A quiet gloom hung in the air the following morning. The sky was gray, a light rain sprayed over Whither’s Hollow, and a cool breeze murmured in the streets.
Ponies scampered about in the dank and the wet, making frantic visits to customers and suppliers, adjusting their preparations, making last-minute corrections and plans. This weather didn’t bode well for the bicentennial, no, not when it was only a few days away. Suddenly the dampness had to be taken into account, the vendors and farmers had to ensure that their wares were ready and unaffected by the sudden moisture. Business blazed.
Star Swirl galloped over the cobblestone streets, his wide-brimmed hat keeping the rain from his eyes, his wet cloak clinging to his fur. He shivered and made for The Blue Rose.
He entered with a shudder, the ding of the little golden bell welcoming him, warming him immediately. He placed his hat on the rack by the door and turned his attention to the sight of Lily watering what appeared to be a large rock in the middle of the floor.
There she sat on the floorboards, with a large gray watering can, showering a watermelon-sized black stone, staring intently at its unbroken smoothness. Star Swirl cleared his throat.
“Good morning, Lily.”
“You’ve come just in time, Star Swirl,” Lily said, her eyes still trained on the rock. “You’re about to see something truly remarkable.”
“Ah.” Star Swirl sat himself next to the deceptively normal boulder. “Never a dull moment with you, I suppose. And what is it we’re about to witness?”
“I have no idea. But my sources me that it will be spectacular.”
Lily emptied the last of the watering can onto the rock. “That should do it,” she said, shaking the can for every last drop. “The only thing that can make it grow is fresh rainwater. We’ve been mostly sunny these past few weeks, and we don’t exactly have many pegasi here in Whither’s Hollow to perform weather duties. But every now and then, the town gets the run-off from other cities, big cities with regularly scheduled rain and all that. Like today. I couldn’t miss my chance.”
“I gather that this is a seed?”
“You gather correctly. Ever been to the Smokey Mountain, Star Swirl? Well, I have. You get to meet some pretty interesting folk around there. Bought this little puppy from a merchant gryphon with an extra toe. Coming out of her forehead. Long story. Anyway, she couldn’t tell me exactly what it was, but I couldn’t turn up the mystery of it, not for the life of me! So I bought it, and now’s as good a time as ever to try it out.”
Lily hoisted the massive seed off the floor and onto the counter. Star Swirl followed behind her, a vague shadow of a thought fluttering in his mind. “You’ve been to the Smokey Mountain?” he asked.
“Sure have. Goodness knows how many places I’ve been to. My hunt for new flora’s taken me on some pretty wild rides.”
“You’re a traveler!”
“I guess you could say that. I’m always looking for a new carnation, a new unusually colored blossom – and if I want to do that, I can’t exactly keep myself eternally tied to The Blue Rose. This shop is sort of like my home base. Most of my work – my real work, the part where the adventure happens – happens out there.” Lily nodded to the door. “Half the fun of flowers are the journeys I take to get my hooves on them. It’s a big world, Star Swirl, and you won’t catch me missing out on it.”
Star Swirl watched as Lily pulled her rag out of thin air and began delicately polishing the massive seed. He smiled. “So that’s it.”
“So that’s what?”
“Well… from the moment I first saw you, from the first day I set hoof in your shop, I thought that you were different somehow. Now I think I know why. You’re so much more worldly than I knew. The other ponies here in Whither’s Hollow, so many of them have never left this town at all. So many of them never will. But you… you’re different.”
Lily paused. She looked up, and something very small had shifted in her. “And what’s so bad about staying in Whither’s Hollow?” she asked.
Star Swirl started. Lily’s eyes bored into him. He stammered. “Nothing, nothing, of course, I just – I just meant – ”
“I know what you meant, Star Swirl,” said Lily, dropping her rag on the counter, turning her full attention to Star Swirl. “And I’m surprised at you. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my travels, it’s that no pony is any better than any pony else. Some folks grow roots, some don’t. That’s all.”
Star Swirl felt his stomach shrivel at Lily’s words, at her eyes, suddenly dim, accusatory, almost sad. He bowed his head, he stammered.
“I’m sorry, Lily,” he said, “I didn’t mean to offend you, and really, truly, that’s not what I meant. I just… I just meant to…”
Star Swirl lifted his head. He looked into Lily’s softening face and drew a breath.
