Cockatrice – such a silly name for such a terrifying creature! In appearance and gait, a broken stalagmite with wings sewn on, a pair of twiggy legs rammed into its underside, and the head of a bleached chicken stuck on top until the creator got the real one in the mail.
And yet in Equites, where the pegasus ponies built cloud temples on the sands and the earth ponies filled their mouths with water to spray over their plants, the name was a curse. Merely uttering it could send fully grown ponies back up the steps of their homes to slam their weighted doors. The town would be dead for hours.
Having spent some months in the neighbouring town of Hippodromos, I had heard daily stories whispered around watering holes and either side of the stables, where the torchlight left looming shadows and the straw was all that saved you from the chill of the nights. These stories always ended with a scream, a slithering in the spiny bushes, and the inhabitants waking up to find an eerily lifelike statue in a dear neighbour’s house. Not that it bothered me at first; if I went around believing every story I was told about how unbeatably terrifying this animal and that beast and those creatures were, I’d have given up in despair years ago and declared all ponydom doomed.
On this day, I received a runner from the Equites Forum – such a pretentious name, as it’s really just an old village green – who told me that Colonel Front was requesting the pleasure of my company for a tea party and possibly some scones. I was acting as town ambassador for Hippodromos, and the Colonel had recently replaced the equivalent in Equites, who had been caught in his own cellar with sackfuls of taxpayer's money. Having met the Colonel before, I wasn't anxious to make her acquaintance again. She was a little too military for my liking.
I confess I had to hide a frown at the news. Presumably, the newcomer wanted to give her image a spit and polish, and with a casual get-together to boot. A casual one, while she still calls herself “the Colonel”! I ask you! It was so unprofessional.
Nevertheless, I packed my things and hired a winged chariot to take me down there. Pegasus transport is excellent for time, and you just have to put up with spitting out the bugs afterwards. Besides, the fares are remarkably cheap, as the drivers uphold the admirable practice of actually taking a direct route and not, for example, giving you an impromptu tour of the neighbourhood en route. “As the crow flies”, they call it.
As I understand it, the Colonel wasn’t really a member of the guard. The title was just inherited, like a battered suit of armour no one had worn since the Classical era, but which was nevertheless proudly kept in a glass case so that old war anecdotes could be tossed around.
She lived some way out of the town of Equites, on a hillside overlooking the forest of thorns. And I do mean “forest”, as the thicket stained the plains from the hill to the horizon and claimed almost a sixth of the entire landscape. I think every town has this kind of dark wilderness somewhere nearby. Hippodromos, for instance, lies near the Hyperborean range, where winds rush eternal. Lots of tales have been told about these mountains, though we adult ponies mostly dismiss them as bedtime stories. Still, even the weariest straggler will take weeks to go around the range than dare try to walk through it, for fear of the lurking griffons. Presumably, such places exist solely to scare foals into good behaviour.
Well, no doubt the chummy Colonel and the other ambassadors would be dying to swap stories about it. I confess, as the town of Equites came up below me and the clouds washed past our slowly sinking chariot, that I was bracing myself for the worst. Already, I longed for the warm hearth, the squeaky chair, and the reassuring presence of mounds of paperwork on my desk. Sad as it sounds, I at least know where I am when I'm dealing with paperwork.
The sun was descending to the west. Having landed at the base of the hill – I saw no point in sightseeing when we were officially on business – and paid off the drivers, I was trotting up the eroded path to this house on the hill when I spotted the tail.
Instantly, I froze. The chariot was gone. I was alone.
Slate-grey that tail was, curling and uncurling in a parody of a bored cat’s, and tipped with a dragonesque diamond that carved the air up as it went. Flapping its wings in a clumsy attempt to float step-by-step, it rose up the stairway leading to the front door. A rumble quaked through its throat, and I felt it through my stiff limbs more than I heard it. The creature nudged the door aside with its stub of a beak and poked its head through the gap.
A cockatrice.
How many times had I heard that description before? A pathetic creature, thrown together from the unwanted parts of a scruffy rooster, a baby dragon, and an obese snake. And yet here it was, all of a sudden, alive in all its hideousness, a mockery of nature. For a few seconds, I stopped to gape at the thing. A gallop and a leap, and I could’ve stroked the thing along its back. I’d have felt real scales! And then it would round on me with its deadly glare…
I was suddenly aware of how vulnerable I was. I could not run. There was no cover anywhere on that hillside, and the gravel would tumble and betray my passage. I couldn’t hope to simply run away, for it would spot me and flap over, and the tales made it clear that the creature would never stop coming. They had told of how the creature could spend days patiently beating those flimsy bat wings, closing in like a glacier with a hunter's mind, until you had to stop to eat, or to drink, or to sleep, and then you would inevitably wake up to see its deadly eyes glaring down at you.
But frozen there, I was at the mercy of its whim. Only one random flick of the head would be enough, and it would spot me regardless of what I did.
The creature clucked once. Warily, it tiptoed into the house. Its twirling tail was the last thing I saw before it casually flicked at the door, slamming it shut.
There was no way the Colonel could avoid it for long. Throwing caution over my shoulder, I galloped around the house to the back door, which mercifully was shut tight. I reared up and cupped my forelimbs around my mouth.
“Colonel!” I hissed. Even in this urgent moment, I was afraid of alerting the cockatrice to my presence. “Colonel!”
However, it was another head that poked out of an upper storey window to look down on me. For a moment, I feverishly saw the cockatrice glaring at me, but when my heart froze in a shock of horror, I blinked and saw that it was another pony instead.
“Who’re you?” yelled the stallion irritably. “And what do you want? We’re busy!”
“There’s a cockatrice!” I hissed, frantically waving my forehooves in an effort to make him speak quietly. “A cockatrice just walked into your house through the front door. I saw it just now!”
“Go away!” The stallion flapped a hoof at me in a symbolic attempt to swat me away. “Curséd mischief-maker! Have you nothing better to do than pester us with tall tales? Be off with you!”
A scuffle ensued which forced the head back. I gasped and prepared to cover my eyes at any second, but then the Colonel’s head poked out with a frown.
“What is the meaning of this?” She adjusted her spectacles and squinted down at me. “Good grief! Is that you, Ambergris? You shouldn’t be skulking around houses like this. I have invited you in, you know!”
“There’s a cockatrice in your house!” In my haste, I raised the volume of my hiss here to make sure the old mare could hear me; I didn’t want to see a sudden scuffle or hear a scream get cut off at the last second, and that monster was probably tackling the stairs as I spoke. “I saw it enter the front door!”
To my immense relief, the Colonel nodded and turned to whisper instructions to her companion. After a few seconds, she turned back to me and nodded curtly.
