The Mare in the Magic Hat

Chapters

Part I: In Which Trixie Has A Strange Encounter
Part II: In Which Trixie Faces the King's Judgement
Part III: In Which Trixie Loses Her Hat
Part IV: In Which Trixie Walks the Lonely Road
Part V: In Which Trixie Finds the First Secret (incomplete)

Part I: In Which Trixie Has A Strange Encounter

Trixie began to say “I knew I should have taken that left turn at Alfalfa-Quirky,” but wisely stopped herself mid-sentence. It was tricky to claim you “knew” something when the rest of you could’ve done with knowing it sooner.

Then again, she was following a guide headed “The Royalle Mappe-Makers’ Union, Mappe 305MD, Fromm the Canter-lotte Archives”. At this particular point in time, wandering down a strange forest road that didn’t fit anything on the picture, she figured that anyone who could spell “map” with an “e” in it had to possess a special kind of incompetence.

Or criminality. No wonder it had been so cheap in the shop. This supposedly ancient document now looked suspiciously like its jaundiced papers were dripping yellow.

In the rain. Because it was raining.

Of course it’s raining, she thought as she tightened her hood around her head and splashed through the road. The Great and Powerful Trixie never gets the road of sunshine and daisies and duckies and bunnies, now does she?

Perhaps it had started all those years ago, when life was younger and fuller and it was still possible to dream of growing up to be a superhero. Years and years of being given socks for her birthday and shoes for Hearth’s Warming, when what she’d really wanted was a perfectly reasonable Power Ponies Ponytropolis Playset with the model city and all three hundred and sixty six collectible dolls from the expanded universe. One would’ve done. One. Even Humdrum would’ve been something.

Up ahead on the side of the road, sheltered under a low branch, a dry mass of black hairs sat twirling its tail contentedly. The creature watched her roll towards it. Trixie stopped, the caravan behind her creaking to a standstill, and glowered at the cat.

“I suppose you think this is funny,” she said.

The black cat blinked up at her.

“Well, go on then,” she said. “Cross paths with the Great and Powerful Trixie. I won’t even notice the extra bad luck. Get it over with.”

She knew it was just her sodden fur talking, but something about the… insouciant way the cat twirled its tail at her was rubbing her the wrong way. The motion also seemed oddly familiar.

“This has not been a good year for me,” she continued while blinking drops off her eyelashes. “Do you know how much of a knife-edge a life on the road is? I do! City ponies think it’s a picnic not having to pay a mortgage for a caravan, but I’d like to see them pay for repairs with magician money. This is my third caravan this year! And that last town didn’t give me enough to oil the axles! That’s modern life for you!”

The cat cocked its head. It mewed. Now that she was giving it a closer inspection, she noticed how thin it looked.

Trixie’s stomach rumbled.

“Sorry.” She shrugged, deflating where she stood. “I’ve got nothing. Are you crossing my path or not?”

The cat mewed again, but its dew-covered ears dropped and hung low on its head.

Trixie sighed. “Listen, I really am sorry. We’re both in the same place. I can’t help you.”

Yet try as she might, she simply couldn’t resist that purring. It was a defeated purr, the feline groan of ever-present but never-ceasing disappointment.

Feeling lower than the puddle she stood in, Trixie added, “Oh, if you insist. Come with me, then. They might have some food at the next village, if we’re lucky. But I’m not much for company on the road.”

She forced her aching limbs back into an amble and moved on. Under the endless creak of wood against wood, she thought she heard the mewing following her.

Your loss, she thought.

“I used to have a cat once,” she said over the rain, which began hammering even harder as though angry at her. “It even looked a bit like you, but mine had a white belly. Actually, I say it was mine, but it used to belong to my Aunt Thorny. She was a Canterlot mare, you know. I was born in Canterlot. But I suppose you don’t know where that is. I’d be surprised if anyone knew where it was, this far away.”

Trixie checked over her shoulder, irritably pulling the hood aside to see better. Under the moving shelter of the caravan, she could just discern the paws stepping easily around the worst of the puddles to keep up.

“Aunt Thorny could’ve left me a fortune,” she continued, surprised at how talkative she suddenly wanted to be. “Or she could’ve given me her mansion. But she had ‘better’ nieces, she said. Two older, well-behaved, gallant nieces, she said. Those were my sisters, you know. Not rowdy little tearaways, she said. Me! A tearaway! I just had an active imagination. It’s not as if the window was that expensive by Canterlot standards.”

Behind her, the cat mewed, though she had no idea if it was out of sympathy or if it was just an attempt to get some food from her.

“All I got was a cat called Fluffy Face. Not that I have anything against cats. The Great and Powerful Trixie could’ve made it work. A nice black cat would’ve made a good familiar spirit. Give me a broom and a cauldron. A witch is kind of like a superhero: funny clothes, special powers, animal motif, dark and gritty tales of good against evil…”

Trixie squinted at a sign looming up ahead: one wooden post with a crudely cut plank nailed to it. Paint’s probably run off by now, she thought gloomily.

“OK, OK, not much like one,” she said. “Not that I had a chance to find out anyway; Fluffy Face ran off a week after I got him. And he took the silverware and half the fine china with him. It was an inside job.”

That was fun to explain to Mom and Dad. It’s not every day a cat burglar leaves a canary as a calling card.

Briefly, she threw back her hood and adjusted the crumpled remains of her pointed hat quickly, before it had time to soak. Her scalp was feeling itchy. Also, the cape under her raincoat was starting to stick to her haunches.

“Well,” she said as she drew level with the sign, “can’t be any worse than this ‘mappe’.”

Part of her hated the sign on sight. Part of her resented having to check anything so shoddy. Part of her resented the very idea that she had to scout this far afield just to get a few innocent gasps anymore, much less a few innocent bits for her trouble.

She was the Great and Powerful Trixie, for crying out loud. When she’d started out, even elderly mares and stallions had gasped and stamped and cheered whenever the lights dimmed and the smokescreen blasted across the stage and she emerged, cape billowing in the subtle and eldritch winds of the quietest fan she could afford. The children, of course, had loved it, stamping and cheering and whispering amongst themselves in excitement.

She shouldn’t be reduced to looking for less and less cynical modern audiences in the boondocks. Not in places where windmills were still considered the peak of technological sophistication. And she certainly should not be reduced to staring at bits of wood that were one crack away from becoming nothing but wet kindling.

The sign said, “YOU ARE LEAVING STONECRAFT.”

“Gee,” she muttered. “Am I? That’s useful to know.”

As she trundled past the sign, she glanced at its rear. Another plank of wood said, “YOU ARE ENTERING STONECRAFT.”

“It doesn’t even say how far the village is from here,” she said. “Amateurs.”

Then again, this was about the level of quality that “village” deserved. Stonecraft had been a street with two rows of houses either side, more like a Wild West timber settlement than a picturesque woodland village of ivy-crept cottages. She could still remember the warnings they’d given about the woodlands beyond, as though she hadn’t heard umpteen different speeches from umpteen different villages already, all along the lines of “if you go down to the woods today…”

And yet every time she’d held her breath in case the bushes rustled and a monster leaped out at her, all that had happened was a nice tree-shaded walk with birdsong accompaniment. It was probably terrifying if you’d lived your entire life in the same square mile of countryside.

At least the rain was easing off to a feeble patter. Trixie looked behind her, and saw the black cat curled up on the driver’s seat of the caravan. She hoped it would get off before they reached the next town; looking like a beast of burden to a moggy was not going to do much for her “mystical master of magicks” persona.

She raised the map to her face. Stonecraft’s forest could have been any of the splodges on it, and none of the dots inside them was labelled “Stonecraft”. She rolled it up and slipped it back into her coat.

“Well, I hope you like aimless wandering,” she said, “because we are lost. Maybe we’ll get some idea of where we are once we clear this wretched forest.”

Resigning herself to a longer trek, Trixie followed the route along its curve, splashing through a road that was not so much riddled with puddles as becoming one gigantic puddle. As she looked around she supposed, in its own dank, mossy way, that the forest was beautiful. Trunks, blackened with moisture, rose up on either side, smothered with primeval green ooze that she guessed some botanist somewhere could gush over.

Hmm, she thought. There is something strangely… spooky about it. Couldn’t you just imagine some ghost floating between those dark trees over there?

To her surprise, the cat screeched behind her. When she turned her head to look – irritably batting the hood aside – she saw the cat streak across to the ferns and vanish. Trixie stopped, as did the creak of her caravan’s wheels.

“Where are you going?” she yelled after it.

On the other side of the road, the bushes rustled. As soon as she heard them, she looked round in time to see the branches settle.

Trixie stared at the spot for a long while. Eventually, she forced herself to continue walking.

I’m only walking alone. It’s just like it was before I met that cat. Except this time her heart gave a pang; she’d been abandoned, right when she’d gotten used to having someone else around to talk to. Even if its only conversational contribution would’ve been “meow”.

Besides, she was recalling exactly what the villagers had said this particular time: something about a “sorceress ogre”, a shape-shifting monster that was said to live in a magnificent castle deep in the forest. Probably stolen, they’d said, or gotten by eating the previous owner.

They said she ate children of all species, but was fond of foals. More to the point, she’d been known to make off with mares and stallions whenever the fancy took her.

Very, very slowly, Trixie summoned a little drop of telekinetic magic. She focused on the inside of her caravan, on a box amid boxes, and more specifically on the fireworks lurking deep inside. They were more like sparklers than true fireworks and were only likely to scare rather than burn – one unfortunate foal’s birthday party had long ago taught her that lesson – but anything that made escape easier was good by her lights.

The rain continued to hammer on her hood and coat, soaking into her scalp and flanks.

No, she thought angrily. No jumped-up bogeymare is going to get the drop on me, the Great and Powerful Trixie! I dealt with Ursas and Amulets and Manticores in the wider world beyond this forest! I have bested Princesses, befriended mages of prodigious magic, and thwarted common criminals and eldritch abominations alike! And I’ll have you know I am an alumnus of Celestia’s School For Gifted Unicorns!

True, I was the problem rather than the solution some of the time… and had some help on one or two of those… and I never really graduated…

But I remain the Great and Powerful Trixie! No force in Equestria or beyond it shall thwart my duty to the paying audiences of the world –!

Her hoof met a tripwire under the puddle.

She yelped. The world blurred. She shot upwards. When she came to, the forest and the road were half-covered by criss-crossing lines and she felt tightening ropes all around her, pressing into her spine and legs and head, curling her up.

Trixie dangled from a vine-woven net, hanging from a line suspended between two trees either side of the road. The lot must’ve been hidden under the dirt and the water. Heart sinking, and head still swimming from the sudden perspective shift, she looked down.

The caravan was in the middle of the road. Around it, emerging from bushes and ferns and tall grasses and mud, small figures prodded the thing with flint spears. One or two had on masks and headdresses that, from a distance, looked like arts and crafts projects scavenged from the leaf litter.

Three strode up to her shadowy reflection in the sodden road, two flanking the one leader. Their upturned glares caught the grey light of the clouds, and as she wriggled around to get a better look, she saw a stumpy hoof point up at her. Its owner shouted something in an obnoxiously squeaky voice.

“Oh no,” she groaned. “Not this. Anything but this.”

They were foals. They were all foals.

None of them looked pleased to see her.

Part II: In Which Trixie Faces the King's Judgement

Of course, I haven’t really just been captured by a bunch of foals, Trixie thought desperately. This is clearly nothing but a childish prank.

All around her, the threads of the net bounced her up and down with every flap her captors took. She hung – rather ignominiously, the critic in her head thought – from a long vine supported at each end between two flying pegasus fillies. They both had green face paint on them, giving them the tribal look of a “cowponies and buffalo” game gone wrong. More to the point, neither of them looked in the mood to let her go.

