Chapters Last night as I lay on my pillow Last night as I lay on my bed Last night as I lay on my pillow I dreamed that my Bonnie was dead...
Daring Do continued to hum as she lifted her cool glass up to the light from the chandelier and tilted it back and forth. The cloudy liquid inside swirled pleasantly. An image seemed to manifest in her drink.
"What's that face?" She had mixed her drinks again. "Hello, old friend. Come in. I was just thinking about you." She sat her glass down and began to busy herself with nothing in particular on the desk before her. By a whim or by habit, she picked up a reed pen and started scribbling in a notebook. "No. Well, yes. But only a little!" She swallowed another drought of what was in the glass. "Regard what I have writ here. Another adventure, leaving out the more indecent things again, I am? Maybe not this time. But like faces, the memories seem to fade. When I drink..." The pen cut through the paper. "I can't think about them. I don't want to think about it." She poured herself another glass of whiskey mixed with absinthe. "I would rather not..."
Same Story, Different Day
"Sixty-four long years..." is what she had wrote.
"Every story the bloody same, told differently."
She brought a shelf down with her as she stumbled in the direction of the door.
"Damn novels." She propped the shelf up and, fallen on the floor of her study as she was, attempted something like sweeping the books into the lowest shelf of the book-case. "You've ceased your novelty. Tired. Same story, different days, different details. Foundering formula. The same dull, idle object in shifting lighting. I am coming!"
A pounding resounded through her house.
"Daring Do! Urgent notice! Open up!"
She found herself somehow laying on the doormat. She slowly rose. Her legs felt like jelly and she braced against the door.
"I'm opening it!" The room whirled and whirled and the handle felt intangible. Falling back, she gripped the handle and it turned. Locked. She propped herself against the wall, struggling with the bolt. "Just a moment more!" Raging waters in her stomach beat against the coast of her throat and gravity determined to make her the fool, pulling at her from all directions.
The visitor caught her gnawing the wainscot when the puzzle of the lock was finally solved.
"Miss Do?"
She stopped biting the wood as one bites a pencil, and stood up as stabled-staggeredly as this visitor would allow for support. Her legs trembled.
"I..." She screwed up her features as though lost in thought. "I—I... My teeth hurt. Dweadfully sahr. Somfing awful." Her tongue felt heavy and numb in her mouth making speech feel something akin to talking through a thick wad of gum. "Somfing awful. I beg your pahdon...?"
"Sir Bristlewood."
"Oh, yes! I remember you. What the character that heads the excavations in that part of Saddle Awabia with the pyrwamids. Fine work you do, I just want to tell ya."
"Well, yes. Thank you." He helped her into a chair with some difficulty.
For a while Sir Bristlewood just stood opposite her, tracing the creasings on a letter he held, considering whether it right to ask her to do what he had been send to her for. To task this elderly mare, out-lived of her prime by a score, and clearly intoxicated beyond rational judgment, with such a dangerous assignment seemed too fool-hearty. What could the ponies who asked—no, insisted on having her, be thinking?
Sir Bristlewood remembered Daring Do in her younger, more capable days. He was just a colt, not even a stallion yet, when she had wandered into his father's inn and told stories of her adventures, the bruises and scares of which sung as though painted on her face, which had inspired him to become an archaeologist. When he first began his career he was disappointed at the lack of adventure and soon became very frustrated. It took several years in his field to start enjoying it, and when he did, he got as much thrill and excitement from discovering a lost tomb, a small, broken artifact, or a simple letter as he imagined he would from chasing bad guys or being shot at. Soon history became alive and the adventure was not one of action but in the echos of the past, like secrets whispers.
And now his fascination with history, and passion for discovery has brought him back to her. He himself was no young, strapping stallion anymore. His youthful health was declining, if but slowly; a middle-aged stallion of Forty-two. And, he thought, if he himself, who was now starting to notice that hikes are not as easy as they used to be, was incapable of this task, how could she, far less able-bodied, a mare of sixty-something, who has been gossiped to be three sheets to the wind half the time, do more than he?
"So you know of me?" His eyes glistened upon talking with one of his heroes, but worry, mixed with no small amount of disappointment in her condition, wrinkled his brow.
