Chapter 6
The yellow dust rising from the bluff was all she needed to see. Scootaloo dropped the sweaty saddle bag and galloped forth, the aching in her legs and the numbness in her feet immediately forgotten. She could hear her brother far behind, and he too was running.
Past the last tree, exposed chunks of talus made her stumble, nearly disjointing her ankles, but she managed to right herself and keep going. The sunlight felt like a warm embrace, and the cloud of flies and gnats and mosquitoes finally disappeared on the ever-blowing wind of Ghastly Gorge.
Getting to the peak, Scootaloo flopped onto the scalding sand and twisted her body a few times until she was lying on her back.
Something blocked out the sun.
She opened one eye. What looked to be a great bird glided over her head; or rather, the wings of the bird, as her dark-accustomed eyes couldn’t distinguish its body against the brilliance of the sky.
Morning Rain dived steeply, completely overshooting the sand pit. Scootaloo watched him plummet headfirst towards the ground beyond the far rim of the shallow bowl… and disappear completely from view.
She waited, not quite understanding what had happened. When Rain didn’t reappear she rolled back onto her belly and slid to the edge of the pit, letting the grit wear away a week’s buildup of crusty filth.
Plopping her head over the edge, Scootaloo gazed into the abyss. The cliff face looked perfectly smooth and almost vertical; cracks spanned a hundred metres or more, running all the way to the rocky valley. The boulders below were like jagged teeth, and she could barely distinguish the slightly flatter parts that served as trails for the few travelers who made it down. A creek snaked through those fangs like a line of drool; though it could not have been more than five metres across at its widest point, and looked at first like nothing more than a white vein of quartz in the dull blue talus, her ears were immediately filled with the roar of a great waterfall.
Rain was flying parallel to the cliff wall beneath her chin, growing steadily bigger in her field of view. He was grinning from ear to ear; Scootaloo rolled her eyes as he came closer still. Anypony with half a brain would have noticed the imminent disaster.
Scootaloo felt the gust of wind on her scalp, and the loud whoosh made her wince. The top layer of sand blew out of the pit and settled on the surrounding rocks with a thousand little pit pats.
“Show off,” she mumbled, hearing her brother touch down beside her.
For a while the sound of sand grinding between her back and the base rock dominated her senses. Scootaloo rubbed her neck vigorously until the numerous bug bites felt uniformly numb and three ticks she didn’t know were there fell off and scurried blindly across the now grey sand.
A little dusty but feeling much cleaner than before, Scootaloo stood up at last and shook the remaining bits of sand from her coat.
Rain tried to get up, but his front legs gave way. His now sand-filled nostrils were just the latest symptoms of his deteriorating condition. Scootaloo was barely able to wake him that morning, though he murmured restlessly all night with sweat on his brow. Under the blanket she could feel his fever on her back, and though she dug up plenty of lily bulbs for him that morning he could barely stomach one. His new feathers too were dull and smaller than the old, though Scootaloo’s had grown in just fine.
They sat together at the edge of the cliff, enjoying the fresh wind that seemed to carry no scent of anything. High overhead an eagle was riding the current, floating perfectly still. Scootaloo prepared herself to voice a question that Rain fully expected to hear.
“Are you ready to go back now?”
The colt stood up to shake out his wings again, and would have plummeted into the gorge had she not caught him.
“I can’t,” he sighed. “Scootaloo, thank you for taking me through the forest. You’ve done more for me than I could have ever hoped for. You really can leave now. There’s nothing too dangerous between here and Horseshoe Bay; you can even tell Gari where you last saw me, and she’ll catch up in a day or two.”
“It doesn’t work like that, Rain,” Scootaloo said, putting her foreleg across his shoulder. “We’re a long ways from Horseshoe Bay, and help won’t be close by. Now you can come with me, or I can go with you. You know you only have a day or two left in you, and I know you’re too dumb to find the next town before you fall down dead under a bush.”
“I’m not looking for the next town,” he said, rubbing his temple vigorously. “I’m going southeast until I hit the coast. If Gari finds me, at least I’ve tried.”
But where was Gari? She had brought enough guards to turn the forest upside down; why hadn’t they seen any sign of bat ponies since Ponyville? Why weren’t there a dozen silver-clad stallions waiting for them in the gorge? Scootaloo strained her ears to catch some hint of distant hoof steps on the wind, but it was as if the whole world had become empty since they entered the forest one week prior.
