Digging up the past
By the time we got home, Mom was walking with a spring in her step and a gleam in her eye that I hadn’t seen in years. The spa, it seems, had done her some good. Or maybe it was the company.
“Oh, they were so nice!” she said as we walked in our front door. I looked up at her, surprised by the change in her voice. The nervous mumbling from earlier was gone. She was speaking in a happy and confident tone that I hadn’t heard from her in a while.
“Yeah,” I said. “They’re good ponies.” Then I added, “You can trust them, you know.”
She stopped in the foyer and gave me a baffled look.
“Uh, anyway... that tired me out more than I expected,” Mom said as she hung her saddlebags on a hook by the door. “I’m going to take a nap. Are you okay on your own?”
My steady glare was the only answer I was willing to give her. Her smile slipped slightly and, with a shrug, she wandered off to her bedroom on the main floor.
As for me, the half-formed plans in my head drove me on. I left my own saddlebags cinched tightly around my barrel as I made my way upstairs, to one of the places forbidden to me by my mother.
So far, my compliance with that order was due mainly to the fact that going up there was too big of a pain in the ass to bother with. But now, I had a plan. And I’d need to find some of the things packed away in those cardboard boxes.
The attic had a pull-down staircase, the kind with the dangling rope you could yank with your teeth. At my current height, I couldn’t reach it on my own. I sauntered into one of my brothers’ old bedrooms, now being used as storage. Like most of the rest of the house these days.
A few boxes of ancient knitting and crafting magazines later, and I had a makeshift staircase. I climbed up, braced myself, and jumped off. I was aiming for the rope and I almost missed it. I stretched my neck out as I twisted in the air, managing at the last second to catch it with my teeth.
The fall ended with a short, sharp jerk and the feeling of some loosened molars. For a few seconds I dangled at the end of the rope, swinging gently back and forth. I was afraid the weight of my body wouldn’t be enough to pull the steps down, but then I felt them shift.
My dad had a spring installed on both sides of the staircase, both to help raise it back up again, and also to help keep the descent smooth. That’s the only reason why, when the stairs came down, I was lowered gracefully to the floor instead of just being dropped on my tail. I scrambled out of the way as the stairs came down and hit the floor with a gentle bump.
I let go of the rope and trotted around to the front of the wooden staircase. It was dark in the attic, but my father had installed an electric light. I suppose the previous owners had used candles or lanterns when exploring up there.
I made my way up the staircase and onto the attic floor, fumbling around in the dark until I found the pull-chain and gave it a yank. The single, naked bulb flickered on and threw out a dim yellow light, illuminating the dusty floor and the boxes piled on top of boxes that made up most of the attic. The whole place smelled of dust and neglect, along with a hint of mildew.
When I’d been a colt the attic had been both intimidating and exciting. Going up there had been like exploring an abandoned tomb, full of imagined horrors in the shadows and cobwebs. As I got older I realized that the only danger was from dust inhalation and allergies. All that was up there was old junk; things that we didn’t need in daily life but were slightly too valuable to throw away.
Up front and center were the few boxes my mom had bothered to pack before dragging me out of my Ponyville apartment. These were the reason I was expressly told not to come up here. No doubt that was to avoid reminding me too much of my old life. At least she hadn’t thrown them away; I suppose I should be grateful for that much.
My hooves kicked up dust and I got spider webs in my nice clean mane as I made my way over to the most recently added boxes. It was a small pile, since most of the personal items in my apartment had stayed behind, along with all of my furniture. I felt a pang of loss, and another of resentment. After all those years growing up, I’d finally had my own place. A place with no brothers, no roommates… I’d made that place my own. And now it was gone.
I shook my head. This was no time to get maudlin. I started digging my way through the boxes, trying to avoid the waves of nostalgia I felt as the familiar items passed through my hooves.
Mom hadn’t wanted to pack this stuff, but the fit I’d pitched when she’d wanted to leave this behind had nearly brought the apartment building down. Come to think of it, that was when we first made our Deal. She’d pack my old police stuff, and I would agree not to be dragged kicking and screaming the whole way back to Hoofington.
