The night was dark and Sunshower could not sleep, though not for lack of trying. She flopped in her misty bed of cirrus and feather down and sighed. Something in the air was not right.
It had not been right when she’d awoke that morning. It had not been right when she’d fought to tame the mounting thunderstorm. It had not been right when she’d returned to Sill, failure sticking to her hooves like tar. She had hoped the feeling would evaporate as the day progressed, but instead it had condensed and grown fat on her shoulders.
The pegasus rolled her shoulders as she sat up. It would be time for her patrol soon. If there was any sleep to be gained, it would do her no good now. Sunshower glared at the disobedient sky, tooth-rot black and without a moon. Veins of lightning forked through curtains of rain.
A gust of wind stole through the cavern and unsettled the fluffy down. In the lightning flash, Sunshower saw her feathers swirl and toss through the cavern like dandelion seeds.
She’d eaten alone that evening. By the time she’d given up on taming thunderheads and gone home, it was near sunset. For the first time in over a month, she’d not seen Cinquefoil all day; not dashing over the rounded mountains, not resting in the smithy, not tending the garden or looking out the window. When Sunshower inquired after him in the late afternoon, the bearded unicorn told her Cinque had gone to bed early.
Sunshower frowned. Perhaps he had taken ill? It was unlike him to retire to bed, or even to his room, so early in the day. The pegasus hopped out of bed and tapped her hoof against the rock thoughtfully. She began to pace, one stone wall to the other and back again. Perhaps he had injured himself? Or he was caught up in his own head again, one of those turns of his.
But no, she knew Cinquefoil too well for that. If he was hurt in spirit, Sunshower would have found him galloping through the Caulkins. If he was hurt in body, she would have found him laid out in the smithy, watching the puddles gather rain. Or in the dining hall, watching jackdaws from the window. He’d be outside. Cinquefoil hated staying in small, still places for too long. He’d told her so himself more than once.
He had to be ill. He had to.
“But if that is the case,” Sunshower said to herself, “Why did the unicorn not say so? …And why was he so quick and terse with his words?”
At the time she’d thought nothing of it. Logic and statistics said he’d want nothing to do with her. The unicorn tribe had little love for pegasus ponies, the same way pegasi scorned earth ponies and earth ponies begrudged unicorns. Additionally, the bearded stargazer was so often distracted by his own thoughts and rarely conversed with anypony at all. He only spoke to her when it could not be avoided or if there was something he wanted from her, like this morning when he requested—politely and quite extensively—for permission to investigate the lower caverns. He gave the barest minimum of interaction and nothing more.
But now, something in her hollow bones told her it was more than that.
Sunshower’s pace quickened; a staccato clip of hoof on stone. “He avoided my eye,” she told the dark room. “And he chose his words carefully…I could see them form in his eyes before he spoke them.”
Her frown hardened. She sat again.
Sunshower rubbed her chin with her wingtip looked about her quarters: at the white barding hung up in the far corner, the tin lunch pail, the sting of feathers skirting with the wind. Some dark irrational voice hiding deep in her gut whispered with the rain, soft, angry, and frightened. An unhappy noise burbled in her throat. She took her wing in her mouth and plucked at her feathers.
It started as preening, methodical and smooth. The path of her teeth wavered, she bit the edge too long, made the feathers crooked and raggedy. She gripped a tertial and pulled to straighten it, but the blasted thing wouldn’t cooperate. She pulled harder.
Sunshower flinched as the quill yanked from skin. She bent her neck to look, still gripping the feather in her teeth as pain throbbed in her wing. Bits of red flecked and dripped along the yellow.
“Shaft might still be stuck in there…must have yanked a new one.”
Ponies lost old feathers all the time, but this one was still fresh, still growing in her and attached to the vein. Sunshower loosened her grip and the wind ripped the bloodfeather from her teeth and swept it out into the storm. She watched it sweep down.
At the foot of Sill, windows glowed like embers, the way they had the first evening he arrived. In the past five weeks, Sunshower had not once been absent for dinner. Late once or twice, but never absent. It was not right to be so unscrupulous with attendance. It was discourteous and undisciplined. There was still time before today became tomorrow.
If Cinquefoil was ill, she could bring him some comfort, or else bring some to herself. If not…
Sunshower fitted her helmet and adjusted her barding, taking special care to assure the wingblades were still sharp.
The pegasus tribe were poor liars. The unicorns made an art of it. They did not simply tell untruths, they carefully trimmed details or bent the truth until it became something else.
There had not been one moment Star Swirl did not avert his eye in Sunshower’s presence. There had not been a moment when his ear was unalert. And Cinquefoil was afraid of him. It was time to find out why.
Sunshower’s wings snapped open. The rain tapped and spat at her armor as she arced through the silver-forked sky.
Cinquefoil’s window was bolted shut, the curtains drawn with a dark room behind them. This was the first thing Sunshower noticed.
The second thing she noticed was that only the kitchen window was lit. She flew over Topsoil’s house at least twice a night. In the months since Cinquefoil’s party arrived, the top left window of the house was lit. Always. The unicorn Star Swirl did not sleep at night—if at all—and let his lanterns burn until sunrise.
It took six knocks before she heard somepony come downstairs. The light from in kitchen window floated to the front door. The lock jiggled twice, thrice. The door opened a crack and Lightheart’s white face blinked out at her.
