9 - The Final Problem
Matters progressed fairly smoothly after that, all things considered.
Starlight Glimmer—the local Starlight, I mean, of course—took charge of Anisette, Hope Springs, and Violet Peony. "We'll get you settled in some rooms upstairs," she said, leading the three of them down the mirror-filled hallway. "We're in the basement of the Royal Palace in Canterlot right now, but we'll be heading back to Ponyville and your new life tomorrow morning." She glanced back over her shoulder. "One thing, though."
Spells lashed from her horn so quickly, their visual traces had already puffed to multi-colored smoke before I could even begin parsing their thaumaturgical content: a wing-numbing cantrip for Springs and a magic-dampening field for Peony. "Princess Twilight's a very kind and forgiving pony." Starlight's voice echoed with quiet intensity from the tunnel walls. "But I know how hard it is to trot the straight and narrow even when you want to. And since I haven't seen any sign yet that you two are interested in changing your lives, while we all get to know each other, I'll be taking a few precautions..."
At that point, they reached the end of the corridor, turned a corner, and vanished from our sight.
Twilight sighed. "I'll have a talk with her."
"When you do," Currycombs said with a calmness that seemed deeper than any I'd seen her evince of late, "kindly commend her for her perspicacity. Mr. Springs and Ms. Peony are slipperiness incarnate, and seeing them delivered to the care of someone who knows the rough road to redemption fills me with a good deal of confidence."
A frown pulled at Twilight's muzzle, but before she could speak, Starswirl rose to his hooves. He'd been kneeling beside Bolide for some time while speaking to him in low tones, but now, he said at a normal volume, "For my part, I'll take Bolide through the mirror and defuse whatever situation remains on the other side." He blew out a breath. "Especially since, as Ms. Currycombs pointed out, I'm almost entirely responsible for setting up that situation."
Currycombs gave a sharp nod. "Might I suggest, sir, that you use your standing as their great prophet to thank them for their generations of service. Tell them further that your return completes said service, that you'll be taking charge of the mirror yourself from now on—" She moved a hoof back and forth between herself and me. "And that you'll be appointing new guardians now that the danger that once lurked behind its surface has been overcome."
"Overcome?" Bolide looked up, an odd and earnest mix of hope and fear on his face. "Sir? Then we've fulfilled the Promise? Carried out the dictates of your Word?"
Starswirl's beard bristled slightly, but with another sigh, he said, "You have, Bolide, and far more thoroughly than I'd ever have thought possible." He held out a hoof. "Let us so inform your associates."
Bolide practically leaped up. "Yes, sir! Thank you, sir! This'll mean so much to us all! Knowing that the sacrifices we've made for more than thirty generations have led the forces of light to victory!" Tears began trickling from the corners of his eyes. "So many even among our fellows have doubted, but now! Now you'll show us that it's all been worthwhile!"
"Yes," Starswirl said, his voice rumbling and his eyes narrow. Still, he stepped along the smooth blue stone to stop before the mirror standing against the wall a pace or two from the one our Starlight Glimmer had vanished into several moments before. "Come along, and we'll see to it."
Very nearly prancing, Bolide joined Starswirl, and the two passed through the mirror's surface—
Leaving Currycombs and I alone in the tunnel with an equine who, for all her lack of pretension, was still royalty in this realm.
All awkwardness, however, dissolved under Twilight's friendly smile and manner. She invited us to join her in a nearby sitting room till the others returned, and a very homey little nook it proved to be, ferns and firefly lanterns, cushions and a magical vent through which, she explained, fresh air from the surface was constantly circulated.
Settling in, we chatted easily for some time, I telling the two of them about the journey Starlight and I had undergone from Ehwazton and Twilight telling us how she and the Starlight Glimmer of this realm had been spending the last several weeks helping Starswirl sort through the hundreds of mirrors he'd locked away in this cavern workshop of his before the unfortunate series of events that had led to him and his friends spending more than a thousand years sealed in Limbo. "You're the first ponies we've had tumble out of one, though." She clapped her hooves together. "It's so exciting!"
