//------------------------------// // Chapter Two // Story: My Fair Pony // by 2K Chrome //------------------------------// “Lend us fifty bits, Lestia.” “What do ya mean, lend? Ya’ve never paid me back the last bits I lent ya, or the one before that, or…” “Ssh!” Applestia and her father were in the cabbage-scented hall of the house in Hoofton Road, and he jerked his head toward the kitchen door, behind which Mrs. Highcastle waited, like a whaleboned spider, for her rent. “She’ll put us out on the street,” he said in the nearest his voice could get to a whisper. “Not me. Ah can pay me way.” “Come on, Lestia, be a good sport. I wouldn’t ask you, only I had a bit of bad luck with that three-legged brute that called himself a stallion. Won’t you help your poor old Dad? After all I’ve done for you. Fed you, clothed you, rocked you to sleep…” He honestly believed it, so it was not worth denying. “Taught you the Elements of Harmony. Ponies were put in this world to help each other, I told you, so you should be glad to fulfill your what’s-its-name by helping me.” Applestia sighed. “I’ve got thirty bits. That’s all I took today.” “Give us it, love. I’ll give it back tomorrow… double. Sure as my names Little Apple Cider.” “If you’re going to put it on a race…” Applestia’s hoof stopped on its way into the pocket of her old saddlebag. “Cross my heart.” She gave him the thirty bits and grabbed him as he made for the front door. “No ya don’t! Not to Buck’s!” She pushed him the other way, through the kitchen door. “Hello, Mr. Cider, this is a pleasant surprise!” Which it was to Mrs. Highcastle, when she saw the bits in his hoof. Applestia had just come in after being out on the streets all day in the first nippy winds of winter, but she would have to go out again, or there would be nothing for her supper. She heard her father and the landpony laughing, and the enviable clinks of teacups. Half the time, Mrs. Highcastle did not save anything for her. She wandered down to Market Square to see if Willow could find her some flowers. When she saw him, his face pale in the flare of a torch on one of the stalls, she stopped a few yards away behind a barrowload of rotting cabbages. What had he done wrong? Had someone found out about those white carnations? He was talking to a stallion in with a large monocle and a long tweed coat. He could only be a plain-clothes guard colt, or what would he want with old Willow? She slipped through a pool of deep shadow beyond the light of the lantern, and ducked behind a pillar to hear what they were saying. “He gimme ten bits fer a harf derzen oranges,” Willow said in his strange accent. “Say it again, there’s a good chap.” The stallion in the tweed coat was a socialite, no mistake. No guard talked posh like that. But they were up to all sorts of tricks, the guards, you couldn’t be too careful. Don’t tell him, Willow Applestia urged silently. “He gimme ten bits fer a harf derzen oranges,” Willow repeated obediently, a foolish grin splitting his broad face like a great sliced turnip. “Yes….yes…” The gentlecolt had a notebook and pencil and was marking it down. Whinnysota?” Willow looked blank. “Born there, I mean?” “Sright.” “Go on talking.” That was enough to strike poor Willow as dumb as a bed leg. “How… ah…. er…” He gasped and swallowed. Applestia could see sweat rolling down his brawny neck, as the strange stallion waited patiently, pencil poised. “Are you having some sort of seizure, my good fellow?” The inquiry was civil enough, but you had the feeling that if it were a fit, he would stand and watch, rather than call for help. “Ask mah girl,” Willow stammered out. “She does the talkin’.” He put out a hoof as large as half a ham and pulled Applestia from behind the pillar. “How did ya know I was there?” She jerked her hoof away and stood angrily. “I seen yer.” Sometimes it seemed that Willow had an odd extra sense, to make up for not having much of the ordinary kind. “Ya in trouble?” she asked him. “What’s he got ya for?” “Calm yourself,” said the stranger. “We’re just having a chat.” “That’s what the guard said when he come after me cousin. Next thing we knew, he was inside wit two months hard.” “Hard?” The stallion was not rude, but he didn’t seem polite either. Just point-blank inquisitive. “Hard labor, as well as ya know, Mr. Nosy Parker. And if ya have come tryin to git poor Willow ter say somethin’ incrum…. incorm…” “Incriminating?” “Don’t take me up!” she flashed at him. “Ah’m as good as ya. Comin’ here attackin’ a poor innocent colt as don’t even know…” She ranted on, giving him the saw-toothed edge of her tongue, which years of shrieking and quarreling on the Canterlot streets had sharpened to the shrillest cockney. “Fascinating… fascinating.” His pencil stabbed and flicked at the paper, making signs that did not look like letters to her, if she had read right at home. And then he looked up with one eyebrow raised, tapping the pencil on the good white teeth that were all his own. “Er… Apple family?” Applestia nodded, in spite of herself. “Little Apple Acres?” His lean head had swooped down at her. In the gassy light of the flare, she noticed that he had very bright blue eyes, witty and questioning, before she drew back afraid, for what did he want with her? What did he know about her? “Nah,” she lied. “Ya got the wrong party. My family’s all Sweet Apple Acre folks,” she replied, thinking of her cousins down in Ponyville. “Funny.” He shut his notebook with his magic. “I could have sworn to Little Apple Acres.” As he began to amble away, he turned to say over his tweedy shoulder, “with the slightest touch of Hoofton Road on top?” Applestia spat at him like a cat, and Willow was shocked. His attitude had irritated her before. He was awed by the gentry. “Don’t ya think he was a guard?” Willow shook his head. Events had moved too fast for him, and he would speak no more that night. “Well, he knows too much,” Applestia said darkly. “He’s bad luck. Ah wouldn’t give him the time of day, meself. Ah wouldn’t give him the dirt stuck on my hooves.” ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The next day, Applestia felt vaguely unhappy. It had turned colder, and she began to think of the long winter ahead, when the rain was chillier than the snow, and there was no escape from the wind which searched you out round corners and behind walls like your own bad conscience. After she had forced herself groaning and muttering out of bed, and pushed through the bars of Azure’s cage the lettuce leaves she had brought home for him last night, she jammed on her flat straw hat and walked a different way to the market, to try to break up the deadly sameness of another deadly day. It was one of those think Canterlot mornings when you can’t see who you are much before noon, and the light from a busy little shop fell pleasantly on the street corner ahead. It was a bakery. Two mares, one quite young, one older, were arranging cupcakes in the window and on the shelves, chatting to each other, like old friends. Applestia walked into the bakery and ordered herself a cupcake. She sat down at a table and brooded there for some time, warming her hooves round the freshly made delight, before she became aware that last night's stranger was in there too, in the circle round the fire, his glasses clear over his bright blue eyes, and horn glowing with magic. “Go on, Jet,” Bruce Mane was saying. “How bout me?” “A-ow aba-out may?” The gray stallion imitated it carefully, like a foal repeating a lesson. “Unmistakably Neigh Zealand, I’d say.” “ Struth, you can’t fault ‘im. Bet yer a screw of tobaccer yer can’t guess.” “Do me.” “Guess me.” “Where was I borned then?” The thickset stallions and bundled up mares clamored at him from all round the group, and more colts and fillies wandered over from other parts of the market to see what was up. “I’m not a music-hall turn,” the stallion said quite politely. “What's the game then?” Bruce Mane asked suspiciously. “If you can’t make a livin at it on the music halls, what’s the sense of it?” “I do make a living, my dear fellow, but not on the stage. I am writing books about language. I teach it at the University of Canterlot. I give private lessons in speech. You do behold, in short” he bowed slightly from his seat on an upturned basket, “Equestria famous Jet Set, Professor of Phonetics.” “What’s that when it’s at home?” Bruce Mane asked rudely, leering at him. “The science of speech. The way people talk. I’ve studied it for years. You can probably tell if a stallion’s Stalliongradian or broad Beaumount. If he’s a Canterlot pony, which is my specialty at the moment, I can tell you what street.” A bit out of their depth, the crowd shifted and muttered uneasily, looking at each other to see what to say, and the stranger’s noticing eye fell on Applestia, frowning over her cupcake at the back of the group. “We’ve heard nothing from Miss Little Apple Acres today. You were vocal enough last night. Where’s your tongue this fair morning?” She stuck it out at him, and hoped it looked as bilious as it felt. “Aha… the morning after. Well, it happens to the best of us.” “Speak fer yerself,” Applestia growled. “Ah never touched a drop in my life.” “What’s up then?” Jet… what’s his name?... Jet Set smiled at her quite kindly. For all his outlandish talk, there were fleeting moments when you felt he might be almost a normal pony. “Ah been slighted, that’s what.” She told him about her father and her landpony, half glad of his interest and the sympathy of the rest of them. “Tchk, tchk.” He clicked his teeth. “But it’s no surprise.” Applestia jumped up and faced him, bristling all over. She could even feel her hat brim quivering with rage. “Ya watch yer tongue, mister! Ah may be no oil paintin’, but ah don’t look as bad as all that!” “You may have seen yourself in shop windows,” he said, guessing correctly that she had no mirror. “But have you ever listened to yourself?” “How could ah, yer stupid…” “If you came home with me, I could reproduce your dulcet tones on my recording machine. The marvels of phonographic science.” (Half of what he said Applestia could not properly understand.” “But since I’ll be dashed if I’ll invite you home,” he wrinkled his nose, “you’ll have to take my word for it. It’s not only the way you look, it’s the way you talk.” “What’s wrong wit the way ah say things?” “Out of your own mouth! ‘Wot’s wrong wit the wye ah sez things?’” Although the rest of the ponies talked the same as either Jet or Applestia, the crowd round the fire laughed, because it sounded so funny, coming out of the mouth of this surprising Jet Set gent. “What did ah ought to have said ter them fancy ponies?” Applestia backed away, as if they were laughing at her. She talked to the unicorn, and kept her eyes on him. “Try this another time: ‘Were you wanting extra help?’ That would sound so nice and refined, they might not notice you weren’t quite dressed for the part.” Applestia took a deep breath. “Were you…” That sounded wrong to her. “Were ya wantin’ extra help?” Jet screwed up his face as if he’d bitten on a sour apple. “Listen, filly. ‘Were you wanting extra help?’” “Were ya wantin’ extra help?” The crowd laughed again, and she yelled at them. “All right, you try it! You try it, if yall are so clever, ya stupid varmints!” She ran away, pursued by the same kind of empty cackling that would laugh at a drunken old mare, or a dog with a tin can tied to its tail. In her narrow little room, with only Azure to listen, his right head cocked intelligently and his eyes unwinking, Applestia practiced the question which would unlock all doors for her. When she thought it sounded perfect, just like Fancypants, she took it along to the upper-class roads of Canterlot. She found a group and confronted them. “Were yew wantin’ extra help?” They laughed at her. Like the thick-headed idiots in the bakery, they laughed at her, and their laughter was even more unkind, because they all had clean manes and clean clothes and clean hooves and faces and should have known better. Jet Set