“Yes? What do you want?” Her bright voice was dull with drowsiness. Lightheart’s red-rimmed eye glanced from the barding to the bedraggled mane wetly stuck to Sunshower’s neck. “Has something happened?”
Sunshower elected to ignore the second question. “I have come to inquire of the state of affairs.”
“What about?” Lightheart yawned into the sleeve of her chiffon robe. “’Tis the middle of the night, if you didn’t notice. Can’t this wait until morning?”
“It cannot, but I will try to be brief. I have…” Sunshower’s wings twitched, fretful and uncertain. “Um. I have come to see Cinquefoil.”
The unicorn nudged the door open wider. “Do what you must,” she said. “But you know, when most ponies do this sort of thing they come through the window or stand upon a balcony. ‘Tisn’t anything romantic at all about knocking on the front door, if you ask me.”
Sunshower paid her no mind and shouldered her way in, squinting in the dim light. The rack by the door was missing an oilskin cloak. She took the stairs two at a time, wings buzzing impatiently at her side. What incompetent knave designed hallways and stairwells too narrow to fly in?
A small iron lantern burned in the corner of the hall. Sunshower brightened it some and set it beside the third door on the left, the one closest to the stairs. She paused, wondering if she was being foolish and making a fuss over nothing. She hoped that she was.
Tap-tappa-tap.
Silence.
No shuffling of blankets. No sleepy grousing.
Tappa-tap-tap-tap.
No hooves on floorboards. No sickly coughing. No snoring.
She nosed the door open. Sunshower’s ears drooped as she watched the orange lantern light spill into a dark and empty room. The blanket was folded into a neat little rectangle at the foot of the bed. A spray of marigolds tipped sideways in a vase by the window. A little grey spider swayed from its thread in a high corner of the ceiling.
The rain fiercely tapped at the window, in time with Sunshower’s heartbeat. The yawning room was bigger than he described. But it probably seemed smaller to him. Cinquefoil’s scent of smoky iron and dirt stuck to the walls. He’d worn a groove in the floorboards. The pegasus prodded it with a hoof.
‘He could have gone for a run. Plagued by bad dreams and struck off into the night to shake them off, no different than before. No different than before.’ Sunshower’s throat tightened.‘ It is not an impossible hypothesis. It is not.’
The second door was unlocked. She didn’t bother knocking this time. The minstrel’s room, too, was empty. No lyre resting upon the bed and no saddlebags on the floor. There was a wicker basket full of strange multicolored fluff near the window, but that was all. Like Cinquefoil’s, it was as if the room was never occupied at all.
The third door was ajar already. The stargazer’s room was a disaster. An unholy collage of ink splatters, crumpled paper, empty jars and ragged writing quills and mysterious stains. She could hardly see the walls, so crowded were they with a bizarre and mysterious compendium of foreign objects. Flat metal discs, strange glass orbs, coils of rubber, and stacks of crumpled metal with exotic letters she’d never seen before crawling over them.
And the window. The window was half-hidden by a great and mighty wing. A wing not of feathers or bone or skin or sinew, but of steel and iron. Sickly ivory-colored paint peeled and flaked onto the floorboards. Little round bolts studded the sides. Rust the color of old blood marred the wing and the smell of it made Sunshower cough. It looked almost… almost like...
A horned silhouette fell over the pegasus’ shoulder. Sunshower spun on her heel and pinned the unicorn to the wall, hooves digging hard into chiffon and flimsy shoulders. Her bladed wings splayed high and glimmered in the dim light.
“Where.”
Lightheart squealed like a rusted gate and squirmed against the wood grain. Her soft curled tail lashed violently against Sunshower’s hoof. “I don’t—!”
“Where did they go?! When? How? I-I saw them just this afternoon, they can’t have gone far.” The mare’s ears flattened. “Tell me.”
“I…” The unicorn’s gaze skirted over the empty room. Comprehension dawned in her eyes and she set her mouth into an indignant pout. “Oh for the love of— How in the blighted sun’s name am I supposed t’know, you mad mare? Do I look like a nursemaid? I saw not a thing of them all day!”
A hard set of hooves hauled Sunshower off the unicorn and tossed her to the floorboards.
Topsoil stood over the pegasus, a candlestick clamped tight in her teeth. “That,” she said, “Is quite enough. Star Swirl hardly speaks with anypony and to Lightheart least of all. Your Cinquefoil keeps to himself and Heartstrings is all small talk and ballads. If Lightheart says she saw nothing, then nothing is what she saw.”
Sunshower rolled her shoulders as she stood. Her wings fanned wide as she glowered with gritted teeth.
Topsoil dismissed the look with a flick of her tail. “See here: I don’t know what sort of quarrel you got with my tenants an’ I don’t care.” The mare stomped the floorboards so hard the walls rattled. “But touch my Lightheart again and I’m kickin’ you straight through the roof. You hear me?”
The pegasus met her stare. Slowly she unpinned her ears and tucked in her wings. She sighed, shoulders slack. “Understood. That was… that was uncalled for. And unbecoming of me.” Sunshower sat back on her haunches and gave a slight nod. “I apologize. Are you unhurt, Lightheart?”
“I think so.” Lightheart gave a soft little mewl as she ran her hoof over the robe. “You tore a seam.”
