have also crept up on Easel, for, after much slipping, sliding, and maneuvering, he came to a stop at the cliff’s edge. I was about to reach him, when, panting heavily, he grabbed the bag holding the wooden figurines and held them over the ocean. “Not another step!” he shrieked. “Or otherwise say goodbye to this junk!” My heart leaped into my throat. I stopped coming towards him. “Easel, please, wait! You don’t have to do this—” “Shut up, already!” He was looking at me with such an intense hatred, it was like he was poisoning me from the inside out. I felt sick and nauseous. And the wind, which threatened to steal the bag from Easel and toss it into the ocean itself, only further contributed to my condition. “Shut up, shut up, shut up and listen, damn it!” He choked and spat, eyes brimming with that hatred, freezing me in place. “You should be thanking me for what I’m about to do! Don’t you get that?!” “What you’re doing is just madness!” I shouted back. Another bout of nausea struck, however, and I had to close my eyes and lower my head, trying to fight it.  It was then that I noticed that the ground below Easel looked heavily eroded. A tiny mudslide was beginning to form, and the rain continued to mine a ditch into it. Each time that Easel adjusted himself in order to compensate for the wind’s strength, the ground looked like it was in danger of crumbling. Every movement of his also brought him closer to the edge of the cliff.  “Easel, wait, the ledge, you’re too close—” “Why won’t you listen to me?!” he shouted. There was an ugliness to his face, a mix of profound anger and grief that could only mean madness.  “I’m just trying to protect the business! Protect you, that’s all! That Argyle creep, he’s bad news—why am I the only one who sees that?!” I stared at him. He wasn’t making any sense, teetering into strange territories of words that could never explain themselves to me. I took another step. This time, he did notice, and he stepped backwards, apparently unaware of how close he was to the edge. “S-stay back! I’m warning you!” Two things seemed to happen at once.  The wind reached its highest speeds yet. I fell to the ground, clutching at the dirt, trying not to get blown away. Meanwhile, behind Easel, the ocean heaved its strongest wave  and struck the cliff with the force of an earthquake. The ground rumbled. Then it cracked apart like someone had wedged a crowbar into it and pulled.  Easel, already stepping backwards, fell on the piece splitting off from the rest. His body pitched backward as a result, and, in a last-ditch attempt to save himself, he thrust both front hooves out to grab onto something. But there was nothing there. Instead, the bag slipped off of him, falling towards land, while Easel fell and vanished before the cliff face. I don’t think I even heard him scream. It happened all so quickly that by the time I’d recovered, Easel was already gone. Yet by some miracle, the bag had landed right in front of me. Rapidly, I picked it up, ignoring the shivering of my hooves, the mud that clung to my fur, and the sickening sensation in my gut. I checked the bag’s contents. All of them were there. Safe and sound, if a little wet. I know I should have stayed a moment longer, if only to see if Easel had somehow survived. But once more, my attention was diverted elsewhere. The wind changed direction yet again, picked up its speed, and tore roots from their fledgling foundations—plants, brushes, and trees alike. I turned just in time to watch, in abject terror, as a massive, dead tree shot through the shop’s top floor—right where my father slept.