The Mixed-Up Life of Brad
by D. G. D. Davidson
XII. Brad, Toil, Tears, and Sweat
When Brad stepped out onto the elevated portico outside the castle’s main entrance, he looked into the moonlight-washed courtyard and saw a long car, midnight blue and decorated with spikes. Chained to it and lounging before it were two of the wraith ponies, probably the same two who had lain before Luna’s throne throughout the Council. Their platinum barding glistened dully, and their bat-like wings fluttered in a faint breeze. One of the wraiths lifted his head and stared at Brad. His golden eyes caught the light like a cat’s.
Stainless Steel patted Brad on the back. “Have fun, boy. I’m headin’ back to the party. I think that mermare likes me.”
Brad glanced at him. “Don’t waste your time. I hear she’s engaged to an aquatic mammal.”
“What?” Stainless held a hoof to his chest. “I like water! I’m a mammal!”
“Sorry. You just can’t compare.”
“Hmmph. Well, there’s other fish in the Sparklin’ Sea. Anyhow, nighty night.”
He turned to go, but Brad grabbed his saddle. “Do I really have to do this?”
“You wanna say no to the princess of the night?”
“Kinda.”
“I wouldn’t. She’s the mysterious, reclusive sort, but she ain’t one to mess with. Two things to know about her: never tell her no, and if she challenges you to anything, for the love of Celestia, lose.”
“How about you come with me?”
“Not on your life.”
Brad looked over his shoulder at the wraiths. One still stared with shining eyes and now opened his mouth to reveal a forked tongue and a set of sharp, needle-like teeth. He hissed like a snake.
Brad turned back to Stainless Steel. “Please?”
“Sorry, boy. I’ll see you in the mornin’—if you’re alive and sane, that is. Cheers!” With that, Stainless trotted back into the warmth and light of the palace’s halls, and the castle’s heavy doors reverberated like thunder when they closed.
Brad’s heart beat hard. His palms went slick, so he tried to wipe them on his clothes, but his clothes were still soaked with saltwater. He took a step down one of the palace’s steep, curving staircases, and he found his knees shaking.
“Okay,” he muttered to himself. “I can do this.” A few more steps.
At last, he reached the ground, and he tried his best to look casual as he strolled up the cobbled walkway toward the wraiths. His mouth went dry, and a lump formed in his throat. He thought for a moment about giving the wraith ponies as wide a berth as possible and diving straight into the car, but he steeled himself, set his jaw, and decided to walk up to them instead.
The one was still staring, and his tufted ears perked forward. Brad stepped to within a few feet of him, raised a hand, and said, “Uh, hello?”
“’Lo yerself,” the wraith answered in a thick brogue. “’Er Worship is waitin’ fer ye, so what be the ’oldup?”
Brad blinked. Somehow, he hadn’t expected the wraiths to talk. “Sorry. I got caught up in the party. Um, I’m Brad, by the—”
“I know who ye be!” the wraith snapped. “Me name’s Shivers. This ’ere is D’Artagnan.” He climbed to his feet and thumped a hoof to his chest. “We be chariot steeds. So, let’s get this over with, wot?”
Feeling relieved, Brad nodded. “Sure.” He started for the chariot, but Shivers snorted and stamped.
“’Ey! Ain’t they got no courtesies where ye come from, lad? Are ye too good to greet th’ help? Is that it?”
“What?”
Shivers snorted again. “Ye walk straight for yer seat an’ ye dinna even sniff me nose! Do ye think just because we’re wraiths we ain’t got no manners?”
Brad stood still for a moment, trying to think of an answer. Finally, he simply raised his palms and repeated, “What?”
With a grunt, Shivers, his chains and armor clanking, walked to him, craned his neck, and took several sharp puffs right in front of Brad’s face. His breath was hot. “Ye stink o’ th’ brine,” he said. “Them filthy mermares is inside, I ken. Tartarus take the lot of ’em, dirty monsters.”