The caravan of foals pushed ahead of her and marched in her wake. In both directions were angry, scowling faces along the lines of their two pegasine comrades.

“Ha, ha, ha,” she said gamely, in the special manner of any adult trying to humour a far-too-dedicated child actor. “Yes, you have captured I, the Grrrreat and Powerful Trrrrixie! Well done! You know, not many have managed to ensnare the fine magician unawares… and you are no exception! You passed the test! Very droll, and all that! Now let me out.”

They continued marching through the forest. Having left the road long ago, she started wondering if her caravan was just going to sit in the rain until she got back. Assuming, of course, she got back.

Pah! Of course I shall. One does not think such paranoid thoughts when one is a master at the art of escapology.

Provided I’m the one setting up the trap, you mean?

“This is all very clever,” she said, “but you don’t have to pretend anymore. It’s a good game, whatever it is. Fair play.”

A few faces before and behind her scowled all the harder. Disappointingly, no one spontaneously said, “All right, joke’s over. You’re a good sport, Miss Trixie. Here’s a few bits for your trouble.”

Their adornments – such as they were, being mostly twigs and leaves – must have been scavenged from the forest floor; even as she watched, the ferns they waded through had the same spiky design as the ones wrapped around that earth filly’s head and used by that unicorn colt as a neckerchief and woven into the skirt of the pegasus… Filly? Colt? Hard to tell on the one with the eyelashes but the square muzzle.

“What is it, money?” Trixie fumbled through her coat pockets. “I’ve got a shiny penny somewhere. A full pocket of the things, in fact. Get yourself some nice clothes, if you know where the nearest charity shop is. It’ll be my treat.”

One of the pegasi carrying her chose that moment to stick out a tongue at her.

Trixie’s patience, already crumbling under the constant bouncing of the net, fell to pieces utterly. The last time she’d been on the wrong end of a protruding tongue, she’d been too busy wiping tomato off her face and trying not to slip on the splattered juice across the stage. And there’d been laughing. And booing. And hisses.

Admittedly, that was some time ago, but when you stare at the abyss and the abyss tosses fruit at you, the memory of the depths comes surging back like a dark tidal wave.

She glared at the surrounding columns of blackened bark and spongy moss. “Seriously, this isn’t funny now! I know you’re out there! Tell your fillies and colts to unhand me this instant, or I swear by the Eight Points of the Royal Compass Ploy, you’ll live to regret this! Don’t you know who I am!? Of all the shoddy, unfriendly receptions I’ve had in my entire life –”

They entered a clearing. Trixie’s jaw stopped in mid-complaint.

Where once the forest had been soaked with shadows and squelched underfoot, now it opened to a near-heavenly glow that drummed with each synchronized step. The marching foals spread out before her, and emerging from the forest around them were little huts. Each one sagged with the weight of greenery squishing itself on top like moss-covered boulders, bulging out and staring with empty sockets which presumably stood in for windows and doors. Torches burned on the tops of poles, bathing the scene in unnatural hues.

More feral foals surged out of their dens, ants swarming around a prize catch. Trixie tried to keep her outer extremities away from them, a tricky feat in an all-encompassing net while little hooves prodded her and little voices jabbered and whooped in excitement.

Everywhere she looked, they had everything: A line of vines, each supporting little leaf-woven vials like grotesque Hearth’s Warming decorations.

“Oh dear,” she said.

A pile of kindling, over which a skewer lay waiting to be turned on a spit.

“Oh my,” she whispered.

A lone colt, his horn aglow while he tied flint axe-heads to smooth poles of black wood.

“Oh no,” she squeaked.

A timber throne, tall enough for a Princess to rest her back against and to spread out her wings too: so many curvy and face-like carvings competed for space that the wood appeared to be haunted by a village of ogres.

Sitting on the throne was a little colt. A twine crown sat askew on his head.

“Oh, come on,” Trixie groaned.

Predictably, the two pegasi – still bearing her – took her over to him, whereupon they stopped a good leap away. Both simply let go.

Trixie hit the hardened earth and fell onto her front. No matter how much she strained against the bonds, she felt her own torso crushing her limbs beneath her. The lost circulation stung all along each leg.

The King – What else, Trixie thought – raised a hoof. Behind her, the mob – Tribe, she corrected – fell silent at once.

One of the earth foals of indeterminate gender leaped between them, bowing to the King. Trixie noticed a couple of unicorn colts either side of her, not so casually hefting little flint spears. The urge to roll her eyes was swiftly countermanded; they were exactly the sort of stiff-backed, thickset foals who’d grow up to lurk in alleyways and dangle innocent victims by their ankles.

“Presenting!” shouted the earth foal. “His Mega Royal Super Awesome Ultra Highness! King of the Trees and Everything! Lord of Good Who Beat Up the Big Pig and Fought a Army! He’s a King! Bow Down Unto Him!”

Somehow, Trixie could actually hear the capital letters slotting into place. She got a kick from one of the unicorn colts.

“Hey, you!” he rumbled. “He said bow down.”

“In point of fact,” Trixie snapped, “I’ve arrived pre-bowed, thank you for nothing. Now get this wretched net off me.”

The colt kicked her again; not that he could do much damage, but it had the effect of a horsefly ignoring the first ten head-flicks and landing anyway.

Helplessly, he shrugged at the King. “She’s not bowing,” he said.

Scowling, the King leaned forwards on his chair. Goodness knew where he’d got the idea of the traditional kingly look from, but the ermine cape, the jewelled sceptre, and the flowing regal beard would’ve looked a lot more imposing if they’d actually been made of the requisite materials and not e.g. from whatever happened to be lying on the ground at the time.

He stroked the fronds of his beard and a couple of spiders fell out. “Fass-kinating,” he said. “She doesn’t want to bow to the King.”

“What are you talking about?” Trixie tried to stand up, met the limits of the net halfway up, and collapsed onto her hocks again. “I can’t do anything else in this ridiculous thing! Listen, if this is some kind of juvenile prank, I’m already bored and tired of it. Take this net off or – so help me – I’ll come over there and make you.”

Even as she burst under the words, however, the rest of her shrank back from the reality slowing dawning on her. Those huts, the lines and spears and vials: all of it looked a little too dedicated to be some kind of playground. Three pegasi flew up to the vials and untangled them from the vine, and then tipped the contents down their throats.

What is that? An excellent way of catching drinking water? A way to moisten whatever treats they’d stuffed inside? And there are dozens of the things up there…

The King whistled at her. “Hey! Over here! You’re supposed to be listening to me!”

Trixie opened her mouth to retort – Hold on. Perhaps playing along with this… charade… will get me out of here faster. Just humour the little blights – and closed it again.

“That’s right.” The King batted his sceptre idly against his other legs, tapping out some random rhythm only he understood. “OK. Now I ask you a question, and you say yes or no if it’s a yes-or-no question, otherwise you gotta say something else. Now, what business have you in my forest, tresserpasser?”

“I think you mean ‘tresspasser’ –” The other colt kicked her. “All right. That’s it. My business is nothing that concerns you foals, understood? I was merely on my way to the next village over from Stonecraft. Anyway, what – pray tell – is it to you whether I come and go as I please? That was a public road.”

“Hmm,” said the King. “You talk funny. What’s your name?”

“My name? You really don’t know who I am?”

“Dummy. That’s why I asked. Who are you, really?”

Right. I’ve had just about enough. Rearing up – and hitting the net and flopping back down again – Trixie cleared her throat.

“Me? You dare to ask me who I am? I am the cape that billows in the storm! I am the smokescreen that explodes on the mirror of life! I… am no less than she, the crafter of miracles, the creator of marvels: the Grrrreat and Powerful Trrrrixie! Not a mare nor a stallion lives who does not tremble in awe at those words! To utter them is to summon a world of wonderment and impossibility! So I ask you in turn, boy –” Cruel as it was, she enjoyed the slight twitch in his limbs at her emphasis “– who are you to presume to question me?”

She hadn’t meant it to explode with the old boastfulness. In truth, she’d tried to keep a lid on such language for years, ever since the… unfortunate incident. But she swore she was getting rashes from the ropes, and in any case her patience had rubbed off somewhere along the journey through the forest. Any foal stupid enough to keep up a joke this long needed no subtlety.

Unfortunately, the King looked no less keen than before. If anything, his irritating kingly face deepened with a solemnity that would’ve worked, if only he’d had a stronger jaw and about twelve years of roughing it in Canterlot.

“In-tressing,” he said. “A bit very wordy, but I thought it was completely a speech, yes. And you know who I am. I’m the King. This is my kingdom, see?”

Trixie followed the sweeping gesture of his stubby limb, which – had it been longer – would’ve encompassed the huts, the silent crowd, the vines, the spit, and the spears.

“School project, is it?” she said sourly.

“What’s a school?” whispered one of the watching foals.

Trixie felt ice creep along her spine. Surely, even that half-street of a village had some kind of learning establishment? She’d been to settler towns you could spit across – and, with the prompting of the locals and much self-disgust, she had done too – and they still had the old-timey schoolmarm somewhere to teach the ABCs and get romantically involved with the nearest sheriff.

Either these foals really were committed to the “undiscovered ponies” role, or some village somewhere had recently lost a part of its youth. Worryingly, she tried to remember if she’d seen so much as a small face back in Stonecraft. Somehow, she couldn’t remember anything but a few mares and stallions scattered here and there…

“Uh,” she said, trying to sound more reasonable in spite of the next kick from one of the colts. “Haven’t you got homes to go back to?”

“Yes. These are our homes,” said the King matter-of-factly. “I built mine in just one day because I’m good at it. I built some others in just one day too.”

“No, I mean your real homes.”

“You’re funny. Su’jects, laugh at the funny mare.”

Little voices gave murmuring chuckles, as though teacher had insisted under pain of detention that everyone applaud the headmaster who’d just wandered in. The ice along her spine began clawing deep between her shoulder blades.

“Look,” said Trixie, trying to back off in a net that kept tangling up her legs, “this has all been an impressively drawn-out experience, but I have prior engagements, and I’m afraid our show-and-tell session will have to be postponed, so if it’s all the same to you –”

With a yelp, she tripped and fell onto her haunches. Up ahead, the King waved a hoof lazily.

Foals surrounded her, in all directions but the one where the King sat on his throne. She didn’t need to turn her head to see all of them; the ring of pricking spearheads pressing against her neck did the job. She didn’t dare turn her head. She didn’t dare move at all.

Chills ran through her body. Even the idea that this was play no longer comforted her. Those flintheads were like knives.

“We found some very in-tressing things in your big wheelie-box-house,” said the King, and as he spoke, other foals came up to him and knelt down to offer –

My crystal ball! My tarot cards! My top hat! My cane! My trick coin box! Get your grubby little paws off my stuff!

“They look like magic,” continued the King.

His kingly frown sharpened when he narrowed his eyes and pouted. On any other day, she would’ve laughed. As it was, she felt the urge stop around the point her neck became a flint collar with a wooden ruff attached.

“Uh…” she said. “Uh…”

“It’s cool stuff,” said the King. “I like this one. I want a cape like this. This looks like a king’s cape.”

Aha. Therein lies a pressure point for one to prise open the heart. School drama club, don’t fail me now.

Trixie ventured a careful nod, dipping her chin without in any way moving her neck. “Treasures for His Royal Majesty!”

The King’s scowl broke into wide-eyed blinking. “What? For me?”

