The spirits of the forest woke me when the rain had gone away, though the night still hung around. Moonlight struck my cart’s canvas, sending its silvery ghost over me. Red flecks of waking pressed upon me, reminding me of fire.
I had dreamed of burning again tonight. The memory of ash made me sniffle.
I gathered my cloak against the cold.
With unsteadied steps, I clambered out of the cart and blinked against the dark. The clear earth beneath me would be well enough to make my meditation. For it I brought out sticks from my cart, kept dry despite the rain. Fumbling, I sought fire with two stones.
The spirit entered after my fifth attempt, and I stepped back to appreciate its gentle glow.
He grew and ate. The glow became a blaze. I smiled, and he smiled back.
“Thank you,” I said, stepping closer, ready now for what I had to do. “I forgive you, fire. We can be friends again.”
That didn’t seem enough, so I asked the forest for more to say.
She remained quite for the time, so instead I sought a silent solace with my newly reclaimed friend. His heat heralded the day; clouded dawn dropped in around us, chewing up the fire’s light. But still he stood, leaning this way and that in greedy hunger for the forest’s food.
In the midst of the murk and morning-gloom, I fell back on my haunches and howled.
On the Sun’s settling above its horizon, the spirit’s song was sung to me. Not the quiet, broken brightness of my morning fire. This song was the morrow’s song, sung of what was, and is, and is to come.
I saw her standing opposite me, confusing my fire, which danced and spun with the waves of the wind.
I knew the names of only four spirits, well-taught as I was. They were holy names, not to be uttered except in sacred ceremony.
Chant, spirit of the new day, stood before me.
“O pure hearts and humbled voices, be my company to the thrones of heaven,” she sang, and her breath made my bones a brittleness. I held up my heart and hoarseness to her.
Our song stopped when fire lay on his deathbed of coals.
My song was stolen out of me by a brutish force falling on me. The spirits dashed away, and I was left in dizziness. Naught but whelps and cowed barking could escape my lungs.
The weight over me shifted to allow air to enter my lungs again and asked, “What business have you here?” The voice was liquid and hawkish.
“Gerroff!” I squeaked, squirming.
The weight complied, sliding off and stepping back. “I do not know the name. Are you sure that you have the right village here?”
I turned around. “Said, Get off.” My paws patted away but a little of what dust I had acquired in falling. I looked up.
Eagle eyes glared back while a lion-like form sat in tree-cast shadows. “That you did. Now, seeing as I’ve so dutifully fulfilled that wish, why don’t you sate my curiosity and tell why you’ve trekked here in the first place.”
“Village?”
“Aye, the village. There isn’t anything in Hollow Shades worth stealing. Nor can I imagine that there are any friends of yours here for the visiting. So what business have you here?”
“None, no business but passing it along the way.”
“The way to where?”
“East. Nowhere! What do you care?”
“To nowhere? Fleeing, then?”
“Aye, fleeing.”
“From what?”
“Fire.” We exchanged glances, and I anticipated his next question. “It burned out my borrow a week prior. That cart and I are the only things that came away from it uneaten.”
He appraised me: blue cloak smudged with dirt over a coat of red fur, a tattered refugee. He did similarly for my cart. “What have you there?” he asked, pointing inside.
“Sticks and stones, wood and dust.” I fought with myself for full honesty. “A book.”
“Book?”
“It’s where we keep the memory of things,” I said, unsure.
“A curious sorcery.”
I wondered then whether he knew of the spirits.
He didn’t ask any further questions, but offered instead: “Can you come to camp at my village? Better than scrounging here. There’s devils in the dark, and they’ll catch you unawares.”
“Can’t,” I said. “Road’s been too muddy for me to pass.” The nightly showers haven’t helped to dry the it, either.
With a ponderous sigh he lifted up one side of my cart, but let it down before I had the chance to ask him to. “How many stones do you weigh?”
Stones? I wasn’t familiar with the measurement, but even if I was, I wasn’t aware of my weight. “A starved dog’s worth of weight.”
He huffed. “No matter, I have strength enough for an hundred stones and four more.” He fought with the hold wrought with another body’s build in mind. He managed it, miraculously. “In. Hold fast, and do not speak until we land.”
I got inside my cart. “Land, you say?”
“We’re flying, thick-wit,” he said, and we did.
After ensuring that I myself wasn’t flung away, I secured the meager holdings of my stomach against this flight’s requested withdrawal. When those requests themselves withdrew, I took appreciation of what was happening.
Truly, he hadn’t lied. We were flying. From the small view I had out the back, I noticed unfamiliar sprites flitting hither and thither and helping to hold up our vessel. Remembering the creature’s command to stay silent, I hunkered down into my cart and waited out the flight. I grabbed the book and held it fast against my chest, only opening it to read when I’d assured myself that the ride could not tear it from me.
