The Keeper of the Dead

Chapters

I

What I remember most, two hundred seventy-three years later, is how Princess Celestia phrased it.

Usually, when she wanted something of me, she’d make it seem like a favor. “Twilight,” she might say, “I’m having some difficulty remembering the premise to Cantor’s Theorem. It was rather simple, wasn’t it? Would you happen to be able to repeat it for me?” And, of course, I would. Other times, such as when she sent me to Ponyville, her requests were direct, but never stern: “I’m sending you to supervise the preparations for the Summer Sun Celebration in this year’s location: Ponyville. And I have an even more essential task for you to complete: make some friends!” Years later I would realize how playful she was with each request, and would later think that many were like that, a patchwork of intent behind seemingly simple tasks that revealed she had a sense of humor bordering on facetious, and which kept her a step above many political battles.

She never strayed from this way of speaking, except once, when she said: “There is somepony I need you to meet.”

Autumn had come cloaked in gray that day, and a pale, thin light limped through the window like a wounded tiger. I looked up from my book—it’s funny how, today, I don’t even remember what I was reading—and saw her standing in the doorway with her wings folded at her sides. It was her face that seized my attention: the kind and wise visage which, though it was only a year into my tutelage, I’d settled on as the default appearance of my mentor, had vanished behind a look of such utter and immediate gravity that, against my usual instincts, I did not question it. Instead, I rose from the floor and lit my horn, wordlessly grabbing my book bag and some quill pens for note-taking. I did not need to bring Spike with me. He was staying with my parents that weekend.

Celestia nodded approvingly at my haste, then looked at my items. “You won’t need these,” she said, in that same voice of quiet weight. I winced, and half-hesitantly set them aside.

A short while later we had left the tower and were walking down the cobblestone road leading out of the heart of Canterlot. At that point, my natural curiosity took over: “Who is this pony?”

“An old acquaintance.” She paused. A shimmer of something else gleamed in her voice. It was not quite nostalgia. “A friend, in some way.”

My ears perked up. Despite my antisocial tendencies, even I was a little curious about the kinds of ponies Celestia surrounded herself with. I’d often seen her conversing with nobles, politicians, and the occasional guild-master, but none seemed ever to approach her with any sense of actual intimacy, or at least the kind that I felt she and I enjoyed, by virtue of our teacher-student relationship. Everypony was a stranger who prided themselves on being able to talk with Celestia, but this was strictly ceremonial, and on occasion, when one of those ponies turned their back, I’d meet Celestia’s gaze, and she’d wink, thinking exactly what I did. I would not have considered myself Celestia’s friend at that age–I was too young and too focused on my studies anyway–but our relationship felt uniquely ours.

When Celestia referred to this stranger as “a friend, in some way,” I was both intrigued, but also admittedly a little jealous, though at the time I could not name that feeling. It struck me as strange, this way in which she referred to this pony, first the initial term, an “old acquaintance,” and then the clarification following hesitation.

Canterlot’s outer gate vanished behind us. Just before we crossed the bridge exiting the city, Celestia turned right and headed down a path I’d never seen before. It was overgrown with weeds struggling through mossy stone and enormously thick cypress and mangrove trees twisting vainly across the road. This confused me, because normally those trees wouldn’t grow in the same environment. Soon that gray morning darkened into a pantomime of early night, and only by the odd appearance of a torch lit by arcane flame could we see.

I noticed that there were no guards accompanying us. Had Celestia told anypony else what we were doing? I felt at once special, but also worried, unsure why this friend of hers earned this sort of treatment.

Just as I was beginning to worry she was simply lost–and worrying whether this would be considered a blasphemous thought–Celestia said, “We’re almost there. Watch your step.”

Her voice was tight in her throat, and I thought, for some reason, that she was displeased. I wracked my brain, trying to think of why that might be the case. “Is your friend hurt?” I asked, looking around at our surroundings. Though it was still dark, the torches revealed that fog had rolled in. The air became thick and damp, and I realized that we had entered a swamp.

Celestia shook her head. “She’s old, but as far as I know, she’s in good health. Sometimes she writes me letters.”

I waited for her to say more, but she wouldn’t. Silence as thick as the swampy environment around us descended, and I swallowed my unease.

A house came to us. I say that, because it seemed to appear out of nowhere, from nothing, as though the fog had summoned it. I thought it had been plucked out of a fairy tale. A rich brown wood, of a cut similar to the surrounding trees, made up the walls, and a silt-colored high-angled sloping roof formed a slightly obtuse triangle over the top. The dirt path became speckled with uneven stones leading up to the carved door, and on both sides of the path, tall grass, cattails, water lilies, and other plants I couldn't immediately identify stalked the air. I was sure no gardener had ever set foot here, and even if they had, I doubted their shears would do any good.

Celestia went up to the small door and knocked. The sound was loud and echoing, as though some larger building were housed behind this small cottage. Behind us, a flock of whippoorwills settled on one of the mangroves’ branches and glared at us like we were invaders. The fog then thickened and the rest of the path became obscured, but I could not tell if some magic was at play.

“Princess Celestia?” I asked, though I wasn’t sure what I was asking.

She glanced at me. “Worry not, my faithful student. This is… all part of the performance.”

I heard latches being undone, many of them, more than I thought any single door should have. Wooden boards slid back and some odd mechanism whirled and buzzed. The whippoorwills let out a squawk, then departed in a brown burst, just as the door opened.

“Oh, Celestia! What a surprise!”

The mare had the widest smile I’d ever seen–only later would Pinkie’s, and those on the faces of the residents of Starlight’s village, compare. She was an earth pony the color of turmeric and had a somewhat ragged-looking pink mane styled alarmingly like some of the hedges surrounding the cottage. She wore a simple green sundress that obscured her Cutie Mark, and had a pair of cleaning gloves on, the yellow rubber just a shade brighter than her coat. She held a mop between her hooves.

