“Isn’t it marvelous, Octavia?”
The reverence in my mother’s voice was the same form in sound that I’d seen in her smile the first day we moved. Only a few months after, before I was set to begin attending school that year, my mother spent the most money on something that I’d ever seen her—or, till this day, have still ever seen. After picking up some used mattresses and basic kitchen utensils, we went without any further additions to the house until that day.
I was woken up by my mother, which was an oddity. I understand it’s usually the convention of children to be bright-eyed and ready to go most of the time before their parents—but that day, my mother shook me awake like it was Hearth’s Warming morning and dragged me downstairs with a glimmer in her eyes on the way to the room that had been empty when I went to bed. I don’t know how I slept through the moving, unless the ponies in question happened to be very skilled and very quiet. Given what I appraised to be the cost of the thing they had moved, I suppose that’s not out of the question.
In the center of the room my mother had dubbed the ‘music room,’ where only blank space and far-eyed glances had been before, a huge piano greeted me that morning. Even in my complete ignorance, I could tell it was expensive. Unlike everything else in our house, which was drab and dingy and reeked perpetually of an unknown odor no matter how many times it was washed or cleaned, the piano shone. It glimmered, even with just a hint of light creeping in from outside, like it was a polished stone hewn into a single entity. Even though I didn’t know what it was, or what to make of it, I ‘oooh’d appropriately as my mother opened the door.
“It’s a hoof-crafted original from Prance,” my mother said, standing at the doorway as she held the door open and let me inside. I immediately began circling the thing, like it was even more of a strange, foreign object than it actually was. I was in awe of it, which I think my mother appreciated.
“The kind your father used to play,” she said, running her hoof along the finished body. That was, I think, the first time I heard her mention him. I was almost too occupied to take notice, but I wasn’t about to let the word I had wondered at for some time just slide by.
“Where is Father?” I asked. The word sounded more proper than my youthful intonation could make it. Unlike last time I’d broached the subject, my mother’s expression stayed sedate.
“He left before you were born,” she said, her hoof still on the piano.
“You told the house-selling pony that he passed.” I chewed the memory over for a few seconds before digging out the meaning I’d put together from the context. “Does that mean he died?”
My mother was silent for a few seconds before she turned to me. Her expression was still soft, like the smile on her face was frozen in a kind of consolatory haze.
“Oh, dear, that’s not something we discuss openly with just anypony. Passing is just a... simpler explanation.”
“So he’s not dead?” I stepped towards the piano, getting so close I could feel the glow of its shining surface in my eyes.
“Who knows? Some things, you’ll find, Octavia, are better left uncertain.”
I don’t think at the time I was content with my mother’s explanation, but I was understanding enough at that point to know that further questioning wasn’t likely to lead anywhere. So, with my line of inquiry stymied, I stopped looking at the piano, let my hoof rest on it the way my mother’s did, and looked at it.
Despite the fact that the giant instrument may as well have been an indecipherable machine, there was something that made my touch linger over it. Somehow, there was an energy about it—whether I could feel my mother’s breathless wonder permeating the wood, or if it was simply a foreboding awareness of what it might come to mean.
My mother smiled as she watched me run my hooves over the fine finish until I reached the cover at the front. My mother’s hoof met my own, and I looked up at her. Still smiling.
“Would you like to see?” she asked.
I nodded.
The way she lifted the cover off was almost worshipful—so slow, so carefully, until at last the cover was up, revealing a full span of white and black keys from one end to the other.
I remember letting out an ‘aaah,’ to my mother’s approval. The two of us stood in front of the piano for a while, neither of us speaking, barely breathing, white and black keys shining, inches away from our hooves—until finally, my mother spoke.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Her words came out in a single breath.
I nodded again.
“It’s alright,” she said. “You can touch it.”
I was apprehensive. Even being around something so new and pure seemed wrong.
“Go on,” she said. “That highest one there, the white one. Press down on it.”
While I was reticent to paw at something so beautiful with my clumsy, dirty hooves, I did as my mother requested. Softly, nervously, with no certainty, I put my hoof on the highest key and pushed it down.