Sunshower stared at the empty room and sighed again. “You heard nothing of it? At all?” Her tail wrapped tight around her hooves. “Truly?”
Topsoil shook her head. “I saw Star Swirl and Cinquefoil head up Sill from the window and I saw them coming back some hours before dinner. Saw nothin’ of any of them since then. ‘Tis a surprise for me, too. Last I checked they were all restin’ downstairs.”
“However…” Lightheart clicked her tongue in thought. “I recall Star Swirl and his green lowland friend never spoke out in the open. All the time they were whispering behind closed doors and always stopped when somepony looked at them. And early this evening, I thought I heard them quarrel in the stairwell.”
Sunshower pricked an ear. “What of?”
“Oh, let’s see… ‘twas something about the new moon and contradictions. Star Swirl mentioned caves, I think? I don’t know, Topsoil made me come away soon after.”
“And Cinquefoil? What of him?”
“Nay, I’ve not seen him since last night,” said Topsoil. “This is the first time I’ve left my room today. Been trying’ t’put down a cold before it has a chance to start.” She sniffled a little, rubbing her nose. “What of you, love?”
Lightheart flipped her tail as she hummed. “I don’t think I…oh! Oh, yes, I saw him after he came down from the mount. ‘Twas all a-curled by the fireplace, drying off, I think. The carpet around him was damp. I lent him a blanket, poor fellow looked so tired. I don’t think he noticed me at all. He was staring at his hooves with just the strangest expression. Confused…crestfallen, almost.”
The unicorn drew her robe in and glanced about the room. She wrinkled her nose and kicked aside a crumpled bit of parchment. “Goodness me, this room is a mess. And what is that by the wall? Smells like old coppers and horseshoes. ‘Tis some manner of madness jangling in that colt’s head, I swear.”
“It is a wing.” The light of the lantern bent in Sunshower’s wavering eye. Her heart beat fast and she could not move. “A wing from a great metal bird with dark eyes. I have seen it before.” Outside the sky growled like an old hungry hound. Her father growled that way sometimes. She pulled her tail tighter around her hooves.
Topsoil watched Sunshower’s young face sift aimlessly through anger, bewilderment, and sorrow. “Oh, now I’m sure they’ll be back soon enough.” She pointedly ignored the coins Star Swirl left on the counter for rent.
“No. I do not think so. And I do not think you think so, either. None of the belongings are left and I...I can tell. I can feel it. They will not return. And this I can understand, but…” Sunshower shook her head and fiercely snapped her wings. Her voice frayed with her composure. “No, that is an untruth. I do not understand at all! Why would he? In the dead of night and not a word to me. Do you hear me? Not one, not one! My Cinque…I. I do not understand.”
The pegasus pressed a hoof to her forehead. When her voice steadied again she asked, “They were here this evening, you said?”
Lightheart and Topsoil traded sympathetic looks. “At least until the sun went down, yes.”
“Then I can catch them.” Sunshower swung out the door, her withers resolute and wingtips shaking. “I can. Perhaps they’ve not gone past the Caulkins yet.”
“Yeah,” a rough little voice said. “Oh, yeah, yeah, you can.”
“Can catch up in no time, yeah, no time,” said another.
“Hop, skip, and a jump!” cried a third. “Whee!”
The three mares looked down to find three balls of fuzz standing in Heartstrings’ doorway: red, green, and orange, all three blinking up at them with bright eyes and brighter smiles.
“Hi,” said the red one. He rubbed his eyes and yawned, “When’s breakfast?”
Sunshower blinked and twitched her ears. “In which direction did they go? Have they left the Caulkin Mountains?”
“Direction? Uh…” The green fuzzball rubbed his chin. His little hands wandered in various directions, as if remembering which was which. He settled for pointing downwards. “Went under?”
“Yeah!” cried the orange. “Under! Yeah, way, way, under. Easier than over.”
“Oh yeah, yeah,” the red agreed. “Easier, much easier. Went while the moon’s gone.”
“The unicorns and Cinquefoil under Sill…” Sunshower tapped her hoof in thought. Her eyes widened. “The elder tunnels!”
The fuzzy creatures yelped and ducked out of the pegasus’ way as she belted past them. She clapped her wings and arced down the stairs.
“Didn’t take a lantern,” the green one observed. “She should be careful in the dark.”
The red and orange fuzzballs nodded. “Yeah, careful. Real careful.”
“Could trip.”
“Or fall.”
“When’s breakfast?”
The three of them smiled up at Lightheart. “Yeah! Breakfast!”
Lightheart stared back at them. “…What are these things and why are they in our house?”
Heartstrings lit her horn again. There wasn’t much to see; grey rock arched overhead and loped on before their hooves until it faded again into the dark. Small bands of obsidian gleamed as they went by. The frail light pulsed and stuttered, bright enough to see a foot in front of their hooves, but no more.
Cinquefoil rubbed his eyes and squinted, still unused to the dim stillness of the tunnels.
“’Tis the best I can do, I’m afraid.” She shook her head apologetically. “I used t’be better at this. Time was I could light this tunnel end to end…”
“Never mind it, Heartstrings.” Star Swirl nodded to the reaching dark. “The twists and curves are behind us now, ‘tis a straight path from here on. We can see ourselves and where we are. That’s enough.”
