Thicker Than Water

She hits the ground, hard. Fortunately, the back alley behind the bakery isn’t paved. As bad a cushion as the dirt makes, it’s better than cobblestones. Cranberry sits up, wincing and rubbing her shoulder. “Owww…”

“Are you okay?” A young colt comes running up, his stubby wings fluttering with worry. Rye’s mane is even messier than usual, thanks to his fight against the terrible Manticore of Mountua—which Cranberry nearly won, this time.

“I’m fine,” she says, grinning. “Manticores heal fast!” She shoots a glance up at the rooftop. “That’s higher than it looks…”

“I told you climbing to the roof wasn’t going to work.” Rye hops from hoof to hoof with nervous energy. “I always went out my bedroom window, until Mom nailed it shut.”

“Maybe if we climb that tree…”

A line of white-trunked trees stand tall around the bakery, shivering in the breeze. It’s dark beyond them, the rest of the city hidden from view as if by black fog. Cranberry sizes up the one nearest to the building, wondering if she could shimmy her way up to the branches. “Good thing manticores can fly!” she says, before charging toward it.

She doesn’t even make it to the lowest branch before her grip fails. Tumbling down into the dirt again, she whinnies—more frustration than pain. “Darn it!”

“Taking advantage of the manticore’s distracted attempts to escape, the Firewing pounces!” Rye tackles her, and their earlier tussle resumes.

Cranberry gives as good as she gets, landing a solid thwack to his chest and boxing his ears. Rolling in the dirt, the two struggle to pin the other. “Roaaaar!” she says, swiping imaginary claws across his face. Falling aside, Rye clutches his head, howling with enthusiastic pain.

“The manticore strikes for the kill!” Unfortunately, her tail isn’t three meters long, prehensile, and tipped with a venomous stinger. She makes do by twisting around and sweeping it down at him.

“For Equestria!” he suddenly shouts, rolling out from under her tail strike. Before she can react, his wings fling out and he leaps back at her. It catches her off-balance, and they crash back to the ground—with Rye solidly on top. Cranberry struggles to move, but he has her firmly pinned, this time. “Hiyaaa!” he yells, drawing back a hoof and then pounding the ground beside her head repeatedly.

Cranberry reacts to the blows, “Oof! Ah! Ow!” Her eyes roll up and her tongue lolls out. “Euuuugh…”

Sliding off her and sitting upright, Rye dusts his forehooves. “Once again, the Firewing is victorious!” He jumps up to his hooves, strutting in a circle around the slain manticore with his wings raised and his chest puffed out.

Rolling over onto her stomach, she props her chin up on her hooves. “And so, the Beast of the Bakery was slain,” she intones theatrically. For a moment, she can almost see him as a real Firewing; clad in shining golden armor, dust-covered and dinged up from the victorious battle. Something strange stirs in her at the thought.

“Canterlot is safe once again,” Rye says, saluting the distant Sun Castle, hidden in the dark somewhere beyond the trees.

“Now you can rescue the duchess it kidnapped,” says Cranberry, standing up.

“Oh, right!” He blinks. “The Firewing makes his way up into the beast’s lair…” glancing up at the roof, he pauses. “Uh… through the ground entrance.” His too-small wings give a subdued flap.

Cranberry flings herself at him, hugging him tight. “Oh, thank you, Captain Strudel! I knew you’d save me.” Falling back on her haunches, she clasps her forehooves beside her cheek.

“All in a day’s work, Lady Sugar,” he says, still puffed up.

Seized with a sudden impish inspiration, she bats her eyes. “The manticore cast a spell on me, brave captain. I can’t leave this place. But you can break the spell with a kiss.”

Rye jolts. “Er, what?”

“Come on, the hero always kisses the fair maiden.” She’s done enough illicit reading of her older sister’s romance novels to know that.

She hasn’t seen him this embarrassed since the time old Jensine caught them using her cane as a sword. “I’m, uh, not sure how exactly to…” he mumbles.

