The Smith and The Pegasi
A Fairy Tale by Shuvcat, 2012

In the days before the first war, a smith set out to get far away from those of his kind. He had grown weary of the huemans’ arrogance, and fearful of their constant talk of war. As a child the smith had been gifted with the almost-magical skill of turning metal into anything he wished. He had turned his hand to shipbuilding, but now the ships he had so diligently crafted were to be used in the coming war.

The smith had once wanted nothing more than to be a sailor, and to drift about the world where the tides would take him. But this was not to be. He loved the sea, but it was cold and grey, and his hands did not know how to master the tides as they mastered metal. Thus rebuked, the smith left the seashore, leaving behind as a token of his amour only a string of shells.

From the sea the smith climbed into the mountains with his pack of smith’s tools. He gripped whatever root he could, ate berries where he found them, and crossed none who did not cross him first. He wanted to climb to the very top of the mountain, and leave huemankind behind forever. But at the end of that first day, he had only progressed as far as the lowest cliff. As night fell, the smith lay down, rested his weary head upon his pack of tools, and fell asleep.

He awoke to find a large, white horse standing over him. The horse was the most beautiful creature the smith had ever seen. There were no smears or scars to be found on the beast’s pure white coat, and the mane and tail too were flawless and free of burrs. There was no army’s brand or bridle upon the beast; indeed, no shoes were fixed to its hooves, which were the color of burnished gold. The smith was startled at first, but said, “Oh, you are only a horse, not the huemans I wish to escape.” So he picked up his pack and, leaving the beautiful horse behind him, resumed his efforts to climb the mountain.

The climb today was much harder than the day before. The brambles and stickers seemed to clutch his legs, as if to hamper his movements. The smith heard strange cries around him, as if from bizarre mountain birds in the sky. The clouds clustered closer around him as he climbed, the mist soaked his clothes and made it hard for him to breathe. And the gusting wind blew hard on his face and froze his hands. He made it to the second highest cliff by dusk, exhausted and scratched, gasping for breath. Again he fell asleep using his pack of tools as a pillow, cold and miserable though he was.

The next morning he awoke to find the immaculate white horse again standing over him. “Indeed, you are a hardy animal, to have climbed the same mountain I did! But now let’s see if I see you at the top of the mountain, for that is where I mean to go.” And, leaving the white horse looking after him, the smith picked up his pack again, and resumed his climb.

This day’s climbing was harder and more perilous than the previous two days combined. Now there were not just brambles and icy gusts, but more than once the smith had to dodge a rock which seemed as if it had been pitched down at him from above. “This mountain is hexed! Indeed, it may be the dragon king Bavsurius himself sitting up there, casting rocks down at me! But I refuse to be put off from my goal, and I will sit on the peak, on the dragon’s very nose!” Thus, through a great amount of effort and struggle, the smith finally collapsed upon the very pinnacle of the mountain. Thunder and lightning raged around him, and the rain drilled down on him, but the smith lay there, insensible.

He woke again, cold and wet. Once again he saw the great white horse standing above him, and nearby stood another horse, just as white and as beautiful as the first. Suddenly, a pair of enormous feathery wings, as full and as large as an angel’s, spread out from the backs of both animals.

Then the smith knew that he was in the presence of the magical pegasi. He trembled in fear, for the pegasus was known to be an unholy beast. But he shouted, “I see now how you managed to beat me to the mountaintop, it must be easy for one with wings! But look, I do not have wings, and I still have managed to climb to the top of your mountain!”

The pegasus stepped forward, as if to trample the prodigal smith under his shining hooves. “Much good it has done you to climb our mountain, but you will go down again, whether by your own feet, or by our hooves,” the smith heard the horse speak distinctly. “Any hueman army you lead will be thrown down, like the rocks on your head yesterday!”

“I lead no army, and I swear no allegiance to any huemans,” spoke the smith. “It is very strange that you have the gift of speech, but after climbing up your mountain, I am not afraid of any magic you pegasi possess.”

“It is strange indeed; we Pegasi have always been able to speak, but huemans have never heard us before.” The pegasus lowered his wings. “If you are not here to conquer us, why are you here?”

“For nothing more than sanctuary from the same huemans you fear,” said the smith. “How many are there of you?”

The two pegasi looked at each other. “Only my friend and myself; we can sire no foals, and so we are the last of our kind. What crime have you committed, to wish sanctuary from your fellow huemans?”

