• Published 3rd Feb 2013
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Subjunctive - Integral Archer



In this romance of language and culture, a changeling linguist struggles to salvage what remains of the failed invasion of Canterlot with only himself, his words, and his deception as his weapons.

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Chapter XXX: Substantive

The crowd dispersed; the sailors attended to their duties; life on board the Star Buck continued. But a pervasive anxiety was evident underneath their actions; their motions seemed to them aimless now, and they performed them only because they knew no other way. The bees had lost their queen, and they couldn’t remember the last time they had had to raise a new one; they weren’t even sure they remembered how.

Shortly after the incident, I slunk back beneath the decks. My whole body hurt, and I couldn’t find my way in the dark, nor could I remember what direction was the right one. Instead, I collapsed onto the first bunk I could find, exhausted. But I never approached a state that was even remotely akin to sleep. With my eyes closed, the scene with Nihil, Flask, and my brother played on an endless loop; and each time a certain new, terrible aspect of it amplified and augmented itself to me—now the discomfort of the rain was the prevailing calamity, now the resounding thunder, now the demonic and judgmental fire of the corposants, now Flask’s pleading cries, now Nihil’s bloodshot eyes, now the crack of his hoof on her jaw, and now the fear in my brother’s face. And I imagined myself in his place, having to throw away all that I had built up around me to save someone I cared for because an inimical event that I had had no say in the shaping thereof had come to pass, losing everything in an instant, being alone, surrounded by enemies, rendered helpless, finding that the more I struggled the worse my situation became, hauled despite my screams for pity and mercy; and then the sensation of falling, water, and then I find that my instinctive motions of swimming are not enough, that I’m not strong enough to keep my head above the water, feeling my muscles ache, my lungs burn, the cold water dragging me down, down . . . and all of it because my brother had been a coward.

That hadn’t been I. That was the pain I’d subjected him to, my brother, for my own selfishness and cowardice. I’d taken everything away from him, because I couldn’t face the thought of having to stand for my own actions. That coward was I.

And, suddenly, when I realized the true meaning of my indecision at that time, all my principles dissolved. In that one moment of hesitation, my morality, my values, my principles—they had been shown to me as they were: just a facade, constructed not to cozen others as to my worthiness before them but to cozen me as to my worthiness before me myself. I couldn’t hold my pretenses any longer; the creature beneath the facade showed himself to me for what he was, and he was wretched. I couldn’t stand to be near him; but there he stayed—he was I. I couldn’t escape myself.

In this wise I tossed and turned throughout the night along with the ship through the storm, my cot sweltering hot and drenched in my sweat, the air so humid that I could breathe only water, and my dreams inevitably turned to those of drowning. My screams upon waking would be sustained wails until my lungs ran out of air, for, in that paroxysmal state, I couldn’t hear anything, but could only feel my vocal cords burn.

I was awoken by a hoof on my back. I turned; there was a large-jawed sailor staring down at me. I recognized him as the pony who had jumped out of the line to help Flask after she had fallen.

“Arise,” he whispered. “The captain wanteth thee and thy Deponent off the ship. We’re at thine island. I’ll row thee ashore.”

I felt no difference between the darkness in the ship and the clear sunlight upon deck.

The sailor who had woken me called a colleague to come help him. The pegasus and I were pushed into a boat, less like departing passengers and more like obligations they were fain to get rid of.

I never found out what became of Nihil, Flask, and the sea ponies of the Star Buck. Had that scene marked the middle of their adventures, or the climax of their companionship? They’re likely still out there on the watery forest, battling waves, storms, each other, drifting along with the currents, which flow more purposefully than they and I ever will. Ah, you dysfunctional duo, you will forever be doomed to a parched and truculent life, as will I. But there is an old maxim in my native language that I now know was devised for you. Roughly translated, it says: May the eddy of your soul, though it break you against the rocky cliffs, bring you onto the shore where you may rest ere long be past!

The sailors dumped me and the pegasus on the coast without a further word, got back in their boat, and rowed back to the anchored ship.

And then there I stood, as I had all those months ago, on the same beach, but now there were neither my brothers nor the open ocean filled with limitless possibilities. Now beside me there was only a strange creature I wanted nothing to do with, and instead of the endless expanse of ocean, there was a wooden ship breaking the horizon, with tattered sails, bending masts, listing slightly to the port.

*

I had only one desire: to get home.

Home was where you returned at the end of a day. Home was where, despite the hardships and mistakes of the day, you could lie down, rest, sleep, and upon waking there would be a new day, a fresh start, and you could leave everything bad that happened behind you.

It was this desire that pushed me forward. Behind there were all my mistakes, my regrets. Behind me there would be the sound of a leaf breaking beneath a hoof, and I knew it was the pegasus. She had not the bright skip she had had when she had found me under the bridge and led me to the Star Buck; now her footsteps fell lugubriously, as though she were still following me due to some sort of mental inertia alone that would take some time and a certain amount of force to change. Those steps sounded like reminders, accusations following me home; I gnashed my teeth every time I heard them, wished they would stop, just right there, stop following me, leave, and never bother me again.

At length, the footsteps indeed stopped. I turned to see her standing twenty paces behind me, far off and distant. She looked at me directly; the circles under her eyes told me that she hadn’t slept last night either.