Celestia said, “Good afternoon, Manea. I apologize for the short notice.”

“Oh, don’t apologize. It’s always lovely to have you visit.” Manea’s gaze turned to me, and it occurred to me that she could not have been that much older than my mother. “And you must be Twilight Sparkle! Celestia’s told me all about you.”

It took until then for me to realize that she did not refer to Celestia with her title. I studied my mentor’s face for any sign of offense, but was met with a placid mask.

Celestia’s wing poked me on the shoulder. There seemed a certain nervousness in it, if I wasn’t imagining things. Remembering my manners, I bounded forward and introduced myself to Manea, even though it was unnecessary.

Celestia cleared her throat, but Manea anticipated her. “Not a social call, then?”

Celestia’s smile was tight. “Is it ever?”

Manea laughed. I thought I liked her laugh, but something about it pricked at the edge of my mind. “Well, she’s just woken up from her nap and is up and about.”

Without waiting for an answer, Manea went back inside. Celestia’s wingtip left my back and brushed along my neck as though to comfort me, but something cold ran over my face. It seemed to emanate from within the cottage. I looked questioningly at my mentor, but she was already heading inside. Without any other choice, I went in as well.

It was small and homely-like. The yellow living room was furnished as though from a country-home catalog, with floral wallpaper, a soft beige-colored carpet floor, and a couch and two small sofas bearing the same pattern as the wallpaper. The kitchen met it with an open archway, and had a black marble countertop no larger than a breadbox and a few bowls drying from presumably that morning’s meal. Manea went into the kitchen and Celestia followed her while I stood in the living room, taking in my surroundings. The cold I’d felt at the entrance was gone. Everything felt warm.

Celestia and Manea began to talk. That sense of urgency which I’d heard in my mentor’s voice was gone, and the odd anticipation that precedes and then interrupts moments of casualness consumed me. I grew antsy. I sat on the floral couch, then moved to one of the sofas. Still Celestia and Manea talked, and still, this other mare that Manea had referred to did not appear.

Sensing that they would be busy for a while, I decided to explore the cottage on my own. Slipping away, I went down a short corridor and turned into another room. It looked to be some sort of study. There was a brown desk to the side with a green-felt covering, and a thick, old-looking ledger of some sort on top. Its pages had once been white, but the heavy light that fell through an unobscured window had yellowed them considerably. I looked at it and found thin writing scrawled across the pages. There were names and a description: male, female, the race, and a number. I didn’t recognize any.

Numerous metal cabinets stood nearby, and on them were housed more ledgers, each one numbered. They were just as thick, if not thicker, and just as old-looking. On top of the shelves were more boxes, unmarked, but overflowing with rolls of film, camera cases, and other photograph paraphernalia. The far back wall was what surprised me the most, for several framed photographs hung from brass hooks, and each contained the image of a different pony.

As I entered the room, closing the door behind me, the sounds of conversation faded. I hardly noticed. I was drawn to the photographs on the wall. Each pony had their eyes closed, like they were asleep. Yet the photos were highly detailed, as though rendered at a resolution far exceeding any known camera. I was both impressed and a little disgusted by the quality. Each showed the pony’s face down to the minute and disquieting details. Here was one whose pores seemed to stick out like thumbtacks. Here was another whose neck had the distinct tracing of a vein. Another whose skin was so pale as to almost reveal the musculature underneath, and another whose face seemed proportioned all wrong, in a manner that I could not describe. I might have called them amateurish, but the intentionality of how the photos were taken seemed to suggest a professional’s touch. You could not take such poor-quality images if you didn’t mean to.

I was unnerved, because the photographs I was used to were, in essence, portraits from film. They were serious affairs that only recently had started to allow for smiles; there were houses in Canterlot who still insisted that a family photo necessitated no pleasure.

I’m not sure how long I stared at these, trying to understand what exactly I was seeing, or what sort of photographer rendered these ponies so perfectly imperfect. I also didn’t hear the door opening behind me, nor of a pony entering the room and standing next to me, as still as the fog outside. I only became aware when she said, “I remember him. A good stallion. You would have liked him, maybe.”

I turned quickly. A very old mare stood behind me. She was an earth pony, but unlike any I’d ever seen, for she was as tall as Celestia yet twice as thin, with legs that did not seem able to support her weight and yet did so with stubborn resolve. She was the color of smoke, and her eyes were so gray as to appear almost like the pebbles outside. Her mane was long and elegant, curling over her neck and back like a cape of gold. A cloak covered the rest of her body; I could not see her Cutie Mark.

Her appearance so badly shook me that, for a moment, I couldn’t think of how to respond. When I recovered, I asked, “Is this your study?”

But she ignored me. Or, maybe more accurately, she didn’t register that I had spoken. She went on. “They called him Sandstone.” She nodded to one of the photographs, and after some searching, I inferred it was the one of a light-brown stallion. “A masonry worker. He built almost all the homes in his village in Abyssinia all by himself, and that was before the cats moved in.”

There was a distracted, fragmentary nature about the way she spoke. She bowed her head and her lips made movements without sound. Then her gaze returned to the photograph, and she continued. It occurred to me that this was like watching one side of a conversation.

“He lived for almost eighty years before a disc slipped and his nights, which he’d previously spent in the warm and sensuous embrace of his many partners–for he lived, you see, in a palace made of gold and sapphires, which he had also built himself over the course of twenty years, and had filled with all manner of lovers and supplicants–were spent under the tender caresses of compresses made of discarded cowskin and ritualistic chants meant to soothe him into sleep. It was a torturous experience, but his body would not let him fade so easily into perdition and kept him alive for another seven years, before, finally, he embraced his lovers for the last time and went into the dark. At the time I was traveling through the region carrying a chest filled with prized jewels, and these I bartered in exchange for entrance into his palace, where I found him at the hooves of his weeping widows.”

