The Substitute Librarian
Clever Title
Something was hammering Emerald’s head into the floorboards. It was probably related to whatever had crawled into his mouth and died, and the elephant who was sitting on his back.
The raw oak of the library floor felt cool and welcome against his face, if perhaps a little powdery. The resident librarian used a nice flavor of wax, although it was getting a little thin, and probably needed a second coat over the battered grain of the bare oak flooring. Or maybe he needed to quit licking that particular section of the floor to get the taste of old coffee out of his mouth. Yes, that would help. Some.
Prying an eyelid open only made things worse. Sun was happily shining through the library windows, at an angle that could only mean what Emerald laughingly called a schedule was already blown. And somepony was still hammering on the front door, which explained the rhythmic echo rebounding between his ears.
Defying the best efforts of gravity, inertia, and the rest of the world to keep him face-down on the floor, Emerald staggered to his hooves and set his best course for the library door, only to see a bedraggled brown griffon already standing there, who seemed to take great joy in knocking on the inside of the door while watching his reaction.
“Uncle Picker,” groaned Emerald. “I must have left the wedge in the door last night for some fresh air while I was studying. I didn’t think you’d be here until later today.”
“What, and miss my favorite client?” Rag Picker gave a short bound forward with his claws scratching along the library’s wooden floor and caught Emerald under one agile foreleg. With the other, he ruffled the pony’s uncovered tangled mane, then swept a lock of the same mane down over his forehead. “Where’s your hat, son? I thought you had that thing glued to your head.”
“Oh, my hat!” Emerald squirmed free of the griffon’s loose grip and vanished behind the couch, only emerging when he had his fedora back in place. “It’s a sticktation spell, Uncle Picker. You know that.”
“We old birds get forgetful when we’re older,” scoffed Rag Picker. He gestured outside with one wing, ignoring the maltreated brown feather that fluttered to the ground with his motion. “Like I almost forgot to pick up my driver before flying down here this morning.”
“Aye,” called the snow-white pegasus lounging outside the front door. Lark Spur was his usual laconic self, displaying his indifference to the early hour of the morning with a yawn that exposed every one of his perfect teeth. There was a rumor around the Buckball team that they wanted to forcibly change his name to Academic Probation last semester after he blew off one of his critical classes, and to see him out enjoying the beautiful morning instead of chained to a desk making one last try at cramming that information into his thick skull before midterms….
“Uncle Picker,” said Emerald firmly as he turned to the smirking griffon. “I wrote you to pick up some scrap and see if you can locate some books on the secondary market, not to try tutoring Ironhead here one last time before he flunks out of school.”
“Relax, dude.” Lark Spur made a little twisting motion with one hoof, but did not come into the library. “There’s no way I’ll pass this midterm, so I’ve decided to go with the flow.”
“And work for Picker for the rest of your life, pulling carts full of scrap books to the recycler instead of teaching young pegasi to fly,” said Emerald. “I’ve seen the way they look up to you.”
“Griffons too,” said Picker. “I told him, but you can see the words just bounce off his skull. ‘E’s stubborn, like some other young idiot I know. He would have made a good griffon.”
With a plaintive groan, Emerald trudged off to the tiny kitchenette, returning in a few minutes with a large glass of wake-up juice and an improved attitude. “Lark,” he managed after a long drink, “I tutored you all semester. This is the last class you need before graduating, but you’ve fought me every step of the way. Don’t you want to—”
The expression on the bulky pegasus spoke volumes. “Hey, I want to graduate,” he protested.
“Bull.” Emerald went over to the hefty oak desk and shuffled through several stacks of notes, talking as fast as he could put words together. “You’re afraid of going into teaching and failing. Well, I know a little something about failure. You’ve never given up in buckball, right? The coach would throw you off the team on your ear. You’ve lost games and you’ve won games; which one feels better? Are you a loser, Lark? Do you want ponies pointing to you in Canterlot, saying ‘There goes somepony who could have been something, if he had a drop of courage.’ Do you give up when the other team scores a goal? Or do you bite down, kick that ball, and score!”
“Yeah! Wait, what?” Although Lark was a fairly large pegasus, Emerald City was not exactly petite either. He put one shoulder under Lark’s side and shoved him in the direction of the desk, and the set of notes resting on it.
