First Fruits

First pored over the lines and whorls engraved in the shears’ shimmering flats, reading them as he would a letter, but failing to recognize what Sundew had discerned. The images had been dormant for all but the last few days of his life, like grass beneath late winter snow, hidden from the springtime sun. Now, layer by layer, the secrets were being peeled away. It was one thing to find the symbols buried for so long under rust and blood, but quite another to know what they meant, even in part. Yet they spoke nothing of his sanctuary. It was not to be found in the ruined garden of Frogmire; that offered nothing but despair. The life-ending poison well of the Greywater, with its strange, lone Rose roaring against the backdrop of the moon had also been a false lead, fortunate though he’d been to have met Wild Carnation and Bellows. As he watched Sundew continue to scan his blade in stern silence, however, he felt that the path he’d been wandering might now have a sign and an arrow.

“Lady Sundew,” he began.

The mare gave him a slight nod as she gingerly lifted one of the shears by its tip to peek at the underside. Unsatisfied, she picked it up to get a better angle.

“I been travelin’ with Ms. Carnation here and her brother to help ‘em find this rotten gourd Baal-Kaas. They wanted to see you first, you bein’ a Wayfinder. Sure enough you seem to know all manner of things. Any chance you can figure where my sanctuary is?”

She turned to him, gripping the blade with a fierce expression, then went back to the table as if her zeal had made her remember that she couldn’t speak. Quill in mouth, she wrote.

Ðy dreame. Ðou seest ðys each niȝt? Muk and terrors, darkness and kraven trees, and ðe weepyng yë of holy Seléne?

First went to her side to read. “Yes ma’am.”

What doþ ðys dreame speake to ðee?

“Don’t know for sure, to tell you the honest truth. She’s searching for something, or some pony. I walk for a while. That part is the same every time. I walk, and then I see her peepin’ down from the moon, sad as a funeral. Then the rain comes … rain falling through her light, and I get the same feeling I get when I’m about to cut down the Roses.”

And what ys yt, ðys feelyng?

“It’s like she’s … she’s opening the way. The way I should go. Don’t know how else to call it.”

Sundew sat back on her haunches as she smiled and hugged the shining implement to her chest. After a moment of private reflection she continued writing.

Ðou art a Karetaker veryly, ðere ys no doubt. Y tell ðee yt ys ðe same for me, when Y am wyþ ðe spyryts of ðe land: when Y peer ynto ðe Deep, and o blessyngs, ðe Mother of Stars openeþ ðe way, ðere ys little Y kannot see.

“You can talk with spirits?” blurted Wild, who had been reading alongside First.

Yn a sense. Ðey do not speake yn wyrds, but yn knowledge certaȝntees. Yt so happed ðey told me of ðe praȝer of Joyous Grove: ðe wyrds ðat gaȝned hym ðe favor of Seléne forever. ‘Open ðe way’. So he answered when She posed to hym Her vysȝon: ðe Garden, to wyt, wyþ hym as Her Archytekt. So ðey ecko þrouȝ alle tyme, yn byrdesong, yn ðe solemn, wyze whyspers of tree braunches, and yn ðe soules of we who love Seléne.

Wild was shaking her head. “Before I met you, I wouldn’t have believed it … spirits … but how else could you know what it’s like, when I tie together two disparate branches of research that explain the events of an entire century, and it’s like … I always saw it as a new pathway being opened. It’s the same for all three of us, but different!”

Sundew smiled wider. Laying a hoof on Wild’s shoulder, she added more to her silent dialogue.

Ðe spyryts also told me of Bäl-Käs, ðe Roote of Korruptȝon. Y knew of hym too from hys murderous assaults on my folk. Ðe proude warriors of ðe Frogmyre fyȝt, but have learned ðat to hyde ys beste.

Wild stamped her hooves. “Oh … I hate the thought of these good ponies being tormented,” she huffed, “but part of me is so glad I didn’t bring this upon you! Please, tell us where we can find him. I will have no rest from his monsters until he’s put down, and the sight of your poor garden won’t leave me. Its destruction can’t go unpunished!” She leaned over to catch each word as the response was inscribed.

Ðou hast an objekt of power wyþ ðee. Mayhap yt kann help.

“An ‘object of power’? I don’t have anything but my knife and some food for the trail. First, do you know what she could be talking about?”

First made a mental tally of the gear he’d carried with him since he’d left home. Some of it he’d lost along the way, but a few items remained. Of these, only one had seemed to possess any hint of magic.

“Mr. Whistle, could I ask you to head out one more time and find my saddlebag? Should be near where you found my shears.”