Then the mare stopped talking. I waited, expecting to hear more, but the story had been cut short and its thread was left dangling in the silence between us like a spider’s web caught in the rain.

The mare blinked, slowly, as though waking from some deep dream. She looked at me. “Oh, hello. Who might you be?”

“I, um…” This time, I remembered myself more readily than before. “I’m… Twilight Sparkle. Princess Celestia’s personal student.”

The mare simply blinked. Then she said, “She has taken on another?”

I frowned, then wondered why I was frowning. It was not outside the realm of possibility that I was one of many of Princess Celestia’s students, but up until then it was not something I had considered.

The mare stared at me. I didn’t like how she looked as she stared, and I didn’t like feeling uncomfortable by it. Her gaze arrested me. Her gray eyes revealed nothing, yet there was also an attractive quality about them. I mean that in a literal sense; the longer I stared back, the more I felt myself being drawn towards them, sucked towards a singular point. I couldn’t look away. I fell deeper and deeper into that grayness.

“Keeper.”

Celestia had spoken, and there was a warble in that word. The mare looked away from me, and I was no longer arrested. Celestia stood in the doorway to the study, but I thought I must have misheard her, for her face did not betray any sense of fear or trepidation, and she was looking at the mare with a small smile.

“Keeper,” she said again, and I realized this was the mare’s name, “I see you’ve met my personal student.”

Keeper nodded. “Yes. She is a special one, I can tell. You have chosen wisely this time, Celestia.”

Celestia scratched her chin with her wingtip. It was her way of telling me to come to her side, and I listened, though something in the room felt different. “What were you two talking about?”

Keeper tilted her head. She was looking at neither me nor Celestia, and a sheen came over her eyes. “Oh, just Sandstone. A good stallion. Strong, handsome. In another life I may have–”

There were some more footsteps, and then Manea appeared behind Celestia. She clicked her tongue. “You know you shouldn’t be moving about so soon after you’d just woken up! What if you’d fallen?”

With impressive sternness, Manea scolded the geriatric mare, fussing over her cloak and warning her about the dangers of wandering around on her own. Keeper looked abashed and responded to these worries with a terse nod of her head, and seemed to hide within the folds of her impressive mane the way that, many years later, my friend Fluttershy would. I giggled a little at the display, then looked up at Celestia. She had lost her smile, and so my own giggling faded.

Before I could ask why, Celestia said, “Why don’t we go into the kitchen? Manea made scones.”

“Yes, you should go!” Manea said. “We’ll meet you there shortly.” Keeper made no such acknowledgement.

We went into the kitchen. On the too-small counter there was indeed a tray of fluffy scones with white cream on top. There were five of them, but only four of us. I took one and Celestia took another, and we sat on the floral-patterned couch opposite each other.

“Are they related?” I asked. “Like, mom and daughter?”

Celestia examined her scone, then hummed thoughtfully. “Mother and daughter… I suppose you could say that about them. But there is no formal or biological relation between Manea and Keeper.”

“That’s a funny name. Keeper. What is she the keeper of?”

A bout of silence, the longest I’d ever experienced with her, ensued. She put her plate with the scone on the table in front of us. I busied myself with finishing off the scone, debating on taking the extra, refusing, then counting and identifying the flowers on the couch.

“You were in her study,” Celestia said at last. She glanced at me. “What do you think she does, based on what you saw there?”

It was a test. Princess Celestia was fond of such impromptu ones, and I had long come to expect that my education would be steeped with them. I thought back to that study, to all the things I had seen. Keeper’s words returned to my mind, but I brushed them aside, thinking them irrelevant, or, at least, the ludicrous ramblings of a mare lost to another world when saying them.

“Well, I think she’s probably a photographer. I mean, she had a lot of rolls of film in there. And the photographs on the wall definitely count towards that.”

I beamed with pleasure at my astuteness. But that pleasure quickly evaporated when I saw Celestia, for though she nodded approvingly, nothing about her suggested satisfaction with my answer. I scrambled to come up with more inferences. “O-of course, I could be mistaken. Maybe she just likes collecting stuff related to photography? I-I mean, I like to collect Starswirl the Bearded stuff, too, but that doesn’t mean I’m a Starswirl scholar–though I’d like that, actually–well, now that I think of it, I mean. What I’m trying to say is–”

“Twilight.”

Celestia’s soft voice on its own would have been enough to silence me, but it was the edge in this one that robbed me of my voice. My hurt and worry must have been obvious, because she then tried to smile.

“Please, my faithful student, do not look so despondent. You are correct: she is a photographer, but of a sort that I doubt many have heard.” She took a breath as though she were preparing herself to leap from a balcony. “Keeper isn’t her name. I am unsure if she even has one or if anypony in this house remembers it, but that is beside the point. It is more of a title, I suppose, one that she has held far longer than anypony knows, even me.”

“A title? Like yours?”

“Yes, but, admittedly, hers dwarfs mine. It dwarfs many because it is older than many. It is a title of power in the purest sense of the word.”

I liked it when Celestia spoke to me in this way, without condescension, with the assumption that I was smart enough to understand both the things she said and the things said between her words. But never had I heard her speak with, at once, reverence and awe–awe in the original sense of that word, awe meaning, filled with dread and terror. That this old mare could cause such contradictory tones in my mentor frightened me more than any bedtime story about moonlit terrors and thousand-year prophecies.

“What is her title?” I asked.

There was another pause. I did not have to look at Celestia’s face to know she was wrestling with answering it. But just as I was about to concede and recant my question, she answered, in a voice heavy with something more than tone and intent:

“The Keeper of the Dead.”

II

Manea and Keeper entered the living room, and Manea, seeing that we had eaten, let out a delighted squeal. “Oh! You tried the scones! What did you think?”

“They were delicious,” Celestia said. “You’ve really outdone yourself this time, Manea.”

