9:05 P.M.
NOVEMBER 11, 2016
RIDEAU HALL
OTTAWA, ONTARIO
A gentle tapping, interrupted by silence now and then. That was enough to make up for not being able to open the windows. It was reason enough to leave the door open a crack. On an evening like tonight, there had to be something to connect a soul to the outside, or he was likely to stew and stifle in his own ruminations.
David Johnston, Governor General of Canada, lay on his bed, listening to his wife typing intermittently three rooms away. She was working on her novel, the last in a trilogy set in the aftermath of the First World War. David supposed it was easy for her to cast her mind back to that time just now; it was just as easy for David, and he didn’t resist. The day had been exhausting but fulfilling, as Remembrance Day always was. It was his honor and privilege to preside over the official ceremony at the National War Memorial, even if the overall process was somewhat grueling. His red poppy sat unfastened from his lapel on the nightstand beside him, and, keeping it in sight, his mind drifted past tombstones and fields into a sepia-toned scene of rough-hewn trenches, barbed wire and rifle smoke.
Not for the first time, David asked himself whether he would have made it, had he fought with the Corps a century ago on the Western Front… perhaps at Ypres when the Germans had added chlorine gas to the already terrifying collection of horrors warfare had to offer. He imagined himself entrenched, looking up as yellow-green sick wafted overhead, preceded by retching and the shouts of fleeing men. Would he have joined them, or held his post?
A clatter from the bathroom spurred his reflexes, still reasonably sharp at age seventy-five. He sat up. His first thought was whether some animal, perhaps a raccoon, had managed to slip through a window. But this wasn’t Sault Ste. Marie. This was Rideau Hall, Canada’s House. There were no open windows or wild animals here.
My God, thought David. Is it an assassin?
The clatter didn’t sound like an assassin, and the calmer part of his mind knew that there was probably some obvious thing it was, but he couldn’t imagine what. Sharon really was in her office, wasn’t she? Yes, he’d seen her leave, and he could hear the distant click of her typing even now. But the sounds continued in the bathroom behind the closed door, even if they weren’t as numerous as before. A clack here and there—could the plumbing have gone haywire? But no, that was a resounding bump—something had bumped the cabinet.
“Who the hell is in there?” demanded David, pushing himself to his feet.
A moment’s silence passed. David wondered whether he should call his wife, call security, maybe even flee the residence. But sheer curiosity, combined with the knowledge that he didn’t have that many years left to lose, held him transfixed.
He didn’t expect the response he got. He’d been expecting, if anything, a man’s voice, either angry or nervous at having been caught out. But the voice was female and urgent and resonant and even beautiful—the voice of a trained actor or singer. “Please—I don’t mean any harm. I swear it. I need you to keep my presence here secret. I know this is a lot to ask, but once I explain, you’ll understand.”
The most foolish thing a man can do, David reflected, is concede to the demands of his own enemy. But he was an intelligent man with a respect for knowledge, and he had a weakness for ‘Let me explain’. They were like magic words, on par with ‘Please’ and ‘Thank you’. So he took one step forward, heart beating quickly, and replied through the door: “Explain, then. Now!”
“Yes,” said the voice uncertainly, and there was another series of clacks—it sounded like they came from the floor. Then the voice resumed rapidly: “I came here through the use of a magic spell. I don’t know where I am—only a few things about this world. It’s best that I not be seen by a lot of people. I am in need of help—my people are in dire need of help. If it matters, I am a head of state—am I speaking to a fellow head of state?”
David exhaled. “This has got to be a prank,” he reflected, seeing no reason to keep the thought to himself. “This is some kind of terrible joke, isn’t it? And on Remembrance Day!” But something in the pit of his stomach was telling him what this was—this was something to do with Donald Trump, wasn’t it? Rioters had plagued the States ever since Tuesday, when John Kasich’s ‘independent’ campaign outmaneuvered Trump to take the American presidency. The White House had been stolen, Trump’s supporters claimed. David had naively expected them to leave Canada out of it, but he wasn’t terribly surprised at the idea some fringe conspiracy might have decided he or Trudeau was somehow to blame. But to put together some cockamamie ruse in his own bathroom!? It didn’t make sense, but since when had Donald Trump—
“Remembrance Day? Did you… is today Remembrance Day?” asked the voice, full of hope and fear.
This was not how a prank worked. It did not improvise, and the emotional notes it struck were not hopefulness or anxious deference. But what in the hell else could this be? “Of course it is. Who the hell are you?” David kept his voice just quiet enough so that his wife wouldn’t hear—somehow, if it was all possible, he wanted to spare her from this obscenity.
