Lost Lily of the Valley

Lily pulled herself out of her makeshift bed and ate breakfast. The day was much the same as the last, with Fish Head taking her down to the docks to collect more fish parts and returning to process them into paste. The paste was then dried and collected into bags or little pouches that Fish Head sold to other ponies. Farmers, mostly, with a few coming to get smaller packages for personal use. The process was all very simple and straightforward, surprisingly. Lily had expected there to be more to it, but there wasn’t. She just took the heads, ground them up, then dried them. It really was that easy.

“That’s it? That’s the whole secret?” Lily asked.

“It is. Good fertilizer is important. How much did you ever use before?”

“Well, not much. I let them do whatever they were going to do.”

“And that’s why you were an amateur, girl.”

Her words stung, but Lily had to admit she was right. Her work was extremely amateur compared to her sisters. She began to wonder how much fertilizer her sisters used, and if they were keeping the secret from her. She knew about fertilizer, but only that it made plants grow faster and stronger.

“Can you use anything else as fertilizer? Why just the heads?”

“You could use the whole fish, the head has bone, eyes, brains (no matter how small), and some meat.”

“That’s interesting. Thank you.” Lily pulled out her notebook and scrawled down the information.

“Stick around for a while longer and you’ll learn more.”

“What?”

“Oh, there’s more, but you haven’t been here long enough to learn it all.”

“How much more?”

“Why not hang about and find out?”

Lily didn’t quite get what she was talking about. Her tone seemed a bit off. “How hard is it to learn?”

Fish head grinned. “Very hard.”

“What benefits do these other methods have over just using fishmeal?”

Fish Head’s eyes sparkled. “Imagine the most beautiful flower you’ve ever seen.”

“Okay…”

“Now imagine that it will never die. You can keep it growing all through the winter. It will be bigger, stronger, and more vibrant than any flower you’ve ever grown before, and you can keep it, forever.”

“What, how?”

“Secrets, girl! Everypony needs her secrets, and you don’t know nearly all of mine. Did you really think fishmeal was all there was?”

“I… don’t know.”

“Do you have the stomach and the desire to be better than your peers?”

Lily thought about how good Rose and Daisy were at growing things, and her jealousy flared up. “Yes!”

“We’ll see about that.” Fish Head picked up a sachet from behind the counter and held it out to Lily. She took it, and Fish Head led the way out of the shop.

“We’re delivering this to a pony named Deep Six. In return for what I bring him, he gives me… supplies.”

They stopped outside a more public graveyard than the one Fish Head had taken her to on the edge of the coast. This one was further inland, heading onto the mainland. It had poorly-maintained grass covering most things, and the gravestones themselves were overgrown by weeds and vines. Fish Head took her to a small shack on the edge of the yard and knocked on the door.

“Deep Six, I have your request.”

The door opened suddenly and silently. There was nary a creak as a pale, sickly-looking stallion stuck his head out. His neck was unusually long, and he looked at Fish Head, then to the sachet. He saw Lily holding it and immediately shrank back into the door and slammed it shut.

“Who’s she!?” he shouted through the wood.

“That’s my apprentice, uh… Girl.”

“My name is Lily.”

“Lily,” Fish Head corrected.

The door opened again and Deep Six stuck his head out. He reached for the sachet carefully, teeth gingerly taking it from her. He disappeared into the door, then a bag that rattled was tossed out onto the ground in front of Fish Head.

“Enjoy, and keep your mouths shut!”

“A pleasure, as always, Deep.” Fish Head motioned to the sack and Lily picked it up off the ground. It was heavy, and it clattered with every shift and bump.

“What’s in this?”

“You think you have the stomach to know?”

“I wouldn’t have stayed if I didn’t.”

“Bones,” Fish Head said matter-of-factly.

Lily went cold. “Bones? Like, pony bones?”

Fish Head gave her a cold smile and held her hoof up to her lips.

“Are you serious?” Lily demanded.

“Getting second thoughts?”

“This is… I could… what would… why?”

“More fertilizer, girl. You know how to make fishmeal, which is the easiest. Now you’ll learn how to make bone meal. And calm down, it’s’ mostly animal bones but… you never know what Deep Six has dug up,” she said with a dark chuckle.

“You pay him in… something to dig up bones?”

“Nopony else is using them, and they’re fantastic fertilizer when prepared right. We’re in the business of making things grow properly, aren’t we?”

“Well… yes.”

“Then don’t get cold hooves just yet, girl. I’ve only just begun. If you want things to grow, you need to be willing to recognize that sometimes, mother nature isn’t enough all alone. You need to give her a boost.”

They returned home and Fish Head pointed to a spot on the floor. “Alright, crush ‘em.”

“What?”

“We can’t use the bones like that. Start stomping.”

“You want me to break them?”

Fish Head nodded. “It would take too long if we waited for them to be broken down. Smash ‘em, then we can move on to making them into a proper fertilizer.”

“But… these might have been somepony!”

“And now they’re a pile of bones. It’s not a pony anymore, and we don’t even know if it was. It could have just been somepony’s pet.”

