"Grimoire! Grimoire!"
Everything shook and my right temple bashed into something hard. The side of the wagon. I shook myself awake to hear her shriek my name again.
"Yes! Yes, I hear you."
"Fell asleep, Sweet Celestia! Lack of attention span, Grimoire? Anyway, good. Grab hold. Landing here is always bumpy."
I reared and clipped my forelegs over the railing just in time to see us dip below the tree line and soar quickly above a grassy uneven meadow. The air howled around us. In the distance, I saw a lantern, waved in a circle.
Streak ruddered rapidly, flapped, and ruddered some more, causing us to sway and shimmy. Her feathers spread as she bled off our forward momentum.
Suddenly, it all made sense.
Wings were the horn of a pegasus. The internal structure, while inadequate for true flight, performed a queer, immensely complex variant of Levitate. No.
No-no-no!
The fields of force didn't fight against gravity, they nullified it. With hints of golden equations floating in my mind, my mind also gave it a name: Aerial Buoyancy. Magic.
It had to be. The magic flowed, not from Streak's non-existent horn, but from a bundle of nerves on her spine, then through her wings, and filled her feathers. A field of synchronicity spread out to everything attached to her body, its strength varying in proportion to the distance from her wings.
One spell. One awesome spell. Cast continuously. Performed mindbogglingly well.
I had memorized the sequence of numbers. I might yet create Pegasus Simulation one day.
Her wings flared, becoming a huge blue feathered fan.
The wagon dropped to the ground with a thump and a shimmy that tried to rearrange everything in the wagon, and would have succeeded with me had I not held on. Nevertheless, she was good. Nothing spilt, slid, or broke. She trotted the wagon to a stop.
She kept her wings flared, though she flexed them a bit.
"Well," she said, flapping a bit, "Nothing like a good flight. I haven't felt this good in days."
I knew why: In-flight massage service!.
Ahead, the lantern made a circle again, against the black line of the monolithic darkness of the Everfree Forest. I could not see who, or what, held the lantern.
"Get out," Streak said. "The ground's uneven and I'm going to have enough trouble pulling this the last half-mile."
I said, "I can help with that." I leaped out and landed on rocky soil, kicking away stones into the grass, and levitated one side of the wagon with a lurch off a rock. The whole wagon was heavier than my five pony weight limit.
"Don't. I know you're strong, but I would much rather you be ready to fight. I can pull."
I followed alongside her and began prepping quick draw force spells. "An ambush? Besides creatures, does the competition know what we're doing? Might there be a raiding party?"
She grunted, rolling the right wheel over a large rock. "I wish. Last time a manticore stalked us until I dive bombed him with rocks. There's also basilisks, spiders the size of a plate, house-sized timber-wolves, and cragadiles. Ya seen it in Monstertopia? It's probably here, a? That doesn't count plain creatures like puma or bear. Ya can see why I asked for you."
"I do," I said, shuddering. I felt my ears pivoting as I searched for what in this poor light I might not see.
Our steps thrashed loudly through the thigh-height wild barley. I lowered my head and ripped free a bite, then savored the nutty flavor as I watched the shadow ahead hang a glass globe lantern on an inverted crook staff. The form resolved into a pony shape, which further proved hard to decipher because the pony wore a dark brown full length cloak that even hid his, or her, tail. Coming closer, I could see a hint of glossiness: his hooves, since a mare's fur extended down to the base of her hoof and a stallion's didn't. At a distance of few yards, I became less certain. He seemed awfully small for a stallion.
A voice inside the hood said, "Since there are not one but two of you this night, I first wish to determine your demeanor and your might." I could not place the accent. It didn't sound Equestrian.
"Stop," Streak hissed at me. Louder, "It's me, Lady of Everfree. I have most everything ya requested last we met."
"You I can see, but heed my plea."
A she then. I whispered to Streak. "Does she always talk this way?"
She hissed back. "In terrible rhyme, yes. It breaks my head to think how she does it." Louder: "Lady, my friend will approach you slowly."
I complied. As I craned my neck and strained my eyes to see the face within the hood, it occurred to me I had my hood up and a ribbon keeping it in place. I shrugged, released the ribbon, and let the hood drop as I took a step, then a second.
I saw a hint of muzzle. Totally black! Was she a black beauty pony like my mother had been?
"All right raindrop, it's time to stop!"