"Of course. I am Daring Do. Adventurwah an' arche-optolis of Equestwia; it is part of my jod to know all who are meddlin' in my field. I love your hat!"
Sir Bristlewood flushed and quickly removed his panama hat. He pulled up his own chair to sit.
"No!" Daring Do nearly fell back in her chair, her eyes wide with wild excitement. "Please, get me another drink before you do!"
Sir Bristlewood could not believe what he was being asked, and his first instinct was to decline. The look in her eyes was desperate, almost fearful. He could not morally be the one to participate in feeding her evidently gluttonous addiction. It would be best for her to not have another drink and be no more compromised than she already was. Would it be better for him to lay her to bed and wait until morning for her piteous condition to pass before asking her? Though withstanding—
"For what did ya come here?"
"Huh?"
"My house. Why are you here? Who sent you? What do they want?"
The sudden change in her demeanor and the abruptness of the questions set him off balance.
"Are you deaf?" she spat. "I am sorry, but it only just occurred to me that I was not expecting visitors this evening; and your arrival is uncanny."
Sir Bristlewood was now sitting down and quite glued to his seat. Daring Do leered, her eyes penetrating and interrogative. She stood up and, hooves braced on the back of his chair, loomed over Sir Bristlewood as one would loom over one's own rape victim, tied to a chair, without escape. Even at this age, perhaps even because of her age, she cut a deep, intimidating air.
"All the more uncanny," she continued, "as it is pouring rain outside, and your jacket is hardly wet. I assume whomever sent you has quite the sum of money on my head, enough even to spare on your covered, luxuriant trip to my rural abode, to secure your compliance by writhen reason that it would not interfere with your comfort."
The stench of alcohol in her breath was strong, and he turned away. He felt something leave his grip. He looked up to find Daring Do breaking the seal on the letter. She slammed it open on the coffee table in another part of the room. She appeared to be reading it, but then she did something remarkable. She took the letter in both hooves, still fixed on it as though reading, and stumbled on two hooves into her study in the next room. A few moments past, during which Sir Bristlewood stared fixedly at the open study door, quite dumbfounded at Daring Do's sudden manic transformation.
There was an outcry, and then a loud crash from her study. Daring Do bolted out, tripping over a corner of a rug in her haste, and rushed at Sir Bristlewood with all the fury of bull.
"What is this?!" She threw the crumpled letter at him. "What is the meaning of this? I simply CAN NOT!"
Sir Bristlewood began opening and smoothing out the letter in his lap. He shook. Memories of his berating mother refused to leave his head.
Daring Do backed into the rear of a couch. She fumed: "I can't read a word of it!" She bucked the couch, shoving it back a few feet, stumbled back, swooned, and collapsed, falling over the back of the couch.
"Miss Do?" Sir Bristlewood muttered. Silence. "Are you alright?" He rose and peered over at her. She had vomited. "Alright, Miss Do. I can't allow this."
"What?" She pulled herself up to look at him. She was shaking and breathing heavily.
"Look at yourself." Sir Bristlewood sat on the love-seat near her and tossed the letter on the coffee table. "What have you been doing with your life since you stopped adventuring? Even the time between publications of your novels have become greater and greater. You came out with more novels during your tumultuous younger years than you have in your idyllic years of late."
Daring Do prostrated herself across the couch. The beams above her made her think of the many times she had been imprisoned.
"I've heard from the other archaeologists who have come to visit you over the years: how there was hardly a visit you were not intoxicated." He felt a special kind of elation he had not felt before as he berated his hero in her suffering. "I had come here to merely deliver an opportunity: a chance to relive the old-times once again for one brief and shining moment." He pronounced the last two words emphatically. Yes, he thought, there is magic in saying it like that; but now it is time to really drive it home . "They asked especially for you. They would have no other but you because, even now, you are the best, Daring Do. Do you know who sent me? The King and Queen of Saddle Arabia. They have recently discovered a map. It needs translation, but that shouldn't be much trouble for a genius like you, should it? Their inquiry and plea for your help was what the letter enclosed."
Daring Do moaned and rolled over. But she did not answer.
"Well, the ride they gave us is waiting outside. The matter is apparently urgent, though their Majesties were disinclined to reveal to me too many details—Celestia knows why. If you simply must insist on being difficult, I will have to let the ponies in whilst we wait for your answer." And with that.