A single, quiet note rang out. As it hung in the air, so softly, my mother closed her eyes and sighed. She waited until the last trace of the note had vanished before opening her eyes again.
“Your father could play so beautifully,” she said, running her hoof over the keys without depressing them. She stopped halfway and lifted her hoof.
“And someday, you will too.”
I nodded, silent, knowing still there was no sense in asking questions. Not knowing that, as the years went by, the piano I was so in awe of at that moment would become the thing I hated more than anything else in the world.
Initially, my mother intended to teach me herself. In the first few weeks, when the piano was still new, she would sit down with me in the newly christened ‘music room,’ plunk me down on the stool and tell me which keys I should press. Even with a complete ignorance of what I was doing, I knew the notes sounded pretty—but some were prettier than others, and I wasn’t sure what to do to make them all sound that way.
“This,” my mother said, pointing to the white key before the two black ones, “is a C. Press down on that one.”
I pressed. A middle C played.
“Good. Now, that one, down two—press that.”
I pressed. A lower note rang out. My mother smiled.
“That’s an A. Those two notes are very special. Play the first one again.”
I pressed. C.
“Now the other.”
A.
“Now keep playing them like that, back and forth.”
My timing must have been terrible, but I tried my best to do as directed, sticking my tongue out between my teeth and focusing as hard as I could on going back and forth between those notes. C. A. C. A.
After a minute or so, my mother began to sing.
It was the same tune she always sang—the one from when I was too young to know anything but her voice, that she hummed to me when she put me to sleep; that she’d hum when tidying the house, and later dusting the figures she collected on every available inch of shelving; or whistled, when making dinner. It’s a tune that, to this day, I cannot forget.
But, with the clumsy back and forth of my playing, it somehow sounded different. More, in a way.
My mother sang for a while as I played, until she stopped with a soft smile and held her hoof up to signal to me to do the same.
“Your father used to play that song for me,” she said.
That was the first time she taught me, but not the last. Subsequent sessions, however, were not as productive. For one thing, though I appreciated the beauty of the sounds I was making in an abstract sense, I didn’t find anything particularly engaging about the piano. I sat down at it once or twice of my own accord to plunk out a few notes, ignorant of theory and still wondering why certain notes sounded better than others. I remember making up a simple song or two, but didn’t have much more interest than that. After a few weeks, the shiny new piano was boring, and I went back to playing games with myself, and wondering aloud to my mother what our neighbours might be like, and if they would play with me if I said hello. My mother put up with half a month of my relative disinterest until she sat me down one morning and informed me she was going to teach me.
It was, in a word, miserable.
For one, despite the basic knowledge she had displayed, as well as her claim of a background in opera, my mother seemed to have no real understanding of theory. She would tell me certain places to press but seemed to be as unsure feeling her way along the keys as I was. She only knew a few songs that she could attempt to translate to the piano, and while she would put up with my amateurish attempts to play at her insistence for a while, she would quickly become frustrated, stressing me to ‘play better’. I had no idea what that meant—the only notes I knew were the ones she told me—and after my desperate attempts at embellishments, which sounded awful, she would scream at me, saying things like “Your father played much better!” Sometimes I would cry, but mostly just apologized.
Two months after we got our piano, my birthday came.
The day was, for all intents and purposes, unremarkable. I didn’t have the benefit of exposure to friends or other ponies to know what I was missing, other than what I had absorbed through convention and assimilation from text or observation. I wasn’t completely shut off from the world—my mother would let me out to fraternize with the ponies playing outside but was always lingering nearby to swoop in if somepony she deemed unsavoury caught my attention. More often than not she would prefer to have me practicing, even though I still had no understanding of exactly what it was I was practicing. We had a meal in the evening that was very much the same as every other meal we’d had that week.
“I’ve gotten you a gift,” she said. It was sudden, an interruption as I was midway through a mouthful of food. I remember being taken aback. While the day that far had been like any other, a gift meant acknowledgement. It meant my mother knew it was my birthday as much as I did, and all the hopes and dreams I had built up might at least be salvaged in something I could use to pretend that for at least one day a year, I was significant.