“I can fly down,” she hissed, “but Ambassador Scarlet here can’t. I’m too weak to carry him safely, so catch him when I get close. Do you understand?”
I gave an exaggerated nod and cantered forwards until I was under the window. With several grunts and grimaces, the Colonel wrapped her hooves around Scarlet’s midriff and heaved him up. I only saw the dangling hooves and the Colonel’s forelimbs wrapped tight around the torso, with the wings above them a frantic blur. I reared up, forelimbs held over my head, to accept the load, but the Colonel insisted on forcing herself to inch down until the dangling hooves scraped my own. Something wheezed out of her mouth, and I cocked my head and turned my ear up.
“Say that again?” I hissed.
“Don’t catch with hooves! Catch on back!” I think that’s what she said; it was hard to tell through the strain of her voice box.
Dutifully, I let my front swing down and landed with a slight jar through my limbs.
“OK!” I hissed. “Drop!”
Would you believe it! The old devil actually ignored me and drifted to my side as she went down, placing the stallion on the grass before letting go. Scarlet was so thoroughly winded by the tight grip that he gasped the instant he hit the ground, and he stumbled away from me, obviously in discomfort. The Colonel landed in the resultant gap between us, heaving and snorting for breath but clenching her jaw muscles hard. I guessed she didn’t want to pant and thus reveal how out of breath she was, but it was almost a solid minute before she dared to talk.
“You definitely… saw it come… excuse me.” She clutched at a stitch in her chest. “Saw it come… through the front of the house?”
Scarlet leaned forwards, eyebrow raised. “Colonel! You don’t seriously believe this tripe about a cockatrice, do you? Those things never come out of the thorn thicket. We don't have anything they'd want.”
“I’m not inventing this as a prank!” I said quickly. “I saw it walk through the front door. It’s in the house right now.”
“Scarlet,” said the Colonel, who was still breathing hard but who could now stand with head held high and chest only rising and falling gently. “Run into town and find the Monster Catcher. As soon as you find him, send him to that one thorn bush over there, the one a little way away from the thicket. That’s where Ambergris and I will be hiding, just in case it looks out a window. Stop for nothing. Do what I say and don’t argue!”
Scarlet had opened his mouth with a scowl, but the Colonel stamped at this.
“I said don’t argue!”
Scarlet backed away, as the force of the words cut him down. Casting a wary eye in my direction – seriously, you’d think I was a delinquent, the way he glared at me – he galloped down the hill towards the town.
“Follow me.” The Colonel cantered over to the thicket, and I quickly followed in her wake.
We both crouched down behind the thicket, flattened our ears against our lowered heads, and curled our tails up. Yet, even though our extremities no longer poked out, it still struck me as a meagre choice. The branches were so thin and leafless that we’d have been easy to spot with anything more vigilant than a cursory glance. I kept expecting the white head to leap up from below a windowsill and stare out at us, but the house was dead.
“So this Monster Catcher,” I said, and even as I said it, I marvelled at how fake it sounded, and how much I pretended we were just continuing an earlier prattle. “I’ve heard the title before, but… well, don’t they just round up the occasional stray Orthros and give wild minotaurs a talking-to?”
The Colonel almost barked a laugh before she remembered where she was. Instead, she settled for a smirk and a grunt of amusement.
“This one’s not like those leash-luggers in the cities,” she whispered. “Out here, the monsters are brutes and killers. Even the lowliest ones are basically fangs and claws with bad attitudes. Out here, the Monster Catchers have to be real Monster Catchers, and Moth-Eaten Dreams is the king of them all.”
Both of us glanced back at the house, but it was still dead. In fact, the Colonel no longer took her gaze off it, though she was still speaking to me. On my part, I kept glancing down at the timber town and its cloudy temples, where even now I could see the odd pony or ox blunder between the oaken rooftops and the cumulus spires. If I hadn't been trying to stop my heart leaping out of my mouth, I'd have commented on the curious mixture of pegasus and earth pony design.
“Mothy’s an Equestrian,” said the Colonel in a sigh of a voice, “but you’d never guess it. He moved here years ago, and yet a few weeks after we first saw him move into his hut, visiting tourists who talked to him kept thinking he was a native, even when we told them otherwise.”
“Earth or pegasus?” I asked.
“Pegasus. Mad about wild critters – rabbits, snakes, even fish – but show him a jackalope, or a lamia, or even a river chimaera, and he’s passed through ‘mad’ and out into a whole new realm. Believe me when I say we won’t be able to hold him back once he hears there’s a cockatrice in my house.”
The Colonel’s lips were thin and pale with tension. I suspected she didn’t exactly approve of this attitude towards nature’s most unholy hellspawn – and honestly, I can’t say I was indulgent towards it myself – but either generous courtesy or professional pride stiffened her against any explicit accusations.
“He has… a certain way with strange creatures,” the Colonel continued. “Everyone in town calls on him, whether it’s a baby dragon bathing in the water tower or a phoenix flock raining infernos down upon a shrine. I’m surprised you haven’t heard of him already; ponies from Hippodromos will gallop for miles just to bang on his box and ask him to come help them.”
A few seconds later, the frown flowed down my face and pooled around my skewed mouth. “Bang on his box?”
The Colonel shrugged. “For reasons best known to himself, he chooses to live in a cardboard box behind a temple’s back entrance. I don’t understand it myself. But he’s the best Monster Catcher in the country, so I think he can do whatever he wants.”
We broke off for a while, the Colonel eyeing up the house for any signs of life, and me checking the town for any sign of life. Neither of us were fulfilled.
“Whatever gets in their heads, I wonder?” I said aloud. “Monsters, I mean. It’s not as if pony houses were made for wild animals. Where will it sleep? What does it eat? How comfortable can it be?”
“If you’re thinking it’ll wander off by itself,” said the Colonel sharply, “then go back to Hippodromos. Don’t you have any idea what monsters are? Savage, cruel beasts that hunt ponies for fun.”
“Of course I don’t. We don’t get them in my district,” I said, but at once I wished I hadn’t; the flash of a glare she gave me would’ve cowed a cockatrice all by itself.
I looked away. “I meant nothing,” I mumbled.
The Colonel harrumphed and shook her head in disappointment. “You can't bring that sort of thinking here. Here, earth and pegasus ponies are equals. Do you understand?”
I nodded, still looking away. Even I had to admit the sociopolitical arrangements of Hippodromos left a lot to be desired, but so many of our neighbours indulged in it that I kept forgetting about oddballs like Equites. They said the system was even inclusive of unicorns in Equestria, but I suspect this is mostly bunkum. What, for starters, would a unicorn actually do? Pointless conjuring tricks? After the old unicorn kings and queens handed over the sun and the moon to the Princesses, I'd be surprised if anyone were to take that vestigial tribe seriously anymore.
