Eq Renaissance Part 6 (Ed)

Sister Enchantress

    The grip was as hard as steel.  They were the strongest human arms and hands that Big Macintosh had ever felt.  It wasn’t natural.  He knew he was in the presence of magic.  Despite the danger, he managed to relax.  She was almost comforting.  He could hear her whispering as she held him from behind.  He couldn’t understand the words, but he could tell that they rhymed.
    As they laid there in the dried leaves on the forest floor, he looked up into the canopy.  Great green leaves blotted out most of the blue sky.  Then he saw them, the things that had been pursuing him.  He only caught glimmers as they flitted through the filtered sunlight, but he could see that they were terrible; some combination of carrion bird and insect.  They had long, dagger like proboscises, like a mosquito’s.  Big Mac had little doubt that she had just saved his life.
    Then they were gone.  Their bizarre hooting or thrumming disappeared in the distance.  She let go, got up and walked off.  He looked around, confused, then got up to follow her.
    She led him deeper into the forest.  She only acknowledged his presence once, when she turned her head to the side, lifted her finger to her lips, and shushed him.  Suddenly Big Mac became aware of how much noise he was making as he trampled through the forest.  He became conscious of his big clumsy feet, and only stepped where she stepped, and avoided the dried sticks and leaves.  Soon he was almost as quiet as she.  He felt safer, as if he were a part of the forest now, rather than an intruder.
    The woman was almost completely naked.  She was almost exactly the same way she had been that night when he had first encountered her.  There were thick gold bracelets around her ankles and wrists.  There was more gold around her neck.  There was a simple woven belt around her waist, with a few thongs that hung down that she might have tied things to when she needed to, but there was nothing there now.
    That night they had first met, she had decorated her body with colorful paints.  They had even glowed with a strange phosphorescence.  She was wearing paint now, in stripes thick in the middle but narrowing at the ends, and it was all jet black.  They were barely discernible against her already black skin, yet it complemented the deep shadows cast by the leaves, and it broke up her pattern.  If this woman didn’t want to be seen, she could have hidden very easily.  She carried a long wooden staff that she used as a walking stick.  Big Mac couldn’t tell what sort of hardwood it had been carved of.  There seemed to be a tiny, yet ornate scrimshaw carved up and down its entire length.
    Big Mac had been watching her feet.  As he became more confident in walking silently, his eyes drifted up to her ankles.  Then her long, black, smooth calves.  Then her thighs.  He watched her buttocks as she moved so gracefully through the trackless forest, stepping over fallen trees and hidden roots.  He could see the way her muscles worked underneath her softer flesh, and how her wide, elegant hips moved as she turned around trees.  Big Mac began to stir.  He felt the glimmers of the lust he had felt that single night all that time ago.  He had felt like a wild animal when she had seduced him.  No other time in his life had he simply let his body take control like that.  The memory of it had led him here, and now the woman was leading him somewhere else.
    They hiked for an hour, maybe more, without saying a word.  They came to the side of a steep, sloping hill.  He was exhausted and soaked with sweat; she looked none the worse for wear.  There was a large tree that had only recently fallen over, and was laying up against the hill.  Its roots were unearthed in a great tangled knot, leaving a huge gaping maw in the ground, a sort of small open cave large enough to walk into.  That was exactly what the woman did, and Big Mac followed her.
    She stepped all the way to the back, where the root and earthen ceiling was the lowest, and squatted down.  Big Mac noticed a small fire pit, and a handful of possessions.  The woman had been camping here; her home had been destroyed by something terrible.  Big Mac sat down opposite her.
    Zecora raised her head and peered into his soul.  Big Mac saw those blue-green eyes again, the ones he had been waiting so long to see, the ones that had been haunting his dreams.  There was a white half moon within them, sunlight reflected from the other end of the little hollow.
    Despite the night they had shared, they had never spoken a word.  Big Mac wanted to know her name.  He opened his mouth to ask, but she interrupted him.
    “Why did you come here?” she asked him.
    It was the first time he had actually heard her speak out loud.  Her voice was smooth and deep.  Big Mac thought of some dark river that cut silently through the African jungle.  It was mysterious, and alluring.  Big Macintosh wanted to answer her honestly.  He couldn’t.  He didn’t know for himself why he had come to her.  “I think I love you,” he blurted out.
    Zecora laughed.  She actually laughed, which, in Big Macintosh’s opinion, was just about the worst response to “I love you” that he could imagine.  She slapped her hand across her mouth.  Big Mac thought it was to stifle more laughter, but when her eyes narrowed he could see that they were welling with tears.
    “No,” she shook her head.  “No.  You do not love me.  I put a spell on you, that is all.”
    “I don’t care,” Big Mac said.  “You didn’t have to.  I’d have loved you anyway if only I’d known you wanted me.”
    “No,” she said again.  Louder, higher pitched.  It was pained.  “No.  You do not love me.  You should be at home.  You love your family.  You love your sisters.”
