From the simplest ‘I love you’ to sprawling epics of courage and wit, words have power. Everybody knows it, but not everybody understands it. Oral history is common to virtually every race that can speak, but a few go beyond that, seeking to wield power over not just hearts and minds, but past and future as well. They are bards and poets, great writers, historians, leaders for both good and ill, but this story is about a pony for whom shaman was both a name and a calling.
Long ago, the founding of Equestria gave rise to a great exodus—a new beginning in a new land. Those who refused this siren song no longer outnumbered the other denizens of the old lands, and shrinking communities grew hardened against harsh conditions and incessant danger. Our shaman, however, eschewed the relative safety of such communities to scour the old lands for words of power. She followed the trail of a new, and very particular, story to the small village of Dockley, which is where our tale begins.
***
The shaman’s heavy hoof-falls are the muffled thud of thick leather soles on old timber. It is her cloak, fashioned from a bear’s pelt, more than her unexpected arrival that draws stares from the crowd, and casual conversation gives way to silence as the room waits for her to speak. Perhaps the stomp of her fur boots is for effect, but maybe it is simply to shake out snow.
“I am a shaman,” she announces, as if by rote. “I have come in search of stories and a warm fire, if such be free to share.”
As was tradition, the village hall kept a roaring hearth by which the villagers could rest their weary hearts and hooves of an evening. Few villages would turn away a stranger without cause, but this stranger was stranger than most.
“An ill evenin’ t’be wanderin’ these hills alone. What’s your name, shaman?” From behind his simple bar, the hearth-master hisses that last word like an accusation.
The shaman throws back her bear’s-head cowl. “I have none save what I am, good sir.” She produces a wistful smile for a foal suckling at her mother’s teat by the fire and breathes in the sweet aroma of burning acacia. The meagre fumes mingle with the sweaty musk of a dozen other warm ponies in the stone and timber room that yearns to house twice that number. Most are in small groups, but an old stallion hunches over the bar—alone, save for the hearth-master. “I mean to pay for a tankard of your finest and spin you a yarn, hoping the favour is returned in kind. I have travelled far and seek nought but a dry roof and willing ears.”
“I wanna hear a story!” a filly cries from the far corner. Her father’s faint scowl holds firm against the little one’s eagerness, but in the silence, his wife nods slowly to him before nodding in turn to the hearth-master. “Yes! Story time!” The filly jumps into her father’s lap and he holds her tightly as a tankard is slapped onto the bar. The room relaxes into scuffling and muttering.
Three stallions shift to make space around a table, dragging in an extra chair for their guest. One of these three hasn’t taken his eyes off her since she entered the room, and she produces a coy grin for the young pony daunted by neither her unusual appearance, nor her unusual appearance.
Before taking her seat, the shaman approaches the bar, drawing a pouch from beneath her furs and spilling a little of its powdery contents into the tankard awaiting her. The old stallion watches closely, and she flashes him a less suggestive grin.
“A little something to soothe tired legs,” she says. “Would you care to partake? The forest is bountiful, and I have much to spare.” The hearth-master sneers and turns away, but the old stallion narrows his eyes and nods. The shaman sips the top inch from her tankard before shoving it towards him and waiting.
The old pony sniffs it briefly and takes a tentative sip. “Get her another,” he says, licking his lips before taking a second, longer swig. “This one’s mine.”
A ripple of mirth from the room, and the hearth-master’s resistance melts; he pours another drink with a smile on his lips and vim in his bearing. “You’ll drink on the house if you’ll part with that little bag, lass. Anythin’ that makes this ol’ horse smile is worth its weight in gold t’me.”
She adds a touch of the mix to her new tankard, pulls the drawstring closed with her teeth, then tosses the pouch onto the bar. “Not for the little ones,” she warns with a wink. Taking a sip, she moves to the offered table and whips off her cloak with a flourish, draping it over the back of her chair. Its silky lining shimmers slightly in the firelight and draws, once again, the eyes of her audience.
“Quite something, wouldn’t you say?” The shaman strokes the lining once before sliding into her seat and casting her eyes at the squirming little filly who bade her speak. “A feat of crafting I witnessed with these very two eyes,” she says, turning her attention back to the stallion whose mind she seemed to occupy. A story requires the attention of but one to succeed, and this stage was set perfectly.