At that moment, however, something flashed by an upper storey window, and the Colonel gasped. I looked round and saw it too. For a moment, I saw the round, big-eyed head of a foal with the mane done up in an undulating pair of pigtails. After a blink, the house was dead again, but the Colonel straightened up in defiance of the measly hiding spot’s requirements, and I quickly followed suit.
“Ambassador Chartreuse!” the Colonel murmured. “Blast! He’s still in there!”
“There’s a third pony? No! How could you forget?” I seized her withers before she could charge up to the house. “Wait, Colonel! That cockatrice will hear you coming!”
The Colonel’s front half thrashed from side to side, desperate to shake me off, but I clung on tighter and weighed her down. A glance up at the windows revealed nothing; at least the poor foal wasn’t being followed. Not yet, at least.
“Leave it to the professionals! Wait for help!” I grunted with the effort of keeping her back.
“I can’t leave him in there! Alone! With that… that thing skulking around, trying to flush him out!”
Typical pegasus heroism, this. At heart, they're still the ancient warrior ponies of yore. Hoping she still had something resembling sense in her head, I licked my lips and decided to try logic.
“Did you see him run? He knew it was in the house and now he’s gone somewhere safe. The thing isn’t following him. I doubt it’ll even know he’s there before the Monster Catcher comes. He still has a chance of avoiding it. But crashing in to save him won’t help anyone.”
Either because of my words or because of a lack of stamina, she went limp and stopped struggling. I was keenly aware of how old the mare was, with her skin starting to wrinkle and feel loose on her bones, her laden breathing as she fought to get her strength back, and her slightly acidic smell. She was a far cry from the chiselled statue of only a few years back.
“Such a brilliant colt,” she was saying between the panting. “So dutiful! So intelligent! A prodigy among prodigies! But he’s still just a foal! I can't leave him in there!”
“You can't get yourself killed on his account. You're getting too emotional, Colonel.”
“Scarlet will kill me,” she moaned. “If that foal is caught –”
“You’re not going in there!” I stamped my hoof to make my point. “Get back behind the bush.”
“But he’s just a foal! He’s no match for that horror.”
Right on cue, she froze, eyes wide and staring at the house. I followed her gaze; the comb of the cockatrice was poking up from behind the uppermost window. Evidently, it had drifted past while we were struggling, but now it drifted out of sight again.
The cockatrice was following the foal, though its slowness suggested it hadn’t actually spotted him yet. Hurriedly, we both ducked behind the bush and crouched down, peering through the threadbare branches and holding our breath. The neighbouring window should’ve shown its comb drifting onwards, but nothing appeared. For a moment, I suspected it had thankfully stopped, but then it rose into view halfway along, and I realized it had just bent its head down.
“Cockatrices can’t smell, can they?” I whispered. Even though we were yards away from the house, I feared even the distant birdsong couldn’t overwhelm our voices on the wind.
Beside me, the Colonel shook her head as slowly as she dared. “Taste,” she mouthed, looking across at me.
The thought of it! That cockatrice licking the ground, tasting its way towards the foal… I shivered and the bushes shivered with me. But the Monster Catcher would come, and I had always been told to leave anything that stressed me to the professionals. I shifted from hoof to hoof, never feeling comfortable wherever I placed my weight. We had to wait for the professional.
Nevertheless, the foal – Chartreuse, if I remember right – was stuck on the first floor. That creature must have picked up his trail. Unless the upper storey looped and let him lead the cockatrice on an indefinite chase, he’d have barely minutes before the thing cornered him in a room. It would only take a few more minutes before it trapped him in his hideaway. If the Monster Catcher got there a second too late, then we condemned the foal to the mercy of a merciless brute.
Sweat broke out on my brow. I hadn’t come out here for this. Had I really just been thinking about hay bales and dinner etiquette today?
The town was still empty of all but a few distant stragglers. No sign of either Scarlet or the Monster Catcher.
“How long does it usually take him?” I said.
“Not this long.” The Colonel frowned at me. “Could be out on a job, could be ill, could be anything. Listen, if we wait any longer, that foal is not going to make it out of there alive. We should distract the cockatrice, or trap it in a room, or… well, something. We’ve got seconds. That thing knows he’s there. Let’s help him!”
“It might not find him. You think he’s a smart kid? Then he’ll find somewhere safe and sit tight.” I glanced back at the empty windows. “But if you go in there, then that cockatrice will definitely have you, and if it goes after the foal anyway, then what? What have you accomplished?”
Despite my careful words, I was shocked to find that I wasn’t listening to my own cautionary speech. In fact, I was itching all over to jump in myself. Until now, the idea had been to put as much distance between me and that cockatrice so I didn’t get in the Monster Catcher’s way. Now, the kid changed everything.
It was a test of my mettle, the sort of heroic opportunity that dullards like me used to dream up when we were foals and look down on once we were adults. My heartbeat was becoming manic. This was a fantasy I had just stepped into, and I knew how to play by the rules. I should go back and save him, rush in and out, possibly fighting off the cockatrice, and…
And…
My grip slackened, and the Colonel slipped past me and cantered uphill. With a curse, I blundered in her wake.
“Wait!” I hissed as we approached.
“Don’t try and stop me!” she hissed over her own shoulder.
Yes, it was noble of her to jump in, but one of us had to be the voice of reason. I opened my mouth to protest, but then we heard a crash from upstairs. I froze on the spot. With barely any hesitation, the Colonel buzzed her wings and shot up the wall and through one of the upper windows.
I hung back near the lower storey, cocking an ear and waiting for a sound. Nothing followed.
I checked the hillside and the town in its shadow, but there were still no ponies coming to help. Perhaps they were being intercepted by other pleading ponies, or perhaps the Monster Catcher was ill, or perhaps Scarlet had taken a nasty fall on his way to get him.
My hooves danced on the spot, fighting the urge to wait but also fighting the urge to jump in. There were still no sounds from upstairs.
I looked back. Still no incoming cavalry.
I sighed and clambered over the nearest windowsill.
As soon as I landed, I fought the urge to clamber back out. The wide open window was suddenly inviting me back with a faint breeze whispering freedom and deliverance. Champing with impatience, I kicked the urge back down. The deed was done. Now I had to face the fallout.
I found myself in a dining room, all long table and house-sized portraits from wall to wall. There were plenty of high-backed seats to cower behind, but better still were the candelabra arranged in a row between the plates and the customized feeding troughs. A nearby trough was shocking pink and had little goldenrod hearts painted on it. Others were oval; some were covered in glitter. One was half as deep as its neighbours.