“You truly are something special, Lily. You’re unlike any pony I’ve ever met. I… That’s all I meant, Lily. You’re something very special.”
Star Swirl smiled at Lily, and something inside him began to glow, warm and weightless. Lily opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again, for the first time at a loss for words.
Star Swirl cleared his throat. “Thank you for your time,” he said. “I need to see Emory about the tents. They’ve been set up for a few days, and, well, the mud, the bad weather, you know… Sorry if I bothered you.”
He turned and made his way for the door. He magically lifted the hat from the rack and placed it on his head. Best to go, and go quickly – already, Star Swirl was beginning to regret his words, his openness, beginning to grow suspicious of this nameless warmth inside him –
“Star Swirl.”
Star Swirl froze, his hoof on the door handle. Slowly, almost afraid of what he would see, he turned his head to face Lily behind him.
And there she stood behind the counter, beaming, gazing at Star Swirl as if for the first time.
“Tomorrow,” she said, “I’m going out to Blackwood Forest. There are still some last-minute flowers that need picking, and they’ll be in full bloom after this rain. Would you like to come with me?”
The question hung in the air, shimmering and mysterious. The warmth inside Star Swirl billowed and bloomed.
“I’d like that very much,” he said.
They looked at each other a moment longer, neither totally certain of what had just happened, and finally Star Swirl turned and opened the door, that pure, splendid, beautiful ding of the golden bell ringing softly behind him as he stepped out into the rain.
The green fields to the south of Whither’s Hollow were peppered with work ponies, taking down the tents, moving them off, dripping and caked with mud. The rain was petering out to a mild drizzle, and the clouds above were finally lightening, but the damage was done. Emory looked on from the sidelines, a slightly soggy clipboard in his hoof, occasionally counting the tents, double-checking his figures, making sure everything was accounted for.
Star Swirl came up behind him. Emory heard him and turned.
“There you are, Star Swirl!” he said, looking back at his clipboard. “We’ve almost got things finished up here. All the water north of here ran downhill to this field, and the result isn’t becoming for a celebration. We won’t have time to let the ground dry out before the bicentennial, so we’re relocating a bit farther west; the mud isn’t nearly so bad over there… Star Swirl, are you all right?”
Star Swirl blinked, realizing that he’d been staring off into the clouds from under the brim of his hat, smiling, oblivious and blissful. “Sorry, yes?” he said, shaking his head. “We’re relocating where?”
“I said, are you all right?”
“Oh – sorry – yes, I’m fine. I suppose I just forgot where I was.”
In front of Emory and Star Swirl, two large brown earth ponies began untying the ropes anchoring a large blue tent to the swollen ground. Emory smiled down at his clipboard. “Well, I’m happy you found your way back to Equestria. Could you help those two stallions with that tent? It looks like a beast to handle.”
“Of course.”
Star Swirl’s horn pulsed with a white light, and the tent, no longer tethered to the earth, rose off the ground, folding itself in the air.
And beneath the tent stood the monster.
Tall, at least a head taller than either of the two worker ponies who stood watching with open mouths and trembling knees. A wolf-like creature, covered with wild, wiry fur, the color of mottled rust, the color of coal with a trace of fire left inside it. And its eyes, two tiny black beads in its face, burning above jagged rows of teeth. It growled a low, raspy growl, a growl that could shake the earth and liquefy the mind, and it turned its sights on Star Swirl.
Star Swirl’s eyes widened, a flash of electric terror shot through him. The light of his horn winked out, and the mass of blue tent fell at the feet of the beast. It stepped over the tent, steely black-red fur standing on end, beginning to crouch, its lips peeling back from its terrible fangs.
“Star – ”
He heard Emory’s thin voice behind him, and Star Swirl was brought back to reality. His senses sharpened, his instincts took over, and with a mighty BANG, Star Swirl let fly a bolt of magical white fire at the creature, straight into the hungry face approaching him.
The beast leapt effortlessly out of the fire’s path, rolling and twisting, landing on its paws some ten yards away. Star Swirl, unable to take his eyes off the monster, had a split second to marvel at the creature’s dexterity; it was not just quick, it was not just flexible, it was almost like a liquid when it leapt through the air, something intangible that could neither be caught nor reasoned with, like a column of smoke, or a shadow.
