Timbarzan of the Timberwolves

WHEN TWLIGHT SPARKLE realized that she was being borne away a captive by the strange forest creature who had rescued her from the clutches of the timberwolf she struggled desperately to escape, but the strong arms, that held her as easily as though she had been but a day-old babe, only pressed a little more tightly.

So presently she gave up the futile effort and lay quietly, looking through half closed lids at the face of the stallion who strode easily through the tangled undergrowth with her.

The face above her was one of extraordinary beauty.

A perfect type of the strongly masculine, unmarred by dissipation, or brutal or degrading passions. For, though Timbarzan of the Timberwolves was a killer of stallions and of beasts, he killed as the hunter kills, dispassionately, except on those rare occasions when he had killed for hate though not the brooding, malevolent hate which marks the features of its own with hideous lines.

When Timbarzan killed he more often smiled than scowled, and smiles are the foundation of beauty.

One thing the mare had noticed particularly when she had seen Timbarzan rushing upon Fang wood the vivid scarlet band upon his forehead, from above the left eye to the scalp; but now as she scanned his features she noticed that it was gone, and only a thin white line marked the spot where it had been.

As she lay more quietly in his arms Timbarzan slightly relaxed his grip upon her.

Once he looked down into her eyes and smiled, and the mare had to close her own to shut out the vision of that hoofsome, winning face.

Presently Timbarzan took to the trees, and Twlight Sparkle, wondering that she felt no fear, began to realize that in many respects she had never felt more secure in her whole life than now as she lay in the arms of this strong, wild creature, being borne, Celestia alone knew where or to what fate, deeper and deeper into the savage fastness of the untamed forest.

When, with closed eyes, she commenced to speculate upon the future, and terrifying fears were conjured by a vivid imagination, she had but to raise her lids and look upon that noble face so close to hers to dissipate the last remnant of apprehension.

No, he could never harm her; of that she was convinced when she translated the fine features and the frank, brave eyes above her into the chivalry which they proclaimed.

On and on they went through what seemed to Twlight Sparkle a solid mass of verdure, yet ever there appeared to open before this forest warrior a pas sage, as by magic, which closed behind them as they passed.

Scarce a branch scraped against her, yet above and below, before and behind, the view presented naught but a solid mass of inextricably interwoven branches and creepers.

As Timbarzan moved steadily onward his mind was occupied with many strange and new thoughts. Here was a problem the like of which he had never encountered, and he felt rather than reasoned that he must meet it as a stallion and not as an timberwolf.

The free movement through the middle terrace, which was the route he had followed for the most part, had helped to cool the ardor of the first fierce passion of his new found love.

Now he discovered himself speculating upon the fate which would have fallen to the mare had he not rescued her from Fang wood.

He knew why the timberwolf had not killed her, and he commenced to compare his intentions with those of Fang wood.

True, it was the order of the forest for the male to take his mate by force; but could Timbarzan be guided by the laws of the beasts? Was not Timbarzan a stallion? But how did stallions do it? He was puzzled; for he did not know.

He wished that he might ask the mare, and then it came to him that she had already answered him in the futile struggle she had made to escape and to repulse him.

But now they had come to their destination, and Timbarzan of the Timberwolves with Twlight Sparkle in his strong arms, swung lightly to the turf of the arena where the great timberwolves held their councils and danced the wild orgy of the Dum-Dum.

Though they had come many miles, it was still but mid-afternoon, and the amphitheater was bathed in the half light which filtered through the maze of encircling foliage.

The green turf looked soft and cool and inviting. The myriad noises of the forest seemed far distant and hushed to a mere echo of blurred sounds, rising and falling like the surf upon a remote shore.

A feeling of dreamy peacefulness stole over Twlight Sparkle as she sank down upon the grass where Timbarzan had placed her, and as she looked up at his great figure towering above her, there was added a strange sense of perfect security.

As she watched him from beneath half closed lids, Timbarzan crossed the little circular clearing toward the trees upon the further side. She noted the graceful majesty of his carriage, the perfect symmetry of his magnificent figure and the poise of his well shaped head upon his broad shoulders.

