The Colt Who Fell Into The Gloaming
Long ago, in the days when history yet lay lightly on the land, a clever, curious, hardworking unicorn colt fell into the faerie lands, called the Gloaming.
He had found a dim hollow among a tree’s roots. It did not smell of badger, so the colt explored it, as colts are wont to do. It became a tunnel that was deep and twisty, but had no branching paths and was lit by a pale moss, with smooth walls devoid of roots to clutch and snag at his purse tied around his neck. These things made the colt suspicious, because he paid attention to the stories of his elders, but his suspicion did not dampen his curiosity, so he continued on. The tunnel went on and on, until finally the moss faded away against a brighter light from ahead.
The colt emerged from the tunnel into a land of twilight. The sky was empty of sun or moon and the stars were strewn across it as thickly as spilled milk. They lay a pale light across the world that cast no shadows, but illuminated everything equally. The colt looked for the Farmer among the stars, to get his bearings, and felt afraid when he could not find it. The Snake, the Pegasus’ Wing, the Haybale, all were gone from the sky.
The colt knew what this place must be, so he turned to go back through the tunnel, but it was already too late. A guard stepped from behind the tree and leveled a spear at him. The guard was tall and slender, with limbs dusted with fur like cinnamon powder. His yellow eyes and cruel mouth looked down on the colt as he said, “You will come with me.”
The colt suffered himself to be driven through the forest. Each time he glanced back at his captor, the guard’s form had changed. Now broad and muscular, now scaly and fat, now two-legged, now four-legged. Only the yellow eyes and the cruel mouth were unchanged. An hour later, they came upon a multicolored city. Its walls looked to have been built by a thousand thousand different architects and masons, so varied were they in material and construction from one span to the next. Inside the gates (one golden, the other wood), the city itself was a patchwork, the streets, markets, and people made in every form imaginable and some not. The crazy-quilt streets were lit by candles and torches and gas and magic, and sometimes a citizen atop a pedestal gleefully shining light from their ever-changing skin. The curious colt could not help but to stare.
Some of the people stared back at the colt. Others pretended not to. Some transformed into yellow-eyed horrors and grinned cruelly at his reactions. Others transformed into yellow-eyed visions and grinned cruelly at his reactions. The colt began to keep his eyes on his hooves as much as possible.
The guard herded him into the middle of the city, toward a castle that was strangely all of a piece, a foreboding pile of dark stone with thick walls and sturdy towers. As the colt looked, the whole castle transformed in a gleam of light, becoming a confection of golden minarets and airy bridges, the whole surrounded by a latticework wall of silver and pearl that let the colt see the white stone of the keep. His guard barked a laugh. “You’re in luck, boy. The king is in a good mood.”
Minutes later, the colt was led into the presence of the king, and saw his good mood for himself. The colt kneeled on the throne room’s fine thick carpet, and the king leaned forward in the throne, beaming at him. His yellow eyes smiled, his beard lay over a jolly paunch, and his mouth was hardly cruel at all. “Welcome, my boy, welcome to the Kingdom of Gloaming! We’re so happy to have you as our guest. What is your name, dear one?”
Because the clever colt had paid attention to his elders, he knew that the Gloaming was the faerie kingdom, and that you should never give your name to one of the fae. Names have power, and the fae cannot be trusted. So the colt said, “I am sorry, Sire, but I have forgotten my name.”
“Forgotten your name? Oh dear, oh dear.” The king’s smile was unchanged, but his eyes had hardened and the carpet under the colt’s knees became thin and shabby. “That will never do.” He raised a clawed hand to stroke his beard thoughtfully. “Then I propose a game. Three challenges will be set before you. If you complete them within one week, I will grant you any boon you wish. If you fail, you will remain here until you remember your name.”
The clever colt knew that the fae keep their word in matters of games. He also knew that the fae always cheat. But the king’s boon was his only chance to return home, so he said, “I accept.”
“Excellent!” The king clapped his tentacles together with a moist slap. “We’ll have such fun. Puck!” In a flash of light, a small figure appeared and bowed to the king. “Puck, this forgetful boy is in your charge.” The king’s grin widened to show too many fangs. “Challenge him.”
