Chapter 2: Erie Orchards

Witchery is often confusing to outsiders, because those who practice it rarely hyperspecialize the way most mages – or even common ponies- do. A unicorn with a Cutie Mark depicting a fireball, for example, will most likely specialize in fire-related spells, and have little to no interest in mastering Ferromancy. A Hearthwitch with a cauldron Cutie Mark, on the other hoof, may naturally excel at Silvapotio, but also be skilled at Chloromancy, Hedge-wizardry, Totem Magery, Rituals, and Moon-dancing.

Because of this, most ponies will not differentiate between the different schools of Witchery, lumping it all together under the same name. However, it is important to both the scholar and the practitioner to be aware of the different practices; for the academic, the importance lies in accuracy. For the practitioner, knowing the difference between the different schools allows them use different types TOGETHER, to produce results that simply could not be obtained otherwise. A perfect example is the Silver Dream Tincture. This herbal remedy, used to sooth night terrors of the young and the traumatized, uses Chloromancy to grow, cultivate, and most importantly, EMPOWER the herbs. However, a competent understanding of Silvapotio is required in order to properly distill, purify, and infuse the magically-empowered herbal essences into the mineral oil base. Even then, the tincture is all but useless without a simple Ritual to activate it. The result? A simple herbal oil that helps prevent unrestful or harmful dreams. Of course, this is just a simplified example, but it illustrates that Witchery is more than a simple collection of stray magics; it is a form of art, like cooking or painting. Blending different disciplines like pigments, to create something more the sum of its' parts.

~Briar Brindlemane (807 A.B) Brindlemane's Guide To The Facets Of Witchcraft, Volume I Manehatten Skyrise Publishing Co, Manehatten

The winding path down into the valley had been longer and more meandering than it had looked from the top of the rise. Tera supposed it had made sense – a path leading straight down into the valley would have been dangerously steep. At least the downhill grade made for a much easier time pulling her small cart. It felt cooler here, too; the breeze strong enough now to carry some of the heat of the day away from her, instead of just toying with her ears and mane.

The breeze carried a myriad of fresh and exciting scents, too. A city mare all her life before, she had never really given much attention to forests, nor to the fields and orchards of farms. So it was a surprise to her to sample the crisp hints of plums, pears, and apples, mixing with the milder scents of drying hay and freshly-cut alfalfa. The dusty tinge of milled oats, the musty funk of decaying compost, and an acrid whiff of smoked rye. Living greenery, pine, and tilled earth. The hints of sweat and canvas, hemp and flax.

The walls of the valley were teeming with farms separated by old wooden fences and irrigation canals carved into the rich soil, and a bewildering variety of crops stretched further than her eye could see. The forest edge had retreated as she had made her slow way downward, barely spilling over the valley's rim in some places. Somewhere in the back of her mind she breathed a silent sigh of relief. The forest hadn't been the monster-infested, haunted and unnatural wilds that the Everfree was said to be, but the Whitetail Woods had still felt too quiet for her liking, as though the entire forest and everything in it had been shh'd by some ancient and unimaginable eldritch librarian, admonished to keep it down, please.

Cobblestone walls, timbered framing and painted wooden roof shingles gave the farms around her and the houses below a quaint, historic feel, contrasting heavily to the fancy, fanciful designs of Canterlot, or the brick-and-mortar industrial aesthetic of Manehatten. The buildings themselves seemed to display a very classic Ibexian style, giving the town still below, and even the farms on the slopes around her a strangely historical feel, like she had somehow inadvertently wandered into an entirely different era. She wondered briefly if there was some sort of local ordinance about building styles, or if it was a point of historical pride for the locals. Probably a bit of both, she decided as she took another bend in the winding road downward. Although she could not, for the life of her, come up with a reason for any law dictating that the first floor of a building had to be made of windowless cobblestone walls. It must, she mused, be a heritage thing.