Acorn gave a quick bow and galloped out of the hut once again, understanding without being told that without his weapons, First would be taking a risk trying to retrieve his bag himself. As the orange-tinted darkness closed around the stallion’s short-cropped tail, warmth began to spread near First’s heart. He had found friends who were willing to protect him, and in Sundew and Wild, guides who no matter where or when he met his destiny would know what to do next.

In as short a time as it took him to retrieve the shears, Acorn returned carrying the forlorn saddlebag slouched over his barrel. He picked it off of his back with his teeth and set it on the floor at First’s hooves.

“Thanks sir,” said First with a nod of gratitude. Rummaging for a moment with his muzzle, he slipped the tightly-wound map from among the jumble of his other supplies.

Wild helped him unfurl it and weigh it down with two of his blades. “First, you didn’t tell me you had this,” she said with reverence as she squinted at the page’s tiny black marks. “That insignia at the top … that tells me this was created sometime in the second century. Not by a cartographer in the High Sanctuary—the crest is wrong—but definitely in one of the prominent satellite convocations. Is this another one of your heirlooms?”

First shrugged. “Probably. Hadn’t seen it before Da packed it for me,” he ventured. “When I took my dunk into the river, it came out none worse for the wear. Figured it had some kind of spell on it. Da said it was drawn up in the old times.”

Sundew scratched her mane. Setting down the shear she’d been studying, she went to the collection of kindling next to the hearth and gathered a foreleg full of the finer twigs of the pile. The whole gathering looked on as she laid the fragile load on First’s map and began to swirl the knobby curves under the flat of her hoof. Now and then she would pause, as if working through a difficult calculation, then change her motion from clockwise to counterclockwise or add a twist at the end of the revolution. Before their eyes, the tips of the twigs began to connect the crescent moons that marked the corrupted points. They spread like roots from sources scattered across the miniature inking of Equestria as it was in the years after the Fall. When Sundew withdrew her hoof, all could see a point of convergence in the center of a plain near where Frogmire now croaked and chirred from its secretive waters. Its moon was accompanied by a rampart surrounded by nine stars.

“Baal-Kaas,” whispered Wild. “That’s … in the Everfree Forest. Not far from here!”

Sundew’s hoof began to work against the table. Having sawn a deep groove in its edge, she gave it a final pound and scratched out a line.

Y shall kleave hys kyrsed heade from hys neck.

First shuffled forward and cleared his throat. “Beg your pardon, ma’am, but you were sayin’ …” He trailed off as she started to write.

What ðou seekest, and ðe quest whych ðy kompanȝon wysheþ to komplete, are one yn ðe same.

“You mean First and I are meant to continue together?” asked Wild.

Sundew pressed a hoof to her own chest, then Wild’s and First’s.

“All three of us,” said Wild, her voice low and harboring rapid thoughts. “Wayfinder, Lorekeeper and Caretaker. How else could it be?”

“This is truly a most wonderful and auspicious hour!” Acorn trumpeted. The stallions that had remained to listen to the conversation stomped and cheered with him. “I am honored to witness this reunion of Selene’s laborers … the first of centuries! May our Mother bless you in abundance!”

Sundew’s quill swept over her page. When the feather fluttered back to the table, she clasped the steeped Mare’s eye bulb between her hooves and proffered it to Acorn, who read her message.

She blesseþ ðee for ðy fayþfulnesse. Ðys now belongeþ to you, ðe trybe of Frogmyre. Plant yt amongst ðe oaks yn ðe deep marsh, and mayhap yn years longe hence ðy kyn shall reap a harvest.

Acorn knelt and took the gift. “Your ‘mayhap’ has always been our certainty,” he said. “Never has there been a time when your portents have not prospered us. I will ensure it is done, and come to safeguard you on your advance upon the enemy with two of my near cousins. Winter Green, Leaf Rustle, are you willing?”

Two of the company who had been marveling at the map from the opposite side of the table circled around and bowed their respect to Sundew. “The strife with the nether folk this night was like a delicious morsel,” said one, “and now my appetite is whetted for more. It would be my joy to see these three safely to the den of the Hateful One, and to fight him as their defender.” The image of a swirl of autumn leaves on his flank told First he could only be Leaf Rustle.

Acorn clapped each on their shoulder and continued. “I could not bear the thought of Lady Sundew traveling into the jaws of danger—skilled though you are, First Fruits, in the ways of battle—with no stallion of Frogmire beside her on the path. Will you accept our offer, Lady?”

Sundew pondered his proposal until she grinned and gave her final edict.

Y shall! Leave us rest for what remaȝns of ðe niȝt, o chyldren of Seléne!

