"Apple Bloom, git away from that there window."
"But Granny, they're out there somewhere!"
They were, it was true. Somewhere out in the driving snow, Applejack and Big Macintosh were...well, who knows? They'd set out for town with the aim to be back before the storm hit, but...
"They're grown ponies, Apple Bloom, and Apples to boot. Bit of wind and snow ain't enough to stop them. More like than not they holed up with Twilight in that big old fort of hers, or they're at Sugarcube Corner, or any place else in town. They're just fine. They ain't stupid enough to try to move through a mean ol' bluster like this'n."
She didn't leave the window. The report had come from Cloudsdale directly. Every once in a while, they said, storms came off the ocean to the west that were beyond even their control. Apple Bloom could remember a few of them. They mostly came in the early fall. Cloudsdale would send out messengers sometimes weeks in advance, and the whole town would reinforce windows, put up sandbags, and stock up on supplies, only to find out that the weather ponies had weakened it, and they'd get nothing but a bit more rain than usual.
But this time...
This time the messenger came only a day before the storm, chewed up and gliding more than flying. This wasn't one of the autumn gales that scratched the back of the youngest Apple's memory, but instead "an icy bank of stormclouds the length of Equestria and closing in like a bat out of Tartarus," to quote the messenger. That was actually where AJ and Big Mac had gone---the messenger (Apple Bloom couldn't remember their name) was quite sick and laid up in Twilight Sparkle’s castle. What better way to cheer up the poor colt than with some of Granny Smith's patented Coldbustin' Apple-Ginger Soup?
That was three hours ago. She propped her head up on a hoof, and used the other to wipe the pane clean of condensation. She let out a big sigh, then snorted angrily, and wiped the pane again. It was doing less each time, and the foggy pane was the last one left in the window that had not frosted over. All the other windows were blocked up from the inside with messy shutters, scrapped together with whatever could be found. Big Mac made quick work of it when he came back from helping the Pegasus limp into town, but she could hear the panes clattering through them. They made her think of dancing skeletons, rattling in time to the ghostly howl of the wind. She sighed, ran her hoof across the glass, and hoped for shapes amongst the swirling fury.
She turned her head, still leaning on her hoof, and watched the slow back-and-forth of Granny's rocker. "But aren't you worried about them?"
"Course I'm worried," the old pony snapped back, "but it ain't like they went wandering off in the Everfree or something. They got any number of friendly folk that'd give them shelter. 'Sides. If'n they are out there, they can carry their own, and there ain't a darn thang you or I can do about it now, is there?"
"But it's snowing so hard, I can't even see the mailbox!"
"Is it?"
"Yeah! And—"
"So how are you going to see them coming?"
"I—"
Another glance out. Her little hoof-made window was quickly losing the battle against the encroaching ice. Her shoulders went slack.
"—I guess you're right." She reached out to one side of the window, then the other, and closed the last shutters. Even without the boards on the windows, the sun had set an hour back. Only the lantern and the soft glow of the wood-burning stove kept the room alight. Apple Bloom took a heavy blanket from the sofa in her teeth, tossed it over her shoulders, and sat down on the end closest to the rocker.
"Ain't no point in working yerself into a frenzy," Granny said. "You start that, then you start thinking you can handle it on yer own, and you go charging headfirst into the storm, only end up more lost then the ponies yer searching for.”
The lantern flickered.
“Apple Bloom, put another log in the stove. Got a feeling like it’s going to be all we have right soon.”
When Apple Bloom sat down again, she grabbed a second blanket. Neither of them would go to up to bed, not until the storm died down, or the other two came trotting in the door. The wind howled louder, and it worked its way under the young one’s skin. Granny Smith just sat, not even staring at something particular, just rocking her chair in a slow steady arc. The window will be totally iced over by now, Apple Bloom thought. She was on the verge of nodding off, but the house creaked and groaned in the wind, and the windows strained against their frames. A hazy question of why Big Mac had blocked the windows from inside instead of out drifted to the surface of her mind, but floated on the surface untouched.
The lantern didn't go out, but it dimmed. The shadows took hold, and she jumped at the sudden sound of the elder Apple’s voice. The errant thought took off like a startled rabbit.
“How many logs we got left, Apple Bloom?”