“They seemed nice enough to me.”
“Aye! Course they did. They bat their eyes and sing sweetly to lure ye down, an’ they promise eternal love.” Shivers bared his sharp fangs, and Brad leaned back. “But all they want is yer seed, lad, an’ once they have that—”
He drew a hoof across his throat.
Brad chuckled nervously and rubbed the back of his neck. “You know, I get the impression some ponies don’t trust you guys so much either—”
Shivers hissed and pounded the ground with both front hooves. Brad leapt backwards.
“She promised eternal night!” Shivers howled. “Our dams an’ sires, fer forty generations, passed along th’ promise, told us we’d ’ave our vengeance on th’ sun-lovin’ cowards! But she lied! Lied!”
He bared his fangs again and leaned forward, as if revealing a confidence. “Ah, but we be loyal, see? We wraiths serve the dark princess even if she ain’t be bringin’ no ever-night, an’ we even make all nicey-nice with Celestia—Tartarus take her, too—who hunted us down fer a thousand years an’ forced us to live in caves an’ holes.”
Brad’s heart began pounding again. He tugged at his collar and said, “Well . . . I, uh, hope all that works out for you. I’m just gonna go ahead and get in the chariot now—”
“Hey!” Shivers shouted. He cocked his head toward his companion. “Ye ain’t sniffed D’Artagnan’s nose yet!”
D’Artagnan, looking bored, whinnied softly. With a fresh lump in his throat, Brad lowered his face to meet the pony’s nose with his own. D’Artagnan merely snorted, turned his head aside, and spat on the ground.
With that unpleasant business finished, Brad sought refuge in the dark car, in the back of which he found a broad, thinly padded seat. He had barely seated himself when Shivers and D’Artagnan reared, spread their membranous wings, and, with shrill cries like bats’, leapt into the air.
A sharp wind cut through his wet clothes, and Brad felt his stomach slide into his groin. Glad for the chariot’s high back, he hunkered down to avoid seeing the ground drop away as they shot upward into the dark sky. As they flew up into the darkness, the over-salted food he’d eaten threatened to make an unwelcome second appearance.
After a moment, the flight leveled out, and he dared rise to his knees and peek over the side. Canterlot stretched far below, a cluster of tall spires ablaze with lit windows and fiery lamps. The city appeared to hover, and he thought he could make out, far below it, a lake and a river glistening with moonlight. It seemed that Canterlot really did sit on a high cliff.
Aside from the lights of Canterlot, the land was pitch black. The night was cloudless, the stars overhead shone bright and cold, and the Milky Way formed a thick band through the heavens. Brad searched for familiar stars and was surprised to discover the Big Dipper and Orion’s Belt. It seemed this world, if it had the same stars as Earth, must really be in an alternate universe and not simply somewhere else in his own.
Overhead, some dark shape silently blotted out a swath of the stars, and Brad groaned and sank down into his seat when the wraiths shot upward toward it.
He could easily guess where they were taking him: that dark stain in the sky had to be the Black Ship.
Brad wasn’t much of a reader, but he had a vague taste for science fiction and fantasy. When he had first seen Luna’s menacing dirigible, he had thought this world was the manifestation of all his childhood daydreams. He had been eager at last to leave his locked room and explore Equestria’s expanses.
But now he wanted his locked room again. All he could think of, as the flying car hurtled upward toward the silent and lightless craft, were the black ships in Lovecraft’s Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath, which carried their unwitting human cargo to the flabby and pestilent monsters of the moon, who sacrificed their prisoners to the dark outer gods.
The chariot drew steadily closer to the ship, but no more details became visible. The Black Ship was indeed entirely lightless: only the starless patch in the sky grew bigger and gradually transformed from an amorphous blob into the defined silhouette of a square-rigged sailing vessel.
It seemed, however, that some of the stars—dozens, in fact—had broken loose from the sky and now fluttered around the ship like moths around a flame, winking in and out and then reappearing. Brad watched these flitting, yellowish lights with growing curiosity until he realized that he was not seeing stars at all, but moonlight glinting from the eyes of the Black Ship’s crew of wraiths.
