“Your brother and I are just dating, Twilight. Seriously. Get over yourself.”

Twilight awoke to a knock on the door. She rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, the dream already fading from memory.

“Is Twilight awake?” she heard Applejack say.

Spike’s voice answered. “She’s still sleeping.”

Twilight checked her horn. Using it barely hurt at all. It glowed, and she teleported downstairs, surprising them in a lavender flash of magic sparkles.

“Twilight!” Spike said. “You’re awake!” He rushed to hug her. “Are you feeling better?”

Twilight smiled. “Mostly. As long as nothing too stressful happens, I’ll be ready to get back to work in no time.”

Applejack looked strained. “Maybe this is a bad time then.”

“What is it?”

Applejack coughed into her hoof, her hat slid down over her face, and she mumbled something that didn’t quite get past the brim.

Twilight frowned. “Spike, can you go make us some juice?”

When Spike was gone, Applejack lifted the hat up and almost managed to look Twilight in the eye. “It’s, uh, well, I heard what you were saying about prices or whatever when we were bothering you about the ticket…sorry about that….”

“It’s fine, no pony died. What’s going on?”

“Well….” Applejack took a deep breath. “It’s Sweet Apple Acres. She’s going broke.”

“You don’t choose the hat, girl,” Granny Smith said.

“Does the hat choose me?” Applejack asked.

“No, I choose!” Granny Smith glanced around, then grabbed a brown cowpony hat off the rack and stuffed it on Applejack’s head.

“Do I look like a real cowfilly?” Applejack asked.

“You look like a filly trying to look like her Granny. Which you is.”

Granny Smith had a hat too, a beaten straw thing with a faded red ribbon, and Applejack was trying to look like her. She didn’t have an apple cutie mark yet, and might never have the green coat even after she and Big Mac had tried bathing her in green apples skins every day for a whole week.

She didn’t live with Granny Smith, who had a cottage on the hill. Instead she lived with her parents and her older brother, Big Mac. They had relatives in the northeast too, her aunts who came to visit sometimes.

Aunt Hypanthium sat in Mother’s chair, nibbling dried apples as she watched Applejack sweep the floor. “How’s your granny’s health?” she said in her raspy voice. She put her hoofs up on the table. “Getting along all right? Must be writing her will soon if she hain’t.”

Aunt Stemma laughed. It was a wet, choking noise, like there was something in her lungs trying to get out. She was perched birdlike on a stool, wearing her boots that dented the wood floor with their sharp heels.

“That harridan won’t share a cent with anypony. Mark my words, she’ll burn every bit she’s got before she sees another pony with something of hers. She’ll bury it, like she buried that other treasure of hers.”

Applejack bent down with the pan. “Buried treasure?”

“That’s right,” Aunt Hypanthium said sharply. “The Apples have a buried treasure here. No pony knows what it is.” She gave Applejack a knowing look. “I suspect you’d like to get your hoofs on that treasure, you greedy little girl. Sweep up!”

Applejack didn’t care about any buried treasure. She emptied the dustpan and kept sweeping because it was work to be done, not because Aunt Hypanthium said so.

Aunt Stemma hunched over, watching Applejack like a vulture. “Your fool mother never dared ask about it. Once Granny Smith is dead, we’ll dig it up! We’ll turn over this whole farm if we have to.”

“Granny Smith ain’t gonna die.”

Her aunts burst out laughing.

“That old witch will be dead soon!” Aunt Hypanthium said.

“Witch?”

“She’s a witch!” Aunt Stemma said. “Ask anypony. That’s how these apples grow so fine, she don’t raise ‘em! I could’ve grown apples just as well, only she never taught me any magic.”

Applejack nodded to herself. Granny Smith was a witch.

“But all witches get what’s coming to ‘em,” Aunt Hypanthium said. “Granny Smith will be buried soon, and then that treasure’s ours!”

“Ain’t gonna die.”

“She will, you foolish little girl. Don’t talk back! Fetch more dried apples, girl, and clean this table off, it’s filthy.”

Applejack didn’t like her aunts much. When they talked about Granny Smith that way, she didn’t like them at all.

Besides, it was true. There couldn’t be a world without Granny Smith in it.