The badge gleamed in the light as I ran my hoof around the edge of it. Sergeant Cinnamon Swirl, badge number 175, Ponyville P.D. I found the lanyard for it and ran it through the back, then hung the badge over my neck like old times. It dragged on the floor, but it felt good to have it back.
I dug through the box for a while longer. I wasn’t sure what else I’d need, but it didn’t hurt to be prepared. I dropped my hoofcuffs into my saddlebags, along with my old notebook and pen. My hat I left behind. It was too big for me now, anyway.
Then I found it, the reason I’d come up here in the first place. It was a rectangular box of black plastic and thin metal about half the size of my lunchbox. It had several buttons on the front, along with a counter. I popped it open and looked at the tape inside, trying to remember what was on it.
Terrace, my old partner back in Ponyville, had laughed at me when I’d sunk half a month’s pay on this thing. A voice recorder, he said, was a stupid waste of money, especially since it wasn’t standard equipment. So far, he’d been right about it. It hadn’t come into any great use, but I’d always been a believer.
And now, with any luck, that investment was finally going to pay off. I stuffed the recorder and several blank tapes into my saddlebags, where they joined the other things I’d already put in there.
I turned to leave the attic and was halfway back to the staircase when another thought struck me. I’d been stuck for weeks trying to think of a way to get anypony to believe me about my past as a colt who had grown up to be a police stallion. And now here I was, surrounded by items from my past. I turned and went back amongst the boxes, trying not to sneeze at all the dust I was kicking up. What I needed would be further back, if it was here at all.
I lost track of time as I peered inside box after box. Most of it was pointless relics of the old days. Nightmare Night and Hearthswarming decorations, odds and ends that I didn’t recognize. None of it mattered to me right then. I kept on digging until I found something that grabbed my attention and stopped me cold.
The box was small and rectangular. When I opened it up, it was full of loose photographs. I picked the top one off of the pile, my hoof trembling slightly as memories flooded me. My mom hadn’t had time to stick it in one of her many photo albums. A chocolate-colored stallion grinned back at me from the photo in my trembling hooves.
I felt a sting in my eye and wiped at it with a fetlock. It was just the dust, or so I told myself.
My father. His smile was warm and proud as he stood next to my mother, who looked happy but tired. On my father’s back was a two year old foal that I recognized as my brother Nutmeg. The colt had a manic grin on his face as he stood on Dad’s withers and pulled on his mane.
I ran my hoof over Dad’s features for a second. I realized with a flood of sadness that I’d almost forgotten what he’d looked like. Then I looked at my mom standing next to him. Time and recent events had changed how I pictured her so much that it was hard to believe that this was the same mare.
Her mane had been shorter back then, darker and somehow looking smoother. She’d worn that style for years, only changing it after Dad had died. She looked so young. Even with the bags under her eyes, even with her swollen fetlocks and the rounded midsection of late pregnancy, she looked younger than I ever remembered her being. She must have been my age, in that picture. And she was beautiful, just like I remembered her being when I was a colt. Maybe it was the joy in her eyes; in spite of how tired she looked, she was obviously very happy.
I felt a pang of loss looking at that picture. It was easy enough to place the approximate date it had been taken. With Mom that far along in her last pregnancy and Nutmeg being a little less than two, it must have been taken shortly before Dad had died. And then the mare in that picture would be gone, changed forever in one night of confusion, fear and grief.
I sighed, shaking my head and reminding myself that I had things to do. Still, the picture was put into my saddlebags. I knew why Mom put it in the attic, rather than in an album. I didn’t care. I was keeping it.
I kept on digging. Eventually I found a box of old school art projects and report cards, some from me, others from my brothers. I started rifling through the contents, occasionally cracking open something with my name on it. One particular single-page essay caught my eye. I read the title and felt the old familiar emotions swirling around inside of me.
What I want to be when I grow up, by Cinnamon Sugar Swirl, aged 9. I winced at seeing my full name written on the top of the sheet. I had written that before the teasing started. Classroom mockery had made me pretend part of my name hadn’t existed. I’d denied a part of myself to avoid being made fun of. It wasn’t my proudest memory.