“Here,” she said, hoisting something over the table. She set it down and shoved it towards me. It was fully wrapped, and the flowery pattern of the paper made a shuffling sound as it moved across the table. I pushed my plate aside and took the box in my hooves. It was much smaller than I expected, but it was still a gift—and so, I opened it with fervor, tearing the wrapping paper off with no reverence for its intricate design.
The wrapper paper fell away to reveal a simple wooden box. I pushed it open and peered inside. A strange object greeted me, with a long arm and several notches along the front.
“What is it?” I asked.
“It’s a metronome,” my mother said simply, as though I would know what the word meant.
“A what?” I picked the object up curiously, and with some apprehension. Even from just looking at it, the same way with our piano, I could tell it was expensive, fragile.
“A metronome,” my mother repeated. “It’s used to keep time when practicing music.”
She said it with a certain smugness. Maybe that much is misremembered in the haze of the emotion that overtook me at that point. Somehow, in all the weeks of forced failure at the piano, and of a whole birthday made to culminate in a gift I had no understanding or use for, my emotions came together. I remember the tears starting, for once without the crying that usually went with them. A hot stream trickling down my cheeks as I held in my hooves the gift that my mother had given me, and at that moment that I loathed as much as her.
“It uses quartz to keep accurate,” she explained, not noticing the clenching of my jaw or the pouring of tears from my eyes. “It’s very high quality.”
“Why did you get this for me?” She looked up at me then as if seeing me for the first time, and at that point must have noticed my crying. The soaking of my coat the way that it did when sorrow flowed over. The way my hooves shook as I held the metronome.
“Oh, come now, Octavia, show some tact. It was very expensive, and goodness knows you’ll be making use of it.”
“For what?” I practically shouted the question. I had enough sense to set the metronome back into its box, knowing full well that if I kept hold of it I was likely to hurl it into the wall.
“What do you mean ‘for what’?” she asked. “Why, for your piano, of course.”
“I hate the piano!” I stood up from the table then, barely high enough to see over it from my chair, which I quickly dismounted. I wanted to turn and run at that moment, but the air was too thick for me to cut myself free just yet. I could feel my mother’s contempt for my display of emotion twisting into her own bitterness, evident as it shone through in the down-curl of her mouth.
“There’s no need for that sort of sentiment, dear. You may say that now, but I can feel it in you; you’ve got an aptitude, the same as your father, and I’ll let myself go to the grave before I allow you to waste it.”
I didn’t speak then. As much as words might have bubbled behind my lips, wanting so badly to let me spit them at her like acid, I held my tongue. She waited a few seconds, then adjusted her plate as though it was entirely proper to return to her meal. That was enough to give me the strength to speak up, though my temper had begun to abate.
“I don’t want to play the piano,” I said. “I hate it.”
“There you go again. Really, don’t be foolish, Octavia. You were born to play the piano as sure as you were born at all.”
“But what if I want to play something else?” I tried to reason, looking around the room. Various statuettes and figurines had begun to coalesce in all rooms of the house by that point, though they were then a far-stretch from the colossal collection they would one day become. On the mantlepiece near the living room window, a miniature orchestra sat, frozen in the perpetual motion of their soundless performance.
“Like the violin?” I asked. “Or the cello?”
My mother cleared her throat quite distinctly, as though she’d practiced it in another life.
“Well, that would be simply a shame, because it’s the piano you’re going to play.”
I remember visibly shaking as I stared at my mother from the other side of the table, willing her to suddenly burst into flame—to wither into nothing for the stupid ‘high-quality’ quartz she had given me on the one day I was meant to feel special.
“I’ve signed you up for lessons as well. Not that I imagine you might be convinced of how generous a gift of that sort is... but you’ll thank me when all is said and done.”
That was the last I could take. I ran up to my room, plate of half-eaten food still on the table, metronome in its wooden box. My mother, chewing daintily, not batting an eyelash at her daughter as she ran away, crying.
Piano lessons started next week.
Despite the eloquent piano in the downstairs of our house, I went to the local music store for lessons—Hoof and Sound. The practice room in the back was a good deal more clinical than our house: the walls were padded with a green material I was told was soundproof, and the shelves were lined with textbooks, musical implements and instruments, folios and sheet music and carrying cases. There was a whole shelf of metronomes, which, when shown, prompted me to present my birthday gift and quietly say that I had brought my own. The pony who showed me around just chuckled at that.