"Indeed," Currycombs said. "The information I've gathered so far about the differences between our two worlds has already proved fascinating."
"Information?" I blinked at her. "We've been in two hallways and a room. What could you possibly have gleaned in so short a time?"
Currycombs smiled, smugness incarnate.
But Twilight let out a gasp before Currycombs could so much as open her mouth. "That's right! The other Starlight Glimmer said you were like Churchill Downs! In the stories, she's always picking up on these little details and adding them together to solve whatever mystery she's facing!" She leaned forward on her cushion. "Are you going to do that now? Have you noticed something that's led you to some conclusion about Equestria? Or about me? I'd love to hear what you've deduced about me!" A flare of her horn summoned a quill pen and a small roll of parchment. "May I take notes?"
And while Currycombs's smile remained every bit as large, all the smugness drained from it to be replaced by a sort of delight that I seldom saw from my friend. "That you are an eager student of the world is so obvious, I hestitate even to mention it. That you are a princess who rules by consensus rather than decree and who sees her advisors as friends speaks well of Equestrian society in general. And that you were not born with those wings but rather attained them and the royal status accorded to all winged unicorns in some manner tells me that—"
"What?" I sprang from my cushion. "Currycombs! You—! That—! How could you possibly—?" Heat flooding my whole body, I turned and bowed to Twilight. "She meant no disrespect, Your Highness! She—"
"She's correct." Twilight had gone completely still, but her face displayed amazement rather than the outrage that I'd expected to see. "I assume it's the way I move." She flared her wings and looked back at them. They seemed cartoonishly small, but then everything about these bodies did: ponies, they'd called themselves more than once, and I had to admit that it seemed an apt term. "I've grown more accustomed to having wings in the years since I picked them up, but—"
"Picked them up?" A tightness clenched my chest. "Forgive me, You Highness, but—"
"Please." Twilight's ears dipped. "Call me Twilight."
For all that I didn't want to sputter unintelligibly at her, honesty forces me to report that that's exactly what I found myself doing. To be a 'princess of the people' was one thing—and a very good thing, I'd always thought. But for Currycombs to say that Twilight had somehow attained royalty? And for her to agree? The thought scoured my every nerve as harshly as the sandy windstorms of the frontier.
Lost in dismay, fatigue, and sudden, grating memories of more unfortunate days, I vaguely registered that Twilight was speaking about some of the other local princesses. My attention snapped back with crystalline clarity, however, when I heard Currycombs say, "Our royal family, the equines of Firebird House, are inundated with a magic that gives them the most extraordinary sort of serial immortality."
My heart, I was certain, had come loose and was crashing about now amongst my ribs. Lurching immediately into action, I cried, "Currycombs! We were told that information in strictest confidence!"
Currycombs gave me a look that, even with her unnaturally large eyes, conveyed her exasperation quite profoundly. Still, when she returned her gaze to Twilight, not a hint of irritation sounded in her words. "We may trust you, Twilight, may we not, to hold our state secrets as closely as you hold your own?
"Of course!" Twilight said, earnestness a very scent surrounding her. A slight blush darkened her cheeks. "I'd have to think a few minutes to come up with a state secret, but yes, you have a solemn word that I'll treat the subject as completely sacrosanct." She made a series of motions with her hooves that ended with her tapping a closed eye, an action that gave me an odd sense of reassurance. "But," she went on, "since the subject seems to be distressing Dr. Scalpel, maybe you could tell us instead, Currycombs, about your journey here? Since you and Anisette traveled a different road than the doctor and the other Starlight Glimmer did?"
To this, Currycombs agreed readily enough, and her recitation of their fraught journey soon roused me from my black study. As our Starlight had foreseen, Anisette had proven vital to their success, her sincerity swaying the hearts of the guardians who'd accosted them in the desert. "I'll thank you, doctor," Currycombs said, giving me a grin, "to accord her all the credit for our survival when you translate this adventure into one of your tales. For she performed marvelously well under extreme pressure and never once told an actual lie to our would-be captors in the act of convincing them that we shared their goals."