“Oh, please, this was just a flight of fancy. And if you should thank anything, it’s the cookbook. I just followed the instructions.” She then popped one of the scones in her mouth, chewed on it happily, then hummed with approval. “How about a drink? We’ve got some lime juice, freshly squeezed!”

As she prepared this, Keeper sat across from us. She seemed to have aged by half a century in the time I had last seen her, for her movements were stiff and cumbersome, and she let out a few grunts when she lowered herself onto the sofa.

I glanced outside. The fog grouped together into columns resembling talons before dispersing.

“How long have you been Celestia’s student?” Keeper asked, without looking at me.

I looked at Celestia. She nodded, giving me permission. “Um… About a year.”

“How did you become her student?”

I again looked at Celestia, and she smiled encouragingly. Hidden in that curve, however, was a trace of uncertainty—or maybe a shadow of what looked like uncertainty, at any rate.

I began to tell Keeper about the entrance exam, sparing no detail. Manea, meanwhile, remained in the kitchen, humming to herself and fixing us our drinks, but whenever there was a pause, it indicated she, too, was listening with interest.

But she was the only one who did, out of the pair. Keeper’s eyes were dull and flat, the eyes of dead fish, and she neither heeded nor suggested acknowledgment of my words. Once or twice I faltered, and it was up to Celestia to prompt me forward, until I had explained the whole of the beginning of my studies and ended with today. At some point, Manea left the kitchen, and a glass of lime juice was placed in front of me. I had been talking without interruption for more than ten minutes. When I was done, I drank from the glass gratefully, then felt embarrassed; but, once again, Keeper’s face reflected neither offense nor any degree of actual engagement.

I worried I’d bored her, and that I’d somehow ruined Celestia’s visit.

Then Manea sat down next to her. She saved the silence by placing a glass pitcher filled with more juice on the table between us. A lime wedge clung to the rim. She leaned forward with a smile.. “Very impressive, Twilight Sparkle. You must be quite the capable student.”

“She is,” Celestia said. She did so simply, stating a mere fact, but I felt a surge of embarrassed pride. “In fact, she recently finished a particularly important research project…”

As Celestia took over the conversation, Manea nodded approvingly, and suddenly I felt grateful that she agreed, as though for a moment there, I’d worried she would think Celestia was wrong in that assessment. How funny it is that we turn to others, even or especially strangers, for their immediate approval, and dread missing it.

But Keeper remained quiet. It was impossible to tell if she’d heard any of what I said, and I wondered, with perhaps a certain small degree of frustration, if she’d simply fallen asleep. The conversation swept over her head the way the ocean does over sand, and she stared into space, not even acknowledging when Manea happily placed the glass of juice in her hooves.

Was she okay? Or, if she was as old as she appeared, was she slipping into a vault of memories hidden behind that wrinkled, wizened face? Perhaps she was thinking of Sandstone again, or any of those ponies I’d seen in the study. I wanted to ask her about them, why she took those photos—what constituted a “Keeper of the Dead.” But a part of me hesitated. I couldn’t tell if it was fear or dread or simple awkwardness. I looked at her, trying to determine which, but when I did, I felt my head begin to throb, a headache of sorts, the kind that happens when you stare into a dark room for too long.

That was when I realized that Keeper was staring at me as well. I flushed, attempting to save face by drinking the rest of my juice. Her face had slackened. But her eyes had lost their placidity; something had sharpened in them, something that suggested that she was now examining me far more closely than I had her. The headache probed the edges of my skull.

I was saved when Celestia said, “But I did say this wasn’t a social call, did I?” Keeper’s gaze broke away.

“So you did,” she said. “But when is it ever not?”

Beside her, Manea muttered, sounding rather annoyed, “That’s what I said.” Keeper did not respond.

Celestia cleared her throat, then leaned forward. She glanced at me—I wonder if she saw something in my face, some hint of the experience I’d undergone—because then her voice took on a strange urgency, like she was suddenly aware of time she no longer had. “My friend, Count Sesily, is dying.”

I started. Today, Count Sesily is not a name that would warrant more than a footnote in a textbook about the noble houses of Canterlot, but he had been one of the ponies who’d proctored my entrance exam. I remembered him as a long-faced, visibly old, periwinkle unicorn with an aquiline nose and rigid jawline, and hair combed back and dyed black to make him seem younger, as well as his somewhat grating and reedy voice. As far as I knew, he and Celestia had only the briefest of polite interactions. I never knew she counted him as a friend.

“Already?” Manea said, clicking her tongue. She retrieved the pitcher, topped off her drink, then sipped at it.

Celestia nodded. “Thoracic cancer. Stage four. He’s refused treatment for years.”

“I remember when he was still stomping around the Academy grounds? What a character. I didn’t think they built egos that inflated.”

“How time flies,” Keeper said gravely, “and how little stallions change.”

“Wait,” I said to Manea, “you knew Count Sesily when he was younger?”

Manea smiled cryptically. She offered nothing else.

Celestia’s horn lit, and with a flash, she summoned into existence a small book. The cover opened to reveal her signature elegant hoofwriting, but I didn’t get a good enough look to read what was written before she levitated it over to the pair of mares.

Keeper, with a hoof, brought the page up to her face. Her eyes made small, near imperceptible movements while she read. Manea joined her over her shoulder. She whistled. “Ooh, tomorrow? A bit sudden, isn’t it?”

“I’m told his condition deteriorated rapidly this morning. Tomorrow may be too late,” Celestia said quietly.

“It will not be,” the Keeper intoned, in such a declarative and certain voice that I was sure she was somehow right, even as I didn’t understand the gravity behind it. Keeper then turned to Manea. “Our schedule is clear for tomorrow?”

Manea frowned, left the room, and returned holding that ledger I’d seen on the desk. She flipped through a few pages. “Looks like it. The only thing coming up is about that new prince in Saddle Arabia. But that’s not until next Monday.” She looked at Celestia and winked conspiratorially. “A few months old, that one.”