Looking down, I noticed the floor was a series of planks floating on a layer of water, as neatly spaced out as a rickety rope bridge over some exotic river. The long table was unique in resting on a correspondingly long plank of its own. Just beyond the surface, I could discern the bubbly cloud that made up the foundations of the floor.
It's peculiar, but even as I was scanning every bulge and flinching at every creak, an inner critic – some brave remnant of sanity, I suspect – whispered through the shadows haunting my mind. Pegasus and earth pony styles really don’t mix. Whatever the citizens of Equites say, putting wood and magical clouds together looks fundamentally wrong. There is also the practical consideration: most wood simply sinks through cloud, but by a strange quirk, bodies of water did not. Whether because the clouds were simply compacted water themselves, or because the water had been treated by some earth pony's herbal potion – I was never privy to the trade secret myself – the result was a way to put earth-based architecture on the same map as weather-based materials.
All the walls were white with cloud. It was as if I'd stepped into an ice cave; nothing like the cosy cottage of the outside. Yet against this heavenly glow, the planks were darker than obsidian knives.
Under my hooves, they bobbed gently with each step. I sneaked around the table and past the most throne-like of the chairs. Sadly, I couldn’t help noticing with a grimace how almost every inch of it was encrusted with gemstones of a rainbow hue, with nothing but random placements that made me ill just by glancing at them. Hopefully, that was not the Colonel’s own chair, or my opinion of her taste would have sunk into the earth.
I peeked through the gap the door had left.
The hallway also had the planks-on-water effect, but I could now hear a slight trickle coming from that room. However, I could see little but the grandfather clock opposite, which I just noticed was nailed to the wall. Evidently, the water-and-plank effect hadn’t proven to be convenient. Who would inflict that on their own home?
Both of my ears stiffened. Not a peep from upstairs. It sent shivers through me as a series of sharp spasms. Somehow, the total silence was worse than any screaming or scuffling or thumping. Even the screech of the cockatrice would’ve been more fitting. There had to be some sign of life up there.
My hoof tenderly eased the door aside. I drew back for a second when it suddenly creaked, but otherwise it was a smooth sweep. Now it was revealed to me: the umbrella stand knocked over, a few splinters projecting from where talons had scratched at a plank, and a trickle of water as it fell from the upper floor and washed step to step to the bottom floor.
Interesting: any water upstairs should have drained away long ago, so logically something must be pumping the water back upstairs. I noted this for barely a few seconds before I stepped forwards, eyes wide, knees tensed to bolt at the slightest break of the silence. At least the constant trickling would mask the slight tap of hoof on plank as I inched across the hallway towards the stairs.
They must be dead, I thought. I doubted the Colonel alone would stay silent for long, not when she'd smelled a scrap nearby. As for the foal, who knew where he was now, or even what he’d managed to do?
I stopped at the foot of the stairs. They turned left partway up, and then left again to open onto an unseen corridor. Anything could come down from there, and I’d have to clatter and stomp just to get out of the room. I held my breath and waited for sound, for the slightest scuff, for any flicker of movement from the higher steps.
The doorway I’d just come through was wide open. Beyond it, I could see the open window and the tallest spires of the town beyond. Surely the two were back by now? Yet I could hear nothing from outside either.
Still, nothing happened.
I gave the hallway one last check in case there were any unexplored hiding spots. Regrettably, there was nothing bigger than the umbrella stand, while the grandfather clock – the only exception – had no chance of being quietly prised off the wall. There was obviously the big front door, which I could close on my way out. The cockatrice could push a door open, sure, but such a dumb creature surely couldn't be smart enough to operate a handle, never mind pull it open. I made a mental note of this and continued looking around.
There were two more doorways, however, leading to other parts of the house, but their doors were only slightly ajar. I peered through, but could make out little beyond the sideboard of one and the edge of a cerulean rug in the other. Their gaps were too narrow to spot anything more.
Nothing.
Just before I took my first step, a creak came from the upstairs floor, loud as a snapping branch over the fall of water.
A pair of wings flapped frantically. In my imagination, I could see the cockatrice on the verge of the upper level, one hop away from the first step of the staircase.
The warmth drained out of me. Now that it was coming, I cursed myself for neglecting any real plan. With the care of one handling glass, I tiptoed back the way I came. The dining room door was almost in my face before I heard the creak of the first step. I heard its breathing; the faint pants of a small creature pushing its body to the limit.
Even then, I was suspicious. As I understood it, cockatrices are like birds and therefore don’t pant at all. Moreover, this one had no reason to be short of breath. It was the master of this situation. It could take all the leisurely time it pleased.
I tiptoed back to the stairs. The panting continued for a while. Perhaps my unseen presence had been frantically avoiding the cockatrice for too long, in which case was it Chartreuse or the Colonel who now stood barely a staircase away from me? I licked my dry lips.
Despite my growing confidence, I was still fighting an urge to flee back to the dining room. All I knew about cockatrices had been told to me by a dozen or so witnesses or friends of witnesses. For all I knew, I’d just reasoned myself towards my death, and would any moment see a hissing, angry specimen leap down the steps and pin me to the floor before I could spin round, never mind gallop to safety.
Under a film of sweat, I frowned in concentration and forced my throat to be as gentle as possible. Even if the mystery guest on the landing was a friend, we might still be too close to the foe to make anything louder than a whisper.
“Hello? I’m a friend,” I whispered, and I gulped – the voice had come out a mite louder than I’d wanted – and continued. “It’s me, Ambergris. Go down the stairs, but be quiet. I’m here to help you.”
I took a step back and waited, staring up at the ceiling as though I could see the other being through it. Of course, if it was Chartreuse, then it would take a moment before he recognized who I was supposed to be. Even the Colonel I imagine would be getting over the shock of suddenly hearing another’s voice. Or it could be the cockatrice grinning and preparing to drop down any moment it wanted, just to have some fun before it became all business.
Two wings flapped. It was a faint noise, much too faint to be the Colonel’s.
My knees had barely tensed when a blur flashed down the steps, and the foal bumped into my chest, pale and sweating. His pigtails bounced against my chin. I almost cried out with shock, but the feel of the trembling bundle against me drove all that darkness out of my mind and out of the room.
“Oh no,” he kept whispering. “Oh no. Oh no. Oh no, oh no, oh no, oh no…”
“Shh,” I whispered into his ear. “Calm down.”
“Hide,” he hissed.
While I was struggling to keep him from wrestling out of my grip, I heard the two wings flap again and realized his position upstairs was being refilled.
Quicker than a thought, I spun round, out of the foal's grip, and was at the front door, pushing hard enough to throw it open. Instead, it rattled in its hinges and I bounced off with a grunt. Chartreuse scuttled up to me and seized my leg as I wrestled with the handle and tried to force the door open.
