Cozy Glow Plays Tiddlywinks with Her Father

The door clicked open. Cozy had returned, carrying her big girl switch in her mouth. Hickory pointed to a spot on the floor below him. “Tail down, flanks up.”

She placed the switch in his waiting hoof, and pressing her muzzle into the floor, raised her backside high enough for him not to have to lean forward. Hickory wrapped the old red cord around the end of his foreleg, tight so he could feel the wood bite into his hide. The work-worn woven reeds of the strop came into sharp focus as Pa’s all-time favorite phrase came to mind.

Only one thing separates a horse from a pony.

He swung the strop down across Cozy’s flank and watched for her reaction. She was grinning into the carpet, like she had yesterday and the day before in her room, pleased as punch. There was no doubt her pelt was getting tougher. It was only natural. He gave it to her again, working both sides, but there was only so much the flexible reeds could do.

After a few minutes without provoking so much as a coat shiver, he figured he needed to try someplace more tender. “Up here,” he said, and when she turned he tapped his haunch. “Like when you were a yearling.”

She clambered onto his lap and lay down.

“Spread out. Let me see your tummy.”

As if imitating Chester when he was about to be given his chew toy, she rolled belly-up and stretched out her legs. A blue wink was stuck to her cheek. Hickory let her stay that way, balanced, warm on his lap. Pa’s voice rumbled through the background of his thoughts.

Let ‘em stew on it. Let it sink in what they done.

So he waited until he could feel her sweat, damp between them, before he let the strop fall. It landed not quite where he’d aimed it, just below her ribs.

“Tum, tum, tummy!” she laughed.

His vision blurred for a moment, and it took all of his will to reign in the urge to throw her against the wall. It had happened once or twice, and only after the fact had he realized that was what she’d wanted him to do. She’d been a step ahead.

The moment passed, and he was back in control. “Oh, you think it’s funny?” he shouted. She was saying something, repeating his usual phrases in singsong taunts, but he’d stopped listening. The switch pistoned up and down, forcing its cadence into her rhymes.

“A whack and a crack so it never comes back!” she chirped.

Hickory raised his voice higher, trying to find a place that would make her flinch. “You …”

“Knees, please!”

“… will …”

“The hip bone’s connected to … connected to the back bone.”

“… not …”

“One, two, hammer my shoe!”

“… lie …”

“Tag, I’m it!”

“ … to me!”

On the other side of the door, Chester was barking and whining. Dull claws scratched at the gap between the plywood and the carpet.

Hickory paused to yell behind him. “Quiet, Chester!” The snuffling and the rattling didn’t stop. “Citrus,” he called, “could you please put the blamed dog outside?”

Hoofsteps approached, and the door opened a crack. Citrus’s muzzle appeared, along with her leg blocking Chester’s efforts to get in. “Is everything OK in there?”

“Yeah, honey. I’m just giving Cozy her medicine.”

Cozy craned her neck upward. “It’s true, Mama. I was a bad filly again.”

Chester lapped at Citrus’s planted hoof, trying to push his way through. The fire coughed.

“Oh. OK. Will it … will you be long?”

“I think so. Papa’s still looking for my funny bone.”

Citrus retreated, taking Chester with her. Hickory could hear the clanking of his collar receding through the house. The front door slammed, and it went quiet.

The smell of nutmeg and apples had crept in, released from the kitchen during the interruption. He took a hard look at Cozy, who was still had her legs and wings spread far apart like she was flying upside-down. It was no good, he decided. She thought it was all so funny. A joke, like an idiot pony who fixes fireplaces for a living is a joke.

Some part of him hadn’t wanted to admit it, but the time had come. He was going to need Old Hick.

“You’re not welcome here anymore,” he whispered to himself. “Time to make your own way.” That’s what Pa had said when he’d come of age.“Fly up to the mantle; behind the portrait of me and Pa,” he told Cozy. “Bring me back what you find there.”

She rolled over and obeyed, returning with a knotty rod of aged, rigid wood. When he took it, she resumed her place on his lap.

