Cloudyearner Keep

Under the pull of Canis Minor, their pursuit of Arcdancer became a warpath. Every claw that pounded through the air which wouldn’t yield to the likes of him yanked them forth through the storm of Alouette and Glitterwind, who could scarcely outpace him even to chase their own sister. The emerald drizzle Hitch knew from the gentle silken chamber now slashed the skies with soaking darts so thorough he forgot what it meant to have ever been dry. Even hiding behind the girdles of the chariot’s cab was pointless, as the breeze that turned pages of books in the quiet library now whipped the torrent from the skies to an inescapable typhoon. To grip the edges of the chariot for like seemed forfeit, for coming any closer to the cab’s edge would risk being tossed to the miles below, unthinkable for anyone but Zipp, who squinted through the wind and the rain to see a glimpse of their crimson target far gone. So near to sleep before, Izzy was now wide awake, and made no such precautions. She turned to Hitch as he dipped below the metal walls for calmer air, her mane flying in the wind as if to escape her head, and yelled to him something hopelessly lost to the storm.

Earth Ponies were never meant to be so high up. Hitch was violently reminded of that so shortly after he believed the night would come to an end in their conference upon the keep’s bridge, in the presence of Monoceros’ last keepsake. Now it was they who brought a storm to Zephyr Heights, preceded by lightning in a way Equestria would never permit, and Hitch realized why the sister’s powers may had been made illegal. The metallic assault of the rain upon the chariot soon began to slow. The wind that twisted about them reduced to a whistle between the spokes of the wheels as Canis Minor took them higher, the encore of the catastrophe the sisters orchestrated clattering beneath them through the thin air. The starlight swelled, though it was not warm. Izzy gasped, and Hitch, pulling his eyes from the boiling whirlpool of clouds below, saw why.

“Nice, huh?” Zipp said.

Far from the entrapment of the enchanted prison, the dome of the night sky waited. The moon hung low so not to steal the shine of the constellations, and for a moment Hitch felt he knew why Monoceros and the wolf may have chased it from the sky. Nothing but the pounding of the wolf’s paws through the cold air accompanied them. At such a height, the stars could have been a sea below them, the infinite reverse of the hot sunsets when Hitch lazily laid off a dockside pier, watching the sun glitter off the gentle waves to make stars of its own. He looked over at Izzy, and her plastered grin which all the dooming events of their time in the keep failed to banish was gone.

“We never get this close,” she said. The way she stared upwards, and not to Hitch or Zipp, told him she referred to neither of them, “You should see the telescopes we build. You’d think the stars were so close they’d singe your nose-hairs off. We lost our magic and all we could do is stare at them.”

Nearly every blemish of the moon could be seen reflected in her eyes. She looked as though all along she never knew it was there.

“It’s not like it would get caught on the edge of Equestria one day and you could go pick it up like a coin. We’ve always wanted it to come down to us. But Pegasi can get closer than we ever could. I like crystals better, but I still look at it sometimes. The Queen thinks Monoceros chased the moon because he was jealous of it. That was always funny to me.”

“Canis! There!” came Zipp’s voice again through nothing but the pulsing of his claws. Hitch peered down past the chains, but he only caught the last light of a red spark falling through the cloud cover.

Soon they followed. Like a professional conveyor, the Canis Minor tipped ground-ward slowly, so no slack entered the chains and it could not whip the carriage and its passengers into the sky upon correcting. That alone, however, was the only lenience the wolf intended to offer, as soon the blinding speed with which they were carried through the storm before seemed a trifling illusion born of the wind and rain which sped faster than they. The trip, in not but a few minutes, seemed frantically rewound, the pointing to the clouds, the roaring of the air, and as soon as Hitch adopted that dreaded feeling of ones insides no longer inhibited by gravity, he felt Zipp come between him and Izzy. It was far more comfort than it was realistically helpful that she, if they were to plummet beyond control, would drag them through the air as long as her wings could hold two fully grown ponies.

In an instant they were in the cloud cover, and out again as if waking from a dream. Their waking world flashed and glittered in a way only Zephyr Heights could. He felt Zipp leave them, and in looking for her found only the fast approaching strip of the castle’s entryway atop the highest peak. Hitch felt for Izzy and held her close, perhaps for a goodbye, or to ensure in their impact her head did not lurch violently and impale him after the long series of deadly encounters that night.

Just as the sounds that wake us from sleep are scarcely remembered, Hitch then learned that the sounds that set us to sleep, rare though they are, are scarcely remembered either. All he recalled was the faintly wet prickle of daily trimmed grass upon his face, and Zipp’s voice, “Are you okay? Come on! You’re tougher than that, even Izzy’s awake! Don’t complain about me leaving you behind then refuse to go anyway. Come on!”