“No,” I whispered. “I saw it! I saw it come in here! It can't be locked!”
Yet it was locked tight. I happened to look down to chide Chartreuse for shaking me, and then I spotted the key. Or at least I spotted half of it. The round end was lying on the planks, having been snapped cleanly. I tried to peer through the keyhole, and found nothing but the blackness of an obvious blockage.
For a moment, I was so shocked that I didn't even notice the thumps coming from up the stairs. It was one thing to be hunted by a cruel beast, but to be hunted by one that had planned its attack?
“Clever,” I whispered in a hoarse voice.
At once, I turned to the dining room, but the kid held my leg tight with one forelimb and pointed with the other.
“Safer in there,” he hissed, and he bolted past me. By the time I looked up, he’d just nudged one of the other doors aside, revealing the rest of the cerulean rug I’d espied earlier.
There was a click from upstairs, and I swear I saw a shadow fall across the topmost steps. I wouldn’t have noticed at all, except that there was also the slight plop of something small hitting the water surface. It was just loud enough to be heard over the constant fall of water down the steps.
We ducked into the room, which I quickly saw was full of cumulus sofas and thatched chairs. Chartreuse had already upturned a coffee table on the ever-present floating planks, and was now rushing from window to window, sliding the wooden ones shut or drawing up the cloud-framed ones like curtains. Soon, there was no exit but the doorway itself, which stood ajar. To my astonishment, the foal hurried around the room in a complete circuit, passing behind every sofa before coming to a halt beside me.
“What the devil are you doing?” I hissed. “Get out the window!”
His eyes wide and his lips taut, he shook his head. I suspected the fear was sapping his wits, but then I heard a splash from the hallway, and all argument was gone at once. I ducked down behind the nearest sofa, and realized at the last second that the back of it was in plain view of the entrance. Wincing slightly, I pushed the right side away from me and slunk out of sight. Now I was hidden.
Behind me, the foal ducked down and shivered. I could hear his subdued panting. Any moment now, I thought, he's going to panic. I placed a hoof on his shoulder and willed him to calm down, but he was still shivering.
“Too late,” he whispered. “Too late.”
Under the sofa, I had a slit of the room to look at, but it was enough. The first I saw was the talon tap against the first plank.
A soft croon followed, as if the animal was wondering aloud how interesting the room actually was. It certainly must have been darker than any room it had seen so far, given the closed windows. Another step followed. Now I could see the reptilian foot, all spindly digits and gnarled black claws. Even without its deadly gaze, that beast could have stabbed through all but the thickest hides.
For a moment, I saw its beak hit the plank ahead. It opened a crack. A black tongue flicked out and slithered across the splintered wood before flicking back in. The beak rose out of sight. Another fearsome foot clicked against the plank. Behind it, I could see the underside of its tail dragging in its wake and hear the scales scraping and rasping at the wood, as though it were towing a slab of granite.
I frowned at this. If it had been this noisy throughout, the cockatrice would have been easy to avoid. I saw it taste the floor again, and a cold thought fell into the simmering mess of my mind. It must know we were here. The dragonesque tip of its tail wagged with a demented sort of excitement as it prowled towards a sofa opposite us. Chartreuse pressed hard against my side; he could see the talons glinting in the shaft of light that beamed from the hallway.
Move away from the door, I thought frantically. Please, please, please move away from the door.
The cockatrice had caught the trail the foal had left behind, and in that moment I realized what Chartreuse had intended by running around the room. Already, the cockatrice was vanishing behind a sofa in the corner, ducking down to taste the ground – so distracted and shielded from the doorway – and now much further away from the light than we were. I braced my knees and placed a hoof on the foal’s shoulder, hoping he would not break cover too soon. Gently, I rocked him back and forth, trying to make clear my intentions.
“On three,” I whispered into his stiff ear, and he nodded, his wide-eyed face focused on the light. “One… Two…”
The cockatrice chirped and turned around. At once, I pressed hard on the kid’s shoulder to keep him still. From what I could tell under the sofa, the cockatrice was turning the corner, and this put us in plain view as it came around the distant obstruction. It would spot us the instant we broke cover.
I held my position for a few seconds longer, watching it duck and taste its way from sofa to thatched chair. Both of its wings ruffled themselves irritably. Its talons drummed against the planks with impatience.
“One…” I whispered; the cockatrice was disappearing behind the next sofa halfway across the room. “Two…”
The cockatrice dipped its head past the planks, and in that instant a gleaming red eye peeked under the sofa right back at me. It must have been a coincidence; surely it couldn’t have noticed anything different, not a noise nor any bits poking out nor any smell or taste that would betray us. But it felt like the most tortured second of my life, pinned down by that crimson glare that came out of nowhere to strike me. For a moment, my countdown vanished with terror and I gaped at the thing.
“THREE!” I was already throwing Chartreuse at the door and kicking over the sofa in my haste to gallop through to the hallway, and when I turned around and saw a flurry of wings topping the other sofa, I slammed the door and cried out as a great weight bounced off the other side. The force of its impact knocked me back.
The door began swinging towards me. Shrieking with fear and rage, I reared up and threw myself back at it and braced my rear legs to take the thumps and bumps. Each time I was hit, the doorway opened a crack and the creature rasped and rumbled as though with fresh bursts of excitement.
“Darn it, darn it, darn it,” I growled. “Some plan, kid! Real genius!”
There was no way we were going to last more than a minute at this rate. Already a wing was forcing its way through the gap, trying to wedge it open. Behind me, the kid was screaming as the thumps grew more manic and the rasps and rumbles became snarls and roars.
“Chartreuse!” I yelled. “Get a chair, a giant clock, anything! The dining room! Get one of those chairs! Hurry up! We'll trap it!”
Outrageously, the kid instead disappeared into the next doorway, revealing the sideboard as he went in. From somewhere inside, I heard him draw a clunky cupboard door open and I heard the jolt of cutlery when it hit the floor.
“No! What are you doing!?”
I barely had time to throw my weight against the door when the comb and the beak caught the closing door’s edge and a talon clamped the side. One wing was beating frantically, slashing at my face. With a cry, I kicked away from the door and scurried into the third room after the kid. Behind me, I heard the splash of the creature as it hit the planks.
We're in for it, I thought. This is happening. Oh my life, this is really happening!
The room was a kitchen, guarded solely by a central cauldron and the cupboards ringing it, an oven in the corner opposite, and an open pantry that might as well have had the word “coffin” written on it for all the protection it could afford. I turned to push the door shut just as the tail stuck out and prevented it from shutting. Eagerly, I cast around for a weapon, snatched a ladle from inside the empty cauldron, and lashed out at a tail that simply swiped the blow aside – jarring my hooves as it did so, and I yelped at the sudden backlash I ended up giving my limbs – and the tail whipped back to allow the cockatrice itself to pass through the door.
