by Lynn Mann
‘She’s a special mare isn’t she,’ I agreed.
‘You’re a trio of special mares,’ said Rowena, ‘you, Flame and Infinity, and you’re changing so fast. As Sonja said, wow! Marvel, the sooner you get on with it, the sooner you’ll know what we’re talking about. Hurry up and get Broad saddled, we have work to do.’
‘Sonja, are you okay to help Aleks again today?’ I asked her. ‘Great. Holly, Infinity and I would love it if you and Serene would work with us?’
Holly looked at Rowena, who grinned and said, ‘fine with me, Marvel that means you have me all to yourself. You may want to take extra sustenance on board before we start, because after everything I’ve just witnessed, you’re going to be experiencing a whole new kind of instruction from me.’
‘When you say new, do you mean gentler, kinder, or... oh okay, I’ll just wait and find out. On my way to saddle Broad now,’ Marvel said as Rowena stood pointing firmly to where Broad grazed some distance away, a look of determination on her face.
‘When you say you and Infinity, are you going to ride around with me and Serene like you did when you helped Sonja?’ said Holly.
‘No, Infinity would like you to ride her,’ I said.
‘What? No, I couldn’t possibly, what if I...’
‘What?’
‘Well, what if I can’t ride her?’ Holly said. ‘I mean I won’t be able to ride her as well as you do, what if I stop her being able to move in perfect balance?’
‘What if you do?’
‘Well, I’ll be letting her down.’
‘Decide not to let her down, then. You know that Infinity knows how to carry herself. She’s happy to show you what that feels like, and then you’ll be clearer about what it is you’re aiming for with Serene.’
‘I can’t get on her.’
‘Why?’
‘Because I’m scared of what might happen.’
‘What do you think might happen?’
‘I’m going to ride Serene.’ Holly turned and walked away from me. I ran to walk at her side.
‘Holly, do you and Serene want to achieve perfect balance?’ I asked her.
‘Of course we do. That’s why I’m going to ride her now.’
‘Do you know, deep down in your heart, that you’re going to push her and yourself enough for you both to be able to achieve it?’
Holly stopped in her tracks and glared at me. Then, tears filled her eyes and she whispered, ‘no.’
‘Then it’s not Infinity you have to worry about letting down. You’ve done brilliantly to get to the stage you have with Serene and you’re both so close. Tell me what it is that you’re so scared of.’
‘You’re Aware, you must already know,’ she accused me.
‘It’s your block. If you want to clear it, you have to admit that it’s there.’
‘Okay, fine. I’m frightened to commit to anything in case I fail. Serene tugged me when I was in the middle of my bone-singing apprenticeship and I couldn’t have been happier. My Master was just about to get me finding the right tones on my own without his voice to copy and I was terrified I wouldn’t be able to do it, so when Serene tugged me, I was off like a pebble from a sling-shot and I didn’t look back. I practised finding and adjusting tones by myself, while Serene and I were on our way to The Gathering after we bonded, so that by the time we got there I was happy to resume my apprenticeship with the resident Master because I already knew I could do it.
‘Riding Serene, trying to help her to balance better, is the only thing in my life that I’ve ever stuck to, because it isn’t just about me. I know how important it is to her to do this so I’ve carried on, even coming on this mission with you because Serene wants us to be with you. But as time goes on and she and I progress, I get more and more terrified that I won’t be good enough to make the final adjustments she needs me to, so I hold back. I know what I saw in Serene when we bonded, and I know that should mean that I have the potential to be what I saw, to be Aware like you and the others, but there’s a part of me that doesn’t believe it.’ Holly’s words tumbled out of her like water from an upturned barrel. She was breathless by the time she had finished but her purging had left a tiny hole in her idea of herself, an opening where a new idea, a new experience could take hold.
‘You need to be clear that you can absolutely be what you saw in Serene when you and she bonded. Infinity can give you that clarity, if you’ll ride her. Please, Holly, let Infinity and me help you?’