He was the same pony who led me into the back room for lessons. While faces are something I find I have no gift for remembering, I do remember the way he looked. He was an older stallion with a great big bushy beard and mustache that circled the entire lower half of his face in pure white. His mane was the same colour, a brilliant contrast against his coat, which was a matte brown. A swirl of music notes circled on his flank, surely at least assurance for my mother that he was good at what he did. At least he had the benefit of direction in his cutie mark: my mother, for example, was possessed of an empty crystal wineglass on her side. While there are inferences to be drawn from such a mark, there’s likely a great deal more about it best left unsaid.
As he led me into the practice room, I remember feeling the worst I’d ever felt up till then. At least in the comfort of my home, no matter how awful my mother decided to be, or how miserable I was for disappointing her, at least then I was safe. Out in the wide world, away from my mother’s watching eye, I was setting hoof entirely into the unknown. The music instructor seemed nice, but that wasn’t enough to stay the rapid imaginings in my head of horrible scenarios and unspeakable horrors that might be waiting for me, hidden under his veneer of a smile. More than that, it wasn’t that I was afraid of being killed or kidnapped or tortured; I was afraid of being judged. My mother had given me a good preclusion for that.
“So,” he said as he sat down with me at the piano. His hooves came noticeably close to mine, and I shuffled sideways as imperceptibly as I could manage.. I could feel a sweat on my coat. “You want to learn the piano, eh?” He had a voice like a real old stallion, or like the imaginary, ideal version of one: loose dentures and cursing adolescent colts and fillies to get off his lawn, dagnabbit. Now I can recall it as being a delightfully pastoral sort of reassurance, but at the time, it was terrifying.
‘So you want to learn the piano,’ he’d asked. No. Of all the things in the world I did not want to do, this was at the top of the list.
“Yes,” I said, a squeak so quiet I could feel him lean towards me to hear better.
“Well,” he said, “you’ve chosen quite the instrument. There’s no instrument so rich in history or complexity as the piano. It’s capable of some of the world’s most moving music, and the choice of some of the most talented performers in Equestria, or even in the world.”
I didn’t say anything. I just shuffled further down the bench in an attempt to move further away from his low-hanging beard. I could feel the edge of the bench underneath my legs.
“Your mother tells me you already know how to play a little. Would you like to show me?”
No. Please, just let me go home, let me do anything but the piano, let me go home and kick the one downstairs until it’s in pieces on the floor and I never have to look at it again.
“I guess.”
He smiled at me like I was the cutest thing in the world, which I may have been to him. While he was smiling, I wanted to throw up.
But, he stood up from the bench and let me slide to the center, which I did with hesitance. I took up the keys with the same attitude, letting my hooves hover over them as though I might play them only by letting my body fall apart and collapse forward.
With my breath laboured and my heart beating louder in my chest than anything else I could hear, I played for him the simple song that I knew, and that I had always known, in some way or another. I made a great many mistakes, even noticeable in a way that I could tell. There was no end to the song, as my mother was usually the one to get me to stop, by humming out the last bar of the melody which I would attempt to follow with my right hoof, or by screaming at me when I got something particularly wrong.
My hooves shook as I settled them into my lap. I didn’t turn to look at him.
He made a sound that, in my terrified brain, didn’t register as a chuckle until I turned around and saw him smiling.
“That’s quite impressive for a filly your age. Do you know the name of that song you were playing?”
I shook my head.
“It’s a very famous song,” he said, standing to reach a hoof up to one of the many shelves of sheet music. He shuffled through the folders before pulling one out and opening it. He gestured for me to slide down the bench, which I did, giving him more than enough room to sit, whereupon he lifted the sheet he had selected to the holder and laid it out atop the keys.
I looked up at it as though it was a bomb waiting to go off. The notes on the page leered back at me, a slew of menacing curly-queues, dots and dashes and lines and symbols and notation written in a language I couldn’t interpret, even when it was using letters I recognized. Concerto. Allegrezza.