“Um…two.” She looked up at Granny Smith. Granny wasn’t looking at her or at the stove, but instead at the door. The old mare was wrapped tight in a heavy down quilt in her rocker, and should have looked tiny. Yet every part of her looked hardened as iron, and her face was a double mask of nervousness and resolve. Maybe it was the dimming light, but she looked as if every year under her belt had been torn from some stronger hand. Like she was expecting somepony or something to come collect them, and like that thing wouldn’t get them without a hell of a fight. Lately Granny was having more of her ‘senior moments,’ as she put them, and as she said, ‘time waits for no pony,’ but this was the opposite. She’d seen Applejack get the same way sometimes, right before something big happened. It was the real source of the family’s often picked-on stubbornness, some primal survival instinct that let them turn themselves into towers of stone, unyielding and unbreakable.
“Put them on. Lantern’s going out soon.”
“Don’t we have more oil?”
“Sure do.”
Apple Bloom stood up from the couch.
“Two full cans, right out in the barn.”
Apple Bloom sat back down.
“Apple Bloom?”
“Yeah?”
“The logs?”
“…Oh. Right.”
The filly opened the door to the wood-burning stove. She remembered a poem that Big Macintosh had memorized about somepony named Stallion McGee. Wasn’t there a stove in that story? She’d heard him recite it once. He memorized it back in school, for extra credit. She shoved the two logs in and pushed them into place with a poker. She shut the door quickly, put the poker back in place, and hurried back to her blankets.
Granny didn’t look at her, but started talking.
“Apple Bloom, did I ever tell you about the last time Ponyville had a storm like this’n?”
The lantern sputtered and went out.
“Um, I don’t think so, Granny.”
“Must’ve been yer brother ‘n’ sister, then. Know I told it a couple of times.”
For a moment, there was no sound but the fire, the wind, and the creaks of Granny’s rocker like the ticks of a clock.
“Now, you remember when I went to yer class and told about how we Apples came to this here land, and Ponyville came up behind us? Well, it was the first winter after that, no doubt. Now keep in mind, Apple Bloom, Them Pegasi up in Cloudsdale weren’t so hot at keeping the weather in check back then. It was the same back when as it was today. Some poor flyer comes a-crashing in to warn us about the storm, but they ain’t quick enough ta git too ahead of a blizzard coming like bolt of lightning. Reckon a few of them Cloudsdale ponies didn’t even make it in time. Yessiree, that was a-one to remember. Now, you see that there photo album on the top shelf? Think you can fetch it for me?”
Apple Bloom didn’t want to leave her cocoon of quilts, but…well, she couldn’t remember Granny ever sounding this serious, not ever. If this was so important, why didn’t she tell it when she came into the classroom? She wiggled her way out of the blankets and after nearly falling twice managed to grab the album and bring it back over to Granny Smith. The binding was old, and the paper inside was so faded and yellowed it looked like tree bark. Granny turned to one of the first pages. She pointed to a large stallion, with a gnarled tree as a cutie mark. There was something odd about him.
“That there was Tangled Root. Bit of an odd feller. He was an uncle of mine, which makes him yer great-great-uncle, I think. See that patch of fur missing there? Goes right up from his shoulder to his ear? He got burned when he was a colt. Liked to tell ponies he’d been fighting with a dragon, made some crazy bet in a card game and the dragon caught him cheating. Truth was he and a couple of yer other great-great-uncles tried to make their own fireworks.” She cackled, then gestured with her hooves. “Turns out they got the BOOM part of them right, but not so much the Fwssssh!” she slapped her knee with a hoof. “Oh, he’d go red as yer brother’s flank any time somepony brought it up.”
The old pony laughed for a little while longer, then the corners of her mouth stopped holding the grin. “Yep, No pony quite like Tangled Root. Anywho, where was I?”
“The blizzard,” said Apple Bloom. Granny gave her the photo album and she set it on the table. The filly went to the couch, grabbed the quilts, and bundled herself up next to Granny’s rocker.
“Right. Well, like I was saying, the poor foal who came to warn us didn’t get here nearly so early as the one in town right now. Came crashing in just as the snow started. I was being a good pony, out helping Uncle Root scoop up some dead limbs for firewood. He might been an apple shy of a bushel at times, but ain’t nopony then or since knew how to walk the Everfree like Tangle could. We were in a far ways when the snow started, and he turned us around before you could say lickety-split.”
Was it that the fire was dimmer, Apple Bloom wondered, or had Granny’s face actually gone darker just now?