First was awakened by the creak of saddlebag straps being cinched. Through the peepholes of his eyelids he recognized a blurry Wild checking the stability of her burdens, a look of panic coming over her face as the bulging sacks began to slide to one side. Sundew was writing something to an alert Acorn, who stood beside her, rumbling grunts of assent as he read. If First didn’t know better he would have thought they’d been conversing all night.

He rose and smiled at Wild. “Mornin’,” he said, and helped her right herself.

“Good morning, First. Get some breakfast! We’re leaving in a few minutes, right after Sundew is finished with a couple things. One of which is a lesson I’m highly looking forward to: she’s going to teach us signs! More or less a necessity where we’re going. No time to be writing out beautiful calligraphy in middle Ponish when Roses and bog bodies and who knows what else are breathing down our necks.”

First did a quick search of the hut and found a bundle of rhubarb that had been prepared for him, with a jar of tea steaming next to it. The absence of other offerings was a sign that everyone else had already eaten. He crunched down on the meaty stalks. The faint light filtering through the window hole revealed that only those who were to make the journey to the place that had been divined by the map and Sundew’s magic remained, with the exception of one stallion of lean stature wearing a traveling cloak.

“… and whom should I call on when asking for this mare?” the newcomer asked Sundew. Unable to avoid eavesdropping, First went to the tableside to read her response.

Y have not been gyven her name, but ðe ymage of a rose tender, and furrouws aliȝned yn ðe yarde of an olde Sanctuary of peculyar hystory. Gyve ðys myssyve to her, and tell her ðat she ys worþy of far more ðan what she beleeveþ fate haþ meted out for her. Tell her ðat she ys not meant for roses ðat she ys no Karetaker, and ðat Y know ðe reason she kannot speke.

She extended a folded slip of paper. He took it, and nodding his understanding, tucked it into a small bag he held slung around his neck. Sundew pressed a hoof to his shoulder and let it slide along his cloak as he turned and departed, as if to leave him with the lingering, warding impression of her touch. Outside, he began to trot toward the trees, then to gallop.

“Sounds like there might be another Wayfinder out there,” explained Wild. “Only she doesn’t know it, and doesn’t have any pony to guide her. Sundew might have an apprentice waiting for her once we get back, if whoever gets that letter takes it seriously.”

Sundew smiled and beckoned the two of them closer. She tapped her hoof rapidly on the dirt floor three times, then wrote a word for them to memorize:

Danger

“Ooh, lesson’s starting!” Wild almost squealed. “First, pay attention!”

The two of them, together with Acorn, Leaf and Winter, sat huddled around Sundew until they grew dizzy from the swarm of words and corresponding signs that she imparted to them. If there was any theme to the silent vocabulary, it was one of immanent disaster and how to avoid it, whether it be of an undead persuasion or otherwise. They began to repeat the words they’d learned a few minutes prior as the list grew and the sun peeked over the horizon, retreading old ground if any were forgotten. Sundew put down her quill only when they had absorbed too much to be able to pair new gestures with their meanings. With a sigh full of resolution, satisfaction and a hint of concern, she lashed out one hoof. It was the last sign she had taught them:

Let’s go.

The company marched through the door in single file, but quickly adopted a formation that suited the peril they anticipated. Sundew, as their navigator, took the lead with the map. Acorn kept pace beside her, armed with a light spear and a scowl that itself could pierce the leathern hide of their enemy’s creations. Leaf and Winter formed two points of a triangle behind them. Slings loaded with lead nuggets swung from their jaws, ready to flick out at the first unnatural sound. Wild took her place in the center of the triangle, knowing well that she would be the most vulnerable if they were ambushed. Her sacrificial knife was clenched between her teeth.

First was the rearguard. He had donned his shears only as a precaution: while he wasn’t expecting to need them until nightfall, there was no telling what new evils would seek them out as they approached the stronghold of their foe. The map had directed the first leg of their journey south, back through the marsh toward the Lowlands, but away from any path or hidden spy. Cinnamon rearranged herself behind his neck. He inhaled the humid, earth-tinged air and wondered at how unlike the treeless fields and lone farmhouse of his upbringing it was.

Frogmire at dawn was a soundscape of the doings of life. The amphibious residents for which it was named exulted in the shallow edges of tea-colored pools, raising their trills, shrieks and rasps toward the whitewashed ultramarine sky above the treetops. He had been up at this hour most days of his life, whether to pick potato bugs off of the crops, feed Cinnamon, or dispose of defeated Roses, but he had always carried out his early morning labors in the quiet of whispering grain. He peered into the resonant undergrowth. Although no hostile eyes returned his gaze, he was surprised to see a pattern in the lay of the land. Channels had been dug to direct the water around long, raised islands. He and his companions were walking along one such ridge.

