My Little Balladeer

by Ardashir

Chapter 1

John’s my name, and those who know me know that it’s no brag for me to say that I’ve been in many a strange place and seen many a strange thing. But I nair did see or be in any place half so strange as that forest I found myself in that night. And it turned out to be the least of the strange things I saw over the next few days.

It started out normal enough. I’d been traveling through the mountains I was born and bred in, traveling over and around places named Hark and Wolter and Dogged, a-trying to find the thing I felt tugging at me. It started a few days afore as I played my old guitar at a play-party for Luke Forshay and Holly Christopher, two friends of mine who I’m proud to say I was able to help the one time when they were in some bad trouble. It was a good party, fine blockade to drink and fine food to eat, whole barbecued hog and corn pone and some prime venison. There was good dancing and good talk and good music, some of it from me and my silver-strung guitar. But right in the middle of my playing Vandy, Vandy I felt something that made my fingers go wrong on the strings for the first time since I could remember; five notes in a rhythm I’d nair heard afore, the same five notes again, then five chords in a different rhythm.

It was a thing kindly like a-pulling on me, like someone was a-calling for help and none other could hear it.
“What is it, John?” Holly asked me. “You look like someone walked over your grave.”

“Nothing so bad as that,” I tried to joke her back. “It’s more like someone is a-trying to say something, but can’t get it out right.” But that wasn’t exactly right, for when I closed my eyes I did see something I knew, a trail that ran in the deepest part of the deep woods maybe a day’s hard hike from Mister Forshay’s cabin. I wondered myself if maybe it was just my mind a-playing tricks on me, but I soon set that aside. Whenever I closed my eyes, the rest of that day or when I slept that night, I couldn’t think or dream of anything but that old trail, and of someone or maybe several someones I couldn’t see a-calling out for someone to come and help them. I heard those notes again and again, too, like I’d heard afore. And something like a distant chorus of women’s voices singing along with it. One a-sounding like any young mountain woman and one so soft and shy you strained to hear; one bold and brash and one smooth and cultured, like some scholar lady’s; and the last two, one that near about laughed air word it sang and one almost a music in itself, like some actress from the stage. There are only a few things that can make you dream that clear and none of them are what you’d call a natural thing.

I slept as much as I could, and then the next day I got up early and told Mister Forshay my apologies for not being able to stay any longer. He thanked me back and asked me to come back when I finished with whatair was doing this. He offered me a pistol to take in case what I met was no ways friendly. I gave him thanks but no thanks.

“I have what knowledge I’ve gotten in my life,” I responded him, “and I’ve got my guitar,” I drew my fingers across the strings, and the sound rose sweet and clear from them. “They’ve both done me all right this long. I bring a gun, maybe someone might try shooting without there being a need for it.” He begged me for a friend to at least take some food along. So did his son Luke, and so did Holly. I thanked them kindly and waited while they put some of the ham and cheese left from yesterday between slices of thick homemade bread, wrapped them in wax paper, and put them in my old soogin sack. All the time I felt that song a-tugging at me, and I wondered me why anyone needed to see me that bad, and if they were a foe or a friend. I filled my canteen with fresh water from their well, asked them to tell my wife Evadare that I might be a few days late getting back depending on what befell, and then I went.

I wondered as I walked through the woods, passing from open areas with dogwood and laurel and bushes that’d be showing strawberries and blueberries in just a few more months when spring got further along into ground where it turned thicker and harder to get through, with massive old oaks and willows that’d nair seen the cut of an axe. I didn’t wonder myself about Evadare. She trusted me as I trust and love her. No, what wondered and maybe worried at me was what was a-happening here. I like to think I don’t brag when I say that I’ve seen and done more than some others, and some of what I’ve seen and done and fought against were no natural things. Things like One Other who came out of the Bottomless Pool, and the Ugly Bird that filled a whole countryside with fear until I killed it, and Kalu, who turned out to be not near as bad as I’d thought when he saved my life and Evadare’s. I’ve seen magic done by human folks and things noways human at all, and this tugging song I felt was like no human feeling I’ve ever had. Nothing wrong in it, mind, but nothing willing to let go, either. The one choice it gave me was to follow, and follow it I did.

