The ground underneath Applejack was barren, hoof-beaten dirt. No leaves, no rocks, no bones. None of those terrifying bones. Countless bones from countless ponies. Ponies that were buried on her own land, practically under her nose. She couldn’t see the bones now, all she stared at was the small patch of dirt directly in front of her.
Applejack, Pinkie, and Twilight were locked in a deep, terrified bow in the presence of Luna. Not one of them spoke. Luna had offered nothing past her ominous greeting, but Applejack was too terrified to look up, too terrified to do anything but stare at the ground.
Her mind wandered back to earlier that day. Earlier, before her life was changed forever. Earlier, when a visit from a friend was to steal away her own innocence.
It was a beautiful day at Apple Acres. Big Mac had been out the night before, enjoying a “friendly milkshake” with Cheerilee over at Sugarcube Corner, and his productivity after such an encounter was usually doubled. He had been hauling in so many apples for the autumn harvest that Applejack was having a hard time bucking fast enough. When Pinkie Pie stopped in shortly after lunch and offered to help with the bucking, Applejack agreed before considering that “help” might include conversation, and any conversation with Pinkie Pie was akin to asking Rarity to talk about fashion or Twilight to recommend a couple good books, except without the same topical focus.
Still, Pinkie was a good-hearted pony. Not the best apple bucker but every little bit would help to keep up with Big Mac, especially with Granny Smith and Apple Bloom out enjoying a shopping day.
The early afternoon passed pleasantly enough. Pinkie was busy with singing, frolicking, talking to Applejack about different places she had stood on her head, and occasionally getting some bucking done. It was, for Applejack, tolerable.
“So AJ, what do you do when you’re done bucking?”
“Eat dinner and go to bed.”
“And then what do you do when you get up?”
“Keep bucking until the season is over.”
“And what about when the season is over?”
“Well, we have plenty of other land that needs workin’ besides the orchards.”
“Like where?”
“The fields where we grow food for the winter.”
“Where else?”
“Keeping the fencing in good order to keep the pastures safe.”
“Where else?”
“Uh, making sure all the outbuildings are repaired and in good shape.”
“Where else?”
“Uh…” Applejack was too focused on her work to be annoyed with the question stream. In fact, her mind wandered enough to keep answering, whether she intended to or not. “Well, there’s one piece of land we don’t work, actually.”
“Really? Is it that one right there?” Pinkie pointed to a tiny patch of green, tangled weeds growing next to an apple tree.
Applejack sighed, “No, Pinkie, much bigger than that. It’s about 40 acres of land out by the northwest orchard. It’s just forest, actually. Like the Everfree Forest except not so spooky. Granny Smith says it’s good for us to leave some land untouched, helps the balance of nature.”
“Well that’s silly, aren’t all the forests around Apple Acres untouched?”
“Yeah, but this is our land. It’s important for us to keep some of our land unspoiled. It helps the orchards.”
“So it doesn’t matter that there’s other forests out there, you have to let some of your own land be forest so your other crops grow better?”
“Now yer getting it.”
“But how do your apple trees know which land belongs to you?”
“Pinkie, I don’t think I could explain it to you proper. It’s just there. It’s good for the trees and we don’t work it. Don’t even set foot on it.”
Pinkie gasped. “Really? You haven’t even been on the land? Then we have to go! What an adventure!”
“No, Pinkie, we have…”
“An adventure with just Pinkie and Applejack! This is so fun, we never get to hang out together!”
“Well, yeah, because…”
“Good thing I ate a big breakfast this morning. C’mon!” Pinkie trotted merrily toward the north, singing as she went. “Adventure time! C’mon, grab your saddle. We’ll gallop to AJ’s … distant trees. Hmmmm, no, that needs some work.” She continued humming different melodies, not even looking back.
“Well,” muttered Applejack, “if I don’t go with her, who knows what trouble she’ll get in.” Giving a final buck to the closest apple tree, she took off after Pinkie.