At once, I covered my eyes with a forelimb. I backed into the cauldron and waited. I had no time whatsoever for any last words or any kind of dignified final moment. The thing screeched and leaped up at my chest so hard I almost went hooves over head into the cauldron. I swear I felt the rim brush my mane for a moment.
Chartreuse yelled out and the weight fell off my chest. In shock, I struck out with the limb that had shielded my eyes, and the instant my hoof hit something, I regretted it.
The foal was knocked away and bounced off a cupboard door with a grunt, his pan clattering beside him. I’d just fluffed his counterattack.
The cockatrice seized my jaw in both its sets of talons, forcing my head round to its flapping wings. The white head came so close that it almost pecked the tip of my snout. I forced my eyes shut; the creature simply squeezed until my chin and everything below my nose burned and stung. Tears welled out from under my lids. With a squeal, I was staring into its face.
Two red flames stared back at me. The gaze reached right in and chilled me from the inside out. A moment later, I couldn’t feel my back legs.
This is the end, I thought. There’s nothing after this.
Beside me, the foal screamed, but I could no longer swivel my eyes as I wished. The stare was pouring through them, forcing them still with its sheer weight. I saw the glint of malice behind the red flames. It was my dying wish to see that glint extinguished.
Without stopping to think about what I was doing, I reached up and seized the cockatrice in as tight an embrace as I could. I felt its bones rub against each other. Immediately, the creature let go of my chin and kicked at my chest. Its tail thumped against my torso hard. The creature even pecked at my chin, and it was all I could do to keep its wings from bursting out from under my forelimbs.
Chartreuse yelled in shock, and the red flames vanished.
I stared back at myself. When I blinked the fire out of my own eyes, the other me blinked too, and I realized I was staring at my own reflection.
I turned my head left. The kid was standing as tall as he could on his hind legs, his forelegs stretched out towards me. After I noticed the handle gripped in his hooves, I realized the reflective surface was the inside of the pan.
Under my hooves, the struggling of the cockatrice ceased. The creature seized up, and before I let go in surprise, I found myself gripping cold stone.
The statue of the cockatrice smashed through the floorboards and disappeared with a splash.
I fell backwards and hit my head against the central cauldron. Not too hard – just enough to shock me and make me rub my head with a sharp wince – so I gritted my teeth and forced myself forwards, clumsily rolling onto all fours. My back end was stiff, and when I tried to step forwards, I yelped in alarm and crashed into the planks face-first. My nose exploded with pain, and my front hooves jumped in to rub the pain away. As I pushed myself up on my elbows, I heard the scrape of stone on wood behind me. I was chilled to the bone as though everything below my waist were crammed inside a safe filled with ice cubes.
With a gasp of breath, I forced myself into a press-up stance and peered over my shoulder. Only then did I see my own rear legs and rump were petrified. They were normal in shape, but now pebbly and coarse, with no shine to them. They could have cracked under a hammer.
I groaned at the sight and tried to cover my eyes. I couldn't feel a thing; that's what terrified me the most. It was as if I was suddenly half-gone, just like that.
“Sir!” whispered the foal, dropping his pan with a clatter and helping me to my hooves. “Your legs! Are you –”
“I’ll manage,” I lied, gruffly waving him aside. “I’ll manage.”
The legs were frozen in the act of sitting, splayed and slightly bent, and I wobbled trying to balance on them. How the devil would I look dragging that monstrosity over the threshold? And then sitting down on a chair would be out of the question – no, merely getting around a house would be a trial. And what about stairs? I couldn’t do anything but drag my back half behind me. If only I were a pegasus pony, then I could’ve used my wings to rise up and then I’d –
A thought stabbed my woes and I jerked on the spot. “The Colonel! My gosh, the Colonel! She's still here! Chartreuse, where is the Colonel?”
The foal’s eyes went wide. “She didn’t get out?”
I struggled, tripped, fell onto my face, and scrambled back to my feet. “Help me up the steps, Chartreuse. She must still be on the upper floor somewhere.”
After a few seconds of stumbling and experimenting, I settled for a strong march, stretching one foreleg ahead, planting it down with a stomp, hauling my shoulders over it – ignoring the scraping sounds – and stretching the other foreleg. This dragged me, pathetic and slug-like, around the hole in the floor and out of the kitchen. Beside me, Chartreuse scampered and circled, and I was firmly reminded of a puppy fussing over a tired parent. By the time we reached the stairs, I was already panting and out of breath. My cheeks flushed with exertion and embarrassment. To be brought so low, where once I’d have leaped the steps with a balletic grace!
“Please, sir.” He jumped forward and reached for my right forelimb. “Let me!”
“Get off!” I stomped on the first step and brought myself up for the second. “I can do it myself. Just scout ahead, or something. You'll get up here faster than me, anyway.”
“I’ll go and look, sir,” he said quickly, but he didn't leave my side.
The first couple of steps were little different from crossing the hallway, but sooner or later I had to drag the rear legs up, and they shuddered as they banged from step to step. I slipped and fell into the wedges chest-first. I could feel my ribs shudder and draw backwards, squeezing the breath out of me.
“Do nothing!” I wheezed, for Chartreuse had run to my side to lift me back up. I shook him off my foreleg. “I’ll see you at the top. Seriously, just scout ahead, or something.”
This time, he scurried up the steps. I'll grant he's a thoughtful kid, but if I didn't get a hold of things now, I never would.
I swear it took me almost three minutes to scale the stairs, as I had to stop and breathe every few steps. The last time I had to do anything this rough on my muscles, I was dragging upstairs a quartet of potato sacks tied to my neck. But even then, I had all four hooves to help me. I wondered glumly if this was what getting old would be like. Perhaps I could join a daredevil club long before that happened.
Dutiful Chartreuse was standing at the topmost step. This time, I didn’t rebuff him when he hauled me up the last step. Such a fine young colt he was too, clearly fidgeting to tell me what he’d found, but waiting patiently for my clumsy panting to cease.
“You… You found her… did you?” I straightened up and tried to stiffen my aching limbs and shoulders.
To our right was a long corridor with two windows looking out. That must’ve been where the cockatrice had passed by, and where the Colonel had flown in. Behind the colt on the landing was a single doorway, standing wide open and affording us a view of a cloud-made bed.
“Yes,” he said in a small voice, and he gestured towards the door. Gritting my teeth, I hauled my weight across the planks, pausing only to check how deep or how white the scratches were I was leaving behind. I owed the next homeowner some new planks.
