For Winters Wrap Up
Chapter 1: The rhythm of a new song.
It was a day like no day had ever been in all the memory of the people. Sometimes half a year or more might go by in the burrow where the first members of Silvermane’s little band had taken refuge against the Long Winter 1000 centuries ago, and there would not be one single event worthy of scribing into the chronicles. But that morning there were three extraordinary happening within the span of an hour, and after that hour life would never again be the same for Silvermane and her Tribe.
First came the discovery that a ponderous swath of ice-worms was approaching the burrow from below, out of the icy depths of the world.
It was Brightheart the chronicler who came upon them. He was the tribes old-stallion, it was a title as well as it was his condition. He had lived far longer than any of the others. As keeper of the chronicles it was his privilege to live until he died. Brightheart's back was bowed, his flank was sunken and hollow, his eyes were forever reddened at the rims and brimming with fluid, his fur and mane were grey/white and grizzled with age. Yet there was vigor in him and much force. Brightheart lived daily in contact with the ages past, and it was that, he believed, which sustained and preserved him: that knowledge of the past cycles of the world, that connection with the greatness that had flourished in the bygone days of warmth.
For weeks Brightheart had been wondering in the ancient passageways below the tribal burrow. Glowstone is what he sought, precious gems of high splendor, useful in the craft of divination. The subterranean passageways in which he prowled had been carved by his remote ancestors, tunneling this way and that through the living rock with infinitely patient labor, when they had first come here to hide from the exploding stars and black rain that killed the Old World. No one in the past ten thousand years had found a glowstone in them; But Brightheart had dreamed three times this year that he would add a new one to the tribe’s collection. He knew and valued the power of dreams. And so he went prowling in the depths almost every day.
He moved now through the deepest and coldest tunnel of all, the one called Mother of Frost. As her crept cautiously on his knees in the darkness, searching with his second sight for the glowstones that he had hoped were embedded in the wall of the passageway somewhere close ahead, he felt a sudden strange tingling and trembling, a throbbing. The sensation ran through the base on his spine up to the tip of his horn where a faint fizz of magic was discharged. It was a sensation that came from living creature near at hoof. Very large, living creatures.
Swept by alarm he lay utterly still.
Yes. He felt a clear emanation of life nearby: something huge turning and turning below him, like a thick sluggish anger drilling through stone. Something alive, here in these cold lightless depths, roaming the mountain's bleak dark heart.
"Luna!"He muttered, and made the sign of the Protector. "Celestia" he said and made the sign of the Provider."Cadence! Twilight!"
In awe and fear Brightheart put his horn to the stone. He pressed into the chilly rock, and aimed is second sight outward and downwards. He swept his horn from side to side in a wide arch.
Stronger sensations, undeniable and incontrovertible, came flooding in. He shivered. Nervously he hoofed at the ancient amllulet dangling on a cord about his throat.
A living thing, yes. Dull-witted, practically mindless, but defiantly alive, throbbing with hot intense vitality, and not far away. It was separated from him, Brightheart perceived, by nothing more than a layer of rock a single body length wide. Gradually its image took form for him. An imminence limbless thick-bodied creature standing on its tail within a vertical tunnel scarcely broader then itself. Great black bristles thicker than a pony’s leg ran along the length of its meaty body, and deep read craters in its pale flesh radiated powerful blast of nauseating stench. It was moving up through the mountain with inexorable determination, cutting a path for itself with its broad stubby boulder-like teeth: gnawing on rock, digesting it, excreting it as moist sand at the far end of its massive fleshy body forty pony-lengths long
Nor was it the only one of its kind making the assent. From the right and left now Brightheart pulled other heavy pulsing emanations. There were three of the beasts.... Five. Maybe a dozen of them. Each was confined in its own narrow tunnel, each embarked upon an unhurried journey upward.
Ice-worms Brightheart thought. Luna! Was it possible?
Shaken, astounded, he lay motionless, listening to the pounding of the huge animal's souls.
Yes, he was certain of it now: surely these were ice-worms moving about. He had never seen on- no pony had ever seen an ice-worm- but he carried a clear image of them in his mind. The oldest pages of the chronicles told of them: vast creatures that the gods had called into being during the first days of the long winter, when the hardy denizens of the Old World were perishing of the darkness and the cold. The Ice-worms made their homes in the black deep places of the earth, and needed neither air nor light nor warmth. Indeed they shunned such things as if they were poisons, which to them they might well be. And the prophets had said a time would come at Winters Wrap Up when the ice-worms would begin to rise toward the surface, until at last they emerged into the bright light of day to meet their doom. Now it seemed the Ice-worms had commenced their climb. Was the endless winter finally over, then?
Perhaps these ice-worms were confused. The chronicles testified that there had been plenty of false omens before this. Brightheart knew the text well: the Book of the Unhappy Dawn, the Book of the Cold Awakening, the Book of the Wrongful Glow.