But then the beast was flying at Star Swirl, its intent absolute, its eyes, blank and unwavering.
With a crack, Star Swirl teleported himself behind the incoming monster, leaving it sprawled in the mud where Star Swirl had been standing. And then like clockwork, it was up again, nose flying every which way, searching.
This is no good, thought Star Swirl, driven solely by the terror, by the adrenaline. It’s so fast. I can’t keep this up forever. Every pony here is in danger.
“Emory!" he shouted. “Get all the ponies back to town! Go, now!”
Emory had been watching, unable to move, unable to blink, but now he started at the sound of his name. Star Swirl sent another bolt of fire at the monster, who again nimbly slipped away, then returned its attention to its attacker. It began slowly circling Star Swirl, head low, enormous and implacable. Star Swirl’s horn buzzed with the promise of magic, and he in turn began circling the monster, the two of them orbiting each other, locked in a dance of death.
The rest of the ponies peppered across the field looked on, awe-struck, ripped from reality. Emory called out to them. “Every pony! This way! Behind me! Run!"
And suddenly there was a balance, an order, Emory in charge, ready to help, and the rest of the ponies fell into their own roles, sprinting across the green, shrieking and shouting all the way to town, directed by Emory, who stood between the citizens and the beast.
There was a crackling from Star Swirl’s horn, and the ground began to quake. Suddenly the earth beneath the beast broke open, and thick brown roots slithered up out of the ground, lighting quick, snake-like, reaching for the monster’s legs.
But the monster again danced his dance, as fluid as a red-black shadow, contorting in impossible ways, almost flying above the roots, tripping over them lightly, a giant acrobat, elegant and repulsive.
And then the beast hit the ground, running at Star Swirl, and Star Swirl again vanished with a crack. But the beast was ready this time, and it did not stumble and fall, but instead ground his feet into the mud, slowing to a halt, and Star Swirl reappeared some twenty yards to the left of the monster.
And from there Star Swirl could see that Emory had not fled into town with the others, he had stayed, he was watching, standing between the monster and the town, but suddenly there was nothing standing between Emory and the monster, and the monster’s head turned with a reptilian smoothness in Emory’s direction.
Star Swirl’s breath stopped, his mind burned through every book he’d read, every book he’d written, searching for this one last chance, this last chance to defeat the abomination before –
And high above Whither’s Hollow, the clouds broke open.
A ray of slanted sunlight fell over the field, the grass glistening, the air warming. It fell over Emory, over Star Swirl, and over the beast.
The creature yelped, convulsing in the sunbeam. Its head whipped up, indignant and terrified of the break in the clouds. And the cloud cover was quickly dissipating, the blue of the sky was growing, strengthening, and the shadows were shrinking.
The beast howled a hideous howl, a piercing, pained sound that made Star Swirl and Emory cringe. And then the beast bolted, trailing smoke behind him, skimming the ground, flying north-west, up past the outskirts of Whither’s Hollow, up into the dark cool of Blackwood Forest.
Star Swirl and Emory stared after it, the smell of burning hair lingering over them, half afraid that the monster would return. Finally, the two of them looked at each other, shaken, uncertain, and frightened beyond the breadth of their experience.
And in the stillness, they could hear a cry rising up from the depths of the town:
“Monsters! Monsters on the green!"
By the time the day was out, the state of things in Whither’s Hollow had rapidly shifted. It hardly took an hour for word of the attack to spread like plague to every pony in town with an ear to hear with. Emory did his best to lead, to scavenge some order from the mess. The citizens amassed quickly in the market square, and there Emory took their attention and made known his plans. He told them the truth of the attack – “I’ll tell you what happened myself, I don’t want this to be mangled by fearful gossip,” he said – assured the town residents that there was nothing to fear, and asked for volunteers who would be willing to keep watch on the forest; a temporary militia, he said. Most male ponies volunteered. Emory sorted them out and scheduled their watches, day and night.
Star Swirl had taken Emory aside during this planning. “If these ponies on watch see anything, hear anything unusual,” he had told Emory, “don’t tell them to fight, don’t tell them to try and delay it, or wound it. You tell these ponies that if anything happens, the very first thing they must do is find me. That is imperative. They cannot win in a fight against the creature I fought today. We hardly escaped ourselves. Tell me that they’ll do that, Emory. That they’ll always come to me first.”
