The Haunting
Admiral Biscuit
I should have been completely exhausted and slept the day away—we both should have—but we woke around noon.
I wanted to say something about the state of Milfoil’s coat and her mane, but before I could even open my mouth she gave me a death glare, and I just grabbed one of her curry combs and started working the tangles out of her coat while she tackled her mane.
Running the brush through her coat was relaxing, even though I had to work carefully to avoid tangles. Besides what the water and sleep had matted together, there was mud that hadn’t been washed out last night, and I was going to need to wash my sheets when we were done.
Milfoil noticed that, too, and shifted her hooves around, so I put a hand on her back. “It’s fine. You worked so hard yesterday.”
She set her mane-brush down, and leaned in for a kiss. “So did you.” She giggled. “You’re not very good with a plow, though.”
“Who ever is their first time?”
“Sanguinary never got good. That’s why she has to pull.”
“So you just decide who’s the best at any task on the farm?”
Milfoil nodded. “Isn’t that the logical way to do it? You can’t pull a plow when you’re small, it’s too heavy, so you have to steer one first, and if you aren’t good at it, you graduate to harness.”
I thought about that. It made sense; farmers were practical and cared about getting the crop in, rather than showing favoritism, and then a realization hit me. “I should have been pulling a plow.”
She nodded. “But you haven’t got a harness, and I thought you’d want to participate.”
“I did.” I leaned over and poked her nose. “Even though I suck at it.”
Milfoil rolled her eyes. “You should have seen the first time I tried. I was barely big enough—I hadn’t even gotten my cutie mark yet. I convinced Sabi and Sanguinary that Mom and Dad would be happy if we helped out. Sanguinary’s harness was too big for me, so they let me steer, and they didn’t get too far before I’d dug the blade so deep into the soil that they couldn’t move it at all.
“Well, they thought maybe we’d hit a rock, ‘cause that happens a lot.”
I knew all about rocks, I’d kept hitting them, too, which would send the plow off-course. I would have thought that after a few years all the rocks would have settled down below the level the plow was at, but that wasn’t the case at all.
“I’d just buried the cutting edge in the soil, and it took a while to get it back out. After that, I spent the next couple of years riding the seeder, until I got big enough that Sabi taught me how to use the cultivator. Sanguinary didn’t like that very much, ‘cause she had to keep stopping and backing up while Sabi was showing me how it worked.
“Once I got good with that, though, the plow was easy.”
•••
There were lots of plants to move. It was easiest to bring them across from her house to mine in her market wagon. I could lift up the front end and steer it while she helped push from behind, and that way we could move a lot of plants at once.
By dusk, my house looked like a hoarder’s. We’d completely filled the entire first floor with flowers, to the point that neither of us could get upstairs any more.
I assumed that she had some sort of logic for the arrangement—I hoped it involved the plants closest to the back door being used first.
I’d expected to feel more tired than I did, and I’d expected to be dreading the night’s planting, but I was actually looking forward to it, if for no other reason that doing helped mute thinking.
“How do normal ponies handle planting in the spring?” Surely they couldn’t all be doing this.
“Sheds, better planning in the fall, and generally not trying to do this much at once. But we don’t have a choice, do we?”
“No, we really don’t.”
“If you hadn’t gotten so many valerian and yarrow plants, it wouldn’t be so crowded in here.”
“I know. But it worked out all right in the end and that’s what matters.”
“And I got a few more than we really need, because I want Windflower to have a chance to look them over and pick the ones she likes the most.”
I looked at the cluster of plants again. “Do you think we’ll get them all planted tonight?”
“I doubt it. But there’s always tomorrow night.”
I sighed. “I don’t know how much more time I can take off work.”
“Thaler will understand,” she assured me. “Even if you don’t want to tell him exactly why. Everypony is planting in the spring.”
“That’ll make it even worse. He’ll be shorthanded.”
“But nopony will be doing much,” she countered. “So there won’t be much work. You’re new in town, so you don’t know how it is. When it’s time for planting, nopony expects much else to get done. Everypony’s busy with that.”
I hoped she was right. I could think of a million arguments against her point, but then I remembered visiting Paris once and discovering that outside the tourist areas, everything shut down for lunch between noon and one p.m. A nice system for the worker, maybe not so much for the consumer.