Not a single light was lit in the castle, not in the halls, nor in the gardens. Hitch assumed it only standard for early hours, but the absence of the royal guard reminded him those lights must remain lit for someone. The things Arcdancer may have learned about her magic and how it affects Zephyr Height’s complex world of steel, wire and light gave Hitch some worry, knowing she may see something of her own power harnessed within the roving displays and electronic devices that were scarcely absent even in the most mundane corners of the city. Her red lightning had dispelled it all to black, and again Izzy’s horn, the Unicorn’s spell, lay their sole and simple savior.

Zipp yelled for her mother and her sister Pipp. The vast marbled halls swallowed their hooffalls and cast back their voices. There were no signs of Arcthether’s entry carved into the floors nor burned into the walls, no riot of fending guard, no call for help from the princess. The palpable pain of self-restraint Zipp showed in not bolting through the dark to find her sister’s room, and her mother’s, was not lost on either of them, as Hitch and Izzy chased her through the dark as she bounded winged and weightless like some stark white scroll might unravel in Glitterwind’s library. Up ornamented stairs and down red carpeted halls, they reached Pipp’s room, which lay dark, empty, yet tepid as the rest of the castle.

Izzy entered the room, shedding her light further and saturating the walls in purple while Hitch remained in the hallway. He wondered where Arcdancer may think to go in such a strange place, what she would make of the glass and glamour that her tribe went on to cherish. In whatever violent rage she flew in with, she might stop and see the halls, the way her ghostly light fell upon its arches and the shadows that would scare from her. Might she remain long enough to see the castle in that strange state Hitch saw Cloudyearner for the first time, with all the same makers and even the same rulers. The grand hall terminated in an outlook of glass that oversaw the northern city. An escape to either side were two tall doorways to smaller halls, and from the leftmost one a red light ran.

“Over here.” Hitch said as calmly as he could, and trotted toward the light. Whispers grew and were lost just as soon in the tall ceilings. Izzy’s purple light began to join Arcdancer’s red. Zipp made even fewer attempts at subtlety, and reached the turn of the doorways with beating wings. However, Hitch arrived first, and turned the corner to see Queen Haven bathed wholly in the crimson light that always spelled their misfortune.

“And this,” Queen Haven said, “is the plaque I told you about, right between Captain Gustweight and Doctor Stratus Twist. Were you acquainted with them?

Arcdancer was still as still and soundless as a distant sun beside the Queen.

“Oh, no matter, you were all in different departments. Look, here it is. ‘Unanimous masters of the clouds, indivisible triplets and the trinity of the skies, banished undeservedly in a tragedy of justice, the Storm Mothers: Alouette, Arcdancer, and Glitterwind.’ See? That’s you, engraved along the top border there, and your two sisters along each bottom corner. When I was young, I was told these inlaid gems were the true colors of your eyes, is that so? Oh, Zephyrina!”

Though Izzy and Hitch stood frozen in the doorway as if they’d found an uncaged animal, Zipp bounded to her mother, embracing her, casting a stark shadow down the hall lined with windows so the memorandum plaques could face the city they served.

“I only asked for a memoir or a record, and you brought me back so much more! Hitch, Izzy, I knew you would keep her safe, I had no doubt, truly I didn’t. Where is your sister? I sent her to find that scroll and she’s not back. That filly would lose her wings if they weren’t attached to her.”

No sooner did Queen Haven finish her reprimand did Pipp’s singsong voice came trilling down the hall, “Found iiiiit! There you all are! How was your leisurely leave from responsibility? A few more days and I thought I would be the new heiress to the throne. Ha! Kidding, kidding. Here you are, Ms. Arcdancer.”

When it became clear she was too distracted to understand, the Queen gently took it from Pipp, and unrolled it. It crackled, just as ancient as the tome that brought the phantoms again to life.

“This is you and your sister’s pardon.”

All the Pegasi crowded around as she showed it to the red spirit. Hitch saw Zipp squint and blink, as though completely unaware such a thing lay withing her grasp her whole life.

“It was posthumous, though many wished it hadn’t been. See the wax seal? That was my great-great-great grandmother’s. She would have only been a filly when the Storm Mothers were commanding the weather brigades. Do you remember her?”

Slowly, she took the document. Pipp broke from her blinding light, “Nice job, sheriff,” she whispered as she passed by to tap hooves excitedly with Izzy.

“Why?” He heard Arcdancer say. The queen seemed confused by the question, hesitating before her attempt.

“You and your sisters were the best, of course. This was signed and sealed after the splitting of the tribes, makingyou three the last brigade commanders in history. They always said you had a temper like a storm, too, but they didn’t appreciate what they had until it was gone, as they say. We had no idea you three had taken refuge at Cloudyearner Keep. I hope your days there were tolerable.”

In the windows of the hall, the weather tower, shattered into thousands of shards two days before, still stood in its framework, flickering the manic colors of the city. Two softer lights fell upon it like snowflakes. One blue, one green. Arcdancer seemed to see it too.

“They were wonderful,” she said.

“Oh, I’m glad. Now that the feuding of the tribes is over, the Unicorns may assist us in the keep’s restoration. Have you any suggestions for it, any at all?”

