Inspirational Hymn:
Dream Engine
Admiral Biscuit
It was still a shock to look down at the bubblegum pink mare, who even this early in the morning had her straw-colored mane pulled back into a neat ponytail.
Clive was barely awake. He took a groggy sip of his coffee.
It helped some, but his eyes were still bleary while hers were as blue and clear as the cloudless sky above Canterlot.
He rubbed a hand over the stubble on his cheeks, chuckling at his recent discovery that he could no longer remember how to use a disposable razor.
That skill was coming back; the last time he’d shaved he’d only nicked himself a few times.
“Good morning, Mister Davis! What do you wanna see today?” she asked, way too cheerfully for this early in the morning.
Especially since wherever they went, they’d be walking.
He shrugged as she got up on the bench next to him. “What haven’t we seen yet?”
She scrunched up her muzzle and pondered.
Clive had pitched the idea of doing a photojournalistic story of significant historical or cultural landmarks in and around Canterlot. The palace had been done, of course, but he reasoned that in a city as old as Canterlot, and one that had been their seat of empire since its founding, there would be dozens of significant sites. Maybe cultural, or religious, who knew.
He wasn’t wrong about that; he’d already toured plenty of sites that no human had yet photographed, and also learned a lot about the ponies—their history, their beliefs, what was societally important for them.
He had also anticipated that there would be some sort of guidebook for tourists, something that listed all the important cultural sites.
There was not; and furthermore, when he had asked Backbeat about it, she seemed confused by the question.
It had taken some back-and-forth before she understood that while her parent’s house was significant for her, it wasn’t culturally significant in Equestrian society.
He still took lots of pictures; sooner or later there would be a photo essay of a typical unicorn house. Her parents were quite friendly and accommodating; he could see where she got it from.
“Well, there’s the granary,” she said. “I mean, there’s lots of them now but the oldest one is still in use.”
“How old is it?” he asked.
“It’s older than the palace,” Backbeat said. “’Cause after Canterlot was founded and after the unicorns decided to build a palace for the Princesses, they needed to have food for all the workers, so they built a granary and then when there was enough food in it they started building the palace.
“It’s kind of part of the palace now,” she admitted. “And it isn’t still used for grain because that’s a fire risk, even with spell-lamps instead of lanterns, but it is still used as a store-room. And it’s close so you won’t even have to walk very far to go see it.”
Clive nodded, and took another sip of his coffee. The palace was huge and rambling, with twisting passages and endless staircases, along with entire sections which could not be reached by foot.
He was still trying to see if he could wrangle an invitation—and a means of transit—to the Rookery in the eastern section of the palace.
•••••
An hour later, both Backbeat and Clive stood in front of the old granary. Like many of the rooms in the various warrens of the castle, there was a sign on the door with a painted icon indicating what was behind the door. In this case, the meaning of the sign on the door wasn’t obvious to him, but once the door was open, it was. Shelves of root vegetables on one side; crates stacked along the other, and some extra tables and chairs stored in the center. It had been repurposed to a general purpose room.
While that was boring, he was here and took some pictures of the joinery and construction details, from the old stone and crumbling mortar, to the thick black beams that held the roof up. Here and there he could see where repairs had been made on the wall, mostly to replace mortar.
One corner of the old roof had been removed. “What’s over there?” he asked Backbeat.
She shrugged. “Go check it out.”
He nodded and walked over. There wasn’t sunlight streaming through, so they’d built something on top of at least part of the granary.
To his puzzlement, there was nothing there, just a square shaft that ran up a couple of stories. It looked not unlike an empty elevator shaft.
Backbeat joined him and looked up. “Oh, that’s a pegasus shaft.”
“Pegasus shaft?”
She nodded. “Sure, so they can fly up and down between floors without going outside. If you look at the very top, there’s also a hook for a block and tackle, so it could also be used to hoist big things up. There’s a bunch of them in the castle; some get used and some don’t.”
Clive nodded, and then took a couple of pictures of the shaft; that was another detail that might not make it in a photo essay of culturally-significant pony sites in Canterlot, but it could be useful in some other publication.
“That was a very interesting building,” he said as the two of them left the granary behind. “Are there other little sites like that on the castle grounds that we haven't seen?”
“Hmm.” Backbeat sat down and scratched her head. Apparently she couldn't think when she was on all four hooves. “Well, there’s the statue garden.”
“Statue garden?”
“It’s not really a garden,” she said. “I mean, it is a garden ‘cause it’s full of decorative plants, but the statues don’t grow or anything like that. Like, there’s a couple of different ones around the palace, but I think the one that’s got the Pillars in it is the most ‘culturally-significant.’ She was still on her rump as she spoke, and used her hooves to make air-quotes around ‘culturally-significant.’
