by Sean Platt
The path on the right, by contrast, was dark and foreboding. It was filled with trees that were black, gnarled, and mostly naked of leaves. The path seemed to extend downward into forever; those old trees arched overhead in a thick lattice that blocked out the sun, the moon, and the stars. The ground was paved with what looked like cinders: black, glassy, faceted chunks of burned wood that would crunch and crack underhoof. A slight breeze emerged from the path’s cavernous mouth, and on its breath was a scent like meat gone bad. There were a few lights in the path, but all of them flickered on and off, like fireflies.
And suddenly Edward realized: the correct choice was too obvious to be correct.
He was walking through a land of strange magic and fantasy, and in that land he’d been presented with a coincidentally placed puzzle. But the left path ahead of him was too perfect. The right path was too sinister. It had to mean something.
Edward found himself remembering Adam.
He missed Grappy and Grammy. He’d always loved the long walk to their haven, and he’d always loved the time he spent there, drinking Grammy’s hot marshmallow chocolate while the old unicorns spun their yarns. At the time, all of their tales — especially Grappy’s — had seemed fantastical and invented. Now, Edward wondered if they might all have been real. If what the cat said were true, then at least here and now reality wasn’t something that existed to be judged from the outside. At least here and now (while the world was apparently “soft”), reality was malleable. Grappy said often, “You create your own reality,” and now Edward wondered if it wasn’t sometimes literally true.
Adam had told Edward repeatedly: Existence is not easy … nor is it meant to be.
The last time Edward had visited the haven, Adam and Eve’s lesson had been heavy with morals — deep themes not so much to be thought upon but to be lived so that they could steep in his mind like hot tea. Adam had said that there was no “good” or “bad,” and that both were required. Light was not to be sought. Dark was not to be avoided. It was conflict and the unknown that drove life’s constant engine.
Ahead of him, the easy way was too easy. The hard way was too hard.
He realized what he had to do.
Edward stepped into the dark path to his right. A knot of cinder exploded under his hoof, making his hide jump. But once he’d started forward, walking became easier. And although he flinched at every noise, he kept his hooves moving.
As he walked, he began to wonder if he was being foolish. His mind and soul wanted to pull back, to take him out of the dark path before it was too late. But that didn’t seem right, so he just kept repeating Adam’s themes, feeling as if he were growing older and wiser and taller and stronger as he did so — even as the dark path pressed in on him, even as schools of fireflies (if that’s what they were) used their lights to create shapes in the dark, to make horrific faces at him.
Adam wanted unicorns to partner with humans because unicorns were pure light and humans contained dark. Eve had eaten the peach to pierce the veil and pollute herself, to sully Mead with the contamination of Darkness. Struggle, Adam had said, was like a grinding stone. You needed to wear away part of a dull edge to reveal the cutting surface beneath. Peace was not progress. Fighting and obstacles were necessary. Difficulty was an ally. And difficulty always made the world better for those who were not deterred by it.
Existence is not easy, Edward. Nor is it meant to be.
Cinders crunched underhoof. Thorns and brambles scratched at his sides. His heart beat in his ears like a drum. He wondered at his own invulnerability, trying to decide if he could heal if he were attacked. His body could do magic, but his horn could not. He wondered, as he took in the shapes in the dark, if he could die.
The tunnel’s end closed behind him faster than it should have, as if the trees themselves had choked the tunnel closed like long fingers wrapped around a throat.
CHAPTER 17
THE DARK FOREST
An unknowable amount of time later, Edward emerged into a clearing that was barely lighter than the path he’d come through. It made sense: He’d been in what he could only think of as a tunnel long enough for the sun to set. Still, he somehow got the impression that the dullness around him was as bright as it was going to get — that the pallor he saw around him was this place’s version of daytime.
The grass beneath his hooves was bent and brown. There was light in the air, but it was like looking through foggy glass. The world was gray, and smelled like ash and fire. Edward was hungry after his walk (his terrifying walk, he had to admit), but there was nothing that looked like anything he wanted to eat. There were plants around the clearing that were probably green, but they seemed strange. They had single flowers atop tall stalks, and they had small, rod-thin leaves along their length that swayed in the ashy breeze and seemed to open and close like tiny hands. The flowers themselves were as bright blue as Adam’s forget-me-knots, but inside the blue petals was a ring of orange, and the seed cluster in the middle was as red as human blood. In the center of the seeds was a black slit, small and horizontal. Edward couldn’t help but think of that slit as a mouth, and couldn’t bring himself to walk close enough to see if it was.