Standing deep in the castle before the door to the first challenge, Puck was hardly bigger than the colt, leaning back against the damp stone wall on two hairy and behoofed legs that were crooked like a goat’s, with two naked arms crossed imperiously over his silk vest. His yellow eyes swept over the colt for the hundredth time, and for the hundredth time he shook his shaggy head. “The first challenge is simple. Ring the bell. When you do, I will return.” Puck turned away as though to leave, but turned back with a sly smile. “Oh, and… lift with your hooves.” Grinning, he vanished in a flash of light that left the colt dazzled.
Blinking, the colt pushed open the door. As his vision cleared, his eyes widened in dismay. Despite the narrow dungeonlike hallway outside, the room was huge. Thin clouds swirled beneath the distant ceiling, engulfing the tarnished brass hinge the size of a wagon from which depended a bell broad enough to live in comfortably.
The hardworking colt set to the task with a will, using his magic to push and pull and tug and strain against the bell, but to no avail. The bell was simply too massive for him to move. Panting, he stopped and considered. With a few moments of thought, he realized that striking the clapper against the bell would ring it just the same as the other way around. The bottom of the bell was nearly eye-level with the colt, and he edged closer, peering under the bell’s skirts while determinedly ignoring its vast weight over his head, and was able to see the clapper. It was a brazen boulder, but a boulder would be easier to move than a hillock. The colt used his magic once more, shoving at the clapper. It swayed as though in a stiff breeze, but did not come near striking the bell. The hardworking colt set his jaw and strained harder, but after an hour of effort the clapper had only swung halfway to the bell.
Exhausted and sick at the thought that the first challenge might defeat him and he would never see his home again, the colt curled into a ball on the floor and slept.
When he awoke, the damp chill of the naked stone floor had soaked into the colt’s bones. He rose stiffly and began trotting laps around the bell to warm himself up. Soon he was galloping, his mind running in circles no less than his body. While his mind was so wandering, he happened to notice the way his hooves felt against the stone floor, the way his legs flexed at the ankle to give his hooves strong purchase on the stones. It seemed to the colt that without that purchase, he would hardly be able to run at all for slipping and sliding. At that thought, Puck’s words of the day before flashed through the colt’s mind like a thunderbolt. Lift with your hooves, he had said. And in that moment, the clever colt had an idea.
He skidded to a stop and brought his magic to bear against the bell’s clapper. But where before he had given it no thought at all, now he focused his mind on an image: himself with hooves firmly planted and able to use all his weight and strength in the task. And the clapper moved, slowly at first but more easily than it had before. The colt imagined as though his life depended on it, and he pushed, then pulled, then pushed, and in ten minutes or half an hour, the clapper kissed gently against the inner surface of the bell. On the return swing, the colt put everything he had into it, and the bell rang, loud and golden and deep enough to rattle the colt’s grinning teeth.
When the colt turned to leave the room, Puck was standing by him. Today he was shaped like a pony about the colt’s age, but with the same monkeylike, shaggy head he’d worn yesterday. “Well done, young master,” he said. His tone was impressed, but his too-clever grin made it into mockery. “The second challenge awaits.”
Elsewhere in the maze of passages beneath the king’s castle, Puck and the colt stopped at last before a door. Puck had become a gleaming yellow-eyed fish swimming languidly through the air, and now he gestured with a long fin. “A book awaits within. Read it to learn how to unlock the door. I await your success with bated breath. And don’t forget, things are not always as they seem.” With fishy lips split in a grin, he vanished in a flash of light.
The colt turned the door handle and entered the room. The door had no handle or knob on the inside, and it swung firmly shut behind him with the noises of latching and locking. He pushed on it experimentally, and it was indeed sealed fast. The room was small and cozy, with rugs on the floor and hanging on the walls and a merry fire crackling in a tidy hearth. The only other furniture in the room was a small square table with a heavy tome lying closed atop it next to a platter of steaming food and a mug of clear water.
The colt was parched and hungry after a day and a night of adventure, but because he had learned well from his elders’ stories, he knew that to eat faerie food would trap him forever in the faerie realm. But the faerie king himself had promised the colt a boon, and the faerie king’s magic could undo the trap of faerie food when the colt wished to return home. Having cleverly worked this out, the colt ate and drank with gusto. When his repast was reduced to a few crumbs and a lone drop of water clinging to the inside of the mug, the colt pushed the platter aside and was startled when it and the mug vanished with a flash.