“What?” I said, unable to suppress the incensed tone rising in my voice.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, “but I have to go home now.”

The blood rushed to my face, my pupils dilated, and my muscles tensed.

“I’m not home yet. You said you would help me get home.”

She turned her head away, as though to start in the opposite direction, but paused. “This is your island, isn’t it?”

“You said you would help me get home.”

“Errenax . . .”

“Don’t call me that! That’s not my name!”

She raised her head up, almost to the sky, her mane falling back and exposing her face completely. “I can’t go with you any longer. After what happened there, on the ship, I . . . well, you’re home now. There’s no place for me here, not on this land, nor in your tasks. I wish you the best.”

A laugh escaped from my throat, a malicious sneer, one of sick realization and loathing toward her and the earth entire.

“There’s no place for you here?” I mocked. “Isn’t that just what I should have expected you to say—you, who have always been unsure of your place in the world, in your actions, in your moods? I thought a promise, a word of honor, was a universal among creatures.” I laughed again, and she shuddered. “It must be, for that sense of honor, independent of culture and language, is what enabled me to survive so long. But how easy it is to exploit one when trust is all he has as insurance, and how easy it is to drive those whom you wish to exploit into madness when you betray that erroneously placed trust! Isn’t that what the good Captain Nihil showed us?”

I turned away from her, back to the path, and gestured to the land in front of me, the woods, and the mountains stretching out above the tree boughs.

“Look!” I snickered. “It’s my home, and it’s just as I left it. What if it weren’t like that? Can you imagine if you were to come home after a long trip and find that not only has the color of your house changed but its shape? And then after lots of searching, you finally find the door, only to realize that your key doesn’t fit. Then maybe you break it down—but inside, you find that the furniture is foreign, the air strange, and maybe even a story is missing! You have nowhere else to go, so you settle down in your new house, get used to its stairs, its walls, and even its facade. Then, one day, you decide to go out—but you come back and find that your home has changed anew! Could you live in a state such as that?”

I turned back to face her. Though I could feel a smile stretching my lips, though my vision was blurred from the deranged flickering in my eyes, a certain horror pervaded my whole body, and my heart pounded not in rage but in fear. The words I spoke came from nowhere, certainly not from me.

“That’s what I like about you. Everything about you is consistent. You are defined and immutable. I know that if I blink, when I open my eyes again, you will be the same as before. And you’ve known this forever—it’s a part of your nature. Before you learn to walk, to speak, it’s fundamental knowledge to you that things will stay as you’ve left them. I imagine that comes with a blissful sense of security; of course it does—you’re so secure in your belief, that you make predictions about how to act based upon that belief, without even considering the possibility of it otherwise. And, as proof, look how much anxiety it’s given you just now to change your mind, to renege on your promise to me! It is only a part of your indicative nature—that, for you, the state of things have some sort of inertia, such that to try to change them you meet distressing mental resistance! That is the only taste you will ever have of the contrary. Can you imagine, even for a second, what it would be like if you couldn’t rely on things you saw to be the same, not just in others but even in yourself? What would you do if the world were not a concrete but a mold, which you try to control, sometimes successfully but sometimes not, wherein even your emotions and principles were ever-shifting and capricious? How would you live? How would you define your values? In a word, how would you ever be moral if one day you were a creature of the subjunctive?”

All the color had drained from her. She trembled uncontrollably. Her hair stood up on end; her chest twitched as though she struggled to breathe.

“Well? What do you think of that?” I snapped again.

She didn’t say anything. She was no longer meeting my eyes. She was staring through me, as though at a place behind.

I took a step forward; she took a step back.

“What is the matter with you?” I hissed.

And when I gesticulated with a hoof, in order to prove my point, it passed briefly in front of my vision . . . a black smear, which I could feel the air passing through . . . and then I could feel my remaining canine pressing against my chin, on one side but not the other, the asymmetry palpable even without my seeing. I brought my hoof once more to my face, in order to be sure, looked through a pore, and saw her on the other side, trembling, unable to scream. The words that had issued from my mouth without warning from an unknown source . . . they had been augmented in a concrete demonstration, to strike fear into her and to show to me the words’ deeper meaning, at which I trembled upon realizing, with a fear that I knew was directed at myself.

She turned and ran. My wing felt better now, and I was able to catch her up quickly.

I landed upon her and tried to subdue her. She kicked and tried to bite me, but I thought about how much harder Elision had kicked me, how insignificant the amount of pain was, and how I could hold her still, feel my power for once in my life, and how if I hissed she turned away and closed her eyes. I wanted to hold her, hold her until she was exhausted and could fight no longer, just until she screamed, and then I would let her go.

But she never screamed. Not once. Instead, it was I who started to tire first. It was her strength that grew, at an inconceivable rate for someone as meek as she. After she threw me off her, I turned my horn and shot her. She tried to wipe away the gel that formed on her, but still I kept up my magic, still the gel formed, climbing up her body, up her neck.

She got up and tried to run, despite the gel, but fell as quickly as she had started. She lay there, not struggling, as it hardened over her into a chrysalis-like trap.

I fell back, exhausted, and stared at her through the chrysalis’s translucent window. She looked calm, placid, as though she were sunbathing out in the field; while I was sweating, barely able to breathe, and could feel my heart pounding in my ears. I couldn’t tell who had conquered whom.