“Final exam notes for Adaptive Physical Education covering all three pony races. If you put your rear down in this chair and study today, you’ll pass. Fail—”
“And I’ll fire you,” said Picker. “No more trips around town with Uncle Picker, getting first dibs on book collections getting tossed. Enjoy shopping retail for a change.”
One of Emerald’s ears twitched with the unexpected support from Picker. “Does that mean you’ll be needing another wagon puller? I mean I can’t fly, but I can still… never mind. He turned back to the pegasus student, who was in turn casting a skeptical look at the stack of papers and organizing his excuses.
“I don’t see why I need to know about pony disabilities for all three races when I’m just going to be teaching little pegasi,” he started.
“Loser or winner,” said Emerald. “That’s a binary choice. Pony disabilities don’t cut that fine of a line. Have you seen a pegasus with Bucker’s Hip? I have. Not all pegasi are limited to pegasus illnesses or disabilities. If you want to teach pegasi foals how to fly, if you’re willing to put in that one final push to score that one last point, you need to know it all. Some little foal out there is just fluttering around on the ground, waiting for you to go teach him how to use his wings. And better yet?” Emerald lowered his voice and moved closer. “You pass that test and I’ll buy a round for every one of your frat brothers. Fail, and I’ll tell them what they missed.”
Lark Spur sucked in a panicked breath. “You wouldn’t. Would you?”
Emerald turned his back and moved over to the cardboard boxes of books he had organized, trying not to smile at the sound of rustling pages behind him. “So, Uncle Picker. I’ve got three boxes of recycling to load, and then we can discuss the list of used books I’d like to get ordered. Outside, so we don’t disturb Lark while he’s studying.”
It took a few minutes to get all the boxes of hopeless books, ancient newspapers, and magazine scraps taken out to the griffon’s wagon, which although small, was large enough to hold them and have some space left. One last trip into the library to get a drink, a minute to pee, and a headache pill stolen from Twilight Sparkle’s huge pill bottle in the bathroom, allowed Emerald to re-emerge refreshed into the bright morning to exchange opening pleasantries with Uncle Picker before the serious negotiations started.
“Interesting list of books,” said the elderly griffon. He waved the sheet of paper in one claw, with neat lines of book titles and maximum prices. “Lots of first editions in your dream list, I notice. Toss another box of scrap in here for me to pick through and I may consider a discount.”
“I probably shouldn’t. I’d have to yank out all the cards and do the paperwork to pull them from library inventory.”
Thankful for the library’s icebox, Emerald took a deep drink out of his chilled glass of wake-up juice, which he had made last night while in the sleepless throes of post-coffee cooldown. That blessed beverage covered up the lingering taste of his coffee from last night, which was why all his homework had been completed, the book request list filled out, the returned books carded, sorted, and stacked by library section, and he vaguely remembered climbing around on the top of the shelves with a dustrag in his teeth before sleep had claimed him. Thankfully, his collapse had been after crawling onto the library couch. Regrettably, there had been enough couch-lumps that the bare library floor had turned out to be more comfortable.
“You’re keeping the boxes of ratty old books at the end of the desk?” Picker gestured with a small metal flask, which he had just taken a good slug out of.
Ah, the real negotiations begin.
“Well…” Emerald considered his words and held his glass of wake-up juice out, which Picker reluctantly added a few drips from his flask. “Better,” admitted Emerald after another drink. There was more peppermint than alcohol in the Protoceran drink, although both ingredients helped open his eyes and nasal passages far more than the weak juice. Even his ears managed to perk up.
“Better be better, young ‘un,” cautioned Rag Picker while screwing the lid back onto his flask. “Your father sent it as a gift, an’ he don’t believe in shorting bits to a good friend of his.”
“Bits are actually the problem,” admitted Emerald. He leaned up against the rough wood of the cart and gestured with one hoof. “You see, those paperbacks are too expensive to throw away. Still, they’re worn enough that they need to be taped up at least, and I can’t do that very well.”
“I cud tape ‘em up,” admitted Picker.
“And sell them back to us,” continued Emerald without a pause. “Miss Bradel lives in town, and I’d really love to have her rebind them, but oh the cost! We could probably put in another branch of the library for what she’d charge. My father had his copy of Principia Thaumatica rebound by her a few years ago. Expensive as anything, but well worth it.”