Celestia, I noticed, stiffened ever so slightly. She said, “But so it goes.”

“So it goes,” Manea repeated. Keeper grunted the phrase.

Their meanings and intentions flew over my head, and I could feel myself growing agitated by the apparent gap in cognizance. More than that, I felt like I was being pushed out of the conversation. The adults were talking, and it was the child’s role to sit on the outside, play with her blocks—but wasn’t I no ordinary child? Wasn’t I Celestia’s faithful student?

Suddenly I realized what my position was, for her. How I acted and what I said or thought reflected on her teachings; I affected her reputation, and the perception of her, more than her daily meetings with the elite. I could not stomach the idea that I was, by orbiting around these three mares and not saying anything, demonstrating some failing on Celestia’s part. I wanted to get involved. I had to.

“What are you going to do?” I asked, leaning forward and adopting a bright-eyed, curious expression. “Are you going to take Count Sesily’s photo? You are, aren’t you? And then you’re going to put it up in that room!”

Innocent inferences, really. But by the thunderstruck expression on Celestia’s face, contrasted sharply by the lack of emotion on Keeper’s, you would have thought I’d just spat on her mother’s grave. I squirmed under both their gazes. “I… I was just… It’s because of what I saw,” I said defensively. “In the other room.”

Manea was the only one who looked pleased, but there was something to her smile that felt off to me. She, however, said nothing, looking like a spectator at a particularly bad tennis match. I cringed under it, feeling more ashamed by her apparent approval than lack thereof, for a reason I didn’t understand.

“I was curious,” I heard myself say, almost reflexively.

“Well, being curious is fine,” Manea said. “Curious fillies ask good questions.”

Keeper glanced at her, then at me. “You’re asking me what is the nature of my work, child?”

“Y-yes?”

“You do not know if you are asking that?”

“I… N-No, I mean… Yes, I guess I—I mean, I am asking you that.”

Keeper’s face remained impassive. But I got the feeling she was evaluating me.

Celestia cleared her throat. Then said with a smile, “Twilight, dear, why don’t you help Manea clean up while we talk?”

I was shocked. Ashamed. Tears sprang to my eyes. I felt immediately foolish, and nodded, keeping my head down so that nopony could see my face. I got up off the couch and trudged towards the kitchen. Manea joined me, bringing with her the pitcher and the cups stacked impressively atop one another.

“Don’t feel bad,” she said, touching me on the shoulder. “It was a fair question. Keeper’s particular about her job, and doesn’t like to talk about the ins and outs with most ponies.”

I nodded, but still felt slighted by the act. Glancing behind me, I saw that Celestia and Keeper were now engaged in some deep conversation, their voices too low for me to hear.

“Do you know a quick-dry spell?” Manea asked, tearing my gaze away.

“Um… I think so.” Hesitation tasted bitter to me, so I amended: “I mean, yes, I do.”

“Great! Here, I’m going to dunk these dishes, and then you can fire away at them, and we’ll put them away together. Sound good?”

I nodded, and Manea began the task. She moved with alarming speed, and seemed to delight in this mundane activity. She scrubbed inside and outside and set the dishes down for me to zap. I stared at the first dish morosely, and had to be prompted by Manea.

Soon we fell into a rhythm. There was a game-like quality to it, too, and Manea was even humming as she sashayed about. She had turned the water all the way up; outside of her voice, I couldn’t hear anything above the faucet.

Still, I performed sluggishly. The slap of dismissal still clung coldly against my fur, dragging my movements and causing a backlog of dishes to pile up. I paused frequently, trying to catch a snippet of whatever was being discussed between my mentor and the old mare on the couch, failing each time, and returning, thus, to this task, and growing more and more crestfallen with each failed attempt.

“So!” Manea exclaimed. “What are you studying right now, Twilight?”

I knew what she was doing. But I answered, as politely as I could, “Classical Equestrian myths.”

Manea’s eyes seemed to sparkle, and suddenly I was assaulted with a deluge of questions from her. But they were not generic questions, the kind I might have heard from a condescending adult who was only asking them out of politeness and who, upon hearing my immediate answers, would realize they were out of their element and would seek the quickest means of escape. No, these were intelligent questions, born out of an informed context. I wondered if she had taught this subject before—how else could she ask me questions of interpretation, of variations, of what is lost in translation or might be lost in the act of removing a story from its oral origin?

In this way, my mood gradually and consistently improved. I soon forgot about the faux pas I had experienced from Celestia. We spoke about the most common myths and how modern Equestrians wrote of them, and Manea even brought up obscure ones that I’d yet to read in any book. “Such as the Mare in the Moon,” she suddenly said as we were finishing up the dishes.

“The Mare in the Moon?”

“You must have seen her when you look out at night, right? A shadow that looks like a mare.” She glanced at them, smiling, then handed me the last dish. “Oh, you’ll find out about her in time, I’ll bet, if you keep up your studies. You’ll enjoy it, I think.”

Then she added, in a manner that almost certainly was deflective, and yet which, at the time, I didn’t notice, “You are one smart filly. I like you, Twilight Sparkle."

“Thank you.” I flushed at the compliment, forgetting immediately about the obscure myth she’d invoked. Then, because I thought I needed to return the remark, I said, “I like you as well, Manea.”

“Really?” She turned, her eyes so large they resembled dual eclipses. “Do you really mean that?”

I nodded rapidly. “I mean, you seem like a nice pony. And you take care of your mom.” It did not occur to me that I was making the wrong inference; I simply said what I thought was a noble thing and hoped it would come across that way.

Manea smiled. “That is true. I do take care of her.” She finished putting the last of the dishes away, and then craned her neck to look closely at me. “Do you like me more than you like her?”