I felt Holly’s attention go to Serene, who had been very quiet in Holly’s mind during our conversation. Serene was loving as ever and hopeful, but nothing more. It was Holly’s decision.
‘Can we go off on our own? Where nobody can see us?’
‘No, sorry.’
Holly rubbed her face vigorously with both hands. ‘You’ll help me? You’ll make sure I don’t fail?’
‘Yes and no.’
Infinity wandered over and nuzzled Holly’s shoulder. Holly turned to rub Infinity’s face, which Infinity allowed briefly before stepping back and fixing Holly with her blue eyes. Then she walked over to where her saddle rested against a boulder and fixed her stare on Holly once more. I waited.
‘Sh...shall I saddle her, or will you?’ Holly said.
‘I’ll do it while you decide how many holes we’re going to need to let my stirrups down by to accommodate your impossibly long legs,’ I said with a grin and Holly laughed, nervously.
Once Infinity was saddled, I put her bridle on. ‘Fin doesn’t need this anymore, but she’s happy to wear it so that everything will be the same as when you ride Serene,’ I explained. ‘Okay, up you get.’
Holly’s hands were shaking as she took Infinity’s reins from me and then mounted. Serene appeared by my side. I felt her confidence that everything was proceeding as it should.
As Holly settled on Infinity’s back, I felt Infinity bristle slightly. Holly was heavier than me and her weight was distributed unevenly, with more to the right than the left. Her legs felt strange as they were so much longer than mine and hanging in a slightly different place.
I moved my attention to Holly’s body and felt Serene there. She wrapped her energy around mine and drew me in. Holly took a sharp intake of breath. ‘Am, how are you doing that? I can feel you!’
‘Err, that was unexpected, but Serene’s decided to help. Are you okay with this or shall I remove myself?’ I said.
‘No, stay, it feels better having you there, I can feel your confidence in me and suddenly I don’t feel so scared.’ Holly sent a huge wave of love to her horse for her help.
‘Okay, well, before you ask Infinity to move, you need to stop collapsing your left hip because your weight’s going over to the right. Sit like this.’ Within her mind, I gave Holly a sense of how it felt to sit straight and I felt her body shift in response. ‘That’s better.’
‘Flaming lanterns, I have no idea how this is happening but it’s incredible! And I can feel that Infinity likes what I’ve done, through you! Okay what else?’
‘Ask Infinity to walk on and then ride as well as you can. Pay attention to what you feel from Infinity’s body as well as what you feel from me. I’m not going to talk too much, so just feel and then do. Okay?’
Holly nodded and then tentatively closed her legs around Infinity’s sides. I gave her a sense of being more definite, more confident and once she managed to replicate it, Infinity lifted her forequarter. Holly’s first reaction was shock at the amount of lift Infinity achieved. Serene steadied Holly while I gave her a sense of what her body needed to do next. Holly responded quickly and a grin broke across her face as she felt what Infinity’s body could do beneath her. But she wasn’t quite there. Infinity couldn’t sit back over her hindquarters properly because Holly’s weight was a fraction too far forward. She needed to lift her head, against its tendency to always be looking slightly downward. As I gave her a sense of the final step she would need to take, I felt resistance from her. Looking down was her way of protecting herself from
committing to anything. If she looked down, she could avoid what was in front of her, she could internalise herself with her fears. I knew that there was one thing that would make her look up.
Serene picked up on my thought and left my side. She trotted to a place in front of Infinity and whinnied. Holly lifted her head to look over Infinity’s ears at her horse and immediately I gave her a sense of always looking forward, looking to her horse, whom she had named for the person that she had the potential to be, the person she WOULD be. Serene whinnied again as she walked along in front of Infinity and I felt Holly’s love for her. She lifted her chin determinedly and set her head back, allowing her chest to lift and her shoulders to drop down and back. She was stable and strong and just where Infinity needed her to be. Infinity moved with ultimate grace and power into a trot and then a canter with Serene now alongside her and then all of a sudden, Infinity collected herself into a halt. Holly dismounted, flung her arms around Infinity’s neck and hugged her, and then reached for Serene’s saddle and bridle.
