by Susan Cooper
The strange white world lay stroked by silence. No birds sang. The garden was no longer there, in this forested land. Nor were the outbuildings nor the old crumbling walls. There lay only a narrow clearing round the house now, hummocked with unbroken snowdrifts, before the trees began, with a narrow path leading away. Will set out down the white tunnel of the path, slowly, stepping high to keep the snow out of his boots. As soon as he moved away from the house, he felt very much alone, and he made himself go on without looking back over his shoulder, because he knew that when he looked, he would find that the house was gone.
He accepted everything that came into his mind, without thought or question, as if he were moving through a dream. But a deeper part of him knew that he was not dreaming. He was crystal-clear awake, in a Midwinter Day that had been waiting for him to wake into it since the day he had been born, and, he somehow knew, for centuries before that. Tomorrow will be beyond imagining. . . . Will came out of the white-arched path into the road, paved smooth with snow and edged everywhere by the great trees, and he looked up between the branches and saw a single black rook flap slowly past, high in the early sky.
Turning to the right, he walked up the narrow road that in his own time was called Huntercombe Lane. It was the way that he and James had taken to Dawsons’ Farm, the same road that he had trodden almost every day of his life, but it was very different now. Now, it was no more than a track through a forest, great snow-burdened trees enclosing it on both sides. Will moved bright-eyed and watchful through the silence, until, suddenly, he heard a faint noise ahead of him.
He stood still. The sound came again, through the muffling trees: a rhythmical, off-key tapping, like a hammer striking metal. It came in short irregular bursts, as though someone were hammering nails. As he stood listening, the world around him seemed to brighten a little; the woods seemed less dense, the snow glittered, and when he looked upward, the strip of sky over Huntercombe Lane was a clear blue. He realised that the sun had risen at last out of the sullen bank of grey cloud.
He trudged on towards the sound of hammering, and soon came to a clearing. There was no village of Huntercombe any more, only this. All his senses sprang to life at once, under a shower of unexpected sounds, sights, smells. He saw two or three low stone buildings thick-roofed with snow; he saw blue wood-smoke rising, and smelt it too, and smelt at the same time a voluptuous scent of new-baked bread that brought the water springing in his mouth. He saw that the nearest of the three buildings was three-walled, open to the track, with a yellow fire burning bright inside like a captive sun. Great showers of sparks were spraying out from an anvil where a man was hammering. Beside the anvil stood a tall black horse, a beautiful gleaming animal; Will had never seen a horse so splendidly midnight in colour, with no white markings anywhere.
The horse raised its head and looked full at him, pawed the ground, and gave a low whinny. The smith’s voice rumbled in protest, and another figure moved out of the shadows behind the horse. Will’s breath came faster at the sight of him, and he felt a hollowness in his throat. He did not know why.
The man was tall, and wore a dark cloak that fell straight like a robe; his hair, which grew low over his neck, shone with a curious reddish tinge. He patted the horse’s neck, murmuring in its ear; then he seemed to sense the cause of its restlessness, and he turned and saw Will. His arms dropped abruptly. He took a step forward and stood there, waiting.
The brightness went out of the snow and the sky, and the morning darkened a little, as an extra layer of the distant cloudbank swallowed the sun.
Will crossed the road through the snow, his hands thrust deep into his pockets. He did not look at the tall cloaked figure facing him. Instead he stared resolutely at the other man, bent again now over the anvil, and realised that he knew him; it was one of the men from Dawsons’ Farm. John Smith, Old George’s son.
“Morning, John,” he said.
The broad-shouldered man in the leather apron glanced up. He frowned briefly, then nodded in welcome. “Eh, Will. You’re out early.”
“It’s my birthday,” Will said.
“A Midwinter birthday,” said the strange man in the cloak. “Auspicious, indeed. And you will be eleven years grown.” It was a statement, not a question. Now Will had to look. Bright blue eyes went with the red-brown hair, and the man spoke with a curious accent that was not of the South-East.
“That’s right,” Will said.
A woman came out of one of the nearby cottages, carrying a basket of small loaves of bread, and with them the new-baked smell that had so tantalised Will before. He sniffed, his stomach reminding him that he had eaten no breakfast. The red-haired man took a loaf, wrenched it apart, and held out a half towards him.
“Here. You’re hungry. Break your birthday fast with me, young Will.” He bit into the remaining half of the loaf, and Will heard the crust crackle invitingly. He reached forward, but as he did so the smith swung a hot horseshoe out of his fire and clapped it briefly on the hoof clenched between his knees. There was a quick smoky smell of burning, killing the scent of the new bread; then the shoe was back in the fire and the smith peering at the hoof. The black horse stood patient and unmoving, but Will stepped back, dropping his arm.
“No, thank you,” he said.
The man shrugged, tearing wolfishly at his bread, and the woman, her face invisible behind the edge of an enveloping shawl, went away again with her basket. John Smith swung the horseshoe out of the fire to sizzle and steam in a bucket of water.