Lily gaped at Fish Head, then looked at the sack. She set it on the floor and gingerly stepped on top of it, then began stamping. The bones make a satisfying cracking sound as she pounded her hooves into it. Despite her earlier trepidation, she was actually enjoying herself. With how quickly they broke, and how solid the crunch, it was easy to forget that these used to be pony bones. Before long, she had the sack crushed down to smaller pieces, with a few chunks poking through the ratty sackcloth.

Lily looked down at the sack, realizing what she had just done, and once again thinking about how they used to be pony bones, despite the admonishment from earlier. She swallowed. “It’s… it’s done, Fish Head.”

“Good, good. Now here.” She thrust a mortar and pestle into Lily’s hooves. “Time to grind again.”

“This one too?”

“Fertilizer needs to be small. If you want good plants, you need good fertilizer. Most of them need to be ground up.”

“Most?”

“Yeah, there are some that don’t, but those are even harder to get than bones.”

Lily was afraid to ask. “What… what kind is that?”

Fish Head looked at her, one eye glaring wider and fiercer than the other. “Blood.”

Lily felt her heart pounding in her chest, from excitement at the knowledge or terror because of what it was, she didn’t know. “Blood… fertilizer?”

Fish Head was completely nonchalant about the whole thing. “Aye, blood meal. Depending on what’s missing in the soil, you need to replace it with something else. Blood compensates for nitrogen, bone for phosphorus, and fish does both. Fishmeal is what I sell the most of, with bonemeal and bloodmeal for more specific needs.”

“That’s…”

“Horrifying?”

“Well, yes. But also very interesting. I never imagined fertilizer was so important.”

“Too many ponies just use dung, and that’s missing a lot of important nutrients for proper soil. You can’t keep using nothing but that and expect to get good soil. Gotta be clever! Gotta be smart! Gotta not be squeamish!” Fish Head spat on the floor. “Blood and bones, girl. That’s what plants need. Blood and bones.”

“How did you learn all this?” Lily asked as she took a hoofful of crushed bones and dumped them in the mortar.

Fish Head looked at her and was silent for a moment. She didn’t answer at first, and walked away, leaving Lily to her work. She didn’t press the issue, as she knew it was a sensitive one. Whatever he had done to her, it had left an indelible mark. She came back some time later, however. Fish Head brought a bowl of fresh vegetables topped with fancy herbs Lily didn’t recognize.

“Why don’t you try to grow something with what we’ve made here today, girl. If you can prove you understand the soil and what it needs, I’ll explain what I learned. How does that sound?”

“Oh! That would be lovely! I can get some practice in!”

Fish Head nodded. “Don’t let me down, girl. I may be old, but I’m not stupid.” Lily didn’t understand what she meant by that, but she was excited to try.

She spent the rest of the day preparing the bonemeal, and the two of them had a calm and quiet evening talking about plants. Lily explained how she had been growing her lilies beforehoof, and Fish Head told her what she was doing right, and what she was doing wrong. Fish Head wasn’t kind about it, and she didn’t sugarcoat a single thing she said. She called Lily stupid, foolish, and myriad other names, but she admitted where Lily was right. That pleased Lily a lot, knowing that she hadn’t just been wrong about everything. What she had to admit, though, was that she was doing the bare minimum for her flowers. She had been giving them the least they needed to grow and become flowers, without giving them anything more. They were struggling, and she hadn’t known it, but all that could be fixed by checking the soil beforehoof, and putting in the right fertilizers for the job.

Fish Head explained how she was supposed to check the soil, looking to see if it needed one nutrient or another, what to do about it, and what fertilizer was best for the job. If she needed phosphorus, use bone, if she needed nitrogen, use blood, and if she needed both, use fish.

“I don’t know how I’m going to get any of those somewhere like Ponyville. It’s such a small town, and there’s no coastline. All we have is an apple farm, and the local animal shelter is run by the most timid, frightened pony imaginable. I doubt she would be able to help me get any of those things.”

“Are you going to let that stop you?”

“No!”

“Glad to hear it, girl. Now get some sleep. I want to see you try to grow flowers tomorrow.”

“Yes, ma’am,” answered Lily.

They went to sleep, and Lily dreamed fitful dreams.

They were surreal, as most dreams are, but this one was more than she had experienced in a very long time. She was standing in the middle of a graveyard, surrounded by gravestones. One of them was the grave of Fish Head’s husband, and another was the grave of Deep Six, the gravedigger. A third was the leader of the griffin crew on the dock. The graves of all three crept closer to her, digging their way through the dirt toward her. They were all three facing her, trapping her in, then the soil covering them began to churn. It boiled like water, but instead of the bodies growing up out of the dirt, instead there were vines, growing strong and vibrante.

It started out as a small shoot topped by leaves, but as it grew it carried up with it their bones. It coiled around their leg bones, ribs, and finally their skulls, having grown through their eyeholes. The plant was massive, and showed no signs of stopping, growing powerful, and deep in her heart she knew it was because it was growing off the body of somepony dead.