“Aye, she does quality work,” admitted Picker. “I’ve sent many a prime but worn-out find to her talented hooves and gotten them back so sharp I could’a sold ‘em as new. Not that I’d do that to an old and trusted customer like you,” he added.
“I’m not old, you’ve never trusted anypony, and I’m barely a customer,” said Emerald. “Not like my father. So how much would you charge to tape them up?”
Picker said a number. Emerald winced.
“For that price I might as well have them pulped,” he said with a sigh. “I’ll toss them into the back of the wagon.”
“You most certainly will not!”
Having never seen Mrs. Bradel before was no barrier to recognizing her at first sight. Emerald City probably could have drawn an adequate sketch of the middle-aged mare yesterday after meeting her son and not had to change a single inked line now. She was smaller than most unicorns, in height but certainly not weight, with an oddly short and blunt horn for her age, which really went well with the narrowed eyes and the lips scrunched together into a disapproving scowl. Although her horn was pointed directly at Emerald, he knew without even looking that she had a book for a cutie mark, most likely done in extremely precise lines and quite neat, much like her short-cropped mane drawn back in an exact scroll-like curl. She was a unicorn who could have been effortlessly dropped into any gathering his mother presided over in Canterlot, where similar short-tempered unicorn mares got together and sniped endlessly about the failures of their unicorn sons.
Only in this case, he was the direct focus of her smoldering ire.
At first, Emerald thought she was going to snap at him for disposing of so many of the library books and periodicals, but an errant breeze took that moment to blow a loose page out of the wagon, or at least most of the page that had not been eaten by mice. Her thin lips became only thinner at the sight until they were nearly dotted lines, and her voice regained a little focus when she asked, “Where are they?”
“The books I was going to have—” Emerald stopped before saying the ‘p’ word and pointed at the library door. Mrs. Bradel stomped inside and returned shortly with two boxes of books floating behind her instead of the one box that Emerald expected to retape. “We can’t afford to have you rebind them,” he said instead. “I was hoping to find some volunteers around town to tape up the corners and spines so they would be good for a few more years, but—”
“Volunteers?” Mrs. Bradel let out a short snort, much like an angered minotaur. “Bending down corners and ripping up the covers? I think not!”
Emerald felt an unreasoned impulse to stick up for the volunteers who worked at the library, but to his regret there had been no new names on the signup list he had found, only dust and a few marked-out names with dates a decade ago.
“Now before I take these to be properly cared for,” snapped Mrs. Bradel with just the smallest hint of strain in her voice, which was probably due to picking up more weight than she was used to. “I came here to tell you to stop bothering my son!”
“Ah, Snips,” said Emerald with a great deal of his stress sloughing away. Working with young unicorns and their first magic made everything else he did worthwhile. Even putting up with mares like this one. “Your son was out at the fountain with the rest of us at the tutoring session last night. Officer Rights said they were all quite interesting children.”
“Interesting is not the word I would use,” said Mrs. Bradel. “You taught him how to make that horrible noise, didn’t you?” Before Emerald could respond, she plowed onward, “Honking like some sort of… digestive illness all around the house! It’s disgusting! It’s—”
“Wonderful!” Emerald beamed and took a step forward, his radiant face fixed in the absolute example of a teacher with a prize student worthy of a scholarship to the highest school in Canterlot. “I had no idea he would learn that lesson so fast. The other students are going to be so far behind him. You have a very talented colt, Mrs. Bradel. Brilliant, if I may say so.”
“Well,” started Mrs. Bradel. The distraction caused her concentration to waver, and the boxes of books began to slowly sag to the ground behind her. “I’ve always… Brilliant?”
“Learning how to focus his magic into a sustainable corona with a simple working in that short a time is quite a feat. Why just yesterday morning when I first arrived at the library, he was unable to even make a spark. I had to get young Snails to use the key to open the wards, but with this kind of progress and the correct encouragement, I’ll bet Snips will progress to multiple periphery workings inside of a year. How long can he make the sound?”
“A few seconds,” said Mrs. Bradel. “But—”
“Several seconds? Fantastic! Since he’s making so much progress, I suppose I can let him skip the next few days of tutoring if you promise to have him practice every day at home. That will let me work with the more difficult students and see if I can bring them all up to the same level of skill.”
“Skip… Oh, no! No you don’t.” Mrs. Bradel huffed herself back up, only this time in more of a Righteous Indignation instead of Divine Vengeance fashion. “If you’re having magic tutoring sessions with the other unicorn students, I insist my Snips be included.”
