As the Orchard expanded, Villagers would often volunteer to assist Big Macintosh with farm work. Now that Apple Bloom, Scootaloo, and Sweetie Belle were spending their summer in the Village, they also offered to pitch in with farm work here and there.
“I just can’t believe how much ground you’ve covered in just a few years,” Apple Bloom said during breakfast one day.
“Well, them Vampire Fruit Bats sure came in handy,” said Big Mac.
Right when apples began to ripen on the first trees Big Mac had planted, they were attracting Vampire Fruit Bats. But his experiences with these bothersome creatures in Sweet Apple Acres had well prepared him. He’d planned from the start to allocate one cluster of apple trees to them. He vigilantly shooed the Vampire Fruit Bats away from every apple tree cluster except that one. Fortunately, it didn’t take long for the Bats to catch on, and ever since, they’ve only targeted apples in that section of the Orchard, which was now fenced off from the rest.
*****
“Think you three could do the bucking for me today?” Big Mac asked the Crusaders. “I gotta go into the Vampire Fruit Bat Zone to collect seeds.”
Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle were about to agree, but Apple Bloom said “I always go into the Bat Zone to fetch the seeds they spit out. I’ve done it back at Sweet Apple Acres for as long as I can remember.”
“You’ve grown quite a lot since then,” Big Mac pointed out. “You ain’t at small as you used to be.”
“Well you’re as big as you’ve always been,” said Apple Bloom. “It’s a jungle in that Bat Zone. You’re okay with all that ducking and leaning and crawling in that mess?”
“Eeeyup. ‘Cause when you’re my size, you can avoid all that,” Big Mac grinned. “You can just shove obstacles outta the way.”
*****
Big Mac showed the Crusaders on a map of the orchard which trees he wanted them to buck. Then he picked up some buckets he’d left by the door to the Barn Extension. He smiled when he looked inside one of them and saw a chocolate glazed gooseberry pie.
“Thanks, sweetheart,” he said to his wife.
Sugar Belle blew him a kiss as he picked up his buckets and left the Cafe.
“Do you ever help Big Mac with farm work?” asked Apple Bloom. “Just outta curiosity.”
“I did when we were first establishing an Orchard out here,” Sugar Belle replied. “But now, I mostly stick to running this Cafe. The most I do when it comes to pitching in with farm work is providing sustenance. Hard work brings an appetite, you know.”
“And does Big Mac ever help you here in the Cafe?” Apple Bloom went on.
“Well he did build me that new display case. Remember?”
“Yeah, sure. But that was way before you two were married or were even dating.”
“Well I’m sure if a table or shelf or something broke, Big Mac would have no trouble fixing it or building a replacement,” Sugar Belle insisted.
Apple Bloom thought for a moment.
“Well… okay,” she said at last. “Come on, you two. Let’s get to work.”
*****
It was quite true that hard work brought an appetite. Well before it was even lunchtime, the Crusaders were starving. They were happy at midday when they returned to the Cafe to find that Sugar Belle had spent the morning making picture perfect confections.
“Help yourselves, everypony,” she said, indicating the table loaded with baked goods.
The Crusaders did so.
“Where’s Big Mac?” asked Sugar Belle.
“Don’t know,” said Scootaloo with a mouthful of cherry chip cake.
“Haven’t seen him since this morning,” said Sweetie Belle, unintentionally firing macadamia cookie crumbs across the table.
“If he’s still in the Vampire Fruit Bat Zone,” said Sugar Belle, “either it must have grown a lot since last year, or there are more seeds than ever for him to collect.”
“If that were it, wouldn’t he have come back for more buckets?” asked Apple Bloom, custard dripping down her chin.
*****
Lunch finished, the Crusaders returned to the Orchard. Apple Bloom was working the Empire trees. About two hours after midday, Sugar Belle walked up.
“Still no sign of Big Mac?” she asked.
“Nope,” shrugged Apple Bloom.
“He’s never missed lunch before,” said Sugar Belle with a frown.