The bright tinkle of bells echoed in the tunnel louder than the ponies’ low voices. They didn’t know how well sound traveled in Sill. The thick walls likely kept sounds to themselves, but in a place like this, it was better to err on the side of caution.
Something here paled little ponies, made their words sickly and desperate. It felt nothing like the Roc’s eternal bleakness or Yarak’s cutting voice. No, it felt older than that. It reminded Star Swirl of the way magic eroded and evaporated in the human’s presence…something like it, but nothing like it, for there was magic here. He felt it rub against his marrow like a skinless cat. It clarified with every step: they were not welcome here. They were close, Star Swirl knew.
Cinquefoil’s hood pooled at his shoulders, his ears steady and eyes far away. Every few yards the earth pony slowed to look back at the path they’d gone, or at his watery reflection in the black glass. He’d not spoken since that afternoon, though Heartstrings thought she heard him singing to himself when she brought some onion soup for dinner.
At first, the unicorns worried the Mustangian was having another one of his turns; still shaken from the encounter with Yarak or drawn into himself to linger in some lightless place. But looking at him closer, it was clear this was not the case. Cinquefoil’s shoulders shook under the oilskin, but his spine was straight and his step hardy. His expression was quiet but keen and looked, Star Swirl thought, much like a human’s.
“You never answered me, by the way.” Star Swirl stepped cautiously, eyeing the rocks, lest one catch in his hoof.
“Answered to what?”
“Did you remember anything else? From before we came here?”
“Yes.” Cinquefoil blinked at the stargazer evenly. He, too, had careful hoofsteps, for he didn’t want to step on his cloak and make himself trip or tear the oilskin. “I did.”
“Oh!” Heartstrings smiled gently over her shoulder. “Did ye now? How much?”
The earth pony averted his eyes to the ceiling. An hour before they left for the tunnels he remembered the words to Tam Lin, Stagger Lee, California Dreaming, and De Colores. In the space of a blink he saw stringent griffons and steel graveyards, shiny seapony skin and skinny saplings; he felt the babbling river over feet, the heartbeat of a pigeon as he held it. He felt the sure grip of a knife he knew was his and the soft, firm curve of a pegasus wing on his shoulder. It was loud, clear, and busy between his ears. It was exhausting. Cinquefoil was starting to miss the fog in his head.
“I remembered enough.” He twitched an ear and looked to Star Swirl. “Where—” Cinquefoil paused. He knew better than to ask questions he did not wish to know the answer to. “Do you know how much farther we’ve got to go?”
“Hm.” Star Swirl felt the obsidian deposits around them. His hoof came away black. “Not far, if I remember true from the last time.”
Heartstrings blinked. “Last time?”
Cinquefoil lifted an eyebrow. “I thought you needed permission first to explore the caverns.”
Star Swirl held up a clarifying hoof. “I wanted permission to explore the caverns.” A scheming smirk winked at his mouth. “But that doesn’t mean I’ve not taken a spot of spelunking here and there. In any case, ‘tis ten minutes more of walking at the least.”
The tunnel fanned out ahead of them, spreading up tall and wide like a cobra hood. Obsidian devoured gabbro as the grey slammed into solid black walls, matte and coarse. In the center of the wall, there was a door. It was shiny brass once, now coated with bright verdigris that reminded Cinquefoil of Sunshower’s mane. The skull-shaped iron lock held a keyhole in its teeth.
“Oh. Or… mayhap it’s more like ten seconds. ‘Could’ve sworn it took longer t’find…” Star Swirl cleared his throat. “’Tis some manner of inscription etched upon it, but I cannot make it out. Heartstrings, bring your horn closer if you please?”
The horn’s glow cast lumpy little shadows on a belt of odd little markings of various size and shape. Larger ones scrawled beneath it in dull red paint.
“Looks a little like the runes from before, don’t it?” Heartstrings tapped at the brass, then jerked her hoof away with a yelp.
Star Swirl and Cinquefoil worriedly hovered over her until she shooed them off with her tail.
“Nay, no harm done at all. ‘Tis just… cold. Cold cold, like a rock froze over—burns, almost.” She gently rubbed the tip of her hoof. “Felt it straight through me shoe.”
The stargazer waved his own hoof over the door. A biting chill radiated from the brass just as heat from a stove. “Indeed, they seem similar to the runes on the bushwoolie jar. At least, some of them do. These red marks I don’t recognize at all. Hmm.”
He tapped the brass with the tip of his horn. The unicorn flattened his ears and hissed through gritted teeth. He felt something shoot through his horn and into his chest, grabbing through his ribs with twisted little arms. Star Swirl pulled away and shook himself. “’Tis bespelled, make no doubt of it. Darkly, too. That is why it feels so very cold.”
Star Swirl shook himself again, harder this time. “A witch’s doing, methinks. I do wish we’d a human hand with us now. Surely these runes divulge the true key for the lock; some manner of puzzle or incantation or impossible task. Stars know how long ‘twill take to decipher them.” He gave a frustrated little snort. “Curse it all! I knew should have given more study to the stasis jar. Now comes the fine of folly and—and what’s that you’re doing?”
Cinquefoil glanced up from the lock. He held a little pin in his teeth, long and slightly crooked at the end. “Picking,” he said around the pin. The oilskin cloak spread out and open to reveal a row of similar pins tucked into the inner pockets.
