"Truly, my pupil—" Starswirl took one of his big, dramatic breaths. "—this is a moment that will live in the annals of history."
Clover hid her grin. It seemed like every other day around here held that sort of moment. "Of course, sir," she said, using her magic to leaf through his notebook. As usual, he'd only given her the thing two minutes ago, and whatever spell he was talking about filled every inch of paper from top to bottom and for page after page after page.
A clearing of throat made her look up. Starswirl was giving her a half-glare, the kind that only set her mane to smoldering rather than outright singeing it. "And don't you take that tone with me, Pupil! These are the secrets of the universe I'm uncovering here! You should feel yourself privileged that I allow you to observe!"
That made her swallow. "Yes, sir." And she did feel privileged—honored, even. Every morning when she awoke to the mountainous view outside her window, her astonishment hit her right in the horn: Starswirl the Bearded, the Court Mage of Unicornia, the greatest wizard to ever hold the title, had picked her out of all the applicants to be his pupil, to study his methods, and to succeed him someday.
But that wouldn't be for quite some time, she knew. Probably not until His Majesty retired and Princess Platinum took over the kingdom. Decades in the future.
"So!" Starswirl shook his head, the single bell on the crown on his hat jingling, and stepped into the circle of chalk he'd drawn on the stone floor of his workshop. "This initial experiment will be a simple one, for even with a work of genius like this, it's best to begin slowly."
"Forgive me, sir." Clover had skimmed through about ten pages and was only now getting an idea of the spell's parameters. "I can't be reading this right. Are you really proposing—?"
"Time travel, Clover!" His face lit up like a foal unwrapping birthday gifts. "With this spell, I can leap back to see the first primitive villages of our eohippoid ancestors, or plunge ahead to see what marvels await us three hundred years from today!"
Her magic faltered at the thought, and she had to reach out quickly to catch the book in her hooves before it could begin to fall. "That...that's impossible!"
"Ha!" His face tightened into one of his full glares, and Clover winced away from the heat of it. "The impossible is our business!"
She looked from her mentor to his notebook and back several times before she could find any words. "But sir! The basic principles of entropic—!"
"Enough!" He stomped a hoof. "I have gone over every phrase and clause of this spell at least four times, Pupil, and I'm here to tell you that I've overcome the objections of both magic and science! This spell is like nothing any unicorn has ever attempted before, but I have every confidence that it will work exactly as I've outlined it!" His horn began to glow. "Now! For my initial experiment, I shall hop forward two hundred years, then hop back to this very room thirty seconds from now!"
"Wait!" Clover fumbled to get the notebook reopened. "Sir, nopony doubts that you're a genius, but—"
"The future's a much safer destination than the past, you see." The light of his horn brightened, sharpened, grew till its glare pushed against her like a wind and Clover had to hold up a hoof to shield her eyes. "Changing something in the past could have repercussions in our present! But a quick look around the future—"
"Sir! For such a gigantic step, we should—!"
"You must have vision, Pupil!" The stones began to shake under Clover's hooves. "Ha! I made a pun!"
"Starswirl! Please!"
"Thirty seconds, Clover! Begin...counting...now!" And a flood of radiance burst over the room like the Unicorn Council had dropped the sun directly on top of her.
It vanished instantly, and Clover pitched forward as the force that had been pushing her back vanished as well. Scrambling upright, she brushed her mane from her eyes and stared at the chalk circle, the stone inscribed within burned as black as coal. She blinked at it, then realized that a part of her mind was counting, had been counting, in fact, since Starswirl's last shout.
Fifteen seconds...twenty seconds...twenty-five seconds...thirty...
Thirty-five...
Forty...
Forty-five...
Two days later, Clover looked up through bleary eyes as the door to Starswirl's workshop swung open. Springing to her hooves, she almost called out his name, but it was just the guard again, a fresh pot of coffee floating in the glow of his horn. "Oh. Yes. Thank you," she muttered.
But the guard didn't set the pot down; instead, he turned sideways and announced, "Her Royal Highness, Princess Platinum."
Clover blinked, and the daughter of the Unicorn King strode into the room, her face as always perfectly composed. Her magical aura, though, seemed a bit rough around the edges to Clover's senses, and her voice wavered when she asked, "What news, Clover the Clever?"
Wishing she could be anywhere other than where she was, Clover sighed and levitated Starswirl's notebook from the table, several sheets of her own notes sliding onto the floor. "Here." She flipped to the second page and tapped a hoof against an equation near the bottom. "Maybe his pen slipped while he was figuring the initial entropic value, but this decimal point is in the wrong place. He then used the incorrect value throughout the entire series of calculations, and while I'm still not sure the exact effect it would've had, whether it would've sent him forward two thousand years or twenty—" She stopped and swallowed against the sudden tightness in her throat. "If he was able to come back, Your Highness, he would certainly have done so by now."
Silence seeped slowly into every corner of the room. "Then he's...gone?" Princess Platinum asked.
Uncertainty squirmed through Clover's middle, a little voice in her head telling her that if their positions had been reversed, if she had become lost in time and Starswirl had remained here, he would have already begun planning her rescue. "If I can rework the spell, start at the beginning and try to follow his process using the correct value, I might be able to—"
Something crackled in the workshop behind her, sudden flashes spattering across the walls; Clover spun, saw a ball of lightning spinning into place above the charred remains of Starswirl's chalk circle. "Starswirl!" she cried, rushing forward.
A figure popped out of the air, and her mentor's voice shouted, "Hold, Clover!"
She froze in her tracks, her jaw dropping. It was Starswirl, all right, but his proud, snow-white beard was streaked with gray, his face thin and wrinkled, the single bell at the peak of his hat now joined by at least a dozen others all around the brim. "I've much to say," he was going on, the words, she now noticed, creakier than she remembered, "and not long to say it. For traveling forward in time, it turns out, is the simplest of matters: we all do it every day a second at a time, and speeding up that process is mere foals' play. Traveling back, however, is nearly impossible, and I've spent decades developing this spell that I can only use once and only for a very few moments."
A gasp beside her, and Clover glanced over to see Princess Platinum staring at Starswirl. "But what—?" she began.
"Forgive me, Your Highness." He bowed. "In brief, I'm doing well and serving in the court of the Royal Pony Sisters. They're a force for great good in the world, and I'm assisting them." He smiled, a softness in his eyes that Clover had never seen there in all the years she'd been his pupil. "Of course, the two of you have quite of bit of good yet to do here and elsewhere, and I...I'm proud of you, Clover. You're a wonderful pony and a wonderful wizard, and you make possible all the wonderful things that are yet to come."
Clover could only stare, and lightning began swirling around him again. "So heed me one last time." He nodded to the notebook, still floating in the flex of Clover's magic. "Leave that spell alone and focus on what's important in the here and now. And have a good life, Clover the Clever!" He winked, his bells tingling. "Because I've read about it in the history books and know that you will!"
The lightning surrounded him with its flashing, then scattered into sparks, the center of the workroom as empty as it had been a moment before.
The lump in her chest as tight as a fist, Clover blinked as the afterglow faded from her retinas. "Thank you," she finally managed to get out.
Author's Note
The whole Starswirl question:
Has bothered me for years. But as I was driving back from the comic book store yesterday, the back part of my brain, the part that apparently broods on this stuff when I'm not paying attention, coughed up an idea. And, twenty-four hours later, here's a story based on it.
Mike
