Cloudyearner Keep

To Hitch’s surprise, the route to Cloudyearner Keep that Izzy had charted was uncharacteristically direct. The pink pencil path traced into their map avoided her home village within Bridlewood entirely when he anticipated at least one restless sleepover at Izzy’s cottage to punctuate a long rambling day. Instead it met with the trailing of an extensive northern river almost immediately before Bridlewood forest before concluding at a little pink star orbited with the nubs of scribbled little ghosts.

The river was well know to Unicorn fillies and foals as a prohibitive border, Izzy explained, and it split itself upon the rocks of the forest into finer and finer creeks like an unraveling braid of hair. Among Unicorns it was said that the waters flowed from the mane of some Capricornian demi-pony laying high in a cave for aeons among mushrooms and moss. This seemed to steal Zipp’s attention in a way things rarely do when preoccupied with flight. “So, where is this cave?” she asked.

As Hitch stood at the ready to grab Izzy by the saddlebag upon a misstep, she made careful hoofholds down the steep and ferrous slope of their mountain path. “In the mountains, I think,” she answered finally, “she’s gotta still be there.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah! The river has to come from somewhere, right? And it never stops. Sometimes it’s just a trickle, sometimes it floods. They say it floods more every year, but who’s keeping track, really? It did stop once, though.”

“What? Why?” asked Zipp.

The tides upon the beaches of Maretime Bay ebbed and flowed by their lonesome, or so Hitch believed, and never stopped. But if the watery creature in Izzy’s far away cave might cease its river to leave and see the sun, he wondered if such a thing occupied the ocean, and what might happen if it simply shifted its weight. Izzy’s answer came as soon as her grip on a smooth and dusty rock slipped, as if her mind unstuck as well. “Beavers!” she exclaimed as though swearing before her hooves gained purchase again.

“I’ve never seen a beaver,” Hitch offered for conversation before he followed her down the rock. Zipp flapped above them, patiently awaiting their descent, and looked about at the tracks of lesser creatures pawed into muddy paste of its rain soaked dust. When she caught Hitch’s eye, the look she gave suggested she knew the location of such a cave, and might describe it very differently. All the while Izzy promised Hitch a freshwater beaver to meet, in the long absence of the rare and undoubtedly massive saltwater ones.

Every step took them further from the clouds. Once they’d dipped beneath the mountain’s foggy cover, Hitch found himself searching the sky for Zipp and often found her absent. As he occupied the trek by trading tales of thieving gulls he chased for tales of Izzy’s fellow unicorns harnessing their magic after long last, he’d once in a while catch the glint of her fuchsia feather tips against the sky. Like a pearl needle she’s sew herself through the overcast and slice her wings through its surface, keeping the clouds company until the rugged rocks of the mountain paths gave way to the lush of the western meadows and miles of air separated her from her friends.

The glittered freckles of daisies scattered about them as the treeline of Bridlewood began to bulge upon the horizon. Several times Hitch witnessed the slow and wobbling approach of Zipp’s descent to the ground, but every time she veered sharply left before overtaking Izzy, and several feet above, only to repeat the pattern again and again. Hitch only realized the purpose when her glide coincided perfectly across the grass so she’d land silently as a snowflake behind an absent-minded Izzy. Zipp pounced upon her with a guttural shout so hoarse it must have occupied a register she hadn’t used since childhood, and Izzy’s shriek pierced the air. In a hysteric fit the Unicorn clung desperately to her coat as if Zipp might become the terror she mistook her for if she were to let go. Hitch caught up while Zipp held her friend, who was still red faced and rolling with laughter. “I thought we lost you back there!” Hitch called to Zipp.

“What, like I went back?”

Hitch only shrugged.

“No, no you can’t lose me that easy. I’m excited, I really am. Izzy’s stories don’t scare me that easy,” Zipp grinned at Izzy, “No, I’m not like my sister. I mean, I love Pipp, I do, but sometimes I don’t think she realizes we got our flight back, you know? I don’t think she realizes what it really means, and everything we can do now and everywhere we can go. It’s weird to see a Pegasus walking nowadays. It’s just been flying and resting and flying for the past months, that’s it. Anyway, you guys are gonna need me. I know my mom disagrees, but you will. This whole thing’s going to be real quick, in and out. I know what I’m looking for, it’s gonna be easy.”