A flash of lightning flitted outside, silent for its distance, like a glowfly before a bonfire against the blinding red. Only Pipp and Izzy spoke, quietly to one another, slipping her the secrets of their daring events.

“Don’t.” Arcdancer said, “I know what you want.”

“Yes,” Queen Haven admitted, “direly.”

“Then I only ask you pardon my master as well. Monoceros. The only one who didn’t deserve it.”

The Queen, having sent Hitch, Izzy, and consequently her daughter on the royal errand, could ultimately not escape the feeling of watching their hope slip away.

“I… But… Monoceros was not our conviction. I cannot pardon what I didn’t give.”

“I can!” Izzy blurted out.

The silhouettes of silent the pegasii turned to see her. The sounds of drops upon the window from the coming storm threw themselves against the window as if desperate to reach them. For the first time, Izzy stepped toward Arcdancer.

“I forgive him,” Said Izzy.

“And who exactly are you?”

“I’m a unicorn. Like him!”

The picture in Izzy’s tome of the Unicorn bathed in the light of its resurrected subjects was made real before them all.

“Can I tell you a story, Arcdancer? It’s about your master. It’s about what he was like before he met you three. I realized it on the way here. Zipp heard the first half of the story, and Hitch heard the second part. But every Unicorn knows the whole thing. We didn’t know who he was, but somehow we never forgot him.”

Arcdancer said nothing. Out of the corner of his eye, Hitch saw Pipp rest on her haunches on the marble floor, just as Izzy did as she again began the story she wanted so badly for her friends to hear in Bridlewood. This time the story was hers; nothing was left of Alphabittle in its words. It must have been an affect of time that Monoceros’ story told him as a girl rather than a boy. He was a friend of a moon and on good terms with the stars, she said, and though his hooves never left ground he seemed to soar among them the way ships do upon their reflections in the water. It was his friend, the wolf, surviving so long and mistaken with his name, who encouraged him to return the gift of lightning to the Pegasi. Monoceros knew without it the stars would be lost to them, hidden beneath the biting fabric of the thunderstorms, and with that generosity alone he resolved to retrieve it. Hitch scarcely understood the point at which Izzy began the story’s second half, for the wolf Monoceros loved and the thing that kept him captive were not one creature to the Unicorns, but two.

Outside the window he saw the very wolf of which she spoke. Just as he stalked down the halls of Cloudyearner Keep and left Monoceros in the dark of the dungeon of Izzy’s story, Canis Minor paced above Zephyr Heights, head hung low, teeth blazing from its old and haggard jowls. Thunder boomed from above, and he watched it in the rain outside as Izzy’s story finished, the unicorn and the wolf never to see each other again. Arcdancer saw Canis Minor too, and just as the final words were spoken, he began to climb to the stars, and she threw her hooves upon the glass.

“Wait!” she cried out to him, the whole glass hall shaking with the panic of her voice, “You can’t leave yet! I need to see my sisters! One last time before we go, please!”

It shocked Hitch to believe that Canis Minor, so far out yet still so massive, had heard her. Perhaps, even for it, to leave without saying goodbye was terrible. The wolf stopped its ascent, and turned back. Whether she realized then in her final moments on Equestria that it was held back by them, and not them by it, Hitch never new. Canis let the gathering Pegasi of the heights admire him as a constellation descended for a little while longer for the sake of his oldest enemy, and his oldest friend.

“I have a debt to repay, I understand. A wrong to right.” Arcdancer said. Her hooves slowly slipped from the window, and she began to leave.

As slowly as Glitterwind, who wordlessly passed between the shelves she studies for centuries to say goodbye, they were all left in the dark as she turned the end of the hall, only her dimming glow to remember her by.

“I will be gone before morning.”

The glass of the weather tower crunched beneath Hitch’s hooves. It was wholly possible, he thought, at such a height that he may be the first in the city to see the morning sun. Arcdancer had left with few more words, and the ones she did were private upon that same tower. Through broken window, as gentle as a leaf blown by the crisp morning wind Zipp landed beside him. She had no sleep behind her, as he could see in her eyes. Neither of them had the energy left to speak, only to smile in acceptance that Arcdancer never revealed her secrets to them. The golden glow of the sun began to swell in the west, and at that, they both knew the Storm Mothers were gone forever.

“Whoa,” Hitch heard Zipp say.

She stared at the floor on which they stood. Izzy read the tome in Glitterwind’s library the same way Zipp seemed to search the floor, until finally he realized she followed the black marks that decorated its marble face and the words imprinted there. The coal black char of the floor was fresh, and stuck to Hitch’s hooves, and they stood atop the sister’s final service. They looked at one another as if to say “we did it,” but neither of them could manage the words. Zipp looked to the sky, which her people were soon to take from the storms, and Hitch followed her eyes. The final stars of night were slipping away. No telescope was needed. Canis Minor lay in his den, the endless dark between the suns made especially for him, and when the mountains became alight he saw three stars. Each the color of their eyes, or so they say.

THE END