The colt opened the book to the first page. The paper was filled by nine large symbols the colt didn’t recognize, arranged in a grid. Frowning, he flipped through the pages, finding each one much the same, though later pages had varying numbers of symbols. He returned to the first page and bent to the task of puzzling out the strange symbols. The symbol in the upper left corner was a square with a dot in its center. The one to its right was a sketch of a grasping hand. And in the upper right corner of the page was another square, this one bisected horizontally by a straight line.
Frowning in puzzlement, the colt examined the three symbols on the second line. The first and third symbols were identical to the ones above them, but the middle symbol was an artfully stylized sun.
The third line had the same dotted square symbol in its first place, but the second was a teardrop shape that the colt realized was meant to be a candle flame, and the third was the dotted square again.
With his chin in his hooves, the colt sat staring at the page, deep in thought. The book was meant to show him how to open the door, according to Puck. It was possible that the door only responded to a command word and this book contained that word somewhere inside. But if that were the case, then this book was written in some faerie tongue which the colt could neither speak nor read. That seemed too great a challenge to be overcome in the next six days, so the colt optimistically decided that that was not the challenge he faced.
He raised his eyes to the blank face of the door. If it was not opened with a magic word, then it must require ordinary magic. If so, then the book was-- “A spellbook,” he said aloud, smiling at the inscrutable symbols. Rather than decoding an entire language in six days, he only had to decipher how the fae folk wrote out instructions for magic. The colt returned to the symbols and recalled his own magic instruction, which he had always paid close attention to because he never shirked hard work. His grand-dam had taught him that casting any spell had three steps: gathering magic in your horn, visualizing an image that determined the effect, and releasing the magic so that it could do its work. The clever colt thus understood that the faerie spellbook’s symbols represented those three steps, and so he paid special attention to the second symbol on each line. This was the first page of the book, so these spells must be the basics of basics. The first line’s grasping hand symbol became clear to the colt as the image for telekinesis. A unicorn imagined it differently, of course, but knowing that the faeries had hands made it obvious. The second line’s sun gave the colt pause for a moment, until he realized that it must be an image for light. Therefore, the third line’s candle flame was an image for fire.
Each of those spells demanded very little magic, so perhaps the dotted square symbol represented that. The colt turned to a random page near the back of the book and confirmed that the first symbols on that page were squares mostly or completely filled with ink. He was dismayed to notice that two of the lines on that page had four symbols. He racked his brain, trying to remember anything in his lessons that could account for that fourth step, but couldn’t think of anything. Unsettled, he turned back to the first page.
The symbol of the bisected square took the colt only moments to decipher when he realized that telekinesis and light spells both required one to continually feed them with magic, while the fire spell’s dotted square would represent the fact that lighting a fire only required one to release your collected magic.
Having made so much progress so quickly, the clever colt felt confident and sure of himself. He would decipher every spell in this book, and one of them would be a spell to open doors, and then the challenge would be complete. He turned the page and the book exploded.
The pages ripped free from the spine and whirled through the air in a papery maelstrom. The colt’s face and hooves were sliced by the tornado as he leapt for the errant pages and he fell back against the wall, where he could only watch as the pages were shredded and the pieces thrown all around the room like confetti. The attack lasted only moments, but that was all it took. When it was over, the colt surveyed the damage with his heart in his stomach. So this was the king’s idea of cheating.
It seemed hopeless, but the colt didn’t give up. He carefully gathered all the shredded pieces together into a pile to begin putting them back together like a jigsaw puzzle. Several hours later, his concentration was broken by a flash of light as a midday meal appeared on the table. The colt ate it absently as he fretted over what he had accomplished so far. Safely away from his work area, several dozen symbols had been reassembled, their torn edges stuck back together with his own saliva. Looking at the small array of symbols, the colt worried that he would spend all his allotted time undoing the king’s treachery. But he pushed the thought out of his mind. He was getting faster with practice, better at seeing which scraps went with which. He could finish this challenge. He would finish this challenge. Filled with newfound determination, the colt bolted the rest of the food and was already hard at work by the time the platter and mug vanished. By the time the evening meal appeared, the collection of completed symbols had grown to hundreds and the pile of scraps had shrunk significantly. The colt continued working hard until he couldn’t keep his eyes open and he finally had to sleep.