He walked through the clearing, leaving the path to creak and bow in on itself as if breathing. The red and blue flowers turned as he passed, their tiny leaves opening and closing. The dry grass, embedded in hard and cracked dirt, rustled underhoof. Edward felt himself shiver and tried to steel his resolve, but Grappy’s platitudes suddenly meant less than nothing. He didn’t care if dark had no meaning unless it was compared to light; Edward was light, and that light was giving the dark around him plenty of contrast. Compared to his warm inner glow, his surroundings felt cold. And on the heels of that cold feeling, Edward remembered something else Grappy had said often: that magic always sought balance. You couldn’t separate light and dark for long — and Edward couldn’t help but feel that his dark surroundings were hungry to absorb his light.
The clearing became a path. The path led into a village that was the utter opposite of the egg-and-pigs village he’d come through before reaching the road’s fork. There were dwellings here, but they were close to the road, almost cramped, and all seemed to be in disrepair. Edward saw rotting roofs, caving walls, and broken windows. Everything was painted (if it was painted and not simply black with mold) in browns and grays and flat black. He saw dark shapes overhead — sparrows or bats — flying in a cloud, circling once before moving on, as if watching and judging.
The road had turned into shards of shattered gray cobblestone, sick with pits that would shatter any human wheel. Edward had to watch his step lest he snap a bone, but because of the place’s scant light, he could only see the holes as pits of deeper shadow amid the darkness. Looking around at the dwellings, he could see that there were faces in some of the windows. The faces were leering, darting back when they saw him. There were also some creatures outdoors; Edward saw several women dressed in robes and huge, pointed black hats. One woman had a green face, with a wart on a nose that looked sharp enough to open a wound. They were all sweeping their stoops with brooms made of unevenly cut reeds, broken in places, missing bristles in giant patches. They paused their sweeping to look up at Edward from under their shriveled brows.
In the middle of the town, beside a square and in front of an enormous home, was what appeared to be the top of a huge vine. Edward passed it, mystified. When he got closer, he realized that the vine descended past street level and into the tops of clouds below. The house behind the plant had a gargantuan door and massive windows. Edward, who was from what was usually considered a race of large beings, felt positively dwarfed. He hurried past, somehow sure that the large house meant trouble, and felt his heart double its beat when he saw the home’s occupant through the window: an enormous giant, its face dumb but menacing.
He was looking to the side, trotting ahead and trying to keep his hooves quiet on the cobblestones, when he ran into another pedestrian. He turned
and almost recoiled. It was the wolf Edward had seen in the other village — the sun-drenched, happy-go-lucky village on the far side of the dark path — following the girl in the red cloak and carrying the basket. The wolf, when seen up close, was huge. It stood upright, like a human, and was covered in gray hair that protruded from its skin in thick, unruly tufts. Edward looked up to apologize and saw that its eyes were a deep yellow, cut with thin slits in their shining centers, framing a mouth that was half-open in a snarl, saliva dripping from long, off-white fangs.
“Excuse me,” said Edward.
The wolf stood and breathed heavily, its exhalations coming out like an idle growl. Its breath was terrible — like something dead and decaying. In the sparse light of the village, everything in the wolf’s hair-covered face was sharp, hooded shadows.
He started to take a step, and the thing inhaled, still watching him. The inhale made a noise like an angry snort. A line of drool dripped from its mouth to land on Edward’s back. A giant, clawed paw came up. Edward tensed to run, but the wolf’s paw was on him before he could, wiping at the pool of dripped saliva.
“I’m so sorry,” the wolf said in a strangely civilized voice, almost like that of a proper unicorn. Its paw went into a pouch at its waist, pulled out a muted swatch of blue fabric, and dabbed at Edward’s back as if swabbing glass.
Edward was so shocked that at first he nearly ran. He looked at the wolf and saw that its face was still snarling. He said, “Um … no problem?”
