I’ve been asked to write this account by Dr. Sparkle and the estimable Squire Rarity for the sake of posterity and also by order of the Equestrian Maritime Court, who, under threat of perjury and the lash, have forced my hoof in its retelling. And though I still dread the events of that voyage with an anxiety that gives even my therapist nightmares, I wish to give as true and full an account of the events that transpired as my memory shall allow.
My story began when the unlikeliest of company forcibly entered its way into my life. I was a young foal then, helping my father run his inn/strip club, the “Admiral Bimbo”.
I had just finished “working the pole” and was counting my earnings when a plodding figure threw the door open with a thunderous crash. I still remember that face like it was yesterday. She was a brawn sea-tan, her orange coat dark from years under a tropical sun. She had a face as hard as chiseled rock, with eyes as unrelenting as the tide.
“I’m sorry sir,” I apologized.
“I’m a ma’am!”
“Ma’am,” I corrected myself. “The next show is tomorrow at the lunch-time special.”
The old sea mare gave me a look as sour as day-old cider.
“I ain’t here for yer jiggling bits which, by the by, ye don’t have! I be looking for a place to stay.”
“Rooms are five bits a night,” I informed her.
This seemed to have an odd effect on her, for the wrinkles on her face seemed to soften as she took off her worn sea cap and let down her golden, matted hair. She approached me at the counter and slid something underneath my hoof. It was large and heavy. When I turned it over I saw a Sovereign - a thousand bit coin.
“What say ye give me anchorage at this here titty pub and don’t mind the names? I’m looking for a safe harbor and I can’t find me something prettier, so it’ll have to do. So now be a good mate to me and keep it on the account and not ask too many questions.”
I stood there silent for a moment, examining the coin closely to check its authenticity and, being satisfied, I eagerly placed it where I normally kept my valuables.
“What can I call you?” I asked at last.
The mare grunted and snorted fiercely, flying into a fit of choleric rage.
“Didn’t I just be tellin’ ye not to mind the names? Arr, never mind! You might be callin’ me Cap’n Apple. And what be your name, by Neptune?”
“Candi – er, I mean, Scootaloo.”
“Well, Scootaloo, I’m in a cruise for a snooze and I don’t be wanting company, otherwise…”
She produced a pistol from her jacket.
“They’ll get a taste of me broadside!”
She then trundled up the stairs to our rooms - without being told which one was hers - cursing and swearing.
When my father heard the commotion, he arose from his rum-induced slumber at his booth and tottered his way to me at the bar.
“And who,” he said between belches, “have you let in now my dear? Didn’t I tell you, I run a pub/strip joint of repute! You can’t just let any old sod in here.”
“I think he’s a sailor sir,” I replied. “A captain, at least he claims.”
“I’m a mare!” I heard her voice echo from somewhere deep in the inn.
“She,” I corrected myself.
“Well tell her to get out. She’s spoiling it for my paying customers. Just look how upset they are!”
He pointed to the patrons in the other booths who seemed wholly oblivious to what was going on.
“But, sir, he’s already paid. Look!”
I produced the coin and my father, a cool, reserved man not prone to excitement, sprang up on the counter and started dancing as nimbly as a leprechaun.
“Oh by gee! By gosh! By gum! By Jove! We’re rich! Whoopee!”
He clicked his hoofs together and did a jig.
“Tell him she may have anything she desires! The house is at her disposal! Spirits she’ll have by the keg! And don’t forget to mind your manners, my dear, remember you are an inn-keeper’s daughter!”
My father collapsed back into a drunken stupor, giggling and muttering something about not having to sell a kidney now; whose he meant, I could only guess. I, for my part, was greatly relieved that I wouldn’t have to pull double shifts to keep the place above water this month, little knowing what my involvement with Captain Apple would mean for my life.
The Captain herself was a solitary mare. Every day she would trot up to the cliffs overlooking the cove, spy-glass in hoof, and smell the salt that drifted heavy with the morning fog as she scanned the horizon from dawn to dusk.
When she wasn’t looking stoically out into the distance, she was in our tavern. Every other evening she would drink cider until she was as sodden as peat and then began to sing in a voice broken by years of calling numbers on the yard-arms. Most of the time she would sing sea-ballads and other sordid shanties, but every so often, when the moon was high and many of the patrons had left, she would wander out alone to the cliffs and croak out a love song, which she may have learned in her early life.