“Well, I really don’t want them to feel left out,” started Emerald, “but I suppose he would be a good example of how to sustain that ever so important first corona effect, and he could help teach the slower students. If it’s not too much of a bother, Mrs. Bradel.”
“I shall reserve a place on his schedule every evening you are here,” said Mrs. Bradel. “As long as you keep him away from that troublemaker! Now, I must be going. There’s work to be done.” With an additional sniff, the middle-aged mare hefted the two boxes of books and headed away, leaving Emerald to keep a pleasant smile on with his jaw locked shut until he was absolutely certain she was far enough away not to hear.
“What a pleasant young mare,” said Picker in his best monotone.
“She’s a gift horse, since she’s going to tape up the books,” said Emerald as he shrugged into the wagon harness. “For that job alone, she is a distinguished and notable member of the town. And the sooner I get out of town for a few hours, the lower the probability that she’s going to come right back at me like a badly thrown boomerang before the job is done. Let’s get these back to your warehouse in Canterlot. We can discuss the book requests while walking.”
“Sounds good to me.” The elderly griffon hopped on top of the wagon and made himself comfortable with the library book orders clenched firmly in one claw. “Onward, my faithful driver. Let us flee the scene of the crime before yon constabulary comes to enforce the restraining order.”
Emerald let out a chuckle when he started walking, the wagon clunking along behind, although the laughter trailed off with realization. “A restraining order?”
“A minor issue.” Picker straightened up and looked over his shoulder. “You could pick up the pace, though.”
The walk up the long road to Canterlot was far more interesting with Rag Picker to talk with, although it would have been nice if the elderly griffon had gotten down from the wagon. Emerald’s short bursts of speed to dart from class to class in Canterlot was not really an exercise program on par with a long, slow trudge up the side of Mount Canter with a passenger-laden wagon squeaking along behind him. Thankfully, it gave him the opportunity to get the griffon in a good mood by asking about his previous trips to the small town and the odd things that seemed to happen there on a weekly basis. It was good for Emerald too, because keeping one’s nose to the scholastic grindstone for too long left you without a nose to sniff the roses, and no place to rest glasses when you got old and feeble.
Although when Picker told him about the way Twilight Sparkle reacted to his last recycling trip to Ponyville, Emerald felt an irrational urge to return to the library, create a tiny altar out of the scrap books in the cart, and make a bloody sacrifice of himself across them to assuage the vengeance of a wrathful librarian.
The impulse only lasted a moment. He had more important things to deal with than a miffed librarian in a small town. He had goals. Tasks to accomplish those goals. Classes to pass in order to get the degree he needed to escape his father’s overcontrolling reach. Important ponies outside of Canterlot who needed to be given the proper opinion of his own skills and talents. Becoming a respected young unicorn magic instructor would be a long, slow slog up a tall mountain far longer and harder than the mere Canterlot road he was trudging up now, and one misstep would send him tumbling to the bottom in a metaphorical puddle of blood.
Until then, he could happily chat with the elderly griffon and get a good price for the library’s book order. The used novels and paperbacks could be had at a discount from Picker’s stash, a complex web of distributors and fellow trash-pickers across the land. The spellbooks that Twilight Sparkle had meticulously listed, not so much. Or rather, too much. Far too much.
“We’re not purchasing a mansion for you to have a place to rest your old talons,” said Emerald, grateful that the road was leveling out as they got near to the city. “They’re books. Just books. Third editions of the same volumes would fit in the library budget with space left over.”
“The list specifies first editions.” The smiling griffon waved a sheaf of papers. “And only first editions. Underlined twice. No self-respecting unicorn researcher would ever stand for anything less.”
“I don’t have any respect,” said Emerald. “My father would tell you so himself.”
“I beg to differ.” Picker leaned back in his bed of loose pages and shredded magazines like a fat old bird in his nest. “Youth. So impertinent. I think there’s a dictionary in this mess somewhere if you want to look it up.” The old griffon ruffled his feathers while Emerald panted for breath. “You’ve never had children of your own. Greedy little squabs, screeching and screaming about how bad they are being treated until they go flapping out on their own. Then in good time, they come scratching around the nest again, looking to find what they had lost without even knowing they had it. You are losing what you want to keep as badly as my brats did.”
