9. Vee
Vinyl had soiled herself. She knew from the smell. She should have been humiliated but she was in too much pain.
Someone was crying. Was it her? No, she had no energy. It was taking all she had just to breathe. Her chest seemed made of iron and her heart a magnet drawing each rib inexorably inwards to stab all her organs.
“Stop! Please, stop!”
Everything sounded like it was underwater. She tried turning her face towards the voice, but it was impossible.
“It’s killing her!”
“She is strong. She can do this.”
“Vinyl, please stop!”
… Tavi?
That couldn’t be right. The voice sounded upset. Octavia hated her now. She knew the truth about how they had met. She knew all the secrets Vinyl – Vanelda – had been keeping from her for so long. No way could she be –
“Vinyl, please!” the voice said urgently. “Don’t do this! It’s not worth it! I’m not worth–”
Dull thud. Wet thump. The voice cried out.
“Foolish mare. She will do this. She will do it because I have told her to and she has learned the perils of disobeying her father.”
“You’re a monster.” The voice was even more muffled, as if the speaker was pressing a hoof over its mouth. Her mouth. Tavi’s mouth. “Why can’t you just let her go?”
“Because she is mine. She has always been mine. She will always be mine.”
“She isn’t yours. She’s her own pony!”
Another wet thump. Tavi cried out again. Something small and hard bounced off Vinyl’s nose. With enormous effort, she prised her eyes open. It took a few moments to focus on the white object on the floor in front of her.
A tooth.
The forked end was bloody.
“Thbt!”
“Ah! Insolent wench! How dare you spit on me!”
“Go to Tartarus, monster!” Tavi’s words sounded odd, her consonants too sibilant.
This was her tooth.
An image of Octavia smiling over a cup of tea in a late-night bakery flashed into Vinyl’s mind. Tavi’s smile, so warm and open and different than the smiles Vinyl was used to. Or maybe that was just her attraction making the memory seem more special than it was. She hadn’t known what attraction was back then. She hadn’t even known what friendship felt like.
Vinyl remembered Octavia smiling unexpectedly when she had tried to cook spaghetti and failed so badly that pieces were still whirling on the ceiling fan a month later.
“You’re a terrible cook, but you’re my terrible cook.”
She remembered the tired smile that came when Vinyl had a warm bath ready after a rehearsal with a brutal new conductor that left Tavi’s hooves sore and chafed.
“It has to be done. Sacrifices have to be made if one wants to get anywhere in life.”
“But Tavi –”
“My dream is to play in the Canterlot Symphony Orchestra someday.”
“I know that but this guy is an assho–”
“Vinyl, language! You don’t get to that level without working hard in lesser orchestras first. Ponyville Players may not be the Canterlot Symphony, but it’s a start. They’ve been known to play at the Galloping Gala before. Who knows? Maybe someday I’ll go with them too.”
She remembered how they had both smiled through their first Hearth’s Warming. They had been too poor for a tree and so had decorated a random branch.
“Vinyl, get out of there! That’s Apple property! You can’t just hop the fence like that!”
“Relax, Tavi, it’s just a branch. What are they gonna do, set their dog on me for branch theft? I’m not even breaking it off one of their precious trees. It’s on the ground!”
“Just get back on this side as quick as you can! Please! I don’t want to get into trouble.”
“Relax. Applejack’s cool. She won’t mind. Heck, if we asked, she might just give us a whole tree.”
“I think you might be exaggerating there.”
Vinyl remembered kissing that smile, so many times. Warm kisses on the doorstep. Slow kisses in the shower, or the bath, or in front of the fireplace on cold winter nights. Sweet kisses that tasted of chocolate and candy on Hearts and Hooves Day. Fast kisses each morning beneath the covers before the alarm clock insisted they get up and go earn the rent money. Kisses each and every day since Vanelda had become Vinyl and thrown herself on the mercy of one of the few ponies who had ever shown her kindness without wanting something in return.
A bead of blood dripped off the tooth’s root.
“Vinyl isn’t yours. She doesn’t belong to anypony. Not you, not me, not anyone. She belongs to herself!”
Tavi … stop talking …
The flap of wings. Another wet thump. Another cry.