Within minutes, she was on Serene’s back, focused, determined and confident. She knew exactly the corrections she needed to make to both her and her horse’s bodies and she committed to making them. Within minutes, Holly and Serene blurred together into one being and my friends and I all cheered.
Over an hour later, a dripping Serene and an equally sweaty Broad finally came to a halt where the rest of us waited for them and their riders. Seeing Holly and Serene achieve perfect balance had been the final push that Marvel had needed for him and Broad to find their own. Marvel was a very capable rider and as soon as the last of his resistance to change had melted away, he had simply followed the confident instructions that Rowena gave him and become one with his horse.
It had sounded as if the horses were being murdered at times whilst Serene and Broad cleared the negativity from their past, with Broad’s bellows being interspersed by shrieks from Serene. Their riders had stayed with them, keeping their own balance while their horses heaved and bucked beneath them and helping Broad and Serene to regain their balance every time they lost it. Holly’s and Marvel’s insecurities were released without notice and I knew that now they were Aware, they would wonder how they could ever have allowed them to stand in their way of the bliss of being at one with their horses and with All That Is.
Rowena rushed to embrace Marvel as he dismounted. ‘I’m so proud of you,’ she said.
‘Proud enough to fetch the firewood in my place this afternoon?’ Marvel hugged her back, tiredly. ‘Thanks Ro. We couldn’t have done it without you.’
‘You mean you wouldn’t have. You could have done it any time you wanted.’
I grinned. Interesting times were ahead now that Marvel and Rowena were both Aware.
As if reading my mind, Aleks said quietly, ‘they were bad enough when they could only communicate by talking. They’re going to be a nightmare now that they’ll be doing it with their minds as well, we’ll never get any sense out of either of them.’
‘It’s going to be very quiet for a while. Remember how I behaved before I began to get my Awareness into balance with the rest of my life? Well we’re going to have four of them all being vacant at the same time. I think we might be relying on each other and Vickery for conversation,’ I said, smiling as I watched Sonja hugging Holly in congratulation.
‘Thunder and lightning, I hadn’t thought of that,’ said Aleks, ‘but you’ve got better really quickly recently, could the same happen with them?’
‘Hmmmm, possibly. It was hard for Justin and me as we were the first to be Aware and we had to make sense of something that was previously unknown. Gas and Infinity gave us lots of time to get accustomed to our new Awareness before beginning to help us to balance it with our physical lives a bit more, and it was really only being on this mission that gave me the impetus to sort myself out.’
‘Well then I’m confident that being on this mission will also mean that these four will come back to their senses soon,’ Aleks said, cheerfully.
He was less confident once he and I were the sole conversationalists at lunchtime. Marvel had a faraway expression on his face as he muttered the words of his conversation with Justin, guffawing every now and then as I hadn’t heard him do since he was last with his friend. Rowena gazed at him proudly, every now and then rolling her eyes at the humour he was sharing with Justin. Holly and Sonja were in conversation with Quinta, Sonja mouthing the words that formed in her mind and Holly whispering those that she both sent and received.
‘This is eerie. I can’t think of another word for it,’ Aleks said.
‘Well you know the saying, if you can’t beat them...’ I teased.
‘I feel further away from that than ever. Sonja’s being great helping me and I’m doing my best, but I’m still finding this whole situation too much.’
‘Could you help me, then? We need to keep them all spending at least some time with us here in the physical world. They’ll fight it at times, but we need them. They don’t have the luxury of time like Justin and I did.’
‘No problem. When do I start?’
‘How about now?’
‘Just remember, this was your idea,’ Aleks said getting to his feet with a mischievous grin on his face. He picked up the water bucket and upended it over Marvel’s head.
Marvel came to in a flash. ‘ALEKS!’ he roared, jerking the other three out of their reveries.
‘It was Amarilla’s idea,’ Aleks said between breaths as Marvel chased him round the campfire holding his full water beaker aloft.
