by Lynn Mann
The Horses Know
Lynn Mann
Coxstone Press
Copyright © Lynn Mann 2016
First edition published 2016
Second edition published 2018
Third edition published 2019
Lynn Mann asserts the moral right to
be identified as the author of this work.
Published by Coxstone Press 2019
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contents
1. Awakening
2. Obsession
3. Healing
4. Apprenticeship
5. Tugged
6. Meetings
7. Bonding
8. Fear
9. Special
10. Arrival
11. Settling
12. Difficulties
13. Decision
14. Observations
15. Discomfort
16. Support
17. Attacked
18. Aftermath
19. Change
20. Surprise
21. Progress
22. Resumption
23. Threshold
24. Clearing
25. Strengthening
26. Infinity
27. Resolution
28. Culmination
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Acknowledgments
Through her, I experience me
In a way I don’t do alone.
My love and thanks go out to her
For assisting my journey home.
Amarilla Nixon
One
Awakening
I wanted to be one of the Horse-Bonded from the moment I found out who they were. I was seven years old, it was a hot summer’s day and I was playing with my dolls under the kitchen table while my mother and my aunt kneaded dough above my head.
‘It’s Holly’s Quest Ceremony tomorrow, there’ll be tears in that household tonight,’ said Aunt Jasmine.
‘I can’t understand the whole business myself, why Holly would want to just up sticks, leave all her family and friends behind and forego any chance of having a family of her own one day, and all because a horse has chosen her,’ my mother replied.
‘She’s always been a restless soul and I think she’d have found it hard to settle down anyway, even with her talent for bone-singing. I think this is the best thing that could have happened to her. And just think, another Horse-Bonded from our village! She’s the second in as many years, it must be something in the water!’ said my aunt.
I crawled out from under the table and clambered up on to one of the worn but homely wooden chairs that surrounded the flour-dusted table. ‘Mum, what’s Horse-Bonded?’ I asked, making swirls in the flour with my finger.
‘Oh Amarilla, sweetheart, it’s just when a horse and a person stay together all of the time and they talk to each other without needing to speak out loud. Horses are very clever and wise, and some of them choose a person who will look after them and in return they teach their person things,’ said my mother.
‘What kind of things?’ I asked.
‘The Horse-Bonded don’t always tell us non-bonded folk, but if a Horse-Bonded and his or her horse pass through the village, then any quarrels between neighbours are taken to them and they always settle things in a way that leaves everyone happy.’
‘And sometimes,’ said my aunt, ‘there is a bonded pair that makes a very big difference wherever they go, and they become famous and their names go down in the Histories, like Mettle and Jonus. Just think, Holly and her horse might go down in the Histories!’
‘Oh Jasmine, don’t go putting big ideas into my little Amarilla’s head,’ complained my mother. ‘Holly has to find her horse first and then we’ll probably never see or hear from her ever again, just like with Fionden after he went. Two years since his Quest Ceremony and not one visit to see his dear mother, how she copes I have no idea.’
‘How will Holly find her horse?’ I had shifted to kneel on my chair so I could lean over the table and stare into my mother’s flour-smudged face.
‘Amarilla Nixon, either sit on that chair properly or get down from it, I will not have you climbing all over the furniture,’ she scolded.
‘But I want to know how Holly will find her horse. Can I go and ask her?’
‘She’s likely to be very busy preparing to leave, Am,’ said Aunt Jasmine kindly. ‘Give me five minutes to finish up here and then I’ll tell you all about it while my dough rises.’
As I sat on my aunt’s knee in our sunny garden, she told me that Holly had felt “the tugging” a few days earlier. She had been assisting the Master Bone-Singer of the village, to whom she was apprenticed, with the Miller’s son, who had broken his finger. It was lucky she was only assisting, in my aunt’s opinion, as before the healing was finished, Holly stopped singing and fell silent, leaving her Master to sing the bone back to full strength alone. She later explained that she had, all of a sudden, felt another mind touch hers and it had started to tug at her, gently but insistently. She lost all sense of what she had been doing as she focused on this foreign sensation and within a few minutes recognised it from the description she had been given as a child, just as it was now being described to me. She stood up, thanked the Bone-Singer for the opportunity he had given her and then informed him that her horse was tugging at her and she needed to go home to prepare herself to leave and find him.
‘But how will she find him?’ I said.
‘After her Quest Ceremony, she’ll start walking in the direction the tugging is coming from and carry on until she meets him coming the other way.’
‘What will happen at her Quest Ceremony?’ I asked.
‘Why don’t you come tomorrow and find out for yourself?’
We went back inside, where my mother was peeling vegetables for dinner.
‘I’m going to Holly’s Quest Ceremony with Auntie Jasmine tomorrow. Are you coming too?’ I asked her.
My mother glared at my aunt. ‘Really Jas, you know how I feel about people running off into the sunset on nothing more than a whim and I don’t want Amarilla being a part of it.’