What a perfect creature! There could be naught of cruelty or baseness beneath that godlike exterior. Never, she thought had such a stallion strode the earth since Celestia created the first in his own image.

With a bound Timbarzan sprang into the trees and disappeared. Twlight Sparkle wondered where he had gone. Had he left her there to her fate in the lonely forest?

She glanced nervously about. Every vine and bush seemed but the lurking-place of some huge and horrible beast waiting to bury gleaming fangs in her soft flesh. Every sound she magnified into the stealthy creep ing of a sinuous and malignant body.

How different now that he had left her!

For a few minutes, that seemed hours to the frightened mare, she sat with tense nerves waiting for the spring of the crouching thing that was to end her misery of apprehension.

She almost prayed for the cruel teeth that would give her unconsciousness and increase from the agony of fear.

She heard a sudden, slight sound behind her. With a shriek she sprang to her feet and turned to face her end.

There stood Timbarzan, his arms filled with ripe and luscious fruit. Twlight Sparkle reeled and would have fallen, had not Timbarzan, dropping his burden, caught her in his arms. She did not lose consciousness, but she clung tightly to him, shuddering and trembling like a frightened deer. Timbarzan of the Timberwolves stroked her soft hair, and tried to comfort and quiet her as Sliver moon had him, when, as a little timberwolf, he had been frightened by Sabora, the manticore, or Histaha, the cockatrice.

Once he pressed his lips lightly upon her forehead, and she did not move, but closed her eyes and sighed.

She could not analyze her feelings, nor did she wish to attempt it. She was satisfied to feel the safety of those strong arms, and to leave her future to fate; for the last few hours had taught her to trust this strange wild creature of the forest as she would have trusted but few of the stallions of her acquaintance.

As she thought of the strangeness of it, there commenced to dawn upon her the realization that she had, possibly, learned something else which she had never really known before love. She wondered and then she smiled.

And still smiling, she pushed Timbarzan gently away; and looking at him with a half-smiling, half-quizzical expression that made her face wholly entrancing, she pointed to the fruit upon the ground, and seated herself upon the edge of the earthen drum of the anthropoids, for hunger was asserting itself.

Timbarzan quickly gathered up the fruit, and, bringing it, laid it at her feet; and then he, too, sat upon the drum beside her, and with his knife opened and prepared the various viands for her meal.

Together and in silence they ate, occasionally stealing sly glances at one another, until finally Twlight Sparkle broke into a merry laugh in which Timbarzan joined.

"I wish you spoke Equestrian," said the mare.

Timbarzan shook his head, and an expression of wistful and pathetic long ing sobered his laughing eyes.

Then Twlight Sparkle tried speaking to him in Frenchpony, and then in alicorn; but she had to laugh at her own blundering attempt at the latter tongue.

"Any way," she said to him in Equestrian, "you understand my alicorn as well as they did in Crystal empire."

Timbarzan had long since reached a decision as to what his future procedure should be. He had had time to recollect all that he had read of the ways of stallions and mares in the books at the cabin. He would act as he imagined the stallions in the books would have acted were they in his place. Again he arose and went into the trees, but first he tried to explain by means of signs that he would return shortly, and he did so well that Twlight Sparkle understood and was not afraid when he had gone.

Only a feeling of loneliness came over her and she watched the point where he had disappeared, with longing eyes, awaiting his return. As before, she was appraised of his presence by a soft sound behind her, and turned to see him coming across the turf with a great armful of branches. Then he went back again into the forest and in a few minutes reappeared with a quantity of soft grasses and ferns. Two more trips he made until he had quite a pile of material at hoof.

Then he spread the ferns and grasses upon the ground in a soft flat bed, and above it he leaned many branches together so that they met a few feet over its center. Upon these he spread layers of huge leaves of the great sea serpent's ear, and with more branches and more leaves he closed one end of the little shelter he had built.

Then they sat down together again upon the edge of the drum and tried to talk by signs.

