13
Glowy Pony
At first I’m disorientated, and it takes me a moment to figure out where I am.
But once I remember all the terrible things that happened in Marin Harbor, hearing Rutholyn giggle seems very wrong. It’s almost more frightening than if she were screaming.
Pushing my blanket aside, I climb off the table-bed and hurry to the guidebox. What I find there… well… it utterly stuns me. Rutholyn is floating a tiny shimmerlight spark around the guidebox and the horselet is chasing it.
The horselet.
The shimmerdark sculpture I made her, the thing that was a motionless statue of energy and has no business being anything else.
It’s still deep black with blue sparkles glimmering on its surface, but otherwise it’s trotting around like a living, breathing animal. It’s even tossing its dark mane and bouncing Rutholyn’s shimmerlight sparks off its nose.
How can this be?
My abilities have changed, yes, but I doubt I can create life.
Could Rutholyn be moving the sculpture? Perhaps she’s manipulating it in the same way I control the Colossi. “How are you doing this?” I ask.
She turns, apparently surprised that I’m awake. I guess with the cagic heater whirring, she didn’t hear me walk through the midpassage. “I’m only just playing with him,” she says.
I feel like I’m trying to swallow wood chips. “Is that thing moving on its own?”
She gives me an “of course” nod.
Impossible.
It is impossible, isn’t it?
Now that Rutholyn is no longer making her cagic spark dance around, the shimmerdark horselet wanders toward me, blinking its luminous, starry eyes.
There’s clearly something alive in the cagic, and whatever it is, I don’t like it. Well, if I gave this creature a form, I can take it away. With growing worry that the longer this thing exists, the more permanent its presence will be, I try to release its shimmerdark.
Yet although the strange horselet shivers and briefly dims, the blue sparks glittering on its dark body promptly brighten again. It then tilts its head, and is it annoyed? Hopefully, I’m imagining that.
So I create a new shimmerdark shape, a globe the size of my fist. I can’t control two shapes at once, and whenever I create a second energy shape, the first always vanishes. But that doesn’t work either. The shining horselet is still standing on the guidebox floor staring at me.
What sort of creature is this then? I don’t like that it appeared in the middle of a dark forest either. Has some sinister spirit put on my horselet sculpture like clothes?
“Rutholyn, go hide in the cabdwell,” I say.
But Rutholyn, foolish girl, lifts the bright horselet to her chest and hugs it. “I don’t like that you’re being upset.” She looks out the dark navigation window. “What’s wrong?”
Oh, I wish she wouldn’t touch it. “What’s wrong is that I don’t know what you’re holding. Please, Rutholyn, put that down. It could be dangerous.”
“But you’re the one who made him,” Rutholyn says, still clinging to the mysterious thing. “Also, he’s nice.”
Again, the shiny horselet looks directly at me, and I have the unsettling sense it’s following the conversation.
“I made a shimmerdark shape to cheer you up,” I tell Rutholyn. “But my cagic shapes don’t move on their own. Whatever that is, we need to get rid of it.” I have no idea how, though, because it seems I can’t dispel its energy. Maybe I could push it out of the seg-coach or trap it in a cagic reservoir.
But Rutholyn doesn’t let go of the shimmerdark horselet. She also lowers her eyebrows. “I won’t let you hurt Glowy Pony.”
Oh realms, she’s named it. I suppose it’s my fault for making such a sweet-looking sculpture, or maybe it’s Osren’s fault for showing me horselets in the first place.
I hear something outside. It might be wind moving through the trees, but it also might be nocturnes. I need to start driving again.
“Alright, alright… let me think.” I take a deep breath. It seems crazy to talk directly to the gleaming thing in Rutholyn’s arms, but I’m not sure what else to do. Crouching down, I look into its shiny eyes. “Do you understand me?”
Deepest realms, it nods.
I shudder. “Did I make you—like this?”
The cagic horselet shakes its head no, which is both interesting and unnerving. Gathering up my courage, I touch it, and unsurprisingly, I feel the warm, staticky dryness of cagic. Its body feels like all my shimmerdark shapes do, firm and prickly—almost like a tightly wound ball of twine.