We landed, shaking me out of the reverie I’d enjoyed. I’d read through The Tale of Two Sisters and nodded off shortly after that. The book was not boring, but the subtle motion of our craft created in me a queasiness that allayed only when I shut my eyes and slumped onto my side.
“Here we are,” he said.
I climbed out, limbs shaking from the exposure to so many unfamiliar sensations.
“I never gave my name. Apologies for that. It’s Canticlear.”
“Eh? Reynard.” I considered it. “But the borrow-brothers always called me ‘the Fox,’ for all the clever mischief I could make.”
“The Fox? Well, alright. I’ve been told my name means ‘Sweet Serenade’ in the old tongue, but my doubts bely them. I would hope it wasn’t so, for how ridiculous a name it is! Soldier, not singer. I’m a beast of battle through and through.”
“There is a phrase we were fond of: the dog is only as good as his song. I think it means to say we should consider our words carefully, but heaven knows that we could’ve just as easily accepted it as-is! Great singers, they were. Taught me the do-re-mi before I knew the a-b-c.”
Canticlear gave me an expression of puzzlement.
“Sung before I could speak, as it were.” I didn’t want to burden the fellow, so I found the next focus of conversation. “Is this it, the village? I’d never before heard of it. Is it new? Or old?”
“Old, terrifyingly so.”
“What kept it this long. A secret?”
“One sort of secret, you could say.”
“But will you say it?”
“Me, no, unfortunately. That will be left to the villagers. I’m something of an anomaly here.”
“I’d imagine you an anomaly in any setting.”
“Now-a-days, yes. Few places still stand that I could call a comforting home.” He smiled. “This is one of them, even if I contrast so clearly with it.”
“No, no, a contrasting is good upon occasion. It readies the mind for reflection.”
“Then I must always be reflecting.”
“The Sun, the Moon, yes! We’re always showing with some brighter, outer light.”
“But not at all any inner shining?”
“Yes, somewhat. But even then, the shine is from life, the life from ancestor, the ancestor from earth and into earth.”
“Astute!”
“Absolutely. It is my vocation to be just that.”
“I meant in jest. You’re a curious scholar, if a scholar at all. Aye, and incorrigible at that.”
“Incorrigible? I’d need a steely will for it. Not one is unbendable, if heated and struck and repeated.”
“If not steel, what are you?”
“Clay, likely clay.”
“The potter’s reject.”
“No, no. Unused, unformed. Maybe the best work, but not yet wrought.”
“He’ll need to wrought a lot. You need much work.”
Another voice spoke up, gravelly and dogged: “Canticlear, who’s this here?”
I’d been so caught up in talk I failed to notice the many dogs that had surrounded us.
“A flighty fool. Found him stuck somewhere in the forest.”
I frowned. “You’re the bird. If anyone’s a flighty fool, it’s you.”
“Ah, but I’m not a ‘bird,’ as you so blithely put it. I’m a gryphon given wings by God.”
“Because your god felt sorry for forming you so strangely?”
“Enough!” A dog stepped up to us from the pack. “What do you mean by coming here?”
“Mean? I mean nothing. I seek somewhere to sleep. Is all, is all.”
“What’s that he’s got?” A crook’d pup pointed at my paw.
I’d had the book in my hand the whole time. With a plummeting spirit, I answered. “A book.”
“He says its a memory of the past.” Canticlear cast his eyes twice around the circle of uneasy dogs.
I saw them then, the broken forms and jagged limbs.
Thievery, murder, madness. They walked behind and stayed back. Still their presence pressed upon me, and I knew not what to do.
“What’s it remember, then? And what if it remembers something we’d rightly like to forget?”
“No, no. That’s not how it works. Let me...” A spirit of dread coiled its arm around me. “I’ll explain, if you’ll give me space.” I stepped back. “Let me, allow me!”
But they couldn’t see the fearful things slipping between them, drawing nigh.
“What’s gotten hold of him?” one wondered.
“A fit. He’s going to faint. See it in his face?”
“What’s he got? Maybe a portent, a prophecy?”
“No, I’ve seen those shakes. He’s probably a borrower, been too long underground.”
When one of them stretched out a gnarled finger to touch me, I broke their ranks and ran.
“Ho boy!”
“Where’s he off to?”
“Canticlear, catch him!”
“Let him be! Allow him leave.”
The last had been Canticlear’s voice, though everything thereafter was inscrutable noise.
The leaves brushed my face, and my paws pulled apart branches. I ran until my steps drew toward a quietness. I stood there, pulling back the raving madness from my mind. I was left alone in the forest.
Then was when the devils caught me.
They took me to their camp, a reeking mouth filled with bent brown teeth-tents set neatly to either side of its grassy tongue.