“Wait here, then,” Scootaloo said.
They had left the bags quite far back in the forest. Scootaloo opened the bundle that was her disintegrating cloak and transferred into it all the heavier contents of the saddle bag. The large sack of oats was starting to rancify, and something else in the bag had imparted upon it a strange, unpleasant flavour. After eating a few mouthfuls, Scootaloo tied the lumpy cloak to her back and took the much-lightened saddle bag in her mouth.
“Fill up the water skin,” she instructed as she emerged again from the shade of the ancient forest. “This valley’s bone dry except for that creek down there. If we try to get on the low road we won’t make it out until late tomorrow, and there are plenty of reasons why we don’t want to be down there for more than a few minutes. You can take another quick flight, right?”
The adrenaline having run its course, Rain’s second descent was noticeably slower and wobblier. He glided in a broad spiral, not moving his wings at all. It looked so easy that Scootaloo wanted to try it herself, but a quick backwards glance at her small wings brought her back to the disappointing reality.
The colt landed in the middle of the creek, disturbing its path noticeably. He remained in that spot for a while, and Scootaloo was beginning to worry that he had fallen asleep when his wings finally flared open again.
He landed in front of her with his eyes bulging, icy water dripping from his glistening body.
“That’s better,” he gasped, handing her the turgid leather pouch.
Scootaloo stayed quiet about what that dip might have done for his health; even through sturdy leather the water made her hooves numb. Taking a sip felt like swallowing an icicle, and it tasted as sterile as the air.
Even with her great load Scootaloo now walked well in front of her brother. Truth be told, she didn’t know this part of the gorge at all. Rainbow Dash had showed her the northern tip of the steep, winding canyon, and Applejack once mentioned a high and low road running its whole length, but Scootaloo had only ever traveled the first few hundred metres. She didn’t know if the road was open, or if it was safe.
She found the trail in the form of a rocky ledge, wide enough for three large stallions to walk shoulder-to-shoulder and angled gently downwards. This leveled out about twenty metres below the top of the cliff, merging with a relatively flat platform of cold blue stone. The trail was painstakingly chiseled out of the solid cliff wall, and though a few dips here and there made her stumble it was quite a leisurely walk compared to the soft muddy ground of the Everfree Forest.
Overhead the eagle was joined by another, and their sharp battle cry soon reached the children. Scootaloo shivered.
Midday came and went, and for a brief period the warmth of the sun held the chill at bay. But the wind that had seemed so refreshing earlier that morning now made her skin numb. Though it wasn’t cold per se her nose dripped constantly and she shivered in the shade.
For lunch Scootaloo offered a few of the leftover lily bulbs to her brother, but he only wanted water. The edge of the trail was looking frayed, and at one place a massive wedge had fallen away from the ledge, offering a narrow yet unnerving view of the treeless valley below (so far away that it might as well have been an endless drop).
“You still can’t fly.”
It wasn’t a question, and had it been anypony else asking Scootaloo would have thrown him off the ledge, or at least she would have yelled.
“Says the colt who trips over his own wings,” she retorted instead. “I don’t need to fly. It’s not like I live in Cloudsdale anymore.”
The eagle was alone once again, but now he circled, as if he had spotted some tasty morsel. All the ground squirrels on the plains above screamed together.
“You’re right,” Rain huffed. “Cloudsdale’s not a very nice place.”
“You used to like it,” Scootaloo pointed out, risking a quick backwards glance. Her brother was falling behind. She adjusted her pace again.
“I like the Cloudsdale I remember,” he slurred. “I’d been living in Canterlot for a year when you came, and I didn’t go back to Cloudsdale again until a year after you left. That was when Gari finally told me that my dad was dead.
"She thought it would make me feel better to see my home again, but it didn’t. You remember those cloud bridges, right? And how some of the houses don’t really have a front walk at all, how the front steps would just end… sort of like this trail? I remember walking behind Gari, and seeing all these pegasi zipping by so fast that I couldn’t tell who they were or even what they looked like. Gari knew how I felt, so we had lunch and left. At the time I didn’t notice how she walked on clouds as if she had done it many times before, but that’s not the point.
“Remember how I said Gari doesn’t like Baltimare anymore? I think I understand now. She’s been away from Baltimare for a thousand years. Just think how it’s changed in that time! It’s one of Equestria’s greatest cities now, but back then it couldn’t have been bigger than Ponyville. And I can’t remember Cloudsdale for two years…”
Scootaloo’s tug was strong enough that the colt flopped hard on his side. His front legs hung over the edge of the curved ledge, which was now no wider than his shoulders.