And so hours later, with the sun going down and the trees a-hanging in over and around me like they maybe wanted to reach down and grab me off my feet and the first stars beginning to come out overhead, the winter constellations leaving until next year and the summer stars a-coming out, Orion and what mountain folks call the pole star and what astronomers call Polaris, I found my feet on that old trail.

It looked like no one else walked it since maybe the Indians. The trees made a wall to either side and the ground ran mossy underfoot. That pressing in my head, right between and behind my eyes like what you feel the morning after drinking some mean blockade, felt stronger than ever. It felt like it near about wanted to drag me down that trail, and no mistake. It felt as quiet and lonely right about then as the inside of a coffin the night before Judgement Day. I looked down that trail and near felt it a-looking back at me.

“The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step,” I said aloud to myself, purely to hear a human voice in all that stillness, “so here I go.” And I started ahead, hoping to find someplace where I could lay my bedroll down for the night. I’ve slept under the trees and stars before, but I didn’t want to be a-doing that here if I could avoid it anyhow. This stretch of woods felt too wild, somehow, like a place where you expected to find wild beasts. And not normal wild things, but ones few natural men got to see and came back to speak of.

As I walked, I felt like I was pushing through something. It was like if you’ve ever had to go a-pushing through a big spider web, or went from cool air inside a home into a hot humid summer outside. It felt like I crossed a boundary and I wondered where to. I looked at the trees around me and saw they seemed even bigger and older than just a few moments before. They were set closer together, too, closer than I ever remembered seeing trees set before. I looked around me then, and I near about tripped over my own feet at what I saw.

I still stood in a wood, but it wasn’t the wood I’d been walking in nor yet any other I’d air seen before. The trees looked too big, somehow, and old and mean, what with how their branches like to claw at the air and their bark twisted itself up like they tried to make faces with it, faces set with mouths full of sharp teeth. Oaks were there, and elms and willows and all the trees I’d seen all my life long, but so were others I’d nair seen or even heard of before. One showed bark that glittered like polished brass and was the same color. Another place on the ground there showed leaves and flowers a blue brighter than any I’d ever seen before in my life. In fact, it all seemed brighter and more colorful, somehow, than air place I could ever recollect seeing before. Where I stood the trees were just open enough for me to see the sun dipping down towards the horizon, nearer than it should have stood. Whereair I was, it was later in the day then from where I’d left or been taken from.

I wondered myself what I saw and how I came to be a-seeing it when I heard a noise that made me freeze. It was the sound of something moving along in the trees beside the trail. It sounded big, maybe big as a man, and a-judging by the wariness of it was trying to not be heard. I maybe wished for a moment that I’d taken Mister Forshay’s offer of a gun. Instead I called out.

“My name’s John,” I said. The stealthy sounds stopped, and I added, “Whoair is there, and why don’t you come out here where I can see you? I’m willing to be peaceable if you are.”

No answer; but I felt eyes on me, and not friendly ones. And now I heard more noises further off, something bear-large and bull-heavy forcing its way through the brush. I bent down, found a good solid piece of wood that would make a club if I needed it and picked it up. More branches lay beside it, cedar branches. I took them and bound some of them together around the larger branch I held. From the way that sun looked, I’d need a torch soon.

I lit a match and held it to the branch, a-hoping it’d burn. It did, and I felt right glad to see that light and feel the warmth from it.

I started down that trail again. The heavy thing sounded to be heading away from me and I felt pure down glad to be a-hearing it go. But the feel of those eyes still lay on me, cold and killing angry. I paid it as little mind as I could as I walked, wondering myself where this place stood and how I’d gotten here and however I’d get back home. If it wanted to stare, then it could. I’d taken worse. And if whoever owned those eyes wanted to come out and face me, I’d face it and say, “All right then. Whatair you want and what do you think to do about it?”

