Sweet Little Lovely: A Gothic Romance

Afterward, Marvelous mentioned nothing of Little Lovely's words, and of the accident he would say “It was only a misunderstanding.” But if one were to catch his eyes, they would find his gaze distant, as though constantly searching in his mind for some memory – some thought or forgotten word gone missing at the most irritating moment.

Though he had always tended toward distraction, each passing day saw him ever more withdrawn. He spoke only rarely and, to his family's great surprise, made no efforts whatsoever to see Little Lovely. The days progressed into weeks and their surprise grew into concern, and from concern into worry.

One particular evening, his mother found her way to his small workshop, fretting as mothers often do, only to find herself gripped by a fearful sense of powerlessness as she looked upon the pale, wretched face of her son staring at the turning wheels of some mechanism upon his work-table.

“Marvelous,” she called. Yet he continued to stare with unabated intensity.

“Marvelous,” she called again a bit more loudly. He didn't give a start, but instead turned quickly upon her with a flash of anger.

Or perhaps she had been mistaken, for when he answered, there was no sign of any expression upon his face but a cheerful smile. “Yes, mother?”

“Are you … are you feeling well, Marvelous? You look as though you haven't slept.”

“Oh, I'm all right,” he said, and he turned back to his work. “Sleep? Yes, that must be it,” he mumbled. “I suppose I've had a bit of trouble sleeping lately, but it's nothing to worry over. I feel perfectly fine.” Of course, he said nothing of the darkly alluring visions that flooded his mind with wakefulness in the darkened hours of the night. He did not mention the mysterious temptations of dreams both horrific and beautiful, of gruesome, tragic phantasms passing unbidden before his eyes, or the constant, droning echo of questions sounding in his mind like the grinding gears of a tower clock.

“Perfectly fine,” he said.

But as his mother quietly walked away, she was little comforted by his reply.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Marvelous hovered over his crafting table, the candles perched here and there glowing with a brown, faded light too feeble to hold back the suffocating darkness of the room. His head lay heavy upon his hooves, his nostrils filled with the scents of oil and smoke and sickly-sweet decay, his eyes down, settled miserably on his latest work.

Brass and green copper, gears within a shell, the shell within a carcass – it lay inside the gaping belly of the chicken, gleaming behind the weaving shadows of the remaining entrails.

The cogs turned. The wires wound themselves upon their spindles. The intestines fluxed. The lungs pulled breath through a headless throat and crippled limbs twisted and flailed in nightmarish spasms.

It lay on the table, flapping like a broken puppet, and Marvelous breathed a shuddering hiss. It was a mockery – a rotting look-alike, no closer to life than the birds in his clocks. For he could mimic the actions of life but not the function. There was, to his knowledge, no magic so subtle, no trick of biology so precise, no mechanism so intricate as to match the delicacy that he'd seen inside even these simple beasts.

His teeth ground in frustration, and every thought in his mind screamed with questions.

Little Lovely had spoken the truth, of that much he was certain. But what she had said – it was simply unbelievable.

She had died, and had been “fixed.”

The cold touch of her lips, the constant chill of her hooves, so many things that he'd overlooked before now only seemed to confirm it. It was the stuff of children's stories and old tales of alchemists and long forgotten gods, but he could not deny the truth of it. She was a dead pony – a dead pony that speaks, and breathes, and moves, and thinks.

But for all of this she was no less beautiful. Nay, rather, she was only the more beautiful because of it. He could see it all in his mind's eye – her delicate features, her perfect operation – construction that he could only imagine, the work of unparalleled genius.

And yet this was the very source of his misery. He could not extract from his mind that maddening question of “How?” And yet he had found not even a hint of an answer, not for all of his ferocious study, not for all of the long nights spent awake over a pile of rotting, bleeding flesh.

With the sudden force of his anger, he brought his hooves down upon his puppet thing, twisting and snapping the strings that pulled its bones, laying to rest its horrible movements, and then ran a hoof through his mane. He sat there while his candles burned low and watched the raindrops rolling over the ghastly, venomous reflection that gazed back at him from the frame of his window, then finally, Marvelous turned toward the door.

He took his failed mechanism as he left. It would remain unfound, rotting in the brush outside the old tenant farms.