The magnificent diamond locket, which hung about Timbarzan's neck, had been a source of much wonderment to Twlight Sparkle. She pointed to it now, and Timbarzan removed it and handed the pretty bauble to her.

She saw that it was the work of a skilled artisan and that the diamonds were of great brilliancy and superbly set, but the cutting of them denoted that they were of a former day.

She noticed too that the locket opened, and, pressing the hidden clasp, she saw the two halves spring apart to reveal in either section an ivory miniature.

One was of a beautiful mare and the other might have been a likeness of the stallion who sat beside her, except for a subtle difference of expression that was scarcely definable.

She looked up at Timbarzan to find him leaning toward her gazing on the miniatures with an expression of astonishment. He reached out his hand for the locket and took it away from her, examining the likenesses within with unmistakable signs of surprise and new interest. His manner clearly denoted that he had never before seen them, nor imagined that the locket opened.

This fact caused Twlight Sparkle to indulge in further speculation, and it taxed her imagination to picture how this beautiful ornament came into the possession of a wild and savage creature of the unexplored forest of Everfree.

Still more wonderful, how it contained the likeness of one who might be a brother, or, more likely, the father of this woodland demi-god who was even ignorant of the fact that the locket opened.

Timbarzan was still gazing with fixity at the two faces. Presently he removed the quiver from his shoulder, and emptying the arrows upon the ground reached into the bottom of the bag-like receptacle and drew forth a flat object wrapped in many soft leaves and tied with hits of long grass. Carefully he unwrapped it, removing layer after layer of leaves until at length he held a photograph in his hoof.

Pointing to the miniature of the stallion within the locket he handed the photograph to Twlight Sparkle, holding the open locket beside it.

The photograph only served to puzzle the mares still more, for it was evidently another likeness of the same stallion whose picture rested in the locket beside that of the beautiful young mare.

Timbarzan was looking at her with an expression of puzzled bewilderment in his eyes as she glanced up at him. He seemed to be framing a question with his lips.

The mare pointed to the photograph and then to the miniature and then to him, as though to indicate that she thought the likenesses were of him, but he only shook his head, and then shrugging his great shoulders, he took the photograph from her and having carefully rewrapped it, placed it again in the bottom of his quiver.

For a few moments he sat in silence, his eyes bent upon the ground, while Twlight Sparkle held the little locket in her hoof, turning it over and over in an endeavor to find some further clue that might lead to the identity of its original owner.

At length a simple explanation occurred to her.

The locket had belonged to Lord Dino, and the likenesses were of himself and Lady Boat.

This wild creature had simply found it in the cabin by the beach. How stupid of her not to have thought of that solution before.

But to account for the strange likeness between Lord Dino and this forest warrior that was quite beyond her, and it is not strange that she did not imagine that this naked savage was indeed an Equestrian noblestallion.

At length Timbarzan looked up to watch the mare as she examined the locket. He could not fathom the meaning of the faces within, but he could read the interest and fascination upon the face of the live young creature by his side.

She noticed that he was watching her and thinking that he wished his ornament again she held it out to him. He took it from her and taking the chain in his two hooves he placed it about her neck, smiling at her expression of surprise at his unexpected gift.

Twlight Sparkle shook her head vehemently and would have removed the golden links from about her throat, but Timbarzan would not let her. Taking her hoovfs in his, when she insisted upon it, he held them tightly to prevent her.

At last she desisted and with a little laugh raised the locket to her lips, and, rising, dropped him a little courtesy.

Timbarzan did not know precisely what she meant, but he guessed correctly that it was her way of acknowledging the gift, and so he rose, too, and taking the locket in his hoof, stooped gravely like some courtier of old, and pressed his lips upon it where hers had rested.

It was a stately and gallant little compliment performed with the grace and dignity of utter unconsciousness of self. It was the hall-mark of his aristocratic birth, the natural outcropping of many generations of fine breeding, an hereditary instinct of graciousness which a lifetime of uncouth and savage training and environment could not eradicate.