“I didn’t see you there,” said the wolf, acting like he was the one who’d run into Edward. “I’ve been distracted.”
Edward looked again at the great wolf’s face. Its gums mostly covered its teeth, but the snarl was still apparent. Those big yellow eyes were on him, boring directly through his skin. A breeze rustled, and the trees chattered with the stir of bones. The light waned further (Edward realized that the source appeared to be a very bright moon, just then partially obscured by a dark cloud), and his hair stood on end. Through the window, the giant turned, came to the sill, and peered out with stupid menace.
Before he could think, Edward said, “Please don’t hurt me.” It was a strange thing to say. It was unlikely that anything here could kill him, but pain was different. A unicorn could heal just fine, but that didn’t make getting raked open with razor-sharp claws any fun.
“Hurt you?” The wolf looked both offended and annoyed. “Why would I hurt you?”
“I thought you were angry.”
The wolf looked down, all teeth and yellow eyes. That strangely proper voice came out of the murderous mouth. “Oh, I see. It’s because I’m a wolf, isn’t it? I’m the bad guy, right? You’re just like that sheriff today.” He shook his head, exasperated.
“What sheriff?” Edward remembered how the wolf had been following the girl earlier, and wondered if he’d been caught doing something untoward. He added, “I saw you earlier. Are you talking about when you were stalking that girl in the red cloak?”
“Stalking?” The wolf laughed. “Oh, that’s rich. Listen, there’s a bakery I like in that village, and they make these wonderful little tarts. Every. Single. Week, that girl right there beats me to it and buys them all. She’s able to do it every week because I have to pass her grammy’s house, and Grammy watches through her window until she sees me coming, then shouts down to the girl so she can run around and get there ahead of me. And I get it; they’re excellent tarts. But can’t she leave just a few?”
“You were following that girl because she had tarts you wanted?”
“Well, I wanted to explain to her that if she wanted to mess with me, that was her business, but that today was different. I figured she’d mayhap have some compassion, given that the tarts I wanted were for a funeral.”
“Funeral?”
“You don’t know?” The wolf shook its great and frightening head. “Of course you wouldn’t. You’re not from around here, are you?” The wolf extended a clawed paw ahead and to the right. “Delores’s funeral is today. You wouldn’t know her, but she was a grand old lady. She had two passions: decorating and cooking desserts. Desserts are pretty much all she ate, and all she made for everyone around here. Candy, too. She made the most magnificent candy. Everyone loved Delores. But those tarts, see, they were her favorite too. She had magic, so she could get to the bakery ahead of that little sneak and buy them, but in the past few months she’d been getting slower and more feeble, and so I started running some of her errands. The one I could never nail was that tart errand, because of the game the girl and her grammy think it’s so funny to play. Delores, she said it was no big deal. ‘Don’t be so hard on yourself, Henry,’ she’d say. ‘You were born with enough of a cross to bear.’ Then she’d laugh this dry little laugh and smile this understated, dry little smile. But it always bothered me — at first because the girl and her grammy seemed to snag those tarts each Sunday just because they thought it was funny to mess with the big, bad wolf from the other village, then later because they were depriving Delores through me as well — and still I mostly let it go. Curse of my timid personality, I suppose. Delores said I should be more assertive. ‘Big boy like you?’ she’d say. ‘You could just take those tarts from her, and she wouldn’t have a thing to say.’ But that’s not how I am. It’s not how Delores was, either. She used to say things like that — used to tell kids that she’d eat them, too.” The wolf laughed, lost in nostalgia. “But she wouldn’t hurt a fly, and knew I wouldn’t either. So we let the little brat take all the tarts, but today … well, my anger got the best of me.”
“What happened?” Edward asked. He was getting used to the wolf’s face. It was terrifying, but his quaint story quickly drained most of the terror. His fangs were merely features beneath his conversant lip; drooling was an unfortunate medical condition he couldn’t help; his eyes were simply intense orbs that happened to be yellow. Still Edward’s skin bristled, and still his eyes kept glancing toward the house with the giant inside, with the strange top of a vine — or was it a stalk? — protruding from below and into the giant’s front yard.