The pony doesn’t seem to be able to talk, and that’s a relief. A strange voice is the last thing I want to hear in the middle of a monster-infested forest.
Yet what am I communicating with? Just like we don’t know where nocturnes come from, we also don’t know much about cagic. Long ago, people believed the energy was a gift from the Hidden Gods. Now we’re taught that some of us are born with the ability to summon energy, the same way some of us are randomly born with freckles.
Maybe shimmerdark isn’t the only new thing I can summon. “Did I bring you here?”
The horselet blinks and doesn’t answer. Maybe it doesn’t understand my question, or maybe the answer is more complicated than a simple yes or no.
“Will you hurt us?” I ask.
The thing shakes its head, and Rutholyn huffs, “I know that he’s good because I can feel his goodness.”
I have no idea what to do. Since I can’t seem to get rid of this thing, worrying is my only option, and I suppose I can worry and drive at the same time.
“Well, sit down then,” I tell Rutholyn, and I slide behind the wheel and flick the guidelights back on. The endless trees reappear as well as the narrow road dented with potholes and gashes. No wonder Theandra preferred the seaside route. Again, I wonder if Drae Devorla knows what a bad state these Periphery roads are in. I’ll be sure to let her know when we reach Kaverlee City. The seg-coach rocks from side-to-side as I drive, and it makes all sorts of creaking noises. But we’ve come so far now, we might as well press on to Haberdine.
I glance at the glimmering horselet-thing again. It’s perched beside Rutholyn, and after turning in circles, it flops down like a sleepy dog. It does seem harmless, but it must be here for a reason, and I can’t imagine it’s here to help us.
Feeling anxious, I try to focus on the certain danger outside the seg-coach rather than the potential danger inside. We’re in a hilly pine forest now, one full of tall, ancient trees. Here and there, drooping branches bristle with needles, and there are a lot of mossy trunks and sparse underbrush. I wish I knew what time it was in the lunar day, but I’ve lost track. I can’t see the sky well enough to spot the moon, and if there’s a clock in the seg-coach, I don’t know where it is. With my terrible luck, it’s probably one of the few items that made it into the shelter with the Shalvos.
We drive for what feels like hours. The forest stretches on and on, and the glowing horselet continues to mysteriously exist. At times, it stands alertly in the navigation window as if expecting trouble. Other times, it watches me, which is worse. I try to ignore it and keep my eyes on the bumpy road, but I can’t stop wondering what it is and what it wants… or I suppose, what he is and what he wants; Rutholyn refers to him as if he’s male, so I guess I will too. When she falls asleep again, I softly ask our unusual visitor more questions.
“Do you know who the Great Drae is?”
He peers at me for a long while and then nods. Huh. Interesting.
“Are there more of you?”
He nods again.
There are? I tremble. “Are they nearby?”
No answer, which is unsettling. Although honestly, all of this is unsettling.
When Rutholyn wakes up, I stop the seg-coach again and assemble another bland meal, this time of tinned fish, leftover beans, and crackers. Unsurprisingly, Rutholyn only eats the crackers. After I wash up, and there’s
only half a bottle of water left.
“I think I’m now thirsty,” Rutholyn tells me while still nibbling on a cracker.
“Me too,” I say. “But we have to save this.”
I drive a little further, and we enter what seems to be an abandoned labor agency camp. Maybe we can find water here. It seems strange, though, that such a tumble-down place would be on the road leading to a large town. The camp doesn’t seem to have been used in years. The place is choked with weeds, the road sometimes disappears like a poorly drawn line, and if there’s a well, it’s not in an obvious spot.
I also can't find where the road continues to head south, even though I drive around the caved-in cottages and sagging warehouses several times. At one point, I even accidentally start driving back the way I came until I notice the compass pointing north.
With no moonlight, the buildings appear and vanish in the guidelights like phantoms. And even though some of the structures are falling apart because of neglect, nocturnes have clearly smashed in a lot of them too.
“I’m still thirsty inside,” Rutholyn murmurs.