“Oh yes, Your Majesty,” said Trixie, and in her head a little Trixie giggled and tried not to collapse. “Have you heard, Your Majesty – though of course it is naive of me to ask such a silly question! – of the great Princess of the Land of Equestria?”

“Huh? No. You made that up.”

“Oh no, Your Majesty. Equestria is very real” – I can’t believe I’ve just had to say that; what is going on here? – “and it lies beyond your forest realm. For you see, I am merely a subject from that beautiful country, a royal subject sent by none other than the greatest and fairest Princess you would ever lay your royal eyes on.”

“Wow, yeah?” His voice shot up with beaming curiosity; evidently, he was informed enough to know where a princess would fit in the grand scheme of things. “What’s her name?”

“Why, no less than the mellifluous Celestia, of course.” The pricking flints loosened around her neck; one or two voices murmured in interest. “Yes! Princess Celestia of the Land of Equestria! Naturally, she has heard of the magnificence of your kingdom and is impressed by what she hears. She is keen to make your acquaintance, Your Majesty, but – Princess as she is – I fear she cannot meet you in person. Alas! Calamnity, calumnity! Such is the world we live in!”

No mistaking it this time: the King leaned forwards so far he should’ve toppled out of his chair. All but two of the spears around her rose away from her throat, and now she could wave her limbs and dart her hooves here and there to make a point. Only the two colts-who-would-grow-up-to-lurk-in-alleyways remained unmoved.

“As her humble but skilled court magician,” she continued, trying not to roll on the ground laughing, “I naturally volunteered to be her envoy – her messenger,” she added, feeling “envoy” was a bit advanced for someone who was still at the waddling stage of leg development – “and forth have I brought: the gifts of royalty, destined for royalty!”

“Liar,” muttered a pegasus filly. “You were nowhere near us.”

“A terrible tragedy! Humble as I am, I was soon lost amid the strange and unnatural trees of the road, and had no choice but to throw myself on the lifeline of fate.”

“We jumped you easy,” said one of the colts, smirking at her.

“I was under orders not to attack anyone,” said Trixie through gritted teeth.

“We stole-ed all the gifts and things,” said an earth colt.

“And whose fault was that?” snapped Trixie.

“Weeelllll, you can’t be much of a magician reeeaaallly,” said an earth filly, “if we jumped you and stole-ed your –”

“Excuse me, little madam! Nobody asked you!”

The ring of foals rushed backwards; she hadn’t liked that “not much of a magician” crack.

“Fass-kinating,” said the King, and all about the clearing, the foals crept back into the ring formation to surround her. “Your story is heared by all here. Now I must think it over if it is true or if it is not true. Thinks… Thinks…”

They all stared at him as he stroked his beard, which dropped a pebble, a bit of webbing, and an earwig that scurried down the throne. Trixie noticed that he in turn was staring at the prizes pinched from the caravan.

Taking her time, she extended a foreleg as far as it would go. She almost reached a full stretch before the net’s vines strained against the back of her cannon. So there’s some give, at least. Good. Now, if I try to move the joints at the end rather than the whole leg… ah, there we go, just like your standard straightjacket escape act… It’ll look a bit silly, but I think the boat’s sailed on that front…

Unfortunately, one of the offering foals chose that moment to become curious. She peered down at her little box and nudged the lid up to get a peep inside, resembling – as it turned out – Pandora the Nosy Parker of pegasine antiquity, who’d done something similar just before making the world a considerably less cheerful place to live in.

Faint blue wisps curled about her muzzle. She sneezed.

Trixie’s special blue powder spilled out and hit the ground. A bang later, the King vanished behind a bush of smoke.

Foals screamed all around her. Trixie’s annoyance at this waste of smokescreen jumped backwards in shock under the noise. Unicorns snorted in alarm, pegasi darted into the sky like startled birds, and earth foals reared and gave a series of squealing neighs.

“What’s wrong!?” she shouted over the noise. “Don’t panic! It’s just a bit of smoke!”

On reflex, her ears pressed hard against her head as though ducking for cover. Her heart was sinking. She wasn’t used to such loud cries, except for the squeals of foalish delight, and that sound hadn’t crossed her ears in years.

By the time the smoke faded away and the King emerged coughing and spluttering, the spears encircled her utterly. Except, this time, none came so much as a foot towards her. Scowls were replaced by wide eyes, and mouths twisted in an attempt to crawl around to the backs of their owners’ heads.

The King coughed his last, and whipped a hoof at her.

“Sorc’ry!” he shouted. “I knowed it! I knowed it as soon as I seed all the stuff you had! You’re the evil sorc’ress ogre! The wickedest, most evilest shape-shifter sorc’ress ogre!”

Trixie glanced around at the masks of terror behind rows of spear shafts. “There’s no need whatsoever to be afraid! It’s not sorcery. Haven’t you seen stage magic before?”

“You said you was a magician! We all heared you! I’m the King, and I say she’s guilty! Throw this stuff into the Water! It’s all got bad magic in.”

“Now come on!” Trixie’s voice rose despite her mental attempts at calming it. “Those things are expensive. You can’t really throw it all away. I order you not to throw it away, or… or you’ll feel the back of my hoof!”

The words hardened their faces, returning the scowls. Leaning back, the King edged away from her.

“Please?” she said.

“Then before you’ve done that,” the King said, “throw the sorc’ress ogre in after them!”

“WHAT!?”

“Yes! And tie her up! Make sure she can’t move anything, or else she might swim or magic her way out of there! Just throw her all the way in!”

Trixie spluttered; this was now officially the world’s worst prank. “But I’m not a sorceress ogre, whatever that is! I swear! I really am just a stage magician.”

Behind the spears, more foals closed in. Trixie tried to back away; they had coils of vines drooling in their mouths or levitating by their horns.

“Take her to the Waters!” shouted the King, losing the imperious edge to a notable squeak. “Now! Now! Now! Before she magics us!”

“I’m not – Are you listening to me?”

The foals piled on top of her. On the scale of offensive manoeuvres, they had all the tactical thinking of an avalanche and the sundry strength of thrown pillows, but they swarmed like army ants on a fallen chick. As soon as Trixie pushed away one lot, another group collapsed and pressed her leg onto the ground. By the time she’d untangled one vine, someone flicked her horn sharply – she gritted her teeth at the sting quivering through her head – and more coils tightened across her chest.

Even throwing her whole body against them only bowled a few of them over before she hit her jaw on the ground; she’d barely scrambled and crawled worm-like out of the pile when they swarmed over her again and sat along her back.

Trixie sucked in as much air as she could before they had a chance to cover her nostrils, and held her breath.

What did I do to deserve this? She gagged at a vine stuffed into her mouth like a bridle’s bit. I woke up this morning in a good mood, I did a few Manehattan card tricks, and I got a nice cress sandwich to go. At what point did Fate say, “Hey, I know, let’s re-enact The Lord of the Horseflies; now all I need is a decent pig”?

Under the net, she felt her legs snap together and vines squeeze her skin. As one, the foals drew back. They’d been thorough; even her spine could barely twitch for all the rigid lines running up and down them, and across her torso.

And they were tight. She was still holding her breath, her lungs as billowed as possible, and she felt the burns along her flanks with the effort.

While two pegasi lifted up the net so it fell away, the King hopped off his throne. His leaf-sewn cape flapped about until he landed. He strode forwards, using the sceptre as a cane every other step.

“Any last words?” he said. “Evil sorc’ress ogre? You’ve got to say ‘yes’.”

“Mmnf, mmnf, mmnf-mmnf!” was all Trixie could manage. What on earth has gotten into them? What’s a sorceress ogre? Why do I get the feeling I’m not going to find out?

“Oh yeah.” The King stopped before her. “It’s a bit sad. Those last words aren’t very good. But you are completely evil, so I guess it’s OK. To the Waters!”

That’s just a name, right? Trixie grunted as the foals heaved and carried her aloft. Maybe it won’t be so bad. Maybe it’s just a fancy way of saying they’ll dunk me in a swimming pool, or throw water balloons at me.

Water balloons might be better, right?

Part III: In Which Trixie Loses Her Hat

The lake was close enough for Trixie to see her terrified reflection in it.

Beneath her, the tribe of feral foals held her up, little hooves pressing into her folded legs. One throw would be all it needed. Slowly, she let out her breath, and, as best she could around her gag, sucked up another big gulp of air.

“Now,” shouted the King in his regal squeal; she glared at the spot to her left where he stood on the bank, puffing himself up for the big speech, “as is custom’ry for the ex’cution of the evil ogre sorc’ress, I say to my Su’jects that the Waters will drown her and melt her, ‘cause water kills evil sorc’ress ogres, and she won’t come back and we’ll all live happily ever after, and I am the King, so I get to throw a big party saying what a good thing it is that we no longer have a big evil to worry about, ‘cause she’ll be in the Waters! And I checked, and she can’t get out the Waters ‘cause she’ll melt, only if she don’t melt, we’ll be watching and if she comes up, we’ll throw a spear at her, but not too many ‘cause we might need them later in case our backs go all scratchy…”

As he prattled on under the loud conviction that his voice could never be heard for long enough, Trixie strained against the vines tightening across her neck. She gave up and just swivelled her eyes about instead.

All along this side of the lake, pegasus foals hovered over the waters to watch. Meanwhile, other foals spaced themselves out along the opposite bank. No joy there, then.

“… and then we’ll go up to the evil sorc’ress ogre’s castle, and we’ll turn it into the world’s biggest playground, and then we’ll play tag, but I can’t be tagged because I’m the King…”

It wasn’t a lake, she realized. The Waters stretched across this part of the forest, as though the soil and the trees had simply dumped themselves on top of a mirror. Trunks and grass stems rose up from the middle of the stretch: too many for a mere lake, but plenty for a flood-land. As she squinted at the trunks in particular, she noticed white trails where the water ran along a current.

A river, then? Or a swamp being fed by one?

“… and we’ll throw the stuff in after her, although if she’s dead, then the magic might go dead too, so maybe it’s OK if we keep it – I really like the cape – but if it’s got bad magic in still, then maybe we’ll find a book to get rid of it, maybe beat it out…”

What really stood out, though, was the water. It was bright blue.

Not the usual blue of ocean water. Not even the blue a river might, in theory, achieve with a tank full of dye poured into it. Trixie saw rivers on her travels, and they could reflect the colours of sky and land perfectly, or they could be tinged green with plant life, or they might even be tomato-soup-red with whatever industrial run-off had recently been dumped there.

Whereas this was like looking into a can of paint. Mirror though it was, it was one with a heavy blue tinge. If she was thrown in, she wouldn’t so much “splash” as “gloop”.

“… and that’s how I was from a little baby with a smelly old cat to a King, ‘cause I made friends with another king and tricked me onto his carriage and killed the last sorc’ress ogre, and I know you think otherwise, and you’re stupid. ‘Cause I’m the King now. So I say throw her in, you throw her in, OK? OK, you can throw her in now.”

Trixie yanked her front away from the foals, but the vines cut across her and she flopped onto the waiting hooves. As one, they drew back.

“Mmnf! Mmnf! Mmmmmnnnnf!”

They threw her into the air. Trixie had enough time to see her own wide-eyed stare coming towards her out of the blue.

She closed her eyes and held her breath.

Chills smacked her across the face. Her ears heard the surface splatter before the muffled squelch of the gunk sucked at them. Dry under her vines, her wrapped skin burned while her exposed head froze. Rolling balls of currents oozed over her swollen cheeks.

Thrashing did nothing. She could barely writhe without the vines snapping her into ramrod stiffness. Her rear legs bounced off the bed, and her chest hit the rock next. She felt herself settling like a stick on the bottom.