“Only refusing to build ships for the war they wish to wage against each other,” said the smith. “I am tired of war and I am tired of huemans. I will lift my hammer to create weapons of war no longer. I wish only to live alone, and die alone, far away from those who would spill my blood.”

The pegasi offered a compromise with the smith. They would allow him to live on the mountaintop, if he would not alert his fellow huemans to where they were. The smith was only too happy to oblige. The pegasi showed him a cave on the mountain where the smith could take shelter from the rain and wind. In this cave he could also set up his tools, and he could craft many things of metal and of glass. He passed his time crafting tiny figurines, mechanical toys, and windmills, and he helped the two pegasi find grass and fruits in the forest to eat. Time passed, and it was a peaceful, amiable existence.

After the smith had lived on the mountaintop for a year and a day, he saw a tiny foaling horse peeking out at him from around a corner of the cave. The little creature had two tiny wings, as white and as perfect as the wings of a swan.

The smith rushed out of his cave to see the foaling fully, but by the time he had got there, the foaling was gone. “What trickery is this?” shouted the smith. “You told me you could not sire foals, yet I have seen one!”

The two male pegasi stepped forth. “It is true we cannot sire. We depend on our mares for that.”

The smith knew himself deceived. “You said there were no pegasi besides you on this mountaintop!”

“We misled you because we were afraid you would betray us to the other huemans,” said one of the two pegasi. “Indeed, we are many; our mares foal daily, we are not the childless effetes your huemans would have you believe. Yet we are helpless. We steal from the farms of huemans in the valley below; hay, vegetables, water, only what we need to survive. We steal all we have, and the huemans wish to exterminate us for this reason.”

The two pegasi took the smith to the other side of the mountaintop. Here the smith saw that there were many, many more pegasi on the mountain than could live there. They came in many different colors, white and black, gold and silver, fiery magenta and dusky twilight blue, shimmering chartreuse and vivid violet. Some of the pegasi’s wings had feathers which were all the different colors of the rainbow. Several of the flying horses with foals had built nests in trees; others lived in nests in the cliff rock. All the pegasi foals were cold, hungry. They needed fresh hay, warm bedding, and safe shelters. They were dangerously low on water, and they could have used apples and other delicacies. The smith saw that the Pegasi were living on the mountaintop, but just barely living was all they could be said to do.

“There has got to be a better way,” said the smith.

The smith began gathering stones and rocks, and cutting wood logs, fashioning these into makeshift stables. He began tending gardens of fruits and corn, growing more food for the Pegasi foals. He went out hunting daily, gathering berries and what meager fruits could be found on the mountain. It was hard work, but work is no stranger to the industrious metalsmith. However he could only do so much. Much more was needed to help the winged horses and their foals.

And so the smith tried to think of machines he could build in order to help him. He melted down the trinkets and baubles he had made from metal over his year on the mountain, and he crafted a few different tools. One was a clever device which could harvest several rows of carrots at one time, grasping the stems and pulling them from the dirt. Another machine with many blades could be made to reap the rows of corn, after which it funneled the cut stems through a device which stripped the cobs of their husks, leaving the corn ready for eating.

The smith realized that he was running out of metal with which to work. The pegasi, who no longer had to steal their food from the farms in the valley, wanted to pay the kind smith back for his selfless deeds and hard work. And so the pegasi decided to begin stealing metal from the farms instead. Bit by bit, piece by piece, the pegasi spirited away pots, pans, swords, tools, bridle ornaments, weathervanes--anything that could be melted down in the smith’s fires. With this new supply of metal purloined by his friends, the smith quickly began working on new machines. With these he was able to plant and grow more crops, and harvest more food. The small group of stables on the mountain grew. The smith built a large, sturdy metal platform on the mountainside. This platform extended over the open air and offered even more surfaces on which the flying horses could alight and rest their wings.

The pegasi were amused by their new friend’s delightful machines, and they were greatly thankful for the plentiful supply of delicious fruits and vegetables. They thrived on the new bounty, and their foals grew healthier and more beautiful. They loved to soar in the sky above the mountain peaks, calling to each other with their shrill but joyful neighs. These were the bizarre cries that the smith had mistaken for birds when he climbed the mountain. As the pegasi grew stronger, they strolled and soared among the clouds, putting on marvelous shows of dexterity and strength by coordinating their swoops and flights, circling in flocks of five and ten. The tiny baby foals darted about the sky like eager hummingbirds, their colors shimmering in the sun. Feathery wings the colors of peppermint pink and peacock blue fluttered and flashed. Streaks of luminous snail-like glitter began to appear in the pegasi’s manes and in their hooves, another sign of the pegasi’s improving health. The flying horses were indeed more flamboyant and more beautiful than any creature that crawled the earth below.