On a few occasions, Celestia had invited me to observe Sun Court. It was an event where nobles and other high-class ponies would gather in the throne room and await an audience with Celestia. When I stood outside, watching the queue grow longer and longer, I’d overhear snippets of conversations and snide comments. Each pony thought themselves as being more highly regarded than the other in the princess’s eyes, for one reason or another: perhaps by how she’d acted towards them at the last Sun Court, or how she remembered their name at the last dinner party, or even how she spoke to them, what words she used. Innocuous and completely meaningless gestures that nevertheless achieved greater meaning when put in the context of a social ladder. These ponies would look around, thankfully never at me, as though asking one of the guards or castle staff to justify that assertion.

So when Manea said this, I knew my answer would be used later, when Celestia and I were gone, and Manea could parade it in front of Keeper.

I backed up a little. Manea stared at me, all smiles, but there was a predatory aspect to both her eyes and her grin. I was reminded of something absurd: how a praying mantis can sit and stare at its prey, not moving, only to strike at the last second once its opponent’s guard is down. Nothing about Manea was bug-like, and yet this image rose to mind, fitting around Manea’s head like a shawl.

Then it seemed that the kitchen grew a little colder. A brief reminder of what I’d felt at the door.

“I wouldn’t say that,” I said. My mouth hurried along and I couldn’t get the next words out any faster: “I only just met you two today. I’d have to talk to you both to be fair.”

Something in Manea’s expression slipped dangerously away, like how a crevasse can open suddenly in front of you if you go spelunking. A dark thing passed over her expression, the shade of some disturbing thought. But in an instant, she had returned; her face was back to normal; she still smiled, and she even laughed. “Right, of course! Oh, I’m sorry to have made it seem like I’m jealous of her. I’m not, really. I was just curious! So many ponies know Keeper, of course, but not many think of me.”

“Oh. Do you resent that?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she opened the refrigerator and took out an oblong-shaped fruit. She placed it on a cutting board, retrieved a knife from a drawer, and with expert precision, split it into small pieces. A few she stuck in a jar, but one piece she put into a small cup and turned to me. “Do you think you could do one more thing for me, Twilight Sparkle? It is a small matter, a trifle, really.”

Manea placed the fruit cup before me. “Would you go into the room at the end of the hall—the opposite hall, not the one leading to the study—and place this on the table you see in there? It’s almost snack time.”

I thought I had offended her, and that she was now sending me away. I wanted, then, to make it up to her, so I eagerly accepted the task.

As I did, I stopped just around the pillar separating the kitchen from the living room. Celestia and the Keeper had stopped talking, but were both now looking at the manuscript Celestia had summoned with such serious expressions that I knew I could never interrupt whatever ritual was passing before my eyes. I felt a pang of sadness at this. It was a reminder of Celestia’s age and the many connections she had made long before I had met her, let alone had been born. Sometimes when I was with her visiting the various heads of houses and families, she would speak with a frank familiarity with them, and they would reply with a kind of laugh or a turn of their head that seemed like an inside joke whose punchline was beyond my reach. That surprised or even disheartened me, because it represented a barrier I could not overcome: the fact that she would forever remain older than me, more experienced, more adept in the ways and customs of the world, and I would always have to play catch-up in some regard. Seeing it here even with strange Keeper brought up ugly feelings, but I pushed these away with the impudent, silent, spiteful protest of a child and returned to bringing the food to the room that required it.

I stopped in front of a closed door, raised my hoof, and knocked. There was no answer. I glanced back at Manea as if to ask if I should try again, but she had vanished from sight. Hesitation kept me from immediately acting, but eventually I drew up enough courage to turn the knob and ease myself into the room.

It was like stepping into a cellar—it was cool, then rapidly became frigid. A cloud of dust burst across my face, and I nearly lost my magical hold on the cup as a violent cough stole my breath. The light from the hallway crept around me but did not get very far. From what I could see, there indeed was a single table—it was a brown disk with a crystal center, on which was the pattern of a flower. But there were no chairs in that room, nor, it seemed, any light switch or source to speak of. Instead of these things, there was situated in the corner a crib.

There was something in the crib.

I tiptoed into the room and placed the cup on the table, aware that I was holding my breath. I released it slowly, then paused, wondering if I had disturbed the crib’s occupant. No sound emerged. I looked at the scone and thought: Could a baby eat this fruit solid? That was assuming there was a baby in that crib.

I cast a basic illumination spell, and a soft purple glow enveloped the room. Shivering, I crept past the table, approached the crib, and leaned over the side.

And found a baby, asleep. I thought it was a filly; something about her facial structure suggested so. She had a stubby little horn and a round head and a small snout, features that would have made anypony coo with adoration. She was also a rich, plum-purple color, so unlike either Manea or Keeper, that I wondered where she got it from. It occurred to me that I hadn’t seen any photos in the house of a father or a husband; the only ones that existed were of those strange effigies in the study. And the filly was asleep, breathing softly, her closed eyes as still as a lake in the early morning, or perhaps the swampy waters outside the house. For a moment, I watched her eyes, curious to see if they would flicker to indicate she was dreaming, but to my amazement, she did not once stir, did not indicate even that she sensed I was nearby. She was in the deepest sleep I’d ever seen, and was perfectly unremarkable otherwise. She could have been any other baby.

I leaned back, suddenly feeling embarrassed. She was a baby–I did not understand why I had been hemming and hawing moments ago. Perhaps the house was getting to me, or I was just anxious and prone to illogical, intrusive thoughts that had no basis.

I shivered again. I wanted to get out of there.

I left the room, careful to keep my breathing low and my hoofsteps quiet, and closed the door silently behind me. But I hadn’t gone two steps from the door when Manea popped up in front of me. “Well? Did you see her?” she asked, putting her face up against mine.

“Um… if you mean the baby–”

“Yes, Twilight, I mean the baby. Did you see her?”