As expected, the chills subsided while she got used to the new sensations. Morbid curiosity forced her eyes open. Despite an initial sting, she squinted and soon saw a slight blackness where the rocky bottom immediately gave way to the blue fog. She could barely see a couple of inches beyond her.

AAAAAAnnnnnnnnd… now, she thought, willing some life back into her cramped legs.

Muscles relaxed along her limbs and chest. Swelling her cheeks, she eased out the breath she’d been holding. Sickly blue bubbles quivered their way past her face. All the while, she felt the tight bonds draw away from the skin, which felt the first trickles of cold sliming in.

Ha! Always specialize, they said. Just stick to conjuring tricks, they said. Who’s laughing now, Miss Flashbang? Mister Abecedaria? That… one heckler in Manehattan, whoever he was!?

Her spine writhed and she eased out of the bonds. Shaking the last of the vines off her rear leg, she stretched out as though her entire body was taking a first breath. Never had she thought she’d miss that liberating joy so much. It was fresh air.

Her lungs gave a spasm. Underwater escapes hadn’t come up often in her career.

Desperately, the Great and Powerful Trixie threw herself into a vaguely remembered front crawl. She didn’t care if she seemed to be flailing more than flowing. Since she couldn’t see anything other than sheer blue, her memory steered her forwards and veered her to what she felt was her sharp right, hopefully into the current.

A black sphere rose out of the blue and clanged.

When Trixie stopped rubbing her scalp, she glared at the metal jug. Lying on the dark rock of the bottom, its handles were curly and gave the impression it was putting its rounded hooves on its hips in a particularly campy fashion. A cork acted as a stopper, yet there was a pointed projection on the rim where the liquid contents were meant to pour out.

They’re not throwing my stuff in here already!? Wait… No, that’s not one of mine. Mine doesn’t have that dent in it.

Who cares? thought a much more pragmatic part of her brain. Let’s just get out of here.

Warnings ran along her hindbrain as her lungs became sore with straining. Remind me what my record is for underwater breath-holding? Two and a half minutes? Three? What is it for breath-holding while swimming with a concussion?

The claws of failure gripped her head, threatening to squeeze. She gave in to the screams coming from her chest and threw herself upwards, rushing through endless blue that was suddenly a lot chillier than she swore it was a minute ago. Her lips broke apart without even waiting for the surface…

She broke through and gasped greedily. Warm rain patted her on the face.

Trixie blinked the last of the drops out of her eyes and stared round. Trunks rose from the flat surface, trunks rose from the banks, trunks rose in the dark depths of the forest all around. No foals, though. She’d avoided them altogether.

She’d gotten lost, true. But she’d avoided them.

Spluttering and spitting as she went, Trixie paddled towards the shore. Fresh as her limbs felt, her mind wasn’t in the mood for learned swimming strokes. Anything would do.

Soon, she splashed her way up the bank, still spluttering and spitting bits of blue onto the grassy slope. She felt oddly light-headed…

At once, she patted her head. She patted it again. She frantically slapped her scalp with both hooves.

“Darn those little brats!” she hissed. “My hat! Where’s my hat?”

Nothing on the surface. There was no way she was going to dive back in for a hat. One time in that choking slick of a swamp had been quite enough.

“They wouldn’t dare steal it,” she said, “would they?”

Trixie patted more of the blue gunk out of her ears. As she watched, trails of it thinned down the bank and then slid into the waters, like embarrassed snakes inching away.

Oh, they would. Those were not normal foals. Something’s messed with their heads, or someone. Sorceress ogre, indeed! But what could possibly do such a thing?

Who cares? I want my hat back. And whatever got into them, the result is they still owe me a caravan full of stock!

Her ears twitched.

Seconds later, a troupe of feral foals rushed along the bank. Earth foals bit down hard on their spear shafts. Unicorns levitated axes and swung them at the innocent air. Pegasi ran in pairs and held vine nets between them, ready to throw.

“Search the Waters! Search the Waters! Make sure she doesn’t come out!”

Soon, two of the pegasi skidded to a halt, leaving their comrades to gallop further along the banks. Both of them swivelled their necks, scanning the surface with beady-eyed frowns.

Trixie peeped over the grasses at the retreating foals, and then crouched again to watch the pegasi. Barely feet away; she could have pounced on them. Her tail curled like a tiger’s.

“Hm,” she murmured.

They were still intent on the water. Turning the other way, she crept through the green cloud of the undergrowth, trying not to wince at the mud encrusting her hooves. Her cape snagged on a low branch – irritably, she elbowed the offender off – and she sidestepped around an ordinary puddle of water, slinking through the shadows as she went.

It was a bad time to realize she hated the outdoors.

Now, the scratch marks on that trunk look familiar… and that’s where they trampled the grass down on their way to the Waters… so this left turn must lead… aha…

Creeping on her belly under the cover of her soaked raincoat, Trixie eased her way through the ferns as cautiously as an adder around fox burrows. Mud and leaves and twigs caked her coat so thoroughly that she was sure she blended in from all angles, invisible even if a pegasus had hovered over her and looked directly downwards. If she was going to get muddy, she might as well make the most of it.

The face paint was proving a bit much, though. Mud masks were strangers to her cheeks; spas happened to other ponies.

Trixie stopped. She flicked her gaze left and right. Two earth foals approached from either side. Urgently, she cast about for the nearest trunk.

Both foals reached the muddy lump… and walked right over it. Neither so much as noticed the crumpling under each step. They carried on.

From the branches overhead, spread-eagled between two sturdy-looking boughs, the coatless Trixie watched them go. Moving quickly and silently helped a lot on the stage, but she still had to twitch with the effort of keeping her panting breath down to a mere gasping.

Trixie slid back down the trunk, let go, and ducked under the coat again. She crawled up the ridge.

Let’s see if we can learn anything from the Camp of Lost Foals.

Over the top, she saw the rounded huts and the burning torches on their poles. Creasing her face against the bright flickering, she could make out rough shapes in the clearing.

My goodness! she thought. It really is a mini-civilization. There’s a foal chopping up wood with an axe, and there’s a foal trying to light a fire with two flints and their sparks, and there’s… astounding! They’ve built a forge. A clay-brick forge, right in the middle! Or is that a bonfire? So… the bricks shield the flames?

Overhead, pegasi untwined the leaf-made vials from the vine lines. One yelped and dropped theirs, which splattered on the exposed ground below. Blue paint splattered the instant it hit.

That strange water again. It must be; it’s the exact same blueness.

Trixie winced as other foals around the clearing quaffed the water in the vials and threw the emptied results aside. Urging herself not to spit in case any drops still remained from her dunking, she scanned the throne. Predictably, the King had already thrown himself onto it.

Around him, his “Su’jects” babbled excitedly, though from this distance and with all of them speaking at once, no words met her ears. They passed around boxes and capes and hats and wands and cards, as though everyone’s birthdays had come all at once.

Why, those thieving little monsters, she thought. It was all she could do not to rise up and shout there and then.

“I told you!” shouted the King, shutting the horde up at once. “I told you twice! The evil sorc’ress ogre is dead and getting deader all the time we’re talking here! Everyone knows sorc’ress ogres go fizzle in water! Have you seed her come out?!”

One of his subjects bowed low enough to head-butt the earth. “No, but that doesn’t mean she’s dead. If she fizzle, then where’s the fizzle? They don’t just disappear, do they?”

Most of the foals backed away from the ill-gotten accoutrements and accessories. It was, Trixie suspected, the same all over; despots could shout and pound ideas into heads until their subjects recited them whole, but the poor ponies’ paranoid hearts just pounded all the harder. Especially when it came to beings a bit more magical than they feared. She could almost see the nightmares in their fire-lit eyes, of a sorceress rising like a sea serpent out of the waters she’d vanished under.

“Of course, of course,” said another foal, nodding fast enough to crack his neck. “She’s dead. It just would’ve been nice to see her dead. That’d prove it really hard. They can’t come back to life… uh, can they?”

And that’s another thing, Trixie thought. Foals really need to see the monster defeated for good. That’s what heroes are for. Or else there’s a chance they’ll come back in the sequel…

Briefly, she remembered sitting up in a big bed, leaning forwards and staring under the lamplight at the words on the page. The pictures came afresh in her mind: knights in shining barding; cone-hatted princesses in stone block towers; dragons and ogres, rearing to pounce.

“I’m gonna prove she’s been deaded!” said the King sullenly. Across the clearing, his voice echoed among the trees as though they were collectively repeating it back to him. He pointed his sceptre. “Look it!”

Along with the attendant subjects, Trixie followed his sceptre to the troupe entering the clearing. Nothing remarkable stood out, though their hooves dribbled flecks of blue behind them. Then, one of the unicorns levitated something over her head, and Trixie growled.

My hat! That sodden mess is my hat! Curse that water: the stars are coming off. You don’t find hats of that quality outside of Canterlot.

Stopping to bow, the troupe also held up the dripping remnants of her vine bonds. Unexpectedly, they’d entangled a long branch at some point, though she could’ve sworn the bottom of the Waters had been clear. At least, mostly clear.

“Um…” said the head of the troupe, fiddling with his frond skirt.

“See!” said the King. “I keep you all safe, look! She melted! There’s nothing but her hat and her vines. The rest of her turned into a puff! Like that! Puff! Puff!”

Hoofsteps approached; Trixie spotted a pair of unicorns clambering up the slope towards the edge of the grasses and ferns. Holding her breath, she backed off a couple of yards, obscuring the little village once more. Barely had she scuttled crab-like to the left when both foreheads crested the ridge. Trixie eased the coat over her face. Her ears turned to follow their steps down the ridge and through the rustling ferns behind her.

At last, she clambered back up, curving around the tree trunk in her path.

“No one seed her climb out,” said one of the troupe while another yanked the branch out of the vines. “But she could’ve magicked herself out.”

Ah, Trixie thought sadly, the young age when magic ponies can do anything and everything. When you could read a book called The Flutter Pony Tales and believe every word of it, right down to the bit about them hiding in the garden. When you could pull doves out of your sleeves, and hear them gasp. When they used to think I was a Princess, with magic that strange…

She sensed the memories settling as gravel over her insides, weighing down her belly and scuffing everything inside. If only she didn’t have to think All those years ago… instead of Only yesterday…

Risking a little exposure, she crawled forwards a couple of elbows and stretched her neck out and her ears up, hungry for more. The undergrowth, sheltering her, ended inches before her hooves. Under the mud mask, her face felt lighter.

“Well…” said the King, whose own face twitched in the presence of all those furrowed brows and pleading stares; evidently, he was absorbing some of the reigning mood, King or no King, “I guess it can’t hurt to check more. If she did climb out, then she might run away, or she might try and get back here.”

Trixie froze. No one had looked in her direction: the wood-cutter was still hefting the axe; the fire-lighter was still striking his flints; a trio of foals crowded around the clay bricks and shielded its unlit kindling from view.

“OK,” said the King. “I think it’s silly, but I’m not you, so what you think is diff’rent. I’ll tell all the Su’jects to hold axe-things and spear-things every day, and if we see the sorc’ress ogre again, they can rush her and go swish-swish, hit-hit! But you got to bring the body back, so we see that she’s been deaded prop’ly. Happy now, Mister Scaredy-Pants?”

“‘m not a scaredy-pants,” muttered the head of the troupe.

“Ha! You so scaredy-pants, your legs run away too, then you look silly!”

Trying not to disturb the coat too much, Trixie shook her head at the mud under her front hooves. Not that this happened very often in Equestria, but it still seemed like a lot of leadership involved smacking the next pony down across the head, even if only verbally. Some rudiments of rude living lingered on even in civilized places, if one knew where to look for it.