    “Ah already left my family,” Big Mac said.  Zecora shut her eyes tight and the tears fell down her face.  “Ah joined the army.  Only I left them too.  When I heard we was going to war and you were the enemy, well then I didn’t know what to believe no more.  Except I knew I had to find you.”
    The woman covered her face with her hands.  Despite her distress, it was Big Mac that was shaken to his core.  This woman, this enchantress, she was the strongest, most powerful woman that he had ever known.  If she were upset, then there must be something very wrong indeed.
    “You do not love me,” Zecora whispered.
    “Oh, I don’t, huh?” Big Mac asked, feeling frustrated.  “Then you want to tell me what in the hell it is that I’m feeling?  Why I left both my family and my country on a whim?  Cause it ain’t lust.  At least it ain’t all lust.  It ain’t some dumb teenage infatuation.  Ah’m old enough to know that.  So tell me, lady, if it ain’t love that I’m feeling for you, then what on earth is it?”
    Her hands dropped down, and Big Macintosh could see her whole face was wet.  It was reflecting the same white sunlight that had been in her eyes.
    “A ghost, Big Macintosh,” she said to him.  “What you feel is the love of a ghost.”

    There was no darkness deeper than a moonless night in the Everfree Forest.  The small campfire that Zecora had lit underneath the roots of the tree glowed a sickly orange.  A pungent oily smoke rolled up through the roots and clumps of dirt.  The wood that Zecora was using was green and full of pitch.  It popped as it burned, and bright sparks drifted up on the currents.  It reminded Big Mac of an old ghost story he had heard once around a campfire as a boy.  He tried to shove such foolishness into the back of his mind.
    She had told him her name, although not much else.  She had left him there for some time, then came back with two large birds that she had already plucked and cleaned.  She had roasted them over the fire, and now they were both pulling the hot, juicy meat apart with their fingers.  Big Mac was devouring it, almost burning his fingers and mouth.  Zecora was only picking at it, lost on some thought.
    When Big Mac was finished, she spoke again.
    “I... do not like to trouble you with bad news, Big Macintosh.  I hate to be the bearer of bad news.  In fact... never in my life have I had to tell somebody that they have lost a loved one.”
    Big Mac thought about it, and then decided to wait for her to tell him when she was ready.  He didn’t like hearing bad news either, and there was no sense in rushing it.
    “I am sorry, Big Macintosh.  Your cousin.  He is dead.”
    Big Mac bore the news as he always bore bad news.  He was silent, and gave no external reaction at all.  He reached up and slowly scratched his chin.  He massaged it for a bit, as if some deep-thinker thinking about important things.
    “I ain’t heard about that yet.  I got an awful lot of cousins though.  Who is it?”
    “Golden,” Zecora whispered, staring into the fire.
    “Cousin Golden?  Golden Delicious?”  Big Mac smiled a weak smile. It wasn’t a smile of pleasure, but one of denial.  In his heart he knew this witch woman wouldn’t lie about something like that.  “Naw.  Naw, can’t be.  He ain’t dead.  He’s doing well.  He just graduated from med school a couple years back.  He’s the pride of the Delicious family.  He’s overseas.  Joined the Peace Corps.  He’s in...”
    The fire crackled.  On a normal night, the forest would have buzzed and hummed with a trillion insects and more unnatural things.  Now there was silence.
    “...he went to Africa,” Big Mac finished, his heart sinking.
    Zecora nodded slowly.  “He did,” she said, that look of grief returned to her face.  “I met him in Africa.  I fell in love with him in Africa, although I did not know it at first.  I have never known any greater love than him.  He is why I am here now.  I abandoned my country.  He abandoned his work.  He brought me here.  We thought we would be happy here.
    “I am sorry, Big Macintosh.  But Golden is dead.  And I am alone.”
    The fire popped loudly.  A great ember was spat out and died in the dust.  The flames grew lower.
    Zecora held her hands to her face again.  “I am an evil woman,” she sobbed.
    She composed herself.  “I missed him.  I wanted to hold him one last time.  I wanted to hear the beating of his heart.  I wanted to see the life in his eyes.  I wanted to taste his skin.  I could no longer do this, and so I did an evil thing.  I cast a spell upon you.  Your flesh is of his flesh, your blood is his blood.  I used you, and pretended you were him.  It was his love that drew you to me.  It was his love that you felt, not your own.
    “Once we were both fools in love.  I thought we would never be apart.  Now there is nothing left of him but his ghost,” she told him, “and the emptiness of my heart.”
    There was a long silence between them.  It stretched well past midnight, and into the witching hour.  The flames died.  The embers still burned, first hot yellow, then cooling to orange, and finally a deep red underneath dead, white ash.
    Big Mac understood now, at least he understood as much as he needed to.  He knew that he wasn’t in love with her.  Yet, as he sat there, he realized that he was swelling inside with love for her. Golden had loved her.  He had loved her as much as any man could love any woman.  That meant that Zecora was family.  It didn’t matter that she was a witch, or that she had an accent, or that she was from Africa, or that she had a different color of skin.  Big Mac would do anything for Zecora, because there was nothing more important to him than family.
    “How did he die?” Big Macintosh asked.