“Since I have promised a story, I would tell you of when and where such skills arose:
“Countless seasons before you or I came to be, there were two brothers. Among ponies, this in itself is nothing, but that is only because ponies know so little about griffons.
“Griffons do not become with child as pony mothers do—they do not come from other griffons—this you must understand. Griffon hatches beside egret, seemingly at the whims of the very clouds themselves, often growing up isolated and without guidance. That is why you know them as brutal hunters who steal your livestock and defend their territory without mercy, but these creatures are the exceptions. Like ponies, they seek their own kin for companionship and other advantages. Their bonds are like that of mother and child, and though it may seem heartless to you or me, they can form new bonds with ease to quell the loss of another. Such is the life of those born into solitude.
“It is, then, with this in mind that I tell you again that countless seasons before you or I came to be, there were two brothers—hatched in the same nest, for the first time in history and possibly the last. The brothers grew, living and hunting as one soul, oblivious to the strangeness of their being until they chanced upon their kin. Only then did something else become known: griffons can fly, but the brothers could not.”
One of the stallions slumps back in his chair. “Bah. What has this to do with wearing a dead bear?”
“Hold your tongue, Barrel Hitch,” his opposite says, waving his brash friend off with a hoof.
“So say I, Backswing,” the mother of the suckling foal adds. “Griffons plague our land. We would be wise to know more.”
The shaman takes a long draught of her beverage, savouring the hint of anise on her tongue and the soothing glow spreading through her blood. She leans back in her chair as the disgruntled stallion folds his legs across his chest, his face a brooding sneer.
“Though they had wings,” the shaman continues, “they were forever denied the greatest advantage of their kin and grew resentful. When they turned their backs on their newfound comrades, it was thought to be in shame, but the brothers returned a decade later, bringing steel sharper than any talon, and coats of scales hardy enough to turn aside spear and claw alike.”
The shaman’s voice lowers to a conspiratorial whisper. “But their martial prowess was ne’er in doubt. The slight they harboured lived only in their own hearts, and their kin spurned them for their arrogance. A single griffon saw the wisdom in their craft and beseeched them to apprentice her, but the brothers refused, so incensed were they by their reception. They disappeared once more, and none expected to see them again. And perhaps none would have, had Princess Jubilee not expanded her borders into griffon territory.”
“I’ve never heard of Princess Jubilee,” Barrel Hitch says, turning away to stare into the fire. “And I’d know. To know their history is to know how to hate those wretched unicorns all the more.”
The shaman bites her tongue. “We ponies pride ourselves on oral tradition, but we are mere children compared to griffons. We inherit from father to son, but not so for them. Thusly, they either do it better or lose their culture to the oblivion of death—only the unicorn libraries hold them at a disadvantage. Now…” She levels a gaze back on her audience of one. “Shall I?”
The stallion nods, of course.
“The griffons called out to defend their land against the unicorns, their most implacable foe. Though the pegasi were a more formidable army, the unicorn paladins, blessed by the princess herself and each clad in a coat of plates, were nigh unstoppable. One morn, after a week of harassment, the paladins readied to march into Bittain, leaving their entrenched camp well-prepared to fend against the air, but not the very earth itself.
“The two brothers came upon the camp like nothing ever beheld by pony eyes. Fangs of steel breached barricades with ease and smashed anything that stood in the brothers’ path. When the paladins returned, their camp lay in ruin, and the griffons’ armour bristled with more arrows than a porcupine has quills. Yet for all their strength and resilience, one griffon lay dying, an arrow lodged in his throat.
“I have since come to understand that unicorn history records they felled no pony not raising arms against them, intent only on smashing the unicorns’ camp—honourable warriors above reproach and worthy of their respect. But this is not the story that matters; it is not the story that leads to this.”
The shaman drapes one leg of her bearskin cloak over her shoulder. “No. Griffons tell of one brother carrying the other home, broken of spirit. Their glorious victory earned him the eyes of many potential new allies and suitors, but he would not let go of his brother and died of his sorrow—a tragedy understood by even the basest animal, but unknown to all but the worldliest griffons.”
“Which still tells us nothing of dead bears,” Barrel Hitch chides.