“Fine, have some water,” I say. “But don’t drink a lot, and whatever you do, don’t spill it.” The coach’s energy gauge is also at low, but that’s easier to deal with. I can charge the reservoirs—I can’t summon water.
“There has to be a road leading out of here,” I say the fourth time we pass the same sentry tower. “It’s on the map!”
“Glowy Pony, will you help us?” Rutholyn whispers.
I shake my head. “No, no, not that—” But too late, the glittering horselet leaps up to the navigation window and amazingly, bizarrely, shivers through the glass. He then trots across the shareck-dented engine hood and jumps down into the tall weeds.
“Go on; go after him,” Rutholyn urges as the horselet cantors off to the right. Since he’s made of inky energy and it’s so dark out, he looks like a translucent blue ghost.
I wonder if he wants us to find the road or if he’d rather we lose our way. But without a better option, I turn the steering wheel and follow him.
The sparkling horselet does seem to know where he’s going. He confidently prances around stone steps that are no longer attached to buildings and passes through the crumbled ruins of a barn. Then all of a sudden, something huge drops down from the sky and lands on him.
Both Rutholyn and I scream.
Purple-brown wings gleam in the coach’s guidelights, and I briefly see a massive, triangular body, round eyes, and a curved beak covered with barbs.
An owleck!
Seconds later, the monster’s flapping upward again and our strange horselet guide is gone.
“No, no, no!” Rutholyn pounds on the navigation window. “I don’t want Glowy Pony to be dead! No!”
But with a flickering shimmer, the horselet reappears in the guidelights. He tilts his dark head toward us apologetically as if to say, “I hope I didn’t worry you.”
“Oh good, he’s alive now.” Rutholyn sinks down into her seat. “He’s back alive.”
But I’m not relieved. If the shimmerdark horselet isn’t troubled by nocturnes, can anything harm it?
“You should keep following him,” Rutholyn suggests.
Against my better judgment, I do.
Glowy Pony leads us past three more old buildings, two made of wood and one of stone, and then the shiny horselet does something completely confusing; he hops into a thicket of saplings.
“He wants us to go inside there.” Rutholyn points at the leaves.
I don’t like this. I still don’t see any sign of a road, and if I drive through those saplings, anything could happen. We might even plunge into a ravine. Very reluctantly, I follow the horselet, crushing young trees beneath the seg-coach’s tires.
But a few minutes later… we’re back on a worn, dented road.
“He knew this was here?” I say. “How?”
“He’s helpful,” Rutholyn says as if that explains everything.
I hear a cagic pop and there’s a strange, staleness to the air, and then the gleaming horselet reappears beside Rutholyn.
“I think you are a very good pony!” she gushes, patting his head.
Feeling more baffled than ever, I keep driving, coaxing the seg-coach’s rugged tires over fallen trees. Travelers mustn’t use this road anymore. I wish Theandra had written that on her map. There were other roads approaching Haberdine from the east and west. They must be more popular.
“Augh!” I cry as a shaggy bearcur lopes across the road. As if the seg-coach is frightened too, it stops. The engine falls silent, the heat fan turns off, and the guidelights fade away.
We must be out of cagic.
Well, great. I don’t want to face the savage nocturne version of a bear, so hopefully I can refill the reservoirs from inside the seg-coach.
Summoning shimmerlight, I head to the cabdwell and roll back the rugs. Good, there are access panels in the floor, and the always organized Theandra has even labeled them.
Pulling up a handle marked “Reservoirs,” I drag aside the largest panel. A rush of icy Dark Month air floods the cabin, making me shiver, and the roadway seems surprisingly close below. If I wanted to, I could touch the gravel. And between those little rocks and me, are the steel canisters Golly replaced.
The reservoirs are too big for me to pull inside the cabdwell—they probably hold seventy paraunits of energy each. So reaching down, I unplug the power cables and put my hands near a reservoir port. I first summon a small globe of shimmerdark, but the reservoir won’t accept it. The energy sphere bursts when I try to force it into the canister. Odd. So instead I summon shimmerlight and that works fine.