Shivers and D’Artagnan at last pulled up alongside the ship and hovered. Somehow, the chariot hovered too and did not drop when the forward movement ceased. There was a coarse rasping of wood on wood, by which Brad heard rather than saw a plank extend to the chariot’s side.
“Welcome aboard, mate!” a voice called from somewhere in the blackness.
“Cor!” Shivers shouted. ‘Give ’im some light there, Cap’n! He’s a sun-lovin’ ninny what canna see ’is hoof afore ’is face! Do ye want ’im to fall to ’is death, an’ the princess lose ’er prey?”
“Arrh!” the voice from the ship cried. “Ye there, ye idlin’ milksop! Lay larboard an’ bring a lamp!”
“Aye aye, Cap’n!” called another voice, and then a flickering, orange light pierced the darkness.
By the light, Brad could make out the faces of several wraiths awaiting him on the ship. Most were guards in dull platinum barding, but one, which Brad assumed was the captain, was marked with an eye patch and topped with a tricornered hat.
He could also make out the plank, a thin sheet of black wood that weaved and bobbed in the air as the wind tossed the dirigible. He took a deep breath, put a foot on the plank, and paused a moment to consider Shivers’s use of the word prey.
The plank bucked, and he immediately pitched forward onto his face. He reached out and wrapped his arms around the plank to keep himself from falling.
He heard bouts of coarse laughter as ponies’ legs reached out, wrapped their fetlocks around his arms, and dragged him aboard.
“Look lively there, mates!” the captain shouted. “He ain’t got ’is airlegs! Haul ’im in like a halyard!”
“Heave ho!” the wraiths shouted with more rough chuckles, and then they dragged him onto the ship.
“Welcome aboard,” the captain repeated.
“Thanks,” Brad gasped. He tried to stand, but the ship’s cables creaked, and the ship swayed, and he fell to his knees again.
Through the darkness, Brad heard a feminine, regal voice call, “Captain Reaver, bring our guest aft.”
“Aye aye, Yer Worship!” the captain yelled back. With his teeth, he yanked the glowing lantern from his crewpony and held it out to Brad. “Ye be wantin’ this, I reckon,” he said around the lamp’s handle.
Brad took the lamp, stood again, and wobbled back and forth as he followed the captain toward a set of stairs leading up to the poop deck. He held the light low in order to see the deck and get an idea of his footing, but he still tripped repeatedly.
As he placed a foot on the stairs, he felt again a strange sensation of loneliness and quietude, as if he were standing on a high, windswept plateau, yet at the same time he felt a drowsy sense of dread, as if he had plunged into water, peered into the depths, and beheld some dark and hungry creature peering back.
Princess Luna was near. No doubt it was her voice he’d heard.
“Steady, mate,” the captain said, and he pushed a shoulder up against Brad’s hip.
“Thanks.”
“Can ye make it? Them stairs is hard for a greenie.”
“I’ll make it.” The stairs were steep, and Brad had to lean forward, grasp them with one hand, and inch his way up on his knees. The higher he climbed, the greater his sense of desolation and loneliness grew.
“I thank thee, young Brad, for coming at our summoning,” Luna’s voice said somewhere in the darkness ahead of him. “Thou hast suffered much these past days. Were I in thy place, I would shun companionship and wish to contemplate my fate alone.”
“I’m more of a people person,” Brad replied as he reached the top of the steps and stood upright. He nearly tumbled backwards down the stairs, but the captain nudged him in the seat of his pants, so he fell forward instead. The candle in the lamp went out, and the lamp rolled away into the darkness.