But it made little difference whether this was the true omen of the winter’s wrap up or another in the long skein of tantalizing disappointments. One thing was for sure: the Tribe would have to abandon their burrow and go forth into the strangeness and mystery of the open world.
For the fullness of the catastrophe was at once apparent to Brightheart. His years of roving these dark abandoned passageways had inscribed an indelible map of their intricate patterns in lines of brilliant scarlet on his mind. The upward route of these vast indifferent monsters drilling slowly through the earth and rock would in time carry them crashing through the heart of the living-chamber were the Tribe had lived for thousands of years. There could be no doubt of that. The worms would be coming up right below the place of the Altarstone. And the Tribe was no more capable of halting them in their blind ascent than it would be of trapping an onrushing death-rock in a net of woven grass. Brightheart glanced down at the quill and inkwell displayed upon his graying flank. It was a rare mark, for only the Old-Stallion knew how to write, and it gave his spirit strength knowing who he was and what he could do.
Far above the cavern where Brightheart knelt eavesdropping on the Ice-worms, Velvetroot the offering-woman, who was the twining-partner of Silvermane the Chiefmare, was at that moment nearing the exit hatch of the burrow. It was the moment of sunrise, when Velvetroot went forth to make the daily offering to the Five Heavenly Ones. Tall, gentle Velvetroot was renowned for her great beauty and sweetness of soul. She bore a crimson mane, and her fur was a lustrous black and banded with two astonishing bright spirals of shining silver that ran the whole length of her body. Powerful muscle ripped beneath her well groomed coat, a fuming potion bottle decorating her flank. Her eyes were soft and dark, her smile warm and easy. Everyone in the tribe loved Velvetroot. From childhood on she had been marked for distinction: a true leader, one to whom others might turn at any time for counsel and support. But if not for the mildness in her spirit, she might well have become cheifmare herself, and not Silvermane; but beauty and strength alone are insufficient. A Cheifmare must not be mild.
So it was Silvermane and not Velvetroot that had come, on that day nine years earlier, when the old Chiefmare Specklemane had reached the resting-age. “This is my resting-day,” sinewy little Specklemane had announced to Silvermane, at the time know as Silverfur. “And so this is your crowning-day,” said Specklemane. Thus Silverfur was made Chiefmare and took the name Silvermane, as it had been agreed five years prior. For Velvetroot a different destiny had been decreed. When, not long afterward, it was the time of Blazonroot the offering-mare to pass through the hatch as Specklemane had, Brightheart and Silvermane came to Velvetroot, then known as Velvethoof, and placed the offering bowl at her hooves. Then Silvermane and Velvetroot embraced, with warm tears in their eyes, and went before the Tribe to accept the election; and a little later that day they celebrated their double accession more privately, with laughter and love, in one of the twining chambers.
“Now it is our time to rule,” Silvermane had told her that day. “Yes,” Velvetroot said.”At last, out time is here.” But she knew the truth, which was that it was now Silvermane’s time to rule, and Velvetroot’s time to serve. Yet were they not both servants of the Tribe, Chiefmare as well as offering-mare?
Each morning for the past nine years Velvetroot had made the same journey, when the silent signal came through the eye of the hatch to tell her that the sun had entered the sky: out of the burrow by the sky-side, up and up through the interior of the cliff along the winding maze of steep narrow corridors that led toward the crest, and at last to the flat area at the top, the Place of Going Out, where she would perform the rite that was her most important responsibility to the Tribe.
There, each morning, Velvetroot unfassoned the exit hatch and stepped across the threshold, cautiously passing a little way into the outer world. Most members of the Tribe crossed that threshold only three times in their lives: on the day of their birth, their Twining-day, and their resting-day. The Cheifmare say the outer world a fourth time, on her crowning-day. But Velvetroot had the privilege and the burden of entering the outer world each morning of her life. Even she was only permitted to go as far as the offering-stone of pink granite flecked with sparkling flakes of fire, six paces beyond the hatch. Upon that holy stone she would place her offering-bowl, containing some little thing of the inner world, a few zapberries or some yellow strands of wall-thatching or a bit of charred carrot; and then she would empty yesterday’s bowl of its offerings and gather something of the outer world to take within, a handful of earth, a scattering of pebbles, half a dozen blades of redgrass. That daily interchange was essential to the well-being of the Tribe. What it said to the gods each day was: We have not forgotten that we are of the world and we are in the world, even though we must live apart from it at this time. Someday we will come forth again and dwell upon the world that you have made for us, and this is the token of our pledge.
Arriving now at the Place of Going Out, Velvetroot gripped the hoof-wheel that opened the hatch. It was no trifling thing to turn the wheel without magic, but it moved easily under her hooves. Velvetroot was proud of her strength. Neither Silvermane nor any stallion of the tribe, not even the mighty Boulderhoof, the biggest and strongest of the guard, could equal her at hoof-sparring, at kick-wrestling, or chasm-jumping.