I carefully put the essay aside and resumed my excavation. I lost track of the number of boxes I’d gone through before I found the book I was looking for. I flipped it open, searching until I found the right page. When I did, I slipped the essay inside to mark the page, closed the cover, and slipped it into my saddlebags.
I knew I needed an ally. Between the essay and the book, and with a great deal of luck, I might just have found the key I needed to finding one.
I gave the attic one last glance. It was impossible to disguise the fact that I’d been up here, but I doubted it mattered. It’s not like Mom was likely to go digging through things here any time soon. With a final satisfied nod, I turned off the light and went back downstairs, leaving the attic and the dust-shrouded remnants of my past behind me.
Considering how hard they were to pull down, the stairs went back up with relative ease. All I had to do was give it a good enough shove, and the springs did the rest of the work. I pushed the boxes back into my brothers’ old room, and then returned to mine to go over my new prizes.
Most important was the recorder. If I could record Figgy or Chains saying something incriminating, then I’d have leverage. Leverage enough, I hoped, to get more of the information I was so desperate for.
The trick would be to get them talking, and then stop them from simply taking the evidence away from me once I had it. I was still working on that part of the plan.
I pressed the rewind button on the recorder and the counter began going backwards as the wheels on the tape spun rapidly. When it hit zero, my curiosity got the better of me and I pressed play. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember what was on this thing.
There was a click, and then the dull rushing sound of ambient noise. Silence for a few seconds, and then there was a voice. A voice I both recognized and didn’t. A stallion’s voice, rough and gravely, a dull bass rumbling into the microphone.
I remembered the first time I’d heard a recording of my own voice. And just like that time, it was hard to believe the voice coming out of the device was actually mine.
“Okay,” the voice from my past said. “This is Cinnamon Swirl, recording number one. Let’s see how this goes.”
Then followed a clearing of the throat that went on longer than it should have. And then, much to my surprise and dawning horror, my old, nearly familiar voice broke out into what I immediately recognized as a once-popular Days and Nights single.
“The road I travel is winding away
I walk down it through the lonely days
Knowin’ that, at the end I’ll find
A certain solitary peace of mind—”
“Oh, damnation, that’s enough of that!” I said, hitting the stop button. I don’t know what was worse: the fact that I’d tried singing in the first place or that I’d tried to force my voice into a higher and more pleasant register. It hadn’t worked.
I hit the rewind again, giving the machine my very best glare.
“You are so getting erased, you sonofabitch,” I said with a wry chuckle.
If I was going to use a tape to record criminal confessions on, I couldn’t think of a better one than this. As nice as it had been to hear my old voice again, it was clear that my career as a lounge singer wasn’t going to be taking off any time soon.
I stuffed the recorder back into my saddlebags and considered my next move for a few minutes. With a mental shrug, I decided I’d just go for it. There was no time like the present, after all. I stopped in the bathroom to clean some of the dust and cobwebs off of me, and then I was down the stairs and out the front door.
School was ending now, colts and fillies walking the other way as I made my way up the road. I ignored their whispers and surprised glances. I had something more important to do than to deal with school children.
Miss Persimmon was where I expected to find her, with her head propped up on a hoof and her elbow on her desk. It looked like she was grading papers, at least until she was interrupted by my knock on the doorframe.
“Can I come in?” I asked the visibly startled mare.
“Cinnamon. You’re suspended, you’re not supposed to be here.” Her tone was more surprised than upset.
“I’m not supposed to go to class. Does that stop me from showing up to talk to you about something important?”
She stared at me for a few seconds, a small, confused frown on her muzzle. Then she shook her head. “I suppose not.”
“Good, because I really have to talk to you.” I walked up to her desk. “I know you don’t believe the whole ‘poison joke’ thing. Honestly, I can’t say I blame you. Even in a place as crazy as Ponyville is, poison joke is almost too crazy to be believed. But I brought this.”
I fished the book I’d found out of my saddlebags with my teeth and reared up on my hind hooves in order to drop it on top of her desk. Her magic took it and she pulled it towards herself, frowning.
“What is this?” she asked.
“Exactly what it says on the cover,” I said. “Hoofington Elementary’s yearbook from seventeen years ago.”