Rubbing his scuffed nose, Brad rose to his knees and found he needed no light to see Luna, who stood at the helm with a silver-clad hoof upon the wheel. Her midnight blue coat glowed faintly, and her misty mane twinkled with stars. Her hair blew in a breeze all its own, and its outer edges were indistinct, so it appeared that the whole of the night sky flowed out from her. Her eyes were bright, and as she turned them on Brad, he could see several emotions, from anger to sadness to glee, running across them like clouds scudding over the moon.
“Thou art welcome aboard the Selenic Maiden,” Luna said. She turned her bright but stormy gaze on the captain and added, “I shall take my guest to my cabin. If you would take the wheel?”
“Aye, Yer Worship.”
Princess Luna walked toward Brad, and as she approached, her bright eyes filled all his vision. He felt again the touch of her silver boot against his forehead, and then he fell senseless.
When he came to, he found himself lying on a cushioned divan in a small, windowless, but richly appointed chamber. Brocaded drapes hung from the walls, and a thick rug covered the floor. Against one wall stood a desk topped with a large chronometer, a sextant, and a map weighted at its corners. Lighting the room were hanging oil lamps, which flickered and dripped as the ship rocked. All the colors of this chamber were blacks and reds and rich purples, and over everything hung a rich and heavy scent of incense. The room, despite its beauty, felt cramped, oppressive, and close.
Opposite the desk was a door, which, when it opened, flooded Brad with fresh sensations of loneliness and drowsiness. Princess Luna walked in, closely followed by a wraith with a severely lined face, a high, stiff collar, and a sloppily tied bowtie.
“Ah, thou art revived,” Luna said. “Good. I have something that shall strengthen thee.” She inclined her head to the wraith. “Starch Pudding, serve him.”
Silently, the wraith placed on a low table in front of the divan a weighted cup filled some steaming brew.
Brad’s hand shook as he reached for the cup. When he tasted the drink, he found it to be tea laced with some bitter herb. As he sipped, the sensations Luna produced in him ebbed.
She smiled. “Doth it please thee?”
“The taste isn’t great, but I’m feeling better.” He swallowed hard and took another sip. “Can I ask, what’s with the thees and thous? You weren’t talking like that before.”
Her grin widened, and she showed her canines, which gave her a fierce, savage look. “I remember the more refined speech of an older and better age, and I am still more comfortable with it than with the vulgar talk of modern ponies.”
“I see.”
She put a hoof to her breast. “I daresay I prefer the air to the ground nowadays. Because this time is peaceful, the ponies have grown soft, and thus the peasants are uppity and forget their proper place. But on a ship, there is danger as a matter of course, so the old hierarchy remaineth intact: the airponies keep to the forecastle as they ought, their officers keep amidships, and the captain hath pride of place at the stern.”
She leaned toward him, and her toothy grin caused sweat to bead on his forehead. “Dost thou know that even I, princess though I am, cannot order the captain in the running of his ship? I say to him, ‘Take me here,’ or ‘Take me there,’ and he doth exactly as I wish. But were I to say, ‘Reef the topsails, unfurl the jib, and run the engine at half power,’ he would scorn me and ignore me, or perhaps rebuke me, for the ship is his domain. Is that not wonderful?”
For a long moment, she continued to smile at him as if expecting a response. She seemed strangely thrilled to have a ship captain she couldn’t order around.
“That’s great,” said Brad.
“’Tis marvelous, for it sheweth that even a princess must know her place in the order of things.” Luna moved toward the chair before her desk, and Starch Pudding, without the slightest change in his grave demeanor, placed a cushion on the seat before Luna settled herself onto it.
“We owe thee an apology,” Luna said. “One such as thee hath not appeared in our land for many a year. Even Celestia hath forgotten the old lores—though she never took the interest in them that I have.”
Brad sat up and rubbed his temples with his free hand as he finished his drink. “One like me? You mean a human? There have been humans here before?”
Luna tapped a hoof against her chin. “Perhaps. But nay, I mean one with such sensitivity to magic. ’Twas a rare condition, even in my day.”
Brad’s hand was steady as he set the cup down on the table.