The Hatch opened. Velvetroot stepped though. The keen, sharp air of morning stung at her nostrils.
The sun had just come up. Its chilly red glow filled the eastern sky, and the swirling dust motes that danced on the frosty air seemed to flare and blaze with an inner flame. Beyond the ledge on which she stood, Velvetroot saw the broad, swift river far below, gleaming with the same crimson stain of morning light.
Once the great river had been known as the Everfree Nile. Velvetroot knew nothing of that. To her, the river was simply the river. Any other name it had gone by was forgotten now, and had been for hundreds of thousands of years. There had been hard times upon the earth since the Endless Winter. The Great World itself was lost; why then should its names have survived? A few had, but only a few. The river was nameless now… as was the forest around it.
The borrow in which the sixty members of Silvermane’s Tribe had spent all their lives-and where their ancestors had huddled since time out of mind, waiting out the undying darkness and chill that the falling mega-rocks had brought- was a snug cozy burrow hollowed out of the side of a lofty bluff rising high above the mighty river. At first, so the chronicles had declared those ponies who had survived the early days of black rains and frightful cold had been content to live in mere caves, eating roots and nuts, and growing what zapberries they could. Then the winter set in, and the plants and wild animals disappeared from the world. Had Pony ingenuity ever faced a greater challenge? But the Burrow was the assure: self-sufficient buried enclose, dug into hillsides and cliffs well above any likely snowline. Small groups of ponies, their numbers strictly controlled by breading regulations, occupied the burrows insulated chambers. Clusters of luminescent glowstones afforded light; intricate ventilation shafts provided fresh air; water was pumped up from underground streams. Crops dairy cows and chickens, having been elegantly adapted to life under artificial illumination by means of magic, were raised in surrounding chambers. The burrows were little island worlds entirely complete in themselves, each as isolated as though it were bound on a solitary voyage across the deep night of space. And in them the survivors of the world’s great calamity waited out the time, by centuries and tens of centuries, until the day when the gods would grow weary of hurling mega-rocks from the sky.
Velvetroot went to the offering-stone, set here bowl on its surface, looked in each of the Five Sacred Directions, spoke in turn the Five Sacred Names.
“Luna,” She said. “Protector
“Celestia. Provider.
“Cadence. Lover.
“Discord. Destroyer.
“Twilight. Consoler.”
Her voice chimed and echoed in the stillness. As she lifted yesterdays bowl to empty it, she looked past the rim of the ledge and down toward the river. Along that bare steep slope, where only gnarled and twisted woody shrubs could grow, brittle whitened bones lay scattered and tumbled everywhere like twigs idly strewn. The bones of Blazonroot lay there, and of Specklemane, and of Tenderpelt, who had been the chronicler before Brightheart. Velvetroot’s mother lay in those scattered drifts, and her fathers, and their mothers and fathers. All those who had ever left the hatch had perished here, on this plunging hillside, struck down by the angry kiss of winter’s air. Velvetroot wondered how long they lived, those who came forth from the burrow when their appointed resting-day arrived. An hour? A day? How far could they roam before they were felled? Most, Velvetroot suspected, simply sat and waited for the end to come to them. But had any of them, overtaken by the desperate curiosity in their last hours of their lives, tried to strike out into the world beyond that ledge? To the river perhaps? Had anypony actually lasted long enough to make it down to the river’s edge?
She wondered what it might be like to clamber down the side of the cliff and touch the tips of her fingers to that mysterious potent current.
It would burn like fire, Velvetroot thought. But it would be cool fire, a purifying fire. She imagined herself wading out into the dark river, hoof-deep, thigh-deep, flank-deep, feeling the cold blaze of water swirling up over her. She saw herself then setting out through the turbulent flow, toward the other bank that was so far away she could barely make it out walking through the water, or perhaps atop it, like the Waterstriders of old, walking on and on toward the sunrise land, never once to see the burrow again.
Velvetroot smiled what foolishness it was to indulge such fantasies!
And what treason to the tribe it would be, if the Offering-mare herself were to take advantage of her hatch-freedom and desert the burrow! But she felt a strange pleasure in pretending that she might someday do such a thing. One could at least dream of it. Almost everyone, Velveteroot expected, now and looks with longing toward the outer world and had a moment’s dream of escaping into it, though surely few would admit to that. She had heard that there were those over the centuries who, growing weary of the burrow, actually had slipped through the hatch and down to the river and into the wild lands beyond, not expelled from the burrow as one was on their resting-day, but voluntary sojourners, setting forth into that frigid unknowability of their own will simply to discover what it was like. Had anypony in truth ever chosen such a desperate course? So it was said; but if it had happened, it had not been in the lifetime of anypony now living. Of course those who might have gone forth in that way could never have returned to tell the tale; they would have died almost at once ion that harsh world out there. To go outside was madness, she thought. But a tempting madness.