Every pony else does it. They just don’t talk about it.

He studied her as he removed the binding of the outgrown switch from his foreleg, scanning for a place to start anew. Her coat was smooth like Citrus’s, but she’d gotten the Kindling looks. Some foals looked less like their parents as they grew up, but the older she got, the more looking at her was like looking in a mirror. Pa’s voice grew louder.

A bonk or two on the noggin. The mane hides it. None the wiser.

He cinched the buckle on Old Hick’s strap and hit her between the ears, hard so that the curls wouldn’t soften the impact.

She grunted, and forced out a laugh. The wink slipped off of her face.

Hickory waited to make sure she wasn’t going to bleed all over the cushions. When nothing dripped down the side of her face, he ran the side of his hoof over the spot where he’d cracked her. There was a lump, but otherwise she was clean as a whistle. Progress, he thought. Pa was usually right. He went for her belly again, eager to see what kind of difference the hardwood could make.

“Tum,” she said.

No laugh this time, he noticed. And he thought he felt her shift, so that he wouldn’t hit the same place again. He went further down, where it was softer.

“Tum,” Cozy repeated.

Her smile wasn’t half as big as when they’d started. There was nothing genuine about it, now. Hickory slid the rod along her belly, another inch toward her tail, so she understood where it was landing next. It fell with a hollow thud.

Cozy winced. “Tum.”

It came out as a groan.

Hickory raised Old Hick, admiring how it glistened in the firelight. He’d found the secret to getting through to his willful daughter at last. The only thing that separates a horse from a pony. He needed to take care, though. He had to stay in control, lest he tear up her insides. There would be no easy way to hide that.

Keep it north of the belly button if you want grandfoals.

Yes, that was right, he knew. Pa was always right. He checked for damage. As he poked at her belly, he got a misplaced glimpse of a shallow valley and the twisted, weeping canyon beyond, and shuddered, and thanked his lucky stars he hadn’t been born a mare.

“Cover up your business,” he commanded. “No one wants to see that.”

The single thick curl of a tail slipped upward between her legs.

“That’s better,” he said. Her wings were trembling against his haunches. He didn’t know much about Pegasi, so he would have to stay away from those too. One wallop too many might make her a cripple, and that was the last thing he needed.

With that, he’d exhausted all of his remaining worries. He smiled and let Old Hick fly as it would, drinking in Cozy’s bitten-off cries, and the various light of the fire, and the smell of wood smoke and apple pie.

Chester was howling outside in the dark. Before long, Cozy reached her forelegs across her heaving chest and belly. “OK, Papa, I’m sorry. Can … can we stop playing now?” Hickory pried her legs back up above her head and held them there, lost in conversation with Pa. As Old Hick’s strokes started falling once more, he listened.

She’s hiding a worm inside, and if you don’t find it—I mean if you don’t make her show it—it’ll grow and eat away what’s good in her, and she’ll grow up rotten. I seen it before. You’re a father now, so today’s the day I’m givin’ you Ol’ Hick. You well know this is how I made you what you are, and I’m proud of the stallion you’ve become.

What had he said to that? He couldn’t remember.

Cozy was struggling for air, her tiny front hooves pushing in vain against his pinioning foreleg. “Please”—she coughed—“please stop. I promise I learned my lesson.”

Raise her the same. You may need this some days. Use it if you got to.

And here she was, her ribs and gut waiting for him like his oats had, soft and warm, not ten minutes prior. The day would come when this prettied-up sack of meat gave birth to his grandfoals, and they would try to hoodwink her same as she was doing to him. Dirty bags of horseapples they’d be, like her, like him, and like Pa. He considered her faceless, mute bottom half, stretched to the limit like it wanted more, while her front end fought and pleaded. Why was she here, the flames asked him, spitting short-lived stars in chaotic time with Old Hick’s drumbeat. The bow, the curls, the careful grooming of the velvet coat; the stamp of his own face on a delicate filly.