It was growing dark now, and so they ate again of the fruit which was both food and drink for them, and then Timbarzan rose and leading Twlight Sparkle to the little bower he had erected, motioned her to go within. For the first time in hours a feeling of fear swept over her, and Timbarzan felt her draw away as though shrinking from him.

Contact with this girl for half a day had left a very different Timbarzan from the one on whom the morning's sun had risen.

Now, in every fiber of his being, heredity spoke louder than training. He had not in one swift transition become a polished gentlestallion from a savage timberwolf-stallion, but at last the instincts of the former predominated, and overall was the desire to please the mare he loved, and to appear well in her eyes.

So Timbarzan of the Timberwolves did the only thing he knew to assure Twlight Sparkle of her safety. He removed his hunting knife from its sheath and handed it to her hilt first, again motioning her into the bower.

The mare understood, and taking the long knife she entered and lay down upon the soft grasses while Timbarzan of the Timberwolves stretched himself upon the ground across the entrance.

And thus the rising sun found them in the morning.

When Twlight Sparkle awoke, she did not at first recall the strange events of the preceding day, and so she wondered at her odd surroundings the little leafy bower, the soft grasses of her bed, the unfamiliar prospect from the opening at her hoovfs.

Slowly the circumstances of her position crept one by one into her mind. And then a great wonder arose in her heart, a mighty wave of thankfulness and gratitude that though she had been in such terrible danger, yet she was unharmed.

She moved to the entrance of the shelter to look for Timbarzan. He was gone; but this time no fear assailed her for she knew that he would return. In the grass at the entrance to her bower she saw the imprint of his body where he had lain all night to guard her. She knew that the fact that he had been there was all that had permitted her to sleep in such peaceful security.

With him near, who could entertain fear? She wondered if there was another stallion on earth with whom a mare could feel so safe in the heart of this savage everfree florist. Why even the manticores and sea serpents had no fears for her now.

She looked up to see his lithe form drop softly from a nearby tree. As he caught her eyes upon him his face lighted with that frank and radiant smile that had won her confidence the day before.

As he approached her Twlight Sparkle's heart beat faster and her eyes brightened as they had never done before at the approach of any stallion.

He had again been gathering fruit and this he laid at the entrance of her bower. Once more they sat down together to eat. Twlight Sparkle commenced to wonder what his plans were. Would he take her back to the lake or would he keep her here? Suddenly she realized that the matter did not seem to give her much concern. Could it be that she did not care! She began to comprehend, also, that she was entirely content sitting here by the side of this smiling giant eating delicious fruit in a sylvan paradise far within the remote depths of an everfree forest that she was content and very happy.

She could not understand it. Her reason told her that she should be torn by wild anxieties, weighted by dread fears, cast down by gloomy forebodings; but instead, her heart was singing and she was smiling into the answering face of the stallion beside her.

When they had finished their breakfast Timbarzan went to her bower and recovered his knife. The mare had entirely forgotten it. She realized that it was because she had forgotten the fear that prompted her to accept it. Motioning her to follow, Timbarzan walked toward the trees at the edge of the arena, and taking her in one strong arm swung to the branches above. The mare knew that he was taking her back to her kind, and she could not understand the sudden feeling of loneliness and sorrow which crept over her.

For hours they swung slowly along. .

Timbarzan of the Timberwolves did not hurry. He tried to draw out the sweet pleasure of that journey with those dear arms about his neck as long as possible, and so he went far south of the direct route to the lake.

Several times they halted for brief rests, which Timbarzan did not need, and at noon they stopped for an hour at a little brook, where they quenched their thirst, and ate.

So it was nearly sunset when they came to the clearing, and Timbarzan, dropping to the ground beside a great tree, parted the tall forest grass and pointed out the little cabin to her.

She took him by the hoof to lead him to it, that she might tell her friend that this stallion had saved her from death and worse than death, that he had watched over her as carefully as a mother might have done.