    “He was murdered,” Zecora whispered.  A cold wind blew.  The last of the embers died, and they were both plunged into darkness.

    The blackness was absolute.  Big Mac could have waved his hands in front of his face and he wouldn't have seen it.  Not a single iota of starlight came into their shelter; none of the phosphorescent insects or fungi of the forest disturbed them.  Then, first mistaking them for spots in his vision, he saw two blue-green orbs.  They were eyes, staring back at him like some kind of jungle cat, reflecting a light that was not there.
    “Who?” Big Mac asked.  “Why?”
    “Your princess,” she told him.  “Celestia.  She killed Golden.  She killed him for no other reason than because I loved him.  She killed him to destroy me.”
    Impossibly, the dark skin on her face came into view.  He could see the dark paint on her skin.  The gold around her neck.  He saw her large, dark breasts and even darker nipples.   If he had looked down, he would have seen himself.  His ratty red shirt, now torn and dirty.  His blue jeans, ripped in places where the forest had torn at them.  He didn’t look down.  His gaze never left hers.  They were both there, both visible, alone in their own private universe.
    “My country,” she explained.  “Where I come from, where I met Golden.  It has been torn by war.  Dictators, despots, have ruled there for hundreds of years.  Each one is worse than the last.
    “It was not always that way.  There was once a princess who ruled there.  She was a powerful sorceress, much like your own, or others in other lands.
    “There was war, Big Macintosh.  War between the princesses of this earth.  The one of my land, she lost.  After she was assassinated, my homeland fell into darkness, and has not recovered since.  Perhaps it will never recover.”
    “There were no heirs?” Big Mac asked.
    “There now lives one heir.  Although I no longer seek the crown.  I did, once.  Golden and I.  I have that blood in my veins.  I carry the mark of the sun.  It is the source of my powers.  Then the crown was lost to me.  I did not despair but I still had him.
    “We came here to be happy together.  But she, Celestia, thought I came to usurp her throne.  She sought to destroy me before that could happen, and in doing so, she destroyed my Golden.  I escaped.  The forest hid me from her eyes.”
    “She’s a tyrant,” Big Mac grumbled.  Before today, he never would have thought it.
    “Hmm,” Zecora considered it.  “She protects her throne.  She will use all of her power to preserve it.  I should have expected no less.  I was naive.”
    “So all this is about you? That great battle in the woods?  The war?”
    “No,” Zecora shook her head.  “Yes.  No.”  She sighed in frustration, having trouble explaining the situation.  “This is not so much about me, as it’s about the girl.  Twilight.”
    “Twilight?  That pretty little girl who runs the library?”
    “Hmmf,” Zecora finally smiled, just a little.  “A librarian?  Big Macintosh, she’s much more than that.  She is something new upon this earth.  There has never been anything like her before.  She simply radiates power, although she does not know how to wield it.  Why this is so is beyond any prophecy or sooth saying.  I cannot divine her true power, or her purpose.  I suspect that neither can Celestia.  Celestia has taken the girl as her own 'student.'  She has also taken the girl as her lover.”
    Big Macintosh’s eyes grew wide.  “You serious?”
    “She has,” Zecora said.  “No doubt she wants to control Twilight.  She wants to hold a place in Twilight’s heart.  I... I won’t lie to you, Big Macintosh.  I had some of the same thoughts when I took the girl as a lover myself.”
    Big Mac said nothing.
    “I took her as a student as well.  There is magic that the girl needs to know, but Celestia will not teach her, perhaps because she is frightened.  I took it upon myself to teach her black magic, and other hidden things.”
    “An I guess you did this out of the kindness of yer heart?” Big Mac asked, skeptically.  Zecora looked at him as if he already knew the answer.  “Or was it some kind of revenge?”
    “Did I do it to drive Celestia mad with jealousy?  If I did, it certainly worked.  That’s why she attacked me.”
    “Wait?  She attacked you?”
    “The scars of battle you saw in the forest.  That was our fight.  She attacked me.  She won.  I fled.”
    “Now, I saw her on the news.  She sure didn’t look to me like she won a fight.”
    “I am not completely defenseless.”
    “And the war?”
    “A ruse.  Nothing more.  She seeks to invade my homeland.  She hopes to draw me out.  She thinks I still seek the crown.  She thinks I still mean to usurp her.  She thinks that if she destroys my homeland, it will draw me from these woods, where she could destroy me in the same way she did Golden.  Many lives will be lost in the process, but the lives of mortals mean little to a sorceress of her power.  I will not leave these woods.  I will not give her the pleasure of destroying me.”
    “That don’t seem right.”
    “She does it simply for spite.  She has already won everything.  I am ruined.  She has her throne.  She has the girl.”
    “You mean Twilight?”
    “Yes.”
    “Huh.  I was suspecting maybe she was hiding out with you.”
    “Why would you think that?” Zecora asked.
    “Well, she ain’t been in Ponyville.  Nobody’s heard hide nor hair of her for some time now.  My little sister and her other friends have been worried sick.  Eyup.  Zecora, Twilight’s missing.”