“You’re a smart little filly, so you can guess that weren’t soon enough. Ain’t much of a story if it were, is it? Before we knew it, we were up to our cutie marks in snow. Uncle Root, even with snow so deep you didn’t touch the ground when you stepped, he still knew the trail. Like I said, nopony knew the forest like he did. For all his bragging, there must’ve been twenty adventures from them there woods he didn’t tell for every made up one he did. Of course I learned later that he had a special trick for marking trees for paths, but that night… call me a foal, but I swear those woods told him where to go. He told us we only had an hour left of trekking to the farmhouse when the timberwolves started howling. You ain’t never heard anything like it, Apple Bloom, and for pony’s sake I hope you never will. They were all around us, but the heck of it was, they sounded worried-like. Scared, even. I asked Uncle Root, ‘They ain’t scared of us, are they?’ and he shook his head. ‘So what are they scared of?’ I asked. And then…then he looked at me, and what I saw plain as day was terror. He told me ‘I hope you never have to find out,’ and we doubled the pace. Just as we came up to that part of the valley that clears out, you know the one—at the edge of the clearing, Uncle Root grabs me and throws me over a bush! Before I git a chance to give him righteous heck for it, he covers my mouth, and I realize he ain’t even looking at me. He’s looking at something in the distance, and though I could’ve put my own hoof in front of my own face without finding it, it’s snowing that hard, I could see it too.
“The timberwolves stopped howling, Apple Bloom. They stopped howling all at once.
“They looked like ponies, and at some point before I figure they were. But they were wearing armor that even I knew nopony used except long, long before my time. All of them were covered in frost, hanging off of them, and they didn’t seem any bothered by it. They were carrying swords, some of them, and others had banners. Them banners were what always got me, Apple Bloom. I’d seen them in school, some of them, and some of them I knew from traveling Equestria. No rhyme or reason to which ones they had. There were flags ain’t been flown in millennia, and some of them were from cities formed only months before that night. I lost count evntually, but they marched on and on and on, following the wind. At some point the wind got to be so harsh I shut my eyes for only a second. When I opened them, there were only about five or six of ‘them. No flags, no great procession, just a few ragged ponies. They trudged on until I couldn’t see them anymore, and only then did Uncle Root loosen up and let me go. He took off towards the farmhouse It was all I could do just to keep up. Something was off. Even if I’d just been imagining things, I know I saw the last band of them marching through where we were running. The snow was coming down like somepony dumped a big ol’ bag of sugar on Equestria, but it weren’t filling up our tracks that fast. I looked back, and I only saw mine and Uncle Root’s, you see what I’m getting at?”
Apple Bloom found she could only nod. The fire was down to mostly embers. Was it her imagination, or was that a timberwolf in the distance?
“Now, soon as we made the homestead, Ol’ Uncle Root slammed the door, threw the bolt, and pushed a chair in front of it. We were gone for quite some time, and we weren’t the only ones caught out in that mess, since we found a note on the table saying’ there was cider on the stove an’ to come wake up yer great-great-grampa when anypony came in, an’ that we’d look for anypony missing once the storm let up. But Tangled Root, he pulled me close, and told me we ain’t waking gramps just yet. He makes me swear on my last jar of Zap-Apple jam—like the pink one’s promise, that kind of swear—swear that I won’t tell a soul what he’s going to tell me. I swore. You would have, too, if’n you’d seen the look he had on.
“‘Missy,’ he says to me—he always called me that, no matter how big a fuss I made ‘bout it—he says ‘Missy, them there are…They…They ain’t friendly. Ain’t really mean, come to think of it, but…let’s just say I don’t want to meet them. They got a job to do. Job that’s going to take them a long, looong time. They stop for nothing. For nopony. And anypony who’s been a courier or an errand-pony in their life knows the story. I’m getting old, you know, despite how spry and suave I may look, make the mares swoon when I walk by, getting old’s something you can’t fight, and can’t cheat. Makes you start thinking about—’
“Never did hear the end of it. There was a knock at the door. He looked at me, and I tried to tell him that it might be just another apple coming in from the cold. Truth was, I didn’t believe it. I can’t even describe it, even now. I ain’t the best with words. He knew. He knew I didn’t believe it, and he knew it wasn’t true. He said sure, let’s move that chair, Missy, wouldn’t want to keep out kith and kin. He was… there was something gone in him. So we moved the chair. We undid the bolt. He stood with his hoof on that doorknob for a good five minutes. The knocks never let up. Steady as a stream.
“It was taller than yer brother is by a full head at least. Ice clung to its beard, and to its armor. The sword at its side was longer than a fencepost an’ about as wide. It was like a walking statue out of the royal gardens, or least I thought so, until I saw its eyes. They were like…how to put it…you ever seen somepony get that determined sort of glare? Yer sister has one of those for every occasion, if’n that helps. Imagine every one you’ve ever seen all bundled up an’ stuffed into one pony. That’s what it was like. It looked down at me, then up to my uncle. An’ it spoke.