“My name is Celestia. I’m the reigning monarch of Equestria, Princess of the Sun.” The fulsome voice said all this nonsense as if to get it out of the way, not to impress. And the topper for it all was that David couldn’t detect any theatricality or sarcasm in the voice at all. Not an ounce. If this was a political stunt, it was the strangest one he’d ever heard of. “Will you help me? What do you mean when you say today is Remembrance Day?”
“It’s the anniversary of Armistice, the end of the Great War!” shouted David. “Now what are you doing in my bathroom?!”
Another bump on the cabinet. “As I said, I was brought here by a magical spell. If I give the signal, my niece will follow. I didn’t know where it would take me, and I’ll happily leave your bathroom if you can arrange secrecy for me. I apologize for this inconvenience. If today is called Remembrance Day here, I must have come to the right place. My people have had their knowledge stripped from them. They desperately need to remember. I know only that the spell was meant to take me to a place where we are known, deeply and truly. In a way not even our own parents know us. I also tried to have it steer me toward a head of state, in hopes things would go more smoothly that way.”
“This is poppycock!” shouted David. Then he remembered the poppy on his nightstand and felt vaguely guilty.
“It’s all true,” said the voice sadly. “Are you alone? If so, I’ll come out, and we’ll see if I can convince you.”
The thing to do, of course, was to stride straight out the door, call for help, and let security take care of this, and then ask a hundred questions until he felt safe laying his head on a pillow again. But… there was a certain quality things had when they were true, and David believed there were certain things lies couldn’t do. An overwhelming part of him was saying: This can’t be a lie. The kind of emotions he was hearing in this plaintive voice couldn’t be faked. Not because there were no actors good enough in the world, but because no one could simultaneously act that well and want a nation thrown into chaos. Anyone that unstable would reveal it in her voice. This couldn’t be true, but it couldn’t be a lie. It had to be some sort of incredibly strange misunderstanding. Was he speaking to an unusually lucid drug addict, perhaps?
He shut the outer door to the bedroom, tenderly, unable to believe he was doing it. Then he went to his bed and stood behind it. He wished he had a gun here in his bedroom, but Rideau was protected by a large detail of RCMP, on top of the various administrative barriers to entrance. He and Sharon had never dreamed they’d need a gun in their bedroom. “All right. Come on out and don’t make any sudden movements.”
The door handle turned and the door opened, slowly, slowly. Bright yellow shone behind it, making David gasp—was this an angel? Was an honest-to-God angel asking for his help? His jaw trembled and he stood gasping, taking shallow, slow breaths. White light followed. A white object, an appendage. A leg? Whiteness exited the bathroom, and David knew he’d been right. He was being visited by an actual angel. Was this his time? Was he being tested?
David drew his hands to his breast—one loosely balled, the other clasped around it—and began to pray. In an urgent afterthought, he slipped his fingers through each other and clasped his hands properly. The white form was adorned, as angels should be, with radiant hair and wings…
Were those… forelegs? It was far too long before David processed the fact that something was wrong. A horse. Was he looking at a horse? So this is what angels are like, said part of him. No, said another part, no they’re not.
“Are you from God?” he asked, feeling like a fool.
The angel was caught by surprise. “No,” she said, her eyes wide. She gave a little shake of her head. “But I have come fleeing the God-Tremor.”
This frightened David. “What in the name of creation is a God-Tremor?”
“It is a need,” said the angel without unhesitation. “A growing, ceaseless need. It demands to see all, and one by one, it blinds us. It demands to know all, and one by one, we forget our reasons for being. I have seen it leave ponies empty, babbling in confusion out of desperation to hear their own voices. It shakes the land, but the destruction of buildings is only the smallest part of it. It shakes our very identities loose from their moorings!”
David closed his eyes, gasping his breaths. “Who are you?” he repeated helplessly. He wanted to ask whether the creature came from Satan, but he didn’t dare.
“I am the ruler of a desperate people,” said the angel. Her white wings fell closed, but her hair still rolled in an endless wave of sea green, teal, indigo and violet.
“I’m David Johnston,” said David. “And yes, I am a head of state. I’m the Governor General.” This probably wasn’t the time to delineate the distinction between head of state and head of government.
“I’m very glad to meet you, David,” said the horse-angel. Was that a horn on her head? Dear Lord, she had a horn. “Will you tell me what country you lead?”