Another step, and he would have toppled off the trail completely.
“Rain, you need to rest.”
He stared at her with a slack jaw, his eyes slowly shifting in and out of focus. Then he turned away and stretched his neck towards the valley floor. Scootaloo put a hoof on his tail lest he leaned too far.
“We can’t stay here,” he managed to say. “This… We can’t rest here…”
Come on, Rain. This isn't you.
“We’ll go back,” she decided. “Rain, get up.”
“We can’t rest here. This isn’t safe. Back isn’t safe. We can’t go back.”
Scootaloo retrieved the water skin. After a long pull of its icy contents, she inverted the open bag over the blabbering colt’s head.
Rain jumped to his feet, his eyes snapping open and his jaw clamping shut with a sharp click.
“We’re going back,” Scootaloo said again.
Rain regarded her with pleading eyes, but Scootaloo met it with a stern gaze. He couldn’t go on, and he knew it.
“The next exit?” He suggested with a sheepish smile.
She should have said no. She should have made him turn back right there. That’s what she would have done, had she known absolutely nothing about the Ghastly Gorge trail system. That’s what she would have done, had she no sense of time or distance or speed. That’s what she would have done, had she not been desperate to get back to the sun; had Rainbow Dash never mentioned the construction of the trails; had Rain been able to walk just a bit faster.
“The upper trail goes down to the lower trail every 5K, and there’s a rest stop every 3K. Some of these places are pretty nice. I mean, don’t trust the medicine cabinets, Celestia knows how long that stuff’s been there, but the sand pits are clean, and there’s lots of firewood at most of these places. Plus they usually have a cabin.”
That Rainbow Dash had only ever traveled about a quarter of the Gorge didn’t bother her. Scootaloo was calculating the distance they had already walked. By her rough estimate, the next exit should be a stone’s toss away; a hundred metres, at most.
“Next exit,” she said at last. “We’ll have a big fire tonight, and help’ll come in no time. We’ll be sleeping in beds again by tomorrow.”
Rain was evidently displeased, but he was in no position to argue. Scootaloo tried to take the saddle bag from him, but he shied away and just nodded for her to lead the way.
The ledge grew narrower still. At first Scootaloo could lean into the cliff wall, but that only lasted for a dozen steps before the stones at shoulder level began to jut out. The edge, never more than an inch wider than her hooves, was covered in tiny cracks. Behind her Rain was leaning hard into the wall, crushing everything on the right half of his saddle bag.
Scootaloo stopped. In front of her was a kind of bridge, no wider than the ledge (or perhaps a little narrower). A massive crack cut the cliff face in half, and the next segment of the trail was about four metres away.
The “bridge” consisted of two beams connected by thin strips of wood like the kind used to make window lattices. On her end it rested about three inches past the edge. The whole assembly sagged in the middle, and she didn’t need to look long to find a broken connector, as if somepony before her had stepped right through the boards.
“Stop,” Scootaloo ordered.
The crack formed a sheer chute straight to the bottom. She couldn’t see anything that might break her fall.
Don’t think like that.
Taking a deep breath, she stepped onto the bridge. The brittle wood cracked as she shifted her weight onto her front hooves, but the sag was not as pronounced as she had expected. Looking between her forelegs, the boulders below might as well have been playground pebbles. For a moment Scootaloo even thought she was looking at a painting on flat ground; a trick of perspectives. Then she took a half-step forward, and the whole structure started bucking up and down in a slow, powerful rhythm. The bridge was more like a ladder, with plenty of places where a hoof might fall through or get stuck. Though she wanted to get off quickly, taking more than one step at a time drew deep groans and snaps from within the weathered wood, and the rocking near the middle was so strong that her hooves actually lifted off the board.
By the time she stepped onto solid ground Scootaloo was soaked in cold sweat and shaking intensely. Dropping the blanket roll, she put her weight into the cliff wall and squeezed her eyes shut, trying to purge the image of that deadly plunge from her mind.
If I’d been leaning just a little to the left…
“Come on!” She called out at last, her voice cracking despite all her effort to calm down. Blood still pounded in her ears like a tympani accompanying the persistent roar of the wind.
Rain stepped onto the bridge.
An ear-splitting crack filled the valley.