There was an impatience in her voice, reminding me of a difficult teacher I once had who was trying to teach me an apparently simple algorithm and couldn’t fathom why I didn’t immediately understand it. A bit of shame at my ineptitude flushed through me. “I did,” I said, then added, though there really was no need to (now that I am older, I notice that ponies and creatures tend to do this, this “over-correction,” adding extra to a statement as though to give it the appearance of being fuller or somehow better): “She’s a lovely filly.”

Manea nodded, still impatient. “And did she see you? She must have, right?”

I shook my head. Manea froze. “What? What do you mean?”

“She wasn’t awake. I didn’t want to disturb her, so I just put the cup on the table, like you said.”

Manea’s frown deepened. “That’s… But she’s never… She always sees everyone. She’s never not seen… Except…” Her pupils shot off to the side, in the direction of the living room.

She fell into such perplexing mutterings that there was no use trying to draw her back into the present. And at any rate, I was deeply unnerved by her, by this transformation, which was changing her from the mare who had begun to live in my memory as the sweet caretaker of this home, to somepony who followed rules I did not understand, that existed on strata separate from mine. It astounds me how quickly we can go from liking somepony to being put off by them.

I left her mumbling in the hallway and returned to the living room. Princess Celestia and Keeper had, it appeared, finished their business, and I saw Celestia lift the manuscript before teleporting it away. “It’s all settled, then?” Celestia said, a thin line appearing over her brow.

Keeper nodded. “As it will be done. Manea will bring the ledger along with the equipment. You will be returning home now, I imagine?”

It was not really a question. Celestia nodded anyway, then saw me idling by the perimeter. She smiled. I still felt uneasy. “Did you enjoy your visit, my faithful student?”

“I did,” I said, looking at Keeper. She neither acknowledged nor ignored me.

As we gathered ourselves, Manea came out of the hallway, still muttering to herself. I was alarmed to see that she carried the baby in her hooves.

Keeper turned her head. She saw Manea and the baby, and a flicker of something akin to an emotion–one that, of course, I couldn’t identify–passed over her face like a cloud. “Is she awake?” she asked Manea.

Manea shook her head. Keeper made an odd motion, before her head swiveled deliberately and slowly. Her eyes fell on me. They held me there.

By that point we had gone to the door. Celestia heard the question and looked back at the mares, confused. Then she looked at me. I identified the emotions there immediately: surprise, which quickly, with a flash, morphed into fear.

“Well, then,” Keeper said, slowly getting up. “Our business is concluded. Always so early, too. It’s a shame we only meet every now and then, isn’t it, Celestia?”

Celestia nodded, as did Manea. Looking between all three of them, I realized that the roles had changed: Manea had been the talkative sort, but now was dazed and reticent, whereas Keeper had become livelier, speaking excitedly (or as excitedly as her body would allow). She came over and helped us to the door, all the while talking about all the sorts of things ponies say in order to have said something, noticing, no doubt, how, in the span of a few seconds, the atmosphere in that tiny home had shifted. Celestia responded to her kindly, but there was an element of hurriedness in her words that Keeper seemed to acknowledge by speaking even faster and with less significance.

Only Manea, the baby, and I were quiet. Manea’s attention remained solely on the child in her arms, who had not stirred once.

“Take care, you two,” Keeper said, opening the door and revealing the fog-ridden world beyond. I blinked at the sight; somehow I had forgotten how thick it was. “Take care, and do be sure to visit every now and then, won’t you, Celestia? I do enjoy your visits.”

“I will try, Keeper. Manea,” she added, more out of acknowledgement than greeting. Manea didn’t say anything, but she did nod. Her eyes landed on me, and they burned with a question that was equal parts intense as it was wordless. She no longer looked happy to see me, or either of us. In fact, she looked deeply troubled.

I would have asked her what was wrong, but then Celestia’s wing guided me in front of her. “Let’s get going,” she said with a forced smile.

The door closed behind us. It did not make a sound.

III

We had not gotten out of that swamp before Celestia turned to me. “Twilight Sparkle.”

Her voice commanded my attention. It was stern, it was frightening, and moreover, it was frightened, in a way that I’d never heard from her before. “Tell me the truth. Did Manea ask you to go into the room with the baby?”

My ears folded back; I began to explain, rapidly, my voice adopting a somewhat shrill note. “Sh-she did. I-I didn’t touch her or anything! I just put some food on the table–”

“Did you look at the baby?”

I cringed, and, ashamed, could only nod.

Celestia stared at me for a long time. Then, slowly, as though every muscle and bone in her neck cried out in agony, she turned away. She murmured something, but I was too afraid to make it out.

Tears gathered in my eyes. I began to babble. “I… Please, Princess Celestia. I’m sorry, I didn’t know, I didn’t mean to… to…”

To what, exactly? Sometimes the worst part of being a child is knowing how painfully ignorant you are. You can lack the vocabulary to explain, but you still know, by the looks of horror and disgust on your parents’ faces, when you’ve done something wrong, even if you’re not sure what was wrong about it. The truth, too, was that I did mean what I did, even if I didn’t understand it. Why else would I have done it? I could not lie on either front; thus, I felt all the worse for it.

More half-words, trailing-off sentences, and bumbling, wet apologies tumbled out. They did not advance very far. Somehow, between my tears and babbling, Celestia crossed the space between us and enveloped me in a hug.

Princess Celestia had never been one to show this kind of affection in this extensive manner. Yes, she was motherly, yes, I loved her and she loved me, but this hug was different. It felt closer. Something had changed inside of her, had brought the sheer majesty of her princesshood crashing down, and the only way she could express this was by this hug.

“You have nothing to apologize for,” she murmured into my ear.

