She kept up the good sleeping regime for three days, and then bad habits ambushed her again.
Perhaps it had just been a really bad day anyway. Production had gone down because one of the cogs had cracked, and Jubilee refused to work with anything cracked even if it still technically worked. Unfortunately, the spare part was out of town, so for most of the day they’d been assigned to sit five to a room counting cherries. Coloratura had lost count fifty times – or so she thought, because she’d lost count of how many times she’d lost count – and she still didn’t believe her final tally.
Her mind felt like it was trying to bore through her skull. She’d taken three mugs of water, but still she had to wince at every renewed scraping of the inside of her head. Numbers swirled around her head like fish, roused from their peace by constant stirring and now refusing to stop. Way past the point when the last light had gone out down the corridor, she kept rolling back and forth on her bed trying to grit her teeth and will it out.
There was something else, though. While she’d been in the canteen, Shill had sat opposite her nursing his own mug as though it were precious nectar. In his trembling voice and through his underbite of a smile, he’d warbled about business this and loss of custom that and future business plans the other thing. Until…
“Still, I’d rather be in a slump through honest and fair effort,” he said, “than through cheating ponies. I didn’t used to think that way before I met Applejack –”
The water went the wrong way with a sting. She felt her lungs explode with shock, and heard Shill yell and hit the boards. Coughing and spluttering, Coloratura beat her chest with a hoof until the worst of the stinging had stopped.
“Whoa, you OK?” said Cherry Berry to her right. “Don’t drink so fast, girl. You’ll kill yourself.”
“Wha-at di-did you s-say, sorry?” she stammered through racking lungs.
Shill peered over the edge of the table. Behind his much-too-large spectacles, he was blinking at her and looked perfectly ready to duck down.
“Uh,” he said, “I’d rather be an honest pony than a cheater?”
“No, no, after that.” Coloratura winced as Cherry Berry placed a bracing hoof against her shoulder blade. “I’m fine, Berry. Really, don’t worry. I meant, what did you say after that? You’ve met Applejack?”
Glancing at his colleagues for support, Shill nodded. Even his nod trembled.
“When was that?” she said, softening her voice. “Sorry. It’s just a bit of a surprise, that’s all. I know Applejack, you see. I was curious. I’m sorry I made you jump.”
“I’m OK.” Shill eased himself back onto his seat. “When you’ve led the life I’ve led, you become a bit jittery, looking over your shoulder all the time for someone to catch you out. Yeah, I was always helping one crooked business pony after another. I was hawking bad goods and pretending to be cured by fake medicine. I was always dressing up whatever junk they had to sell. I never liked any of it, but it seemed to be what I was best at, so I went along with it just in case. It didn’t really seem to be hurting any pony. I never wanted to go that far.”
“Oh,” she said dully. Coloratura bowed her head low. “No one had a problem with the lies, did they? It was what got results, wasn’t it? A little white lie here, a little spit and polish there…”
“I had a problem with it,” said Shill. She looked up sharply, and for once the tremble was gone and those oversized eyes of his held a steady stare. “And so would everyone else if they found out they were being taken for fools. That was why Applejack was so good to me. She showed me that lying to ponies for money wasn’t right. It was treating them like the garbage I was selling them.”
“Wow,” said the stallion to his left. “That was just like me and my old travelling circus. I used to be a pickpocket for the ringleader.”
“I used to sell sheep that lost their wool.” The next stallion along grinned apologetically. “It was taped on. I got into a lot of trouble with my dad over that.”
“I wasn’t that bad,” said Cherry Berry thoughtfully, “but I did used to get in the way when I was trying to get into showpony business. Everyone kept saying my jokes were bad, but I just lied to myself and refused to believe them until I got my first gig. Talk about ouch. It wasn’t one of my better career choices.”
Coloratura blinked and followed each agreeing pony and talking head up and down the table. An old well, long since poisoned, felt as though it was being cleansed inside her heart. So Svengallop had been wrong. Not everyone cared more for image than integrity. She knew it!
“Quiet,” muttered the stallion to Shill’s right. “Shill ain’t finished yet. Were you, Shill?”
“Yeah,” Cherry Berry said. “Tell us what happened next.”
A hush went all along the table as Shill became once more the focus of attention. He coughed nervously. Never had he found himself surrounded by so many wide and eager eyes.
“Well,” he began, and then faltered and looked at his plate.
“Go on, Shill. We're all friends here,” said the stallion to his right. Nods went up and down the table.
“Oh dear. Well, if you insist, I guess I should tell it. Um.”
He tapped his chin for a while. Inside, Coloratura squirmed with anticipation, but she forced it down. Patience.