The bridge wobbled, and Rain dropped onto his belly, wrapping his legs around the boards and stretching out his wings for balance.
A single rock about the size of a baseball struck him, snapping a few feathers before continuing in its descent. His injured wing drooped slightly, but he kept it extended and shut his eyes even tighter.
A larger rock hit the bridge and bounced. It too fell.
The first wave of boulders rolled along the pre-existing crack in the cliff wall. Scootaloo clumsily turned around on the narrow ledge and sat dumbstruck, her ears folded against the thunderous roar.
It looked to her as if the cliff was liquefying.
One block of stone hopped off another and broke in half, one piece continuing to roll along the groove while the other was propelled away from the cliff wall.
That’s not very big…
The bridge snapped like a twig.
Rain’s eyes leapt open. His lips parted, his ears stood straight up, and then he was gone.
The rock ledge beneath her hooves, the one that had seemed so sturdy and immovable just a second ago, dropped away instantly. For a moment Scootaloo watched in wonder as the slate to her left began to drift upwards, slowly at first but then turning into a blur of dusty blues and greys and whites.
I’m actually falling.
Something huge struck her in the back, but it didn’t hurt. Looking upwards, she saw that the top of the canyon was still flaking away steadily. The debris now included chunks of sod and dirt-covered pebbles. Dust filled the air overhead, and glistening drops of water too, conjuring a brilliant rainbow that was abruptly cut in half by the shadow of the opposite cliff.
Below her, the ground was no closer than before.
A flake of slate bounced off the top of her head, feeling more like a padded ball than the cleaver that it so resembled. The force of impact knocked her back to her senses, and Scootaloo spread her wings and started to flap furiously.
Her hooves touched down on the remnants of the ledge.
She kicked off, changing the angle of her wings now to give her lift. By now house-sized chunks of stone were spinning in the air overhead, their arched paths taking them far, far from the cliff face that had accommodated them for countless aeons.
Always go down as far as you can. Once you hit rock bottom, nothing’s going to move.
And what if I get crushed?
But where else could she go? Her wings were slowing her descent, but at a cost: the giant rocks above were getting closer.
Forwards! I have to go forwards!
Scootaloo adjusted her wings again, dropping onto another boulder. It rotated slowly, angling her away from nearest cliff face. She jumped, aiming for the next sizable island.
A flash of white caught her attention. Twenty metres below her, Rain was finally trying to right himself. He was still clinging onto what’s left of the bridge, which was now upside-down.
“LET GO!” Scootaloo hollered, but the rumbling from the rockslide was so loud that she couldn’t even hear her own voice.
Rain threw the wooden beams aside. His wings were slowing his descent, and he was immediately pummeled with a shower of slate. A few feathers drifted upwards past Scootaloo. He clutched his chest, but already was starting to reorient himself, searching for the edge of the flow of rocks.
“GO DOWN!” She called.
As she watched, Rain arched his back and pushed against the air, gaining altitude as he angled towards a distant boulder just above Scootaloo.
“JUST GO DOWN! RAIN! THE TRAIL’S GONE! THE TRAIL’S GONE!”
But Scootaloo had lingered on her latest hold for too long. The boulder flipped, and she suddenly found herself scrambling for traction beneath it.
When she next saw him Rain had reached his target. One of his ears was hanging limp on top of his head, but Scootaloo now saw that he was not in such a bad position after all. He needed only glide for a metre or two to escape the giant boulders which were still looming overhead.
Scootaloo felt the air leave her lungs as she was momentarily crushed against something huge, but even that didn’t hurt. She kicked off again…
The sharp talus was more like a carpet of spears than fangs. In the quarter-second it had taken to correct her mistake she had lost much of her upwards momentum. She angled her body towards the sky and buzzed her wings, barely dodging the debris flying straight at her face. Her descent was slowing down, but still she was not gaining any altitude.
In front of her and not far above, Rain leapt clear of the stream of rocks and twisted around. Executing a tight roll, he started a steep, wobbly climb…
Long black talons tore into his back, slicing the saddle bag clear in half and clamping his wings down in an awkward position. His head snapped to the side, and his neck went limp.
“RAIN!”
The bird didn’t even notice her as it veered off down the valley. Three sets of those glossy bronze wings would have been enough to bridge the gorge, and each feather was as long Scootaloo’s whole body.
She was still staring at the receding shape of the predator carrying her brother when her world came to a crashing halt.