“And what do you think I want?” Emerald slowed his pace to a sedate stroll, the wagon squeaking along behind him.
“Respect. Oh, I’ve seen the way the little ones caper around you.” Rag Picker gave a snort and wiped his beak on a loose page. “They worship at your hooves, and I know you would do anything for them in turn. All of the little ponies, not just unicorns. I’ve even seen the way young griffon chicks act around you. What I’m talking about is your father.”
“What about my father?” Emerald leaned into the harness until the wagon clattered along at a good clip, making the elderly griffon bounce on his makeshift nest, but not impeding his cutting words in the slightest.
“Oh, you talk big about getting out from under your father’s hoof so you can live a life of educating young unicorns.” Picker let out a sharp, rasping cough. “You’re living your life rump-first. Griffons have their priorities straight. Bits don’t lie to you. They stack up in neat little rows and keep to themselves. They don’t run your life, like you ponies and your Marks.”
“I’m not falling into my Mark,” countered Emerald.
“You’re either a gutless coward or an outright liar. If you really wanted to get away from him, you would have changed your name and emigrated to Protocera ages ago.” Picker stood up, stretched, and moved with one casual flap to walk briskly at Emerald’s side. “So why didn’t you? There are quite a few young unicorns in the griffon lands. They need somepony to teach them about their first magic also.”
“I’m frail, and would not survive the journey. Or at least that’s what my parents would say.” Emerald let out a breath in a sharp, bitter hiss as he tripped on a small stone and stumbled. In the process, his dark fedora tumbled from his head and rolled down the road, making him limp over to where it was lying in the dust. He jammed the hat back on his hornless head and snapped, “None of this would have mattered if I had been born a unicorn.”
“And if I had been born with a trunk, I could have been an elephant.”
Emerald kept walking, and Rag Picker did not say anything else for a long time. They continued in relative silence while the cart clattered along through the outskirts of Canterlot, along the streets, and to his shop. Unfortunately, the grouchy griffon resumed talking once Emerald had gotten the wagon parked in the pulping equipment yard behind his shop.
“So, you still want to order those spellbooks on your list before you go? All nice and fresh off the press.”
“Yeah, about that.” Emerald leaned up against the wagon to catch his breath. “Did you know that the last first edition spellbook I purchased for my father’s collection seems to have had a correction inside it that was only in the third printing of books by that author?”
“A fluke,” said Picker.
“And yet the flyleaf page clearly said it was a first edition,” countered Emerald. “Almost like somepony had found a source for printing a large stack of first edition flyleafs, purchased a binding machine from my father with all the most modern workings, and went through all the trouble of unbinding the brand new cheaper third edition just to rebind it with a new flyleaf and sell it for many, many times the price.” Emerald took a few tattered pages out of the bed of the wagon in order to wipe the sweat off his brow. “Purely theoretical, of course. By the way, how have the workings on that rebinding machine you bought last year been functioning? Father would probably like to know, because his company will be coming out with a revision for the spells in the workings early next year.”
Rag Picker walked over to the pulping yard gate and waited for Emerald to leave before closing it behind them. Then he named a smaller number.
Emerald waited. Eventually, Picker named another, slightly smaller number. Then, after a period of quiet beak-grinding, a last number far more suitable to the library’s budget.
After a few moments writing in the library cheque book, Emerald tore out a single bank draft and hoofed it over to the quiet griffon. “Thank you, Uncle Picker. I knew we could come to an agreement.”
“Maybe it’s better that you didn’t run off to Protocera after all,” he mused. “You’d own the place in a few decades no matter how many griffons are there.”
* * *
Sheer serendipity in timing allowed Emerald to catch a train for the trip back down the mountain to Ponyville with only a few minutes spent lounging at the station. It was a good thing, because his hooves were starting to hurt with every step. All he wanted to do was stagger back into the library, stuff the cheque book back into the desk—
Oh, buggerit. I have to get those Amnesty Friday bits deposited before Picker’s check clears or it will bounce like a red rubber ball.
And to make matters rapidly worse, five youthful and bright horn-adorned faces awaited him at the library door.
“All right!” cheered Firelock before the rest of them could speak. “Can we light something on fire this tutoring session, Mister Emerald?”
