My Fair Pony

by 2K Chrome

Chapter Six

After that, Applestia was so disgusted that she didn't care about anything.

Like a puppet, she dressed herself in the plain, school-filly dresses that Upper Crust put out for her. Without even bothering to look in the mirror, for who cared whether she lived or died, let alone what she looked like? She pulled back her mane in a think braid or a swinging ponytail, or coiled it up in a bun, as Upper Crust ordered.

She mouthed through her lessons with no interest and no improvement. She stood sullenly on the respiration rose and lifted up her diaphragm obediently up and down in time to the tick of the metronome. She blew up balloons to help her lung control, but no longer bothered to burst them in the professor’s face, as she used to. Even when she was allowed to move on to a new verse of”Maud,” it was all the same to her.

Birds in the ‘Igh Hall garden,
When twilight was fallin’,
“Mawd, Mawd, Mawd, Mawd,”
They was cryin’ and callin’.

“High Hall garden,” Jet corrected her for the umpteenth time. He lit that dratted candle, and set it on the desk in front of her. “High Hall garden. Say that twenty times and blow out the flame.”

“Igh Hall garden, ‘Igh Hall garden,” Applestia repeated tonelessly. She was almost as disgusted with Jet as with her father. “A great character. Salt of the earth,” he told her. “If I had him to teach, instead of you…”

He thought Apple Cider was a rare and lovable joke.

Well you can have him, Jet. The two of them were a fine pair, for they were both dead selfish, and neither of them had any idea that anypony else had any feelings.

Quite blind to her wretchedness, driving her like a slave master to get what he wanted, Jet was working her harder than ever, and losing patience more quickly. There had not been much fun before, but now there was none at all. There was no more singing and Applestia would not have sung if he asked her.

He had moved her over to his swivel chair on the other side of the desk, so that she could turn north, south, east, and west, and throw her voice to all corners of the room. He would take one vowel sound at a time, and keep on and on at it, until she was ready to scream, or kill herself. Or him.

There was a long paper knife on the desk, shaped like a dagger. Once she picked it up and looked at the point as Jet was saying, “Let me hear it once more. ‘The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain’.”

“The rine in Spine stays minely in the pline.” At each hated vowel sound, Applestia jabbed the point of the paperknife viciously into the red leather top of the desk.

“Wishing that desk was me?” Jet said serenely.

She glowered, gripping the handle of the dagger.

“But don’t forget, your daddy has sold you. I’m all you’ve got now.”

Applestia burst into tears of rage and exhaustion.

“Oh, for Celestia’s sake! If you’re going to blubber like a baby…”

Fancypants, who was a kindly soul, but no use at controlling Jet, came and patted her shoulder nervously, as if she were a dog and he never had a dog, and said, “Dash it all, Jet. The mare does have some feelings, after all.”

“There’s no time for feelings,” Jet said. “Here’s over a month gone by, and she still can’t tell me where the rain falls in Spain.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The servants were all against him now, and on Applestia’s side. Often he would make her work right through a mealtime, and sometimes her sent her to bed without any supper, for things like losing her temper and swiveling the chair round so violently that the seat came right off its screw and landed on the carpet with her still in it. Then Uncle Nutters would send her up a daisy sandwich and a glass of wine, or Diamond Mint would creep up the back stairs with cups of tea and croissants, and they would picnic on her bed in the dark, so that old hawkeye Jet should not spot the light shining into the back garden.

One wet January day, when he had tried to make her sing “Celestia Save the King” with her mouth full of marbles, she ran away.

She put on her double-breasted coat with the big brass buttons and the pockets like huge envelopes, bundled her mane up out of the rain under her green turban, and went back to the dingy house in Hoofton Road.

“Take me back, Dad,” she was going to say, but he was out, and so was Mrs. Highcastle. One of the lodgers let her in, and she climbed up through the stale food smells which hung about the bare familiar stairs.

Her tiny slot of a room at the top of the house was open. The mattress was gone, and Applestia climbed over the rusty bed springs, and knelt to look through the grime on the window at the wet gray landscape of slate roofs and blackened chimney pots.

Kneeling there on that sagging iron bed, with the springs cutting into her flesh, and the dirty peeling walls closing in on her like a coffin, she thought of her bedroom at 27a Whinnypole Street: a white painted furniture, flowered curtains, and the sparrows in the lime tree waiting for her to bring crumbs for the window sill.

The cracked bell on the church struck three o’clock through the sooty rain. “Can’t… turn…. back,” it said flatly.

Applestia scrambled back over the bed, and ran down the stairs and banged the door behind her, as if she wanted to shut the hateful house up forever. Her coat and the bottom of her long dress were dirty already just from being in the place ten minutes. Upper Curst would flay her alive. When she saw dirt, she screamed as if she had seen a mouse.