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

His hooves pushed through the short winter grass, the sound of his steps smothered by the rolling din of the storm that left his body wet and numb and cast a moonless cerement over the plain, to be pierced by neither moonlight nor the meager glow of his horn. His mind enveloped in a drowsy, dreamlike haze, he crept to the wall beneath Little Lovely's window and rapped upon the pane, at first gently and then, when he perceived no response, more firmly.

All at once the room was alight with a soft, amber radiance that lifted, in that same moment, the darkness that had settled upon his heart. A shadow danced across the wall and a trembling hoof struggled upon the latch.

And then, there she stood, looking down upon him through the open window. As he crouched below, unmoving, the rain washing over his matted hair – as he watched the lamplight cast that wonderful glow over her snow white cheek and set a twinkle upon those eyes which held the silvery mist of the morning – he knew that never before had there been upon the Earth any creature of such magnificence.

“Marvelous?”

“I'm sorry to wake you,” he said. “I had to see you.”

She hesitated for only a moment, and then extended her hoof, beckoning him forward to lead him quietly inside.

After fastening the window, Little Lovely, clad about in a heavy robe, stepped aside to a porcelain basin, and taking the pitcher in her still shaking hooves, began to pour. “Y-You sh-should w-wash your hooves,” she spoke softly.

Her room was small and simple, the floor left bare, the walls empty of any artwork or decoration. Piled about the corners of the room were scraps of cloth, and peaking out from their shadowy places upon the wall were a number of elaborately dressed wooden dolls.

As he cleaned his soiled hooves, he noticed a tremulous sound at his side. He turned and was struck by the telltale glimmer of tears.

“Little Lovely? Whatever is the matter?”

She looked away and brought a hoof to her cheek. “I … I was c-certain that you had left me f-forever.”

He rushed to her, and gently laid his hooves about her shoulders. “No, never!” he whispered. “Never.”

She accepted the comfort of his touch, and her trembling soon died away as she stood in his embrace. And then, very slowly, she began to draw back, and cast at him a suddenly curious look. “Marvelous,” she asked, “why are you here?”

“Just as I said, I simply had to see you.” He drew a hoof over his rain-slicked mane and then leaned close. “You told me, all those weeks ago – you'd told me that you had died. And I think … I think that I understand what you'd meant.” Her eyes wavered from his as he spoke. “But I must know for certain. I must see the truth with my own eyes.”

She pulled from his grasp. “Marvelous, why m-must you do this to me?” she softly implored. “What you ask now…. I can show you … I can give you your answer but y-you could never love me afterward!”

Immediately, he was upon her with gentle kisses for her tears. “No! Little Lovely, you must believe me when I say that I will always love you! But you don't know what this question, this terrible mystery, has done to me! Please, let me settle the matter in my mind, if only a little.”

Her voice was heavy with sorrow, and she sniffled as she gave her reply.

“Do as you wish, then.”

She looked away as his hooves lay upon her shoulders. He slid the robe from her back, leaving her standing shamefaced and trembling in her nightdress, and for the first time, he saw her limbs uncovered.

He took her pale hoof in his and lifted it from the floor, and with his other, he drew a long, slow caress along her foreleg. The body in his grasp held nothing of the supple softness and warmth of youth. Instead, his hoof slid over cold, thick skin, the flesh beneath unyielding, exhibiting a distinctive feeling of bloat. He could see at her joints ragged, gray patches of flesh which gave way to unmistakable protrusions of bone, as though her body had worn itself through like a threadbare suit of clothes.

He carefully stroked the skeletal hinge of her fetlock. “Does it hurt?”

“No,” she said, “I can scarcely feel anything anymore.”

He kissed her, softly. Her lips were cracked and dry. What once would seem a result of the winter cold he knew now to be the artifact of decay. Yet her kiss was still beautiful, in both sentiment and flavor, for upon her flesh was a subtle, flowery moisture which lingered familiarly upon his tongue.

“Could you feel that?”

She smiled, but her smile could not lift the sadness from her eyes. “Not as much as I would like.”

He pulled her gently into his embrace, and she lay upon his neck. They stood together, and the winter rain fell with cold indifference upon the earth. As he held her, stroking her back tenderly, he felt, in the fine fabric of her nightdress, a coarseness, as if something lay beneath. A glance back revealed, through the diaphanous lace, a bandage which enclosed her completely from haunch to breast.

