//------------------------------// // Final Exam // Story: First Fruits // by the dobermans //------------------------------// Sacred Oak watched the impending battle from the upstairs window. The pane was layered with dust left by rain and wind, but was yet transparent enough to provide a view of the lanky colt who stood at the edge of the walled garden that abutted the backyard. The boy below was stock still, his face set with grim determination. There had been a time, not long ago, when fear would have rattled his knees, or caused him to look back for reassurance. Sacred Oak's lessons had put an end to that. “Go on,” he muttered. “Sun’s down. They’ll come a callin’ any minute.” The colt crossed below the white roses that had been woven into an arch in the wall’s only entrance, braided like thick fingers over years long forgotten. Above his head, a crescent moon weathervane at the arch’s crest creaked on its stem, turning as if to point its single clawed finger at the intruder. A tribe of swallows broke from the surrounding hedge. Nothing else moved. “Right,” growled Sacred Oak. “Here we go. Time to see what you’re really made of.” He saw the boy sit back on his haunches and cross his hooves over his chest. Along each wiry leg ran a rusty sickle blade, fastened with coils of frayed hemp twine. Two more were bound to his hind legs, and a half of a sheep shear protected his muzzle. His lips were moving, and his eyes were turned to the stars. Sacred Oak brought his own forelegs to his chest, scarred and weathered with age. “Mother of the Blessed Night, protect him,” he whispered. As if summoned by his words, a pair of mottled brown legs exploded out of the moss mere inches from where the colt sat, throwing loose, black soil over the green as they searched to grasp and drag. Three more geysers of gravel and rotten leaves violated the evening silence, disgorging worm-scored flesh still draped in funeral finery onto the neat, mown grass and marigold beds. A howling filled the yard; a mournful, multi-tonal roar of tortured throats forced open by an unnatural strength. “Well, good evening to you,” Sacred Oak chuckled. The colt leapt back to avoid the sweeping limbs of the first attacker. He tucked into an easy roll and sprang to the ready, flexing his shoulders to check that the knots that secured his blades had not come undone. Before him, three ruined ponies rose on atrophied legs. They lifted their dirt-clotted muzzles to the darkening sky, dipping and searching until they all aligned to the newly risen moon. As one they opened their mouths, wider and wider until the jaws broke, unsheathing sharp bone from desiccated muscle. They stood uttering their infernal noise while the fourth scrambled out of its cold womb. Before it could wrench itself free and flank him, he jumped toward the trio and began to run at full gallop. Their bellowing receded to a sloppy growl as he approached. Whatever intelligence drove them perceived him as a threat, or marked him as prey. They gouged the earth with their hooves and stamped deep holes into the ground, each blow reverberating like the fall of an axe on rain-soaked wood. The colt ran harder. At a tail’s length from the lead creature, he lowered his muzzle to bring the sheep shear to level. The monster reared to avoid the blade, burbling out a waterlogged battle cry. Its hooves snapped out with obscene alacrity, the greasy keratin flicking filthy matter of long interment, eager to connect with bone and break it. They found only air. With a fine-tuned dive, the colt turned in mid-air and arced his sickles to either side, his momentum carrying him under and through. There was a sound of thick branches being hewn. The creature toppled onto its side, its hind legs severed at the knees. It scrabbled its remaining limbs with the energy of a dying spider, pus spraying from its death-slackened lips. Before its partners could react, the boy launched himself onto the back of the nearest and crossed his crescent blades behind its neck. As it bucked to dislodge him, he pushed the edges into the gray meat and brought the backs of his hooves together. Its roar became a hollow gurgle as its head slid away. Maggots foamed out of the exposed hole like the froth of over-fermented beer. He avoided the white globs of larvae, cutting through the shoulder tendons of the decapitated, still-struggling torso and dropping it to the moss where it squirmed with the desperation of an asphyxiating fish. It was then that the third heaved itself onto him from behind, its mouth descending to ram its broken jawbone into his unprotected nape. The boy threw his head backward, and the sheep shear did its work. It sliced through what little connected the mandible to the skull, continuing into the brain pan. Ignoring the moist press of the screaming larynx against his scalp, he whipped his head free, swiveled, and cut. The decayed forelegs fell to the earth, a pair of pruned saplings leaking black sap. A final slash, and the wretched head joined them. Sacred Oak smiled down at the twitching limbs and bodies that littered the once-pristine garden. “Well done as always, my boy,” he said to himself. “Getting sharper with the tools. But some fights aren’t about who’s stronger or smarter.” He got out of his seat and brushed the curtain to the side. The moon had assumed full command of the sky. Awash in its solemn light, the wiry figure was trudging toward the remaining creature, which had become tangled in a net of roots as it fought to unearth itself, and was still half-buried in the spongy turf. The few patches of its dress that were unstained by the grave glowed bright white. He stopped a few paces from where it raged and knelt. Even from his distant vantage point, Sacred Oak could make out the pain that seized his features, and the word he spoke. Mama. The thing that had once been a mare ceased thrashing and turned. Parts of its face were balding, and its shriveled eyes, still flecked with hints of the brilliant green they held in life, pointed in different directions. Its mouth cracked open in a brown-toothed grin. Sacred Oak leaned forward so far that his nose bumped the window. “It’s just dead matter, boy. Soul’s long gone. Finish it now.” Below, more words were being spoken, and a trembling hoof was reaching toward the white-draped abomination. Its two skeletal forelegs rose up in response, and inched forward as if to receive a newborn. Just as they were about to touch, the dead mare shrieked and shot forward, its shredded dress expelling a plume of white tatters like a dandelion blasted by a gust of wind. The boy recoiled, but not in time to avoid the two branches of saggy flesh that hooked around his neck and pulled him against the snapping jaws and black, dirt-caked tongue. The teeth found his leg, just below his shoulder, and bit deep into the lean muscle. He cried out over the babbling of the torn corpses that surrounded him—the first sound of life since the conflict began—and pushed away, leaving a gobbet of his flesh trapped between the dull, gnashing molars. He stood, bleeding. The pain and confusion left his face, and were replaced with cold apathy. As quickly as his resolve had returned, he spun and bucked the frenzied creature, and as it whipped backward against the edge of the pit, threw himself on top of it. Sickles and shear rose and fell with surgical precision. When he was finished, he limped away from the dismembered mess and out of the garden. In the quiet of the battle’s aftermath, the brilliance of the moon and stars, and the gentle swaying of the lilacs that cooperated with the hedges to form the sanctuary wall blended in nightmarish contradiction to the ruined bodies that still squirmed and barked beneath them. Beyond on the horizon, the lights of a town twinkled warm yellow and white, its occupants already asleep and dreaming. The colt returned, cradling a lit torch with his wounded leg. A bucket of black liquid swung from his mouth. He passed once more below the roses and the sign of the moon, and with well-practiced motions began to splash the piles of restless body parts with the contents of the bucket like they were so many flowers in need of watering. When each had received its libation, he set them alight with the torch, crossed his sickles over his chest once more, and addressed a final prayer to the blazing skies above him. He watched the pyres burn until all was black and silent, and ground the torch’s flame in the dirt to extinguish it. A cat appeared from the shadows of the yard, testing the smoky air with its nose. Satisfied that the danger was gone, it padded to where the boy sat and rubbed against his haunch. The warm, soft touch broke his reverie. He stooped to stroke its head, and picking it up with his good leg, limped toward the house. Crickets began to chirp from somewhere in the grass. Sacred Oak met him at the front door. His deep-set eyes lingered on the soiled blades, and the blood, and the bemused expression of the cat. “First Fruits. My boy. You’re ready,” he said, and without waiting for a reply, went back inside.