They took the book and tore the cloak from my back.
“Reynard, an unexpected visitor,” said a shadow stepping forward.
“Wolf,” I said. The dog before me stopped.
“Aren’t we beyond childhood names, Brother?”
“Isegrim, then! What do you mean by this?” I extended my arms in either direction and then brought my paws to my chest. “By abducting me?”
“I’m merely knotting loose ends. Finishing the weave, and what a fine fabric it’ll be.”
I furrowed my brow.
“You’re a craven creature. You couldn’t even suffer yourself the valuable death. Instead, tonight you die as a dog.”
Something was very wrong.
“Death? Do mean to say you want to kill me? What for?” Every emotion in me slunk away, leaving a hollow heart.
“That fire was the start of my simplification, Reynard. It was the beginning of an era unfettered by its past. Now, will you take your death politely or must I listen to your whimpering all the while?”
I stared up at him.
“Do you only have dumb eyes for us, then? Or do the spirits wish to speak?”
“And what could they say to you that hasn’t been said already, Isegrim?” The hollowness was filled by echoes of fury. “You have ears, hear them! You have eyes, see them!” I pointed at a murder that had followed me. His body was blackened and charred, his eyes a whiteness. “Observe what you’ve awakened into this world.”
The dogs looked among themselves.
“Here, here!” He clapped. He clasped his clawed paw onto my ear and raised me to his fellows. “You all, eared and eyed: the spirits are here among us! Observe, brothers. See them stalking? Hear their talking?
“No?” He grinned at me. “How about it, then. What are the spirits saying, Reynard? None of the other borrow-brothers seem to know.”
I stayed silent.
He dropped me. “Maybe the spirits need a provocation.” He gestured to one of the dogs, which then produced the book.
Isegrim took it and raised it up into the air.
“What was the name of the sun-spirit? Kael?”
“Such unclean lips are not fit to speak it.”
“Kael, then.” He turned to the height of the Sun. “O spirit! If the spirits wish to speak, reach down your arm and snatch away this book.”
Something from the sky obliged.
Isegrim stood in shocked silence.
“The spirits say, Hello.” I laughed.
“A forest beast wants to make a mockery of me. Be it so, then! Take it! But do not approach again if your affection doesn’t lie with death.”
“I’ve no affinity for it, but neither am I craven when the killing is called for,” said a brutish force falling between Isegrim and me.
The Wolf took a step back.
“Canticlear?”
“Aye. What’s this mess you’ve gotten into?”
I wondered how to answer his question.
“Get on my back.”
“What? I—”
“Nay beast, stay! Or do you want us to hunt you to your borrow?”
“Now, Fox.”
I complied. I felt nothing but nakedness, holding onto him.
“Grip tightly,” he warned before taking off. I needed no prompting.
The group made to pounce on the gryphon, but he was too fast. They found only the grass in their grasp.
“Why?” I asked him when we were in the air.
“Because otherwise you might fall off.”
“No, why did you come?”
“An angel asked me to.”
“Angel?”
“Your people are spirit-worshipers, are they not?”
“It's not our duty to appraise the worth of anything.”
“You are spirit-seekers, spirit-seers! The particular word doesn’t matter.”
“Were.”
“Then what are you now?”
“I’m still a shaman, but my brothers no longer respect the old ways.”
“Ah. See: an angel is a spirit.”
“Oh?”
“In a way, yes. I’d say more, but petty distinctions are unimportant right now.”
“What did it look like?”
“The angel? It looked like bright.”
“Sounded like?”
“Heaven.”
I blinked at the Sun.
We landed.
My thoughts had well-preoccupied the time. That, or I hadn’t gone as far from the village as I’d thought.
“Getoff,” Canticlear clipped.
I complied. “Don’t know the name. Another gryphon?”
“Aye, and his name means Get Off,” he said before turning to the village. “Everyone!” he shouted. “Quickly, there’s not much time. Raiders will be here in no less than an hour. Pups and mothers in the temple. All else, to me!”
Confusion, followed by scramble.
“Do you really think they’ll come here to fight?”
“I’m afraid so. That’s the joy of the hunt. I’m surprised you don’t know it.” He reviewed the forces. “Now, go with Timon.” He pointed to a thin dog in orange tatters. “And don’t die.”
I looked back between the two. “I’ll won’t, not unless you drive me to it,” I said before bounding over.
“We get the mad hound. How appropriate.”
I shuffled around, unsure of what to do.
“See that big white building?” He pointed.
I nodded.
“You and Guinefort can go and guard it. Don’t let anything in. And don’t let anyone out until one of us tells you to. Got it?”
I nodded.
“Good.”
We went and waited our hour.
They came and began their battle.
“Roch defend us,” my companion prayed.
“Who?”