“Don’t talk to Daddy like that!”
Tavi … please …
This wasn’t happening.
Vanelda looked around in horror. Smashed furniture lay everywhere. The couch had been torn open and upended. Beloved books were torn to pieces, their pages spattered with red.
Vanelda took a few hesitant steps into the room. “P-Professor?”
No answer.
“Professor Orchid?”
Her hooves travelled of their own volition. She stooped by the couch, peering under the gap. She had to twist her head nearly upside down to see properly. Blood scent filled her nose. She knew what she would see, but not how she would feel when she saw it.
“No …”
Necks should not bend that way. No bone had broken the skin, but a purplish lump showed where it bulged beneath. There was no way to tell whether death had come from that or the weight of a wooden couch landing on her skull.
“You’ve been a naughty giiiiiirl.”
Vanelda sprang to her hooves. “Vellum! You did this?”
“Actually no.” Vellum leaned against the doorframe like she had any right to be here. Vanelda had never quite felt like she belonged, but Vellum’s presence was even more ill-fitting. She claimed whatever room she walked into with her mere presence. Voron did it too. Her little sister was inheriting more and more of their father’s traits with each passing night.
Vanelda faltered. “What?”
“I didn’t kill her. He did.” Vellum inclined her head.
For the first time, Vanelda noticed the second body beyond the couch. Bass Note’s head had been all but completely separated from his body. His blood scent mingled with Professor Orchid’s, becoming inseparable to Vanelda’s nose. Her intake of breath seemed inordinately loud in the small office. Bass Note had not been seen on campus since he was expelled for his attack on Octavia. He had gone home to his parents in disgrace, carrying a criminal record instead of the university degree they had expected.
Death had not come easily to him. His expression was locked in a rictus of surprise and fear.
“He tried to throw a couch at me,” Vellum snorted. “A couch! I’ve been hunting him all week but, ironically, it wasn’t until he left his estate and came into town that he was alone enough for me to strike. And then he tries to throw furniture at my head! I threw it back at him, of course. I missed, but that mare was beyond caring at that point. He put up quite a fight for a mortal. How come you can’t use telepathy like that, big sis?”
“Telekinesis …” Vanelda said slowly, unable to quite believe what was going on. Coincidence? Really? It couldn’t be. Not even she was that unlucky. “You were hunting this stallion?”
“It was fun. He kept coming to this tavern I’ve been hunting at for the past few weeks. A real run-down place on the outskirts of town. I like to chase the patrons into the forest and scare the poop out of them before bringing them down. They wander out when they come round and it’s hilarious to see them bumping into things. Once, one of them cracked his head open on a rock! This guy though; he’s a riot. Or, well, he was. He had such a potty mouth! Way worse than the older stallions who usually drink there. I learned all sorts of naughty new words. He hated that mare.” Vellum pointed to where Professor Orchid lay. “Kept talking about how it was her fault he got kicked out of university. Even I was surprised when he came here tonight to kill her, though.”
Vellum sauntered over as she spoke and kicked the corpse. Bass Note slid sideways, smearing a bloody arc against the wall. It looked like the world’s worst painted rainbow.
“It was always ‘That nag this’ and ‘I’ll make her pay’ that and ‘If it hadn’t been for her, my life wouldn’t be ruined’ and yadda, yadda, yadda. Never pegged him for a killer though.” She shrugged. “Mortals are weird.”
Vellum’s words rang in Vanelda’s ears. Bass Note blamed Professor Orchid for his expulsion?
“But the professor wasn’t the reason he was thrown out,” she protested. Octavia had been. Vanelda snapped her mouth shut with a jolt, realising what she had said.
“How would you know?” Vellum narrowed her eyes.
“I-I’ve been hunting here for a few months now. All these drunken teenage ponies? It’s easy pickings. They drink to excess at parties and can’t even remembered their own names, let alone why they’re waking up in strange places with less blood than when they started the night.”
“This place is your hunting ground?” Vellum sounded both pleased and delighted. “Why didn’t you tell me? We could have hunted together! Or shared! All this young flesh around? And you were keeping it all for yourself?”
“And Daddy.”