Threading her way with remembered ease among the carriages and trundling open buses of Hoofton Road, Applestia walked down the long street she had trodden so many times in her draggled skirts and her leaky cracked boots, and went in among the cobbled archways of the Market Square, looking for Willow.

She had forgotten that she was not dressed right for the market. Some of the porters whistled at her, and one cried, “Oh, I say!” in a fancy voice.

She saw Willow before he saw her. He was sheltering under an archway, leaning against a pillar with his hooves in his pockets and coat collar turned up, his mane plastered over his forehead like wet straw. He often stood like that, not thinking, not seeing. Not asleep, but not quite awake either.

She came right up to him, and he looked at her blankly. He didn't recognize her, until she said softly, “Hello, Willow, my old mate.”

“Celestia…” His jaw dropped like a ton weight. “Applestia!”

“Don’t know me with my face washed?”

He nodded and shook his head and smiled and frowned and blinked and stared all at the same time, totally at a loss. He took his hooves out of his pockets, reached to put them round her, and drew them back, gasping and stuttering and treading on his own hooves.

Applestia laughed. “Well, ya haven’t changed, that’s fer sure,” she said. “How do ya like my duds?” She twirled, showing off her clothes, and minced a few steps over the wet cobbles, like the ladies she could see parading when she sat on the stepladder in the study in Whinnypole Street.

She thought he would tell hrt that she was lovely, or at least be quite impressed by the change in her. But when he got enough control of his breath and his tongue and his wits to speak, all he said was, “Well, we’ll soon get them things off you, my little filly,” as if she was covered with ants or cobwebs.

“Ya missed me, Willow?”

She hoped he would tell her that he had not looked at another mare, but Willow didn't look at mares anyway. He was scared of them, so it was no compliment, even if he had stayed loyal. Flummoxed by her questions, he cleared his throat and spat among the sodden cabbage leaves in the gutter. “Going to take the barrer down to Maredonian Market,” he said. “Get a shawl or something, and you can come on down with me. See if we can sell some of them brussel sprouts.”

“Brussel sprouts! Yer old chum comes back ter see ya after all this time, and all ya can talk about is brussel sprouts. Willow, ain’t ya got no soul?”

“I dunno,” he said blankly. “But I do know I got to get rid of them sprouts before they rot on me.”

Can’t… turn…. back. The words beat in Applestia’s head as she trudged away through the darkening streets. She had enough bits in her pocket to take a carriage, but she wanted the dark, and the bright streaks of rain across the gas lamps, and the evening noises of the city. Hooves hurrying home on the wet pavements, the clop of the bearded colts pulling the empty coal wagon home over the wood paving blocks, the switch of carriage wheels through the muddy gutters, carrying ponies home.

Everypony was going home. It was time for her to go too.

She had thought Professor Jet would be angry because she had run away, but he had not even noticed her rebellion. He merely said that since she had chosen to take the afternoon off, she would have to work later than usual that night.

She changed her wet clothes and ate some supper, and refused to answer the questions in the servants’ hall about where she had been and what had she done and why had she gone out without telling anypony.

“I thought you were gone for good,” Diamond Mint said, through a mouthful of pudding. “ ‘We’ll never see her again,’ I said to Mr. Nutterville. ‘She’s gone and I don’t blame her.’ Why did you come back, you soppy thing?”

“Oh, shut up your noise,” Applestia said. “Ah’m tired.” No use trying to explain to them what she had found out. You can’t turn back. They wouldn’t understand.

The professor was harder on her than ever that night. Perhaps he did know that she had tried to run away? They worked on and on, while Fancypants fell asleep before the dwindling fire, and the clock on the mantelpiece chimed the quarters and the hours, and Upper Crust came in, fussing like a hen, and said that it was past midnight and everypony ought to be in bed.

“No pony is going to bed,” Jet snapped, “until somepony can speak like a pony instead of a savage. I’m not even asking her to speak like a lady anymore,” he said bitterly. “Just like a normal pony.”

“You’ll make the filly ill,” Upper Crust said smugly as she went out, as if it would be worth doing, to prove her right.

“Ah’m ill already.” Applestia put her head in her hooves. “Ah’ve got a headache and a throat ache and a backache, and my hooves are killin’ me.”

“You shouldn’t go walking all afternoon in the rain. Rain. Rain.” He clapped his hooves, as if she were a trick seal.

“Rine, rine,” she said, without looking up.

“The rain in Spain falls mainly in the plain.”

“The rine in Spine stys minely in the pline.”

“You think you’ve got a headache! The top of my head is opening and shutting like a door. Every time it opens your hideous vowel sound come in like a caterwauling tomcat.”

“Ah don’t care.”