From time to time, it was the Captain’s habit to remind me of another task I was to perform outside of my regular line of duty.
“Keep a weather eye out for the mare with a moon on her butt! You sees her, you’re to get me quick as lightning, savvy?”
I agreed to do this – for a nominal fee– though I always found the Captain’s manner strange. She was in the habit of racing to her room when a new visitor approached that she didn’t recognize and stare out of the corner until she was sure the coast was clear.
I didn’t think much of this at first, but as time went on, and my fancies began to drift, I imagined the moon-butt mare coming in the dead of night. She had large, supple hips and inviting eyes. How she made me tremble and shake! And she would speak so sweetly that I couldn’t resist her. Such were the visions that haunted my dreams.
Some time passed like this as my father’s health gradually began to deteriorate from excessive ear bleeding (thanks in no part to the Captain’s bad singing) until the events of that fateful evening.
I was out on the front steps of the inn, enjoying an after-work blunt, as was my custom, when out of the darkness I heard the rapid tap of a cane against the road and a high, squeaky voice calling:
“Will somebody tell me where the heck I am? I may be blind, but I know I’m not dumb!” the odd voice chuckled.
Through the gloom I spied a strange figure coming down the road. It was a pink mare, draped in a cloak, with a piece of cloth around her eyes. She smiled and snorted as she clumsily bumped into trees and apologized, laughing all the while.
At first I was not sure if what I was seeing was the product of my addled mind or if my dealer had accidentally slipped me the good stuff, but as I watched from afar, I became more convinced what I was seeing was real. I took pity on the poor pony and went to her at once.
“Do you need any help, ma’am?”
She stopped.
“Who me?” she waved her hoof dismissively. “Nah, I don’t think so. Thank you for offering though!”
I was about to turn away before she called back to me.
“Actually, maybe you could help me. I’m just trying to find a friend of mine. You haven’t seen a mare with an orange coat and blonde hair, have ya?”
I felt my heart sink as I looked down at the pony’s rear to see what I was sure would be a moon. Instead, I only saw three balloons in bright colors.
“It’s rude to stare, ya know,” she continued.
“Yes, er, sorry,” I replied, more than a little startled. “She lives here in the Inn/Strip Club nearby.”
The mare nodded.
“Ah excellent! I knew she’d be around somewhere. How in-sight-ful.”
She let out a tittering laugh, like it was a joke she never tired of telling, while I led her to the door. As we ascended the front steps, however, I felt her hoof suddenly catch me in a vise from which I couldn’t escape.
“Now now, no need to run off so fast. Take me to Captain Apples and no funny business or I’ll clip that pretty little wing of yours!”
“Go ahead, I can’t fly with them anyway.”
She immediately relaxed her grip.
“Oh, well, I’m sorry, I didn’t realize,” she muttered remorsefully, holding up her cane. “Well maybe if I broke one of your legs then?”
“No don’t! I need those to work the pole otherwise I’ll starve!”
“Then march!” she commanded.
I led her into the empty dance room that still smelt of fresh sweat, vomit, and shame, where Captain Apples was in her usual corner, singing off-key. It took a moment for the captain to notice my presence, but when she did, her voice caught in her throat and all the color drained from her cheeks.
Trembling, she stuttered: “It’s…Blind Pink!”
“Pink as I ever was. Come back to give you something from your old shipmates.”
The blind mare instructed me to guide her hoof to the Captain’s. I did so and after she handed the Captain a piece of parchment, she stood back with a smile.
“And now, hasta la vista!” the blind mare exclaimed before nimbly somersaulting out of the door.
Captain Apples carefully unfolded the paper in her hoof and stared at it with inscrutable eyes.
“What is it Captain?”
“The blue spot,” she murmured, twisting it over to see a message written in bright crayon: “Give us the map or you’ll be sorry!”
A chill raced down my spine at the ominous words written so plain that even I could see them form where I stood.
“Until dark…they’re coming at dark.”
I looked outside.
“But it’s dark now!”
“Then we don’t have long.”
