Chapter 21 of 21·6 min read·The following afternoon
The Road to the Punchline
By noon, Spike had drawn three trapdoors beneath the mill and crossed out two of them. The third had a little bell beside it, though he hadn’t decided what the bell did. I had offered one suggestion and then kept my muzzle shut. It was his adventure, and a game master who couldn’t tolerate a quiet spot was just a railroad with better stationery.
Twilight borrowed Spike to help sort a stack of books. He left the map on the table and promised to be back before lunch was over. I waited, tried to read a local paper, and discovered that Ponyville had more opinions about a cabbage competition than I’d known existed. By the time the library clock clicked past noon, I took the paper outside and sat on a bench near the market.
I’d spent years among people who knew which version of me they were getting: the writer, the game runner, the guy who could pick up a shift if rent was looming. Here, strangers knew the unicorn with the dark coat and the missing cutie mark. They were usually kind about it. Kindness still left a lot of room between one conversation and the next.
A mare with a basket glanced at me as she passed. I folded the paper.
“Do you know if the cabbage contest is judged by size or taste?” I asked. “The article is committed to preserving the mystery.”
She stopped beside the bench and peered at the page. “Taste, mostly. Size gets you noticed, but a giant cabbage can still be woody.”
“That sounds like the kind of lesson people learn only after growing a giant cabbage.”
She laughed and shifted the basket higher on her back. A smaller pony walking beside her leaned in to see what I was reading. The conversation might have ended there. Instead, I asked whether the contest had a category for the most stubborn cabbage, and the mare told me about one that had resisted harvest until her brother brought a saw.
A gray stallion waiting at the next market stall joined in to dispute the story. He had lost a pumpkin to a similar battle, and he described the pumpkin’s final days in the tone of someone recounting a hard-fought siege. I listened, added a few questions, and found myself doing what I used to do at a game table: giving people room to make the next part up.
The stallion’s story ended when the shopkeeper came out with a crate. The mare’s smaller companion stayed by the bench, looking at me expectantly.
“Have you got one?” the young pony asked.
I knew a long joke that had survived several game nights and at least one group chat. It was the sort of joke that made people groan before they finished laughing, which was a niche but dependable form of entertainment.
“I’ve got one,” I told the little group. “It takes a while to get where it’s going.”
Next
Tomorrow, David will play the mill owner again while Spike discovers what the players choose to do with the door beneath the mill.
The mare set her basket down. “We’re not in a hurry.”
That was all the invitation I needed. I shifted on the bench, careful with my legs, and started with a horse who lived in a village far from any tavern. The horse was a careful sort, and he had heard there was a place across the hills where the cider was good and the innkeeper knew every traveler’s name. He decided to go there, but he wanted to arrive with a story worth telling.
“So he packed a map?” the stallion asked, easing himself against the stall.
“He packed four,” I said. “One for the route, one in case the first map was wrong, one to prove he’d planned ahead, and one he couldn’t read because he’d bought it from a traveling goat.”
The young pony snorted. The mare’s mouth twitched, and I kept going.
The horse set off. The first bridge was closed for repairs, so he went around by the river and got his hooves muddy. A shepherd sent him to a village with a blacksmith who could fix his travel-worn shoes. The blacksmith sent him to a tailor because the horse’s coat had caught on a thornbush. The tailor sent him to a barber, who claimed he could trim a mane into a shape that made any traveler look respectable.
“He got a haircut?” the mare asked, lifting one eyebrow.
“He got a haircut, a repaired shoe, and a very expensive scarf,” I said. “Then he crossed a mountain pass, where a goat charged him a toll for using a path the goat had not built.”
The stallion tapped a hoof against the dirt. “That sounds familiar.”
“Apparently it’s a common goat business model.”
I kept the horse on the road. He passed a mill with a broken wheel and helped the miller fix it. He carried a lost letter to a post office, where the clerk made him fill out a form explaining why a horse was delivering a letter that had already been delivered. He took a wrong turn, circled a lake, and arrived at a village where everypony had heard about the tavern but nobody could agree which hill it was on.
The young pony had sat down in the grass. The mare’s basket was still on the ground. The stallion had stopped pretending he needed to be elsewhere.
At last, after weeks of travel, the horse found the tavern. He’d lost the scarf, repaired his shoes twice, and acquired a small collection of maps he still couldn’t read. The door swung open. He stepped inside, and the bartender looked up from polishing a glass.
“Why the long face?”
The stallion groaned. The mare laughed into her hoof. The young pony rolled onto their back in the grass, delighted mostly, I suspected, by how much effort I’d spent on such a terrible ending.
“That’s it?” the stallion asked, though he was still smiling.
“That’s the whole thing,” I said. “There’s a version with more goats, but it doesn’t improve the punchline.”
The mare picked up her basket. “I’d have stayed for the goats.”
“I’ll keep that in mind if I’m ever asked to give a lecture on poor travel planning.”
The young pony sat up. “Do you tell stories for a living?”
“Sometimes. Mostly I run games and make up people who take the wrong road.” I looked at the pony’s face and wondered if I’d answered the question they meant. “I used to do that with friends back home.”
The words came out with less polish than I’d wanted. I had friends. I had people who would have interrupted the joke to argue over the goat’s toll policy. The distance between here and them didn’t get smaller because a few ponies laughed at the right parts.
The mare nudged her basket into place. “You should tell another one sometime. Maybe one with a better ending.”
“I’ll see what I can do.”
Spike came around the corner with Twilight’s bookbag bumping his side. He slowed when he saw the group. “Are you running a game out here?”
“Only a long joke,” I told him. “The players have rejected the ending but remain open to supplemental goat material.”
Spike looked at the stallion, who was still chuckling. “I want to hear the goat version.”
“Then tomorrow, at the library, I’ll deliver the director’s cut.”
Spike set the bag down beside me. “I figured out what the bell does under the mill. It rings when somebody opens the wrong door.”
“That’s a useful bell.”
“It rings even if they open it by accident.” He took the map from under his arm and held it out. “I want the players to find the door, but I don’t want them to know what’s behind it yet.”
I looked over the pencil lines and the little bell. “Then give them a reason to stop and decide whether they’re ready.”
Spike considered the map, then added a mark beside the door. “Maybe there’s a note from the mill owner.”
“Good. Make it sound like he wrote it in a hurry.”
He bent over the paper. The mare and stallion continued on their way, and the young pony trotted after them. I didn’t ask them to stay. I had been the one to start the conversation, and that counted for more than waiting for a perfect invitation.
Spike added a few words beside the door and turned the map toward me. “Tomorrow, we find out what the players do.”
I folded the cabbage article and tucked it beneath the bench slat so the wind wouldn’t take it. “Tomorrow, you find out. I’ll be there to play the mill owner.”