•••
Windflower was paler than she’d been yesterday, although not lacking in spirit whatsoever.
We’d left the back door open and she just came in through that, rather than by way of the attic.
I imagined that she’d made a brief circle of the backyard before coming into the house—a last inspection of last night’s handiwork—and I regretted that Milfoil and I had been talking instead of watching outside.
Naturally, she noticed all the plants immediately, and began to examine them, starting with an orbit at ceiling level to get an idea of what we had.
Milfoil was biting her lip as Windflower settled down among the pots for a proper inspection. “I hope we’ve—”
I cut her off with a kiss. “Of course you have.”
Indeed, Windflower appeared to be satisfied with all the plants. She zipped around like a general inspecting her troops, pausing at each pot before moving to the next.
She worked her way back into the kitchen, and finally pointed to one pot that was reasonably close to the back door, one of the amaranth plants, and we began to work.
•••
Maybe the ponies didn’t see it, but I felt like there was a bit of ceremony in placing the first plant. It was like digging the first shovelful of dirt before the excavators moved in, or tossing out the first pitch in a baseball game.
I carried it out and set the pot in the garden, right next to the spot that Windflower indicated. The soil had already been turned up, so it only took Windflower a few scoops with a trowel to make a big enough space for the root ball.
Milfoil carefully lifted the plant out of its pot and put it in the soil, and I shoveled dirt back around it.
In hindsight, that was the moment before going over Niagara Falls. The moment that the roller coaster is at the peak of the lift hill, almost but not quite to the point where gravity takes over. The brief moment of focus before the ride begins in earnest.
•••
I’d once watched a construction documentary where the foreman had graphed out every single step of the process, with time estimates and branches leading off at different key points. Was the north end or the south end of the pipe closer after the crane dropped the valve in place? Did the welds pass initial inspection or not? How long would X-rays take, and would there be repairs needed?
This was not that organized. Not by a long shot. And that didn’t matter one whit; we did what Windflower asked. We put the plants where she wanted, we fulfilled her final vision.
When the old stallion arrived for the night, I got demoted to carrying duty, and I found I didn’t mind a bit.
As the night progressed, Windflower got better at managing us; she’d point to a few pots at a time, and I’d take them out one-by-one, and let the ponies put them in place.
There was a point I realized that the yard had gone from turned-up dirt to meaningful rows of plants, and another point when I realized that I’d worked my way into the living room and there were only a few stragglers left at the corners of the kitchen. Those might have been unworthy plants, or they might have been on the docket for tomorrow, I didn’t know.
It wasn’t warm, but I still had my shirt off. I was vaguely aware that I was operating on autopilot, although I came back into focus when Windflower finally left for the night.
•••
We were all covered in mud and sweat, and I had to imagine that both ponies were as sore as I was. And if I wanted to be negative, there was still a lot of work to be done. I knew how many plants were left over at Milfoil’s house, to say nothing of the seeds and bulbs which would all have to be individually planted as well.
And yet, we’d made enough progress that I could almost see what it was going to be when we finished. How it might look as the plants grew and the flowers bloomed.
When I was a kid, I’d camped out in the backyard, which had been a grand adventure. As I grew up, the confines of the yard lost their appeal, but now seemed like a fine time to try again. The sheets were muddy anyway; a little more wouldn’t hurt.
I didn’t have a proper tent, but there wasn’t any rain scheduled yet, so after Windflower’s great-uncle left, I went upstairs and bundled up all the bedding and dumped it out in the backyard.
“Are you serious?”
“Why not? It’s a nice night.”
“You humans have weird customs.”
“Yes.” I spread the sheet out on the lawn. “Didn’t you ever camp out in the backyard when you were a kid? A foal?”
“Sure, but that was years ago.I ought to just go over to my house, and I can watch you from my bedroom. See how long you last.”
“I can make it the rest of the night, easy.”
“I don’t know why I hang out with you,” she muttered. “You lie about walking into lampposts and want to sleep outside when there are two perfectly good houses to spend the rest of the night in.”
I shrugged. “Probably because I’m a lovable idiot.”
“You’re my lovable idiot.” She kissed me on the nose and then settled down on the blanket. “We’re going to the spa tomorrow, and you owe me so you can’t say no.”