“Well, then! You’d better practice if you’re going to be a real Firewing.” She leans forward, puckering her lips and closing her eyes.

After a few moments without a sound, she cracks one eye back open. He’s standing right in front of her, his own eyes shut tight and his right forehoof quivering anxiously in the air.

Well, if he isn’t going to work up the courage, she’ll have to. Darting forward, Cranberry plants a clumsy kiss on his mouth, pressing his lips against her own. She feels him go very still. Closing her eyes again, she focuses on the strange new sensation of another pony’s lips.

All around, the leaves of the white trees shift eagerly.

This isn’t so bad. She kind of likes it, actually. Maybe this is why the adults are always doing it in Inkpot’s books. Sometimes there’s more that comes after the kissing parts, but she never understands any of it, and she knows asking Inkpot to explain will only get her a scolding for reading them in the first place. Still, this is nice…

Rye breaks away, making a pfft sound over and over as he scrubs his tongue. “Blech!”

She giggles. “Thanks, Captain Strudel.”

“That was weird.” He glances at her, nervously. “Well, did it work?”

“Yes. I’m free!” She prances past him, her tail swishing happily. “And I’m starving. You think Papa’s making macaroni again tonight?”

“Nahhh.” Relaxing, he follows her at a trot. “We just had that last week. Dad never cooks the same thing twice in a fortnight.”

As they reach the front door of the bakery, she pushes it open. The bell dings above, as she grins over her shoulder at Rye. “Then I bet you dinner’s going to be—”

There’s a dull clink of heavy glass, like a bottle bumping against something metal. Suddenly she feels a cold breeze from inside the building, and the whispering leaves of the trees hiss and shudder.

“That’s a good vintage,” says Rye.

The ground falls away, taking the bakery with it. She stands in the circle of pale trees, her hooves resting on a black void. “This is good,” her own voice says, from somewhere in the treetops.

“I’m not going to have to carry you down the mountain, am I?”

* * *

Cranberry’s eyes opened.

Sweat clung to her, plastering her mane against her neck. Her heart pounded in her chest like she’d just run a marathon. Outside the tent, she could hear the wind brushing through the leaves. The pale light of early dawn filtered through the tent, still so faint that she doubted the sun had yet risen above the horizon.

Sitting upright, she found herself out of breath, pressing a hoof to her chest. A quick look to her side assured her that Inger was still fast asleep, though he was stirring fitfully. He mumbled something, though the only word Cranberry caught was dogs. She was still too frazzled to attempt to parse it.

What in the hell had that been? She stared at the fabric flap covering the exit as her racing heart began to steady. The tent felt suffocatingly small. Grabbing her journal, she stepped over Apricot and pushed her way out into the daylight.

The morning air was filled with the scent of flowers, the sky a faint blue as the world began to wake. Cold dew painted her hooves as she tread through the grass toward the fire, which had guttered out sometime during the night. A camel, one of Kaduat’s people, was sitting on watch beside the ashes. She gave Cranberry a mute nod before returning to watch the forest. Taking a seat across the remains of the campfire, Cranberry began to scratch new letters on her journal’s pages with a trembling grip on her pen.

We’ve reached the Elderwood at last. It’s not a welcoming place. The air is filled with this foreboding chill, and the noise of the aspen leaves is ceaseless. My first night beneath the trees was filled by a dream of a silly childhood game. A real one I once played. It was more vivid than my own memory, though strange—there have never been trees near the bakery. Yet the other details…

Her pen paused. Those details burned in her brain like flaming arrows. The soreness from losing that wrestling match, the warmth in her belly at the thought of a proud Firewing rescuing her, the feeling of Rye’s lips on her own in her first childish kiss—she shivered, and continued writing. For some reason, she felt compelled to put the entire dream down on the page, while it was still fresh in her mind. Just a stupid dream, she thought, as words filled the page. Just kids playing around.

Of course, there was that other memory, the one that had begun to bubble up at the dream’s end… Was that what had woken her?