“Well, yes, but that goes without saying. No wonder he liked taking from you more than me lately! Your prey must taste much sweeter than the old duffers I’ve been drinking from!”
“It won’t last much longer.” Vanelda fought to keep the tremor from her voice and her eyes off the upended couch. Nopony else was here on a Saturday, or else this much damage and commotion would have raised the alarm already.
“Why not?”
“It’s nearly summer break. They’ll all go home then.”
“Aw.” Vellum pouted. “Phooey. So … what did you mean about this professor mare not being the reason my naughty stallion was kicked out of this place?”
Vanelda swallowed, carving her story out from the frozen mass of her brain as she spoke, hoping she didn’t contradict herself. “You go to enough parties and speak to enough ponies, you learn things. He beat up another student. That’s why he was thrown out.”
“Oh really?” Vellum tapped her chin in thought. “That would explain it, actually.”
“Explain what?”
“Why he kept asking this professor mare where ‘she’ was – and why he looked so upset when her neck broke. He was holding her in his … telepathy? No, telekinesis. That’s what you said, right?”
“Right.”
“Yeah, only her horn was doing that glowing thing too, and she was struggling like blazes! Then, crack! No more professor pony.”
Vanelda could picture it in her mind: Bass Note must have taken Professor Orchid by surprise as she sat at her desk waiting for Vanelda to arrive for their lesson. She might even have thought the door opening was her. More often than not, she did not look up from whatever she was doing until Vanelda had been sitting on the couch for several minutes. She could envision Bass Note grabbing her up in his telekinesis, demanding to know where Octavia was, and Professor Orchid fighting back until …
Vanelda’s hoof tingled with the memory of splintering bone and flesh and the meaty thump of a body falling from a tree.
This was all her fault.
“Big sis? Are you okay?”
“We can’t cover this up, Vellum.”
Vellum stared at the carnage as if she was only just seeing it properly. “Oh. Yes. Pretty hard to make this look accidental, huh?”
“Daddy is going to make us leave.” Vanelda swallowed the lump in her throat. “If he doesn’t kill us first.”
Vellum was as white as her but she seemed to grow paler at this realisation. “He won’t,” she said, though she didn’t sound sure. “He loves us. He’ll understand. This wasn’t our fault.”
“Maybe if you’d left that stallion alive it might have been okay, but … Vellum, did you have to go so far?”
As if on cue, the last few strands of skin holding Bass Note’s head to his neck snapped and his skull struck the floorboards.
Vellum’s throat bobbed. “He won’t … I mean, h-he … Daddy loves me.”
“I just hope he was done courting.” Vanelda’s mind raced. “And the mares he was courting are with foal now.”
Vellum’s eyes rounded. “Didn’t you know? Three of them are.”
“What?”
“Weren’t you listening when he told us?”
She clearly hadn’t been. Then again, her thoughts had been consumed with magic lessons and Octavia for the last two months.
Octavia.
Voron would make them leave tonight. Vanelda knew it with the same certainty that told her the sun would rise tomorrow. When he punished his daughters or not, they would leave tonight and Vanelda would never see Octavia again.
“Fly home.”
“Big sis?”
“I’ll mess up the crime scene.” Vanelda lit her horn. “I’ll make it look like they both died in a magic fight.”
Vellum’s eyes lit with hope. “You can do that?”
“I can try. Fly home. Get there as quick as you can. Tell Daddy what I’m doing. Maybe he’ll be easier on us.” And with the time she had bought herself, maybe Vanelda could get to Octavia and say goodbye. She harboured no hope that she would be able to stay while her father and sister left. That was not how things worked. It was never how they worked and would never be how they worked. She was trapped forever in the life Voron had designed for her. For a short time she had begun to think that maybe there was hope for her, but this just confirmed that she was destined to stay trapped forever.
But a goodbye was not too much to hope for, was it?
“Go, Vellum!” Vanelda picked up the lamp off the desk and telekinetically hurled it at the window. “Go!”
Vellum escaped through the jagged hole, soaring up into a cloud bank that concealed her white body.