Time passed. A time came when the huemans in the valley below wondered what was happening on the mountaintop. They had seen ghostly figures flying around, and fires which burned long into the night. “Surely, it is the dwelling of the dragon god, he who breathes fire!” spoke some.

“Nay,” spake others, “it is nothing but the effete Pegasi horses, who are too afraid of us to come down the mountain! But powerful they are... powerful and valuable.”

The pegasi began to find when they went on their looting missions that the rich farmers and landowners were ready and waiting for the horses with nets, pitchforks, and clubs. More than one pegasus was attacked and nearly killed or trapped by the angry villagers. The King of the land himself sent out a royal decree offering ten gold pieces to any man who brought him the wing of a pegasus. The pegasi, for all their beauty, did not possess the magical powers that the unicorns of the valley used to keep the huemans at bay. The unicorns themselves disdained the pegasi, thinking the flying horses too meek and silly to be of any worth. So no aid could be got from the unicorns.

The smith realized that very soon the angry huemans below would try to climb the mountain. If he could do it, propelled by nothing but a wish to be alone, it would surely be no obstacle to many huemans thirsting for war. He knew the huemans too well. There was only one way to save his gentle pegasi friends, and that was to flee the mountaintop that had been their only home for so long. But where could they go?

The smith had tried to create a source of fresh water for the pegasi to drink. Instead however, he had invented a machine which would create thick clouds out of thin air. This he used now, to cloak the already-misty mountaintop and hide the pegasi from eyes below. This meant they could not dance and fly about in the air to their heart’s content, but it was necessary to keep them safe. The smith had also built a great many windmills in his time on the mountain. Now he began fixing them to the bottom of the great platform he had built on the side of the cliff. The large fixture began to take the form of a land-bound ship. The smith moved the several buildings he had built on the mountainside to the top of the platform, which made it look ever more like a tiny city in the sky. The curved roofs and pillars began to take on the appearance of an abode of angels.

Below, the huemans had indeed begun to scale the treacherous mountain. “We must have the flying horses!” they shouted as they clambered up the stony face. “We must bring the criminals to justice! Give us the smith! Make him pay us for all the horses have stolen!”

The pegasi, however, were not as cowardly as rumors would have them seem. The winged horses attacked the invading huemans from the air, swooping toward them and causing them to lose their footing. Some of the invaders tumbled and fell to the rocks below. Other pegasi kicked stones down on the invaders’ heads from above, the same trick they had tried with the smith before. Still other pegasi uttered shrill neighs in the climbers’ ears. And above, the smith turned his cloud-making machine toward the invading huemans, spewing clouds of impenetrable mist and fog, and making the climb increasingly difficult. Indeed, some of the huemans became so discombobulated in the fog that they began climbing down the mountain, instead of up!

But in time, the first of the invaders clambered onto the mountain’s peak, where the smith had his cave. The smith fled to the large platform, where he had moved all his wonderful machines. He turned on all the windmills he had affixed to the bottom of the ship. A great gust of wind began blowing from the many windmills, blowing the angry invading huemans off their footing. The huge beams fixing the great ship to the side of the mountain cracked under the strain of the windmills’ power. With a massive tearing of rock and earth, the great metal ship began to rise into the sky.

The invaders watched in dismay at the great ship’s ascension, surrounded by what looked many hosts of shimmering, glorious angels--really the pegasi horses, flapping their voluminous wings, helping the smith steer his ship higher and higher into the sky. Within a very short time, the gleaming metal ship looked like a sparkling bead of water floating upon the very surface of the wind. It truly was a ship now, sailing on a sea of air.

Ever after, when the Pegasi needed a place to nest and raise their young, when they needed to land and rest their weary wings, they flew to the smith’s marvelous mechanical flying ship, where they were gladly welcomed. The smith kept huge stables on his ship, and great gardens of fruits and vegetables on deck. He modified his mist-making machine to harvest water from the clouds, and he used those clouds to hide his ship, which he christened the Supernatant, from spying eyes below. The mists around the ship made it look like nothing more than an immense thundercloud. From time to time, someone on the ground might claim that they had seen a marvelous flying ship in the sky, peering from behind the clouds. But these ridiculous claims were soundly rebuked by most sensible huemans, because everyone knows that ships, as well as horses, cannot fly. And so the smith and the Pegasi were safe for all time.

The End

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