“If you’re worried about him, don’t be. Like I said this morning,” said Apple Bloom, “I used to go into our Vampire Fruit Bat Zone all the time back in Ponyville. I may have been small, but I knew as long as I didn’t get in any Bat’s way, they wouldn’t attack me. All I had to do was keep my head down and focus on the seeds on the ground. It was Big Mac who taught me that.”
And she kicked an Empire tree, which yielded a bucketful of bright red apples.
*****
Apple Bloom might have been convinced that Big Mac was having no trouble in the Vampire Fruit Bat Zone, but Sugar Belle was concerned. She returned to her Cafe, but not to carry on baking. She decided to close up shop for the time being, and go look for her husband. Fortunately, the Cafe was empty at the time, so she didn’t have to awkwardly tell any customers to leave. So she hung the Closed sign in the Cafe window, and went back out into the Orchard toward the Vampire Fruit Bat Zone.
“Wow. Apple Bloom was right. It is a jungle in there.”
Sugar Belle hadn’t seen this section of the Orchard since the Bats had first been diverted there from the rest of the trees with their ripening apples. The trees were much younger, smaller, and neater at that time. It was only about two years later, and now Sugar Belle could swear that someone had moved the Everfree Forest here.
*****
“Big Mac?!”
No reply. Sugar Belle took one step into the Vampire Fruit Bat Zone. It was clear why the farm ponies insisted on sparing everypony else from working here. The trees looked dead and spooky, the Bats were swift and snappy, an unpleasant smell hung in the air, and it took lots of concentration not to trip on a root or scrape a hoof on a fallen branch.
“Big Mac, are you still in here?!”
Sugar Belle heard nothing but some distant chirping from some Bats. She walked further in. It grew darker almost instantly.
“Oh, I hope Discord didn’t decide to have an impromptu Ogres & Oubliettes game and teleported Big Mac to Twilight’s Castle,” Sugar Belle grunted.
She turned around and started to head back the way she came in… or at least, that’s what she intended. She could have sworn she’d done an about-face to walk out the same way she came in, but somehow, she found herself walking deeper and deeper into the forest of wild apple trees.
“How did this happen?”
She looked around. She couldn’t see the Sun. The chirping and screeching from the Bats was growing more prominent. Sugar Belle could swear she was hearing growling and purring in some overgrown bushes.
*****
There was no path to follow. Sugar Belle distinctly remembered the trees in this section were planted in straight rows. Yet the trees she was looking at now seemed to have grown in random spots. Some were growing close to each other and were coiling around each other. Clumps of tall grass and piles of rotten broken branches lay everywhere. Sugar Belle maneuvered her way along, calling for Big Mac along her unclear way. She did her best to ignore the discoloured mud she was stepping as she ventured on.
“Ooh.” She spotted a large tree with thick branches. “I can climb up that and maybe see where Big Mac is.”
She made her way to the large tree trunk.
“Or maybe a way out,” she went on.
She started to climb the tree. But the higher she got, the more agitated the nearby Vampire Fruit Bats grew. Sugar Belle saw some ripe apples were growing on this big tree, and then she remembered what Apple Bloom had said.
Keep low, and the Vampire Fruit Bats won’t attack.
One Bat swooped. Sugar Belle was almost knocked out of the tree. She steadied herself, and started to quickly but carefully clamber back down. It wasn’t quite quick enough to the Bats. Another took a snap at her. She tried to shoo it away, but when she made a grab for a branch to hold herself up, it snapped, and she fell off the limb she’d been standing on. Fortunately, the mud at the base of the tree broke her fall. She wiped the discoloured goo from her eyes and looked up at the large tree. The Vampire Fruit Bats had stopped squawking, and were now feasting on the ripe apples. One spat the seeds out down into Sugar Belle’s face.
*****
The ground grew muddier and muddier as Sugar Belle continued on through the jungle.
“I’ll bet this stuff makes great fertilizer,” she muttered as she struggled through the swamp.
She kept calling Big Mac’s name along her journey through the twigs, roots, boughs, bushes, and tall grass. Then suddenly, Sugar Belle abruptly found herself sinking. Before she could even yell, she was up to her flank in mud.
“Oh, no! I’m stuck!”