“‘Tangled Root. Your time has come.’
“Uncle Root, he says, ‘I understand.’ An’ he turns to me. ‘Missy, I got one last favor to ask you. Tell your dear auntie that I love her more than the whole wide world, and there’s never a moment where she didn’t make me happy, alright? Tell her I didn’t deserve her.’ He was crying. Not sobbing, mind you, he was too tough for that even then, but I never seen him cry before that, and tears ran from him like a river. ‘Tell… Tell everypony I had one last errand to run. One last debt to settle, and I’ll be back soon as I can, you hear?’
“I had so many questions, Apple Bloom. So many. But I think I knew even then that there weren’t time for answering them. Time waits for no pony. I told him I would, and then I hugged him. Didn’t really put it together before then, how much I cared about him. He was loud, an’ full of it, an’ I hated the way he picked on me sometimes, but… but I’d give the world to hear him call me Missy one last time, even after all these years. Then he was gone.”
The fire was nearly out. Apple Bloom didn’t know what to say.
“Yer great-gramma sat up with me, but I didn’t last the night. I fell asleep in her arms. Next morning, by some miracle—if’n you can call it that—he was the only one missing. I never told a soul back then what I saw, but I told everypony just what he told me to. The storm blew over some time in the night, and we set out searching for him just after dawn. Got the whole town involved, small as it was back then. Ended up clearing out the snow ourselves, searching the fields, breaking the ice. Even tried to ask the local critters for help. Cloudsdale was pretty impressed by us, f’sure. We ended up cleaning up winter every year, and we still do it to this day. It’s a fair bit different from that first time, I’ll tell you that.”
“Wait, THAT’s why Ponyville does Winter Wrap-Up on its own?!”
“Yep, though I suppose ponies just forgot about how it started way back when. Don’t blame them, myself. I don’t like thinking about it either.”
“Did you find him? Was he okay?”
“No. No, Apple Bloom, we never found him. Somepony kept joking that he’d gone back to settle the score with that dragon of his, but that somepony found rocks in their bed that night. There were a lot of theories, but none of them were all that good. No, the last anypony saw of him was when I saw him walk out the door with…them.”
The fire went out.
Those were Timberwolves she heard earlier. They were much, much louder now. It almost sounded like an alarm, like they were all trying to warn each other of something. Something coming in the distance. Apple Bloom looked at Granny again. In the dull afterglow of the last dying ember, the elder’s face had returned to a hardness of stone.
“Granny, do you…do you think that…”
“Can’t say for sure, Apple Bloom. Can’t say for sure. Never were a courier myself, but one of them saw me. They only come with the storm, I think.”
“Granny!”
“If the call comes, afraid I’ll have to answer it.”
“But you can’t! I don’t want you to go!” Apple Bloom stood in front of the rocker now. The Timberwolves reached a fever pitch.
“Time waits for no pony, Apple Bloom, not even little old me.”
The wolves went silent.
Even through the wind, Apple Bloom could hear the heavy footsteps.
Knock.
Knock knock.
“NO!” Apple Bloom ran to the stove, and grabbed the poker. She clenched it in her teeth, and stood between Granny Smith before the door. “I ain’t going to let them take you!”
Knock knock, like the hooves of soldiers marching to the drums.
“Apple Bloom, you ain’t near big enough to take them on. Even if’n you were, you couldn’t stop them.”
“I don’t care!” Apple Bloom sobbed. “I don’t! You don’t know! Maybe you can fight it!”
Knock knock, like the blows of axeponies, chopping down trees. The lock was starting to rattle.
“GO AWAY! YOU CAN’T TAKE MY GRANNY!”
Granny Smith looked at the crying filly before her. Even through the tears, the little pony had a fire lit inside her. Granny remembered that fire, the same fire that so many Apples—heck, even so many ponies kept within themselves. The fire of fear, of anger, of joy, of life. Of sheer determined will. She sighed. The force of the knocking was breaking the lock away from the wall. Little bits of snow slipped through the gaps.
“Fine, Apple Bloom. Let’s take them on. You and me. Make our stand.”
The knocks gave way to slams. Wood splintered in the door frame. The whole wall of the house shook with the force.
The lock gave. The door swung open—
—And Big Macintosh and Applejack tumbled through the door in a pile of pony, scarves, firewood, and two full canisters of lantern oil.
“Well, I’ll be,” said Granny Smith, “I guess they are that stupid.”
