Tales of an Equestrian Mare

by Durandal

Chapter 12

Hearthfire nodded glumly, and finished off the rest of her food. Cas had dozed off on top of the heaped blankets, and Posy had fortunately had the good sense to leave her to sleep. Instead, Posy was watching Hearthfire expectantly, rocking on her haunches. As soon as the older unicorn put down her bowl, Posy fired off an excited string of Saddle Arabian; her brother shrugged, and said something to Dima.

“She asked if you would please tell another story, if it is not a bother for you,” Dima translated, “Only she was not nearly as polite. She wants a fairy tale, about princesses and palaces.”

“Hmm, I do have one story a bit like that, but I doubt it’s quite what she’s looking for...”

“Oh, and Sandwhistler and Cloud Flower don’t want any boring love stories. Of course, don’t feel that you have to indulge them, but... well, I would love to hear more, and I do not mind translating for you.”

“Well, it’s going to be very dark soon,” Hearthfire reflected. “Perhaps what this calls for is a scary story? Something with monsters in it?”

The two pegasi nodded enthusiastically as this was translated; Posy’s eyes went wide at the mention of monsters, but she didn’t look like she was opposed to the idea.

“All right, then,” Hearthfire grinned, taking a moment to gather her thoughts. “Very far to the north, as far north as it is possible to go, there is a country on the very edge of the world...”

* * *

It was too cold for snow.

She had heard, but she did not believe, that if you travelled far enough north, you could find temperatures that went beyond cold and through the other side, temperatures so cold that even the snow stayed away, and fell only once in a lifetime or less.

Well, here she was. For a week’s worth of travelling, or perhaps longer, there had been no more snow. It was impossible to say exactly how long, for here, at the edge of the world, the night was indistinguishable from the day, and there was only darkness, and cold.

The cold was a solid force. It hammered against her defences hungrily, eager to prey on the warmth of her core, and she could feel its blows, despite layer after layer of furs and woven cloth and her own shaggy coat. She had not dared bring Cas with her, on this trip, even though her friend had been furious at being left behind in Equestria.

Equestria. Rolling green hills. Warm sunshine. Cool autumn winds. The sun, rising and falling each day, warming the earth and allowing flowers and crops to flourish...

Out here, the memories seemed absurd, almost grotesque. The ice that covered the earth was said to be a thousand meters thick, and it never melted. The idea of growing food in the ground was a joke, a legend told about far off lands where life was a paradise of simple leisure.

It was beautiful.

Without even the idea of the sun to brighten the skies, the endless night was alive with the swirl of stars. Heavenly bodies that were mere smears of light in fair Equestria were glittering baubles in the black skies of the north.

The ground, too, all but glowed. The hard-packed ice was opaque and dark when viewed up close, but pull back to view it from a distance, and look out over the undulating, frozen waves, and it seemed that the entire icefield glowed with some internal pale fire, as some trickery of the ice captured the faint light of the stars above and scattered it in every direction.

“Hearthfire!”

The shout echoed off the pristine silence of the frozen world, distracting her from the bleak attractiveness of her surroundings. Her awareness of the cold in the air, in the ground, came crashing back to her; she gave a mighty shiver, and turned away from the vista. Behind her, at the bottom of the treacherous ice-hill she had climbed, she could see the flickering firelight of the village over the lip of the wooden palisade, and beyond, an expanse far darker than the faint glow of the ice.

Another figure stood between her and the fire, half the way up the slope, as shapeless in its bundled layers as she was. It held a lantern, hooked over one hoof, that cast long shadows across the ice.

“Come in, child! Wind’s cold tonight!” Feminine voice, a mother’s sharp edge of assumed obedience to it. It was Audir, by the sound of it.

“I’m coming, I’m coming!” Hearthfire took in one final glimpse of the view, and began to pick her careful way down. “You don’t have to call me child, you know, I’m already grown as big as I’m going to get!”

The figure barked laughter at her annoyance. The lantern shook on its ring, making the shadows dance.

“You’re like a child to us, little pony. Besides, every cow in the village is a calf until her elders say otherwise!”