I nodded, but upon giving the matter a second thought, I had to stop and shake my head instead. "What with the story involving murder, the truth about Firebird House, Starlight Glimmer, and now these mirror universes, I'm beginning to think that this entire adventure has become altogether too involved for the general reading public. I'll fabricate some end to the matter and—"
"Fabricate?" Currycombs arched an eyebrow. "Need I remind you, Scalpel, that some of us have a literal, physical connection to the truth?" She flipped the tail of her Mulester coat. "My eigensigil, after all."
A choking sound splayed my ears wide, and I turned to see Twilight staring open-mouthed at Currycombs. "You...you haven't got a cutie mark?"
This led to Currycombs expounding her theory about her sigil being invisible as truth is invisible, and that led to Twilight denying that any such thing could ever in any way occur. The discussion grew heated rather quickly, and with each party in possession of facts which the other declared to be irrelevant, my attempts to referee went nowhere.
Fortunately, Starlight Glimmer—again, I mean, of course, the local Starlight Glimmer—came into the room before their exchange of views had quite escalated into full-fledged, hoof-stomping argument. "Whoa, whoa, whoa!" she called immediately upon entering. "What—?"
"Starlight!" Twilight aimed a shaking hoof at Currycombs. "She says she's got an invisible cutie mark!"
"Eigensigil," Currycombs and I both said at once, but since Currycombs had already scoffed at such a silly name as 'cutie mark' to designate something that meant so much to any equine's very existence, neither of us brought the point up again.
"And that," Twilight went on, the slightest dart of her eye acknowledging that she'd heard us speak, "is impossible in every way, shape, and form, right? I mean, the very idea of an invisible cutie mark makes a mockery of everything—!"
"Mockery?" Mane bristling, Currycombs snorted. "Do you call the air a mockery, Your Highness, since you can't see that? Or—"
"Enough!" Starlight shouted, and the extra reverberation she apparently put behind the word made the rest of us flinch. "Now," she went on in less explosive tones, "I think you'll agree, Twilight, that I know a little something about cutie marks?" She narrowed her eyes in a way that seemed designed to lend weight to her statement.
Twilight's ears fell.
"And as an expert," Starlight continued, her horn glowing and a similarly colored light gently lifting the hem of Currycombs's coat, "when I look here, I'm sensing a cutie mark every bit as strongly as I am from you or me or Dr. Scalpel."
My gaze was drawn once again to contemplation of my friend's blank hindquarters, but a clearing of throat from the doorway startled me back to see Starswirl regarding us with the most quizzical of expressions. Two small squeaking noises came from Twilight and Starlight, and when I turned toward them, they both had more than a bit of red tingeing their faces, Currycombs's coat swinging into place and not a single waver of Starlight's hornglow visible.
Currycombs, of course, to the best of my knowledge, has never known a single moment's embarrassment, and she merely nodded to Starswirl. "All went well on the other side?" she asked.
Something very close to a smile twitched beneath Starswirl's beard. "Not as well as things here, from the look of it."
Twilight and Starlight both began sputtering, but Starswirl merely held up a hoof and outlined how he'd made a brief but effective speech to the descendants of those he'd left to guard the mirror that led out into Hevosenvalta. He'd used the same spell on them that he'd used here to prove his identity to Bolide, and with much weeping and rejoicing, the guardians had left their outpost and begun the trek back to San Pinto.
"Excellent!" Currycombs nodded crisply. "Then we shall return to our side of the mirror and convey said object back to our flat in Ehwazton." She cocked her head at me. "I think it will look quite well against the wall in the front room beside your bedroom door, Scalpel."
I could only blink, my ears muffled and yet buzzing as if a beehive had been stuffed into my head. "Perhaps," I managed to get out, "we could first prevail upon our new acquaintances for the use of these cushions for the next several hours? For I find that riding the train all day, walking across the desert all night, and then journeying outside the confines of our universe has left me in need of a nap."