When he awoke, it was the third day of his week. The colt devoured the food waiting on the table and plunged back into his labor. He worked at a feverish pace through the day, stopping only to eat and drink. At last, sooner than he would have thought possible when he began, he pasted together the last two torn scraps to form the last symbol. As he slumped back in relief and rubbed his tired eyes, his dinner appeared on the table.
The colt gratefully ate and drank, his gaze playing over the drifts and whorls of random symbols scattered over the floor. During the work of piecing them back together, he had become as familiar with them as the back of his own hoof. The visualizing images were what had captured his imagination and were what he sought out now. The image of a budding plant, what spell could that be for? The ant? The whirlpool? The cloud? He had paid close attention and worked hard during his magic lessons, like any hardworking student should, and had shown an aptitude for magic beyond his tender years, but he had never learned of any spells to which those images might apply. The mystery was fascinating, and his curiosity got the better of him. He reached out with his magic and floated the budding-plant symbol toward him to look more closely. So intent was the colt on the symbol as it drew close, he failed to notice that his image was slipping. For barely a moment, the image of the budding plant overlaid his image of carrying the paper. The surface of the wooden table sprouted a young green living twig which grew rapidly toward the colt, thrusting like a spear at his eye. The colt scrambled backwards away from it, which broke his concentration on his magic, and the twig ceased growing as suddenly as it had started.
The colt pushed himself to his hooves and stared at the needle-sharp tip of the twig. Cautiously, he backed away to the furthest corner of the room and cast a spell at the twig, imagining the budding plant. The twig thickened into a sapling branch and all along its length, twigs sprouted and grew in all directions, tiny green leaves budding forth from them. The colt ended the spell and frowned thoughtfully at the branch, which now looked for all the world like any ordinary young branch growing from any unremarkable tree. As he was puzzling on it, he remembered--his image had slipped, and for a moment he had been visualizing two images at once. He regarded the infamous scrap of paper contemplatively. He had certainly been imagining bringing that paper close to his eye, the better to see it, and the growing twig had followed the same path. His eyes went wide with a shock of realization: the four-symbol spells at the back of the book must require two simultaneous images.
The colt dashed to the haphazard drift of repaired symbols scattered on the floor and stared at them with new eyes. Each image could be combined with others to create a different spell than either of the two alone. He quickly rearranged the symbols so that all of the images were to one side. Before he began sampling the images, his sense of caution reasserted itself over his curiosity, and he broke the branch off of the table and set it in a corner of the room to serve as his target.
The process of experimentation fascinated the colt and kept him awake long into the night. When he finally allowed himself to sleep, the branch and its successors had been burned, drenched, shrunk, launched, vanished into thin air, and had a dozen dozen other indignities visited upon them. The colt fell asleep satisfied that he had learned much, and that the challenge would be solved in the morning.
But it was not to be, for the colt had underestimated the cleverness of the fae. He awoke on the fourth day and enjoyed his breakfast, marshaling the spells he had learned the night before. When his meal was finished, he stood and faced the blank door. With the image of an open door in his mind, he cast a spell. Nothing happened. The failure did not faze the colt. Obviously the faerie would seal the door in a way that would not respond to the most likely spell. He gathered magic again and imagined the budding plant and the pane of glass at once. Spreading out from the middle of the door, the wooden surface turned to glass, allowing him to see the hidden mechanisms inside. To his dismay, the door was filled from floor to arch with clockworks and machinery. The hardworking colt would not give up, however, and turned his eyes to where the handle was on the other side. Reaching through the door with his magic, he imagined turning the handle. The works inside the door clicked and jiggled, but unsurprisingly the door did not open. So the colt patiently and painstakingly traced the machinery with his eyes, watching the jiggling and the shimmying as he manipulated the handle, until he found a complicated cluster of parts that could only be a lock.
The colt began to poke and prod the lock with his magic in order to learn how it was put together and so how to disable it. Progress was slow, and the noontime meal came and went unnoticed behind him. Some hours later, the door gave a satisfying thunk-THUNK as the locking mechanism disengaged at last. Weary but happy, the colt turned the handle--and nothing happened. The machinery moved freely and the lock’s parts spun and jigged cheerfully, and they were not attached to anything else in the door’s works. Somewhere else in the door was the true mechanism that would solve the challenge. He had wasted an entire day on a faerie jape.