We all laughed as Marvel got close enough to empty his beaker over Aleks and then laughed even harder as a dripping Aleks again tried to protest his innocence.
Hooves thumped through the scrub nearby. ‘Vickery!’ Rowena and Holly said at the same time.
Vickery rounded some bushes and came into sight, alongside Verve, who was dragging a litter of supplies. ‘Hi guys,’ she said, ‘wha’ve I missed?’
Thirteen
Horses
Flame put on weight and condition steadily. As she continued to work with Infinity and me, she gradually released her fear, each time allowing me to help her pelvis to realign better. I was hopeful that soon, we could begin making the necessary changes in her stifle.
When we packed up camp and resumed our journey, Flame walked next to Infinity and me with a sense of purpose that wasn’t even shaken by the discomfort she felt when I checked in with my sense of the Kindred Elder to make sure that we were still heading in the right direction.
The Elder returned my interest. She gently searched my mind for my most recent experiences and I was Aware of her refusal to allow herself to commit to feeling one way or another about the fact that most of our group were now Aware. Flame, however, gave her pause for thought. I felt her shock when she picked up the destiny that Flame had chosen for herself. She sifted carefully through all that I knew of Flame, all that we had experienced together and all that Flame was prepared to face in order to fulfil her destiny. A glimmer of hope flared within her and unlike the other times, when I had felt her extinguish any hope or faith that things could change, this time she allowed it to remain flickering deep inside of her. She made sure I knew, however, that her trust in humanity remained uncertain.
I was Aware that Flame’s discomfort at the Kindred Elder’s touch on my mind was now being quenched by her determination to forge onwards towards its source. The Elder and I were united in admiring Flame’s courage before her touch on my mind receded.
‘That was a fine line you just walked, Amarilla,’ said Marvel from behind me. ‘She’s like a butterfly who’ll take wing with the slightest breeze, isn’t she?’
I nodded. ‘Understandably, she’s finding it hard to trust that humanity is capable of truly, fundamentally changing.’
‘Well it isn’t as if we can hand on heart be sure of that ourselves,’ said Rowena, ‘but that doesn’t mean that the Kindred shouldn’t allow us to try. The horses have invested
themselves in us for generations to get us to this point, as the Kindred well know. Their faith in us should count for something.’
‘I think it might be the faith that we and the horses have in the Kindred that will make the difference,’ I replied, thoughtfully.
‘And Flame will be at the centre of that,’ said Sonja, leaning across from Bright’s back to rub Flame’s back. ‘I’ll hold back and explain to Aleks and Vickery what just happened, they’re looking disgruntled again.’
The days that followed fell into a routine. We would all rise at dawn and Marvel and Vickery would go off hunting while the rest of us groomed the horses, made breakfast and then packed up camp. Marvel and Vickery would eat what we had prepared for them on their return, while we prepared and packed whatever game they had brought back – usually rabbits and birds with the occasional deer. We would travel for most of the day, whatever the weather, and then stop somewhere between mid-afternoon and evening, whenever we came across suitable grazing for the horses. There, we would leave the horses to rest while we had dinner and then I would work with Flame while the others took it in turns to coach Aleks with Nexus and occasionally Vickery with Verve, when Vickery requested it.
Fitt visited us every now and then, venturing only as close as she felt that Flame could cope with before waiting for one or more of us to go and meet her. I was Aware that Fitt focused on her respect for our horses whenever she was near, so as to make it clear that she represented no threat and Flame was adjusting well to her presence as a result.
Fitt was good company. She carefully avoided giving us any information about her kind, but she seemed to set great store by her ability to listen to everything we told her about ourselves and the villages of The New and then to give us her opinions about every aspect of what she learnt. She would furrow her brow as she considered every detail that we gave her and then she would look earnestly into our eyes as she told us of her views with regard to each of them. Those of us who were Aware could feel how important this process was to her; it was as if she defined herself by her ability to decide for herself how she felt and we could all feel her confidence growing in herself as we listened to and valued her opinons.