“It’s an old, old folk tune from overseas... nowhere in particular, and in fact the original composer isn’t even known. Over the years it’s been adapted to a variety of formats... operas, symphonies, concertos... that’s the one I’ve put up there. Have a look, would you?”
I peered at the sheet music again. Somehow, I was meant to believe that the incomprehensible mess of squiggles I was looking at was the same thing as the song I had just played.
“Do you know what any of that means?” The instructor leaned in close enough that I could feel the phantom tickle of his beard on my shoulder.
I shook my head.
“That one there,” he said, gesturing to the first in a cluster of black blobs, “is a note called C... along with some other notes above it that make it sound nicer.”
“I know C,” I said, letting the admission slip out before I could stop it.
The old pony raised an eyebrow at me.
“So you can read after all?”
I shook my head again.
The instructor cocked his head at me. He held a stare for a few seconds before shifting his hoof slightly to the right.
“Do you know what note that is?”
My tongue felt thick in my mouth, but something inside compelled me to answer.
“A,” I said.
“Yes, that is an A. You’re sure you don’t know how to read this?”
Again, head shake.
“What about this one?” he asked, moving his hoof over.
“C,” I said. “Then A again. F. G. C, G—”
He held up a hoof to stop my flood of notes. I would have kept going through the whole song otherwise, I’m sure.
I could feel myself breathing, staring intently at my hooves at rest in my lap.
“You’ve got quite an aptitude for music, miss... I’m sorry, I’ve forgotten your name.”
“Octavia,” I blurted out, hooves still tucked between my legs.
“Grace Note,” he said. “Pleased to make your acquaintance.”
I stared down and said nothing.
“Is this a song you’d like to learn to play, Octavia?”
My first instinct was to shake my head, to be rid of that song and the piano and to go home and never listen to another not of music for the rest of my life.
But a face jumped out at me behind my eyes. Her face, soft, smiling as she swayed and sang to me as I sat at the piano. The metronome I’d pulled from its wooden box ticking on top of our piano, instead of nestled safely in the bag I’d brought with me to my lesson. C. A. C. A.
“Yes,” I said.
Grace Note nodded with a wide grin on his face.
“Wonderful. This particular version is quite complex, but I’m sure I can find some simpler versions for you to start with.” He gathered the sheet music and stood up to put it back on the shelf.
“Tell me... are you doing any technique exercises?” he asked while straightening the music folders on their shelf.
I shook my head for a second before realizing he couldn’t see me.
“No.”
“I noticed your timing was a little off—nothing to be worried about, certainly not at your age! But, you would certainly benefit from some simple practice drills—tempo, note articulation, etcetera. You’ll want to get a decent metronome, though I’m sure I have one you can borrow if need be.”
“I have my own,” I said. Grace Note turned to me with a slanted grin.
“Ah, that’s right, you do! Forgive my memory, it’s not what it used to be. Did you bring it with you?”
Nod.
“May I see it?”
I dived into my bag like I wanted to burrow into it, scurrying through until I found the birthday gift I’d brought with me. I held it out to Grace Note. His eyes lit up when he saw it.
“My word! That’s quite the timekeeper you have. I can see you’re serious about this music business.”
I didn’t say anything—just jumped up onto the bench and sat with my metronome in my hooves.
“A good metronome is invaluable,” Grace Note said, taking a seat next to me. “Anyone can read music after enough practice, but timing is something very difficult to learn without proper assistance—like that metronome there. If you study, however, you can develop a sense of rhythm that will benefit you your whole life! Rhythm, believe it or not, is everywhere. In movement, in speech... and of course, in music.”
Quiet. Didn’t want to say anything.
Grace Note seemed to think that was funny. He laughed and patted me on the shoulder, which made me cringe slightly.
“Well, I can tell you’re tired of listening to an old stallion’s ramblings. Shall we get on with the lesson?”
I nodded.
Over the rest of the hour, Grace Note taught me more about music than anything I’d learned from my mother. I learned that the few letters I knew were just some of a slew of notes, including the ugly sounding black keys that were called sharps. I learned that a cluster of notes together was called a chord, though I was told I should work on my articulation before trying those. And, I was shown how to practice to the steady tick-tick of the metronome, keeping time as I ran through a simple, shortened scale, over and over again.