“Patience,” the shaman replies. “Before his death, he bequeathed his craft to another, that one griffon who beseeched their tutelage. It took years, they say, to teach the art, but one day the apprentice finished a blade so perfect that its mere existence cut the ties binding the surviving brother to the waking world. Seeing his legacy realised, he lay down to sleep and slipped quietly away to rejoin his brother thereafter.
“Where ponies tell stories of love eternal, the griffons tell the story of a bond so pure that even death could not break it. The brothers’ legacy is treated with no lesser reverence, for to take up the art is to dedicate one’s life to every aspect of it: as his blade is tempered in the heat of a forge, so must his heart be tempered by devotion and tested in the heat of battle.
“Such a griffon I have met: Vendel. Once, a bear riddled with plague came unto him, and he granted it a clean death, claiming its hide as payment. With tools crafted by his own claws and sanctified in pure mountain springs, he made this cloak and gifted it unto me as a reminder that the spirit of nature is not idealistic, merely pragmatic.” The shaman turns to the entranced little filly and grins as she ends her story. “This inner weave, like silk, lines their armour to avert scale from feather. Seems they are less fearsome to look upon when balding.”
The shaman always found such light-hearted distractions a necessary flourish to her darker tales, and duly, her wider audience chuckles and chortles—no doubt conjuring images of plucked griffons. She notes, of course, that Barrel Hitch is less enamoured, but as they say, the show must go on.
“So,” she begins anew, leaning forward and resting her muzzle on a hoof. “Would you tell me a story now, sir?” She gazes lazily at the stallion opposite her. Barely more than half her age and stranded amongst a dwindling population, he is hopeful enough to dream but not yet experienced enough to keep the warmth from his face. Once her audience, he is now the stage upon which her plot unfolds. “Mayhap you should begin with your name?”
It is with sudden dread that he realises she speaks only to him. He stiffens, his eyes widening. “Carpenter—I mean Chisel! Chisel. I-I’m a carpenter. I, er... I don’t know many stories.”
“Belay your frets; I seek not to be entertained. In truth, there is but a single story I desire. Twice have I heard it uttered of an evening, and twice have I been guided here. I speak of The Boy Who Cried Wolf.”
The mood of the room plummets. The eyes of older ponies dart from one to another as the silence deepens; there can be no doubt that this is the place.
“Oh. Aye,” Chisel says, oblivious to the unease. “I know it well enough, I think.”
The shaman shoves her remaining beverage across the table, some of its contents sloshing out and running along a deep groove. “Drink! Relax. Words have power, Chisel. Let your spirit guide you to it.”
The liquid reaches the end of the table, the hollow noise loud against the floor as the room holds its breath. Drip. Drip. Drip.]
Draining the last of the tankard, he stares into the empty vessel as he begins. “Well, ahh. Long ago there were a colt born to a family of herders. A lazy child, he was—no respect for his elders. One eve, after neighbours spoke of wolves in the dark, he grew bored of his night’s watch and wished to spite his pa for burdening him so. He awaited the dousing of candles—and an hour besides—before screaming, ‘Wolf! Wolf!’
“Moments later, father, mother, and elder brother barrelled forth from their home, waving cudgel and flame to ward off the loathsome predators, but they found only the boy, revelling in his mirth at the sight of them.
“‘Wretched boy!’ yelled his pa. ‘For that, you’ll keep watch on the morrow, too!’ And so next day, he stood his vigil under the auspices of the sun, ever yawning and cursing his fate.
“So profound were his boredom and so spiteful ’is nature that he thought to repay his drudgerous chore by repeating the prank. ‘Wolf! Wolf!’ cried he, ’cept now he stood among the hills where sheep grazed, and folk from all ’round came running. Shamed before the villagers, his pa raged while the boy writhed and cackled with glee.
“So it were no surprise that he should be sent to bed without supper and find himself back in the fields the next morn. His pa bemoaned being stuck with such an ’orrid child to any who would listen, and when the cry of ‘Wolf! Wolf!’ came again from the field, the villagers would have none of it. ‘We’ll hear your lies no more’ they said, and left the boy to his lonely punishment.