Miss Persimmon sighed. “Cinnamon, it’s been a long day. What’s the point of this?”
“Open it to page twenty-seven. Mrs. Cobbler’s class. It’s marked by a homework assignment where I had to write out what I wanted to be when I grew up.”
The teacher let out a long-suffering sigh as she flipped the book open and took out the essay. She glanced at it briefly and then frowned at me.
“This isn’t one of my assignments,” she said.
“No, it’s Mrs. Cobbler’s. Nice old mare. A widow. Had the only beehive manestyle I’d ever seen outside of pictures. She had us write that up, what we wanted to be when we grew up. Mine couldn’t have been anything other than a police officer, like my dad.”
“Yes, I remember Mrs. Cobbler,” Persimmon said absently. “I worked with her for a few years before she died. Is this supposed to be proof?”
That shook me a little. I hadn’t known Mrs. Cobbler had died. I felt a small piece of my foalhood detach and float away. I managed to rally and continued trying to convince the stubborn mare.
“Look at my picture. Top row, fourth one from the left. The colt with the goofy grin on his face. That was me. And check the name, it’s the same as mine. The writing on the essay, both the student’s and the teacher’s notes, you know that’s my writing. And if you’ve ever seen Mrs. Cobbler’s, you’d recognize hers as well.”
The mare looked shaken but still skeptical. She shook her head, scowling at me. “This is some elaborate joke. A fake homework assignment, and you must have gotten her name and appearance from the book.”
I snorted and pawed at the floor with a hoof. “There comes a point where ignoring the evidence in front of your eyes stops being cute and starts being a pain in my ass,” I said. Her eyes flashed with anger and she opened her muzzle to respond, but I kept going. “What about the Cinnamon Sugar Swirl in the book, then? Another joke? A weird coincidence?”
“I don’t know,” she confessed. “Maybe an uncle of yours or something? It doesn’t matter.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I repeated. “When did Mrs. Cobbler die?”
“Why does it matter?” she asked.
I just stared at her until she relented with a sigh.
“About twelve years ago,” she said.
“And I’m supposedly how old?” I asked her.
“Well, I would assume the same age as the rest of my students, which makes you nine or ten.”
“So I couldn’t have met her, right?”
“No, you couldn’t have met her,” Miss Persimmon said.
“Have met her,” I echoed.
Then I stood there, quietly meeting her eyes until the silence became too much and she had to break it.
“Cinnamon, what are you doing?” she asked me.
“Are you doing?” I said back. Then I stared at her again.
“I don’t understand what this is, but it’s very annoying,” she said sharply.
“Very annoying,” I repeated with a nod.
I waited a few seconds, then cut her off just as she readied herself to start yelling at me. “Mrs. Cobbler did that all the time, didn’t she?”
“What?” Miss Persimmon said, not making the connection.
“Repeating the last couple words you said. She couldn’t help it.” I grinned at her without humor. “I remember, she once spent a whole class discussing it. She called it echolalia. The kids in class used to sometimes tease her over that. She would just laugh it off, though. Said she’d been teased about it her whole life and it didn’t bother her anymore.”
Miss Persimmon stared at me with wide, shocked eyes. Her back legs wobbled and she sat down, hard.
“Somepony told you about that,” she said. “Somepony who knew her…”
“Do you remember how she smelled like vanilla? Like, all the time. Did you know why?” The teacher looked stunned, but still managed to shake her head. “I asked her once. It was what her favorite shampoo smelled like, that’s why.”
“Oh…” Miss Persimmon said weakly.
“Do you remember that her favorite candy was lemon drops, and that she had a bowl full of them on her desk every day? How about how she’d start nearly every class with ‘It’s a great day to learn, boys and girls!’? Do you remember that she had a lazy eye that would sometimes get away from her when she was really tired or distracted? The left one, if I remember right. And a mole on her chin that had a single hair growing out of it. She called it her ‘good luck mole’. Always got a laugh out of the kids.”
I took a couple of steps closer to her and she leaned back away from me, disbelief and unease in her eyes.
“The time for me to play ‘little miss filly’ is quickly coming to an end,” I said. “I need you to at least believe this is possible, Miss Persimmon. Because something bad is going on and I need your help. Because Plum Pudding and her whole family are in danger, and it’s all my fault. And because I’m like this, I can’t do most of the things I need to do in order to protect her.”