It was then, near the end of the fourth day of his captivity, that the colt cried. The shock of being so close to victory only to have it stolen away, and the constant worry of the deadline hanging over him, and his homesickness and the thought that he might never be able to see home again, finally defeated his resolve and determination. The colt sank to the floor and sobbed piteously with great heartwrenching cries of pain. In the end, he slept, curled around himself in front of the treacherous door.
The colt woke early on the fifth day, sore and exhausted and hungry and, most of all, angry. The faeries thought cheating was some grand joke, so why should he not cheat in return? He went to the array of image symbols collected together on the floor and looked them over, remembering what some did and gambling on others. Without leaving the symbols, he looked at the door and gathered magic. The image of the flame combined with the grasping hand created a lance of fire that struck at the door but shimmered into nothingness before touching its surface. The flame with the cloud created a fiery blanket that pressed to the door but did not harm it. The ant and the paper, and some careful experimentation, flattened the sturdy wooden table to the thickness of paper. The colt slid the table beneath the door and stood back before releasing the spell all at once. The table returned in a blink to its original size and shape, exerting tremendous pressure against the bottom of the door, which shattered the table into flinders without so much as wiggling the door in its jamb. The colt continued attacking the door with everything at his disposal, but to no avail. The wings, the rainbow, the oven, the bottle, the fish, all for naught. The door was protected by spells the colt did not know how to defeat.
The morning meal appeared eventually, the platter and the mug sitting with dignity on the floor in the table’s absence. The colt ate and drank ravenously, and as he tore a hunk from a steaming loaf of bread, the answer came to him. He had decided to cheat, like the fae did. But he had not cheated like the fae did. He had approached the problem directly, instead of with cleverness.
The colt popped the last bite into his mouth and faced the door, gathering magic. His gaze focused on the stone wall into which the door was set, and he imagined the decaying log and the hungry mouth, and channeled as much magic as he could bear. The thick, sturdy stones of the wall slumped like caramel on a hot day, drooping toward the floor before shivering apart into a rattle of sand and pebbles. The door still stood, proud and alone, and the colt put his hoof against it and pushed. The door fell over with a boom into the hallway. He stepped out over it and Puck was there, gleefully applauding in a centaurlike form with six arms.
“Well done, well done! And on only the fifth day, too. You’re quite something. The third challenge should be a breeze for you.” He blinked at himself, wrinkling up his nose. “Oh, that was awful. I should be ashamed of myself.” A grin burst onto his face. “But I’m not!” With a playful gesture, he led the colt away from the fallen door.
The third challenge was to take place in a spacious courtyard somewhere in the midst of the castle, open to the twilight sky and decorated with artfully shaped trees and stone-paved paths that led between beds of colorful flowers. The thousands of candles that filled every inch of the paths and floated in the air like dandelion fluff were most likely a new addition.
“Your challenge is to blow out the candles,” said Puck.
The colt narrowed his eyes suspiciously. “What’s the trick?”
All three of Puck’s left arms fluttered to his chest in exaggerated dismay. “Trick? My dear boy, you sound as though you don’t trust me. Which means you’re finally learning.” He leaned over to the nearest candle, which floated unsupported in the air by his chest, and puffed it out with a gentle breath. A moment later, it re-lit itself and continued burning as though nothing had happened. “The trick, as you so charmingly put it, is this: you must blow out all the candles at once. If any are left alight, they will all continue burning.” He made as though to leave, but turned back with a thought. “Oh, and…” A snap of his right hands’ fingers created a globe of water surrounding the candle he had blown out. It continued burning merrily, its yellow light dancing through the water. “The king doesn’t care for the thought of his garden being swamped, so the candles can’t be drowned. Third time’s the charm, so best of luck!” Puck snapped again, dismissing the watery globe, then with a cheerful wave, he vanished.
The colt regarded the candle with no less suspicion than he had given to Puck himself. He spun on his heels and marched away through the garden. Several minutes later, he stopped beside an arbitrary candle and used the images of the lake and the cloud to form his own globe of water around it. As promised, it continued burning. He ended the spell and the globe splashed onto the grass to be absorbed. With a sigh, the colt began walking the garden to learn its layout and get an idea of the size of the challenge.