“But as the sun sank below the ’orizon, the boy had yet to be seen. Worried as only a mother could be, his ma set out with something to fill his belly, but all she found were a missing sheep and a bloodstain on the ground. The wolves had come, and the boy’s fate were sealed by the lies of his own making, and he were never seen again.”
Grinning pridefully, Chisel’s gaze finally rises to meet the shaman’s as he lets out a nervous sigh. Stroking the fur that still adorns her shoulder, she looks to the hearth-master and taps the empty table before her. She smiles sweetly before returning her attention to the stallion.
“My compliments, dear Chisel; a fine job, indeed. I see the formerly missing part writ large upon my mind’s eye—that trust begets belief, and it is distrust, rather than a simple lie, that robs the boy’s words of their power.”
It is as if the room itself breathes a sigh of relief, so strongly does the mood of the audience change.
“However,” she begins anew, the atmosphere tightening again like a bowstring. “What grain of truth summons such a story from this place? The recitations I heard before this night tell me much that has gone unsaid.”
Little does the boy know that his moment in the spotlight is gone, and another player takes center stage.
“That degenerate jackal would be my uncle—” Barrel Hitch spits the word out as if it sullies his tongue “—if fate had not dealt him what he deserved.”
The hearth-master places another tankard on the table and wipes off the spillage dutifully, but his hard stare reflects the darkening mood of all.
“This surprises me nought. Dear Chisel, do you believe this story to be true?” The shaman speaks to the hopeful but uncertain colt, but her eyes dwell on the surlier stallion.
“I, uhh… ’ave faith in the words, shaman.”
She smiles and graces him with her attention. “When first I heard the story of the brothers, it was said that the surviving brother was found to have no impediment to flight, instead grounding himself in secret and out of devotion to his sibling. A heartwarming twist, it’s true, but a falsehood nonetheless. Such untruth is not so much a lie as an embellishment—a message crafted in words. Your story’s moral is worthy, no doubt, but perhaps it has been… sharpened, to yield extra clout?”
“Speak plain and true!” Barrel Hitch roars, pounding a hoof on the table. “Hide not behind wit and rhyme, shaman—your tone is unwelcome here.”
“Your tone is unwelcome,” says the foal’s mother, cradling her sleeping babe. “Answer her question; we fear not the truth.”
“I’d answer—a-as sure as summer follows spring,” says Chisel with an uncertain quaver, “but I’ve no answer to give save my ignorance.”
The shaman smiles. Even as some eyes avoid her, the die is cast and the end comes none too soon.
“Would you hear, then, the story as I have heard it, Chisel?” The stallion nods, but his consent is of little concern. “Imagine, if you will, that the pony in your tale is neither lazy nor malign—instead, a downtrodden boy guilty of nothing more than simply being unloved.”
Barrel Hitch snorts and turns away, but our shaman’s voice soars, slipping into a forceful rhythm. “His cries for attention fall onto deaf ears, and soon his whole mind becomes swollen with fears. In the spirit of cruelty, malice, and spite, he is left quite alone to guard all through the night. As shadows grow deeper, a howling he hears; grim images forming that move him to tears. If worst comes to worst, who would care for his plight? Would anyone come to bring safety and light? He cried… Wolf… Wolf…”
Her final words a dying whimper, even the little filly sits bewitched and still in the shaman’s lyrical spell. Chisel’s jaw works itself to no avail while the hearth-master gives her a knowing glare.
Barrel Hitch, naturally, shows no such regard. “Pah! The mewling sentiments of simpering mares mean nothing to one such as I.”
Our shaman returns the hearth-master’s stare for but a moment. “Of that, I have no doubt,” she says. “But ask yourself, Chisel, if my words seem misplaced, or whether in rhyme I have spoken in haste. Could it be that our pony is punished by day, to watch over flock while his family play? What would happen, you think, if a pony so placed, were away from his flock by a monster now chased? What else could he do and what more could he say, save turn on his fetlocks and run right away, crying... Griffon! Griffon!”
Chisel’s jaw flaps open, but Barrel Hitch does nothing more than wave her off with his back turned.
“The villagers did come running,” she says quietly to Chisel. “But it was the father that did not believe—the father that beat him out of shame.”
For a moment, the shaman stares blankly past Chisel to the fire. Another moment and her vacant eyes harden, joined by a sneer on her lips as she bursts into a pounding verse.