The Mustangian had no distinct memories of lock picking (though he did recall being strangled and knew it was somehow related) or knowledge of how to choose the correct pick. He didn’t have to. It was a skill learned too early and too well to be forgotten, his muscles remembered for him. The tricky part was keeping a grip while maneuvering the little hook between his teeth and tongue just so. The lock was old, fickle, and brittle. It needed a gentle, clever touch.
“But ‘tis a magical door.” Star Swirl frowned skeptically. “Even if it does open by key, ‘twill be the only one of its kind and hidden in some secret compartment only reached through a series of convoluted nigh-impossible tasks.”
Cinquefoil waved his ears with the movement of bolt and pin and pick, not hearing the unicorn at all. Picking was a delicate and concise art, even with more cooperative locks. It demanded a constant touch and a constant mind. He only now realized how much he’d missed it.
The earth pony’s ears twitched at a little click between the skull’s teeth. He smiled as he stepped away from the verdigris door and nudged it open. “The door might be magic, but that doesn’t mean the lock is.” A dash of pride peppered his voice. He glanced up at the cold brass. “Besides, I don’t think a child’s room would be that hard to break into, witch or no witch.”
Heartstrings smiled for the first time that night. “I didn’t know ye knew how t’read runes.”
“Oh, I don’t.” Cinquefoil pointed at the crooked red markings. “But this part here, it’s just letters. Reads ‘DRAGGLE’S DEN: KEEP OUT’ . He squinted where the big marks turned into smaller marks. “‘REEKA YOU BAG OF BAT GUTS THAT MEANS YOU”
“But looks nothing like the language we’ve seen before at all.” Star Swirl huffed, recalling the handsome, precise lettering in the books and on the side of hubcaps. “These ugly scrawls are…well, look at them!”
Cinquefoil tucked the lock pick back into his cloak. “It’s not easy to read, no. Whoever Draggle is, she has terrible penmanship. She was either a child or a messy and illiterate adult.”
The room was dank and dreary, though not quite so dark thanks to the bloated glowworms squirming near the ceiling. It had the damp, moldy chill of a puddle-soaked sock. The dry, stagnant air smelled of tabby cat bones and cobwebs, withered herbs and rusted iron, toadskin, and yellowing parchment.
Goosebumps crawled under Star Swirl’s coat. His bells jangled and echoed like cruel laughter. Heartstrings flanked him closely.
Cinquefoil went on with bold naiveté. He got a strong whiff of cobwebbed metal and atrophied plaster. The scent washed over him like nostalgia. Cinquefoil found himself missing lost things he could not name, heart drowned in foolish want and willing to make offers taller than he could ever hope to pay. (A witch’s room, reader, knows a human heart, regardless of its vessel.)
The earth pony nosed open a little box of rat tails and hen’s teeth. “So, what is it you’re looking for?”
“’Twas forget-me-nots, the bushwoolies said. Forget-me-nots grown with love.” Heartstrings wrinkled her nose as the light of her horn grazed over a stone shelf stocked high with pickled magpie feet and fish eyes, bookended by jars of worm’s wort and frog’s breath. The other shelves were similarly piled with macabre memorabilia. The only normal thing was the bare little bed in the corner.
Star Swirl pushed aside an hourglass full of powdered bone. A scroll listing the best entrails for hepatomancy unrolled beside his hoof. “And in some sort of glass. A glass of what sort, I don’t know.”
“If ye ask my opinion, it sounds like a fool’s errand.” The minstrel flicked open a little stone box with her magic. She looked inside, went quite pale, and closed the box again. “I cannae imagine any flowers in this sort of place. None that weren’t withered, anyway.”
“Aye, I can’t either,” Star Swirl said. “But mayhap whilst going through some rebellious stage she collected up some fresh flowers. Or t’was a stunt for attention. You know, the same way well-bred fillies court mules or abuse milkvetch. Who knows?”
“She does seem to like interesting aesthetics…” Cinquefoil frowned at a mummified squirrel set up with needles to look as if it were dancing. A row of leather-bound books leaned against it. There was something else behind there. It had a listless shine he could only see when he angled his head the right way. He pushed the squirrel and the books aside to behold a crystal ball the size of a small carriage. It was heavily coated in grime and dust. A modest calf-bone stand held it up.
Star Swirl looked over the earth pony’s shoulder and hummed curiously. He rubbed off a bit of dust with the edge of his cape. A shadow waved back and forth behind the glass, the shade sliding down the side like water.
Cinquefoil tapped on the glass. Something tapped back.
“Bring your light about, Heartstrings,” the stargazer whispered. “We’ve found something.”
Heartstrings twitched her ears as the light of her horn swept over the ball. The shadow moved with it. “Nay, lad, not something. Someone.” She fished an old rag and set to dusting off parts of the glass too hard for Star Swirl to reach.
It was more than a vague shadow now, a blurry shape in the back of the ball, colored lavender and grey. It moved closer and came into focus. It was a mare, or something like it, for Cinquefoil had never seen such a strange looking pony before.
She was a head taller than Heartstrings with a long, thin face and tiny hooves at the end of gentle, spindly legs. Her little frame had all the robustness of a porcelain egg. Silver mane wilted at her neck, not unkempt, but dead and sallow. Warped holes wormed through it, as though moths had eaten it like an old sweater.