She did not move. Her breathing had stopped. He shook her.
"Same story," she sighed.
"Celestia, it's wet!" Daring Do stumbled back along the piazza away from the rain and threw herself against the front door.
"Are you sure you have everything?" Sir Bristlewood asked, picking up Daring Do's bag. His face still expressed concern for her condition which had not yet begun to lighten even as she moved about packing her things and getting dressed. This only distressed him the more. If time was no matter, he would insist she wait until morning.
She nodded. She looked green. Her hat fell off. She fell at the railing and puked. The old wood creaked as she pushed herself up.
"That's it then?" Sir Bristlewood was already locking the door for her. He put the key in a pocket in her bag. Putting Daring Do's hat on her, he gave a sharp whistle. A stagecoach rolled up from beneath some pines. "Come on, now." He threw one of her hooves over his back for support. "Easy. There are steps."
Daring Do spat on his polished hooves.
Sir Bristlewood, ever the professional, did not permit a glance and stoically opened the cab door. He shoved Daring Do inside, wiped his hoof on the slick grass, and hopped up behind her. The two ponies inside helped Daring Do up onto a seat. She braced herself against a window.
Sir Bristlewood banged on the ceiling and the stagecoach took off. Stealing a look around at the faces, he sighed and announced proudly, with a hoof to his chest: "I got her!"
"So you have," spoke a cool voice.
"We have her, but she is impaired," spoke another voice, this one warmer.
"It couldn't be helped," Sir Bristlewood remarked matter-of-factly. He shook he head rapidly. "It was a matter of taking her now, or waiting until morning." He suppressed the urgency in his voice, for the sake of Daring Do.
"Why the hell are we in the dark?"
All in the cabin turned to Daring Do.
"Hello? I said: why are we in the dark? Sire Bri-Se-Vu-de, hoof me my torch." She slipped off her seat. "Are these seats of leather?!" Her voice cracked.
"Miss Do."
"What?" Daring Do took off her hat. "Oh! I had my hat over my face the whole time. Wha..."
Since Daring Do had been moving, the alcohol circulated her system with greater ease, and she felt the effects more potently than she had soon after Sir Bristlewood's arrival. She felt light-headed, and her body felt detached from her mind, and her mind from herself. Everything seemed for all the world a stage, and nothing quite real.
One of the strangers helped her up onto her seat, and immediately wiped off their own hooves as though having touched something filthy. The pony grumbled all the while.
Sir Bristlewood sighed deeply. The pony with the cool voice leaned into the pony beside them. The pony with the warm voice shook their head rapidly. A silence fell that held only the sound of Daring Do's deep breathing in its wake.
"I suppose I should say something to break this intolerable icy sheet," the pony with the warm voice drew from his lips the first words in the very long hush that ensued since the stagecoach had leapt into the air. "Miss Do, my name is Hoofcliff. I am a trader of fine goods between the Saddle Arabians and Equestrians. This here on my right..." Hoofcliff shot his lips at his companion indicating her moment to give her voice.
"Call me Kitty; Lady Catherine by formality, I much prefer the former." Her voice was as cool as her very rigid way of holder herself, as though always and habitually on ceremony, quite at odds against her inclination for the casual way of being addressed. "I am a mare of blood from both Saddle Arabia and Equestria; I am the head curator of the Museum of International Arts and Histories." She screwed up her face in subdued scorn looking down upon Daring Do. Daring returned her look, as much as to say, You who speak of royal blood, who appeal to authority, are nothing but banal knives cutting histories away, never letting truth get in the way of a good story . This thought, of course, fell unheard and died in the dark waters of her mind.
Daring Do pulled herself up, breathed deep a full drought of air, and, the stench of alcohol hitting her nose, shook her head, sneezed, and sat down.
"And?" Daring Do swept a look that was difficult to discern.
"And?" Hoofcliff began.
"You can't be serious," Daring Do cut in. "Oh, listen to me, you have even me doing it!"
"Miss Do," Sir Bristlewood pleaded breathlessly.
"Hoofcliff, you're an usurper; Cat, a whore in your trade and your body."