As Zipp panted through her words, Hitch could not help but notice that he’d never heard her talk so much, as if she’d emerged from those clouds washed of all her worries. Something within himself stirred to ask her about the storms, and about the shattering of the weather tower into uncountable shards across the city, but he stopped himself. Maybe later, he thought, learning then he hadn’t the heart to bring her down.

Night descended early, or so it seemed as the sun retired behind the trees of Bridlewood. For the sake of timekeeping Hitch could track a few stars, but his foalhood scouting camps never took him to the forest thicket that blocked the starry sky. The left bank of the river Izzy mythologized so led them straight beneath the shadows of the colossal oaks.

“Watch, watch!” said Izzy. A gleam of violet began to shine from her horn first warbling like the sun’s reflection upon the river, but soon hastened until it held strong and clear with a barely perceptible flicker remaining. At her art, she leered at her friends with a suave grin, and led them into the forest she lit.

The shadows of the trees leaned to and fro with the progress of Izzy’s violet light. Crystal deposits like burly scarecrows hung headfirst into the ground littered the forest, and only upon the third or fourth hitch begin to recognize them and keep his heart from racing at their sight. In a stony clearing beside the splitting creeks they made a camp whose fire lent a green touch to everything in sight; an illusion, Zipp explained, from having seen purple for so long.

“Where are you going? Can I come?” Izzy asked Hitch, stopped midway through worming into her sleeping bag. Zipp looked as though she could barely keep her wings furled from exhaustion.

“You girls get comfy,” he told her as he left, “I’m just securing the perimeter.”

Though he would never tell her, Hitch found he preferred the forest without Izzy’s magic light. With a body of water close, even if the moon that peaked through the fissure in the trees above were gone, he could keep the sounds of its running to his right and never lose the camp. The hush of the ocean waves back home left searches for lost ponies few and far between. All his life its shores were the only true limit that really mattered, the borders of the town, he knew, were simply formal. It daunted him to know there was no such border to a Pegasus, and on a whim one could dare the distance beyond.

The creek was no such boundary, and Alphabittle’s warnings of what lay beyond it never reached him. He looked for a stone upon which to cross, and a dark spot that reflected no moonlight lay at the neck of the nearest channel. His weight lay upon it for only a moment when the mass beneath was crushed in a series of snaps, and his hoof was dunked in the cold waters. It was not deep, but the splashing of the cold water to his underbelly sent him scrambling to other other bank. He shook himself and looked back upon his inadequate crossing, only to see a convoy of crooked twigs being swept downstream with no hope of recovery. Something else emerged ashore much more calm than he only a few paces away, carrying a stick of the very same in its tiny jaws.

“Wow, sorry about that,” Hitch said to the little beaver as a moonlight beam shone off the black marbles of its eyes.

“You worked really hard on that, huh?”

He saw its tiny nose glisten and wiggle as it stared out blankly at the spot where its dam used to lay, gnawing its stick in a way that suggested contemplation.

Each twig Hitch retrieved took him further into the forest where the canopy seldom relented. Soon his return with further sticks took so long that the pile he’d stocked by the creekside had already been depleted into the wicker weave of a new dam. Each step of his own saved the beaver four, and he settled to repay it so. It was rare, or so he believed, that animals meet ponies they can tolerate, let alone cooperate. As he swore the twig he felt under his hoof would be the last, he realized he could no longer hear the river. Something snapped under a heavy step, though he stood still.

Hitch turned, but to whatever direction in the dark he now faced was a mystery. A second snap came, and it was now unclear whether its source was one or more. He could stand tall, knowing some wild creatures mistake such gestures as growths in size. Whatever Alphabittle warned against could no doubt chase down a foal, and he may stumble just the same without a single source of light. Blindly he waiting for another creeping sound, until something in the forest grinned.

On the ground before him lay a pair of teeth, gleaming white. Hitch’s heart pounded in a plea to run, but if such a creature hadn’t pounced now, it must have retained the confidence to chase him.

“All you little Unicorns will learn to love the dark.”

The words oozed from its mouth like some mockery of the river, and soon the whites of eyes appeared above it. They bore down like two moons rising through the air to reach the height of Hitch’s own. Soon the light that lit them stretched across its face, disembodied in the dark beneath its horn on which the gleam was perched.

“His fangs blazed like torches,” Izzy carried on, “his claws scraped at the grimy floor beneath. Dragging his body like a scaly boat, the spikes on his tail rattled against the bars of her cage.

‘Keep me if you must,’ she said, ‘but please, let my sisters go!’”