She squirmed, she struggled, she tugged; it was no use. She was stuck fast.
“Big Mac! Big Mac, help! I’m stuck!”
Still no reply from her husband. Sugar Belle kept trying to pull her legs out of the mud, and she carried on calling for help. But after a while, she gave it up. Her legs couldn’t move, and her throat was getting sore. She spotted a long stick poking out of a large shrub. She used her magic to pick it up, and started poking around the mud. She was trying to find a solid piece of ground she could try to get to and climb onto. It was impossible to tell any solid ground from mud; they were both the same unpleasant grey colour. Sugar Belle was starting to panic; she couldn’t find any solid ground… not even right behind her.
*****
To her left, about twenty feet away, Sugar Belle could see a fallen tree lying horizontally along the “ground”.
“If I could only reach that tree,” she frowned, “I could climb out of this mud.”
She looked down at the grey mud and sniffed.
“…This isn’t mud.”
Sugar Belle realised this swamp was made up of apples that had had all the juice sucked out of them by the Vampire Fruit Bats.
“Well… I guess this means I’ll have to eat my way out,” sighed Sugar Belle.
She craned her neck to the left, and took a bite out of a clump of grey goo, and spat it out to her right. The taste was awful. But Sugar Belle repeated the process. After what felt like an hour, she was able to move her left foreleg. She hoisted it out of the muck and started digging her way towards the fallen tree. Soon her right foreleg budged as well, and she tried to spread her forelegs out as she dug, so as not to put too much weight on the surface of the swamp and sink further. At last, she could pull her hind legs up, and she began to dig/swim her way to the tree trunk.
*****
With a sigh of relief, Sugar Belle climbed onto the fallen tree and out of the rotten apple swamp. Once she was standing on the horizontal trunk, she could see a bucket lying in the mud on the other side of it. Her heart stopped.
“Big Mac sank! I was standing on top of him!” she shrieked.
Her horn lit up, she picked up the bucket, and started digging. Fortunately, the imprint she’d left was still pronounced. Sugar Belle scooped up bucketful after bucketful of mud. A red and cream hoof popped out of the mud like a groundhog.
“Big Mac!”
Sugar Belle picked up the pace. Then out of the mud shot another bucket. And there was Big Macintosh’s head.
“Oh! Thank you!” he gasped. “I was running out of air.”
“How did you manage to breathe down there?” Sugar Belle panted, continuing to dig.
“Before I went down, I managed to get that bucket over my head,” replied Big Mac. “Gave me enough air for a while there.”
Sugar Belle used her magic to dig with the other bucket as well. Big Mac pitched in with his forelegs, but he was a lot heavier than Sugar Belle, and there was a risk that he might sink again.
*****
Apple Bloom was heading back to the Barn Extension with her baskets of Empire apples. Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle joined her with their collection of Cameos and Red Deliciouses.
“Did Sugar Belle close up?” asked Sweetie Belle when she saw the empty Cafe.
Apple Bloom called out. There was no reply from Sugar Belle or Big Mac.
“Big Mac must still have not come back from the Vampire Fruit Bat Zone,” suggested Scootaloo. “Sugar Belle must have gone to look for him.”
The Crusaders left the Barn Extension and started to run towards the Vampire Fruit Bat Zone.
“There they are!” exclaimed Apple Bloom.
Staggering towards them, filthy and exhausted, carrying no cargo, were Sugar Belle and Big Macintosh.
*****
“What happened?” asked the Crusaders.
Big Mac told them about the rotten apple swamp and how Sugar Belle saved him from drowning.
“Wow. We never had that kinda problem back at Sweet Apple Acres,” said Apple Bloom.
“Nnnnope,” Big Mac said. “So from now on, Sugar Belle will be doing our seed collecting in that Zone.”
Sugar Belle nodded. “I can use my magic to carry a walking stick with me so I can test the ground as I walk along.”
“You two must be worn out,” said Apple Bloom. “How about the three of us make dinner tonight.”
Sugar Belle groaned. “Thanks, but after what I’ve been through today, I don’t have much of an appetite right now.”