“Look, Little Applestia.” He dropped his long body into the opposite chair, and flung his hooves out on the desk. “This is your last chance. Bet or no bet, I can’t go on much longer. This is your last chance to be a lady. Don’t you want to go to the Grand Galloping Gala in a golden coach with six white horses and a prince to kiss your hoof? Don’t you want to sit in a velvet box at the opera with diamonds round your throat and in your shining mane, and all the duchesses peering up at you through their lorgnettes (small binoculars) and asking, ‘Who is she?’ Don’t you want to have a satin gown with a long train and three feathers on your head and go to Canterlot Palace and meet the princess?”

“And if ah ever did,” Applestia said, jutting out her jaw at him and narrowing her eyes, “ya know what ah’d say?”

“The rine in Spine stys minely in the pline, I suppose. She’d love that.”

“Ah’d say, ‘You can arrest Jet Set, Yer Majesty, You can lock him up because ah say so, and if ya like ya can cut off his head and he can cry all he wants fer mercy, before and after it’s off, but all ah’ll do is cheer, because ah’ll be glad… glad… glad!” Flushed and angry, half sobbing, she glared at him across the desk.

But he would never rise to a fight. That was the most maddening thing of all. “The rain,” he droned, with his eyes closed, “in Spain…. stays mainly…”

And all of a sudden, as Applestia sat there with her mane tumbling down and tears straining her cheeks and her eyes swimming with hopeless hatred for this cruel, pig-headed tyrant, she took a deep sobbing breath and said, very clearly, “The rain in Spain stays mainly in the plain.”

“Who said that?” He did not open his eyes.

“I did.” Applestia was as surprised as he was.

“Say it again.”

He slowly opened his eyes, like a colt reluctant to wake up from a dream, as Applestia found her voice repeating, “The… rain in Spain stays…”

Jet gave a shout that woke Fancypants with such a shock that he leaped out of his chair, waving an imaginary sword and yelling “Charge!”

After that, it was pandemonium. Applestia laughed and cried and laughed, and swiveled the chair round and round with her hooves in the air, shrieking “Come into the garden, Maud!” for all of a sudden, she could say that too.

The professor grabbed her hooves and swung her off the chair and into a capering waltz, while Fancypants letting out cries of “View halloo!” from his old days, dashed to the piano and crashed out triumphant music.

“Excuse my glove, excuse my glove, excuse my glove!” She twitched the cover off Azure’s cage, and he joined hysterically in the excitement, reeling off all the words he knew and some he never knew before, and dashing his beak along the bars of his cage like a demented harpist.

The tall oak door of the study opened, and there stood Upper Crust and Nutters. She was bundled in a dressing gown like next week’s laundry, with her mane in a skimpy pigtail tied with tape.

“What’s up, sir,” Nutter cried. “Is it a fire?”

Upper Crust said, “What in the world is going on here?”

“She got it! She got it right. Rejoice with us, for this day has been won a great victory!” The professor advanced on her with such a lunatic grin that she reeled back against Nutterville, and clutched the billows of cloth where her heart was supposed to be.

While Fancypants thumped on the piano fit to wake the whole lower end of Whinnypole Street, Jet seized Upper Crust round the middle, and Applestia seized Uncle Nutters, and they twirled round in a crazy dance, with the butler tripping, and the housekeeper gasping, “Let me go! Stop, stop! It will be the ruin of my blood pressure!”

It seemed to Applestia that she had never been so happy in her life. Half an hour ago, she had not cared two bits how she talked, nor what became of her. But suddenly now she could do it. Her headache had vanished. She felt strong as a lion and light as a butterfly, and she knew how that Pegasus felt who flew to the sun. His wings had melted though, but hers wouldn’t. She could go anywhere, do anything.

“She even looks different,” Jet said wonderingly. He had poured champagne for them all to celebrate, and she raised her glass to him, her eyes dancing and sparkling over the bubbling sparkles in the glass. “Sweet Celestia, Fancypants, I feel marvelous. I feel like Pygmalion. Your health, Galatea!” He clinked his glasses with Applestia.

“Same to you. And everything else, if I knew who she was.”

“Galatea was the ivory statue Pygmalion carved, and the goddess of love brought it to life for him.”

“And then he married her,” put in Fancypants.

“Bedtime,” said Jet abruptly. “The party’s over. Bedtime, everypony.”

Comments

[thewaffler]

I tracked just because it's based off my 5th favorite musical(yeah, I like musicals and I'm not afraid to admit that), It's only a shame that after reading this so far none of my favorite songs have appeared, but this is still a good read. I'd like to see a fan fic adaptation of Hello Dolly, Singing the Rain, The Producers, The Blues Brothers....just to name a few.

Peace Out.