“Hold that thought.” Emerald darted into the library, pushed Lark Spur back behind the librarian’s desk, took away his comic book, and gave him a quick quiz on the notes he was supposed to be studying. Surprisingly, he did not do as bad as expected. So after pointing his older student’s nose at the rest of the notes, Emerald heaved the metal bucket he had been using as a deposit box out of the desk’s bottom drawer, muscled it onto his aching back, and staggered out the door again.
“This tutoring session will take place while walking,” he managed as the five little unicorns fell into step around him with all the organization and sedate manner of energized electrons around an unstable nucleus. “Snips, your mother tells me that you’ve started this lesson ahead of time.”
“Oh, yeah!!” The rotund little unicorn nearly tumbled when his hooves started dancing under him. “Listen to this!”
He stopped, planted all four hooves, and wrinkled up his nose while the faint glow of magic formed in a corona around his horn. Then there was an awful, terrible, flatulent noise that any colt would be proud of, complete with a slow dying off until it ended in a wet ‘poit’ that made the mind think entirely disgusting thoughts of trying not to step in something.
Despite the lateness of the afternoon, Emerald had stopped by his student to watch (and listen). “Excellent,” he exclaimed as he picked up the pace again with the jingle of coins on his back. “Can you walk and do that?”
“Me too!” declared Snails. “We had some practice time while waiting.” The taller unicorn’s steps hesitated while he was walking, and he did not squint quite so much, but a golden light lit up his horn in a simple corona while they walked, and a few moments later he began giving out a ‘blat-blat-blat-blat’ noise with every step.
“Excellent!” Emerald caught sight of the local bank and adjusted his course accordingly. “Normally, it’s the fillies who learn that spell first instead of the colts. Have you girls practiced?”
“I didn’t really have time,” started Sweetie Belle. “My friends and I were crusading—”
“Our fire chief, Red Splasher doesn’t like me practicing outside,” said Firelock in a rapid burst of words. “Or indoors.”
“I… don’t really have an excuse,” admitted Dinky.
“No need for an excuse when you have an opportunity. You five stay right outside of the bank here and practice together just as loud as you can. Remember, it’s like the feeling you get facing horn-first into the wind, only backwards. Since Snips and Snails already have gotten started on the lesson, they can coach you three. You’re all really close to getting this one, and I bet you’re all making noise by the time I get the deposit done. How does that sound?”
One general group agreement later, Emerald trotted up the front steps of the bank and tried the door, which was locked. He rapped gently on the glass and caught the attention of a sharply dressed bank clerk, who walked over to the doors and announced loudly enough to be heard through them, “I’m sorry, sir. We’re closed.”
Emerald checked his vestpocket watch, and eyed the sign. “You’re open for another few minutes. All I need is to make a deposit in the library fund and I’ll be on my way.”
The town clock tower took that moment to chime the hour, and the clerk’s face acquired a most subtle smile of very little amusement. “We were open. We’re closed now. Come back tomorrow.”
“I don’t want to keep this much money in the library overnight.” The moment he said it, Emerald knew it was the wrong approach. The clerk’s eyes moved to the bucket on his back, obviously calculated just how much work it would be to count the bits, and determined that the bank door would remain resolutely closed until morning.
Of course, that was before a stentorian ‘blat’ of impressive duration filled the air.
“By the stars,” exclaimed the clerk. “What was that?”
“Just my students, practicing their magic,” said Emerald over the sound of a second noise, even louder, as if Snips and Snails were engaged in a competition.
“Well, you can’t have them doing that in front of the bank,” snapped the clerk on the other side of the door. “Move along or I shall notify the police.”
“Your bank is closed,” stated Emerald. “You said so yourself. Certainly there can’t be any issue with noise outside a closed establishment.”
“But—” started the clerk, only to have a third noise echo around the street outside, sounding vaguely like an irate goose.
“And they’re improving so fast,” said Emerald just before a noise like a terminally wounded clarinet shrieked behind him. “Ah, that must be Sweetie Belle,” he added.
The clerk jerked her head up and looked past Emerald with an expression of barely suppressed abject terror. “The Crusade,” she whispered. “And… Oh, no. Is that Firelock?”
Emerald took a casual look over his shoulder at the four small unicorns putting out a cacophony of noise, and the reddish one in the middle who was struggling to catch up with her diminutive peers. “Yes, I believe so. Hopefully, this lesson will help her harness the control she’s going to need with such a powerful talent. I’ve always heard how young ponies are going to set the world on fire. She’s the first one I could see doing it literally.”