Vanelda proceeded to wreck the tiny office yet further, sweeping her magic around in huge wave. She yanked chunks out of the walls, tore free the ceiling fan and whirling it so deep into Bass Note’s body that it looked like that had been what killed him and the weight of his body had pulled it off the ceiling. She did her best to stage the fight scene, apologising to Professor Orchid for treating her remains so poorly.
“I’m so sorry,” she cried, tears streaking her face. “I’m s-so sorry.”
Finally, she blew all the torn pages into the air, lit the little oil lamp Professor Orchid’s brother had given her, and allowed a drifting page to fall into the flame. The rest took care of itself.
As she streaked away from the scene, Vanelda kept her mind focussed on the task ahead instead of the one just performed. She travelled by rooftop, hiding in shadows and not looking back even when the fire alarm began to ring.
Octavia opened her door with a frown at the desperate knocking. Her expression melted into a smile, then concern when she saw Vanelda in the corridor.
“Vee? What’s –”
“There’s no time.” Vanelda pushed her inside and slammed the door behind them. “I’m leaving. Tonight.”
“Leaving?” Octavia repeated. “What do you mean?”
“Leaving Trottingham. My father is going to make us move tonight.”
“He can’t!”
“Yes, he can.”
“But … but why?”
“I can’t explain now. Octavia, please, I don’t have much time. I came to say goodbye, but if he finds out I was here…” She swallowed. “He may hurt you.”
“Hurt me?”
“Because I put you above him.”
Octavia’s eyes widened. “Don’t go back to him. Stay here. I’ll … I’ll hide you.”
Vanelda shook her head sorrowfully. “These past few months … they’ve been the best of my life. And I mean that. I’ve loved every minute. You have no idea how much I … how much I wish I could stay.” Her throat felt clogged up, like she was talking through congealed blood. “I would give up everything to be able to stay with you.”
“Then why –?”
“Because I don’t have that option. He’ll never let me go. Professor Orchid … she tried to help me. She wanted me to go to the authorities.” Vanelda didn’t bother to hold back her tears. “Bass Note … tonight he … he …”
“Bass Note?” Octavia frowned. “Vee, what happened? Why do you smell of smoke?”
“Bass Note …” Vanelda stumbled over her words. How could she explain this? “He came looking for you, but Professor Orchid … I … I found them but I … I c-couldn’t …”
“Vee?” At last, Octavia sounded scared.
“Octavia, please … my father won’t let us stay. I know him. He won’t let us stay here. The media that’ll come from this … b-but I wanted … I needed to come and say goodbye to you.”
“I’ll come and find you,” Octavia said resolutely.
“I don’t know where we’re going. And … and it’s not safe. I won’t let you put yourself at risk for me.”
“But –”
“Octavia, I think I love you! And I’d die before I’d let anything happen to you! So please, forget about me, okay? I needed you to know that I didn’t … that I didn’t just leave because I wanted to … but I c-can’t …”
“I … I think I love you too,” Octavia said softly. “But I didn’t know … I thought you weren’t into mares … but all the time we spent together was … the best time of my life too. I was so lonely, and then you came along and…” She gulped. “I don’t want you to go.”
“I don’t want to go,” Vanelda replied, her chest hurting at the revelation of what might have been. “But I have to. I n-need you to b-be safe. You’re the b-best thing in m-my life and … and …”
And then there was a mouth on hers, and hooves running through her mane, and everything was touch and feel and smell and Octavia Octavia Octavia …
Vanelda broke the kiss with a gasp for air. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
“I want you to be safe too,” Octavia whispered back. “This isn’t fair. You don’t deserve this.”
Vanelda leaned in to hold her, feeling Octavia’s body begin to judder as she cried. “I’m so, so sorry.”
“Please don’t leave me,” Octavia sobbed. “I waited to tell you how I felt. Please don’t let this be the end before it even started. Whatever happens, we can face it together. Bass Note, your father – anything!”
“You wouldn’t say that if you knew the whole story.”
“Vee, please!”
“I’m sorry Octavia. I love you so much.”
She hadn’t even realised what love was until this moment, and as soon as she had found it, she had lost it.
“No! Vee, wait! Come back!”
She ran from the dorm with the sound of Octavia’s crying in her ears and the taste of her on her lips.