Emory had agreed.
As the militia took their first posts and the sun began to set, Star Swirl found himself sitting back at his desk at thirty-three Blackwood Road. Star Swirl had moved the Dragon’s Tongue from his bedroom to the desk, and there it burned in front of him, its sickly green pulse filling the room. Before Star Swirl sat a quill, an inkwell, and parchment. Star Swirl stared intently at the words written across the top of the yellow scroll:
Dear Princess Celestia:
The words would not come. For all the time he’d been at Whither’s Hollow, he’d not yet written to the princess. Even in the face of all the things he’d learned about friendship, he could never bring himself to write to Princess Celestia about his experiences. What should have been a quiet period spent studying in a far-off town had become a very personal journey for the young unicorn. And to share it with a pony he hardly knew, a pony he wasn’t even sure had his best interests at heart – yes, even the most powerful and respected magical creature in Equestria – seemed somehow wrong to Star Swirl. Almost obscene.
But now, there could be no more silence between he and the princess. Something had to be done, beyond a rag-tag militia of earth ponies standing around the town line with shovels and hammers and axes. The Royal Guard. Court unicorns. Help was needed.
Knowing that what he was doing was for the best, and regretting it all the same, Star Swirl magically lifted the quill and scratched out on the parchment:
I write to you with urgent news about the welfare of Whither’s Hollow. There has been an incident. We are in a state of emergency.
And from there the words would come. He told her what had happened, he told her of the monster, of the fluid, unnatural way the creature moved, of how it burned in the sun and fled into the woods, and of the militia and the need for help.
He couldn’t bear to read what he’d written over again, and in any case, time was of the essence, and so he signed the letter, Your student, Star Swirl, and held the letter above the quivering candle-flame. With surprising hunger, the green fire bloomed with a soft poof, and suddenly the letter was gone, nothing but a wisp of smoke slithering in the air.
The sun had fallen, the windows were black. Star Swirl sat back in his chair, his eyes fixed on the Dragon’s Tongue, awaiting his reply.
Agnes Whither did not suspect that she would sleep well that night.
The Whither house was very still in the dreary black of late evening, solemn, filled with too much empty space. Downstairs, the living room was lit only by a fire, cackling in the fireplace with mindless benevolence. And in a rocking chair next to that fire sat Agnes Whither, the mayor of Whither's Hollow. She was the same soft blue as her grandson, Emory, though her own coat had been slightly faded by the years, and the white of her hair and the lines under her eyes gave away her advanced age. But she was even older than she looked.
She looked into the fire, past it, dwelling, up far later than she’d been in a long time. She was even up past Emory, who she had finally convinced to take his rest. “You’ve done so well today, my sweet,” she had said to Emory, who had been barely lucid by the time the day was done, held aloft only by some thin thread of invisible purpose running through him. “Now please, to bed, Emory.”
“But Grandmother, there’s so much left to do… I must make sure that the militia is on watch and orderly, I must prepare for whatever is to be done next about the monster, and there’s always so much paperwork that I haven’t – ”
“Live one day at a time, my sweet. And take the night to rest. The militia is in place, all is well. You can hardly stand. Please, for your old Grammy.”
And so he had gone to bed.
And she, unable to rest, had stayed up with the fire.
She stood up to put another log on the coals, slowly, delicately, limbs quivering. She would never have dared move so slowly in public – oh, no, then, she moved with as much drive and authority as she could muster. She was, in all technicalities, the mayor, after all, and she at least had to keep up an air of dignity, no matter what her stage of life. But alone, in her home at night where no one was watching, she moved slowly, every hoof step sending tremors up her body.
She put the log on the coals, and gradually flames began to lick its sides. Agnes Whither sat down again in her rocking chair.
Such very strange things had been happening.
Like every forest, Agnes had heard the stories of foul things running amuck in Blackwood in the dead of night, but of course, in her whole life she’d never seen so much as a timber wolf poke its nose out of the trees. And yet today… Perhaps there might have been disastrous consequences, if the unicorn had not been there to defend the town from the beast.
Ah, yes. The unicorn, Star Swirl. That pony was in and of himself another strange happening. A student of magic, taking up residence in a small town all but devoid of other unicorns. Taking up residence in thirty-three Blackwood Road. For so long, that cabin had sat empty. And suddenly it was occupied by the least likely of outsiders.