Oh yeah. Being big by being bad. Remind you of anyone, Trixie? But she perished the thought. She’d been sure she’d heard voices coming up behind her.

Suddenly shouting, the King added, “OK, everyone! Now we’re going on a bear-hunt! Get the special bear-hunting tools!”

Moments later, half the foals – which still left dozens crowding about the moss-smothered huts – charged off in the opposite direction. The special bear-hunting tools, it transpired, were just really big axes.

Right, she thought, watching them go. That didn’t help very much.

Yet observing the flints spark and the embers scatter over the kindling, she found her mind drifting to the shadows beyond the forest. These foals couldn’t possibly have lived here all their lives. Where were the nearest adults? How had these foals picked up tribal living in the short time they’d spent breathing? And come on: they couldn’t really believe she was an abomination just because of the smokescreen powder. Could they?

The voices were getting closer. She could make out individual words.

Never mind that. What do I do now? I might not be the first pony they’ve trussed up and paraded through the trees. I might not be the last. Foals they may be, but a spear’s a spear. And so long as no one else knows they’re here, and wanders through this neck of the woods, they may well end up losing their neck in the woods too.

Trixie thought back to the village. Stonecraft… had there been any foals the whole time she’d had her caravan parked at the end of the street? Not a single young face crossed her mind. She was sure of it now.

Far below, the foals bearing her caravan goods pulled capes and opened more boxes and whacked the ground with canes and wands that were going to get serious scuff marks. Trixie wished she could rush down there and snatch the lot back, and to heck with any waterworks that resulted.

Not “to heck with any spear-throws that resulted”, of course. Even a foal with a pointed stick tended to command respect, especially when they were, in fact, dozens of foals: dozens of chances of getting hit, then.

So what, exactly, did the parents think? Did they even know? Someone must have put them up to this.

Behind her, the voices continued but grew no louder; they’d presumably stopped to thrash out some particular topic.

Trixie smells something fishy in the woods. And no responsible mare can just leave these foals in the middle of all this, with no parents to look after them. Only a coward would run away from a problem like this. Tis time for a true hero to arise!

Two foals waddled up the slope, squelching an empty coat underfoot.

Part IV: In Which Trixie Walks the Lonely Road

OK, so I’m a coward. I admit it.

Trixie’s conscience gave her a dirty look.

But I’m a coward with no holes in her, see? Anyway, I can think much better a long way away from any chances of having an axe thrown at my head.

Rain hammered the road around her blurring hooves. Onwards she splashed, not daring to look back in case she saw anything that upset her. No sign of the caravan yet; she wasn’t even sure if she was going the wrong way. No sign of the sign, come to that. But then, she might have missed it; she was barely looking up anymore, too busy looking out for tripwires.

Trixie’s conscience, if anything, turned up the heat of its glare.

And yes, it is a shame I’m having to run away from a bunch of little foals, but me? I’m an equal-opportunity coward. I don’t judge by the greatness of their age, but by the strength of their ability to make my life short and interesting.

All she had left was a cape that glued itself to her skin. Sores began erupting along her flanks and thighs: too much running, too much chafing.

Other bits of her mind made menacing gestures in her direction.

All right, all right. I don’t like it either. At least I’m honest this time. That’s an improvement, for a given definition of “improvement”. A few years ago, I wouldn’t have admitted that much. No, I was stupid enough to spread tales of my derring-do and hope none of them came back to dare me to do it. At least I’d admit it now. You’ve got to give me that.

She’d never been given anything else. Spewing hot air about giant bears that she could remove in a puff of smoke… that had once sounded like a good idea, right up until jaws the size of her caravan were spewing more literal hot air back into her face.

She could’ve been a hero. If only… if only…

But therein lay the problem. “If only”. If only history had turned left rather than right, she’d be a rodeo clown with baggy trousers and a drawl. Anything sounded plausible when the words “if only” were tacked on.

The foal had said in her heart, I’m gonna be a hero. Trouble was that the mare coating this heart was saying, I’m gonna get creamed.

By now, her mind almost entirely had her surrounded. No matter how much the remnant of sanity pleaded, its voice in her head was rising along with its chances of getting shanghaied.

Lungs fit to burst, Trixie skidded to a halt, sending a bow wave skimming along the river that had once been a road with mere puddles on it. She massaged her face with both hooves.

All right. All right. I’ll do something. Nothing too risky, though. Maybe I can tell someone, or find a way to send a message out to Equestria. They wouldn’t ignore foals lost in the woods, would they?

Since the remnant of sanity wasn’t completely free of bile, it added; I expect you know where I can find a hero at this hour, then? O Brave Knight of Equestria? Or will you be “Sir” Trixie of Canterlot?

Trixie sloshed up the road. Once more, it curled around and she followed the arc between the darkness of the trees. Overhead, the rainclouds dimmed. Naturally, the daytime glow behind them couldn’t last forever.

Surrounded by encroaching shadows: well, it wasn’t doing her constitution much good. No countryside gal was she; the darkness under the trees was too… empty for her liking. Even a small village would’ve had a helpful lantern or a few lit windows to suggest a world existed at all.

That was probably why the hiss caught her off guard.

“Who’s there!?” Trixie snapped. “What was that!? Where are you hiding!?” Gaze and limbs leaped from place to place. “Show yourself! I’m ready for you! Try anything, and I swear I’ll make you regret it!”

Someone struck a match to her left. Within the orange dab of light against the absolute shadow, two yellow eyes blinked up at her.

Trixie relaxed. The stranger was no paint-daubed foal. So far, so good.

“I’m sorry I startled you,” said the mare, and Trixie was surprised to hear a slight purr in the voice. “You’re heading to Stonecraft, aren’t you?”

All the same, this new mare had proven nothing yet. “Maybe. And my questions still stand, by the way.”

Face tinged orange by the flame – making it impossible to tell her natural fur colour in the dark – the stranger closed her eyes briefly and nodded once.

“Of course,” she said. “Where are my manners? My name is Felicity. I only just noticed you coming the other way, and I wanted to alert you to my presence so I wouldn’t startle you – some success I had there! And I assure you I was not hiding. I’m a traveller, just like you.”

“Oh.” To her embarrassment, Trixie realized she’d forgotten her questions already. “Uh… well remembered.”

The mare beamed at her, incisors gleaming orange under the match’s light. Trixie noticed she was holding it up by the hoof, in the skilful manner of one earth pony who never, ever wanted to handle anything between her teeth. Just looking at that smile put Trixie in mind of celebrities telling the press about this amazing new dentist they could now afford, and of photographs on billboards with big toothpaste tubes printed on them.

Those teeth looked a little… off in some way. Too eager, perhaps.

“Maybe I can help you?” offered the stranger. “It’s not safe out here after dark. Someone left their caravan in the middle of the road, but I wheeled it back to Stonecraft out of the way. I thought it the best thing to do.”

“Oh? Did you? I was wondering where the thing was.” Trixie made a mental note to check the stranger hadn’t taken any “perks” from inside. Although, since the feral foals had raided her stock, she doubted there’d be any way to tell.

The stranger inclined her head respectfully. “I could take you to the village, if you like. It’s much safer there.”

Trixie’s lips twitched with surprise. “Oh. This is the way to Stonecraft?”

“Yes. Let’s go together. That is, if you have no objection?”

“I can’t, as of this moment in time, think of any,” lied Trixie.

“Oh, thank goodness! But come! We mustn’t waste another moment. The sooner you escape this place, the better.”

Shaking the match out, the figure shifted in the shadows. Trixie had to focus to catch even that much, but at least they weren’t heading back the way she’d just come.

“It’s such a relief to meet sane company,” said the stranger from the shadow on her right. “You really should get out of here as soon as possible.”

“Uh…” Trixie started walking a little faster, sloshing water as she went. This wasn’t a welcome turn in the conversation.

“I’m sorry. This must seem so out-of-nowhere to you.”

“Hadn’t crossed my mind,” lied Trixie. “Miss…?”

“Please, call me Felicity.” A rustle and a slight hot breath on Trixie’s ear told her the stranger had just leaned towards her. “To tell you the truth,” whispered Felicity, “it’s not just the foals who are acting strange around here.”

“You don’t say,” said Trixie weakly. Something in her head sounded the alarm.

“Unfortunately, they won’t move, you see. Too stubborn. It does something to their heads. I’ve tried reasoning with them myself, but I can’t do anything about it.”

“Uh… if you say so.”

More urgently – almost hissing now – the low purr of the voice said, “Don’t drink the water, under any circumstances. Choose rain instead. And if you end up in the forest again, beware the gnarly ground.”

“What gnarly ground?” Trixie said before she could stop herself. Don’t encourage her, you fool!

“Too terrible to say. All I can reveal is that it lies in the depths of the forest. Strange things happen on the gnarly ground. We avoid it whenever possible; we know its perils all too well. Although it shouldn’t come to that, of course, because you’ll be escaping soon. In fact. forget I said anything.”

Trixie gave up on comments. She had the sharp, sinking feeling of one who, having invited the harmless-looking hitchhiker onto her caravan, was now watching them suddenly foam at the mouth and jabber about flying saucers.

“No coat?” said the stranger, sounding strangely pained, as though its loss was the death of a distant relative.

“Er, no. I had one, but it got lost.”

“I see. And your poor hat’s missing too. A pity.”

The alarms reached an ear-splitting pitch in Trixie’s head.

“Look here, Miss ‘Felicity’,” she snapped, turning and hoping she was facing the right way in the dark, “have you been spying on… Hello? Hello?”

Only silence. The space beside her seemed empty of even the vaguest suggestion of a silhouette. No hoofsteps betrayed her companion’s presence.

Come to that, Trixie realized she’d never heard any the whole time…

You’re hallucinating. How wonderful. This is your fault, Conscience. I’d be just fine if you took a running jump.

Nevertheless, she cocked her ears for the slightest sounds above the splashing of her own hooves. No matter how often she shook her head, the memory of those teeth, of those yellowing eyes, and of that purring, whispering voice had all been too real to be some guilt-ridden apparition. She could still feel the hot breath on her ear, for goodness’ sake.

Trixie could only distinguish the road by the dimming greyness of the reflected sky. In the distance, the dots of light promised salvation. She tried not to think about the intervening mile, or to think of the pure shadows looming on both sides.

At least the stranger had been right; Trixie’s caravan was sitting a little apart from the village, to the right of the main road. Trixie herself thought it looked like a wannabe house cosying up to its bigger neighbours.

In the encroaching dark, she gravitated towards it, hooves aching from so much damp walking that she was already dreaming of a lie-down on the boards. A flicker of magic passed through her horn. The side entrance creaked open. Pure nothingness waited inside.

Trixie flicked on the light. She’d saved up for months for a decent magic-based illumination system, so to see the pale bar flash on and off overhead was a bit of a letdown. Then again, she’d been recycling it for years, often prising it out of the wreckage of previous caravans.

Her home was an empty wooden box on wheels. Boards, wooden planks, and timber ribs were all. Her sigh echoed amid the unfurnished space. Drained of what little energy she had left, Trixie eased the door shut.

“So much for that,” she muttered.

The rest of the village really was nothing but humble lodges on either side of the road, as though someone had cut a bypass through the forest and then thrown these scraps together as an afterthought. She could tell which one was the inn because it had “IN” painted above the door. Other examples of architectural variety included “BANK”, “BAR”, “GIFT SHOPPE”, and her personal favourite, “HALL”. Not “TOWN HALL” or “COMMUNAL HALL” or even “HALL WHERE WE KEEP THE FOOD”. Just… “HALL”.