There was a jingling of keys in the door and the clerk fairly yanked Emerald into the bank. After that, things only sped up. The tin bucket full of bits was dumped unceremoniously into the counter bin, which growled and snarled as the golden disks were shunted off into individual paper-wrapped cylinders and the mechanical counter’s magic working clattered its way to cover the hot check Emerald had just written.
One of the clerks even pulled the deposit slip out of the library cheque book and began filling it out for him when Silver Standard, the vice-president of the bank, came out of his office to see what all the fuss was about. Emerald was not privy to the brief discussion the clerks had with their boss, but when the bit counter gave a crunching noise and ground to a halt with half of the contents still uncounted, the older stallion was the first one over to him with a smile and an offer to double the estimated amount of bits in the deposit if he were so kind as to accept the generosity of the bank toward the respected civic institution of the public library and if you would sign here please and take these six lollipops for your wonderful students thank you so much for doing business with us and we hope you have a nice day back at the library sir goodbye.
There was barely enough time to grab the deposit receipt before the doors slammed closed behind him, which left Emerald free to trot across the street to his independent study group.
“Ladies? Ladies! And you two also.” Once the farting noises died down, he waved the white piece of paper and passed out the lollipops. “Mister Silver Standard was so impressed by your progress that he gave you all a treat. Everypony wave, please.”
All the bank employees were lined up behind the wide expanse of plate-glass windows and waved back, some with obvious relief that the inadvertent concert was being canceled due to sugar intake, others with a furtive ducking behind something solid to use as cover.
“Now I hate to break up the practice, but I need to get this receipt back to the library and into the ledger. On the way, I need everypony and that includes you, young lady—” he added, looking straight at Firelock “—to practice the same technique only as quietly and consistently as you can. Think of it as a long hummingbird hum with the lollipop in your mouth keeping you from saying it, so your horn has to speak for you. Ready? Let’s go.”
Without an oncoming deadline, the trip back to the library was accomplished in a much more sedate fashion. Sucking on the lollipop gave Emerald the excuse to nod at the passing ponies instead of stopping to talk, which would undoubtedly disturb the student’s concentration.
Firelock was starting to worry him. Well, the little firebrand probably worried most of the flammable town in a slightly different fashion than her behavior worried him as a teacher. Her corona flickered and strobed like a candle in the wind while the other four students managed fairly constant although weak glows around their horns while walking. Her start at spellcasting was still far better than she had done when he first arrived in the town, but with her peers progressing ever more rapidly, she could lose confidence and backslide. Or worse, get frustrated and blow something up.
A quick trip inside the library while his students were honking outside did not make any epiphanies descend on his hornless noggin, but it did get the empty bucket and filled cheque book put away, and Lark Spur redirected back to his notes again. By the time Emerald came back outside, the unicorn study group was all honking away by the fountain, less one who could be seen trugging away.
“Hey, Firelock! Wait up.” It took some quick galloping to catch his reluctant student, who nearly turned the corner by the time Emerald got in front of her. “You’re supposed to be over by the fountain so you can practice,” he said. “Do you think they’d mind if I stood in the water while I taught? I walked all the way to Canterlot, and my hooves hurt.”
“I… uh… We’re not supposed to get into the fountain,” said Firelock, obviously confused by the multiple angles of the conversation, and that Emerald had not asked her to go there, but simply assumed the fact, and was leading her there. It was a routine that — in his experience with other ponies — worked wonders. A question could always be met with a simple ‘no’ for an answer, while sweeping somepony along into an activity required the subject to be forceful and active to change direction.
“We’re not going to be practicing for very long,” said Emerald while coming around Firelock’s other side and guiding her toward the fountain despite a certain wavering of her course. “And the water should help with your lesson. You see, in order for you to use your magic properly, you have to want to cast a spell. And I don’t think casting a fart spell is quite your cup of tea.”
“You’re going to teach me a fire spell?” Firelock sped up her pace to the point where Emerald had to trot to stay even. “Is it a fireball or a sheet of flame or a giant—”
Since they had nearly reached the fountain, Emerald asked, “Have you ever bought a spark shower firework?” He kept right on walking down the steps to keep his inertia while Firelock continued to follow like a second tail. “With all the little colorful sparks shooting up into the air and that shrieking noise they make?”