“What the hay do you mean we’re that st—hey now! What’s gotten into you—”
Apple Bloom had dropped the poker and pounded on Applejack’s shoulder with her hooves. “Don’t you ever scare us like that again! I thought that…I thought…”
She fell down crying. Big Macintosh brushed himself off, and went about lighting the fire in the stove again. Applejack held her little sister close.
“Ssh, ssh…it’s okay, it’s okay. We heard you two shoutin’ when we came to the door, and with all them timberwolves hollerin’, we thought maybe somethin’ happened in here. When you didn’t answer it, Big Macintosh and I got worried, so we gave it the ol’ shoulder.” She kept stoking Apple Bloom’s hair, and turned to Granny Smith. “Stopped off at the barn first, ‘cause we figured we needed the supplies anyway, and at that point a little extra walkin’ wasn’t too much of a problem, ‘cause we got this far anyway. What’s got her so worked up?”
Big Macintosh tried to latch the door again, to no avail.
Apple Bloom sniffled. “Granny said that—”
“We were just worried about you both, is all. Apple Bloom got a bit worked up about it, and I was just trying to calm her down.”
Applejack looked down at her sister. “Is that true, Apple Bloom?”
Apple Bloom looked at Granny, then back to Applejack. She wiped her nose and nodded.
“Well, we’re here now, and as soon as I help your brother fix the door, I’ll be up to tuck you in, alright? The storm’s letting up a little, and you’ve got plenty of quilts. You must be plum tuckered out.”
Apple Bloom looked to Granny again, but the aging mare was already halfway up the stairs. Apple Bloom nodded again, scooped up the quilts from the couch, and ran up to her room.
Hell, Applejack knew Granny wasn’t being honest. She wasn’t stupid. Apple Bloom did get spun up to a tizzy here and there, but typically she didn’t start threatening ponies with a poker, either. And if anything, it would be stupid not to come back. They’d left a senile old hag and a filly prone to hysteria in a house with no wood, no lantern oil, and nopony to help them if something went wrong. The Pegasus who’d brought news of the storm was safe in Twilight’s care for sure, so why hang around? Sure, he’d been a bit delirious when they showed up, but he was asleep by the time they left. He’d be fine by morning, day after at the latest. She shook her head. Sometimes she just didn’t get Granny at all.
Applejack and Big Macintosh tried to set the door back gently, but it wouldn’t stay. The forced entry destroyed a hinge as well as the lock, and with the way it had bent, there was no way to seal it up. They decided to rip it off, nail it in place, and fix it the next morning. As they ripped the door off the last hinges, both of them glanced out into the storm.
“H-hey Mac.”
“Yup?”
“Do you remember that story Granny Smith told us when we were foals?”
Silence. Then, “…Eeyup.”
“Do…do you hear the timberwolves anymore?”
“N….Nope.”
The two of them stared out into the snow, not looking at each other.
“She said that Uncle Root was pretty tall, didn’t she? And that…that scar, it’d be hard to miss.”
“Sure would.”
“She said she saw six of them at the end, right?”
“Might…Might have been five.”
“Definitely—”
“Not eight.”
“Didn’t think so.”
At some point feeling came back to Applejack’s face and hooves, and she remembered snow was blowing into the house. “Well, it’s been a long night. Maybe I’m just seeing things, on account of being tired. Just a ghost story, after all.”
Big Macintosh just shrugged. They fixed the door in no time at all. As they climbed the stairs, Applejack looked back over her shoulder. “Just…seeing things.”
But Applejack found sleep wouldn’t come, and when she got up to check on Apple Bloom for about the ninth time, she noticed the faint glow of a lantern from under Big Macintosh’s door. When the news came the next day that the Pegasus was missing the next morning, neither of them were surprised. After all, they saw it for themselves as they stood over the mangled door. Tangled Root came to make the call, and the poor young Courier had no choice but to answer.
Author's Note
[revised 1/15/2016]
[Changes made: fixed up rampant grammatical and formatting errors. Added back in the original ending. Made Applejack not a cardboard cutout. Removed eye-gougingly bad punctuation use from Granny Smith.]
This one was a doozy. When I was writing this originally, I was pretty sleep deprived. I'm not convinced I even edited it on the first pass. The plot itself was inspired by the song No Quarter, by Led Zeppelin. The song evokes such fierce images, stark figures in a barren wasteland of ice. At some point while writing, I realized there was no definitive origin to Winter Wrap-up, other than that it was an Earth Pony tradition. Well, if it's a Ponyville tradition, and the Apples founded Ponyville, shouldn't it be an Apple tradition, then?
I was on the verge of scrapping this story, but a few friends convinced me it was worth saving, and the ending still gives me such visceral joy.