Agnes was well aware of all the rumors surrounding that little dwelling, thirty-three Blackwood Road. Cursed, they said. No pony in their right mind would set hoof in there for longer than a night. Thoroughly, inescapably cursed.
Well, Agnes Whither was not so easily convinced by the babbling of town gossips. And yet something pulled at her mind, something that told her that those rumors might not be entirely without substance.
This was the thought tugging at her as she sat in her rocking chair in the dwindling hours of the night, unable to sleep, hardly able to stay awake. A vague prickling in her head, telling her that she was forgetting something, something she ought not to have forgotten in the first place.
And all at once, she remembered.
There had been a day in her youth, her days as a little foal, that something happened, something out by the forest. And since that day, no one would go within a mile of thirty-three Blackwood Road if they could help it.
And she had written it down.
With only a fuzzy and nearly shapeless compulsion, Agnes stood from her rocking chair with many a creak and clatter and began the arduous journey across the room to a bookshelf. Almost every book on the shelf was covered with a thick layer of dust – old photo albums and journals and calendars. Memories and mementos, things that members of the Whither family seldom had time to look back on but couldn’t bear to part with.
Agnes ran her hoof across the shelf slowly, squinting in the low light, searching, and finally she found it. A yellowed old notebook, with a faded pattern of flowers sprawling across the back, the spine, the cover. Her old diary.
She ventured back to her rocking chair with the old book, floating through a haze of half-remembered youth. She sat back down in her rocking chair and opened the diary.
It was not difficult to find the entry she desired – Agnes had seldom ever written in that diary, except for the most remarkable occasions. The writing on the page was jagged and determined, the writing of a pony unused to much quill on paper.
She read.
Dear Diary,
Something most unusual happened at the edge of the forest today. Mrs. Cook released us from the schoolhouse in the afternoon, as always, and I had planned on finding Peppermint and skipping rope. But then I noticed that all the foals were running up to Blackwood Forest. I guessed that Peppermint must have been somewhere among them, so I followed.
And there at the edge of the forest, not far from the old cabin, a zebra had appeared! The other foals told me that she’d come from the forest, but I’m not sure that I believe them. She had a fire lit on the grass, and she told stories and played riddle games with the littlest of us, and we were all laughing and having a wonderful time. The grown-ups stood watching us from a little ways away. Some were smiling, some were not.
The sun was starting to go down, and I could tell that soon the grown-ups would want to get us home. But then the zebra did something quite unexpected. She threw something in the fire, and all at once it started burning bright white. The zebra looked into the fire. I don’t think any pony really knew what she was doing. Then she spoke.
What she said wasn’t exactly a riddle, at least not like the riddles she’d been telling us before. I still don’t think I know what it means. After she spoke, the grown-ups started taking us all back to the village. They seemed awful worried. We just left that zebra standing there, looking into the white fire.
I shall try as best I can to record what she said. Peppermint and I discussed it on the way home, and we both agreed that these were the exact words. But in any case, I don’t have much trouble remembering it. For some reason, the zebra’s words are difficult to forget.
Come see, my friends; my senses numb.
The fire shows me what’s to come.
A story rolls across the years.
The ages echo in my ears.
A shadow fills my looking glass.
Hot blood shall spill upon the grass.
The dark obscures, but still I see
That friend and foe shall fight and flee.
Beware the empty old abode
By forest’s edge on dusty road.
For history shall not abide
The stallion who will die inside.
Agnes Whither closed the diary. Her breathing had become irregular, her heartbeat, erratic. It took so little now, to upset her. She closed her eyes and focused on deep, slow breaths.
Her nerves calmed and she opened her eyes. She stared at the flowery yellow cover of the book resting in her hooves. How bizarre, that I should ever have forgotten that, she thought. The cryptic poetry of a mysterious zebra. A part of the show, I suspect. One last riddle, that no pony could solve. All the same… Drivel. Drivel and nonsense.
She tottered back to the bookshelf and re-shelved the book. Of course, she did not plan on mentioning it to Emory. He was so distraught already, poor dear, and after all, what was that diary entry, really? What, beyond a macabre little novelty, a twisted old memory better left alone?
And so Agnes Whither gathered herself and went up to bed. And outside, the ever-shrinking silver sliver of the moon shone down with dull weariness.
And all sleep was uneasy.