Several hours later, he returned to where he started, wearing the frown that had creased his brow for much of the circumnavigation. The garden was enormous, filling at least as much space as the colt’s village. Creating rain was the most obvious solution, but that wouldn’t work. Therefore, wind was his best hope. A big enough gust could sweep across the garden in a moment and put out all the candles at once.
With that thought, the colt set to action. He went to the approximate center of the garden and plucked a twig from a tree. Imagining the budding plant and the grasping hand, he made the twig grow into a tall, sturdy, naked tree trunk, deeply rooted in the manicured lawn. He redoubled his efforts and caused a spiral staircase of short limbs to grow from the trunk, and near the top he made a bowl-shaped platform a little larger than himself. Sweaty but satisfied, he climbed into his crow’s nest and surveyed the garden. From that vantage, he could see the entire expanse of it and all the candles that were his targets.
He gathered all the magic he could hold, and imagined the sky for wind and the grasping hand to direct it. A blast of air pressed him down into the bowl of his platform and made the treetop pitch and roll, but it stood fast. The colt peeped over the edge and sent the wind rushing in all directions to fill the garden. Candles snuffed out in a spreading wave of darkness, but the wave crested and fell back just over halfway to the garden’s walls. The colt watched with disappointment as the candles reignited, light rushing back to his lookout like the tide coming in.
It occurred to the colt to wonder if he could begin several gusts at once and let them each blow out a portion of the candles. It would test his ability to the limit, but the hardworking colt was willing to try. He again gathered as much magic as he could hold, and rehearsed what he would imagine, as a spell’s images needed to be clear in order to have the desired effect. After a moment, he felt ready, and he cast the first spell, the sky and a hard push from the grasping hand to push the wind out of the north corner of the garden. Quickly, so quickly, he cast the second spell, set to come out of the west. Then the third, in the south. But even as he cast the fourth, in the east, he knew that it was useless. The first gust of wind had already dispersed, and the candles in the north were shining again. He watched the rest of the candles reignite and sat down hard in his bowl-like lookout, beginning to fret again about the end of his week, which seemed to be racing at him faster in times of setback such as this.
As though to underscore the point, the midday meal appeared before him then, the platter and mug perched on a tray with legs that spread wide to balance in the bowl. The colt ate mechanically, taking no pleasure in the food, his mind churning as it tried to figure a solution. When he finished, the tray and all disappeared in a bright flash of light that dazzled the colt’s eyes. Blinking his vision clear reminded him of entering his first challenge, when he had been dazzled by Puck’s disappearance. Puck had left after saying something that had, in the end, given the colt the clue he needed to solve the puzzle.
The colt’s eyes narrowed in thought. Before the second challenge, Puck had said things are not as they seem, and in the end the colt had succeeded in the challenge by unlocking the door in a rather unconventional manner. Was Puck an ally? Or was he only playing some deeper game? Whichever it was, he had given the colt clues before each of the previous challenges. What had he said while leaving the colt in this garden? Third time’s the charm. But what did that mean? Maybe that he should create three separate gusts, that four was too many?
The colt stood and tried it. Initially, it was promising, the candles all around winking out obligingly. But when the gusts met in the middle, their winds merged into chaos, and many of the candle flames danced frantically but did not go out. The colt tried it several times, sometimes beginning in the center and sometimes beginning at the walls, and each time the result was the same. Three gusts in such a large space could not meet with enough power to extinguish all the candles.
The colt thought some more, pacing little circles around the bottom of the bowl. Perhaps it had to do with the spells themselves? An ordinary spell had three steps, after all. Maybe the clue was about the third step, the manner in which the magic was released. He had been releasing the magic steadily, in the manner of a telekinesis spell, in order to control the wind with the grasping hand image. What would happen if he released it all at once, like a simple fire-lighting spell?
Looking out over the edge of his perch, the colt gathered magic into his horn and imagined the sky and the grasping hand. He swallowed nervously, then released the spell, using the burst of magic to give the wind a violent push outward from the center. The wind howled around him far more powerfully than before and his tree tried to throw him to the ground, but he somehow managed to cling to the bowl. Squinting through the mane whipping his face, he saw the candles going out so rapidly that he thought for certain that he had succeeded. But the wind petered out just feet from the wall, leaving a thin band of light all the way around the edge of the garden, which then widened and closed in around his tree as the candles re-lit.