The shock and concern that flooded Currycombs's face surprised me a bit: in truth, I'd been expecting an argument from her. But instead, when Twilight immediately offered us the use of an actual bedchamber not far down another corridor, Currycombs became quite insistent that I avail myself of it. "And in fact," she said from the doorway as I settled gratefully among the silk sheets and flannel blankets, "I may return shortly and throw myself across that chair in the corner."
Dropping off in the middle of my nod, I knew nothing more till I slowly realized that I was drifting awake. The room remained in the same state of semi-darkness that had filled it when I'd fallen asleep, but raising my head, I saw that Currycombs had indeed entered at some point and was now sprawled over the lounge chair she'd pointed out earlier.
Had I ever seen her look so relaxed? I found myself thinking not.
I pulled in a lungful of air, wondrously bracing yet at the same time soothing. It had to be a magical effect, the way everything about this place—
"Yes," Currycombs said softly across the room. "Quite the unusual sensation, isn't it?"
"How—?" I started up but stopped, settling back onto the sheets. "You heard my intake of breath and inferred that I was noticing the quality."
She rolled into a sitting position, her eyes and grin nearly sparkling. "Well done, Scalpel! I shall have you fully versed in my methods within the year, I'm certain of it!"
I had to laugh. "I shall do my utmost, then, to become less observant lest I abscond with your clients."
That got a laugh out of her, and she leaped from the chair, her hooves scarcely making a sound against the plush carpeting. "Ah, but before we can become ruthless competitors, we must make our way back to San Pinto carrying that mirror between us." A slight frown tugged her snout, and she glanced around the shadowy chamber. "In all honesty," she murmured, "I shall very much welcome the pungency of Ehwazton in my nostrils again. For I find this place every bit as unnerving as I do exhilarating."
"Unnerving?" Wriggling from the blankets onto the floor, I stopped to blink at her.
Currycombs shifted her shoulders beneath her Mulester coat. "We've discussed before, I think, the way my mistrust of equines, places, and things increases the more perfect they appear. And what I've seen of this Equestria..." She shifted again, but this time, it seemed rather to be a shiver than a shift. "One of the perils, I suppose, of the profession I follow."
Not sure how to respond to this, I got my hooves under me, moved across the carpet, and touched my shoulder to hers.
She smiled, slipped past me, and poked her snout at a crystalline box sitting upon the table beside the door. "Ah," she said. "This device Twilight provided to summon her when we awakened displays the time as well." She looked back at me. "With a nice, leisurely, six-hour trot through the desert night, we should easily reach San Pinto in time to meet tomorrow morning's train bound for Ehwazton."
Which was just what we did. Twilight arrived to guide us back to the proper mirror and bid us goodbye, clapping her hooves together and saying, "I'll move this mirror to my castle so we'll have a direct link from your home to mine." Her eyes shone. "A diplomatic mission to a whole new world! I can hardly wait!"
"Of course," Currycombs said, her smile already tighter than it had been, her gaze darting toward the mirrored surface.
I nodded to draw Twilight's attention. "We'll need to lay some ground work on our side of things first, Twilight, but yes. This is just the beginning."
Twilight clapped her hooves again. "I'll look forward to hear from you!"
Currycombs practically leaped into the silver. I felt obliged to bow before following.
The less said about our trek, the better. At least we'd returned to our accustomed shapes and sizes, so we were able to balance the mirror lengthwise across Currycombs's back while my horn directed as much steadying force toward the thing as I could muster. Trudging then hour after hour through the darkness, we reached San Pinto just before dawn began glowing at the horizon. Between the two of us, we convinced the porter that the mirror would fare better in the passenger compartment with us rather than the baggage car, and muscling the thing aboard, we managed to get it stowed securely just before the train lurched us all off toward the rising sun.
I'd retrieved my pack and all from the redoubt Starlight and I had spent so much time digging in the side of the once-again-deserted canyon, and I spent the journey dozing and making notes for my eventual retelling of these events. Currycombs sat silently beside me the entire trip, her mood as near as I could tell neither happy nor unhappy.