“Morning,” yawned someone from behind her.

Inger? she wondered, pulling the journal up against her chest and turning her head. But it wasn’t her husband; it was Virgil. The griffon rubbed his eyes and nodded to her. Cranberry gave him a single nod in return. “Good morning.”

“Bea’s getting breakfast ready,” he said, yawning again and gesturing toward the carts, where Cranberry spied Beatriz gathering supplies. “Sleep well?”

“Just fine,” she said, closing the journal with the pen inside. “You?”

Virgil peered blearily into the forest, blinking at the sea of green leaves. “Just fine,” he echoed.

* * *

Inger swatted aside a twig, stepping carefully around the tangled roots to his right. “Watch out for those,” he warned Kaduat, who was pulling a cart a little ways behind him.

“Mm,” she grunted, steering wide around them.

So far, the Elderwood was nothing like Inger’s last venture into an elken forest. Rather than a dense, dark blanket of silence, the aspen wood was open and filled with sound. The ever-shifting canopy of leaves let in the sun along with their whispering, letting dappled light play across the shadowed ground. Birds chirped among the treetops, building springtime nests. It was peaceful, bucolic even, but Inger couldn’t settle the queasiness in his stomach. Just Beatriz’s oatmeal, he assured himself, stepping around another root. I never did like heavy breakfasts.

It had taken longer than usual for the expedition’s tents to be packed and the carts to start moving again. The cause of the delay could have been breakfast, or the early start—everyone looked as tired as Inger felt—but the other culprit was Zaeneas’s alchemical brew. Inger glanced up ahead at the zebra, who was pulling her own tiny cart. It was a strange-looking contraption, with an inverted v-shaped roof and a chimney-esque little vent on the top. Steam trickled out gently as the wheels trundled on.

Last night, Inger had caught a glimpse of the cauldron inside, and the strange iron wire-work that held it. Rows and rows of vials and pouches covered the sides, filled with ingredients as common as dandelions and as rare as powdered gemstone. The cauldron had bubbled all night above a small coalpile the alchemist had built at the edge of camp. It had taken a good twenty minutes this morning after eating for Zaeneas to load it properly into her cart without spilling anything. Now, hours later, the vent was still leaking steam.

Elyrium, Inger thought. Let’s hope we don’t need it.

“So?” Tybalt’s voice drew his attention back. Somehow, he’d snuck up on Inger while he was lost in thought. “How’d it go?”

Inger cocked his head. “Huh?”

“You know,” Tybalt said, hushed. He glanced around, apparently determining that Kaduat was too far behind them to overhear. “The apology.”

“Oh.” Inger frowned unhappily. “I’m not sure. Last night, she said she wanted to stop fighting, but she was still angry. And this morning, when I tried to talk to her, she seemed jumpy. When Apricot asked if any of those books she brought had anything about spellsinging in them, she took off like a lightning bolt for the cart with our things to find one for him. We haven’t had a chance to speak since then.”

Glumly, he drifted to the side of the path, looking around Kaduat’s cart to see if Cranberry was alone yet. No such luck, however; she was still deep in some conversation about elken relics with Pwyll. Apricot was nearby, still wrapped up in his exercises with the knotted string. “I think she’s avoiding me.”

“… Ah.” Tybalt frowned in sympathy. “Maybe she just needs time.”

“I don’t know. I could be imagining things. I didn’t get much sleep last night.” Inger yawned.

“Bad dreams?”

“Mm.” Fluffing his wings, Inger’s lips tightened. “About Mother.”

Tybalt started at the word. “Meg…?”

“Yes. An old memory I’d nearly forgotten about,” said Inger, shaking his head, “We were at this house, this huge mansion on the edge of the noble districts in Canterlot. We’d gone there to steal food from the refuse piles behind the kitchen. But just as we found some half-eaten fresh bread, they set the dogs out. Mother and I ran from them through the trees, on and on…” He shivered.