Finally, he spoke. “I suppose really, I should say Applejack inspired me. I asked myself, ‘Do I really want to live my life so disrespectfully? Is that who I really am, or is that just who I’d been told to be by cheats and liars?’ Well, I decided to turn over a new leaf there and then, when Applejack said she’d made a mistake by okaying the stuff those frauds were peddling.”
“Of course she’d do that.” Coloratura found herself nodding eagerly. “Applejack always hated lies, but she never spoke out when she was a filly.” Until I came along, thought the Countess smugly. “She regretted it ever after. No way she’d keep silent now, especially with a bunch of frauds in her town. I’ll just bet she stormed up to them and gave them a piece of her mind.”
Shill wrinkled his lips slightly. “Uh… not right away.”
Coloratura blinked. “What do you mean?”
“Well, she went along with it first because it was making her granny happy. I thought she was just another pony who knew what she was doing, and that I was just being naive again. I was so relieved to be able to lie to myself, I even thanked her for it. But then she changed her mind at the last minute, and I will always be happy that she did. For a while there, I almost gave in to it!”
Coloratura kept silent. Shill cleared his throat, commanding an audience simply because, well, it was Shill and he virtually never seemed as certain and solid as he did now. No one else seemed to notice Coloratura after that.
“You know,” he said to the table at large, and he was earning nods as he continued, “it must be very sad to have to fake it to make it. At least honest junk has its own integrity. So I sure showed those two con artists what for, right in front of everyone. Applejack was struggling a bit with the crowd, but I stood up for her. Oh, you have no idea how long I’d been waiting for a day like that! I felt a hundred hands tall! Then to show it wasn’t just talk, I went and made it up to the ponies I’d been fooling. It wasn’t always nice because of the shouting I usually got, but I felt like a better pony when it was all over. And I am never going back to my old ways. Not even if that could help me become the biggest name in business.”
That had gotten a few rounds of muttered and booming agreements, and it had almost earned his relieved smile a round of stamping applause immediately after. She could still hear it, hours later, hammering away at her skull.
Finally, with the moonlight streaming in silently through the window, she gave in. Coloratura rolled off the bed and drew out, from underneath, the paper and pen and clipboard she’d stashed under the boards on her first night. No one could know about this. Everyone but Cherry Jubilee thought she was just another city mare. It would only lead to awkward questions she didn’t have the answers to.
At least, no answers she wanted to give away.
A few fumbles and a round of reshuffling later, she’d propped up the clipboard against the sill and switched on the bedside lamp. Overhead, the white moon stared down as though at a long-lost lover. She stared back.
Stars twinkled while the words chilled her mind. Whatever boring and scraping had been there faded away under the winter of contentment. Songs and beats haunted her, suggesting possible worlds beyond the one she knew, always teasing her, never letting her see the full thing whenever she tried to focus.
Inspiration snowed, winds stirred up the falling flakes into new shapes, ice cracked with the pressure of sheer certainty. She knew what to write. Below her, the words stood out as arctic rivers on a frozen shelf.
“When I was just a little foal,
I had no special gifts at all.
However much I wished and begged
Upon a star, I wasn’t pegged
As nothing more than nothing, no one special.
As nothing less than grist beneath a pestle.
Yet I met a normal filly;
Boring, yes, but it was silly
Mocking her with private laughter.
Friends we were forever after.
And she was but a wizard in disguise
Who cured me of my blind and shaking eyes.
She showed the magic in my heart
And turned my tongue towards the art
I knew I had there all along:
Enchanting others with my song.
With something more than pure love symphonies.
With sweet, divine, enchanting melodies.
Flowing words now kept me tall,
Kept me from the reaper’s fall
Crashing down to fading darkness,
Gave me heart when I was heartless.
And we were kept together by the word.
Across the distant hills, we spoke unheard.
Until the day the magic found
The city where the weak were ground,
The ‘scrapers hid the open sky,
And no one looked you in the eye.
Then came the lasers with the leading jacket,
Who said, ‘If you don’t like it, we won’t back it.’
So I sacrificed my magic;
Didn’t know I’d had the tragic
Curses cast upon my mind,
Changing my dark soul inside:
My idol for the city – soul unblessed! –
Had me possessed; the ghost was my Countess!
I broke my roots across the hills.
The spotlight blinded me; it still
Has left me blind in one good eye.
But I could see another sky,
And now my roots grew back across the distance,
And I was saved by my own reminiscence…
Wizard came to set me free,
Cast the Countess out of me,
Banished darkness, gave me song,
Showed I’d treasured all along
A chance to hear a song so pure and pleasant…
She’d simply dragged the past into the present!
So I was now a stronger mare;
I cast my spells without a care!
I sang the phoenix song of love
And rose from ash to light above.
The wizard came and saved me with her charm:
Her second chance had been my soothing balm.