I can’t remember how long it was I walked under those trees and in that wood. Long enough, anyway, that soon enough I needed to make my club a torch. It lit up right quick, the way dry wood will, and it looked to burn slow enough that I’d have me some light for a few hours. The air felt cool around me. Not winter cold, but I figured it to be coming on to early spring here just like back home. Up overhead I could see the moon and stars a-coming out. They looked bigger and brighter than I’d ever seen aforetimes. I looked up at them and wondered me if there was air soul there to be a-looking and wondering back. I asked myself if I might not learn the answer to that here where I was. Whereair I might could be, anyway.

And all that time through, I felt that something just watching and hating on me, a-hoping to come in on me and do whatair I couldn’t even guess. I ignored it best I could and pressed on under those trees as it got darker. I hoped I’d find some place with people in it as it got darker out. I’ve been in a right many places I didn’t like, but few quite so unlikable as right then and there.

Along about then I began to hear noises from before me. First I thought they sounded like people talking, but then as I got closer I could hear them better and they weren’t people. They were whinnies and snorts and all the other sounds that horses make. Those sounds made me glad, even gladder than the light from my torch. Where you find horses you find people, most often. I pushed a ways further down the trail and the noises got louder.

Then I saw the horses before me, and they looked right strange. They were small, for one thing. One looked downright tiny, her withers, that’d be her front set of shoulders for air person reading this who doesn’t know horses, coming maybe up to my knees at best, and the other seemed just big enough to be either a small pony or a filly, barely coming up to my waist. I could feel something right peculiar about her, nothing I could lay name to but something strange all the same. She owned a pale gray coat with a mane and tail that looked a shade of yellow that some women would be proud to have. The moonlight looked odd against her coat, almost like she glowed in it. She tossed up her head and looked around, and then she went and ran off into the woods. As she went I saw an odd brand on her flank, but before I could see closer she slipped between two trees and was gone. I hurried up, hoping to catch her. She looked more like some show pet than a plow horse. Either way I figured that whoair her owner was they would be sorry to lose her. And I didn’t want to be responsible for her spooking and running off to be lost.

“Whoa, there, girl,” I called to her, keeping my voice calm so as not to scare her and the other any more than they already were. “Don’t go a-running off, now.” I might as well have not bothered. By the time I got to where she’d been standing, she was off in the distance and barely visible between the dark and the bushes under the trees. I caught sight of her one last time in the distance, her coat a-shining in the dark. She seemed to look back at me. Then she slipped between two trees and I saw her no more.

The other horse, the tiny one, just stared at me as I came up, and I slowed to take a look on her. Her eyes looked bigger than they should be, and they were set more frontwise like a person’s rather than on the sides of her head all the horses I remember seeing. They were the pale gold of amber, and rested above a muzzle shorter and smaller than any other horse’s. Her snout showed smaller and her head larger for her size than air other horse I’d ever seen. Her pale chestnut coat looked well-kept, and her mane showed red as a rose, a brighter shade of red than I thought any real horse could have. But that wasn’t the oddest part of it. The oddest part was that she wore a bow in her mane the way some women do in their hair, a big red bow tied in a fancy knot. She looked at me, her eyes wide, for all the world like a little girl scared of a stranger-man but trying not to show it.

I spoke her slow and gentle, hoping not to spook her like I did the other.

“Now, you take it easy,” I spoke to her. “I’m a friend and no enemy to you.” I knelt down, moving right slow, and kept speaking to her. “See here? I’ve got something you can eat.” I reached in my pack and took out half of an apple I’d been eating before and offered it to her. She gave me a look, tilting her head to the side, before she stuck her neck out and sniffed at the apple. She snorted in disgust and jerked back from it like I’d insulted her by the offer. I had to smile at it. I’ve seen many a horse aforetimes, but none that particular.

Then I heard that sound from before. The sound of something maybe man-sized coming through the trees and brush, but not so quietly now. Now it forced and shoved through in a rush. I turned and rose to see what came from the woods, and right then two things happened that startled me more than I care to remember.