“Does it matter? We could use all the help we can get.”
“Aye.” I nodded in agreement.
The murder I’d seen in the camp stood afar off, watching.
The battle bore down on us.
One combatant charged our position. He struck Guinefort with a long blade and turned toward me.
I was on him within the instant, wrestling with his arms and gunning for his sword.
I got it into my grip by a gift of chance and rammed it into his front with inexpert fidelity.
He fell, coughing. He lay in sputters.
I saw his face and recognized it.
“Gelert? O brother, what have I done to you?” I knelt beside him. We’d been brothers by birth, hanging on the same paps as pups.
He swallowed his swill of blood. “Fox, O Fox. Fox, you’ve ended me. Why’d you have to do a thing like that? Why, why I’d been doing so well, too.”
“Say, don’t speak such things. You’d joke now?”
“You’d think I’d joke?”
“By the way you handled that blade, you are one.”
“You’ve won the fight! No need to sully such a victory so.”
“It’s already sullied.”
“Then make it clean.”
I sighed. I’d never performed this particular ceremony. “Fine. Any final confession, friend?”
“Just the one: I’ve killed him.” He looked over to Guinefort, who had a bloodied shoulder and a breath or two yet in him.
“No, now you’re wrong. He’s not dead.”
“Then for sloth! For not finishing what I’d started. Now stop forcing me through trivialities and complete your fiendish rite!”
“As you wish.” I concentrated on all the souls and spirits in susurration about us. I saw them gathering around us, standing with us.
Most were fresh dead.
“Spirits! Open up our hearts. Lighten the darkness of our desires. Cleanse our thoughts and bring us out of error and into clarity and truth.”
Gelert was breathing heavy now. I hurried in my horrid attempt to prevent the fall of night.
“We present our souls and bodies for reasonable, holy, and living sacrifice.” I should have skipped the words. They were artifice and scaffolding to the undone monument. “Though in every way unworthy, I accept, by my bounden duty and service, this brother-spirit into me.” I kissed him and drew his breath.
Fire flared up within me, and the spirit made its residence.
I held his host till it went cold. Uneasiness hung in the air, and none dared draw near except the spirits. Their numbers gained as the battle waned and the daylight did the same.
They took the dead from me (first the body, then the spirits following with it) and placed living bodies before me. Prisoners, they said, captured and bound. They asked me if I knew them.
One I knew: Endal. He said nothing to us, nor did he look up to face me.
I asked for a blade.
They gave me the blade Gelert died on. I knew it for the flutter of fire within.
I stepped up to Endal and eyed his purple cloak. He’d been raised to a royal rank.
“Any last confession, brother?”
“None. Death is no place for regrets.”
I heaved the sword and brought it down on his bounds.
He blinked warily.
“Your cloak.”
He took it off and threw it to the ground.
“This twilight favors you, Endal. Go now and live. And if you meet Isegrim along the way, tell him of the invaluable death you were spared.”
I waited for him to go.
He did so. I had no care what happened to the other prisoners.
I gathered up the cloak and put it on and walked away.
I know not where I went, but it was Canticlear who found me.
“What’s gotten into you?”
“A friend. Nothing! What do you care?”
“A friend? Fleeing again?”
“Fleeing? No.”
“Then what?”
I sat on a stump. “Searching, I suppose.”
“For this?” He produced the book from somewhere.
I stared.
When he held it out, I took it. “By the dawn, day, dusk, and dark.”
“They must be important to you, these memories.”
“Yes, very.” I opened it. I could just make out the words by the dimming light. “Would like me to share one with you?”
“I’d like that very much,” he replied.
“This is called Dux’s Last Letter:”
I’m sorry.
They’re starving. But there’s nothing here for them. They’ll try to take it anyway.
I’m tired. Really, really tired. I’ve never been this tired before. Not when I’d read a book all night. Not when I practiced magic all the next day.
What I’d give to have that wasted energy!
I’ve sent Spike to Canterlot. Hopefully he’ll be able to help defend Blueblood and whoever else is left to run things, despite his dwindling fire. He’ll hate me. He hardly got to say goodbye.
But there’s been no time. And the time for goodbyes has gone by three times already. Once more can’t hurt much more.
I’m sorry, Spike. At least you won’t see me cry.
When they get in, I’ll have nothing.
The last of it is going here, on these pages. Someone find this. Someone remember us.
I’m so, so sorry.
Canticlear waited. When he knew I’d finished it, he asked: “Do you weep each read?”
I shook my head, embarrassed by the emotional display I’d let slip. “It’s not the letter.”
“Then for what?”
“Life, death.” I closed the book. “I don’t know.”
“Thank you for sharing it.”
I composed myself. We walked back to the village together.
I rested in the dark, and the fire inside fell to embers.