Had it been a settler town, she could’ve found a sheriff to talk to, but that wasn’t how it worked out here. Police officers, Royal Guards, and private security staff were city-dwellers or townsfolk. Even sheriffs were anomalies, found only in the desert. Everywhere else, the “community” usually saw to it that pickpockets and muggers got what was coming to them.

Once upon a time, that would’ve suited young Trixie fine; a travelling fraud could easily escape such local jurisdictions, often by simply going over the next hill. Besides, even discounting her youthful bluster and arrogance, she’d generally found that a crowd’s IQ went downhill fast. Throw in the ability to conjure illusions and shout about the mysteries beyond the known world, and she could leaving a small village with her belly full, her pockets jingling, and the happy memory of terrified ponies making signs to ward off evil.

Trixie sighed and shuffled onwards, sloshing water under her hooves.

That particular episode was a stain on her history. She’d dropped that act early in her career, though mostly out of a growing suspicion that it’d land her in jail at some point. Looking back on it now, squelching in the mud of the road, Trixie cringed.

Yet already she felt the unwelcome déjà vu creeping back into her heart’s nest. She found herself automatically scanning the lodges for a target.

Disdain – not just at herself – forced her to march on. The sooner she got this out of the way, the better.

It was probably very narrow-minded of her, she was sure of it, but she lived and breathed the city excitement, the magic of lots of ponies mixing together, and her urban pride couldn’t bring itself to see the “picturesque” or “quaint” in places like this. Villages were mere punctuation marks on the story of her life. Their only role was to tide her over until she could get to the next big town.

She ambled along the road, under the heavy rain and over the reflection of a sky soon to be absorbed by the night.

All the same, the villagers themselves were usually a welcoming and friendly sort, the kind to point out the nearest eatery and then offer to pay for the meal.

She passed the “BAR”, where several loud voices jabbered and laughed. Chairs scraped along the floor inside, and mugs slammed down on tables. It had been much quieter – to an almost deathly degree, she thought – when she’d eaten there the previous day and had her meal so happily paid for. A crowd beckoned: a crowd in an amiable mood. As she walked past, she moved closer to the orange glow around the door.

Not a bad lot per se. It was just a shame agriculture wasn’t that big a deal this close to nature.

The generous meal they’d paid for yesterday had consisted of wild crab apples that were solid vinegar. Her mouth wrinkled itself up with the sheer sting of memory. In addition, they’d given her purple, bulbous, spidery things they’d insisted were natural carrots, but which tasted more like raw soil. She could make the comparison because they’d still had bits of soil stuck on them.

Remembering that, she instantly ambled on, past the thin suggestions of warmth and light.

They’d beamed at her. They’d said it was finest Stonecraft grub. It had certainly reminded her of the time she’d eaten apples addled with maggots.

However, she’d made no attempt to point this out at the time. She knew those beaming smiles. When it came to local pride, a villager could make the most vociferous patriot look like a kid playing pretend. Tact was a survival response out here in the boondocks: Trixie had fled one too many pitchfork-wielding mobs to wish to face another one anytime soon.

After all that, she’d slept in her caravan. She didn’t trust inns or, for that matter, any strange bed that wasn’t premium hotel quality. Not that she’d even seen a premium hotel in weeks. Much less could she afford one.

And for what? Once she’d woken up and stepped out onto the street around midday, she’d put on her usual low-tier performance: a few card tricks, a couple of riddles, and the old “smokescreen teleportation” gag. Respectable applause, respectable nods, a few bits and bobs for her trouble, end of interest. They’d bustled about whatever business villagers dragged themselves through in their spare time.

Oh, a few had given her cheery goodbyes. That was it. That was life for Trixie, nine times out of ten, and usually on her way to the tenth place: a big town worth visiting. Of the nine stops, she’d forgotten all other details within minutes. It was like the opposite of magic.

Somehow, the thought weighed more heavily on her than the rain-soaked cape. She even found herself hanging her head.

Business, Trixie, she thought warningly. Get your stuff back, if you can.

She found the doorway – twelfth house on the left, she remembered – and rapped a hoof smartly against the wood. The first pony who’d greeted her, and the last pony who’d stopped waving to disappear indoors, must still be inside…

The mare with the twin braids opened up and beamed at her.

“Good evening, Miss,” the villager said. “Can I help you?”

“I’ve been robbed,” said Trixie, not remotely in the mood for pleasantries. “Some foals – uh, I mean, never mind the details. Please, I need some supplies before I can get out of this forest. They cleared me out entirely.”

“Oh, phooey,” said the villager cheerfully. “You look fine to me. Not cleared out in the slightest. Still got your insides, I take it? Then again, it would be hard to walk and talk without them. Hi, my name’s Adder Stone. What’s yours?”

Trixie stared at her. Then, with a shake of her head, she disregarded virtually everything that had just happened.

“Look, can you give me some food and some money? I don’t need much. I just need enough to see me to the next settlement. Then I’m getting a Royal Guard, or whatever they have, to come get my stuff back…”

Ignoring the fact that I just got robbed by a bunch of kids, she thought.

“But first I need –”

“A name! What’s your name, stranger? What’s your name?”

After Trixie’s eyebrows came back down to earth, she said through gritted teeth. “You know me. We spoke this morning. It’s Trixie. If this is some kind of country bumpkin joke, it isn’t –”

“Pumpkins? We don’t have pumpkins around here. Would you like a rock?” Adder Stone vanished into the light of the interior. Trixie had to blink away the sudden blinding flash before a silhouette returned. “I’ve got lots of rocks: tough rocks, sissy rocks, rocks that climb on rocks… Six bits a bite, and that’s daylight robbery tonight!”

A bucket pressed into Trixie’s face. With her muzzle squashed by the pressure, she glanced down at the pile of black chunks piled up inside. Then she refocused, and noticed they all seemed to have holes in: a mass of triangular rings, crude as though carved by children.

“Look. It’s very simple,” said Trixie, pushing the bucket away with a hoof and leaning forwards. “I need food and money. Food. Money. It’s not complicated.”

“And it’s not tonight, my strange friend,” said Adder Stone, cheerfully shoving the bucket out of view. “Tonight, it’s the Feast of Foalish Fancy. Masters are servants, servants are masters, the king of the day tells us all what silly things to do, and frankly I think the bean was rigged. I welcome you humbly into my home!”

She slammed the door so hard that Trixie’s nose was shoved backwards into her skull.

Wincing at the pain, she stepped away and growled until her muzzle popped back into shape. What on earth is her game? She seemed fine earlier today.

Just great. First, those wild foals, then that strange ‘Felicity’ talking about gnarly ground – whatever that is – and now this…

Wait a minute…

Suspicion flicked on a light in her brain. Once more, Trixie rapped her hoof smartly against the wood.

“Hello, again,” she said, trying to sound casual. “Uh… excuse me, but are those foals in the forest from this village, by any chance?”

“Foals?” Adder Stone squinted at her. “So you’ve been to the King’s land, have you? Tut, tut, tut, my friend. I hope you had your papers with you.”

“Papers…?” Trixie clicked her tongue impatiently. “You do know about them, then? Because those foals have been drinking some noticeably contaminated water –”

“Ah, I’m afraid it’s nothing to do with me,” said Adder Stone with a shrug and an apologetic smile. “That’s the King’s business, you see. We know about their sovereignty, you see. We can’t help you with your problems out there in his country.”

“His sovereignty? Miss Adder Stone, don’t you realize your foals are running amok in the wilderness? In fact, they’re not even all from this village, are they? There are hundreds of the little monsters! They can’t all have come from here!”

“Hey, hey. Relax, my friend. You know what kids are like.”

Trixie spluttered under the crossfire of a dozen objections. Eventually, an alliance emerged from the clearing dust.

“‘You know what kids are like’? Good gracious, you utter fool! They’re being poisoned! Deranged! Driven insane! They’re drinking toxic waters, when they’re not throwing me into them! Foals are running wild in the forest, waylaying innocent travellers and acting like savages, and you don’t care!? What about the mothers? The fathers? Family? Friends? Doesn’t anybody care?!”

Adder Stone continued to smile at her, perfectly happy with whatever she’d just said. Suspicion whispered in Trixie’s ears. Those eyes looked a little too glazed.

“Wow,” murmured the villager. “You seem too tense. I need a drink.”

She closed the door; this time, Trixie leaned away from it just before the slam. Raising her hoof to rap smartly against the wood again, Trixie chewed her lip. She lowered the hoof.

As though prompted by a new noise, her gaze shot towards the “BAR”. Laughter and chatter continued unabated. By now, suspicion was jumping up and down on her cerebral cortex, waving its limbs for attention.

Felicity said not to drink the water, she thought. Even though I was heading into the village, away from the forest. But that doesn’t mean a lot out here, does it? They get most of their food alone from the forest, so if they get other things too…

Rain drummed against the rooftops and pattered across the puddles. Trixie sloshed through them to reach the entrance, where a rusty old horseshoe hung off a rusty old nail. They recycled a lot out here.

She held her breath, and then eased it out gently. We’ll just get a look, and then head to the nearest town. That’s all. The Royal Guard or whatever will take care of this. No hesitation. No doubts. What we find, we find.

Hoping her suspicion was wrong, Trixie pushed open the door and guided it as far as it’d go.

At first, there were no surprises. She’d been to hundreds like it around and across Equestria: one small counter served by one small pony; normal-sized rooms that were fine for a normal home but cramped for a drinking establishment; tiny round tables, surrounded by tiny round stools, and each bearing a couple of roses in a glass if anyone was peckish. Even the mugs looked like many she’d quaffed at a hundred counters.

The villagers didn’t look out of place either. Most sat and jabbered at each other, faces reddened by sunshine. A few tried to spin on their heads, a couple doing this on actual tables. One stallion tried making binoculars out of two mugs, which would’ve made more sense if they weren’t made of ebony. A pair of them climbed onto a table, linked forelimb to forelimb, and danced on their hind legs. All in all, a typical end-of-the-day outing, if she wasn’t mistaken.

Trixie slid through the flailing limbs and scraping chairs. Now that she was in their midst, the jabbering resolved into coherent words. Or not coherent words, as it turned out.

“With this thorn, I’ve invented a new way of flying at night. OW! My hoof went baddy-bad!”

“Smell this orange. It’ll make you invisible. See? No you don’t, because I smelled it first!”

“Always wear bells before going to bed, that’s what I say. That way, you’ll wake yourself up in the morning.”

“I heard if you roast a stick for a month and then throw it in the river, and it floats upstream, you can make it into a powder that’ll bring you eternal good luck.”

When she reached the first table, she stopped and peered over the nearest mare’s shoulders. Inside every mug on the table, what looked like blue paint stared up at her.

One of the stallions crashed onto the table, splashing the occupants’ faces with blue. Trixie winced and backed off at once, bumping into an elderly mare trying to juggle five mugs simultaneously. Hastily apologizing as mugs rained down on the next table’s heads, Trixie hurried out of the mob and through the door and onto the puddle-strewn street. Behind her, the door creaked to a close.

“I hate it when I’m right,” she said. “But a whole village… poisoned?”

And if the foals were willing to throw me into a river to drown, then what would fully grown ponies do?

Shadows reduced the world to a thin strip below her hooves: reflections of the dark grey above. Trixie stared down at it as though hoping to divine her next move from the pitter-patter of raindrops. She couldn’t stay here. Not a moment longer. Yet if she left without food or money, then what were her chances of passing the forest boundary, especially with those foals running around out there?

The caravan was just a box with wheels on. Never mind that she’d seen predecessors reduced to firewood. At least those times, she’d never been more than a day’s walk from the next village, with a rabbit under her hat and the power to draw coins out of passersby.