The swamp gurgled and hissed around us, and I had the distinct impression of all the fog and mist coagulating towards us, turning into ghoulish shapes and maleficent figures of indescribable proportions. Some primal part of my brain remembered that I was but a filly, small, frail, insignificant compared to the forces of nature, and I became afraid; but in Celestia’s warm embrace, the fear, while it did not fade, seemed to shrink away, like how shadows do at the touch of dawn.

The swamp became just a swamp.

“Princess Celestia,” I heard myself ask, “why did you bring me here?” I had meant to say, “Why did we come here?” but that, instead, had slipped out; and I realized it was an implicit accusation of coercion, of me admitting to being duped in some way, brought on to a plan I could not foresee, which had the effect of making me regard my mentor not necessarily with suspicion, but its cousin—hurt.

She drew out of the hug and looked at me, her own eyes registering hurt for a moment. Then she sighed.

“How old do you think I am?”

I struggled to answer, both because the question came out of nowhere, and because it was not something I had actually really considered. I knew she was old, the way a child instinctively knows their grandparents are of a different generation, and yet, that kind of old didn’t fit with Celestia. Her immortality saw to that. I thought back to the earliest stories I’d heard of her growing up, the things that were once legends, only to be revealed, through one-on-one interaction with her, to be not just apocryphal, but also almost mundane. A thousand years, I thought; no, more; but not as old as the classic Hearth's Warming tale, but perhaps being born somewhat afterwards; but even that was a guess…

She smiled as she saw me thinking. “Well, you don’t need to give me an answer now, though I think you’d give a rather flattering one. However old you think I am, though, know this: the Keeper and Manea and the baby—everypony in that house—are far, far older. Older than Equestria itself.”

“What?” I couldn’t refrain from exclaiming. “But—but that’s impossible! The baby can’t be—”

She shook her head and fixed me with a gaze burdened by sheer solemnity. “That baby looked the exact same the first time I entered that house more than a thousand years ago—and, I suspect, had always looked that way all the years beforehand. There has always been a baby, a Manea, and a Keeper. The Keeper of the Dead.”

I was silent, without really knowing why.

Celestia tilted her head. “Earlier, I told you that her title was ‘Keeper.’ Can you infer why that is hers? Think about other occupations with that word.”

That was simple. I thought of bookkeepers and beekeepers, and virtually any job that involved tracking items or entire inventories. Once I’d chanced upon that, my mind seemed to let out a tense sigh.

“She… keeps track of the dead?”

Celestia nodded approvingly. “She does. Ever since the first creature on this planet breathed its last, she and her kind”—she stressed that word, over something like “family”—“have done their diligent duty. At first they did it with fossils. Then with paintings. Once she even showed me her private collection, though I’m not sure she brought it with her to this house. But now they use photographs. They archive the dead and the deceased at precisely the moment they die, and preserve them all in their collection.”

“So… Count Sesily…”

“He will die. Keeper will take his photo and add him and his life to that ledger, as she’s always done.”

“But that’s…” I shook my head. “So many die every day. So many things. That would have to mean…” But I couldn’t voice it, and Celestia gazed sympathetically at me while my head swam with information it couldn’t make sense of.

It made a frightening amount of sense, but not in a manner that felt digestible, or even satisfactory. I was tempted to turn back around and walk into that house, demand answers to questions I could scarcely find the words to, but instinct—or perhaps simple fear—held me back.

“But why did we come here?” I asked this time.

She looked at me, her gaze sorrowful. “To learn, my faithful student. To learn that there are greater powers out there, older than me, than our country, than, really, most things we consider old. It is a very important lesson to take to heart.”

“Why?” I felt like a petulant child still asking that, but Celestia seemed to approve of the question.

“To know to respect them.” She looked back at the house, and finally I cemented what I’d suspected I’d been seeing throughout our visit: she was afraid. She was afraid of Keeper, and of Manea, and of that baby.

So was I, I realized.

We began to walk away, our footsteps eaten by the soft and swampy earth. Soon, in the silence, Canterlot approached, but it had lost its usual splendor. It seemed thinner, the colors washed out, like a painting that had spent too long in the sun.

Just as we were nearing the front gate, I asked, “What about Manea? Why did she ask me to feed the baby? Why were you so worried about that?”

Celestia sucked in a breath, then released it, tight and stressed. “She was testing you, as she has always wanted to test others before you. That baby is part of it.” There was a vehemence in Celestia’s voice, and it occurred to me that she’d been keeping it in ever since we’d entered the cottage, retaining it until we were out of earshot. “I thought I had told her my students are off limits, but of course she would ignore that. I am sorry I let her do that to you.”

We entered through the gate. A pair of guards nodded at us, apparently unbothered by our sudden reappearance.

As we entered the archway that would lead to the road taking us to the castle, I stopped. Another question, which had nestled silently in the back of my mind, burst forth and began to take up my entire focus. Celestia noticed and paused, glancing concernedly back at me.

My throat felt parched, and I had to shake my head a little to try and focus. “If, um… If that was a test, did… did I pass?”

Celestia’s lips burned a thin line across her face. “Yes, I suppose you could say you did. At the very least, you surprised Manea and the Keeper.”

I frowned at this, and glanced again back the way we came. But it seemed like the path itself had vanished, or had otherwise been devoured by the elements, for I couldn’t even see a trace of the cobblestone road that had led to the cottage in the first place.

“I passed,” I ventured slowly, “because the baby didn’t wake up.” Celestia didn’t answer; that was all the confirmation I needed. Desperate, I stepped forward, and tried to keep my voice under control. “What would have happened if I failed? What would have happened if the baby had woken up?”

A cloud hung over both our heads and darkened our faces. I fancied hearing laughter, and it sounded strangely like Manea’s. There seemed also to be a quick, percussive sound, which made me think of a camera shutter.

Celestia’s voice, when she finally answered, was thick with sorrow.

“Then you would have died, Twilight Sparkle, because anypony whom that baby opens its eyes to look upon is fated to die one day.”

She went away without another word.

We never visited the Keeper again.