To Applejack, every inch of Sweet Apple Acres was home. She would be as comfortable sleeping out here under the stars as she would in her own bed. She could find her way around blindfolded if she needed to. The gentle slopes of the hills, the smells of different types of apples in different parts of the orchard, the feel of the different dirt paths under her hooves, it was all so familiar. She was the fourth generation of the Apple Family to work these fields and she could feel the blood of her ancestors pumping through her veins, whispers from her lineage guiding her in even the most mundane chores. The constant ethereal encouragement from her past was part of the satisfaction of working the farm. When she bucked a tree, she could feel dozens of other ponies strengthening her legs, focusing exactly where to hit, dislodging more apples than anypony else. This land was her land now, and she would die to protect it.
Wait, what was that? Die to protect it? What a strange thought. She would protect it, yes, but she’d never have to die to protect it. She gave her head a big shake, whipping her pony tail back and forth and nearly dislodging her hat. Hanging around Pinkie for the day was certainly getting to her.
Music continued to flow from the bubbly pink pony leading the way. “With Pinkie the pony and Applejack the … other pony. No, that’s not good.” Pinkie continued to work on her tune as they neared the northern perimeter of the orchard. Applejack paused to pluck an apple off a nearby tree. As she cantered behind Pinkie she chewed it slowly, admiring its sweetness. She hadn’t traveled much, always preferring to be home with the family instead of big cities like Manehattan or Los Pegasus. Even Canterlot made her a little nervous. One thing all those fancy places had in common was the bland food. Nowhere in Equestria were the apples as sweet as Sweet Apple Acres.
“Woooo, that looks like the Everfree forest!” Pinkie was perched on two legs, her front left and her back right, balancing mid trot, while cocking her head at a sudden wall of thick trees. They were at the edge of the maintained orchard and the beginning of the back forty acres of land that Applejack had never stepped hoof on.
Under the bright noonday sun it didn’t seem intimidating, not like the dark and eerie Everfree Forest. This looked just like any forested land, apart from the fact that Applejack was inclined to never walk on it.
A sudden distant memory clouded over Applejack, “Uh, Pinkie, I’m not sure we should really go in. Granny Smith was always pretty insistent that we not bother the trees there.”
“Well, what if I was north of here, and I wanted to come here, and I came through it without knowing I was walking through it, would that be okay?”
“Uh…” was all Applejack could manage. Confound Pinkie and her beguiling logic!
“Because it can’t only be not okay to go there if you know it’s there and be not okay to go if you do know, unless if nothing happens and you don’t know then you didn’t cause nothing so it wasn’t your fault, unless you knew, but if you did and nothing happened then there’s no reason not to until after you already did, but then you’d know already.”
“Pinkie, if we just peek in for five minutes, will you stop talking?”
“Sure!”
Five minutes later they were walking quietly through the only patch of forest in Apple Acres that Applejack had never seen. It didn’t look any different from any other forest. The trees were thick and tall, deadfall choked the ground where nopony had ever cleaned away fallen branches. Broken stumps punctuated fallen, moss-covered trunks. Everything was covered in mushrooms. There was no path, they simply picked their way in and around trees and ferns. The sun came down in small patches through the thick covering of leaves overhead. It was a fairly enjoyable walk, so peaceful and quiet. Too quiet. Applejack glanced at Pinkie and noticed her fidgeting with her mouth, a look of mild desperation on her face, and Applejack was familiar enough with her friend to know exactly what was going on.
“It’s okay Pinkie, you can talk now. Just not so much.”
“It’s beautiful!” she exclaimed. “So beautiful! I can’t believe you never come here.”
“Yeah, well, this will be the last time. I ain’t so sure Granny Smith will like the idea that we’re out here.”
“Just look at the trees and leaves! And the other trees! And the … huh, I guess it’s not all beautiful,” said Pinkie, standing on top of a tiny hill.
“What’cha see there, hon?” Applejack trotted over to stand next to Pinkie. The other side of the hill sloped down sharply and gave way to a low, flat area where the trees thinned out. It was darker, even though the trees here had far fewer leaves, it felt like less sunlight was making it through. The trees themselves looked like they never got sun. They were thin, gnarled, and missing large pieces of bark.
“Woooo, it’s like a tree graveyard!”
“Those trees have leaves, darlin’. They ain’t dead.”