Winter caught sight of his appraisal. “We of Frogmire are farmers once more,” he told him, “as we were before the days of the Garden. Before Joyous Grove called upon us, we tilled and harvested these lands as any pony does, although in days of yore this was no marsh, but fertile fields fit for the plow. Now we trade in mint and teaberry, and in the pigment of the Redclay frogs that make their home here.”

“We make our crop to grow along the dry rood we’ve worked betwixt the waterways,” Leaf added, sweeping a foreleg at the mist-enshrouded pools. “Seed and pollywog ripen side by side. All the easier to gather leaf and peeper when they’re grown.”

“Makes sense to me,” First replied. “Good way to get around, too.”

Wild’s ears perked up. “Joyous Grove recruited you to be groundskeepers?” she asked.

“He did,” Acorn replied. “That much is known, and not legend. He invited all ponies who tended the lands and the waters—from north around the horizon again to north, from mountainside to valley deep—to join him in creating the Gardens of our Mother’s inspiration. Our people agreed when they were told the purpose of Selene’s great endeavor.”

At this, Sundew looked back. Her smile was broad, but not happy.

Wild almost bowled Acorn over as she crowded close to him. “You know why the Gardens were made?”

Acorn hung his head, his pace slowing. “Alas, no. That has been lost. We have only a saying that was passed down—“flame by day, glory by night”—and know that our people were filled with hope at what they heard. So much so that in time their labors earned them the keeping of the Lavender Concourse.”

“Flame by day … glory by night,” Wild repeat, puzzling over the ancient phrase.

Sundew stopped them and gave Wild a meaningful look. She pointed at the pinprick of light that was growing in the east, then at the moon still hanging at the opposite rim of the twilit sky.

“Sun and moon?” Wild asked.

Sundew shook her head. With downcast eyes, she turned and resumed walking.

Onward First followed into the blossoming morning, becoming ever more conscious of the omnipresent gnats, and of Cinnamon’s itchy warmth on his back. He called for a short break, during which they all stopped and took turns sipping tepid water from the skins that Wild had been lugging in her saddlebags. Sundew showed them the map. With a hooftip she indicated that two-thirds of their trek remained.

Another ten miles passed, or so it felt to First. The ferns and dripping junior maples that drank from the marsh were joined by venerable pines as the land inclined. The channels of Frogmire’s aquaculture receded, and great boulders began to poke through the leaf litter like the broken foundations of primordial castles once inhabited by giants.

The way Sundew led them took a sharp left. Through the thinned trees First could make out a distant spine of rock and drab grass.

“I … I think that’s the Greywater,” mused Wild.

Sundew gave a nod and began to sign.

It is. Outpost of Baal-Kaas. We enter Everfree.

The Frogmire stallions shared a look. Acorn jabbed the tip of his spear toward the dark green canopy that waited to receive them at the ridge’s north end. “Woe to the poisoner of waters,” he growled. “His time is coming.”

Sundew placed a hoof on his chest, then curled it upward in an unmistakable gesture.

Strength.

She smiled as she led them uphill and into the dark, twisted limbs of the Everfree Forest.

First recognized this particular treeline from when he had discovered the Greywater and its grim secret. As he passed below the gnarled crowns of the diseased conifers, it all began to click. The well-worn path they were on, lined with the shattered ribcages and broken leg bones of Wild’s sacrifices, had been used by the werebeast to hide its prey, and perhaps as a means of returning the victims of the grotto’s curse to its master. Now that the creature had been destroyed, it was all the more likely that this entrance to Baal-Kaas’s domain was being watched.

He checked the bindings of his shears. The knots were firm and serviceable. Night was still far off, but he was prepared for surprises.

The gruesome path wound up and down over the tortured terrain. The company struggled to find stable surfaces for their hooves, resorting to scrambling up sheer rock faces every few hundred strides while being heckled from above by foreign, unkind birds. The heat was no less uncomfortable here than below in the waterlogged turf of the swamp. First found himself envying the werebeast’s wolfish agility.

Just as they were about to rest below the overhang of a fallen megalith, the land evened out again, and the path became a corridor of grass between impenetrable walls of tree trunks. It widened into a meadow dotted with pink, blue and cream wildflowers; an island of beauty in the midst of a hostile jade and ochre sea. Determined to meet their enemy before he had the chance to impede them, Sundew urged them forward.

First scanned the shoulder-high grass from side to side. If there was ever a place to launch an ambush, he considered, this was it. An ox could have hidden in the dense vegetation.