“Yes! Wait a minute.” The little unicorn paused at the edge of the fountain’s stone lip with the rest of the students next to her, obviously unwilling to climb down into the water where Emerald had just waded in, belly-deep. “Is this just a ruse to get me to make farting noises out of my horn?”
“Yes.” Emerald splashed the water with a hoof. “And the rest of you should watch too. From the edge,” he added before the magic tutoring session turned into a wild pool party.
There was a narrow set of stone stairs on the inside wall of the fountain in case a pony or some ducklings fell in, making a ramp which was just wide enough for Firelock to stand on the bottom step and not have to tread water. She made herself comfortable with the other small unicorns peering over the edge, then looked over at Emerald with the eager expression of the young and guileless.
“A spark fountain firework makes a shrieking noise by passing the stream of hot gas through a restriction,” started Emerald. “Ponies use their lungs and their throats the same way. You four—” he nodded at the watching students “—are streaming your magic out of your horns and tightening up the flow to make that noise, which is the exact same process that older unicorns use to fire bolts of magic, or project shields, or to play music, although it’s generally easier just to pick up a tuba.”
“My uncle has a tuba,” said Snails before being shushed by the other students.
“So why are we in the fountain?” asked Firelock. “Is it because I could surge and set fire to—”
“Yes,” said Emerald quickly before he heard the rest of the list. “Young unicorns have been known to lose control of their magic. In that case, I think a quick dunk into cold water would help you recover your concentration.”
“I really don’t want to get dunked,” said Firelock.
“Then try really hard not to lose control,” countered Emerald, rolling right into the lesson before his student could get distracted. “First, to make the fire fountain noise, you have to imagine your entire body to be covered in tiny little fires. Tens of thousands of itty bitty teeny little things, smaller even than a grain of sand. Fire is what life is after all. We breathe air to burn food, so our fire keeps us warm. Your magic is mostly fire, and your horn can be like a wick to your candle. Start by gathering all of those tiny fires together, one tiny bit at a time, letting them stream harmlessly across your body until they reach your horn… yes, like that,” he added when Firelock’s horn began to glow a deep red. “Like a candle, the corona should stay steady and bright, but not too bright.”
Inside, Emerald fought hard to keep his face straight and his hooves from tapdancing with joy, even being up to his belly in water. Firelock had lit up her horn just as smooth as an older unicorn lifting a spoon. Incentive was a wonderful thing. Too many teachers⁽*⁾ would try to keep her from thinking about fire.
(*) And flammable bystanders in the town. And the mayor. And Red Splasher, the fire chief.
“Now imagine some of those tiny bits of fire floating up in the candle flame,” said Emerald, “while you tighten around the fire. There we go,” he added when the first spark floated up. “Focus. Squeeze the flow a little tighter to make it whistle. Yes, like that. Keep it steady. Steady. STEADY!”
The faint whistle rose in pitch and volume as Firelock’s horn erupted in a spray of sparks, quickly cut off when Emerald swept a leg under her and she fell horn-first into the water. A cloud of steam burst around them, making Emerald cough as he nudged the happy, soggy student in the direction of the steps.
“Did you see that! I was making fire! Flames, even! I bet I can—”
“I’ll bet you can catch a cold if you don’t go home and get toweled off,” said Emerald sharply. “That was a good start, as good as any young student I’ve seen—”
Other than my sister, Frost. At least we can put out fire. Her frostbite stings.
“—but you’re going to need to improve your focus before I teach you any more. All of you.” Emerald eyed his suddenly quiet students gathered around the edge of the fountain. “The first step to casting any spells is not power. That comes far later. The real first lesson is control to keep your magic steady. You will need to generate an initial corona and hold it while sitting, talking, and walking. If you have to maintain a constant musical note, or a little — a tiny little, that is — fire on the end of your horn, that’s fine. Have your parents help you, or work with each other. From what I’ve heard, reading a book at night is good practice. If you don’t keep your focus, it gets dark.” He winked. “That’s normally a bad sign.”
The children laughed, which was nice, because adults never did laugh at his corny jokes. It was music to his ears, particularly the way they chattered among themselves as they departed for their homes, leaving Emerald enough time this evening to study for final exams.
And as he walked away from the fountain, leaving puddles of water behind with every step, he would not have exchanged that moment for anything.