Arriving at Puddington Station in the mid-afternoon, we hired a cart to haul the mirror to Bakery Row, and I ventured my first comment since we'd departed the world of Equestria. "Whatever shall we tell Mr. Trencher about Anisette?"
Currycombs gave one of her brief, explosive laughs: she'd taken the traces herself, slipping into harness and hauling away as easily as any carter while I trotted alongside. "We shall summon her from the mirror and send her downstairs to tell him herself." The humor faded from her face, and she glanced around. "No, there's something I fear more than that, if I'm once again to be honest, Scalpel."
A chill stroking my spine, I followed her gaze. Equines bustled over the sidewalks, voices and laughter clattering from the public houses as early evening approached. The air seemed thick compared to my memories of Equestria, but it wrapped around me as welcoming as a woolen blanket or a bowl of barley broth.
"Recall," Currycombs said softly, "that Starswirl's concern lay in our world infecting theirs. I have to wonder what might happen if the opposite is true and our Hevosenvalta becomes all shining, friendly, and cute." She shuddered. "What place has a consulting detective in a world where serious crime happens less often than it does here? What puzzles worth solving could possibly present themselves to my eager gaze?" Shaking herself, she pulled the cart around the corner into Bakery Row. "But I suppose I'll deal with that problem if it arises."
As for my own worries about how to present this story in writing, I shall leave the matter in hooves more capable than mine. Once Your Majesty and Your Highness have read this account, Currycombs and I stand ready to do your bidding. I recommend opening a dialogue with Princess Twilight of Equestria, and I know that she would be overjoyed to meet with either or both of you. But should you decide that that is a course we shouldn't take, well, a simple stone tossed with sufficient velocity is all that would be required.
Your Obedient Servant,
Dr. Silver Scalpel
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It's still Saturday:
For another 10 minutes where I am, so here's the conclusion after all these years.
Mike
I'm sad to see the end of Currycombs and Silver Scalpel (hopefully not forever!). It was a fantastic journey, really capturing the spirit of Sherlock and Holmes with hooves.
Still think those two should have been sent to Tartarus, lucky them that Anisette is such a kind soul.
May evil-doers on two (or more) dimensions beware, for their plots are grass, and Currycombs has just the lawnmower to mow them down.
That story was good.
I want a sequel, but I understand if you don't want to wright another one.
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Thanks, folks!
There may yet be more Currycombs adventures, but I've got a couple non-Pony novels I wanna put together this summer.
9671120
"When criminals in this world appear
And break the laws that they should fear
And frighten all who see or hear,
The cry goes up both far and near
For Currycombs."
(Go ahead and Google it, folks: I'm pretty sure Georg is the only one other than me who likely heard the song "live" as it were over the TV all those decades ago...)
Mike
9671568 I didn't have to Google it. I was singing along by the second line. Yea for old people!
Magnificent stuff. I can always alpreciate a turn for the pleasantly multiversal. Thank you for a fantastic series of adventures.
Yes, yes you are.
When you start a cult, don't be surprised at the results.
He's become so smug he came out the other side to happy!
Oooo, he correctly concluded that the wings weren't original.
Uh oh, peace didn't last long before the Blank Cutie Mark War began.
Hey, confirmation from Starlight.
Maybe someplace slightly more secure than that.
Should be fun.
Hey, that's a pretty good plan.
Very entertaining story, that was fun to read.
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Thanks, folks!
I can't imagine I'll ever write it, but I'm already seeing Currycombs and Twilight bickering back-and-forth with Scalpel stuck between them as they all pursue some villain through the fog-bound streets of Ehwazton...
Mike
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Thanks!
I'm glad you enjoyed the story.
Mike
Well those made for quite an end to the story. Will say, though, would have liked if Starlight's confirmation of Currycombs's cutie mark had started with something like "this may feel a little unpleasant" and ended with Currycombs with an equals sign on her butt for a little while. Come to think of it, that might have left Currycombs feeling a little better about the too-nice world they'd just decided to connect with.
Finally got around to catching up with this one. Well done!
No actual Maremons -- which was probably wise -- but I'm happy with what the word (apparently) turned into.