“Little Lovely, your injury, how did your father fix it?”

“He just fixed it,” she said in a voice that carried with it the evidence of a hundred experiences which had long since stripped away any notion of novelty or the unusual. “He … took out the pieces that didn't work, and put in new ones”

“May I see it?”

“I won't stop you, Marvelous.” She paused. “But could you really love me, even if you could no longer look upon me without disgust?"

He gently lowered her to the floor. “My love, I give you my word at this moment – in no way, at no time, could you ever disgust me,” he said. He kissed the tip of her nose and then lifted her gown to her chest.

He stood back, and with the magic of his horn, he slowly and carefully unwrapped the manifold turns of white linen. All the while, Little Lovely lay with her head tucked timorously within her folded forelegs.

Marvelous soon came to the final folds of bandage, revealing beneath a fine rubber sheet wrapped fully about her abdomen. In truth, he had not known what it was that he had expected to find beneath – perhaps no more than a small cut upon her belly. But as the sheet opened and fell away, he was left astonished. His mind, heretofore addled with sleeplessness, was left paralyzed with shock.

For the black rubber curtain had parted to show no delicate alabaster belly, no small wound, nor even the mangled flesh of a long-ruined corpse. Instead, there lay within the lurid, sanguine coils of bare entrails – which, as the sheet fell away, promptly spilled upon the floor.

After only a moment, his senses returned, yet still he gazed upon her with unabated amazement. There, between the solid form of her hips and her lilly-white chest lay a spreading mound of viscera. Her innards glistened in the wavering lamplight, and he drew close; his senses were awash in the sweet, warm fragrance that filled the room as his eyes traveled past the delicate, rosaline form of her stomach to the undulating, distinct pouches of her intestine, each rolling mound like a pale, polished bead of soft carnelian. And there he kissed her, a light and careful touch which nevertheless drew a gasp from her throat. On his lips he found a thin, sticky film, and at once he realized the source of that constant, familiar flavor – honey – honey which pervaded every part of her, honey which now pooled thickly beneath her very organs.

He lifted his head and laid a heavy kiss upon her lips. Here too was the intense, intoxicating taste of honey.

Little Lovely's eyes were wide in surprise. “Marvelous? I'd never thought –”

“Have I hurt you at all?”

“No. No, but ….” She wrapped him tightly in her grasp, and whispered through fresh tears, “I've never felt your kisses so keenly before.”

He laughed as he gently loosened her grip. “And you shall feel many more such kisses.”

True to his word, he kissed her upon the neck, and then once more upon the breast. As he finally kissed her, carefully, upon her stomach, he could actually see her shuddering gasp as the thin muscle beneath her lungs quivered before his eyes.

From where he lay, he could also hear the curious sound of her heart – though, to his surprise, it beat with a steady, solid “tick,” in the familiar resonance of brass and iron, neither speeding nor slowing, but always sounding each heavy pulse with perfect regularity.

Setting aside this curiosity in his mind, his gaze settled upon the scene before him. To his continued wonderment, he watched the contractions of her stomach and intestines, the vacillating, fluid motion of her digestion laid bare before his eyes as Little Lovely fidgeted shyly with a lock of her mane.

Woven throughout her entrails was the complex path of her circulation, like a thin and delicate sweep of lace knit with unfathomable intricacy in tiny threads of red and violet. As he searched intently about her body, he noticed, dotted about here and there, a number of small mechanisms – rings and wires of silver which served, he suspected, to hold and connect the various pieces together. And as always, Little Lovely lay watching with shimmering, ghostly eyes flooded with admiration.

With effort, he composed himself as he drew once again to her lips. “My darling, my wonderful girl,” he said, his voice tremulous with emotion, “how could you ever think I would be disgusted by you?”

It was in the midst of their kiss that the door burst open to the heavy sound of hooves on the floor.

“Papa?!”

The light which had so kindly caressed Little Lovely's youthful cheek lay now upon the sallow, grim features of Mr. Carver. His eyes were tired, his face lined with dark crevices of age and bereft of its smile, now set with a bitter, weary glare upon Marvelous.