Looking closer, Cinquefoil saw they weren’t limited to her mane. The moth holes ran down all along her legs, the edge of her cheek, the crease of her ribs, and in the soft hollow of her throat. They bored straight through her, and the light of Heartstring’s horn shone through and cast shadows through her body as she moved. An incredible pair of gossamer wings twitched at her back, near-translucent with tiny holes running along the edge like lace filigree.
“As I live and breathe.” Heartstrings smiled in wonder. “A flutterpony.”
Ears the shape of orchid petals twitched at her. “I am.” She hadn’t taken her eyes from Cinquefoil. She blinked her jay-blue eyes at him and smiled politely. Her teeth were slightly pointed. “Little fellow, whatever is the matter? Why, you look as if you’ve been smoozed.”
Cinquefoil blinked back warily and frowned. He did not trust anything with teeth so bright in a place so dark. Glittering sheens of magic, old and dim and potent, coated her wings. Cinquefoil did not like that either.
The flutterpony tisked. “Oh, that won’t do at all! Little pony, you must not frown so. What good can frowns ever bring? Smile instead.”
“I don’t feel like smiling,” said Cinquefoil.
“Well, I don’t see what that has to do with it. If ponies went around looking how they felt, other ponies could be offended and then they’d ask questions and get answers they didn’t want and before you know it, nobody is smiling at all. Can you imagine?” She shook her head, chuckling to herself. “Why, don’t you know? If you smile long enough, your spirit will believe, and then the smile will be real. Is that not lovely?”
The lavender pony’s smile bloated into a grin. She giggled—a sound warped and layered that echoed against itself. “So smile, Cinquefoil! Life is beautiful when you make it so.”
The Mustangian lay back his ears and pawed the mouse fur carpet. “My name is not for you to know.”
“Too bad,” the moth-bitten pony sniffed. She waggled her head with a playful little smirk. “I know it anyway. I heard it drip through the mountain like stalactite water. If you didn’t want anybody to know it, you should have kept it to yourself. Come, don’t fret. I couldn’t do anything with it even if I wanted. It is a very nice name, if it helps.”
Star Swirl put his hooves against the glass, taking in the full form of the flutterpony. “The holes are new and the legs a little longer, but for all the world, ‘tis the just same as Lady Galaxy’s scrolls. Beautiful.”
“Oh!” The flutterpony peered at Star Swirl with a curious eye. “I didn’t know Galaxy wrote. How very interesting! Are you friends with—no.” The flutterpony studied Star Swirl’s young face and the cobwebs stretching at the crystal ball’s sides like aged wrinkles. She was quiet for a moment, her grin unchanging as smile lines fell from her old eyes.
“No,” she said again. Her voice shivered. “No, I don’t think you are friends with her. You couldn’t be, could you? I’m sorry, it’s been a very long time. I forget that sometimes… Everything is the same here, you see. The room never changes, save the mounting dust. But out there, Galaxy is…they all are…”
The flutterpony swallowed the rest of her sentence and giggled brightly. “Oh, look! You have her color in your mane, Star Swirl. Are you related? And how close if so?”
“I, uh.” Star Swirl twitched his ears, a little confused at the route the conversation was headed. “Four generations directly down, on my mother’s side. Five, counting my sisters and myself.”
“Five,” the flutterpony whispered. “Such a long time…but that makes sense. It takes time for a volcano to become a mountain, I think. I admit, I’ve never known much of mountains, we’re a valley sort. Or were. Son of the sons of Galaxy, what has become of Flutter Valley? Is the Sun Stone safe?”
“Desert, we believe. But ‘tis too far away and hazardous for anypony to know for sure. I don’t know anypony that’s gone that way and come back. The sun stone is either gone, broken, or corrupted.”
“Oh.” She shrugged her wings with a little chuckle. “Well, that is life, I guess. What about the rest of it? I heard the sky broke and doesn’t act as it should, but I don’t know what that means. I heard a griffon say that once when there were more griffons here. Has the moon fallen or drowned the land?”
“The unicorn tribe moves the moon along now.” Heartstrings spared a glance towards Cinquefoil, who still glowered at the flutterpony. “The Caulkins act a little strange, but the rest of the land’s doing fine, otherwise.”
“But,” said the flutterpony, “Not as it was.”
“No,” said Cinquefoil. “Not at all.”
“You looked at me with such wonder before, Star Swirl. Am I the first flutterpony you have ever seen?” She tittered and swished her tail. “If I’d known, I’d have freshened up.”
“Nopony has seen your kind since the Old Worlds became the New.” The unicorn played with his beard and offered a sympathetic shrug. “Extinct, the scholars say.”
The flutterpony laughed harder. “Then your scholars are wrong. Don’t you know? All the flutterponies are connected for as long as we live.” She looked at her sallow tail and the clusters of holes in her leg. “Nothing can happen to them that does not happen to me. Nothing. The magic of this ball is strong—I want not for nectar, nor water, nor food, and age will not touch me. But even magic cannot stop my connection to the flutterponies, only hinder it. Had they all burned to death, you would speak now to a pony crumbling into ash. I live, so must they. Thus, I tell you again: there is nothing that happens to them that does not happen to me.”
“Fascinating!” Star Swirl looked upon the dilapidated pony with fresh, curious eyes. “Do you know what manner of spell this ball is under? Can it be broken? Or can we simply smash the glass open?”