The Apple family owned an apple orchard that went on for miles, rolling green to the horizon and bursting with red in the summertime. It was Granny Smith’s orchard, everypony knew, though Mother ran it. But it was Granny Smith’s orchard.

Applejack loved her because she wasn’t just Applejack’s Granny. She was everypony’s. Applejack said as much, and got a wallop for it. “Some would take that the wrong way,” Granny had said, her black-pitted teeth showing, and Applejack rubbed where it smarted and didn’t say nothing.

But it was true. Granny Smith walloped anypony if she had reason to. Like that stallion, Buridan, who had been so cruel to his donkey, and Granny had snatched up a stick and whipped him twice across his face so fast Applejack couldn’t blink another tear before it was done.

Buridan had stumbled back, touched his cheeks in shock, but it was Granny Smith who’d whipped him. He couldn’t have complained any less if it was God who’d struck him.

If Granny Smith wasn’t everypony’s Granny, how come they all came to her when they needed something? She’d sit in her rocking chair smoking her applewood pipe with the apple ‘baccy so foul it made Applejack cry, but when Granny told her to go on and shoo if the smoke was too much Applejack said it was just allergies and stayed. That’s why she got to listen to all the ponies come to Granny Smith with their problems, and she got to watch Granny Smith do magic.

It’d be health, or money, or their marriages, and they’d talk and talk but after a while Applejack could see the patterns. Granny Smith never needed to ask no questions. She’d just chew on her pipe and nod and then snap at them to leave and come back in one week. When they did she’d have her magic potion ready.

There was the mare who kept in-vest-ing her money bad. Granny Smith made this bubbling green slimy stuff that smelled like apples, mostly apples, and told her to drink it every time she was about to spend her money. It’d give her wisdom, she said. The mare looked more grateful than dreading, and came back in a month with a quadruple of rain-boots saying that Granny Smith had done a miracle; every time she drunk that potion she suddenly didn’t want to spend her money no more.

Or there had been the stallion whose wife was at her wit’s end with him. Granny listened to him say how she worked long hours and would come home real tired and he’d want to talk and talk but she’d soon snap at him. Granny Smith didn’t need for him to wait a week. She told him to fit as many apples into his mouth as he could and start chewing when his wife came home. Said it’d give him luck. He came back too with a sack of nails and plenty of twine almost crying cuz he and his wife were getting along so good.

The gifts were always good, and it seemed to happen regular. Even when Granny Smith hadn’t done nothing recent for somepony they’d still go out of their way to holler a how-do and find something they weren’t using much that Granny Smith might like.

Some ponies made the mistake of bringing her fruits though, and withered under her glare. One mare brought a basket of plums, and when Granny Smith looked at her, chomping fierce on that applewood pipe, she let out an “Oh, God,” dropped the basket, and fled. She didn’t come home for a year, though rumor had it a pony by her appearance had showed up in Whinnyapolis only weeks later. When she did come back to the farm, she found Granny Smith on her rocking chair, biting her applewood pipe, the basket where it had always been. Granny Smith took a puff and said, “You forgot your plums, girl.”

Applejack loved her because of the gravel in her voice and the stoop in her walk. She loved her because of the sound her teeth made biting that applewood pipe and the squeak of the rocking chair. Even the smell of the apple ‘baccy and the bitter smell of the crushed apple seeds in her teeth when her mouth got too close, Applejack loved her for.

The fillies called Granny a witch, and Applejack made them eat mud. ‘Cept for Rainbow Dash, who could fly which wasn’t fair and didn’t seem to know what she was saying anyway, and a filly from the family up at the northern end of Ponyville who bothered her with the strangest things.

“Granny! Granny!” Applejack came running in.

“Would you rush an apple pie?” Granny said harshly.

“No, Granny—”

“Then take at least as much care of yourself.”

Applejack forced herself to slow down. “Granny there’s a Unicorn with big purple hair and a hat e’en bigger’n mine and she said my hat wasn’t in sty-y-yle!”

“So what?” Granny snapped.

“Well, what’s style?”

“Tain’t nothing important.” At risk of repeating herself, she added, “Ain’t got nothing to do with apples.”