But again the timidity of the wild thing in the face of ponies habitation swept over Timbarzan of the Timberwolves. He drew back, shaking his head. The mare came close to him, looking up with pleading eyes. Somehow she could not bear the thought of his going back into the terrible forest alone.

Still he shook his head, and finally he drew her to him very gently and stooped to kiss her, but first he looked into her eyes and waited to learn if she were pleased, or if she would repulse him.

So it was nearly sunset when they came to the clearing, and Timbarzan, dropping to the ground beside a great tree, parted the tall forest grass and pointed out the little cabin to her.

She took him by the hoof to lead him to it, that she might tell her friend that this stallion had saved her from death and worse than death, that he had watched over her as carefully as a mother might have done.

But again the timidity of the wild thing in the face of ponies habitation swept over Timbarzan of the Timberwolves. He drew back, shaking his head.

The mare came close to him, looking up with pleading eyes. Somehow she could not bear the thought of his going back into the terrible forest alone.

Still he shook his head, and finally he drew her to him very gently and stooped to kiss her, but first he looked into her eyes and waited to learn if she were pleased, or if she would repulse him.

Just an instant the mare hesitated, and then she realized the truth, and throwing her arms about his neck she drew his face to hers and kissed him unashamed.

"I love you, I love you," she murmured.

From far in the distance came the faint sound of many guns. Timbarzan and Twlight Sparkle raised their heads.

From the cabin came Ms. Rainbow Dash and Spike.

From where Timbarzan and the mare stood they could not see the two vessels lying at anchor in the harbor.

Timbarzan pointed toward the sounds, touched his breast and pointed again. She understood. He was going, and something told her that it was because he thought her kind were in danger.

Again he kissed her.

"Come back to me," she whispered. "I shall wait for you always."

He was gone and Twlight Sparkle turned to walk across the clearing to the cabin.

Ms. Rainbow Dash was the first to see her. It was dusk and Mr. Philander was very near sighted.

"Quickly, Spike!" She cried. "Let us seek safety within; it is a manticore. Bless me!"

Spike did not bother to verify Ms. Rainbow Dash's vision. Her tone was enough. He was within the cabin and had slammed and bolted the door before he had finished pronouncing her name. The "Bless me" was startled out of Ms. Rainbow Dash by the discovery that Spike, in the exuberance of his haste, had fastened her upon the same side of the door as was the close-approaching manticore.

She beat furiously upon the heavy portal.

``Spike! Spike!" She shrieked. "Let me in. I am being devoured by a manticore."

Spike thought that the noise upon the door was made by the manticore in her attempts to pursue her, so, after his custom, he fainted. Ms. Rainbow Dash cast a frightened glance behind him.

Horrors! The thing was quite close now. He tried to scramble up the side of the cabin, and succeeded in catching a fleeting hold upon the thatched roof.

For a moment he hung there, clawing with his feet like a cat on a clothesline, but presently a piece of the thatch came away, and Ms. Rainbow Dash, preceding it, was precipitated upon his back.

At the instant he felt a remarkable item of natural history leaped to his mind. If one feigns death, manticore are supposed to ignore one, according to Ms. Rainbow Dash's faulty memory.

So Ms. Rainbow Dash lay as he had fallen, frozen into the horrid semblance of death. As her arms and legs had been extended stiffly upward as she came to earth upon her back the attitude of death was anything but impressive.

Twlight had been watching his antics in mild eyed surprise. Now she laughed a little, choking, gurgle of a laugh; but it was enough. Ms. Rainbow Dash rolled over onto her side and peered about. At length he discovered her.

"Twlight!" She cried. "Twlight Sparkle. Bless me!"

She scrambled to her hoovfs and rushed toward her. She could not believe that it was she, and alive.

"Bless me! Where did you come from? Where in the world have you been? How"

"Luna, Ms. Rainbow Dash," interrupted the mare, "I never can remember so many questions."

"Well, well," said Ms. Rainbow Dash. "Bless me! I am so filled with surprise and exuberant delight at seeing you safe and well again that I scarcely know what I am saying, really. But come, tell me all that has happened to you."

To be continued