“Herb lore, too, is much neglected in this decadent age,” Luna said. “Had Princess Cadance fed thee this, much suffering couldst thou have avoided.”
“What is it?”
“Tea. ’Tis one of the few pleasures of an airpony, who calleth it ‘water bewitched.’ In this case, he speaketh rightly, for I have put a magic herb in it.”
“What herb?”
“Nightshade.”
Brad coughed and doubled over. “But that’s—”
“Nay, I have taken the hurt from it. A stone pulled from the gizzard of a cock on the night of a full moon when Jove blazeth in the Twelfth House, if crushed and mixed with any potion, destroyeth all poison. Knowest thou not this?”
Brad rubbed his throat. “It’s news to me.”
“Then thy education is as shoddy as any modern pony’s. A pity. But despair not!” She leaned toward him, and her eyes gleamed. “When we two enter the Deeper Slumber, I shall take thee to read of the Ponykotic Manuscripts, and thus shall I initiate thee in the secrets of the arcane arts. Art thou not excited?”
“About that—”
“But we have a journey still before us, young Brad! For I dare not take thee, fresh and untrained, into the blackest realms of Dream unless we slumber within my wards. Without the protections I shall place upon thee, thou wouldst go mad with terror! Therefore to my fortress we fly, and there we make our bed.”
“Bed. Ah. Yes, I wanted to say—”
“In the meantime, however, we have an hour to while away. Playest thou chess?”
Brad blinked. “What?”
“Chess. Dost thou play? ’Tis a noble game, but I take thee, by thy simple ways, for a peasant.”
Brad rubbed the back of his neck. “Funny you ask that. When I was seven, my dad started paying me a dollar every time I played chess with him. Dad was weird about some things—he always said a real man should know how to chop wood, fix an engine, build a deck, and play chess. I don’t know why that was his list of manly things, but it was.”
His shoulders drooped, and he stared at his cup on the tabletop. “I miss my dad . . .”
“Thou playest,” said Luna with a nod. “That pleaseth me.”
She turned her chair around to face him, and she swept the empty teacup to the floor, from whence Starch Pudding, apparently straining to keep his dignity, picked it up. Unfolding the top of the table, Luna revealed a chessboard, which she then turned sideways to expose a secret compartment, out of which she pulled a set of elaborately carved pieces of ebony and ivory.
The pieces, Brad saw, resembled ponies. The white pawns looked much like Celestia’s gold-clad guards, and the black pawns looked like Luna’s platinum-barded wraiths. The white rooks were finely carved images of Canterlot’s spires, whereas the black rooks looked like some sort of squarish black tower. Some pieces were apparently different in this world: the “bishops” were ponies carrying pocket watches, and the “queens” looked much like the armored pawns, only bigger and with crowns built into their helmets. The “kings” were Celestia and Luna themselves, except Luna’s piece looked somehow darker and more malevolent than the real princess did, and was clad in purplish armor.
After she put the pieces in their places, Luna turned the board so that the black was on Brad’s side.
She smiled thinly. “Prithee forgive my manners, young Brad. It is of course the custom to let the guest play as Celestia, but since I never play as Nightmare, thou must. Thou dost understand this, I assume?”
“Of course,” said Brad, who didn’t.
Luna grinned so widely that she again showed her well-developed tusks, and, across her bright but stormy eyes, signs of pleasure now passed more frequently than rage or sorrow.
With the solemn expression unchanged on his craggy face, Starch Pudding stepped up behind Luna with a notepad on one hoof and a quill in his mouth, apparently to record the game. Luna opened by moving a pawn to e4, Brad replied with a pawn to e5, and thus it began.
Luna played a rapid and aggressive game. She could not keep her seat: instead, while Brad studied the board during his turn, she paced back and forth like a caged animal, and she snarled whenever she thought he was taking too long. Twice, the emotion seething in her face broke forth into full-fledged wrath when Brad made a brilliant move. Then she pounded her hoof hard on the board, the pieces scattered, Luna’s eyes flashed with white light, and thunder cracked outside. The first time this happened, Brad cringed back, but, like a desert thundershower, the storm of rage passed as quickly as it came: Luna calmly magicked the pieces back to their places on the board and continued as if nothing had happened. Thanks to the tea he’d drunk, her magic produced only a heavy pressure in the back of Brad’s skull, but no pain.