“She said hats this season are tall, not wide, and have beads in ‘em, not apples, and I was just saving this one for a snack, it ain’t even part of my hat really and I said my hat’s good for keeping off rain and she said why would anypony be out in the raaaaaaain!”

“She making fun of you? Disparaging remarks and such?”

“I ain’t sure. That’s why I’m asking.”

Granny Smith thought.

Granny Smith’s thinking was the stuff of legends. It was why ponies came from miles carrying winter cloaks and bushels of hay and sacks of cloth and anything else they thought she might like. Not that she ever asked for anything. Just sometimes she’d give ponies a bit of an eye if they hadn’t brought her anything a while after she’d done some thinking for them, and suddenly it was like it was the most important thing in the world that they run home and get her a spare wheel in case the wagon ever broke.

She wasn’t in charge of anything. She wasn’t no pony’s boss. It just seemed that whenever they were building new houses or the mayor had some bright idea, Granny Smith was always sort of there, biting her applewood pipe or chewing apple seeds, looking at stuff, and maybe she’d nod, and then everypony’d let out a breath they didn’t know they’d been holding in.

When Applejack got older she started hearing about other ponies in cities and towns far away who sounded a bit like Granny. Like the Lemon Lady, or the Kumquat Queen. Folks didn’t say they were witches, but somehow everypony knew that’s what folks weren’t saying.

“C’mere, girl,” Granny Smith had said roughly, holding a thick, ancient book, and took Applejack up to the hills where they could see Sweet Apple Acres spread out red and green like a colorful bird asleep, its feathers rippling in the wind.

“Ponyville’s town enough for me, girl,” she said in response to Applejack’s unasked question. “Never did much get along with the others.”

“Is it because you’re a witch?” Applejack asked.

“Ain’t a witch!” Granny Smith said harshly. She bit her pipe. “‘Sides, it’s a foolish question to ask a witch if she’s a witch.”

Applejack nodded and adjusted her hat so it was more at the angle of Granny Smith’s.

“Your mother’s a fine girl, don’t tell her I said that,” Granny Smith said. “But she don’t got the knack. And Big Mac’s a stallion. Even if he weren’t, he’s strong but thicker than apple molasses. When I die, the farm is yours to care for.”

“Everything that the light touches is our orchard?” Applejack asked.

“Just the part with the apple trees, fool!”

They sat down and Granny Smith opened The Book.

Applejack had heard of The Book in the same sense that a Christian has heard of God. She had never actually seen it before, and the sight of it filled her with wonder.

It was old. The cracks in the faded cover made Granny Smith’s wrinkles look like a baby’s folds. Many of the pages were hanging loose from the binding or free of it altogether. The ink was dark and chipped and smelled acidic.

Granny Smith hunched over it, concentrating fiercely. “Ye…shall…take the mare…or…or filly…if she…be….”

“…and show her the orchard, and teach her the meaning of the trees, yea, and the taste of the apple in the tongue of the mind, so too shall she be Hatted and learned in the ways of the Book,” finished Applejack, who was getting a fine modern education over at the schoolhouse.

Granny Smith glared at her. “No use rushing. I was only being dramatic.”

“Sorry, Granny.”

Granny Smith turned the pages with a humph. “Consarn this old book anyway. Never could make heads or tails of all the jabbering and prophecy in the beginning. Look here, girl! The rules! ’S called Leviticus, on account of how livid and cussing I’ll be if you forget a single one.”

Applejack’s eyes widened. Was Granny Smith going to bring her into the coven?

“And this is Numbers, on account of…numbers. Listen: Prices in summer are two bits per bushel gen’rally, and three in winter on account of ponies needing to bake pies, and in spring and fall if it ain’t raining it’s two bits, but if it is raining then it depends on whether she’s got an umbrella and a place to stay….”

Oh.

Every night Applejack learned from The Book with Granny Smith. She learned the commandments of Prices and Quantities and Quarterly Reports. She learned the sacraments of Buy One Get One Free and Big Summer Blowout. She even learned a bit of nome-speak along with Applenese, although it wasn’t clear that nomes existed, let alone what they did.

And then there was the witching.

Granny Smith didn’t teach her witching. Witching was just something Granny Smith did. In bits and pieces, Applejack learned witching like foals learned talking.

”You been lying, girl?