Before I knew it, the lesson was over.
“Well, that’s probably enough for today. How are you feeling? Does it seem like too much to take in all at once?”
I nodded, mostly because I was sure it was what he was expecting.
“Well, that’s understandable. Don't worry about getting it all at once. After all, you’re getting quite a head start. You’ve got your whole life ahead of you to practice.”
Yes. My whole life.
“Now, just get your metronome there, if you could. Your mother should be here to pick you up soon.”
I’d grabbed my bag, along with my metronome and new folders of exercises, and was just about to walk out of the practice room when I saw it. Leaning against the wall, a life-sized version of the one being played in stasis on our mantelpiece: a cello.
Grace Note must have caught me looking, because he slowed behind me as we approached the door. For the first time of my own volition that day, I spoke.
“Is that... a cello?”
“Ah, you’ve got a good eye, it certainly is. Crafted right here in Ponyville, I believe. This one’s used mostly by students, for practice, so it’s not in the best shape. Still has a good sound to it though.”
“Can I... can I see it?”
Grace Note’s eyes lit up. He laughed in that way I was beginning to notice he always laughed, and nodded his head after a minute.
“Of course you can, my dear.” He picked up the cello and held it towards me. “Go on.”
It felt different.
The wood wasn’t anything like the lacquered wood of our piano. It was worn—used—real. It felt a bit heavy as I held it, but it leaned on the ground easily, into a natural feeling fit against my body. I ran my hoof over the strings, touching an instrument’s strings for the first time, as the piano’s were always locked away it its giant, hollow body. I touched them lightly, barely strong enough to move them at all.
Grace Note cleared his throat. I looked up at him, and he held something out.
A bow. Just like the figure had.
“You’ll want this as well,” he said.
The bow felt unfamiliar, like a new limb meant to be added to my body. I turned it over a few times until I found the side I knew from the figure must go against the string. I could feel my hoof shaking as I set it against the cello.
“Go on,” Grace Note said. His voice sounded bright.
So I went. I held the bow against the string and pulled.
No piano could ever make a sound like that. A single, low, sorrowful note, held like a mourning wail, trembling at the edges as the bow moved across.
The room shook with it, or perhaps just my body, lingering in suspension until the final traces of the note ebbed. At some point, I opened my eyes and remembered to breathe.
Grace Note was there, smiling at me.
“It’s quite a remarkable sound, isn’t it?”
I don’t think I even managed to nod.
I felt something. I’m not sure what it was, or even looking back, how I might describe it. It was something like a bubble welling up inside me, but bursting, all with a pleasant warmness that seeped from my chest to every inch of my body. It broke, and flooded, and in that room the air might have shone.
Amongst all that, I felt a particular tingle on my side. It took me long enough to look towards it that I wasn’t the first to react.
“My word!” Grace Note practically shouted. It was that which turned my head, just in time to see the final sparkles of the thing that had appeared on my side. A symbol which I had no understanding of at the time, other than the very limited flirtation with it I’d had over the last hour under Grace Note’s instruction. A symbol that I know now is called a clef, emblazoned on my flank.
“In all my years of teaching, I’ve never had that happen before.” Grace Note was so taken he had to sit down on the piano bench again, leaving me there with the cello and bow in my hooves, eyes glazed over like I was on another planet. For the first time, the sound I had made wasn’t something I hated. It wasn’t something my mother had told me to play. And now a mark of it was left on my side.
“Remarkable, my dear girl, simply remarkable. Are you certain you shouldn’t be studying the cello instead?”
I think I set the cello down then and took another minute to examine my mark. I can’t decide if some cruel irony placed it there, or if the heavenly agent that bestows cutie marks simply didn’t know that a cello is usually played with a bass clef—at least in that way it was convenient to explain, which is exactly what I did when my mother showed up to retrieve me. With as limited elaboration as I could manage, I just told her I had gotten the mark during my music lesson. Me, still-not-old-enough-to-be-in-school Octavia, had gotten her cutie mark during a music lesson.
“Well, that’s it then, dear. You really are destined for the piano, you see?”
I never did tell her the rest of what had happened.