In the distance, I could hear the blind mare shrieking: “Applejack! You Pinkie promised to share the map!”
The old Captain blanched.
“Tarnation! They’re coming for my hide!”
I raised an eyebrow as the Captain exchanged her sea brogue for a deep southern drawl.
“Who are you!?” I exclaimed.
The mare rolled her eyes.
“Listen pard, I think I’m having a stroke and those pirates are coming for me-”
“Pirates!?”
“I aint got much time! Look, I was the first mate on the dread pirate ship Walnut. I did a lot of stuff I ain’t proud of, but I tried to go straight! I mean, in a career sense, cause I definitely ain’t attracted to mares!”
The Admiral Bimbo shook as a cannon ball rocketed through the window and took the head off the mermaid figurehead over the bar.
“Long story short! I sailed with Captain Sombra and we got plenty of loot, but Captain Sombra had a mid-life crisis – something about how the true treasure was time with his family or some other bilge water – but he hid the gold on an island that only I know the location of. I wrote it on this map. Here, take this,” she stated, tucking a warn piece of parchment between my breasts. “Guard it with your life. You’ve always been a decent sort to me, you deserve it. Now get out of here, leave stripping behind, and use that treasure to get a decent education instead of wasting it on drink and gigolos like me. And also! Beware the mare with the moon on her butt!”
The Captain had no sooner finished her sentence then she gave out a cry and collapsed on the floor – stone cold dead.
I didn’t have long to grieve, for I knew the pirates would return at any moment, so I threw on my jacket and made for the door before feeling something grasp my shoulder.
I turned around immediately to see my father.
“And where do you think you’re going? I spies a crowd coming and I’ll be scuppered if they were to miss out on a private show. Now go to the back and-”
CRACK!
My father dropped to the floor in front of me, a stunned expression on his face. When I looked back, I saw Captain Apples with a smoking pistol levelled at where my father had been.
“Tell ‘em, when ya get to hell, Cap’n Apples sent ya,” she chuckled throatily as she resumed her biologically challenged condition.
I can forgive the reader if they find the events that I recount to be unbelievable – I found them just as unbelievable at the time! Of course, in hindsight, this may have been for other reasons, though I believe the facts of it will bear out the particulars. In any case, the end result was the same: my father and my daddy were both dead and the pirates were closing in on all sides!
I escaped the only way I knew how. I went to the nearest keg and drank until I couldn’t see straight. Next thing I knew, I was outside in the woods nearby, watching a motley crew of rogues armed with swords and pistols shambling up the road toward the inn/strip club – Blind Pink leading them on.
“Get in there and find that map! In a month I could be eating all the candy I can stomach! In! In! In!” she urged.
The crew obeyed and what followed was the terrible sound of glass shattering and wood breaking as they ransacked the place. After some time, a group of them came out to the blind mare waiting at the door.
“Apple’s keeled over and the map is nowhere to be found. We found this stash of loot though,” he stated, producing a sack of coins that I knew must have belonged to my late father.
“I don’t want your paltry pay! I want that map! Aye, It’s that wench! She’s got the map! Go! Find her fast you dogs!”
But the crew seemed hesitant – mulling about around her.
“Come on Pink,” the one stated. “It was a bad run, let’s just take the loot and go.”
The Pink mare seized her cane and began to swing it around wildly as the rest tried to avoid her blows.
“You nescient nincompoops! You could all be living like kings if you go and find her! She’s as high as a kite and couldn’t have gotten far!”
The others paid no mind to what she said, only trying to stay out of her way or wrest the cane away from her. When this failed, the lot of them scattered in all directions as she tried to command them to return. When she founds that her protestations were in vain, she began wandering down the road, shouting curses and swears.
I tried to keep as still as I could in the thicket but sure enough she seemed to be coming closer, her nostrils flaring.
“I know you’re close!” she cried. “I can smells ya!”
I thought about running but my legs were unwilling to move. She was almost upon me when, to my great fortune and surprise, a flyer rode over the hill and caught Blind Pink under its tracks. She let out an agonized yelp as it ran her over, crushing both of her legs.
“Haha, oh man, now I’m blind and cripple!”
She snorted and laughed as I escaped into the woods, the peal of her voice echoing behind me with every step.
