The Keeper of the Dead

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.