There were more orchards now, as she approached the outskirts of the town. Apples and pears were abundant, but Tera also saw cherries, plums, and apricots scattered around, and more than few oaks, sugar maples and pines, planted in neatly-spaced rows. In her mind, she marveled at the sheer variety of crops growing in this valley. Now, she'd be the first to admit that she was no farmfilly, but even her untrained eye could see that there had to be magic at work to keep such a startling variety of crops growing so heartily. Of what kind, however, she couldn't begin to guess. Earth pony magic was the most obvious, judging by just how lush the farmlands around were, but surely that couldn't account for everything, could it?

The mare sighed and shook the idle thoughts away. She was a city filly, and a student, at that. Or had been, rather. Urban magiology wasn't just outside her wheelhouse, it was on an entirely different ship, Probably one moored in Minotaur Isles, no less. Not that there wasn't a certain amount of overlap between the studies of esoteric herbology in relation to legends and the agrarian settlements bordering the-

...!?

As she rounded another bend in the winding road down into the valley, the unicorn's train of thought derailed like a steam locomotive hit broadside by an irate and ancient dragon – messily, horrifically, and with little to no hope for any survivors. A large barn – or storage shed, how would she know? - had hidden the view beyond the curve of the road, and nothing had prepared her for what she saw.

Not that anything could have. Sure, she had heard all sorts of rumors of the town – tales of perversion, dark magic, drug cartels, sex trafficking, cannibalism, secret alicorns, monsters in the streets – but she hadn't given any credit to them. By and large, ponies were both skittish and gossipy, and one had to take any stories with the proverbial grain of salt. Now, through a haze of sudden and nauseating unease, she wondered if perhaps she had taken too much for granted.

Lining both sides of the road were strange, stunted lemon trees and half-dead looking bushes. Unlike the farms she had already passed, there seemed to be no attempt at careful cultivation or spacing – just wild and neglected growth. Indeed, several of the lemons were visibly wilted, or even rotting on the stem. The whole mess was fenced in by equally-neglected-looking wooden fencing, crudely patched and held together with tangles of rusted chickenwire. However, none of that really registered as she stared at the dozens – no, hundreds of sun-baked, desiccated, and decaying dolls hanging from – and in some cases impaled on – the knobby branches and limbs.

There had been no warning, and nothing could have prepared her for the horrifying sight. Handmade rag dolls, popular mass-produced toys from bygone years, stuffed snuggletoys. They hung from ropes and twine, string and wire. Small nooses and garrotes looped around necks or limbs indiscriminately, plush bodies spilling rotted cloth and moldy foam stuffing from impaled torsos. And the eyes.... Painted plastic, glass marbles, ceramic, buttons, or just gaping holes all staring lifelessly, blankly gazing at every angle and in every direction.

Tera gaped at the scene, staggering backwards a few steps even as she felt a powerful wave of vertigo pass through her, feeling like the world had just tipped to the left side for a long moment. She was barely aware of the suddenly weakness in her legs that sent her falling to all four knees. The color seemed to bleed out of her vision as she swayed, but as much as she wanted to get to her hooves and bolt, something deep in her most primal instincts told her not to move, don't attract attention, don't draw the gaze of the dolls. It was ridiculous, she knew on some level, that dolls were just inanimate objects, toys, and that what was before her was nothing more than some macabre, twisted joke, some sort of display of a sick and fractured mind. Her rational side found it disturbing, but nothing more.

Her instincts, however were screaming at her, telling her to get up, get away, but don't run, do not draw attention to yourself. They'd see movement, they'd smell her fear, they would run and hunt and never stop-

She felt another wave of vertigo, and realized she was dangerously close to passing out, right here on the road, and with nothing but a few yards of road between her and the dolls. She squeezed her eyes shut, and took a deep, shuddering breath. Surprisingly, the terror she had felt mere moments before seemed to flow out of her with her exhale. She breathed in again, deeply, before letting it out in a long breath, her unease and nausea ebbing further. What was this?