‘Firstly, it’s a lot more than a whim, as you well know and secondly, you will be there too; the whole village should be there to wish a person well when they leave on their quest. It’s an exciting time and we all should be there to wish Holly well.’
That night, as my thoughts drifted just before sleep took me, I saw her in my mind for the first time — a black and white horse whose blue eyes were encircled by a thin strip of black skin which enhanced their unusual and vivid colouring. Her long eyelashes matched the brilliant white of her coat and her forelock was black, but streaked with silvery white. I went to sleep seeing her face and had dreams of meeting her one day, although I felt as if I already knew her.
The following morning, my parents, my two brothers, my sister Katonia and I made our way to the house that Holly shared with her family. As we walked along the cobbled road past the multitude of two-storey stone cottages with their slate roofs, all very similar in appearance to ours, more and more families joined us on our way, including my aunt and her husband, Jodral.
My brothers, Robbie and Con, walked along in front of me, chatting animatedly. Every now and then they would laugh and then look around immediately to see if my mother was watching them, and I wondered what they we
re plotting.
Robbie was fourteen, dark-haired and mischievous and always managed to be where there was trouble, usually without being obviously involved. He was always encouraging auburn-haired, twelve-year-old, quieter Con to join him in his mischief and the two of them were inseparable. Everyone said Robbie and Con were just like my mother and my aunt all over again, a fact which Robbie always tried to use to his advantage when being yelled at by my mother.
I walked hand in hand with Katonia, who was two years my senior. She and I were alike enough to obviously be sisters, both slight in build, brown-haired and blue-eyed. We had always been close, as Katonia was a natural little mother and doted on me from the moment I was born. As I grew older, we became each other’s preferred playmates and her confident character always protected my more introverted one.
My aunt caught up with Katonia and me. ‘Girls, your mother tells me she hasn’t given you anything to hang on Holly as she passes you. I had a feeling she mightn’t, honestly, my sister really should relax sometimes, but anyway, here you are, a metal horseshoe each that I got from Hayden this morning and some made from grasses that I made myself last night.’
Hayden was the village Metal-Singer. He could sing metal into almost any shape, from the tiny, fingernail-sized horseshoes, each with its own tiny hook, that Katonia and I now held, to garden and farming tools and even the large field gates.
‘What are they for?’ asked Katonia.
‘When Holly leaves her house, her family and close friends will be waiting for her at the front door. They will each present her with something for her back-sack that will aid her on her quest; hunting equipment, bedding, a cookpot, food, that sort of thing. The rest of the village will form two lines opposite each other from Holly’s house, all the way down the road to the end of the village and as Holly walks down the corridor of people, we’ll all say goodbye and wish her well. And we hang these,’ she said, holding up her own handful of tiny horseshoes, ‘on Holly’s clothes and back-sack, wherever there is room for them, as she passes us. They hold all our love and good wishes, and will protect her from harm as she travels to meet her horse.’
‘Will everyone hang things on her?’ I asked, picturing Holly lost under a mountain of ornaments.
‘No Am, some people will throw flowers and the Healers will walk behind her and sing her as close to perfect health as they can, as their gift. The point of the Quest Ceremony is for everyone who knows Holly to give what they can and wish her well. It’s the least we can do after all that the Horse-Bonded do for us and your Mum does agree deep down, no matter how much she protests.’
It wasn’t long before we saw the ends of two lines of villagers, just as my aunt had described. My brothers took their places next to the Baker and his wife and Katonia and I joined the lines next to them.
We waited and waited. My brothers grew bored and flicked bits of dirt at each other, then at the Baker every time he turned away to look down the line, and finally at my sister and me, until I wailed to my mother, who scolded Robbie and Con into behaving themselves.
Just as the sun started to gain strength and beat down on us, and my mother started up about how she knew she shouldn’t have brought her children and in another ten minutes she would be taking us home, I heard laughing and shouting in the distance. As the shouting got louder, I could hear voices I recognised wishing Holly well and congratulating her. Then I saw her. She was bent over slightly and people were throwing little flowers over her head and reaching out to touch her as she passed. She wore brown leggings and knee-high brown leather boots, a beige shirt with brown, sparkling buttons and a red neck scarf. On her back was an enormous sack with some pots and blankets tied to the outside of it. Little ornaments dangled from her blond hair, her clothes and her back-sack. As she got closer I could see horseshoes made from metal and grass, such as we had, others made from glass and some made from what looked like bits of coloured fabric. Four Healers tailed her, singing in droning tones as they concentrated intently on her back.
‘We’re proud of you, Holly,’ called out the Baker’s wife. ‘All the best, love,’
‘Good luck Holly,’ shouted my brothers in unison as they hung horseshoes in her hair.
I quickly hung my horseshoes onto the blankets tied to her back-sack as Katonia said, ‘good luck, we hope you find your horse very soon!’