“Woooo, it’s like a tree graveyard with living trees! Let’s go see them!” Decisive action always seemed so easy for Pinkie.
Applejack decisively wanted to leave, but realized that seeing these strange trees may be just the right amount of adventure for Pinkie and after that they could depart. Big Mac was probably wondering where they were. Even though they had been bucking trees pretty far from the barn, he had certainly made enough round trips to cart off the surplus by now.
Down into the scattered litter of trees the two friends went, Applejack leading the way. Pinkie suddenly held back and wrinkled her nose. “Ugh, what’s that smell? Wait, is that a smell?”
“I don’t smell anythin’, what’s it smell like?”
Pinkie looked confused. She backed up. She trotted in a circle. She stood still, reached her head as far forward as she could without moving her hooves, and promptly fell over.
“Okay, I think it’s time we left here now, we gotta get back to work.”
“You don’t smell the smell, do you?”
“I smell trees, dirt, forest. What do you smell?”
“I don’t know. I don’t even know if it’s a smell. I smell it here,” she stood a few feet from one of the gnarled trees, “but not here,” she leaned forward about two feet, “and then I smell it again here,” returning to her original posture, “but if I go over here, I smell it again,” she trotted in a wide circle, stopping halfway through. “I don’t get it, it’s not like a smell at all. But it stinks.”
Applejack tentatively stepped where Pinkie had been moments before. She still smelled trees, dirt, and forest. She tried to lean toward the nearby tree but it just smelled like a tree. “I don’t smell anything.”
“You’re right, you can’t. It’s not a smell.” Pinkie’s eyes grew wide and she gasped melodramatically. “It’s my Pinkie sense! But what’sit for? I’ve never smelled anything with my Pinkie sense before. What does a smell mean?” Pinkie wandered around in between the trees. She looked up and down. Applejack had never seen her look so serious before, it was like watching Twilight try to solve a math problem. Pinkie would stop, sniff, lean over, back up, walk in circles, run, stop quickly, then shuffle from side to side, the whole time wearing an uncharacteristic look of deep concentration. The longer Applejack watched, the less random the patterns looked. Pinkie was actually performing one wide circuit around several trees, incorporating all her strange maneuvers, and then doing the exact same circuit again, doing all the same moves in the same places, like she was playing a game of follow-the-pony with just herself.
She suddenly looked up at Applejack, eyes wide. “We have to dig!”
“Dig?”
“Dig! I smell the smell everywhere, it’s in patches all over the place. But always the same places. It’s like a super Pinkie Pie Pinkie Sense cornucopia explosion of smells! But I don’t know what else they’d be telling me except that there’s something buried. Nothing’s falling, nothing’s moving, whatever I’m getting, it’s sitting still, but I don’t see anything sitting still above the dirt, do you?”
“Okay, Pinkie, we’ll dig one hole, that’s it, then it’s time to go. I’m sure Big Mac is wondering where we’re at right now and we have to get home.”
“Oh sure, just one hole! It’s probably the same thing in each hole.”
Pinkie selected the spot, it was as far away as they could get from the gnarled trees, a suggestion of Applejack’s, to avoid hitting roots as they dug. This one spot seemed to have fairly loose dirt, hopefully minimizing their time investment. Applejack almost chuckled when she thought how keen Rarity or Fluttershy would be to come on an adventure like this with Pinkie and suddenly start digging when commanded. It made her feel like a pretty good friend. Pinkie was an interesting pony and, when not talking too much, could be downright fun, creating a party or an adventure out of thin air. She definitely wasn’t lazy or afraid of getting her hooves dirty, she started digging the hole just as eagerly as Applejack. In fact, it was Pinkie that first exclaimed “Ohhh, what’s this?”
They had been digging side by side, two halves to one giant hole, and merely a foot below ground level Pinkie had struck a large, smooth, white stone.
“Oh, it smells, it smells!” Pinkie backed away, making gagging noises, and Applejack was unsurprised to discover that she still couldn’t smell anything.