“Hydia gave it to her daughter as a gift to practice magic on. Draggle was gifted in magic, but awful at witchery. Things in the ball were meant to decay and corrode at breakneck speed. To make hideous things out of what was once fair and lovely. That is their way, witches. But when poor Draggle cast her spell she got just the opposite. This ball—indeed, much of this room—keeps immortal. I was glad I wouldn’t wither away, but I felt a little bad for her. She was so sad.”
The flutterpony tilted her head at her spherical cage. “As for the crystal, I don’t think you can smash it. Not unless you have a diamond sword or some Atrophy Powder # 4 on you. Anyway, I prefer you wouldn’t.”
Heartstrings tilted her head. “Do ye not want t’be freed?”
“Would you desire to crumble into a pile of dust and bone? Think, pony! What did I just say? This ball is under a stasis spell, what do you think happens when it is broken? No, I prefer to live.”
Heartstrings’ ears drooped. “But an eternity all alone in the dark, caged and hidden away…”
“It sounds horrific,” Cinquefoil finished.
“I prefer to live,” the flutterpony said again. “And you’re one to talk, colt.”
“I’m sure I have no idea what you mean.”
She smirked. “Of course not.”
Heartstrings nudged Star Swirl’s shoulder. “Never mind all of that. Ask about the flowers. If she’s been here as long as she says, she must know about them. “
The flutterpony’s moth-bitten tail swished along her chin like a lady’s fan. “Flowers?” she giggled. “What good can little ponies get from flowers in a witch’s den? You plan to offer dried-up snowdrops or snapdragons to your lady fair? Because that is all you will find.”
“But the bushwoolies said—”
“Bushwoolies!” The flutterpony laughed louder. “Honey, I don’t know if anyone’s told you, but bushwoolies only say whatever they think you want to hear. You may as well have asked a parrot!”
The unicorns exchanged worried looks. Star Swirl inclined his head and offered a humble hoof in request. “Please, madam. We were told to look for forget-me-nots. Do you know where we might find some?”
The flutterpony stared silently for one second, then another and another. Her little giggle swelled into a great belly-laugh, full and round. Her legs crumbled with laughter, barely able to stand.
Star Swirl eyed the cavern warily; Yarak would wake any moment at this rate.
The minstrel hunched her shoulders and lashed her tail. “Well, there’s no need for all that. If ye cannae tell us, then say so.”
“Oh, I can tell you. And I-I might—snrk—might know where you can find one...but I don’t think I’ll tell you.” The flutterpony bit her bottom lip, laughter hissing from her sharp teeth. “Oh, it’s just too good.”
The three little ponies looked at each other, then back at the crystal ball. Cinquefoil rolled his eyes and Heartstrings put her hoof to her forehead.
“Ah.” Star Swirl smiled a little. “Your name’s Forget-Me-Not.”
“Yep!” The flutterpony winked. “Clever little wizard.”
“Oh, but I’m not—”
“Oh, but you are. Only a wizard could have done what you’ve done.” Forget-Me-Not looked upon Cinquefoil tenderly. Cinquefoil frowned. “What a wondrous thing. And made the mountain so much more interesting. The general—you know he almost never smiles?—the general never was so interesting, to say nothing of his daughter. Sill has awoken, stirring, maybe remembering the volcano it used to be. And all because the little wizard took his flower to the top of it.”
Cinquefoil pricked his ears. He glanced at Star Swirl. His frown deepened and his tail flicked nervously under his cloak.
“I am not a wizard,” Star Swirl repeated. “A wizard is just a half-step below a witch. Wizards do things like keep ponies underground to dig up magic gems until they go blind. Wizards have no love for anything or anyone besides magic and themselves. Ponies don’t have wizards and they don’t have witches. We have mages and scholars, we have stargazers and soothsayers, sometimes potion masters. But never wizards.”
“Oh, you should know better than that. Never is like its brothers Always and Forever: it does not exist.” Forget-Me-Not’s smile softened. “But if you wish, son of Dream Valley, I won’t call you that. Please don’t frown anymore. Please. I have seen no smiles in over a century, no smiles except my own. Don’t be upset. Here, I will try to help you. Little ponies don’t come into dark places like this for no reason. Why have you come seeking Forget-Me-Not?”
“We’ve come looking for something.” Heartstrings thought again with a click of her tongue. “No, more like somewhere. We need the way to—”
“If it’s Tambelon you’re looking for, you’re a hundred years too late. Or eighteen hundred years too early.”
“Well, it isn’t. We’re a-search of a way down into Yarak’s cache of humans. D’ye know it?”
“I know many things.”
“D’ye know that thing?”
Forget-Me-Not blinked innocently. “What thing?”
Heartstrings stamped. “The path to Sill’s humans, ye nit!”
“Oh, that! Well, you can’t get there from here. Not directly.” Forget-Me-Not trotted to the far end of her ball and peered over her shoulder. Her wings gently brushed her chin. “If you could, this story would have such an unsatisfying ending. It would be too easy.”
“Yes, but this is not a story,” Star Swirl protested. “This is actually happening.”
“No difference,” said the flutterpony. “What happens now will end. When it ends, stargazer, who will keep it? Songs and stories are the only things that remember. The only thing that lasts and keeps you company in the dark. But as for what you’re looking for, it’s right on through the White Roc’s nest, straight shot.”
Cinquefoil paled.