After a third cleansing breath, she opened her eyes again. Immediately, she was struck with a sense of wrongness, of deep unease and nervousness, but nothing like the terrifying feeling of unreality and horror she had experienced when she first cast eyes on the dolls. The scene before her was still macabre and twisted, but what she now felt was more like the distrustful unease she might get while walking past a dark alley at two in the morning after an extended research session at the campus library, rather than the terrorized certainty that her life had been a hair's width away from ending horrifically.

Well, she thought stubbornly, she had never let that dark alleyway deter her from getting back to her dorm, and she'd be damned if somepone's ugly, twisted little..... art project of a display was going to stop her. Her brow furrowed suddenly, her unease ebbing more as anger took its' place. How dare they, whoever had set up this nasty surprise? She had come this far, and she'd be damned if a cheap knockoff of a Nightmare Night haunted house attraction was going to stop her.

The unicorn was tangentially aware that her rapidly-shifting emotions were nowhere near normal for her, but at the moment, her rage at being terrified by the macabre display was more useful than introspection, giving her the push needed to get her hooves under her and stand defiantly. With an aggressive snort, she resumed pushing forward, pulling her cart along the shaded stretch of road.

The miasma of withering lemons, decaying foam, and rotting cloth crowded out the cornucopia of farm scents from before, but slight breeze also held the whisper of clean ice and snow, hinting at the glacier-topped mountains beyond the town that lay ahead. The stench around her was off-putting, but nowhere as strong as a few moments ago. In fact, the longer she walked, the less gruesome the creepy scene around her seemed to be. The lifeless gaze of dismembered dolls, horrifying just moments before now just seemed.... sad, really. It was like looking at the remains of a house that had burned down with nopony in it – sad, and ugly, but not the tragedy it could have been. As she trotted past a rotting unicorn plush toy, hanging from a noose of twine, she found herself pitying whomever owned the land on either side of the road, and sincerely hoping they were getting the help they obviously needed.

It was a shorter distance than she had expected. When she first looked down the road, it seemed like an endless corridor or rotting lemons, scraggly branches, and staring abominations. But ten minutes of trotting down the slight slope took her around the next bend, and before she could really register it, she found herself in the sunlight again, the couloir of dolls, rot and distress suddenly behind her. A slight shudder ran through her before she could stop it, but her relief at being past the harrowing experience was palpable, even to herself.

With the dolls behind her, and the outskirts of the town proper ahead of her, she felt..... invigorated. Her day, which had swung between misery, wonder, and horror, now seemed brighter, full of hope and excitement. Shaking the dust of the road from her withers, mane, and tail, she trotted forwards, her little cart of personal belonging squeaking along behind her.

...

It was probably for the best that, consumed by her upturning feelings, she didn't glance back, and therefore never noticed that the heads of every doll she had passed were now turned and staring down the road where she and her cart slowly shrank into the distance.

Author's Note

Don't you hate it when you're just walking along, you turn a corner, and you're suddenly you're staring at hundreds of dolls that are all staring right back at you?

It doesn't matter if the damned things are lynched and hanging from trees, organized neatly in a room, or stuffed into and strewn haphazardly around a storage shed in the back corner of a rural property, there's just no preparing for that moment. It is my sincere belief that it's statistically impossible for a person to gather a large number of mannequins, plushies, or dolls into one space without attracting something otherworldly and sinister.

As for Tera, she doesn't seem to be fully enjoying her first taste of Candle Light's Coven, does she? The poor girl has certainly had a rough time of it. But hay, that's behind her now, and things are starting to look up.

By the way, in case you're wondering about the "Ibexian" building style, think traditional timbered German architecture; windowless bottom floors made of mortared cobblestone, and dressed timber upper stories, like so:
https://www.shutterstock.com/shutterstock/photos/2106069620/display_1500/stock-photo-samara-russia-september-ethnocultural-complex-people-s-friendship-park-traditional-2106069620.jpg