Applejack shook her head. Granny Smith looked her in the eye some, and Applejack nodded her head.

“Apples don’t lie.”

Shake head.

“You could at least do as well as an apple, girl.”

Didn’t call it witching.

”You been mucking in the mud with that rainbow-mane Pegasus filly?”

Applejack wouldn’t lie. ”Yes,” she said.

Granny Smith bit her pipe thoughtfully. “Ain’t nothing wrong with that.”

But witching it was.

The stick flashed twice in Granny Smith’s hoof while Applejack watched frozen with a tear trailing down her cheek. The stallion Buridan stumbled and fell back, drops of blood falling from his face.

Granny Smith didn’t speak. But she did give the donkey the stick.

Pure magic.

And when the donkey came down with the switch on old Buridan, it stopped short on Granny Smith’s foreleg.

“Ain’t no way to behave,” she said calmly. “You could’ve bucked his rump anytime. Going to say you couldn’t choose which cheek to buck? That’s a lie. You knew that, but now you been told. That’s why you’re hitting him, and that’s why you can’t.”

The donkey bowed his head. Granny Smith led Applejack away, muttering about apples.

“Was that a magic wand, Granny?” Applejack said.

“Just a stick, child.”

Applejack looked at Granny Smith’s foreleg. Weren’t no blood. Weren’t even a mark.

Now Granny Pipe sucked her pipe while Applejack danced on her hoofs, and finally she said,

“That Unicorn filly? Next time she talks about your hat, push her in the mud.”

“That’ll make her leave me alone?”

“It might. Or she might push you back.” Granny Smith grinned like an apple wedge, black seeds and all. The next day Applejack and Rarity became the worst of enemies, and by the end of the week, the best of friends.

Applejack got a bit older, and Mommy’s stomach got fatter and fatter. She and Daddy went on a business trip ‘spite Granny’s muttering’ about no need for franchisin’ and such, and Mommy had finally given up trying to explain the difference between, uh, whatever franchisin’ was and just trying to do a bit of business shipping apples to other cities and towns, and when they came back two months later they were being carried on account of all the blood. Timberwolves, ponies said.

They took them up to Granny Smith’s cottage, and she made ponies wet rags and stoke a fire and then slammed the door shut and told them all to go away. Applejack waited with Rarity while Rainbow Dash flew around in agitated circles overhead.

It was dark, and the flickering orange glow from Granny Smith’s cottage hadn’t gone out. Applejack told Rarity and Rainbow Dash to go home. The stars came out, and Applejack shivered a bit. She decided to head on up to Granny Smith’s cottage and see about her parents.

The door creaked open at her touch. It was dark, and for a moment she was blinded by a hungry orange fire. Its crackle and sudden pops filled the silence. Long shadows loomed on the walls and stretched up the ceiling. Then she saw the blood.

There was blood on the floor and blood on the walls. There was blood on the—on the—the lumps—on the floor, covered in bloody red rags. There was blood on the figure hunched over the lumps, looking away from the door, in a black cloak, whose shadow on the back wall loomed over herself like the shadow of Death.

Applejack’s heart leaped. The tin smell of blood was in her head and made her legs weak—she turned to run—

“Girl.”

Applejack froze.

“Girl, come here.”

Applejack shook her head. Then she stepped inside and closed the door, taking one slow breath through her mouth till her stomach shook, and held it in.

“Your stubborn, foolish mother married a stubborn, foolish fool.” Granny Smith still faced away. “Went through wild woods where Timberwolves live. Got away, but lost too much blood.”

A wailing cry pierced the quiet of the crackling orange fire. It went on with its own strength that paid no mind to the blood on the walls or the shocked, frozen filly by the door.

“Had to pick,” Granny Smith said when it mostly ended, and the air was still again, and the crackle and pop of the fire filled Applejack’s mind. There was a bundle, something swaddled in blankets Granny Smith was carrying. “And I did. I think it’s what my daughter would have chosen. But I chose.”

It was too much. Applejack turned to flee.

“Come here, Applejack!”

Applejack’s legs froze. They turned her around and forced her forward until she could see by the flickering blaze of the fire the terrible shadow on Granny Smith’s face and the sight of Granny’s shadow looming over them both like it might bend down and swallow them whole.