I sat down in front of her and looked her squarely in the eye. “I need your help. Plum needs your help. If you keep dismissing me as ‘just a filly’, if you don’t believe the things I tell you, then bad things will happen. I need to know, can I count on you?”
She looked at the book, and I saw her eyes pick out the picture from my childhood. Then she looked back at me. The confusion washed away, and something like wonder took its place.
“It’s really true, isn’t it?” she asked me in a quiet voice.
“It really is,” I said, breathing a sigh of relief. “Especially about the part where Plum Pudding is in danger.”
“Okay,” she said. She got back up on her hooves and looked down at me. “What kind of trouble is Plum in, and why do you need my help?”
I didn’t bother disguising my relieved sigh. “All right, then. Let me start at the beginning.”
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FINALLY, Cinnamon gets through to someone.
I was about to say, about damn time.
Also, was it ever said that someone came looking for him? Like, the Ponyville police wondering where their officer was? And that the elements of harmony all saw him get poison joked? That there are multiple witnesses?
I mean, I know there's the whole "Deal" thing, but if he really wanted out, he could do it.
It only took 17 chapters for a grownup to believe him
Feels like the story is about to wrap up.
Somepony believes him?
It's end game time.
So at least someone believes her at last.
This is the part where the game ends, lol.
*Insert Rainbow Dash "Dun, dun, duuuuuuuuuun" here*
His old teacher sounds like one of the great ones.
Say it with me, everypony!
[youtube=https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=ltbqOCnp8WA]
Halle-friggin'-lujah!
Aww, yeah, time to get things on the road. Makin' money tonight bb!
ladies and gentlemen i give you, adults. extremely quick to dismiss anything a child has to say no matter what.
Would it kill an adult to actually maybe just FAKE listening and agreeing with the younger generation for once?
This chapter delivered. Damn! He finally got through to someone!
The pieces on the board have been moved.Cinnamon made his play, time for fate to make it's own move.
Great job as always Hoopy
Things are about to get interesting!
Another excellent chapter. Very exciting to see this story moving into its third act. The climax is getting closer, I can feel it...
When I see "echolalia" the first thing I thing of is E coli.
3761463
3761778 somepony "Adult", you mean. remember, Plum believes him.
I have had this in my "to read" list for a while. It has been a very nice reading ^^
While eternally a supporter of Cinnamon not turning into a colt again, I have to say if he does I do hope him and Ms. Persimmon would get together.
Awesome chapter! The scene with the old teacher was heartwarming and finally someone believes him. I hope Plum and her family won´t be harmed.
I know it's proper to be more constructive but seriously..
This chapter was amazing.
nice
And then she got a concussion, as well as short term memory loss.
THE STORY MUST GO ON.
The climax be a'comin'! dl.dropbox.com/u/31471793/FiMFiction/Emoticons/misc_Bonbon_OMG_LOVE.png
Oh Luna.
Here weeee gooo.
Let's break everything and let the action rise!
I enjoyed the new chapter!
This chapter got me really excited. I can't wait for the next chapter, now!
Can't blame the teacher for resisting this long, but it's so satisfying to see her realize what's going on.
Ohhhh, CLEVER! I did not think of him going to Persimmon! This is a neat twist. You've taken some really neat turns to this story, avoiding a few I was expecting (I totally thought you'd go the route of Vanilla being the daughter of a mobster and finding Cinnamon's notes) and taking some I didn't expect (like this one). This is moving along nicely!
FINALLY.
5791061
It was honestly the only option he has. The only option that isn't somehow tangled into this whole mess (or so we know? ;D), and - if convinced - would be a very useful resource. He also has some rapport established with her, to a degree - if nothing else, she has to respect how he thinks, and she must consider the weight behind his words, if she truly means being a teacher, and not just playing the role of one.
And once you get past the idea that this child is being impertinent and infuriating to an adult - he makes a suprising amount of sense for a 9yo. You can ignore it for a while, but it'll get tougher and tougher.
Oh my goodness. Best chapter so far x3