“Little Lovely,” he said, “get yourself cleaned up and get down to the cellar.”

With her flickering, faltering magic, she began to wrap herself with the rubber sheet. “D-d-don't-don't be angry w-with him, papa!” she begged as Marvelous stood at her side, carefully enclosing her about with the bandages once again, though his eyes were still fast upon Mr. Carver.

She stood, quaking with fear, her hoof upon her belly as she stumbled toward the door. “Papa, please –”

“Get down to the cellar.”

She quickly left without another word. Mr. Carver shut the door behind her. The sound of her delicate hoofsteps quickly died away, and Marvelous' ears were left ringing in the deep, oppressive silence of their absence.

“Now, what are you doing here so late at night, Marvelous?”

Carefully, he considered his response, knowing now that nothing less than the truth would stand. “I had to see with my own eyes if it was true – Little Lovely, she'd told me that she'd died, you see. And she'd said that you fixed her – brought her back to life, I'd assumed – and I-I simply wanted to know how it was possible.”

“And it seems you weren't at all unhappy with what you'd found,” he spat. “You expected to take advantage of my daughter then? Knowing her secret, you make your wicked demands and she must comply or be exposed to the town as a monster? Is blackmail your game, boy?”

“Blackmail? A monster?” he nearly stumbled in his shock. “Not at all! I care about your daughter very much, Mr. Carver!” He composed himself, and quietly, sincerely continued. “She's … a very beautiful pony.”

Slowly, the harshness began to fall from the old pony's face as he breathed a tired sigh, “I must say, you always did strike me as a very strange boy, Marvelous,” he said.

Now absent the dangerous bearing of an angry father, he seemed suddenly older, pressed beneath the weight of many years as he sat himself down by Little Lovely's simple dressing-table. Silently, he took a doll from her shelf with a wisp of his magic, looking upon the carefully crafted little toy with eyes that knew the sting of bitter sorrow. “But you are wrong; I did not, as you seem to believe, bring a dead pony to life.”

His gaze grew ever more distant as he continued. “It was after the war ended. After such a long time and so much fighting, I'd decided that I'd seen enough of the border. Besides, it had grown too crowded, too noisy. So I said to myself, I would look for a new home. I packed with me what little I had and traveled north, where there would be snow, and pine trees, and solitude. I found myself a little village. I learned to carve furniture, to make clocks. And very soon, I was married.”

“She was such a good girl, Marvelous. She was so filled with love. And then came our first child and I tell you, I had not seen such happiness in all my days.” His accent seemed to grow thicker with each sentence. He smiled as he spoke, and his voice wavered with laughter that threatened to break into tears. “With everything in her, she wanted to love that little child. She spoke of it constantly, of course, and she bought it gifts, and she would tell me stories of how our child would grow up and make us proud.”

“And as you probably suspect, the child did not live. He was my first son.”

“My second son did not survive also, some two years later.”

He gripped the little doll between his hooves. “My little wife, she was destroyed, Marvelous. As much as her happiness was beautiful, her sadness was awful. She was wasting away, and as much as I tried not to think it, I sometimes feared that the sadness would be her death.”

“But then we found that she was with foal once again. We were both afraid for a time; it was not at all certain whether her body, or her soul, could endure such a trial. But in the end, she gave birth to a little filly. That little filly, she was the most beautiful thing in the world to us. She was our Little Lovely.”

Mr. Carver's tired face broke into a wide smile. “For a while, we were happy again. When she looked at Little Lovely, all the light came back into her eyes. She looked like the beautiful unicorn I married, full of life and joy and hope.”

“But, of course, it couldn't last,” he growled, his face grim once more. “It could never last. When she was still young, too young even to have a cutie mark, Little Lovely grew very sick. For months, she could not so much as leave her bed. And my little wife was there every minute by her side. I could see that horrible sadness coming upon her once again.”

“But there was something else too, Marvelous; she had a fire inside her. Her eyes, they told me that she would die herself before she lost Little Lovely.”

“I remember the day that Little Lovely's heart stopped beating. And my wife, she just sat there, angry, and she reached in with her own magic, into the little girl's chest, and she pumped her heart herself. She kept at it for hours, and Little Lovely lay there the whole time watching her momma keep her alive.”