The long trail of that day suddenly weighed heavily on Hitch, and he found he lacked the energy to act convincingly angry at her. “Izzy, you could have gotten lost,” he cleared his throat to remedy his wavering voice, “where’s Zipp?”.

“How could I get lost? I’m the one with light! Zipp’s asleep. I was telling her a ghost story, but she fell asleep halfway through. I don’t feel like starting over again, so I’m just going to keep going, okay?”

Satisfied simply with company, Hitch led her back along the trail of his tracks now revealed in the glow.

“’I will free them. I’ll free them slowly, gnawing them from their shackles bit by bit. You’ll know when I’m done, for then I shall come for you!’

“Then Monoceros stalked away into the dark hall. His body drug behind him like a hundred hogtied ponies. Finally it was silent, so quiet she could almost hear the moonlight falling on the windowsill. She saw the empty eyes of pleasing, their wings bound with chains in the other cells, waiting for her to go mad like them. She waited to see them in the light of day, but day never came. They say the magic that lies in femurs pulled from midnight graves that Unicorns of old weaved their spells with were dead things full of helpless life, just like her in that tower, night after night after night.”

Hitch stopped her, “Wait, what? Femurs? Midnight graves? I thought Unicorns don’t really use that stuff.”

“Now that’s a professional secret, pal. Where was I? The part with the Pegasus Queen, right.”

They had reached the creek again, and Izzy stooped to dip her muzzle beneath its waters to drink. Seeing the Unicorn bathed in pure moonlight beside a sparkling stream was like seeing a featherless bird suddenly bestowed with a full coat of its regal down. The beaver was nowhere to be seen, chased away by Izzy’s presence, Hitch assumed. They began to follow back the stream.

“One night, the first sound she’d heard since all hope was lost came clattering down the steps. The sound of metal rattled against metal. When it reached her floor she saw them: The royal guard of the Pegasi escorting the queen!

“’I’ve been saved!’ she said, and threw herself against bars of the cell. When she saw the red velvet dress and crystal crown of the queen, she rushed to retrieve the ancient tome of lightning and thunder and thrust it through the bars. The Queen took it. She stared down at the cover, then looked at her, then its cover again. As soon as they had came, her and her royal guard took the book and started for the steps.

“’Wait! I did as you asked! You can’t leave me!’

“’Your kind must break easy in the cages, Unicorn. You are not of our tribe. You are not ours to save.’

“And with that, they were gone. The last of the moon was lost behind the clouds, even it wouldn’t keep her company. She began to howl in her cage, desperate to drown out the crackling flames from the jaws of Monoceros. On moonless nights, come close enough to the keep and you’ll hear it. Her endless cries, the final warning to all Unicorns who may dare to venture near Cloudyearner Keep.”

Their return to camp was quiet after the story’s end. When the campfire was in sight, Hitch asked what he decided was best not to in Zipp’s earshot.

“So, the Pegasus Queen – I guess that’s one of Zipp’s ancestors – leaves her there? Because she’s a Unicorn?”

Izzy laughed a little, “Yeah, it’s an old story. Oldie but goodie. From back when ponies were really afraid. Turns out they were trying to scare us off from ever helping the other tribes.”

In the warm light of the campfire, Zipp was curled motionless in her sleeping back, her muzzle tucked in its woolen layers against the cold.

“Maybe it’s better she didn’t hear the end of that one,” Hitch said as he patted down his own bag to chase away whatever may have crawled inside, “seeing what Unicorns used to think about her relatives.”

“We made Cloudyearner because they thought her people would just show up on our doorsteps one day, picking a fight. But they didn’t. They just never wanted see each other again.”

As she lay wrapped in her blankets, Hitch watched a sad look creep into her eyes that he hadn’t seen in months. She was one of only two ponies he’d known who, during days when his people performed feats no less incredible than Cloudyearner Keep in the name of fear, was fearlessly kind, and thus he knew the memories of regret that pained her were not hers. He did not look away, and when her dark train of though pulled tiredly into its station, her eyes found his, and they both smiled as they felt the nightmares of olden days melt away together.

With little more than a quiet goodnight they retired to their bags. Izzy’s twittering voice and dramatic impressions made it difficult to find any horror in her story, but something about it kept him awake. Perhaps she misspoke, he thought, but of all of Monoceros’ gruesome curses, there was something about a Pegasus in a cage, yet their wings still bound, that was his last thought before he finally slept.