At last, after a surprisingly short but exhausting time, Luna danced around the room with a wide, toothy grin splitting her muzzle. “Huzzah! Checkmate! I win! Thou art defeated, thou churl, thou cur, thou saucy varlet! Thy army lieth strewn at my hooves, vanquished and disgraced! Thy princess is mine, to do with as I will! Thy fortresses are breached, and thy land is in flames! I shall seed thy fields with salt, beat thy cities to dust, see thy ponies driven before me, and hear the lamentations of thy mares! What sayest thou, mine enemy? How likest thou them apples?” She reared up onto her hind hooves, a deafening peal of thunder ripped through the room, and the whole ship tossed and buckled. Stunned, Brad slid to the floor.
He blinked. “I, uh . . . good game,” he said. He wiped sweat from his forehead. Pride had not allowed him to follow Stainless Steel’s advice and lose to Luna on purpose, but he was relieved to have lost fairly. He now understood why Stainless had given him such a warning in the first place: Luna did not seem the sort to take a loss in a sportsmanlike way.
“’Twas a good game indeed!” Luna cried as she settled again into her seat. “A battle for the ages. Starch Pudding, hast recorded it?”
Starch Pudding pulled the quill from his mouth. “Aye, Yer Worship,” he said.
“Ha!” cried Luna. “Excellent! Later, I shall study my strategic brilliance.” She sat back in her chair, folded her forelegs over her breast, and offered Brad a smug smile. “Ah, ’tis good that thou playest, Brad.”
He shrugged. “I’m not real good in most subjects, but I’ve always done okay at math. I mean, music is mathematical, and so is chess, in a way—”
“Chess is war!” Luna cried as she leaned forward and again pounded a hoof on the chessboard. “It teacheth cunning and strategy. It is essential for one who is to do battle in the Dreaming.”
“Do what?”
“I take thee to war, Brad. Did I not tell thee?”
“No, you said something about sleeping with me, to which, by the way, I kind of obj—”
“Of course! It is not in this peaceful, quiet world that the greatest battle lies! Every night when the ponies rest, the princess of the night rides to war on their behalf. Thou art a recruit in my army.”
“Army?”
“Indeed! When the sun falleth and the moon riseth, monsters creep out from Everfree and Leota, determined to devour ponies in their beds. My elite guard and I march forth to vanquish them. Why, just three nights ago I wrestled six owlbears. At once. ’Twas most grand!”
“I, uh, would kinda like to pass on the bear-wrestling—”
“Certainly, for thou art small and weak. But thou mayest yet do battle, for just as monsters corporeal sneak forth at night to devour ponies’ bodies, so monsters incorporeal sneak forth to devour their souls and drag them into Acheron. We go to fight in dreams.”
Brad felt the sweat bead on his forehead again. He raised himself back onto the divan and said, “If you don’t mind, I really prefer to rest while I’m sleeping—”
Luna tipped her head back and laughed. “Ah, mortals! Thou crackest me up!”
A quiet knock sounded on the cabin door. Starch Pudding glanced at Luna, who gave him a curt nod. When Starch Pudding opened the door, the captain appeared with his tricornered hat in his hooves. “Yer Worship,” the captain said, “we’ve reached yer Black Tower, an’ we are prepared to take ye Selenic Maiden into ’er berth.”
“Thank you, Captain,” Luna replied. “Do so. I sense stirrings in the Dreamtime: dark things are ahoof, and I am eager to test the mettle of my new protégé.”
The captain nodded and retreated. Starch Pudding closed the door after him.
Luna’s grin became hard and cunning, and Brad swallowed a lump.