“I caught up with her and offered to buy the tarts. I tried to explain the situation, but when she realized whose funeral I was getting all teary about, she laughed at me and skipped off even faster. She said that Delores had gotten what she deserved. So I followed her again, and caught up with her in the woods, just after going over the river. She yelled back at me, chanting ‘Burn witch, burn!’ like a cruel little brat. So I ran past her, figuring I could reason with her grammy. Well, Grammy was away, so I got this idea, and I went into Grammy’s house, and I put on her housecoat and got into her bed and … ”
“Wait,” said Edward. “You thought you could pass for a human woman just by putting on a coat?”
“And a hat!” the wolf blurted, defensive. His shoulders slumped, and he said, “Okay, so it wasn’t one of my better ideas. But this thing with Delores … it has me all confused. Of course the minute Goldie came in and saw me, she just snorted laughter and yelled for the sheriff. After my wrists were bound and he was hauling me out, the girl was sitting in a chair by the door, shoving tarts into her mouth, and raining crumbs on the floor. And this little brat, she looks at me still in her grammy’s housecoat and says, ‘What big eyes you have, Grammy,’ and I just kind of snapped and yelled back at her, ‘The better to poop on you with!’ which didn’t even make sense, seeing as my eyes don’t do that, but it just kind of came out. That didn’t help me with the sheriff, and he used it as justification to keep me on grounds of harassment — made worse by my sneaking into her grammy’s house and putting on her clothes … well, you get the idea.”
Edward wasn’t sure what to say. He really just wanted to move on, but the wolf’s story intrigued him. When he’d seen the wolf (Henry, he reminded himself) earlier, he’d assumed he was harassing the girl and would probably catch her in the shadows and kill her. But the way the wolf told the story now was kind of impossible to doubt.
“It’s been a r
ough week,” said Henry the wolf, now using the blue cloth to dab at his watering eyes. He stowed the cloth and shook his head, as if to clear it. “I haven’t been myself. Snapping like that. It hasn’t helped my reputation on the other side of the path. Any of our reputations, really. That little stunt set us way back.” He blinked, then sighed. “Oh well. It is what it is.”
“What happened to Delores?” said Edward.
“Well, that’s the other thing with Goldie. She knew the kids. The kids with the accents?” He looked at Edward then gave another shake of his big head, as if chastising himself for continually failing to remember that the unicorn colt knew no assumptions from either village. “Sorry. They all hung together. They were terrors. Most of the kids from the village, they were afraid of Delores. And the other magic-users here too; they called them witches. It was totally unfounded, the kids being afraid — just because a woman lives alone and doesn’t have children doesn’t mean she hates children, though those town kids didn’t make it easy for them to do otherwise sometimes — but they were afraid most of the time, and it was useful in a way because it kept them from bothering us. But not Goldie and her friends. It was almost like they wanted to torture the women here. Their parents are probably to blame; I don’t know. But they used to come here and vandalize Delores’s house … ”
“They’d just come in and break windows?” Edward, who had plenty of unicorn pride, found this reprehensible. A being’s home was sacred. He couldn’t imagine bad colts and fillies coming to his grammy and grappy’s haven to defile it. Trying blushed him with anger.
“Well, in a way it’s hard to blame them,” said Henry. The wolf bobbed his head, apparently trying to understand the intruding children’s motivations. “See, like I said, Delores was this great cook. She made the most amazing pastries and candies, and believe me, all of us benefitted.” The wolf patted his stomach. “But she was also an artist at heart, so she loved to decorate and keep her house. And that, in part, is why it was so terrible that those kids wouldn’t stay away — because Delores, out of all of us, really cared about her house. But anyway, she liked to make candies and decorate her home, and one year she had this amazing idea. She decided to make her house out of the things she baked, combining her passions. It took Delores a year, working under a protective spell to keep weather from her roof. She painstakingly baked gingerbread squares and then mortared them together with royal icing to make the walls. She created giant, hand-twisted candy canes as her corner supports and lampposts. She decorated with peppermint twists and gumdrops and chocolates. Her house was beautiful — a never-ending work in progress — and she was always tweaking here or there, adding new rooms or outbuildings, refreshing pieces that had gone stale. It was her passion.”