I halted. She walked in a circle around me, keeping her distance. I could see into her hood and found the outlines of a face, painted white with stripes. As the light changed, I could see the form of her mane. It was spiked up in a perfect crest a hoof length in width and… half the black hair looked bleached to white stripes. Another thing...
I sensed magic.
She had no horn, which jibed with the sense of earth pony magic, or rather, potion magic—but something more, too. Like she had an invisible aura. What I knew for sure was she was likely armed with powders she could throw or vials she could crush at the first hint of attack, and something that might act as a ward, perhaps embedded in her cloak.
The Lady of Everfree stopped. The lantern light now entered her hood. Deep blue eyes regarded me. I saw an eyebrow go up before she said, "I sense a life of such great potential even the sun might find it consequential."
"Is that good?"
"Like the unknown seed, in the moment it is indeed."
The more I looked at her, the more I became certain she wasn't a pony. She reminded me of a breed that I'd read about, in passing in the days after I'd started pretending that Sunburst had left me to go to another continent. South of the deserts to which he'd have traveled lay rich savannas populated by… "You're a zebra."
The zebra laughed pronouncing the words, "Ha, ha." I guess that rhymed. She added, "By this we know a diva, for yes she can identify the zebra."
Streak said, "I didn't know."
"You didn't try to find out."
Her identity known, The Lady of Everfree used her mouth to remove her cloak and lay it across her back. Her mane, her face, and her body was white-striped over black fur. She even had a weird spiral cutie mark that looked more like a hieroglyph than a symbol. None of it was makeup. Reaching for her staff, she first said, "Imagine me as the parade's drummer and follow me Miss Dumb and Dumber."
Streak quipped, "And I thought she was being nice to you."
Oddly, I understood. She'd said I had potential, but considered it wasted. I shook my head, but some inspiration made me say, "These words that you submit make me blue, but I must admit that they are true."
"Hey!" Streak cried. "Don't you dare start!"
The Lady had the staff crosswise in her mouth, the lantern hanging to the left; she laughed around it. I took our lantern and hung it on a peg on the right of the wagon. We followed along a trail used often enough that it was almost a path. It had no ruts, so it wasn't a road per se. We left the moonlight behind.
Trees surrounded us. None grew straight. Most were bowed or bent, and quite a few looked gnarled, some like twisted wooden animals or ponies. Birds hooted in the night, and something went tick-tick-tick buzz. Every so often, something would skitter through the underbrush, but never showed itself. Here and there shrubs and vines strangled a trunk or filled in between the trees until we walked by a solid wall of thorns and leaves. At lesser intervals, burnt trunks made way for a pocket meadow, probably thanks to a lightning strike. We strode into the fourth one of these we encountered, and there I spotted a light in the distance, which might have been a house—not a very well made house, considering it had windows at random heights.
The Lady tilted her head and planted her staff firmly in the ground. The beads at the end rattled against the lantern. She turned and pointed with a hoof at a field of blue flowers through which the path meandered. "Beware you pony folk, these blue flowers are not a joke."
Streak said, sotto voce, "Trust me, they aren't. Don't touch."
"Got it."
A few steps away, the zebra reached for a big bush of thorns and leaves with her mouth. I cringed, but she grabbed hold of a wooden lattice and pulled away a blind that hid a two-wheeled cart. Streak pulled up to it so she could glance inside. I didn't need to. I could tell by the smell; this was where Running Mead got the product he sold.
Over the next half hour, we sorted the packages between the vehicles until the two of them agreed it was a fair trade. The zebra actually had more product than we had herbs to trade for.
I asked, "What do you do with this stuff? You seem pretty isolated."
"I sometimes make a pill and work to cure an ill. When something happens quite tragic, I often mix up something that's magic. Sadly my life has a hitch; these Ponyville folk think me a witch."
"No accounting for some ponies. You're a doctor?"
"It might be clearer that spirits make me a healer."
I glanced over at Streak who had a pencil grasped in her lips and was checking off things on a pad of paper. I asked quietly, "Do you know what these herbs you gave us are for?"
"I am not amused that these substances are abused, but in my land these plants are not banned. We treasure their merit to commune with a spirit. Of this I don't confuse, in this matter you don't approve."
I nodded. "I don't sell product, but I understand a mare must do—"
"—what a mare must do," the zebra concurred with a sigh, completing what for her was a good-enough rhyme.
A roar sounded near the tree line at the edge of the clearing.