‘Come home to us soon, Holly and stay safe, you make sure you find that horse of yours before one of those Woeful finds you,’ said my mother.
‘Mailen!’ said my father sternly. ‘Holly, you’ll be fine, ignore my wife, she just worries for a living. Here you go love.’ He added his horseshoes to the arm of her shirt.
More good wishes followed as Holly moved down the line and then she was gone.
‘What’s a woffle?’ I said. Katonia looked mystified.
Robbie said, ‘Woeful are monsters who live in the woods. They stalk their prey before leaping on them from the trees and tearing their throats out.’ He held his hands up with his fingers curled as claws for added effect.
‘Now Robbie, you don’t want to be frightening your sisters with monster stories, you’ll give them nightmares,’ said the Baker. ‘Mailen, Frank, I think your children are feeling the effects of the heat, you might need to get them home.’
My mother came hurrying over. ‘Right everyone, home now for lunch, and if you two,’ she said to my brothers, ‘think that now means in an hour’s time, after you’ve followed the Bailey girls home and stuck cleavers on their backs, then you are wrong. And you’ll leave all the cleavers you have stuffed into your pockets by the roadside, right now.’
‘Mum, Robbie said the woffle live in the woods and tear people’s throats out, they don’t, do they?’ I said.
‘Oh, he did, did he?’ she glared at Robbie.
‘You can’t tell me off for telling the truth and I know it’s true, because we are learning about the Woeful at school, that’s woe-full Am,’ said Robbie. ‘In the next six months everyone in my class will be tested to make sure we can sense them and when we’ve passed we’ll FINALLY be allowed out of the village without an adult.’
‘That does NOT mean that you have to go around frightening younger children. You weren’t taught about the Woe… I mean creatures until now for a very good reason and if I catch you trying to scare your sisters again, you won’t be leaving the village without an adult whether you pass the test or not. Do I make myself clear? And that goes for you too, Con, whatever your brother has told you.’
‘Yes Mum,’ they droned in well-practised unison.
‘Now girls, I want you to listen to me,’ my mother said. ‘Whatever your brother told you is nothing to worry about. You have your family and the whole village to protect you and you are safe. Do you believe me?’ I looked at Katonia and we both nodded.
‘Good, now let’s get back for lunch.’
Half an hour later, we all sat around the kitchen table, our chatter and laughter bouncing off the stone walls of the large, sunny kitchen as we helped ourselves to salad, bread and cheese.
My father knocked loudly on the table and said, ‘right everyone, I think we should all raise a glass to Holly and her horse.’
As I copied my family, I remembered the black and white horse with blue eyes who had entered my thoughts the previous night. I felt confused; I’d never seen her before, yet somehow, I knew her. And I also knew something else.
‘When I grow up, I am going to be Horse-Bonded,’ I announced, ‘and my horse will keep me safe from the Woeful.’
My mother put her hand to her forehead. ‘I never should have let Jasmine fill her head with the Horse-Bonded,’ she said, ‘now look what’s happened. Curse Holly and her wild ways. And you, Robbie, with your talk of the Woeful.’
‘You were the one who brought them up when you were talking to Holly,’ retorted Robbie. ‘I only told her what they are.’
‘Mailen, calm yourself love,’ said my father. ‘Each of our children has had the same reaction wh
en they learnt of the Horse-Bonded and you’ve been nigh on hysterical each time. Look how things have turned out: Robbie will apprentice to an Earth-Singer next year and I know he will work hard. Con will no doubt follow in his footsteps, and Katonia will of course achieve her ambition of becoming a Rock-Singer, as well as having her own home and family like you. And I’m sure that when our little Am is older and decides what she will be good at, then she too will succeed.’
‘But I’ve already decided what I’ll be good at. I will be good at taking care of my horse after she tugs me. I am going to be one of the Horse-Bonded and my horse will be black and white with blue eyes, I know it, I’ve seen her,’ I said.
‘You see?’ squeaked my mother. ‘My Amarilla is going to leave us. I knew one of my children would, I always knew one of them would, oh Frank didn’t I always say one of them would? You talk to her, I need to go and lie down.’ With a sob, she left the room.
My father said, ‘don’t worry Am, your Mum is tired and just needs to rest for a bit. Why don’t you help Katonia clear away, and when the boys and I have washed up and had a chat about topics of conversation that are suitable to have at family times,’ he glared at Robbie, ‘we’ll all go and play cricket outside.’
My father was a skilled Rock-Singer whose voice and intent could lift rocks to a height that few others of his profession could match. I heard it said often that it was his affinity for rocks that gave him his stability of character and never-ending patience with my mother, which was fortunate once my personality began to assert itself. From that day forward, to my mother’s anguish, horses and the Horse-Bonded were my sole interest. I knew that a horse would one day tug me and I knew exactly what she would look like.