“Now scalded, our boy can but quiver and quake; another day guarding alone he must take. When griffons return, a dark promise he’ll keep, and all he can do is fall over and weep. He dared not to holler, a fuss he won’t make, lest the wrath of his father he surely would wake. In spite of the danger, the price was too steep; alone and afraid, his despair he would reap. He pleaded, ‘Make it swift.’
“But the boy’s life, the griffons never did claim; instead they just ogled, confused at his pain. The likes of this young one, they never had seen; they knew not one like him that ever had been. While all of his body was regular brown, his legs harboured stripes that went all the way—”
“How dare you!” bellows the old pony at the bar. Spritely for his age, he storms toward the table, and the younger ponies, even Barrel Hitch, slope away. The shaman slides from her own chair, circling the table to keep it between them. “How dare you befoul our home with such lies!”
And now, the curtain falls.
“Old Rope,” the shaman says with a sneer. “Long have I awaited this day.”
“Still your tongue, you cacophonous witch. I am head of this village and I will not be challenged by your like. Who are you to speak ill of the dead? Of my son.”
Our shaman’s sneer becomes a vehement growl. “Speak ill? Are you mad?
“The only thing ill is your pestilent mind; though your head has two eyes you are woefully blind. The stories I hear all around me are fake; the truth, to these young folk, full seen I will make. Four walls and a roof and a hearth are not home; without your acceptance, these hills he did roam. Taken by griffons who welcomed him in, he learned all the songs and was known as their kin. He lived.”
“Lies!” The old horse’s face turns crimson with rage. “Two sons, I have left and I will hear no more of this! Quilton, Backswing, remove this detestable wretch from my presence.”
A scraping of chairs heralds movement, but it halts when the shaman bellows, “Would you lay hooves upon me as you did so many times to your own son? Vendel!”
More gasps fill the room as the door swings wide and a figure steps through, clad in a suit of cascading scales. Lacquered in all the colours of a sunset and bound together with matching cords, the armour is not the only thing holding attention; his steel fang is sheathed to one side, and a claw gently caresses its pommel as this monster, this griffon, raises himself to his hind legs and kicks the door closed.
“Stay your hooves, ponies,” he commands, and the ponies obey. “And be quick, shaman. I tire of this place.”
“The game is done, honoured friend.” The shaman stares at Old Rope. “Just a pathetic stallion ill-tempered to stand the reminder of his dishonour.”
The stallion opens his mouth to riposte, but our shaman shoves the table hard, catching the base of his throat with its edge. He collapses, gasping, but the sound of Vendel’s fang sliding free from its sheath dissuades any hooves from action.
“I hate you,” she growls, “without reservation or doubt, just as you hated your half-breed son—a portrait of your poisonous soul. No pony worthy of being called father could love so little that their son trusted not that his father would come. He was the gentlest, most thoughtful pony I have ever known. He had a voice like an angel and a nature to match. He was a miracle, and I am his widow.
“Yet I am no griffon, and his loss I will feel until I join him thereafter. Nor am I such a gentle flower as he, and I will rest easier knowing that you, too, will share my pain until the grave.”
The old horse’s eyes widen, but he is unable to form more than a gargling choke.
“You are poisoned. How better to slip you a tonic than to distract you with bounty far sweeter?”
Old Rope’s gaze darts to his drink, his eyes watering as he looks back to the shaman now towering over him.
“It will not be quick; I have no mercy left for you. When you die, ponies will remember not the proud head of the village, but a vicious, sickly old goat not even fit to fertilise crops. And while your body rots from the inside, I will speak your tale from east to west so that all may curse your name as I do. When you finally perish, your name will live on as the vilest of ponies ever to breathe, so long as my story is remembered.
“This was his last gift unto me: your name.”
***
As she promised, the old horse withered and wilted as our shaman roamed the land spreading her tale. While it could be said that his eventual death was on her hooves, her words of poison were only half a truth. His name in tatters, his past the subject of gossip for a hundred miles, it was hopelessness, bitterness, rage, and hate that poisoned him, as he had poisoned the minds of those around him—father to sons.
He died alone, cursed and shunned, because words… words have power. Everybody knows it, but not everybody understands it.
THE END