The Colonel herself was standing in another doorway to our right. This was where the bedroom opened out to a little lavatory, beyond which was another door. So I had been right; the upper floor did form a loop, albeit of corridor and rooms rather than of one big corridor. The bathroom was just as sky-blue and white as the bedroom, and even the planks were bleached and shiny as though carved from a glacier. Through a gap, I could see a bubbling patch where a small pipe was releasing more water under the floorboards; so I'd been right about the pump at least. The bed was made. Given her gregariousness and casual nature, I figured the Colonel was the sort who stayed up late and slept on the sofa.
I didn’t dare look at the Colonel.
Poor Chartreuse was beside me. He couldn’t stop staring. With his drooping ears, his body trembling, and his head hung low, he looked as though he’d drowned in the frozen sea of the north, and only the smallest speck of life kept him from falling where he stood.
“Is she…?” he began.
“She went out fighting,” I said as softly as I could.
The Colonel had indeed reared up, teeth gritted and wings flared, to bring an iron flail down on her foe. Its chain clinked gently, and the spiked ball swung in a slight breeze, bouncing occasionally off the back of her head.
“There are worse ways to go,” I added, though not convincingly; I'm of the opinion there's no good way to go at all.
“We must do something,” he whispered. “Anything.”
“I don’t know if we can,” I said, and I turned away, dragging my stone legs behind me. “I’m sorry, Chartreuse.”
“There must be a way.”
I could tell he was trying to talk himself into believing it, and I was burning to put a hoof on his shoulder and whisper words of comfort. Believe me.
But I just didn’t know the Colonel or Chartreuse well enough. I didn’t think I could do anything but make it worse. Besides, I hadn’t earned that right. I hauled myself out of the room and left the poor foal to it.
In any case, the statue was starting to scare me too much. I didn’t want to be anywhere near it, even without looking directly at it. My hooves trembled so badly that I simply wanted to get out of that room.
Once I’d struggled down the stairs and winced as my rear legs thumped the floorboards, the front door burst open and two ponies marched right in. I recognized Scarlet at the rear, but my immediate attention went to the pegasus pony right in front of me, especially when he seized my shoulders in both hooves and pulled me close. Nets, bottles, saddlebags, and other rods and beads jangled with the slightest movement, and yet none of his movements were slight; he jumped from hoof to hoof with the irritability of a bull, and flapped and shivered with the twitchiness of a bird. A pair of reflective shades almost rammed into my face.
“What are you doing in here!?” he yelled. “There’s a cockatrice in the house! Get out now! Now, now, now!”
“It’s dead,” I said flatly.
“Cockatrice done wandered outside its range, you hear me? This ain’t no place to be hangin’ around.”
“And why on earth would a cockatrice come this far out, smart guy?” I said, starting to flare up around the cheeks. “Don’t they keep to themselves? Do you go around every week to give them a seminar on stranger danger? I mean what, exactly, do you do?”
The Monster Catcher just shrugged, rattling everything from neck beads to the rods tied into his tail. “I’ve watched creatures like that for years, and even I don’t have a clue what goes on in their heads.”
At this, I stomped a hoof. I was feeling the ache in my bones, and the weight of the day was starting to strain my back. “I’m telling you, for Pete’s sake! It's dead.”
“Now hold on a second!” The Monster Catcher reared up and waved his forelimbs at me. “You can’t just jump in here, all gobby and goody-goody, and try to do my job for me! That’s outside your jurisdiction. That’s disrespectin’ demarcation. You gotta get out while you’re still ahead, son.”
The wind went out of me. I tried to haul my rear legs past him, but then he stuck a leg out to block me.
“Hey!” I almost fell backwards and over. “You just said I gotta get –”
“I’m doin’ mah job, buddy! Now where’s that there cockatrice? If it’s dead, where’s the body?”
With a grunt, I pointed at the doorway to the kitchen. At once, he leaped through, making the door bounce off the wall. I heard him scurrying around the room, knocking pans and pots as he went and accompanied every step of the way by that maddening jangle.
“It fell through the floorboards!” I yelled after him.
When I made to leave, Scarlet zipped forwards and blocked my way. The look on his face was one of suspicion and dread; his eyebrow was raised at me, but both eyes were wide open, and he was baring his teeth either to grimace at me or out of shock at the sight of my cold, stony legs dragging behind. His throat was shaking as though forcing words back and forth.
“You fool!” he said once his throat stopped. “Why did you come back in? I looked a right idiot standing next to an empty bush.”
I wasn’t in the mood for explanations, especially not ones delivered to a pony with so little charity, so I just shrugged and glared at him.
“And where’s the Colonel?” he said as though he were cracking a whip.
At this, I took a breath and glared at his gaze until the suspicion drained away, and only the fear was left over. Both eyebrows shot up. He glanced around as though expecting a clue to pop up, and then stared back at me. It was obvious the poor stallion was paddling out of his depth, but I didn't feel like swimming that far out for him.
“You’re going to have to cancel the dinner,” I murmured. “Chartreuse is upstairs. I think he needs help right about now.”
“Chartreuse? What? What do you mean ‘cancel the dinner’?”
“The Colonel is…” I swallowed. “You should go upstairs… The Colonel’s up there too, but –”
Before I could so much as throw myself aside, Scarlet had done so, pushing his way past me and bounding up the stairs two at a time, panting and growling with each stumbled step and fumbled landing. I heard him gallop across the floorboards overhead.
Just then, the Monster Catcher burst back into the hallway. He didn’t seem the least bit bothered by anything he’d just done.
“Where d’you say it was again?” he said.
“Under the floorboards,” I said. “There should be a big hole where it dropped through. You can’t miss it.”
“I ain’t missin’ no hole. It’s the cockatrice tha’s givin’ me trouble. You sure you got it right?”
When I entered the kitchen, there was the scene as I had left it. The pan was lying on the floor where Chartreuse had dropped it. I almost stepped into the hole the cockatrice had left behind it. But when I went right up to the edge of the hole and peered down, I saw only water and the cloudy bottom.
Hastily, I crouched down, trying to see more of the bottom. Beside me, the Monster Catcher shook his head.
“Don’t bother,” he said. “I done tried that already. Nothin’ doin’.”
“Where’s it gone?” I backed into my own petrified legs and fell onto my haunches.
“Think cockatrices have never met that trick before?” He shook his head and folded his wings behind him, knocking a rolled-up net into a saddlebag. “Only a cockatrice fixes what a cockatrice breaks.”
“Then where the blazes is it?”
“You could show a little more courtesy, you know. No need to bite my head off.” He chuckled at this. “For one thing, I have a name. It's Mothy.”
The nerve of this stallion! “Then where the blazes is it, Mothy?”
Mothy grinned and tapped his shades with a hoof. “If it’s smart, a long way away by now. Cockatrices is extra if I can bag 'em.”