First was what came from amongst the trees. It looked like a shadow in the light of the torch, tall and black and shaped in some way like a man, with a lump for a head and two long things like arms or maybe snakes a-reaching out to grab, and beneath it two long stretched-out legs that didn’t move, they just hung there while it came on at me. Right dead center showed a single white spot, maybe as big as my hand, looking like a patch of dead flesh against the rest of it. I knew it for a sending, though I’d only read of such before this and nair seen one. I remembered what I read. They were ghosts called up by sorcerers from Iceland, sent after their enemies to kill them. I wondered myself what enemies I had here, and how they knew where to find me, before I thought if maybe they were after the little pony. But that, friends and neighbors, wasn’t what truly scared me.

I felt something tug on my pants leg. I looked and I suppose maybe I stared to see the tiny chestnut pony a-holding the leg of my pants, the cloth pinched in her hoof like she held it with fingers. She showed fear in her eyes, but not an animal’s fear, wild and unreasoning. This was the fear you see in human eyes, the kind that knows it’s in trouble and can think a way through it if it doesn’t panic. She whinnied at me, longer and fancier than anything I’d ever heard afore from a horse’s throat. She whinnied high and fearful and tugged with one forehoof and pointed off down the trail. Just like a person could call for you to run.

And she did that, and I wondered how this could be, and then the sending came on at us both.

“C’mon, Mister whatever-yah-are!” Apple Bloom said as she tugged on the strange creature’s pants leg. She thrust her other forehoof down the trail, away from the ghost. “We got to get out of here!”

The creature, hairless Diamond Dog, whatever he was, said nothing. He just stared at her with wide eyes, reminding Apple Bloom a little of the look some adults got on their faces when she and her friends got into trouble. And as he stared, the shadowy thing came at them both.

The Diamond Dog held his his torch up and out, thrusting it at the shadow. It shrank back, recoiling like some sort of giant snake or maybe flowing back like dirty water. As it fell back, he set himself between her and it. Apple Bloom shivered at the sight and the feel of that shadow-monster. It reminded her a little of what she’d felt that night she and everypony in Ponyville saw Nightmare Moon, the feeling of rage and the need to hurt something, anything. The hairless Diamond Dog must have felt something too. He made barking noises at it. It recoiled again, but it didn’t run away. The Diamond Dog looked worried, like he thought it should have run. He waved his hand at Apple Bloom in a go and run gesture. Apple Bloom almost did. This was scary, and right then she wanted nothing more than to be with her big sis and brother. She trotted a few steps away and looked back. That nasty shadow was trying to get at the Diamond Dog again. He waved the torch at it and it flinched back from the light, but less than before. As it did he tugged at a back pocket of his pants. But when he did the torch dropped slightly and the shadow ghost slapped at his face and throat with those long snaky arms. He jumped back from it and waved the torch again. It touched the thing, lightly, and a bit of it boiled away in a dark cloud.

See, he don’t need my help, Apple Bloom thought, but then she saw the arm grow itself back out as long as ever. He could hurt it with the torch, and scare it a little, but he couldn’t beat it. He waved at Apple Bloom again, obviously wanting her to run. She thought, he’s tryin’ to save me even if he gets hurt. I could run, but if I did, what if he gets hurt so bad he dies?

As soon as she thought that Apple Bloom found her little legs working as she charged back up beside the Diamond Dog.

“Gimme thet torch and I’ll hold it for yah!” She said up at him. He glanced at her and she pointed at the torch. “Please, let me help!” He looked and decided. The torch dropped to the earth before her. Apple Bloom thanked Celestia it didn’t go out. She snatched it up in her mouth. As soon as he did he reached into his back pocket and began pulling something out about the size of his hand. Apple Bloom held the torch and charged at the shadow thing. It reached for her with those long arms. They looked as black as the inside of the Sweet Apple Acres barn at night. That white patch showed pale in its body. She waved the torch at the reaching hands and they smoked away where it hit. The reek filled her nose and made her gag. The torch dropped to sputter against the dirt of the forest floor. The shadow thing towered above Apple Bloom, cutting off the sight of the trees and sky. No features showed on the lump-head but somehow Apple Bloom felt a cold glee from it.