Yet the city had no pity,
Met my words with something witty,
Met my fight with callous chuckles,
Watched me rage and said ‘Your trouble
‘Is that you’re just a little foal still yearning
‘Upon a star; you’ve earned all you’ll be earning.’
The Countess had forsaken me
Because I’d thought mistakenly
That I was special, worth a dime;
But I’d just lived on stolen time
As nothing more than nothing, no one special.
As nothing less than grist beneath a pestle.
I’d betrayed that normal filly,
Proven I was just a silly
Farmer’s gal who’d run away,
Lost it all, and had to pay
With dirt and sweat and aching limbs forever.
I’m dead to song, to magic words forever.”
Frowning down at the final cadence, she shot forwards and scribbled out the last verse until nothing remained but a ripped hole in the paper. The magic’s not dead yet, she thought angrily. I won’t let it die!
And there was the ghost of the Countess, watching and waiting.
Her heart began beating harder and harder. No way could she ever sing this. It would be like going onto the stage with no makeup, no clothes, and no lights. She’d never make it off alive.
What does it matter now? Calluses burned across her hocks. Strains threatened to break out along her back. Cherries and numbers and timber and chirpy voices filled her future. Who cares what happens to all that stuff?
She ignored the list of names that flooded her mind in response. None of them were needed. She knew she was wrong before she’d even asked the two questions.
I care.
Coloratura paused and thought of the next line. Shill’s voice echoed in her head: “Well, she went along with it first because it was making her granny happy. I thought she was just another pony who knew what she was doing, and that I was just being naive again. I was so relieved to be able to lie to myself, I even thanked her for it.”
Finally, the glacier of thought cracked. Icebergs broke free. Her pen came crashing down with inevitable gravity. The rivers stretched onwards, and now continued:
“Turns out wizards have a weakness
Saving me from total bleakness:
She was just a filly too
Living lies, not being true
Herself, but now I see she needed me
To make our dreams a rich reality.
So I shall be the wizard now
And bring the magic to the crowd.
If silver saves her, so can I;
I don’t need gilded wings to fly.
When I have paid my debt to honest soil,
I’ll fly on wings of honesty and toil.
Phoenix rising from the ash,
Rising ready for the dash.
My horizon! My heartsong!
Singing joyful, loud, and long!
With dirt and sweat and aching limbs forever!
I’ll cast my song, my magic words forever!
However much we stretch our heartstrung tether,
No spell will stop us facing life together.”
There was a flash behind her, but Coloratura barely noticed. In the end, something dripped onto the page and smudged the last line. She dropped the pen and stared up at the moon. She wasn’t surprised to see it was blurring.
She was surprised, however, when someone rapped against the bedroom door.
“You still up, sugar?” cooed the unmistakeable, warbling voice of Cherry Jubilee. Too late, Coloratura rammed her hoof on the switch, and the bedside lamp went off.
“Uh…” she said.
Her clipboard clattered to the floor. Hastily, she shoved it under the bed.
“N…” Honesty and common sense kicked her in the ear. “Yes, Miss Jubilee.”
“Figured you might be. There’s a visitor here to see you. I know it’s odd hours, but she got in on a late train, and since bedtime don’t mean much to you anyway…”
Coloratura frowned. She couldn’t tell if her boss was being playful or serious. “Who is it?”
“Well, it sure ain’t Princess Celestia, kid. Jus’ come an’ be neighbourly, wouldya?”
When she gave in and opened the door, however, Coloratura was greeted with a knowing grin that, on Cherry Jubilee, made her look not so much “mature” as “experienced”. She felt her own ears burning just looking at that grin.
“Uh…” she said again. Cherry Jubilee looked past her to the wide open window, and, to her horror, she realized the pen was still out on the planks in plain sight.
“Enjoyin’ a li’l late night moonlightin’?” Her boss chuckled and led them down the corridor, talking over her shoulder as she went. “Don’t blame you. I used to stare out late at nights too, jus’ admirin’ the orchard trees shiverin’ under the stars. O’ course, some of the nights I used to sneak out with a beau for a romantic dinner at the ol’ tavern, but the smarter ones took me up to the hills for a better view of nature.”
“You’ve… certainly led an interesting life,” said Coloratura helplessly.
“Ha! ‘Interesting life’, she says. I ain’t even mentioned the really interestin’ stuff we got up to on those nights. But now ain’t the time for hearin’ an old mare’s tales.” Cherry threw a wink over her shoulder. “Mind the steps as you go down. Cherry Berry pointed out a rickety one this evenin’, but I forgot which one it is.”
At the bottom of the staircase, and after Coloratura jumped over a step that creaked warningly at her, they both entered the main lobby, which unsurprisingly was timber all over. A firefly jar glowed and flickered on the desk, accompanied by tiny bumps and scrapes when the insects occasionally hit the sides.
Sitting on the waiting bench was Applejack.