But now? Utterly stranded.

Unless…

Trixie grinned; it was a grin that rose like a battle-scarred crocodile from the depths of a foul-smelling swamp. Easy targets.

She splashed back and knocked on Adder Stone’s door.

“Good evening,” she said, forcing her voice to rise on false cheer. “I wondered if you could step out here. I’ve found a new way to make holes out of stones. But you have to come outside and stare at this patch of ground first.”

“Great! Let’s see if we can find a toad in one!”

Adder Stone stepped across the threshold and set her face to stare. Grinning, Trixie slipped past her.

The interior was hardly any different from that of the “BAR”, and the wooden room had hardly any decoration beyond the one framed family portrait and the brick fireplace. It was the work of a moment to find the bed in the adjoining room, lift up the boards under it, and find a little stash of coins tucked away. They always thought it was the least likely hiding place.

Trixie licked her lips and summoned the coins up to eye level. That’d be enough to get a pack of cards, maybe some joke shop items she could co-opt – she’d learned that trick from the great Ersatz Enchanter shortly before he’d upstaged her in Hoofington – but first she’d check the kitchen for some food – no one could live on coins – and even if it was disgusting, she could… at least… survive… on it…

Halfway across the bedroom to the front door, Trixie woke up.

She blinked. She stared down at the coins floating next to her elbow. She saw them for the first time, glowing behind her own blue aura of magical talent.

What am I doing?

It’s an emergency, prompted the pragmatist inside her. We won’t last to the next location with no supplies. Besides, it’s not like these ponies are going to see you again. Who cares, anyway? They’re just any old backwater ponies. They’re a dime a dozen. And we got to deal with the poisoned water somehow, even if only by telling someone at the next place.

But Trixie, the Great and Powerful Trixie, would never rob anyone. Only bad guys did that. Good guys did great deeds. They were just and honourable. She’d known that since she was old enough to tell that the Power Ponies in the comics were her home team and Mane-iac’s henchponies were the away team, and every single comic she’d ever read had proceeded from there.

Sure, the Great and Powerful Trixie had told stories about vanquishing Ursas and Hydras, and she’d cheerfully tied up hecklers with their own ropes, but those were… well, showpony crimes. They burst outwards. They showed the world what she was. She’d never snuck around the place like a snake, except to get quietly ready for the next vanishing cabinet trick.

She shook the conscience out of her head and stepped towards the door. From here, she could still see the ridiculous Adder Stone staring at the ground, apparently enthralled by her own imagination.

On her way across the entrance hall, Trixie about-turned and saw the framed family portrait. This time, she stopped and examined it.

One mare. One stallion. One filly. One colt. All smiling those special fake smiles that remain when all else has eroded away waiting for the blasted painter to finish already.

She sighed. What would those foals think of her, if she went out that door? How could she tell them that she’d done it to help them, really?

Don’t be sappy. You need a professional to solve this mess. Get the Royal Guard.

Trixie’s jaw tightened.

At once, she marched into the bedroom. She dropped the coins into the gap, and let the board snap back into place. She marched out of the room and across the threshold, ignoring the mare still staring at the ground. Rain patted her along her spine again, in spite of the heat within rising to boiling point.

Professional, huh? Oh, so Trixie’s not good enough for you, is she? Can’t handle herself, you think? Unfit for heroism, am I?

Well, I am the Great and Powerful Trixie! I fathom the unfathomable, do the undoable, think the unthinkable! I something something the ineffable, and that is no mean feat! I am known and admired by the mighty and the meagre alike! A mob of babies and a spit of tacky water are nothing, NOTHING, to the likes of me.

In the middle of the street, she stopped marching. Rain and darkness soaked into her consciousness. To her right, the laughter and jabbering never ceased. She imagined, under those dumb smiles and even dumber antics, the hearts of parents crying out for missing foals.

“Very well!” she enunciated sharply. “First things first. I’m going to need some supplies, and then we’d best have a look at our mysterious Waters. The Great and Powerful Trixie is a professional, and a hero besides! I will not be reduced to common thievery!”

Now the sky vanished in the darkness. Only the faint glow of lights around the “BAR” doorway showed her where she was. Her caravan was long since lost to the night. Her useless, notably supply-free caravan. And the only supplies around were owned by ponies in no fit state to hand them over.

“Ah…” she began. “Slight flaw in the plan there…”

Part V: In Which Trixie Finds the First Secret (incomplete)

Inside the “BAR” stockroom, Trixie groaned while her hooves rummaged and crashed through the cupboard’s iron contents. She paused only to levitate the lantern over her shoulder. Lit up by the embers, the pots and pans gleamed.

“It’s not stealing,” she said patiently. “It’s borrowing. I’m going to give it back when I’m done.”

Her conscience stuck its tongue out at her.

“Fine. Then call it resourceful heroism. Just give me a break. How’s this?”

She drafted a fairly lengthy “I.O.U.” and then let the paper fall onto the worktop. At least that was something she could point to if challenged later.

“Feel better?” she said, considerably less patiently than before.

While she rummaged through the topmost drawer, the jabbering and laughing continued to her right. No one had stumbled in yet, but one would have to, sooner or later. Trixie ground her teeth at the thought.

The rear door creaked open behind her. Immediately, she spun round, head lowered, forelimbs braced to charge or to fire from her horn, whichever suited best. Then she relaxed.

“Oh, it’s just you,” she said.

Ears erect, the black cat poked its head through the rear door. Beyond, Trixie could see the utter blackness and hear the rustle of trees in a mild midnight wind.

“Got bored out there on your own, did you?” she said, returning to the drawer. “I can’t imagine why you’d go anywhere near the village when they’re out of their minds like this.”

The black cat mewed expectantly. Trixie looked up, and followed its gaze along the worktop to the pile of carrots and apples and other unmentionable plant foods. Most of them looked like violently killed mandrakes, all twisted roots and face-like contortions.

“You’re still hungry, I take it?” Trixie tossed over the one that most closely resembled a carrot, which was still orange only in patches. “Enjoy. I’ll add it to the I.O.U. here. I’m not stealing, before you ask. It’s, uh, credit.”

Munching soon followed. Trixie couldn’t resist a small smile while the cat bent its head down for another bite. If only Fluffy Face had possessed a heart, or at least an obliging stomach.

“Oh, why not? Let’s see if there’s any milk too. No point leaving a foul taste in your mouth.”

A few opened and closed cupboards later, she heaved out a likely-looking jug and tipped some creamy fluid into a leftover mug.

“I suppose you make your own way out in the forest, all alone.” Trixie passed the worktop and heaved a keg barrel out of the way; from the weight of the thing and the sloshing inside, it must’ve been full almost to the top. “Wretched way of living, if you ask me. So what’s in here? They can’t just drink that blue muck.”

Quite shamelessly, Trixie uncorked the top and summoned a slither of brownish liquid to curl and spiral in the air. To her surprise, the cat hissed at this.

“Oh, relax. It’s a standard Canterlot-level hydrokinetic spell. Any unicorn could do it if they had the patience.” Now that she was paying close attention, the odd frothy flow within the liquid looked familiar. “Barley drink?”

She sniffed it, and then gagged as a smell like a rotting field soaked through her nose, the scent rubbing as harshly as a nettle pressed against her face.

“Out-of-date barley drink!” The liquid slid back into the hole. She couldn’t cork it fast enough. “Have they been drinking nothing but that poisoned water? Only someone that crazy would leave this lying around.”

And yet the milk smelt absolutely fine. Trixie creased her face up and shook the errant thought out. As if she didn’t have enough mysteries to worry about.

At least she found a coil of rope behind the barrel. It hung from a hook on the wall. Uncoiling it, she tugged it and twisted it. Good rope. Hemp, possibly, if a little tougher than she was used to. They probably scavenged that from the forest too. A few horseshoes lay below, leaning against the wall. With a shrug, she summoned a saddlebag from the corner and dumped the lot inside.

Beside her, the cat seated itself on the edge and mewed curiously. White smudges lay between its whiskers, and its flicking tongue tried to wipe them off.

“A few tricks of the trade,” Trixie said to the saddlebag, throwing in some string and one of the apples. “I’m not staying around here until daybreak. Not with those ruffians quaffing the same vile concoction the foals were drinking too.”

Alarmed, the cat stood up, arching its spine. A yowl accused her. Not of anything specific: Trixie just thought it sounded generally accusatory, sharp and direct.

“I’m just heading out.” Trixie slung the saddlebag over her head. “There was a jug in the Waters. I’ll bet anything our mystery poison is coming from there, but there’s only one way to find out. I might be some time.”

When she went for the rear entrance, however, the cat leaped in her way. Irritably, Trixie tried to sidestep around it, but the cat simply skipped to the left when she went left, and skipped to the right when she went right. In the end, she levitated the animal aside, leaving white marks where its claws raked the floorboards.

“What’s gotten into you?” she muttered on her way past.

Er, Trixie? Aren’t you forgetting what happened the last time that cat went paranoid?

Barely had she stepped out of the “BAR” and onto the edge of the forest when the suspicion hit her around the head. She pressed her back against the wall.

Something growled.

The growl suggested a mouthful of fangs, drool vibrating with sheer hatred, and a beast crouched to strike. Trixie lowered her lantern, wishing she’d brought some kind of covering for the thing. Out here, it was an ember among ash.

Her ears swivelled on her head. As far as she could tell, the creature making that noise was in the street. Sloshing sounds followed, as of feet dragging through the puddles.

Slowly, back pressed against the wall, Trixie slid across to the corner. Heart trying not to explode through shock, head trying not to stick out too much, she peered round the woodwork to see.

White trails marked where the four legs cut through the road. Hot breath crystallized between the gleaming of fangs. Two eyes, however, glowed with a fiery brilliance. The creature could’ve had a lantern in its skull.

Trixie felt her stomach plummet, her eyes widen, her legs tremble. Ancient instincts rose up, remembering primeval plains below twilit skies, the urge to flee at the slightest shadows, and in the darkness, the rumbling, growling shock of a hidden hunter. This was a sound that crept past the adult mind to strangle the foalish fears cowering in the spine.

The creature stopped. The eyes went down low. A snout sniffed. Then, Trixie heard the sloppy working of jaws.

What’s there to eat? she thought. There’s nothing in the road but rocks. Or have the snails come out tonight?

It looked up sharply, and Trixie realized her mistake. Two eyes, yes, but on one side of its face. She found herself pinned down by four orange, glowing glowers.

Urgently, she forced herself back to the wall. Her insides burned as though they’d writhed and thrashed within that creature’s staring fire. Even looking out at the darkness, she saw four purple afterimages still glowing stubbornly, determined not to let her forget.

Her gaze fell to the ground. Too late, she saw the edge of the lantern’s cast light fell beyond the corner. That creature could see the orange if it wanted to.

Moments later, the sloppy working of jaws returned. Trixie let out a breath.

Instinct seized her.

She almost screamed: a hoof-sized lump bumped against her rear cannon. Jolted with shock, she glanced down.

Beside her, the cat nudged her leg again and mewed.

Trixie rubbed her face with a hoof. “Don’t you ever do that again,” she hissed.

Her ears twitched towards the corner, from which came the reassuringly constant sloppy working. “What is that? Some kind of forest monster? Oh no. It’s Ponyville all over again…”

Yet when she peered around the corner again, her gaze gradually absorbed more of the night. She could make out its silhouette, though merely as a deeper shadow among shadows. One hunched shoulder stood out, to fuzzy fur running down a sloping back. Ahead of the four legs, the muzzle was long and topped by two rounded, bending ears.

“A dog?” she murmured. A big, black dog wandering the village at night? Haven’t I heard a story like that before…?