As he was scouring the surroundings, Winter called out and pointed. There, one half buried within the inscrutable ranks of the trees and the other sprawled across the field, were remnants of a structure unlike any he’d seen before. It had once been a merry house, decorated with what might have been mistaken for candy swirls. Its greened, mold-mottled walls sagged inward like the gangrenous skin of a dying mare, and bones, not wood, formed its broken joists and studs.

Troubled, Sundew knelt down next to an exposed boulder and pressed herself against it as if listening for the heartbeat of an unconscious hospital patient. After a few moments she arose and acted out rapid-fire signs.

Bad place. Violence and despair, over and over. The spirits ever flee here. Move fast away. Beware the ground.

“Is it one of Baal-Kaas’s monsters?” asked Wild.

Perhaps, or perhaps victim, Sundew signed. She beckoned them to follow. Once they had resumed their formation—tighter than before—she proceeded at a quicker pace.

The trees were closing in again. Just before they were enveloped once more by the forest, Acorn gave the signal to stop.

“See? Lady Sundew’s foreknowledge does not fail. Behold,” he said, and pointed to the left of where they were walking.

A pit had been dug to ensnare anything emerging from the trail from beyond the meadow. Its bottom was lined with sun-bleached wooden stakes. Tangled among them were skeletal remains of a pony.

“My Lady, the danger grows,” said Acorn. “Let me and my kin take the lead to scout for such traps.”

Sundew grimaced while she mulled over the proposal, but in the end nodded her consent. Leaf and Winter strode forward and fanned out with Acorn.

It was well past midday, and the air had at last cooled to a tolerable swelter. They had plunged deep into the Everfree, out of sight of the meadow and its latent horror. Wild now kept even with Sundew, who seemed to have become more agitated despite the respite from the heat, while First remained a few steps behind them, readier to spring to the defense now that a threat had been revealed. Leaf and Winter rotated ahead at their flanks, probing, listening, and moving on. Acorn was far ahead out of sight, determined to flush out anything that might bring harm to Sundew and her friends before it had a chance to catch them off guard.

When he began to scream, it became clear that their tactics had failed.

The proud stallion’s kinsfolk rushed forward to bring aid, heedless of their own safety. Sundew, Wild and First followed close behind. When they reached the source of the pained cries, they realized that they came from above. Acorn was dangling upside down from a rope in the center of a mass of vines covered with thorns as long as dragons’ teeth. Around him, corpses of ponies and animals hung in various stages of decay.

“Hold still, cousin!” shouted Leaf. He cast about in desperate search of a way to bring the hapless stallion safely to the ground.

“Please, do not struggle!” Winter called as blood began to drip faster and faster on his head and barrel. “We shall help you!”

“Do what you can!” Acorn hissed. Gasping against the sting of his wounds, he steadied his breath enough to continue. “Lady Sundew, it may be that … I am slain. You must not let … the foe catch us here at nightfall. Go on … go on with your brother and sister in … the moon. The spirits shall surely guide you.”

Sundew looked for signs of dissent, but found only deep concern. She signed out a question.

You wish this?

“Acorn’s words ring true,” said Leaf. “We cannot both guard him and you should the enemy come upon us like this.”

“We shall find a way to release him,” added Winter. “It is but a simple trap of rope and counterweight. We shall cut it and catch him.”

“What if it gets to be late and you still haven’t freed him? What if there are more werebeasts?” Wild posed. Her hoof was grinding a pinecone to dust against the ground.

“Then we shall deprive them of their heads,” Winter replied. His grin was dour, but reflected steadfast self-assurance.

It was enough; Sundew had decided. She took one last look at the map and waved First forward to take the lead. She and Wild fell into triangular formation behind him. Before prompting him to proceed, she directed a few final signs to First.

You are the champion of Selene, and shall not fail. Spirits say path is clear. Now make haste.

First nodded. “Cinnamon girl,” he said, “watch our backs, OK?”

Cinnamon stood and turned to face the way they had come. With a yawn and a stretch, she settled back down into a ball. First took off at a trot.

More miles passed in a foul sameness of indistinct trees and toothsome vines. If there had been no path, all directions would have looked identical, with no way to tell where they had begun or where they were going. The feeling of imprisonment weighed on them: to stray from the thin strand of dirt they trod would be to be lost forever, but every sound they made heightened their fear of drawing the attention of nightmarish monsters made more sinister by their imaginations, lying in wait further along the way. Yet they dared not stop to eat or drink, or talk through their plan, lest they be caught out in the darkness.

They hurried on because there was nothing else they could do. They hurried despite the growing burden on their minds and bodies, so that when they stumbled across the shattered threshold of the great ruined Sanctuary, they had little strength left with which to fight.