The whole cabin broke into silence. No one, not Hoofcliff, Catherine, nor Bristlewood dared speak a word. What could they say? Each knew they could hardly argue it: if they did it was likely Daring Do, even in her inebriated state, would promptly leave, which she had been known to do on many other excursions where some ponies had enlisted her aid and had in some way irritated her, never to hear from her again, and they could not afford to lose the fallen hero.
Daring Do produced a flask from her bag and took a swing.
Sir Bristlewood breathed a sigh of relief after a few moments. Neither Hoofcliff nor Kitty breathed so much as a whiff of malidiction against Daring Do's wild and disillusioned accusations.
For the rest of the flight to Saddle Arabia they all were silent, silently resigning to discuss matters when they had arrived and Daring Do's head was clear. When they had landed, Hoofcliff was shaking.
"How are we this morning, miss Do?"
"Off it!"
"Feeling unwell?"
"I am now."
"Too many spirits haunting your addled life?"
"Just you, worn yarn."
"What?"
Daring Do slammed the door in Hoofcliff's face.
"As you will, miss Do; but be out in fifteen minutes for your briefing in the Royal Room."
"My briefing ?" Daring Do spat under her breath.
Cradling her head in one hoof, she drained the rest of the tonic she had told a maid to mix up for her. This was a mix she had at some point learned helped cure a hang-over.
The map from last night lay on a study desk in front of her. Of course, she had not looked at it since, until now. Its spiral letters appeared only vaguely familiar to her, as though of an impression of a dream left upon one's mind just after waking, and, upon trying to recall its details, feeling it fleeing away down memory's swift, windy river.
She folded the map neatly and tucked it into her shirt pocket.
Head still pounding, she rubbed her eyes as though smothering them. She fell back on to the straw-mattress bed and found herself staring back from on high, reflected in the mirror above like a star, chill-yellow and unimaginably distant.
Daring Do imagined the King and Queen of Saddle Arabia, along with an obscene amount of dignified dignitaries, waiting for her in a long polished hall with ornately decorated high walls and a vaulted ceiling.
It was all too stereotypical and cliche, even the very thought of thinking about it! Whenever Daring Do caught herself musing upon those scenes which would fit all too perfectly in the plot of a story, she drowned it with a shot, and immediately attempted to dispel it with a few rapid shakes of her head, as though these thoughts were lice and she could shake them off like dust.
But here she refrained.
She was on the verge of tears when she sat on the cushion motioned to her in the tiny Royal Room. The Queen offered her tea and milk.
Suddenly the silence stopped breathing.
The King's voice intimated that he wanted to tell her something. At that moment Daring Do spilt her tea.
"Poor Dear!"
To a servant at the other end of the modest-sized room, waving her forehooves about wildly, somehow indicating that the tea Daring Do spilt had to be cleaned up presently by anypony other than her, the Queen, who instead, in an extraordinarily long and breathless sentence, in too many words, said to Daring Do what could have been conveyed in but less than a dozen: that the elderly are prone to accidents; this, of course, implying far beyond the mere forgiveness of accidents one, perhaps, could not help, but, hidden under the piles of letters, the true meaning, something though perhaps lost to the lesser experienced or without penetrating observation of intelligence, had found its mark to strike Daring Do to the very heart, producing latent alarm, something which the Queen thought and convinced herself that she had quite cleverly and expertly, in her over-refined manner, obscured from perview under the lofty fluff of false eloquence, under the perception and precomprehension that those who mouth difficult words understand difficult and really intelligent things, something, she felt she had gathered, Daring Do did not possess, either because she never had them or lost them in her late age, she evidenced by her rough appearance and lack of refined speech.
"These things happen," the Queen ended, reassuringly, as though reassuring not only Daring Do, but the whole room. "Don't fret," she added, pouting as a parent might pout at cleaning up the mess their new-born had just made, with motherly affection, clouding cold irony.
All those in the room, each in their own way, without thinking, reflected the Queen's empty expression, as though sympathizing with Daring Do, all their eyes on her under masks of pity they themselves hardly understood they were donning.
In that moment Daring Do became a little filly again.