“I’ll dig it up for ya, sweetie.” Applejack loosened the dirt walls of the hole to enlarge it enough to clear dirt away from the sides of the stone. She hoped this wasn’t a tiny tip of a much larger rock; they could be here all day. As she managed to clear away most of the soil from one side of the stone, she tapped it roughly with her hoof and saw it wiggle slightly. That was good news, it had to be fairly small if she could already shift it. From what she could see it was a round white stone, about the size of her head. She should be able to unearth it shortly.
Applejack didn’t mind that Pinkie was standing back now, she was happy to do the work. Digging was difficult, which meant that it was rewarding. She was so focused on excavating the stone that she didn’t notice Pinkie lie down. She didn’t see the distress on Pinkie’s face or hear the anguished gurgling coming from Pinkie’s half-open mouth, nor could she hear Pinkie whispering “so bad…smells sooooo bad.”
With the top and one side of the stone cleared away, Applejack rocked the stone up a bit, jammed a stick in the tight space between the stone and the dirt, and launched herself onto the stick. With a gravelly rasp, the hole released its grip on the stone. Leverage from the stick launched the stone out and it landed on the ground next to Pinkie.
“Well, it doesn’t smell anymore,” exclaimed Pinkie, quickly getting to her feet. “Buuuuut I don’t think it’s a stone, and believe me, I know stones,” she tapped it with her hoof, rotating it around so Applejack could see the view from the front. The stone had two dirt-packed holes in the front, and it took a moment before Applejack realized what she was looking at.
“Is that a … skull?”
“Sure looks like it! That must be what my Pinkie Pie sense was telling me. Bad smell means buried skull. I have to add that one to the list.” Pinkie cocked her head to one side and stared off in the distance.
A few moments passed, filled only with the quiet of Pinkie managing her internal files and Applejack staring helplessly at a skull that appeared to be staring back at her with large, dirt packed sockets. She wasn’t sure what to expect, certainly it wasn’t going to come to life. What was it doing out here? Were there more? Wait, of course there were more! “Pinkie! How many different places did you get the smell?”
Pinkie snapped to attention, “What? Oh, I dunno, maybe 20?”
Twenty? Pinkie hadn’t covered much ground, either. This area, with the twisted trees, and dull light, was big, a couple acres or more. Pinkie had only explored around a few trees. A compulsion grabbed Applejack. This was her land. She had every right to know what was here. “Pinkie, I need you to help me dig. I know it’s a bad smell, but it’s not really a smell, it’s just in yer head. Can you work with me?”
Pinkie seemed to consider this very seriously for a minute. She looked back and forth from Applejack to the skull to the land before her expression completely softened and she exploded out a joyful “Okee dokee lokee!”
They dug in near silence, two ponies dutifully focused on a single goal. Wherever there was a smell, there was a skull. Wherever there was a skull, more digging would uncover a mostly complete skeleton. When satisfied there were no more bones to be found, they would pile them together next to the hole and hastily push the dirt back in, the bones and the unpacked mound marking each excavation site. Pinkie never had to walk far before her Pinkie Sense would trigger the awful smell again and they would begin to dig. Applejack could only imagine how terrible the smell was because she never caught a whiff of anything.
As they focused intently on their project, Applejack didn’t even notice the sun going down, the light dimming, and darkness setting it. It wasn’t until she almost ran into a tree following Pinkie when she realized it was night time. “Pinkie! It’s dark! What time is it?”
“Night time, silly!” exclaimed Pinkie, not appearing to be the least bit tired from what must have been five hours of solid digging.
“How … how many do you think we dug up?”
“I dunno,” said Pinkie, surveying their worksite, “looks like almost forty. And we didn’t even cover much ground. There’s probably a lot of them out there.”
Despite the horror of unearthing 40 skeletons on her own land, Applejack breathed a sigh of relief. At one point her brain had started to play tricks on her, telling her that she had no business digging this up, that for all she knew, this was a family burial site and she was digging up her own relatives, but no way had so many died since her family first moved to Sweet Apple Acres. This was something older, from long before their time.
“Pinkie, you can find your way back here, right?”
“Um, yes?”
“Good. You need to go get Twilight Sparkle. She needs to see this. Don’t tell her where you’re bringing her or what we found. Just get her out here.”
Without a word, but humming a tune extra-loud, Pinkie sped off in the night, leaving Applejack alone with the mass grave of unknown ponies.