Both Rutholyn and Glowy Pony watch me work. Rutholyn sits patiently on the table-bed, which I’ve left in the sleeping position, while Glowy Pony trots around, agitated. After a few moments, he climbs onto the kitchen counter and bats small objects onto me—an egg timer, a spice shaker, a spoon.
“Stop that,” I say, my hands still on the reservoir.
I wonder how Drae Devorla will react to him. Perhaps Glowy Pony’s appearance is a sign that my cagic is corrupt.
“Ow!” I cry as a coaster bounces off the back of my neck, and I glare at him. “Stop it or I’ll…” I’ll what? If an owleck can’t carry him off, there’s not much I can do.
Therefore enduring a mostly harmless barrage, I fill only one of the two reservoirs so I can quickly get moving. I then replace the floor panel and spread the red and maroon rug back over it. As soon as I return to the guidebox, I turn the heater on and start driving again. I can’t wait to get out of these woods.
Yet as we continue to travel, the road gets worse and worse. There seems to be a path through the trees, but I’m often just using the compass.
“Should I ask Glowy Pony to guide us again?” Rutholyn suggests.
“No,” I say because it might be Glowy Pony’s fault we’re lost.
But only a few moments later, the forest thins, and I see a glistening, flat expanse in front of us. “A lake!” I cry. I think there's a lake north of Haberdine on the map. A lake also means we can refill our water supply.
“Also, there’s a bridge!” Rutholyn points out the passenger window.
She’s right. Even though I guess we did lose the road, we were still near it. A straight, flat bridge stretches across the water. It’s made of stone and brick, and it looks strong enough to support the seg-coach.
I check the map. This must be Silvermaar Lake, and yes, Haberdine’s on the other side. What a relief.
“We’ll stop in the middle for water,” I tell Rutholyn. “It will be easier to see nocturnes there.”
She nods as I ease the seg-coach onto the bridge. It’s much smoother than the bumpy hills we've been driving on, so for the first time in hours, Rutholyn and I aren’t bouncing on the seats.
When I think we’re about halfway across, I stop the coach and head to the cabdwell. There, I pull on my pallacoat—still muddy from fighting the
cattern—and put six bottles into a canvas laundry bag. One of Golly’s stiff socks is bunched up at the bottom—gross.
“I’ll look for nocturnes,” Rutholyn says, wrapping a blanket around her shoulders, apparently willing to go outside.
“No, no, you’re staying in here,” I say. “Look out the windows and sound the horn if you see anything.”
“But then I can’t see all the ways at the same time.” She juts out her little chin. “There might be flying monsters too.”
She’s right. The seg-coach doesn’t have that many windows, and I do need someone to warn me about nocturnes.
I suppose I shouldn’t leave her cooped up with the mysterious shimmerdark horselet either. “Fine,” I say, “but listen closely. Keep the passenger door open and stand on the mud cover. Don’t stand on the bridge. If there’s any trouble—anything at all—jump in the guidebox and lock the door. I’ll take care of myself.”
Rutholyn nods solemnly.
I climb out the passenger door with the laundry sack slung over my shoulder and the bottles clinking inside. Even though I expect it to be cold, the freezing temperature is still bee-sting startling. I’m surprised it isn’t snowing.
It’s also eerily quiet without the coach’s motor running. There’s only the whispering hush of wind in the distant trees and the soft lap of water on the bridge pilings. The air smells like algae and tangy pines, and clouds hover above me like gawking onlookers, waiting to see if I’ll survive.
“I’ll be right back,” I tell Rutholyn as I walk to the nearest bridge support.
She nods and shivers, and for better or worse, Glowy Pony stands beside her, perched on the engine hood.
I peer over the railing at the rippling water that’s about ten feet below the bridge. I then create a shimmerdark panel the size of a doormat and climb onto it. Again, I marvel at how easy it is to control this new energy for I glide effortlessly over the railing and down toward the inky lake.
Rutholyn’s little voice wafts after me. “Shimmerlady, be careful!”
“I will,” I call back, wondering if any aqua nocturnes are nearby. There’s a reason we seal off Kaverlee’s harbor during the Dark Month. Sharecks can swim, and there are octovipers and daggerfish too.
Shimmerdark Page 13