“His nest is vast, and he is so very big and the night is so dark that two little unicorns can slip past easily. You’ve seen the nest, surely? That great mass of clouds piled on clouds?”
“But we cannot walk on clouds!” Star Swirl cried. “Even pegasi cannot perch upon those clouds.”
“Nevermind that, just go on through.”
“Will we fall?”
“Maybe!” The flutterpony blithely shrugged her thin shoulders. “Or maybe not. I don’t know. I mean, it’s not like I have a crystal ball.”
Heartstrings’ expression was so flat it shamed every pancake in the Nation. “Suppose this one’s mad, or are all flutterponies naturally difficult?”
“I hear that flutterponies, like cats and teenagers, just do what suits them.” Star Swirl shrugged. “So, a bit of both.”
Forget-Me-Not fluttered to the front of the ball, cheek pressed against the glass as she watched the ponies muse amongst themselves.
Cinquefoil quietly stared back at her. “You haven’t told us all of it.”
“True. You don’t know how to get to the nest without falling, but I do. The path is very near but hidden. And I know where, too. Would you like to know?”
“You know we do,” Star Swirl sighed.
“Oh my, you look so desperate. My Queen always encouraged the doing of goodness for goodness’ sake, you know.” A sly smile curled up to Forget-Me-Not’s ears. “But Queen Rosedust is not here, is she? No, she is not. So the question becomes ‘What can we do for Forget-Me-Not?’”
Star Swirl smiled hopefully. “Offer our eternal gratitude?”
The flutterpony didn’t dignify that with an answer. “It is very dark in this room. And so cold. Love is warmth, but a witch’s heart has no love in the hearth, so it is always cold. I would like to be warm again.”
The unicorns graced her with bright, crescent smiles. Cinquefoil, after a moment of thought, offered a small one of his own.
Forget-Me-Not wrinkled her nose in distaste. “No, that is not what I want at all. There is no love in those smiles.”
Star Swirl wrinkled his nose back. “But just a few moments ago, you said a false smile—”
“I know what I said!” The smile dropped from Forget-Me-Not’s face. Dust fell from the flutterpony’s wings as she shook. “I know what I said…but i-it’s not what I want. You are only doing that because you want something of me. I don’t want that. Do you not understand? Please, I’m cold.”
“I know some love songs,” Heartstrings offered. Magic glazed the strings of her lyre, merry and golden. “They seem to brighten a pony’s heart well enough. How’s that?”
The flutterpony sniffed, leaning her petal-shaped ears toward the sound. “Maybe... if you sing it right. Maybe.”
The old mare nodded, plucked a few notes, and dove into My Only Rose, starting strong with a simple but sincere vow of adoration. She followed it with the clever and romantic Riddles Wisely Expounded, the bittersweet Blow the Candle Out and Lily of the West.
When that didn’t work, she dug deeper: songs of love for children, for siblings, for parents, for countries and cities, for the love of summer days and winter nights, songs in love with love, and a few songs she’d made up while singing to restless fawns she’d loved as her own.
Forget-Me-Not’s smile came back. She laughed at all the parts she was supposed to laugh at, wept at the sad finales, and often hummed along with the choruses. Yet it was not enough.
Heartstrings sat back on her haunches. Several songs were left in her repertoire, but in her building frustration and exhaustion, she could no longer sing in earnest.
“Oh, try not to be so glum,” Forget-Me-Not said. “Even if it did not work, it was a very good try. Really, it was. I liked the one about the fawn sisters in the woods, that one almost did it. Do not be sad. There is too much sadness in the world. Perhaps you can keep me company anyway? I like you, and I’ve really missed talking to other…say.”
Her ears flicked up and out, swiveling like petals caught in the breeze. “Say, who’s doing that? I like it.”
The dust shifted and swirled as Forget-Me-Not fluttered to the top of her ball, bumping her head on the top. Her little hooves clacked at the sides as she pressed her face against the dinge to take in the sound. The unicorns turned to follow her line of sight.
It was hard to make out, at first. The song hid under Cinquefoil’s breath, shadowed with hope and bright with sorrow.
“Then take me back into your arms
If you my love would win
And hold me tight and fear me not
I’ll be a gentleman
But first I’ll change all in your arms
Into a wild wolf
But hold me tight and fear me not
I am your own true love
“And then I’ll change all in your arms
Into a wild bear
But hold me tight and fear me not
I am your husband dear”
“And then I’ll change all in your arms
Into a lion bold
But hold me tight and fear me not
And—”
Cinquefoil slowed to a stop and cautiously glanced at the flutterpony staring at him. It made his stomach twist.
“Yes,” Forget-Me-Not sighed. She closed her eyes, grinning as she inhaled greedily, hungrily. “Yes, that’s the stuff.”
“I miss his off-key meanderin’ voice,” Heartstrings whispered. “‘Twas much better.”
“Oh, what do you know?” sniffed the flutterpony. “I like it better this way.”
Cinquefoil flicked his pink-tinged ears. “It wasn’t meant for you.”
“Yes.” The flutterpony grinned and breathed deep. The tips of her sharp teeth shone as she took it all in. “I know.”
Forget-Me-Not’s eyes were a deeper shade of blue when she opened them. The pupils were thin and slitted like a cat looking into the light.
They stared not at Cinquefoil but behind him, towards the verdigris doorway where Sunshower stood.