Pale beneath his onyx coat, Tybalt swallowed. “I wasn’t sure whether you were exaggerating, before. The two of you really had to scavenge in the garbage?”

“Sometimes,” said Inger, flatly.

“Sisters,” muttered his father, looking sick. “Inger, I’m—”

“You didn’t know,” he interjected, cutting Tybalt off. “Forget about it.”

“I should have known,” said Tybalt. “You’ve a right to be angry with me.” He sounded almost pleading, as if he wanted to be punished.

I’m not your judge, or your redemption. Inger restrained a sudden snarl. “Of course I—” he paused, and took a deep breath. “Look. Neither of us can change what happened. And feeling guilty or angry about it isn’t going to help.” He sighed, shaking his head. “Let’s just keep our eyes facing forward, all right?” Softening, he looked ahead. “The past is past, but the future’s what we make of it.”

“Yes…” Tybalt slowly nodded. “A wise philosophy. Thank you.”

They walked together without words for a minute or two, before Tybalt cleared his throat. “I had a strange dream, myself. Of Eurydice. I haven’t dreamed about her in years…” For a moment, his eyes were haunted. “Serves me right for bringing her up last night.”

“Good dream, or bad?”

“It was rarely that simple with her,” muttered Tybalt. “I was dreaming about the time I returned to Canterlot with her, and learned that Meg had disappeared from the castle. Grief and fear were whirling around inside me the entire trip, but I couldn’t let Eurydice see any of it. The secrets were like burning coals in my chest. The simplest questions from her would give me anxiety attacks. She kept asking why I was so jumpy. It was a hellish week.” Shaking his head, he exhaled. “Bad,” he said, changing his mind. “Definitely a bad dream.”

“Hey!” barked Kaduat from behind, jolting both stallions. She rolled her right shoulder, hefting the harness she was pulling the cart with. “Either pick up the pace or move to the back, boys. You’re slowing down the whole line.”

Inger and Tybalt shared a rueful look. “Sorry,” said Inger, as they quickened their gait to a vigorous trot. The conversation ended there, leaving the two to trod in companionable quiet beneath the green-gilded white trees.

* * *

Lunch was called later than Cranberry’s growling stomach would have liked. Yet, once the rations of bread and cheese had been passed out, she found herself immediately wishing they could get moving again. Sitting still beneath the ceaselessly rustling aspens was making it hard to keep her mind off last night and the things now written in her journal. Mindlessly chewing her meal, she stared at a nearby tree, one of the few they’d passed with a dark trunk. A maple, she thought, if she remembered the leaf shape correctly. It seemed foreign in the endless ranks of aspens.

“Ah—listen!” Beside her, Beatriz craned her ears forward, and Cranberry followed suit, grateful for the distraction. She heard a new trilling in the distance, beneath the ceaseless rustling of the leaves.

Fee bee-ee! Fee bee-ee!

One of the maple branches above burst into a flurry of motion as two chickadees took off, fluttering around each other in a whirlwind of feathers. Cranberry watched, instantly delighted. “You think they have a nest nearby?”

“Not yet; spring’s just begun. They’re probably building one right now.” Beatriz beamed as a blue jay skree’d somewhere in the distance. “Back when I lived in Antellucía, I used to go out into the woods every morning to listen to the songbirds. I don’t often get the chance anymore. We’re always on the road, and there’s not much work for mercenaries in forests.”

“Is that why you took up the flute?” Cranberry’s eyes followed an orange-and-black streak as a blackbird raced through the canopy overhead.

Beatriz laughed. “No, that I picked up from my aunt.” She tossed a scrap of bread away from the campsite into the treeline around the meadow. Less than a second passed before a bright yellow blur swept past and snatched the food. “Warblers! My favorites. This forest is gorgeous.”

“It’s not what I was expecting,” Cranberry admitted. “It’s very… open.”

Virgil grunted an affirmation as he tore into his small loaf. “Smooth path, too,” he mumbled around the food. “The carts are doing better than I expected.”