Velvetroot began to collect what she needed for the inward offering, a faint glow coming from her horn. Then, out of the corner of her eye she caught a flash of movement. She whirled, startled, turning back towards the hatch just in time to see the small slight figure of a colt dart through it and race across the ledge to the rim.
Velvetroot reacted without thinking. The colt had already begun scrambling over the side of the ledge when a faint glow wrapped around the heel of his rear leg before he could disappear, and causing his face to crash into the rocky ledge. He yowled and kicked, but here hold on his heel held fast,. She hauled him away from the edge, throwing him down beside her.
His eyes were wide with fright, but there was boldness and bright audacity in them too. He was looking past her, trying to get a glimpse of the hills and river. Velvetroot stood poised over him, half expecting him to make another desperate lunge around her.
“Cobalt,” She said, “Of course. Cobaltblaze. Who else but you would try something this foolish?”
He was eight, Spottedmane’s colt, wild and headstrong all his life. Cobalt-full-of-questions, they called him, bubbling as he was with unlawful curiosity, an inner fire needing knowledge never to be satisfied. He was tall, slender, almost frail, a wriggling rope of a colt, with ghostly face, triangular and sharply tapering from his wide brow, and huge hazel eyes mysteriously flecked with scarlet specks. His coat was a dark blue, his mane even a darker hue containing stripes of fiery orange. Everyone said of him that he had been born for trouble. But this was no trifling scrape he had gotten himself into now.
Velvetroot shook her head sadly. “Have you gone crazy? What did you think you were doing?”
“I only wanted to see what’s out here Velvet! The sky. The river. Everything.” He said softly, his voice laced with longing.
“You would have seen all that on your naming-day.”
He shrugged. “But that’s a whole year away! I couldn’t wait that long.”
“The law is the law, Cobalt. We all obey, for the good of the Tribe. Are you above the law?”
Sullenly he said, “I only wanted to see. Just for a single day, Velvet!”
“Do you know what happens to those who break the law?”
Frowning he said, “Not really. But it’s something bad, isn’t it? What will you do to me?
“Me? Nothing. It’s up to Silvermane.”
“Then what will SHE do to me?”
“Anything she wants to. I don’t know. Ponies have been put to death for doing what you have tried to do.
“Death?”
“Expelled from the burrow. That’s certain death. No pony could last out here for very long. Look there boy.”
She pointed done to the slope, at the field of bones bleached from the sun.
“What are those?” Cobalt asked at once.
Velvetroot pushed s hoof into his shoulder, pressing against the bone within. “Skeletons. There’s one inside you. You’ll leave your bones on that hill if you go outside. Everypony does.”
“Everypony who’s ever gone outside?”
“They all lie right there, Cobalt. Like pieces of old wood tossed about by winter storms.”
He trembled. ”There aren’t enough of them,” he said with a sudden defiance. “All those years and years and years of Resting-days, the whole hill ought to be covered with bones, deeper than I am high.”
Despite herself Velvetroot felt a grin coming on, and looked away a moment. There was nopony else like this little colt, was there? “The Bones don’t last, Cobalt. Fifty, a hundred years perhaps, and then they turn to dust. Those you see are just the one cast out most recently.”
Cobalt considered a moment. In a hushed voice he asked, “Would they do that to me?”
“Everything is in Silverman’s hooves.”
There was a sudden flash of panic in the colt’s strange eyes. “But you won’t tell her will you? Will you, Velvet?” His expression grew guileful. “You don’t have to say anything, do you? You almost didn’t notice me, after all. Another moment and I would have just passed you and been over the edge, and I wouldn’t have just stayed out until tomorrow morning, and nopony would have been the wiser. I mean, it isn’t as though I hurt anypony. I only wanted to see the river.”
She sighed. His frightened, be screeching look was hard to resist. And, truly, what harm was done? He hadn’t managed to get more than ten paces outside. She could understand his yearning to discover what lay beyond the walls of the burrow: that boiling curiosity, that horde of unanswered questions that must rage in him all the time. She had felt some of that herself that, through her spirit, she knew, had a little of the fire that possessed this troubled colt. But the law was the law, and he had broken it. She could ignore that only at the peril of her own soul.
“Please Velvet, Please-,”
She shook her head. Without taking her eyes from the colt, she gathered what she needed for the offering. She glanced once more in the five sacred directions. She spoke the five names. Then she turned to the boy and indicated with a brusque gesture that he was to proceed inside. He looked terrified. Gently Velvetroot said, “I have no choice, Cobalt. I have to take you to Silvermane.”
End of Chapter One.