Granny Smith held out the bundle. “Say how-do to your little sister.”

Applejack didn’t remember much of the funeral. The days were a blur after that. Big Mac didn’t say much anyway, and he said even less after. Only Granny Smith seemed the same, though she wore her black cloak more’n before.

Wasn’t Apple Bloom’s fault. She was a fine foal, didn’t cry too much, even if she had to drink different mares’ milk. Granny Smith said it would put funny ideas in her head. But Granny Smith also said eating pears’d give you cholera.

Applejack was getting to be the age where most fillies had their cutie marks. Rainbow Dash had a lightning bolt rainbow on her flank and couldn’t stop showing it off. Granny was getting slower all of a sudden, walking less and resting in her rocking chair more, though her eyes were as sharp as ever, and so was her tongue.

“Let’s go up on the hill, girl,” she told Applejack, though she let Applejack lead for once, and twice made them stop to “look around a bit, girl, don’t be rushing all the time.” And at the top of the hill they just looked out for a while on the sleeping feathered bird that Sweet Apple Acres was when the wind was blowing, and Granny Smith took the applewood pipe out of her mouth and said,

“Listen to the apples, girl. Listen to the apples.”

“They’re just apples, Granny.”

She expected a wallop, but Granny Smith just got all quiet and looked off real thoughtful.

“Huh,” she said to herself.

The next day they found Granny Smith dead in her cottage. The night of, Applejack had dreamed the smell of crushed apple seed breath and woken up suddenly in the middle of the night to the sound of a final bite of teeth on an old applewood pipe. She hadn’t been able to get back to sleep. Few hours later when the sun rose and she was out bucking trees they came and told her Granny Smith was dead.

Then they touched their forelocks. Talked real respectful. And waited for her to tell them what to do.

She told them to have an applewood casket made. There was going to be a funeral.

The whole town was there for the funeral. Even ponies from out of town came to see Granny Smith laid to rest. There were ponies who wore yellow or orange or green and had fruits on their flanks. Applejack felt their eyes on her as she talked about Granny Smith. As she talked about Granny Smith who was lying in an applewood casket in the ground. Big Mac was holding Apple Bloom, and Applejack was wearing Granny Smith’s straw hat with the faded red ribbon. She had taken it and the applewood pipe and a few other things that she reckoned were hers while the adults were running about. It kept slipping over her face.

Even the trees were bent over.

The day after the funeral Aunt Hypanthium and Aunt Stemma arrived in town by train. Applejack met them at the station, Granny Smith’s straw hat in a small brown sack, and took their luggage. They smelled of old paint and looked at Applejack with eyes that were by turns suspicious and greedy as they walked.

“This home will fetch a nice price,” Aunt Stemma said. They had Granny Smith’s will on the table, hunched over it like vultures. “I despise the idea of farming, but the land will sell too once we tear down these trees.”

“We’ll need bulldozers to turn over all the land,” Aunt Hypanthium scowled. “That cursed witch had to go and bury that treasure! It’ll take ages to dig it up.”

Applejack scrubbed the floor where their boots had tracked in mud.

Then Aunt Hypanthium shrieked, making Applejack jump. “Stemma, look at this!” She pointed at something in the will. Aunt Stemma looked and squawked.

“What is it?” Applejack said.

“Quiet, girl, it don’t concern you!” Aunt Hypanthium snapped.

“Where is the hat?” Aunt Stemma looked around, then at Applejack, hawklike. “Where is it, eavesdropper?”

“What hat?”

“The hat, silly girl, the hat! The symbol of Sweet Apple Acres.”

Applejack slowly rose. “You need that hat for Sweet Apple Acres to belong to you.”

“Stupid girl, it’s just a hat. A symbol. We own the farm.”

“But you don’t own the trees.”

Applejack reached slowly into the small brown sack and drew out the straw hat with the faded red ribbon and hatted herself. Aunt Stemma saw it and froze.

“She’s got the hat, Hypanthium!”

“Give it here, you little thief!” Aunt Hypanthium said.

“It’s mine.”

“It is not, you liar! Now give it here, girlie, it ain’t magic.”

“You seem mighty bothered by it.”

“Listen here, thief, these papers make me owner of Sweet Apple Acres and everything in it, and that includes that hat, and that includes you! Now give it to me!”

