First Fruits

by the dobermans

The Three Missions

First’s blades arced down, and the repugnant pale limbs of the creature dropped to the gore-slickened gravel. The gargling head he placed on one of the weathered girdling stones, and, lifting one of the fallen boulders above his head, brought it down to crush the cartilaginous skull. Pieces of jaw and blackened brains cascaded down the sides of the makeshift anvil.

Satisfied that any threat had been neutralized, he walked to the still-troubled water and knelt, paying no regard to the restless remains that littered the ground around him. He crossed his blades and spoke out to the cloudless moon.

“Let your Garden be that much more beautiful, o Night Princess. Thank you for guiding my shears. All is in service to You.”

The cool night wind whispered over the crest of the ridge in reply.

“Cinnamon, where are you girl?” he called to the darkness. He broke his pose and smiled. “Trimmed the Rose … it’s safe to come out.”

A ruddy shadow appeared from beyond the ridge’s crest. Silent paws picked their way over the battle-raked earth, homing on the sound of his voice. Cinnamon stepped into the moonlight, and saw her friend. She bounded the rest of the way, leapt onto his back to her spot below his mane, and curled up.

“The Salute! You did the Salute! Oh, it’s really true,” Wild Carnation shouted. She sank to her haunches, laughing and crying at the same time.

First smiled as Cinnamon nuzzled his neck. “Are you OK, ma’am?”

“No … yes … I don’t know! I just … I never thought I’d be free of that thing.” She rushed down from the head of the pool and swept him into a bone-crushing hug.

“Blessed stars! Selene has finally sent a Caretaker to us in our dire need. So many years. So much misery. So much … what’s the matter?”

First had begun to squirm in her grip. She let go and backed away, checking him for injuries. Seeing none, she sat down at a safe distance and waited for him to collect himself.

“I’m not supposed to look at mares …” he mumbled, crossing his forelegs. His shears clacked together and locked, almost tripping him. “Until I’m a full-grown stallion.”

“Oh honey, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to butt into your personal space. Shoot, I shouldn’t have said butt. Bad timing. Isn’t it funny how things like that come out at the wrong time?”

“It’s OK, I guess. You were probably getting blood on Cinnamon either way.”

Wild peeked around First’s head. Cinnamon glared angrily back at her, covered in thick red streaks.

She looked down at her own stained forelegs and grimaced. “Goodness. Well, OK. Why don’t we all get back to the forge and wash up? Bellows has to have more than one towel, although—” she turned and retrieved her saddlebags from behind a boulder “—a pony never knows with singletons like him. I can use a shop rag if he doesn’t.”

She swiveled downhill and began to trot in the direction of the distant town lights. “I’ll come back tomorrow morning to collect the remains of the werebeast and poor Sweet’ums. Poor puppy. Just for the record, she was unconscious. I drugged her with Pillowcase herb extract so she wouldn’t feel it when I …” She paused when she realized that First wasn’t following her.

“Aren’t you coming?” she called up the hill.

“I smelled your mane,” First mumbled, his head bowed to the ground.

“You … oh. Was it bad?” She pushed one of her locks in front of her muzzle. All she could detect was the peach scent of her shampoo, faint after the long day’s labor. She strode back to where First was slouching and rested a hoof on his shoulder.

“Listen, we both serve holy Selene, but even if we didn’t, I’d respect your … uh … the way you were raised. OK, honey? I’ll try not to make it awkward for you again. But I also have to say that mares are just ponies. We’re not magic, or sacred, any more than stallions are. Or maybe I should say we’re all equally sacred in the eyes of the Night Princess. OK?”

“Yeah,” said First, “guess I never thought of it that way. Sorry for—“

“No sorries,” Wild interrupted. She swung around once more and resumed her descent into the valley. This time First Fruits followed.

Their hike along the winding dirt trail was far more harrowing for him than the last. After the battle with the creature by the barren pool, he was watchful for more of the beasts charging across the acres of dew-soaked grasses, aiming to avenge their fallen pack mate with flailing claws and gnashing fangs. The moon watched with him, he was glad to see, leaving no hill or rise shadowed below the stars. Nothing could launch itself out of the darkness without there being plenty of time for him to prepare himself.