Tongues flicked and wagged; the Queen leaned into the ear of some scholarly pony or other with marvelous rings adorning their horn, a derisive grin playing on her lips; Hoofcliff scoffed with Catherine; Sir Bristlewood flushed with embarrassment not because the archaeologist next to him was making some contemptuous lewd remarks about Daring Do but because he knew what the pony dared only whisper were true. The King, as though he neither wished to notice nor comprehend anything that was being said around him, with that typical indifferent air those in power often take concerning things which have no concern with their own perceptions, again began the attempt to open up the conversation to the matter at hoof. The whispers of the ponies were at once transformed into dunnish smiles repressing to the best of their will expressions of amusement.
"Miss Do," the King of Saddle Arabia began, adjusting himself on the cushion. Somepony dropped a wispy snort at the word miss . "May you please refrain from these distractions so apparently your wont that you may heed what we know and of it what we think you must do?" His ear twitched. He scratched his beard. "Whether you know already or not, for I do not know for sure how far Sir Bristlewood, Hoofcliff, or Catherine has caught you up to speed, regardless I will make all of what we know clear to you."
Daring Do absorbed herself into her newly-filled cup of tea, drinking the transient phantoms. If I haven't already heard this talk of treasure and culture and politics in countless variations. Nevertheless, he has yet to develop that habit of eloquence in refined speech as not only his wife has but as most royals possess and have mastered by repetition and tuning in the fine art of telling lies through means of the mechanical process of conversation. And my own payment--nothing extraordinary, but the job's easy. Why am I here?
"And so it is, that we, the collected present party, have come to the universally unanimous conclusion," (his wife smiled derisively) "that you of all ponies would most benefit us in this enterprise, given your vast years of experience in the field and in the study. So we, though our choice is restrained, nevertheless freely choose to bequeath to you the responsibility of not merely pursuing over not merely the map (I hope you have made some heading as to its meaning last night) but several fragmented documents Sir Hoofcliff and Lady Catherine have happened upon in their businesses that we feel very strongly relate to the present case, but, providence willing, in your future travels, recover the ponies of the aforementioned previous expedition, whatever the condition you may find them in."
"Among the ponies who will accompany you on your expedition of course includes myself, but as well as your old friend, Captain Rainbowdash," Sir Bristlewood chirped. "I hope this will be some comfort to you to have familiar faces along with you on your journey."
Daring Do flattened the map and motioned to Sir Bristlewood. The archaeologist beside him dunned her spectacles and followed after him. Arriving at Daring Do's side, she leaned over Sir Bristlewood's shoulder, pressing in her glasses, not exchanging Daring Do's glance.
Daring Do swung her gaze around the room, and proceeded:
"At first the script appeared to me to be Kappa in origin; if one has seen Kappa script once, it is not difficult to pick out: their swirls are unmistakable. Kappa are water-creatures that look like small monkeys with frog skin and a duck bill and have a shape in the top of their skull of a shallow bowl that holds water," she added their description emphatically in anticipation of looks of inquiry. The archaeologist's glasses slipped. "On second thoughts however I seem to have been correct in my aforementioned assumption. Of course, Kappa script does not mean the map was draw by Kappas, nor even written by Kappas--the most I can presently come to is that the one or ones who put this map together have knowledge of Kappanese, at least enough to write it tolerable well. I will need a few things from my place, or access to some very special library to translate it--alas, I've rarely encountered this language, so I apologize deeply for being unable to avoid begging permission to call a lift back to my house for that purpose. From there, of course, we can set off and see where your premier expedition went wrong."
Sir Bristlewood assented without a second thought. The King and Queen leaned closer to the map with all the affected interest one could have at looking at something one has already seen quite enough of. The rest of the room exchanged whispers, perhaps expressing doubts that she even knew what she was talking about, and that they'd be doing best to simply set out in the same general direction as the last expedition; the locations of the majority of the map, if nearly never visited, were at least not unknowns.
"What for?" The archaeologist dropped her spectacles.
Author's Note
At the time of this chapter finally being published, the majority was written soon after the previous chapter was published--I apologize for one encountering any clumsiness here because of this. I want to continue this story--for I feel there will be much good in it for telling a story that can reveal some somber corners of this character--though, so far, I am merely scratching at the surface with my fingernail, attempting to gently lay down strokes to be layered on later on--and for honing some skills as a writer--even the titles are loomings beyond their headings for chapters.
But time, access, and concentration are issues.
Alas.