The wind was knocked clean out of me. “You mean it’s… it’s… it’s healed itself? But how? How's that even remotely possible? Or fair? I mean, how the heck do you stop something like that? It’s practically… well, unstoppable!”
“S’right.” The grin never left his face.
I wanted to sock him in the mouth right there and then. “Do you realize someone’s died today because of that thing?”
He nodded, the grin fading at once. “The Colonel. I know. I heard everything. May her soul rest in peace. But I got a job to do, and you gotta keep outta my way. You ain’t the only one hurt, you know.”
From upstairs came the screeching wail of Scarlet, and then we heard the shocked yelp of Chartreuse. It tore right through me and scrunched up my chest so badly I had to clutch at it with a forelimb. Gritting my teeth, I stared down at the floor.
“Hell’s bells!” I hissed.
“The Colonel was a good mare,” said Mothy as though nothing had happened. “I’m sorry she’s gone.”
“We came back in.” I hated the matter-of-fact voice he was using, but instantly I regretted my own choice of words. To my ears, it was far more petulant than it seemed in my head.
“Yes,” he said with a sigh. “Yes, you did. And it was stupid. There’s no pussy-footin’ around that.”
“We couldn’t just leave the kid. It would’ve got him.”
“I don’t deny that.”
“And why were you” – I shot a hoof at his chest – “so late anyway? Looking for your shades?”
“Look, buddy…”
“Sauntering in here late as you like, grinning at me like I'm some kind of idiot.” A dam burst in my chest, and before I knew it, I was alive from scalp to waist. “What the heck gives you that right, Mister Professional? What kind of rat-catcher do you think you are? Because let me tell you, if you were this bad in Hippodromos, the authorities would skin you alive!”
“If you must know…”
Here, his mouth was twisted with the effort of spitting the words at me. His reflective face was almost into mine, and I jumped away from the two snarling stallions that I suddenly realized were my reflections in his shades. The life that burned through me was suddenly doused with chilled water, and I almost died there and then.
“If you must know,” he said in a cold voice, “I was out dealin’ with another cockatrice attack on the other side of town. I was this close to losin’ a family of six. So don’t you come at me with the high-and-mighty attitude, boy. You’ve just lost a dinner today. I’ve lost a friend.”
Only then did I register the outbursts of crying and wailing being torn from over our heads. Scarlet’s voice carried through the house, and it sent chills through me. It was a glimpse into someone else’s mind – no, into someone else’s heart – and suddenly I wanted to get out of that house. Whatever did that to a pony, I didn’t want to be close to it.
Moreover, as I looked at Mothy and his downturned mouth under his protective shades, the weight of what I’d just been saying to him tumbled onto my back and threatened to snap my knees. I had no idea what the Colonel had been like moments before I actually met her, never mind years before. How stupid I must have sounded. Me, to act like she’d just popped into existence the moment I’d met her! I burned with the knowledge that all I got out of this was frozen legs. But the Colonel? She must’ve gone out at nights, grown up somewhere, been cheerfully talked about by ponies who walked away from her each day…
Mothy gestured towards the door with a hoof. “Time to go, buddy.”
“NO!” I almost reached a higher octave, and immediately I moderated my tone. “The Colonel… I can’t just leave like that.”
“You’re just in shock. You gotta calm down. You can do that best at home.”
“Forget that! Look –”
After I took a step towards him, one of my frozen legs caught on the edge of a floorboard. With a yell, I went down. I hit the ground hard and moaned with the shock rippling through me.
“There must be something I can do!” I hauled myself up, feeling my face prickle with embarrassment. It had really stung, and now the backlash was making the hit even more unbearable.
“There’s nothin’. Sorry. The best thing you can do is go home and relax. Get a hot chocolate. Read a romance. Treat yourself kindly, you hear? I’ll let Nurse Marshmallow know; she’ll drop by to check on you later.”
“My legs are fine!” I did not look at him, but at the floor.
“Did I say ‘your legs’? I meant she’d check on you, Mister Bravado. A monster attack don’t just leave scars on the body, you know. Now head on out, buddy. You done good, all things considered. But it's time to wind down.”
With a pat on my withers, he marched up the stairs, still jangling, and left me in the hallway.
Not for the last time, I regretted not being able to trust myself. Someone, possibly Scarlet, was going to have to write the poor mare’s obituary. There would be dozens in the town tomorrow, standing by streetlamps or walking down the road or sitting at café tables, with The Equites Chronicle in their hooves or in their saddlebags or on the tabletop before them. The Colonel would haunt the town.
Upstairs, I could hear the wailing sobs of Scarlet. At once, my imagination supplied a pulpit, Scarlet struggling to speak as a crowd of black-dressed onlookers bowed respectfully. I drew back at once. My own grandparents had passed away in another land long ago. Although I knew someone in the world must be losing loved ones practically every time I blinked, that wasn’t a country I ever wanted to visit again.
As I hauled myself out into the sunset, the thorns stretched away beyond. I swear I saw two red eyes peering out at me, but when I turned my head to face the frontier, the eyes were gone.
When I returned home that evening, I went straight for the kitchen and took in my mouth the first saucepan I could find. Every step I took, every flex of my limbs through the cupboard, and every pat of the pan against my other hoof went on as though someone else had taken control. I might have been possessed by a demon. I don't even remember locking the door, but it shuddered against the frame when I went back to check.
Mothy was the best Monster Catcher that Equites had. Having seen him, that was no comfort. Yet in a strange sense, I was glad; my forelegs ached to swing my weapon and swing it hard. Their painful urge would not be denied.
The cold void below my waist burned everything above it. Not once did my heartbeat settle, nor did the room cease to echo with the lonely breaths lurking about my slit of a mouth. My mind crackled and crumpled under the heat of visions: Chartreuse, rushing down the stairs in panic; the statue of the Colonel, preserving her last defiant act with the flail; two red eyes.
Carefully, I guided my stone rear onto the wicker chair of the lounge, and then I settled back with a straining whine.
A creak. A rattle. A click of talons.
I could never tell if these were beyond my shrinking home or between my own ears. There no longer seemed to be any reality even here, the room where I had wiled away ten thousand hours in front of paper and ink.
Absurd, I thought impatiently. Mothy will catch it. The Monster Catcher will end this nightmare. Trust in his expertise.
There might have been a scrabbling at the front of the house. I could never tell. Like the dwindling light of a dying candle, the world beyond my chair began to fade away. Soon, there would only be this room, and that door, and the unseen darkness beyond.
Nevertheless, I remembered the old tales of the cockatrice, which stoked my mind and refused to let the burning die away. Do not sleep, they said. Do not sigh with relief. And remember how the tale always ends.
Finally settled in, I sat back, and I waited, staring at the door.