What brought her into focus, the silver of the mirror that threw back his reflection, was the sting of Old Hick. The question and the answer both.

She was murmuring against his coat. “Chester’s sad. Maybe you should let him inside.”

He lifted his weight, tapping the end of her muzzle with his rod. “And let you run off and hide somewhere I can’t reach you? I don’t think so.”

Keep hitting her said the flames in his dead father’s voice.

“Keep hitting her,” he spat in her face.

His foreleg descended on her neck again like a guillotine, and he was off, running to his secret place, where the hearth cradled its fiery heart like a dear friend, surrounded by the absent dogs’ lamentations who approached its light in another glad reunion; long-legged legislators in their private cabinet, hale in their cups and the haze of their pipes, and Pa was there too, making darn sure he did the job right. He galloped strong and free, yearning for the ache in his shoulders to grow, and itch he could tend to as he needed; the more the words were screamed—stop stop stop please stop—the more he needed to hear them, the long-winded wails rising and falling, ending in needful squirming sweet ragged protest. He ran through a forest of bursting ripe fruit and ancient spices, warm on the wind, and as the merciless sunlight was shown and shaded by the trees, Cozy’s sun-kissed face pulsed in and out, nearer and farther, flickering between a huge, open-mouthed frown and a bitter, snarling mask of hatred.

Peel back that onion.

Good idea, Pa. You peeled me all the way back.

There it was, he thought. Now she hated. Now she could go out into the world and not be stomped flat by it. “Peel it back, now, Cozy. What did you do wrong?”

“I was a bad … a bad filly,” she hiccupped.

“Why?”

“I lied! You were just trying to enjoy a good honest game and I lied!” She writhed in his grip, growling and shrieking while she tried to pound herself with her hooves.

He nodded. “And what do you deserve?”

“I deserve to go to Tartarus and burn like garbage. I’m a piece of trash and trash gets thrown away and burned and …” Her livid scream lapsed into a fit of coughing.

Hickory smoothed back her curls, bunching them back under her ribbon. “That’s right. And you will, if you don’t shape up. You know we go through this because I love you, Cozy, and I want you to be the best you can be. No pony is going to help you”—he shook her by the shoulders—“no pony is going to help you!”

“Yes Papa, you’re right. You're always right. No pony is going to help me. I have to help myself.”

“You got it,” Hickory replied. He eased back, letting her curl up and clutch her bruised, swollen belly. As she raked her welts, experimenting, he toweled the sweat and snot and tears from her face with the couch quilt. The flames gave one last wise whisper.

“I love you, Cozy.”

Her listless hoof dropped onto his chest. “I love you too, Papa.”

He unwound Old Hick’s strap from his foreleg. The cuts it had made in his coat felt good and right. “Hey, why don’t we get some apple pie? I bet Chester would like some too.”

“That old snickerdoodle. I’ll share mine with him.”

“That’s very nice of you. Just one more thing, though. Where’s that doll of yours?”

“Miss Pretty?” Cozy asked, looking up.

“In your dollhouse?”

“No, Papa.”

“’No, Papa’? Well if you know, tell me where she is!”

“She’s right here, Papa.” She pointed to where she’d been sitting beside him.

“Pick her up. And take a good look at her.”

Cozy uncoiled herself, laboring to retrieve the shapeless bag from between the cushions. She held it up for her father to take.

“I’m going to need you to put Miss Pretty in the fire.”

“But she's—”

“Do it, right now.”

The fire had shrunk to skeletal ash, spreading a faint glow broken by a few snarls of orange. Cozy took the doll in her mouth, and limping through the wash of shadows to the hearth, dropped it into the embers.

“Tell me what’s happening to her,” said Hickory.

“She’s … she’s turning black. Her hair’s gone, and—“

“That's what happens to bad fillies. What else?”

“Her eyes. I can’t her eyes.”

The last of the firelight was receding into the flawless, blackened brickwork. “That's good. That's really good. Never let them see your eyes. Do you understand? Never let them know what you’re thinking. Never, never what you're feeling. Never let them see your …”