Brushing his mane back out of his face with a careless hoof and a scowl, the colt resumed pondering. He had been very nearly successful, and he felt he was on the right track, but he needed something more to create a strong enough wind. What else could Puck have meant? The colt’s scowl deepened into thoughtfulness as an idea bubbled up from his mind. He had learned only two days ago that a spell could use two images to change its effects. Was it possible to use three images? He paced rapidly around the bowl, considering it. Images needed to be crystal-clear while casting a spell. Using two images was already a challenge, because they could not be allowed to bleed into one another, but had to remain separate and perfect. Imagining three simultaneous images would greatly increase the difficulty of that separation.
The colt decided to try it. He climbed down out of his tree and focused on one of the bottom rungs of his spiral staircase. He gathered a little magic and imagined the budding plant, the grasping hand, and the shining sun, wanting to grow a leaf that shed light. The rung-branch extruded a tiny twig, which sprouted a little sun-shaped leaf. His images had bled one into another, and he mentally kicked himself. He tried again, re-imagining the three images, focusing on the next rung up. A tiny twig emerged, which sprouted a small leaf, which promptly burst into flame. Grumbling, the colt knocked the twig off and stomped the flame out.
The hardworking colt continued experimenting into the night and through the morning of the sixth day, gradually learning the knack of imagining three things at once, until at last, between bites of his midday meal, he was able to create ten perfect leaves in a row, each one glowing with a silvery-blue luminescence. By the time the platter and mug disappeared, the colt felt ready to take on the candles again.
He ascended his tree and took his place in the lookout bowl. Closing his eyes, he rehearsed what he would imagine, getting each image perfect and ready in his mind. Then he gathered all the magic he could hold, and imagined a sky, gray and lowering with chill winter winds. He imagined a second sky, high and blue and skimming warm summer gusts across the ground. And he imagined the grasping hand, its arm muscular and powerful, strong enough to wrangle the wind. He released all the magic at once.
The wind roared in his ears and flattened them painfully back against his head. His mane was bramble whips attacking his face. The tree he stood in was twisted and bent one way and another as though it was no more substantial than a blade of grass. There was a CRACK that the colt felt as much as heard, and he was falling through the roar of the wind, spinning in the air so that he could not tell the darkness of the sky from the darkness of the ground.
Desperately, he sucked a breath and imagined the lake and the cloud, suspending himself in the middle of a globe of water. The roar of the wind instantly ceased, replaced with a low vibration that pulsed in the colt’s waterlogged ears. Without the wind to toy with him, he stopped spinning, and through his strange bubble he could see the last flickers of candles winking out. Then the globe struck the ground and despite the cushion of the water, the colt was struck hard enough to knock the breath from him. As his body reflexively sucked for air, it found only water. In his drowning panic, his spell failed, and that saved his life. The windstorm was over, the candles were out, and in the darkness of the garden, the colt choked and vomited.
When he finally caught his breath, he lay limp on the ground and rolled his head to look around the garden. It was ruined, as though a hurricane had rampaged through it. Trees were uprooted, grassy lawns had been torn to shreds by flying debris, and the flowerbeds were denuded, with the colorful flowers scattered hither and yon. The colt closed his eyes for a long moment, and when he reopened them, Puck was standing over him.
The faerie was wearing the form of a diminutive jewel-encrusted dragon, like a statue come to life. As always, his yellow eyes and cruel mouth were the same in every form. He smiled down at the colt. “Very nice work. I particularly like the redecorating you’ve done. Fetching, yes, quite. I think it’s an improvement, but the king is very particular, sadly.”
The colt started to speak, but coughed instead. He spat a bit of watery phlegm onto the grass and tried again. “My apologies to the king for ruining his garden.”
“Ruined? This? Pish-posh, my boy, think nothing of it.” He clicked his claws together and a blinding light made the colt fling an arm over his eyes. When he lowered it, the garden was restored to pristine condition, except without candles. “See? Nothing to it.”
The colt eyed him. “What about the king not wanting his garden swamped?”