“Sure, let’s go see it.”
•••••
Clive tried to get as many perspectives of the sites as he could. Some things had been designed to be inclusive, while others had been built with just one or two tribes in mind.
He didn’t quite get a pegasus-eye view of the statue garden, but they got a chance to look over it from a balcony. From there, he could see the overall layout of the garden, tucked in an alcove between a wing of the palace and an outer wall.
As they reached ground level and followed the flagstone path to the garden, he got a different perspective, that of a pony who might be visiting it from town. He could still see the statues poking above the hedge that surrounded it, but as he crouched down on his heels, he got a more pony-eye perspective, and from that angle it was just a hedge with an opening. Nothing could be seen of it.
There weren’t lines of ponies waiting to visit it, although he did see one walk in as he was taking pictures. Since she was wearing wicker panniers stuffed full of gardening implements, he assumed that she was a groundskeeper of sorts, rather than a tourist.
“It’s kinda arranged in chronological order,” Backbeat explained. “That is, chronological of when the subjects of the statues lived.” She considered, and then added, “Or got famous.”
“So some of them got made long after the ponies were alive?” he asked.
Backbeat nodded. “Like, there weren’t any statues of the Pillars here until I was a filly, and then ponies got interested enough in them to make statues. They’re not entirely accurate,” she admitted, “as we now know.”
“Ah.” Clive said, thinking back to Earth statues which had been made long after the fact and which weren’t always accurate. “So they got carved and then historians did more research, and—”
“No, not in the case of the Pillars. They came back.”
“Came back?”
She nodded and swept a hoof past the six statues, arranged three on each side of the pathway. “They were trapped in Limbo, and then got brought back . . .” She tapped a hoof on the gravel pathway. “A few dozen moons ago, I don’t remember exactly.”
“Ah.” There was going to be more to learn about the Pillars, but for now he took pictures of them, as well as the placards at the base of each statue and then let Backbeat lead him on to the next section of the statue garden.
From above, it hadn’t looked all that large; from the ground, with his view mostly blocked by hedges, it felt considerably larger.
It also guided his focus; while the statues were sometimes in groups—like the Pillars—or singly, like Oculus the Unobservant, they were arranged in such a way that you couldn’t see any other clusters of statues, as if the garden had been designed to have small viewing areas.
He supposed it had.
As they neared the end of the statue garden, Clive had already decided that Equestrian history was weird. Between supposedly-historical ponies being brought back from Limbo, or the inventor of the self-petrification spell (but not the un-petrification spell) forever preserved in the garden, he had decided that he was going to sanitize the captions for the eventual photo spread. Nobody would believe them otherwise.
After all, it wasn’t meant to be a history book or an art book, it was more for entertainment or tourism, and the photos of the statue garden would only occupy a few pages of the thick, glossy coffee-table book that people would impulse buy as they waited in a supermarket checkout line.
He snapped a photo of a statue of a flaming steed, then a mare wearing a cape who was holding an orange flag. He snapped a shot just as the flag totally eclipsed the stallion, cursed, and tried again.
Then they rounded another corner and ducked into an alcove. As soon as he laid eyes on the statue, Clive was so taken aback, he would have dropped his camera if it hadn’t been strapped around his neck.
Of all the things he’d expected to see in statue form, a human wasn’t on the list.
•••••
In hindsight, a human statue could have made sense. It could have been the first human to make contact with the ponies, for example. Or a world leader who had signed a peace treaty with the ponies.
This didn’t look like a world leader. The clearly male figure had long hair and a pair of shades over his eyes, as well as what appeared to be a leather jacket with a studded collar.
“Who’s that?”
“You don’t know?” There was both incredulity and pity in Backbeat’s voice.
She hadn’t been surprised he didn’t recognize any of the ponies who had been represented—one way or another—in stone, but this was different. “That,” she said, “is Jim Steinman, inventor of the Power Ballad.”
Clive didn’t answer; he was still trying to process what she’d just said. She took it to mean he’d never heard of Jim Steinman.
“How do you not know who he was? He wrote lots of the best power ballads, like Holding Out for a Hero (1984, Columbia Music), and Is Nothing Sacred (1999, Virgin), and 悲しみは続かない (1986, TDK)."
Clive’s mouth was still gaping open like a fish.
Backbeat’s expression got even more pitying. “Not even Total Eclipse of the Heart (1983, CBS)? Well.” She bumped his hip with her muzzle. “Put your camera down, Mister Davis; you’re about to experience some proper cultural significance. We’re going to the karaoke bar.”