Yet she dismissed the nightmare. Her face hardened into a frown. All this proved was that nowhere was safe. Checking that the dog was still occupied, she leaped across the gap to the next building, lantern still levitating beside her, and proceeded on the tips of her hooves along to the next corner, waiting to leap again.

Trixie’s lantern soon found no more timber walls; only ferns and road gravel. She’d reached the threshold. Remnants of civilization on one side. Forest path on the other.

To her surprise, the black cat leaped out in front of her. A mew stopped her short.

“What?” she whispered.

The black cat blinked and mewed again.

“Forget it. I’m not waiting till morning. If those foals are asleep like good little children, then I can fish that jar out unhindered.”

Assuming you can remember the route when it’s this dark. Slight flaw in your plan, Little Miss Bravado.

As if reading her thoughts, the cat mewed a third time. Trixie reared up for a big speech – the dog sneezed and sprayed droplets pattering over puddles – and then lowered herself again.

“I can’t wait while it’s this dangerous all over. Anyway, I’m in the mood now,” she whispered pleadingly. “If I don’t do it, who will? So come on. Out of my way.”

The cat did leap aside, but then yowled and nodded its head. Trixie raised her lantern. This patch of forest looked just like any other. She turned back to her original route, and the cat barred her way.

Odd. And a little annoying. Experimentally, Trixie turned to the side. Once again, the cat leaped aside and yowled and nodded its head. Trixie looked from its eyes shining golden under the lantern’s light, to the barely distinguishable patch of ferns.

“You want me to go this way?” she whispered, still aware of how close the dog’s sounds were; the beast was snuffling.

The black cat nodded its head. For a moment, Trixie swore a smile flashed across its face. Then her unexpected companion crept through the ferns, slinking under the leaves.

Trixie lowered the lantern to the ground. Out in the forest, any light would only give her away. She’d been hoping to use rare sparkles from her horn to check on her progress. Admittedly, she wasn’t sure how one found one’s way in a forest, but presumably there were signs an expert tracker could follow. Perhaps she could’ve picked some tricks up on the job.

Hissing, the black cat whipped her nose with its tail. Trixie winced and crouched in readiness for another. The hissing lowered to a purr.

“What now?” Trixie hissed. “You want me to walk like this?”

Two shining golden eyes appeared for a moment and then nodded once. Then they vanished; she could only follow the cat by the slight tickle of its tail on her muzzle.

“Swell,” muttered Trixie, creeping forwards. “Led by a stray kitty. If it wasn’t for the foals, this would be the most embarrassing thing that’s happened to me today.”

All around her, the night drowned in pure silence. Trixie kept her mouth closed the rest of the way. Far behind, the slosh of four legs almost covered the snuffle of a giant snout. The lantern’s light was a distant memory.

Trixie crept on through the void, keeping pace with the twirl and caress of the tail’s tip. Fronds ran like fingers across her back. Rain-battered earth squelched and oozed under her belly and under her legs. Hardly any warmth remained; it slowly seeped out of her and vanished into the gloom.

She stopped straining her eyes and closed them instead. So long as she could feel her way through, it didn’t matter that this made no difference anyway. However, she favoured any excuse not to focus on a night so unnatural and absolute. Dark fantasies insisted on filling the void. This way, at least she could pretend it was sunny.

When she’d been younger, she’d never slept without a nightlight. Something spoke to her in pure shadows. Something primeval.

As she crept under bushes, Trixie swore she heard faint noises every now and then. First, the clatter of hooves over a distant hill made her freeze on the spot. She didn’t dare move until the cat’s tail returned and wiped a few beads of sweat off her face. Next, a howl echoed over the treetops. Whether wolf, dog, or an even stranger beast, it was hard to tell. Then, the rattling groan: an unseen throat sucked at the air, trying to slurp up whatever hideous food could satisfy its owner. Regardless, any time Trixie stiffened her ears and tried to aim her head at each sound, the silence stared at her again and said nothing.

Don’t you start losing your mind, she thought warningly. There’s enough of that going around.

“Are we almost there?” she whispered after what felt like… One hour? Two hours? Impossible to say anymore.

The tickle along her face vanished. Trixie stopped in mid-crawl at once.

“Cat?” she whispered, wishing her voice didn’t go up so high. “Cat? Are you there?”

As soon as she stretched out a groping leg to find her guide, her hoof slapped against a surface. Water splashed. Chills tingled across her foot.

Right in her ear, the cat purred. She felt its small head nudge her neck encouragingly.

Glancing about – for all the good that’d do – Trixie risked a glint at the tip of her horn. One blue star flickered on the surface in tandem.

“Excellent.” Trixie removed her saddlebag and plunged a hoof inside. “I hope this is the right spot, or we’ll be busy for a while. Get comfortable, my feline friend.”

The cat’s yowl rose at the end. To Trixie’s ears, it sounded questioning.

“We’re fishing for one metal jar, if you must know. Observe.”

She scooped out the rope. Now this old trick was scarcely good enough material for the Fantastic Hack, but right there and then, she wasn’t picky. A twirl of her forelimbs, the age-old weave-and-bob of hooves, a slight glow of her horn, and…

Best pat it, just to make sure it’s the right shape. It is the right shape, isn’t it? Good!

“Done,” she murmured. “One improvised net, ready for the catch.”

Having thus delivered the closest thing her whisper could get to a “Ta-da!”, Trixie concentrated on her magic – better control of the contours that way – and threw the splaying net out across the void. A thin splash followed the winking out of the blue light. In case of watchers, Trixie pulled a peaked cap out of the saddlebag and covered her horn. Thankfully, no one could’ve criticized her shoddy accessory, though she soon wished she’d pinched one that didn’t itch so much.

Three… two… one… and that should give it enough time to settle. Now, to haul it in.

No sign of the net appeared until blue threads cleared the surface. Within the dribbling mass that hovered over her, smooth stones clattered over each other. A horseshoe reflected the light briefly before a stone tumbled onto it. Grimacing, Trixie upturned the lot and waited for the splashes to subside.

“I can’t say my hopes were high,” she whispered. “Again.”

Once more, she cast the net. Once more, she counted. And, regrettably, once more she had to stare at polished stones. This time, twigs and slimy white dots tumbled among them. On closer inspection under her blue light, the slimy white dots turned out to be crawdads.

Over and over and over she cast, she counted, she stared, and she threw the lot back, catch after catch after catch. Hope faded within her. Soon, she lost count, but shuffled along what she guessed was the riverbank and cast anew.

Beside her, the black cat hissed.

Trixie didn’t waste any time, but ducked down as low as she could go. Her chin almost bounced off the earth.

What now?

Across the invisible lake, orange eyes wandered past. Two more glowed some way beneath, shimmering slightly. A reflection, she thought. It has to be.

Twigs and stems crackled under each footfall. Briefly, the orange eyes flashed in her direction, all four of them and their reflections. Pattering paws followed. Finally, the creature scanned the other way, all eyes disappearing from view. Trixie didn’t breathe again until the steps died away.

Beside her, the black cat hissed again and crashed through the vegetation. Caught by surprise, Trixie rose up at once.

“Wait,” she whispered urgently after it. “You can’t leave me like this! Come back!”

Silence returned to stare at her. Her hoof was half-raised to follow. Under the omnipresent stare of the night, she lowered it again.

“Don’t leave me in the dark,” she moaned.

Why? That was your plan to begin with. What difference does it make really if one kitty absconds?

“Shut up, Common Sense. I’ve already put Conscience on my blacklist. Don’t make me put you on it as well.”

Trixie didn’t dare pull up the net. Moments ago, she could’ve yanked the blue-lit strands without issue. Suddenly, it seemed too reckless. Not all the eyes in the forest would glow.

Branches whispered under a slight wind. She was sure insects were crawling along her back.

“Don’t leave me behind,” she murmured, in spite of the way her common sense rolled its eyes at her. “I’m not used to all this… this nature…”

“What’s wrong with it?” said a voice.

Trixie fought not to scream; her body shuddered under the strain.

“Eeeeeeeeeeyah!” she squeaked as quietly as she could. “For Pete’s sake! Don’t do that!”

“Calm down,” said the purring voice, and Trixie heard the smile in it. “It’s only me.”

“Why are you spying on me?” Trixie snapped. “Do you have any idea how creepy that is?”

When she next spoke, Felicity’s voice croaked with pain. “I only wanted to help you. I told you. This place is dangerous. You saw that beast just now.”

“I don’t need help.” Trixie hauled the net out of the depths: still no jug.

“Believe me, you do need – and you will need – all the help you can get. Those things are always looking for victims.”

Trixie peered out across the lake, but since she couldn’t tell where water ended and land began, she basically stared at pure blackness. “All right, let’s say for the sake of argument that I do need some information. A kind of help, if you will.”

“Don’t worry. It’s gone. But that was just one of them. There are dozens like that lurking in this forest.”

Pretending not to lean towards the voice – somewhere to her left, she figured – Trixie cast the net again and watched the criss-crossing blueness vanish.

In the manner of one too terrified to even speak the name, Felicity squeaked, “They’re… Warnings.”

“Uh huh.” Trixie counted under her breath. “For what?”

“You know. Just… Warnings. ‘Don’t wander off’; ‘don’t pick your nose’; ‘don’t sleep in on a workday’: that sort of thing. And if a foal does that sort of thing anyway, then they become targets for the… Warnings.”

Is that a jug? Oh, as you were. Just a chunk of scrap metal. “Looked like a black dog to me,” she said as she threw the lot back.

“That one was merely an Omen; not much of a Warning. Omens only appear when someone’s seriously ill. It’s a warning sign that they’re not going to make it. No, there are worse ones than that…”

While the frightened squeak-of-a-voice crept on, Trixie shuffled further along and cast the net. Huh. Wild foals, idiocy-inducing Waters, strangers who think spying on you is helpful, and now monsters. If I ever get out of this, I’m telling all and sundry to steer clear of this place.

“…and then there’s one that jumps out at you if you don’t brush your teeth, or if you rush the job.”

Trixie realized she’d missed something. “One what, sorry?”

“One Warning. Are you listening to me?”

“I’m trying to listen out for anything sneaking up on us, if you must know.”

Felicity breathed heavily. “You should’ve left when you had the chance.”

“I didn’t have a chance.” Trixie fought against the chills clinging to her spine. “Look. Will you stop going on about it, please? I’m jumpy enough as it is.”

“You won’t win in this place. Don’t you understand? This isn’t just another pretty woodland home. This forest is alive. It’s hard to explain, but somehow it… listens to you. And it’s ancient. So ancient that it’s said to have existed before magic itself. It knows what lurks in the hearts of ponies. All those foalhood fears and secret terrors that adults won’t admit to… they have meaning here.”

“Oh, phooey. Don’t be so melodramatic.”

All the same, Trixie could feel herself stirring under the layers of bluff and busyness. Even as she sighed and emptied the net again, her insides squirmed at the emptiness of the world around her. In her mind’s eye, four orange glares burned fiercely. She could imagine Adder Stone, still staring at some random patch of ground, not remotely aware of the foals that should’ve been playing in the village that morning. And hadn’t she wondered, earlier that day, whether the trees harboured wandering ghosts among the dreary greens and browns?

Much earlier than she’d planned to, Trixie shuffled along the bank. Away from Felicity’s voice.

“The Great and Powerful Trixie has a duty to uphold.” Trixie willed herself to be still and steady. She cast the net one more time. “I just have to get rid of this poison, whatever it turns out to be.”

“You can’t save the foals so easily, I’m afraid.”

“Oh, is that so? You wait and see, my faithless friend. You wait and see.”