Puck grinned hugely. “Why, that was a lie, of course!”
“Of course.” The colt let his head fall back onto the grass with a thump.
“On your feet now. It’s time to see the king.”
Puck led the colt past the throne room and out of the castle. As they were crossing the moat, the colt asked, “Where is the king?”
“He is waiting for you by the tunnel back to your sunlit world. He knows you wish to return as soon as possible.”
“That is very kind of him,” said the colt neutrally. His brief meeting with the king made him suspect that the king had never been intentionally kind to anyone in all his days.
“It is,” Puck agreed. “Our beloved king is always in the midst of a whirl of affection, just like you no doubt will be once you get back home.”
“Mmm,” mumbled the colt, wondering.
Puck and the colt traveled through the forest and arrived at the tunnel, and as promised, the king was there. His smile made the colt’s skin crawl. Two guards wearing large, muscular forms flanked the tunnel’s mouth.
“Hello, my dear, forgetful boy!” boomed the king. “You’ve succeeded in the challenges and have earned your boon. I--” He laid a clawed finger alongside his long, hairy nose in an attitude of sudden thought. “Wait a moment. I seem to recall that the terms were that you had to surpass the challenges within one week, yes?”
The colt’s heart sank in horrible anticipation, but he made himself say, “This is the sixth day, Your Highness.”
“I don’t believe it is. You see, in your world, six months have passed. It’s only fair for people to be held accountable to the rules of their own world, isn’t it?” He smiled again, and his yellow eyes gleamed with cruel glee. “So I’m sorry, my little lost lamb, but you have failed. You will remain here with us.”
“No!”
“Oh, yes. Though--” The king transformed between one second and the next, his wicked claws and fangs disappearing, his towering bulk shrinking. “Hm, perhaps I could be convinced to allow you to return to your home and family. All I need is your name.” He leaned toward the colt, one beseeching paw outstretched, waiting.
The colt was trapped. There was no telling if he could leave the fae lands without the king’s boon, and anyway he couldn’t hope to run past all four faerie to get into the tunnel. If only there were some way he could disappear.
His eyes widened, and the king’s narrowed impatiently. But the colt was too deep in frantic thought to care how scary the king looked. When he had first been testing the symbols, there was one that had made his table-branch vanish. But what symbol was it? Unbidden, Puck’s words floated through the colt’s mind. A whirl of affection. That was it!
With a triumphant grin, the colt slapped the king’s paw away, and before the king even had time to be outraged, the colt imagined the whirlpool and cast the spell. With a small flash, the faithful little branch appeared in midair above the king and fell down to poke him in the eye.
The king reared back with a roar of mingled anger and pain, and the wholly-not-disappeared colt felt his bowels loosen.
Things seemed to slow down for the colt. The guards shifted their weight to charge at him, but it would be minutes before they took their first step. The king’s paws had claws again, and his muscles were tensing to swing at the colt’s neck, but that was a goodly time off as well. So the colt spent a little while thinking about what had happened. The branch had not disappeared like he had thought, but rather it had gone somewhere and stayed there until that place had been reopened moments before. So, the clever colt reasoned, if he opened two gates to that place at once, he should go in one and come out the other. He hoped. But, looking at the king’s claws inching toward his throat, he didn’t have a lot of choice. He shoved magic into his horn and imagined a whirlpool where he was standing, and a whirlpool at the opposite end of the tunnel, and, with a sudden insight, he imagined the open door standing between the two.
With a brilliant flash, the colt vanished. The king cursed as his claws rent the air where he had been.
The sunlight was blinding after so long spent in the twilight gloom of the faerie lands. When the colt forced his eyes open, through his tears he could see that he was standing exactly where he had imagined. He let out a whoop of joy and leapt into the air with a kick. As he twisted around to land, he saw something on his flank, and let out another joyful whoop when he got a clearer look at it: his new cutie mark was a whirlpool with two large stars floating in it. The sight gave him an idea, and he spun to yell into the mouth of the tunnel, hoping the horrible king would hear him. “You can’t beat me with faerie tricks or faerie lies! You’ll never catch Star Swirl!”
With another kick and a laugh, he ran toward his village, already yelling at the top of his lungs, “Mom! Mom, I’m back! I’m safe!”