“Eventually, Little Lovely's heart started to beat on its own. But she wasn't getting any better, and eventually, we knew, it would only happen again.”

He finally met Marvelous' eyes once more. “I told you once, Marvelous, that when I was in the war, I learned many things. And I had a fire inside as well, you know. I would not stand by while the two ponies that I loved wasted away. I knew I couldn't heal Little Lovely, but maybe, I thought, I could fix her.”

“Her heart wouldn't beat, so I said, I'll make her a new heart. And so, I made her a heart that would never stop. When her stomach wouldn't take food, my wife, she went out in the night and she killed one of the neighbor's dogs. I put the stomach inside Little Lovely. The war, as I said, taught me many, many things.”

“But I knew that no matter how many pieces I could put back, Little Lovely would never truly recover. You see, the source of the sickness was inside her bones. One day, I let it slip to my wife that if I could just somehow give Little Lovely new bones, she would finally be free of the sickness for good. When she looked at me then … of all the things I've seen, in the war and since, there is no memory that fills me with such horror.”

“She gave Little Lovely new bones, Marvelous. She gave her a whole new body.”

The short silence that followed seemed so much longer in that small room where the rain fell relentlessly, and the wind roared, and the world ignored the quiet words of the old pony. “Little Lovely's mind was touched by the ordeal. And the nerves, they die too quickly. I was never able to give her a sense of feeling.”

Marvelous spoke quietly, “And … and I suppose that's why she can't use magic?”

“Oh, no. She can use magic very well, Marvelous. She just doesn't know it. Perhaps in a way she understands, but anymore, I suspect that it has become something that she simply doesn't think about. As I said, the nerves die too quickly; I was never able to connect her mind to her body. I had feared that she would be left an invalid, confined to her bed with only the most basic capacities for the rest of her life. But you see, she surprised even me.” The doll in his hooves did a little dance as it floated to the ground, the glimmer of Mr. Carver's magic just visible upon it as it cantered along the floor. “Her magic is what allows her to move, Marvelous. She can walk and speak and even feel, all from the magic that she uses to carry herself every moment of every single day, controlling her own body as though it were a little wooden doll.”

He looked to Marvelous once again, his lips curled in bitter humor. “So you see, Little Lovely isn't some amazing, mystical creation, my boy. She's just a … sick little filly who grew up in a broken body.”

Marvelous stood, pondering, silent and unmoving. The little doll continued its walk along the floorboards until it struck his hoof, and he watched as the magic flickered away and it fell, softly, to the ground.

“So you have your answer, though I'm sure you're rather disappointed” he said. “And now that you know the whole truth, what will you do?”

As he lifted the doll from the ground, Marvelous began to speak. “You and your daughter have certainly suffered a great deal, Mr. Carver. And I would … never wish to add to your troubles. But if I could, I suppose that I should like to ask for your blessing.”

“My blessing?”

He responded with a smile. “On our marriage, of course.”

Mr. Carver quietly laughed, and even in the lamplight, his eyes seemed to shine once more with their familiar friendliness. “You are a very strange boy, Marvelous. But you know,” he said, “you are also a very good boy.”

=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Marvelous had asked her once if she'd have preferred a wedding in the winter or in the spring. In fact, Little Lovely wished most of all to be married on the first day of summer.

And so it was, on a cloudless day when the air was cool and still fragrant with the scents of late spring flowers, that Little Lovely and Marvelous were wed. The affair was fairly simple, held in the town square where even the townsfolk who weren't personally invited were obliged to watch with smiles from their windows. Marvelous' family had been at work the entire morning preparing the decorations and had left the center of town awash in fresh blossoms and ribbons tied on ivy greens.

There she stood, Little Lovely in front of her groom, wearing the flowing white gown that she'd stitched herself, her golden mane aglow in the summer sun. Even the most jealous ponies would later declare that she was, predictably, the loveliest bride they could ever hope to see.

He gazed into her eyes – eyes damp with joyous tears, that spoke of laughter and whispers and embracing under the soft blue moonlight. In the midst of the cheers and applause of the villagers, he kissed her for the first time as her husband, and tasted once more the honey-sweet flavor of her cold lips.