“Ah’m sorry ah didn’t listen, big sis,” was all Apple Bloom could think to say.

And the Diamond Dog moved between her and it. She saw his hand thrusting up and at the white spot. The torch shed just enough light to show what he held. A knife, the blade driving into that pale spot with a sort of soft wet grinding that was the most quietly horrible sound Apple Bloom could ever remember hearing.

The shadow vanished, popping out of sight. The Diamond Dog sagged in relief. He looked down at her and smiled, reaching down to scratch her on the ears.

“Hey!” Apple Bloom said, jerking her head away and giving him what she hoped was the indignant look her big sister would have used. “I ain’t a dog like Winona, or some kind ‘o pet! First you try an’ give me thet nasty apple, an’ now this!” He pulled his hand back, looking confused. At least she would have thought it a confused look on a pony’s face. Who knew about Diamond Dogs?

However, as she looked closer, she began to wonder he truly was a Diamond Dog. His legs were too long, his arms too short. He had no fur save for some short brownish mane. His coat looked pale pink, but as she looked closer, she realized it wasn’t a true coat. That was his bare skin. He wore pants and a shirt and beat-up old boots and a jacket, and whoever ever heard of anypony, even a Diamond Dog, needing so many clothes? And that face, with no muzzle and small round ears and eyes, didn’t look right at all.

“Uh, mister, just what the hay are y’all?” Apple Bloom walked up to where the shadow thing stood and looked around. “An’ what did you do with thet monster?”

He must have understood somehow what she wanted. He knelt down to the ground and pointed at a spot right by her feet. Apple Bloom looked and saw his knife. It looked thick made in the handle, with a long blade that could be folded out. The blade stuck through a pale white stick. Apple Bloom gave it a closer look and felt a chill. It wasn’t a stick. It was some sort of bone and the knife blade had been driven into it. She looked back at the Diamond Dog. She didn’t think he was one, but she didn’t know what else to call him, though something about him did nag at her memory. Maybe a story she’d heard from somepony? He took the knife and pulled it free from the bone.

“You m-mean that really was some kind of spook we fought? And I – wait!” Apple Bloom turned and looked at her flank. Her hopes were plunged once again as she saw the same bare flank she’d always seen.

“Awww… I coulda got a ghost fightin’ cutie mark…” She sighed. “Better luck next time, I reckon.”

She looked back at her new friend. The Diamond Dog looked at her, kind of curious. Then he took the bone in his hand and began digging at the dirt with the knife blade. Apple Bloom went beside him and started digging with her forehooves. Together they quickly opened up a small hole. He touched her lightly on the shoulder and nodded his head. He dropped the bone in the hole and shoved the dirt back on top of it, patting it smooth with his hand. Apple Bloom watched, wondering what he was about. He said some words as he finished and stood up, wiping his hand clean on his pants leg. He bent back down to pick the torch up before he looked around, rather obviously lost.

Apple Bloom thought and decided. She tugged on his pants leg again and when he looked, she pointed off down the trail and spoke slowly and carefully. Applejack told her once that if you did that sometimes you could get an idea across even if the other pony didn’t understand what exactly you were saying.

“Mah home’s that way,” she said, “An’ I know a shortcut that’ll get us there before it gets to be too dark out. Mah family will be settin’ down to eat supper, and they’ll have food for y’all if you want it. Hay and alfalfa,” she fought down a shudder, “N’ plenty o’ apples. Good ones, not like that one you showed me.” She started off in the direction of Sweet Apple Acres. When he didn’t follow, she went back and tugged on his pants leg again. “C’mon! You don’t want ta be out in the Everfree when it gets darker. I was only here ‘cause Ruby kept me safe from the monsters.” He shrugged and followed her down the trail, holding the torch out.

Boy, Apple Bloom thought, wait ‘til Applejack an’ Big Mac an’ Granny Smith ‘n everpony else see what ah found! Maybe I’ll get a findin’ aliens cutie mark! And with that hopeful thought in mind Apple Bloom lead her new friend back to Sweet Apple Acres, trying very hard whenever she could to get a look at her flank.