“Granny Smith didn’t give you this hat.”

“She's dead!” Aunt Stemma screamed. “Dead like the witch deserved!”

“Only dead when the apples are.”

Applejack stood taller. “Only as dead as the green hills. Only dead if the sky is dead, if the earth is dead, if little Apple Bloom and every wailing thing is dead, only when no pony don’t need her Granny no more will she truly be dead.”

She advanced. Her aunts retreated, falling off their chairs and stumbling backwards.

“You talk of destroying land, but you never had no mud in your hoofs. You talk of death, but you don’t know life.”

A wind began to howl. Applejack could see the trees blowing in the breeze in the eye of her mind and knew she wasn’t alone.

“You came here to claim a buried treasure, but you want to cut down the treasure growing from the earth. You came here for an inheritance, but you couldn’t make your own mother’s funeral.”

The breeze was growing. Something rising, soaring, built inside her. She saw a bird with red and green feathers, felt its wings spread as if they were her own.

She moved forward and they moved back, cowering from the switch that was her tongue, bleeding shame and fury from their cheeks.

“Greedy.”

They flinched.

“Jealous.”

Aunt Stemma wrenched the door open.

“And you’ll never know the taste of an apple, not how it really tastes, the one you make for yourself.”

Aunt Hypanthium drew herself up.

“ENOUGH!”

Applejack stopped, and stared at her from under the hat of Granny Smith.

Her face was bright red and distorted with anger. “Listen, you girl, we are coming back for our property! If your business, you ungrateful filly, ever goes under, we are coming BACK and we are going to BURN this orchard and BURN this farmhouse and burn YOU, you thieving, lying, stealing, WITCH!”

Applejack felt the breeze stream across the bird’s red and green feathers.

“The hat didn’t pick you,” she said, and they fled through the open door.

Applejack watched them disappear beyond the hill. They had even forgotten their luggage.

“The hat don’t pick,” Applejack whispered. “I do.”

She threw their luggage outside, got the mop and scrubbed every inch of the floor their hoofs had touched. Only then did she read the will, and saw what was at the end, and laughed.

Don’t try nothing without that hat, foolish daughters of mine.

—The last words of the final will and testament of Granny Smith.

The next day a pony came from far away lugging a fine piece of metal for a plowshare. He saw the eldest mare of the Apple farm sitting on a rocking chair sucking an applewood pipe.

“She’s dead,” Applejack said when he was close enough.

“Oh!” For a moment he looked stunned. “I—I didn’t know.”

“Don’t matter none. She only ever listened to the apples. I can help you just as well.”

He looked uneasy. “No, it’s not a big deal. I’ll go.”

Applejack took the pipe out of her mouth. “You came pretty far away for no big deal. What’s the matter? Your foal sick? Your wife unhappy?”

“Yes…yes, it is my wife. She’s terribly sad. Our,” he swallowed, “our foal died, and…it’s like she’s a ghost, just empty, won’t talk, won’t eat….”

Applejack listened to him. And said,

“Feed…feed her some apples.”

He stared at her.

“You should eat some too.”

He just looked at her.

The hat slid lower over Applejack’s face. “But I reckon you should go now.”

Applejack bit hard on the applewood pipe so the tears didn’t start until he’d left with the metal. She felt herself begin to shake and knew there were things gone into that applewood casket that couldn’t never be brought back.

Something burned inside her. The bitter smell of crushed apple seeds flooded her nose.

That night she knocked on Rarity’s door.

“Applejack! How…how are you?”

Applejack turned slightly. Rarity gasped.

“Applejack, your cutie mark! It’s three apples! It’s…wonderful!”

“I’m the eldest mare of the Apple family,” Applejack said hoarsely. “My grandmother is dead.” The hat slid low over her eyes. She couldn’t think of anything else to say.

Applejack threw herself down at Twilight’s hoofs. “Please, you gotta help me…I can’t lose the farm…I don’t know nothing about this stuff, The Book won’t tell me….”

“Don’t worry,” Twilight said firmly. “I’m an economist; we’re great at giving practical advice to businesses.”

She fetched a scarf, and together the two of them headed out into the snow to save Sweet Apple Acres.