“Don’t talk with your beak full,” said Beatriz, giving him a gentle swat. “I forgot to pack the lid back on the water barrel. Could you go hammer it a few times for me?”

“Sure,” he said, through another bite of bread. He hopped up and headed for the nearest supply cart.

The domestic display sent a twang through Cranberry. She glanced over her shoulder to where Inger and Castor were trading war stories again. Before he could notice her, she quickly looked back to the maple. She still couldn’t figure out what to say to him.

What is there to say? You had a bad dream. Not even worth mentioning.

Running a hoof through her mane, she asked Beatriz, “How’d you and Virgil end up together, anyway?”

“Ah…” said Beatriz, turning melancholy. “After Simone died, I was… I was a wreck, to put it plainly. Not eating. Barely speaking to anyone. I just threw myself into the work, hammering plates of armor and serving plates of food.” She smiled weakly at her own wordplay. “No one else in the company knew what to say. They all avoided me, whether out of respect or fear that my dark cloud would hover over them as well. Except for Virgil.”

She fiddled with her hooves. “He knew I played the flute sometimes. He told me that he was a musician, too. Showed me the old violin he’d brought from Grypha, that he hadn’t touched in years. I’d never seen him use it. But he asked if I wanted to practice with him, do something… fun for a change.” Her voice caught. “At the time I thought he just wanted me to stop moping around. Later, I realized… his music makes him so happy that he was hoping some of that would catch.”

Cranberry remembered the long black nights just after Papa’s passing, and the way Inger had quietly tucked a book on her nightstand each evening. An offered distraction, something he knew would pull her out of her own head for a time.

Beatriz smiled, running a hoof up across a white twig. “I didn’t even play my flute at first. He didn’t say anything about that, but he was more than willing to play for me. Aurelian’s Sixth Concerto is his favorite piece.”

“It’s a good one.”

“One day, I guess I just couldn’t stay silent any longer. I grabbed my flute case and popped it open while he was rosining his bow. I still didn’t say anything, but we played a few songs together. Gods, I was terrible. Horribly out of practice.” Beatriz snickered. “But it became a weekly activity. Then a daily one. Eventually we were confident enough to play for the others, and we learned about Pollux’s impressive lungs. He started to join our little shows.”

Cranberry nodded, with a faint smile. “That’s very sweet.”

“After playing for the night, while we were packing up our instruments, I found that I could talk to Virgil. About things I otherwise couldn’t say. About Simone.” Beatriz took a deep breath, but forged on. “It got easier. And one day, I wanted to thank him for being so patient, and understanding, and I…”

The antelope’s cheeks tinged with pink. “Well. One thing led to another.”

Cranberry wished she’d used a different phrase. “I’m happy for you.”

“Hmm. Is everything all right?” Beatriz glanced up as another pair of birds darted overhead. “You seem distracted today.”

“Just… a lot on my mind.”

“Okay.” Beatriz shrugged amiably. “By the way, keep an eye out for woodpeckers! I heard one earlier today, but I didn’t catch a glimpse of him. I haven’t seen a woodpecker since living in Antellucía.”

“I’ll let you know if I spot one.” This time, the smile was genuine. “And thanks for the company.”

A shrill whistle carried over the caravan. “All right, people, wrap it up!” shouted Castor. “We’re moving off in five minutes.”

Scarfing down the last of her bread, Beatriz leaped up. “That’s it for lunch, then. I’m going to check on that barrel before we head out.” And then, she was gone.

Cranberry chewed her own meal, barely tasting it. Kaduat passed her, looking refreshed from the break. The camel reached the cart she’d been hauling, checking the hitch for loose nails or frayed straps. Once satisfied with the harness’s condition, Cranberry watched her slide up to the front of the cart and reach inside. She lifted out the bottle she’d stashed in the front corner and took a surreptitious sip.

Words echoed under the whispering leaves, swirling into Cranberry’s ears. That’s a good vintage.

She finished her bread with trembling hooves.