As Hearthfire slithered closer, she could see that she had been right; Audir’s white-and-brown splotched nose and face were visible through the gap in the protective layers of clothing. The cow turned to match the unicorn’s uncertain steps with her own confident stride. Hearthfire still had not really mastered whatever trick the cows seemed to use to walk easily on the hard-packed, slippery ice.

“And when is that, pray?” Hearthfire asked, more pointedly than she had intended, as she almost lost her balance for the fifth time.

“When you wear the land like a skin, child. When you find your own place in a deadly world, which wants nothing from you save your life.”

“You’re always so cheerful, Audir,” Hearthfire noted, rolling her eyes.

The village had a very particular smell, that reached them as they approached, of fish fat burning in oily, smoky torches, the... unique smells associated with leather tanning, the salty sting of seaweed drying on racks. It was doubly sharp, as the icefields had no smell of their own that Hearthfire could detect, unless it was possible to smell cold.

“There is good news, child.”

“Oh?”

They had walked most of the distance in reflective silence, of the sort that Hearthfire had become comfortable with over the past few weeks. There was something about the environment that encouraged contemplation over conversation, quite aside from the unpleasant feeling of heat leaving the body every time she opened her mouth. Audir’s announcement caught her off guard.

“In a few more days, the weather will turn again, the boats will leave, and you can begin your journey.”

She realised that Audir was watching her, judging her response.

“I’m ready. I promise. I’ve been preparing for this for a long time.”

“Hmph,” Audir snorted, “Well, we shall see, child. Maybe you will earn yourself a name.”

* * *

It was three days until the winds shifted, and every last cow in the village was immersed in the work of preparing. There was recaulking to be completed, hulls to be tested, sails to be mended, rope to be spliced, supplies to be sealed ready for loading, and so many more tasks that must be finished before the village’s boats could begin their voyage. Hearthfire spent most of that time helping with the mending of sails, where even her own admittedly weak magical talent was highly prized for its fine dexterity.

The cows were a stoic folk, well adapted to the cold, heavily layered in muscle and fat. They towered over Hearthfire, and their headstrong attitude made them frequently intimidating, but she had swiftly discovered that, if a pony was willing to give as good as they got, and take insults with good humor, they were all in all a welcoming bunch.

Their difficult lives revolved around two simple seasons. During the ‘warm’ season, in which the salty seas were mostly free from ice and the winds were less treacherous, they sailed away from the safety of the shore in their boats to fish, the harvest of which they smoked or pickled, and stocked for the rest of the year. During the ‘cold’ season, when the seas became a slow moving sludge of partially frozen ice slurry, the cows sat on their stockpiles of food, and huddled in their huts drinking a stinking, throat-burning spirit which they fermented from seaweed.

“This is home,” one of the villagers had told her, sharply, when she had asked why they did not travel south, and find an easier climate, with more abundant food and fertile soil. “Our ancestors lived and died here.”

Ancestors. Hearthfire had quickly learned that they were big on ancestors. Whenever she had been introduced to one of the villagers, she had also received a multi-generation retelling of their lineage, and their family’s notable accomplishments. For her part, she could only name members of her family back to her grandparents, and had not even known much about them. She had wondered if she would be ridiculed, but it seemed only to mark her for pity, as if not being able to name your great-great-great grandmother was somehow the same as never having known your parents. Still, she had a few achievements of her own to recount, and her family were hardly slouches either, even if they were achievements a world away from the concerns of the cows, and sometimes difficult to explain.

Before she realised it, everything was ready. The morning came when the cows had predicted the wind would turn, and turn it did. The tide was out, but set to rise before long, and the cows had hauled their longboats as far down the freezing beach as they could, until the water was lapping at the freshly-repaired hulls.

They were an impressive sight, even on the beach propped upright with timbers. Sleek, thin hulls of expertly smoothed wood over a sturdy skeleton, with a low draft and flat keel to allow them to cut near to the coast without fear of running aground. The curve of the keel arched up at the prow and stern of each vessel, rising several feet above the level of the gunwale. Each ship was single masted, with an immense square sail of hoof-woven cloth, and the design of each of the dozen ships sail was unique: there were horned helmets, and stars and moon motifs, sea monsters, blazing suns...