When they entered the town, they were met only by a solitary raccoon as it trundled across the cobblestone road. They passed below halos of moths and wispy mayflies entranced by the street lamps’ orange light, wheeling and slapping against the glass in whispering clouds. It was well into the morning hours, and all of the balconies and doorsteps were silent. They ducked under a line of forgotten laundry strung across the alley behind the empty forge and, checking for eyes in the windows above, stepped inside.

Wild opened the damper of the firefly lamp like she had before. “So, any trouble getting that mud off of you earlier? Wait, before you answer that, how did you really get it on you, if you don’t mind my asking?”

First went to the quenching bucket and threw her a wet towel. “Well, I found a bridge across the river, but there was a bunch of no-account ponies there waitin’ to collect a toll. Told ’em I’d rather swim, so I did, but it all went kittywampus. Next I knew I was washed up in the mud somewhere downstream, and Cinnamon was gone.” He picked up another towel and began washing the blood from the cat’s long tawny fur. “Can I ask you something now?”

“Sure, I don’t mind,” said Wild as she scrubbed the side of her face the creature had defiled with its tongue.

First turned his attention to cleaning his forelegs and chest. “Well, uh, what was that all about up on the ridge? Never heard of a Caretaker doin’ somethin’ like that.”

“Well … I …” Wild faltered. Her voice lost any hint of cheer. “I was making an offering. Sacrificing to the werebeast.”

“You were what? You’re supposed to trim the Roses, not feed ’em.”

“I know, I know. I’m not a Caretaker, First. I can’t do what you do. No one in the Lowlands can. We’ve been—” she sniffed “—we’ve been without a Caretaker for almost twenty years. Two hundred and twenty-eight cycles, and no one to defend us from that cursed wight. So we had no choice but to give it what it wanted. It bested Hazel, the last Caretaker. That’s how it started. The townsfolk found her … most of her … by the Greywater—that’s the pool on the ridge. More bodies turned up in the days that followed; ponies we all knew. Ponies I grew up with. I was just a filly at the time, but I remember the adults talking. And how scared they were. Those in service to Selene knew it to be a Rose of some kind. They eventually came up with the idea to leave a chicken by the Greywater, hoping the thing would be appeased. I was … I was the one they chose to bear the offering. If I came back, they’d know their plan worked.” She rubbed at her face harder, as if her skin were diseased and she was sanding away a rash.

First scraped at the worn floorboards. “Sorry how much sorrow the thing caused you. Glad I could do my part to help. But I’m wonderin’, if you’re not a Caretaker, how do you know about Roses? Why were you sent to the Greywater?”

Wild stopped scrubbing herself. “I am a Lorekeeper, of the Order of the Moon Brilliant,” she replied, holding her head high.

First appraised her for a long moment, his brow creased in thought. “Haven’t heard of Lorekeepers.”

“You haven’t?”

“Nope. Far as I know a Caretaker’s a Caretaker.”

“Oh, well, we’ll have to fix that right now!” Wild retorted. She hung her towel over a rack of what would eventually be pickaxes, headed to the hay bed where First had rested earlier, and lay down. She beckoned him to join her with a wave of her hoof.

First hurried to unstrap his blades. While he worked at the knots in the twine, Cinnamon padded to where Wild was waiting and burrowed under the hay beside her.

Unencumbered, First eased into the soft, dry straw. Cinnamon began to purr, her rasps doubling and trebling with her contentment.

“In the days of the High Sanctuary,” Wild began in the low, conspiratorial voice of a scholar long enthralled by her studies, “there were three missions, fashioned after the three duties of the laborers of the Garden. The first mission was that of the Caretaker, modeled on the groundskeepers who would work all hours, in the days of old, to trim and dig and sculpt the earth. Theirs were the hooves that moved the soil of the Moonlight Paradise. The Caretakers, like the groundskeepers, were greatest in number of the three, and were charged with protecting the subjects of the absent Princess in Her time of woe. It was they who would reclaim the lost Sanctuaries, and tame the fell magic that had taken root wherever it was spread by the idolaters of Nightmare Moon.”