David swallowed. “You’re in Canada.”
“Canada.” She repeated the name with such wonder, such hope. “Please tell me, David. Am I known here? Is Equestria known to the people of Canada?”
David felt almost ashamed to shake his head. “No. I’m sorry, I don’t know who you are. You look like an angel.”
“An angel?” The stranger smiled and laughed, and God, did she laugh beautifully. “I do my best to be a good person, but I’ve made my share of mistakes over the years. At times, especially recently, I’ve failed to protect my own country. But if I have any ability to save it this time, I will. David, I can see I’m scaring you. I’m sorry. Is there anything I can do to make you more comfortable?”
The creature sat down. David struggled to gather his thoughts. “So you’re not an angel?”
The visitor tilted her head. “I think you must mean something by that I’m not familiar with,” she said. “To me, an angel is a person of impeccable moral behavior.”
David took a breath. “That may be an accepted secondary meaning,” he said. “But an angel, as I mean it, is a servant of God.”
Now it was the visitor’s turn to swallow. “I look like a servant of God?” she asked.
David couldn’t believe he was having this conversation, but truth must out. “To be honest, you look like a… like a creature known as the horse. Well, really, like a unicorn. But I would never have guessed that unicorns were real.”
The white head nodded slowly, and the huge wings rose halfway. “As it happens, you’re very nearly correct. But as you can see, I possess wings. I am an alicorn.”
“Alicorn,” David repeated.
“My sister and I were tapped long ago to rule Equestria for that reason.”
“Equestria,” David said. He was at least partly in his element, now, memorizing facts about a foreign leader. “And your name? I’m sorry, but in the confusion, I missed it.”
“Celestia.” The horse-angel—the alicorn seemed more at ease than before. She seemed to think she could make a friend out of David… and hell, maybe she could, but there was so much more he had to know!
“Celestia. And you have magical abilities? You cast a magic spell to come here?”
“Correct,” said the alicorn, nodding gently. “It was a spell designed in antiquity by Sneak Peak, an ancient mage who specialized in teleportation. My protege worked for days around the clock to update it to our needs, and my sister and I added some details of our own. I’m quite relieved that it worked.”
The visitor was slowly starting to seem more like an actual person, what with protege and sister. “And it sent you here? Why, exactly?”
“I wish I knew,” said Celestia. “Supposedly, my people are known deeply here. We speculated that the spell might take us to meet our creators.”
David shook his head. “I have no idea what that could mean.”
“I admit that I’m confused, David. At first you said you don’t know what I am, but then you said I look like a servant of God… and then a horse, and then a unicorn. Do I really look like all of those things?”
David wanted to flee, but he’d felt that way before, and he knew how to pull himself together. If this emissary thought it was important that she remain unseen by others, then he’d at least try to grant her wish. “You look like a unicorn, only with wings. But unicorns… they’re fictional, or so I believed all my life.”
“Fictional? Do you mean, creatures of stories?”
“Yes, that’s what I mean.”
She smiled brightly. “Then we’re close! Did your people… invent unicorns? Did they create tales about them out of whole cloth?”
“Um… well, not Canadians, specifically, but… human beings, yes.”
“In that sense, you could be our creators. I wonder… I wonder if somehow, on some level, your stories gave us life.”
“I wish I knew. Celestia… is it all right if I call you Celestia, or do you have a title?”
“Technically, I’m ‘Your Highness’ or ‘Princess’. But as we’re both leaders here, and somewhat stuck in the same boat, I don’t mind if you call me by name.”
“Technically, I’m ‘Your Excellency’, said David, tapping his chest. “But… all right. First names it is. Celestia, I’m frightened. I don’t know anything about magic. I don’t know anything about winged unicorns.”
“Nothing about magic?” Celestia rose a little taller, still seated. “Do you have magic here?”
“Not anything real,” admitted David. “At least, not that I thought was real.” For all he knew, everything was changed now.
The emissary seemed troubled. “That may make things difficult.”
“Will it? Your Highness… Celestia, what do you want from me?”
She spoke carefully. “What I need… what my people need, is knowledge. Of ourselves. Of why we are.” She looked carefully around the room. “It seems as though you can’t personally provide that understanding. But perhaps someone here, in this world, can?”
“You need to know why you are,” summed up David.
Celestia nodded hopefully, her eyes large.
David flipped open his hands in a helpless shrug. “God damn.” Why couldn’t it have just been a crazy Trump supporter?