First stared in awe at Wild’s words. “Stars preserve us,” he whispered. He curled up, eager to hear more.

Wild saw his enthusiasm and smiled. “The second mission,” she continued, “was the Lorekeepers, who were inspired by the Garden’s sages who wrote the almanacs, and whose business it was to know the season and needs of every plant and fruit, and the habit of every creature that was let to roam there. The Lorekeepers’ role was to track the history of the High Sanctuary, and to record all of the deeds of its members. It was organized into Orders, each with its own task. Arguments arose over the centuries, sadly; disagreements over details at first, then full-blown schisms. 'The past is past; who can tell what the truth is?' Or so they say.”

First nestled deeper into the warm bed of hay. “What was the third mission?” he asked.

“The third mission, and the smallest, was the Wayfinders. They were the counterparts of the Garden’s architects, who were privy to the will and whim of the Night Princess. The architects would lay the plans, and guide the sages and the groundskeepers in their execution. The Wayfinders, likewise, were the seers. They could perceive what others could not; the lines of magical force that underpin the earth. The way of things was known to them, and the story that nature tells. But they are unknown in these days, except a few. And all are cursed.”

“Cursed?” First probed.

“Yes. In the early days, a powerful Wayfinder was seduced to the worship of the Nightmare aspect of the Princess. She doomed her fellows to speak no more. All who followed, born with the vocation, are as silent as the stones.”

“’Silent as the stones’ … that’s horrible.”

“It is. I only know of one in this region: a mare about my age who lives in the marshlands. I haven’t met her, but there’s tell she has the gift beyond doubt.” Wild was quiet for a time, listening to Cinnamon’s constant purring. After taking a deep breath, she sighed and looked up at First once more. “Well, I’ve blabbed at lot,” she said. “Do you have any questions?”

First thought for a moment. “My head’s spinnin’ like a top,” he said. “Not sure where to start. Maybe the Caretakers, I guess. Can you tell me more about them, seein’ as I am one?”

Wild nodded and cleared her throat. “In time, the Caretakers dwindled, their ranks decimated by the nature of their work: either they succeeded and lessened the need for more, or they didn’t and … well … their lines ended. They divided into clans, and eventually isolated families, living on the sites of the Sanctuaries they purged and maintained. Do you know anything of your family’s history? Tell me your ancestors’ names, if you know them, and I’ll see if I can place them.”

“Well, my da’s name is Sacred Oak," replied First, scratching his head, "and his da’s name was Silver Branches, and his great, great, great grandmama’s name or somesuch was Pine Delight—we know because we have a letter quilled by her own hoof—then—”

“Wait, did you say Pine Delight?”

“Yup. Don’t know much about her except she mentions prunin’ back the Roses sure enough in her letter, which means she was a Caretaker too.”

Wild began rubbing her temple with her hooftip. “That’s … hold on, that’s ringing a bell. That’s right, there’s a Pine Delight mentioned in the Chronicles of Receding Blight. Page two hundred sixty-one, paragraph six, if I recall. ‘And Pine Delight overthrew them every each, the Children vile and grim of Weeping Willow, bearing the holy sigil and geis of her forebear, all glory to Selene.’ Or something like that. If she’s your direct ancestor, that means you’re of the lineage of—“

“Joyous Grove?”

“Yes! The Moonseer. The One Architect, favored by Selene above all. Do you know his story? You must.”

First nodded. “Some of it, I guess. Ponies actually heard about him? I thought only me and Da knew. Family secret.”

“Of course ponies know about him! Well, all who belong to the missions. First, Joyous Grove is—“

The door that connected the workshop to the house crashed open. A stallion appeared out of the shadows beyond, tall and lean, with muscles that writhed at every joint as he moved. His black mane brushed against the top of the doorframe.

“What have we here?” he rumbled, one eyebrow raised.

Comments

[Starlight Nova]

Do I need to read Garden of Roses in order to understand this story?

[the dobermans]

11402573

No, it's intended as a stand-alone, but you should definitely read Garden of Roses regardless

[jmj]

Lots of history in this one. Really deep and cool. Also ended it right when I needed to know more!