“Get on, get on,” said the rider irritably, raising his head. “The day grows. How much longer?”
“Your iron will not be hurried,” said the smith, but he was hammering the shoe in place now with quick, sure strokes. “Done!” he said at last, trimming the hoof with a knife.
The red-haired man led his horse round, tightened the girths, and slid upwards, quick as a jumping cat, into his saddle. Towering there, with the folds of his dark robe flowing over the flanks of the black horse, he looked like a statue carved out of night. But the blue eyes were staring compellingly down at Will. “Come up, boy. I’ll take you where you want to go. Riding is the only way, in snow as thick as this.”
“No, thank you,” Will said. “I am out to find the Walker.” He heard his own words with amazement. So that’s it, he thought.
“But now the Rider is abroad,” the man said, and all in one quick movement he twitched his horse’s head around, bent in the saddle, and made a sweeping grab at Will’s arm. Will jerked sideways, but he would have been seized if the smith, standing at the open wall of the forge, had not leapt forward and dragged him out of reach. For so broad a man, he moved with astonishing speed.
The midnight stallion reared, and the cloaked rider was almost thrown. He shouted in fury, then recovered himself, and sat looking down in a cold contemplation that was more terrible than rage. “That was a foolish move, my friend smith,” he said softly. “We shall not forget.” Then he swung the stallion round and rode out in the direction from which Will had come, and the hooves of his great horse made only a muffled whisper in the snow.
John Smith spat, derisively, and began hanging up his tools.
“Thank you,” Will said. “I hope —” He stopped.
“They can do me no harm,” the smith said. “I come of the wrong breed for that. And in this time I belong to the road, as my craft belongs to all who use the road. Their power can work no harm on the road through Hunter’s Combe. Remember that, for yourself.”
The dream-state flickered, and Will felt his thoughts begin to stir. “John,” he said. “I know it’s true I must find the Walker, but I don’t know why. Will you tell me?”
The smith turned and looked directly at him for the first time, with a kind of compassion in his weathered face. “Ah no, young Will. Are you so newly awake? That you must learn for yourself. And much more, this your first day.”
“First day?” said Will.
“Eat,” said the smith. “There is no
danger in it now that you will not be breaking bread with the Rider. You see how quickly you saw the peril of that. Just as you knew there would be greater peril in riding with him. Follow your nose through the day, boy, just follow your nose.” He called to the house, “Martha!”
The woman came out again with her basket. This time she drew back her shawl and smiled at Will, and he saw blue eyes like the Rider’s but with a softer light in them. Gratefully, he munched at the warm crusty bread, which had been split now and spread with honey. Then beyond the clearing there was a new sound of muffled footfalls in the road, and he spun fearfully round.
A white mare, without rider or harness, trotted into the clearing towards them: a reverse image of the Rider’s midnight-black stallion, tall and splendid and without marking of any kind. Against the dazzle of the snow, glittering now as the sun re-emerged from cloud, there seemed a faint golden glow in its whiteness and in the long mane falling over the arched neck. The horse came to stand beside Will, bent its nose briefly and touched his shoulder as if in greeting, then tossed its great white head, blowing a cloud of misty breath into the cold air. Will reached out and laid a reverent hand on its neck.
“You come in good time,” John Smith said. “The fire is hot.”
He went back into the forge and pumped once or twice at the bellows-arm, so that the fire roared; then he hooked down a shoe from the shadowed wall beyond and thrust it into the heat. “Look well,” he said, studying Will’s face. “You’ve not seen a horse like this ever before. But this will not be the last time.”
“She’s beautiful,” Will said, and the mare nuzzled again gently at his neck.
“Mount,” said the smith.
Will laughed. It was so obviously impossible; his head reached scarcely to the horse’s shoulder, and even if there had been a stirrup it would have been far out of reach of his foot.
“I am not joking,” said the smith, and indeed he did not look the kind of man who often smiled, let alone made a joke. “It is your privilege. Take hold of her mane where you can reach it, and you will see.”
To humour him, Will reached up and wound the fingers of both hands in the long coarse hair of the white horse’s mane, low on the neck. In the same instant, he felt giddy; his head hummed like a spinning-top, and behind the sound he heard quite plainly, but very far off, the haunting, bell-like phrase of music that he had heard before waking that morning. He cried out. His arms jerked strangely; the world spun; and the music was gone. His mind was still groping desperately to recover it when he realised that he was closer to the snow-thick branches of the trees than he had been before, sitting high on the white mare’s broad back. He looked down at the smith and laughed aloud in delight.
“When she is shod,” the smith said, “she will carry you, if you ask.”
Will sobered suddenly, thinking. Then something drew his gaze up through the arching trees to the sky, and he saw two black rooks flapping lazily past, high up. “No,” he said. “I think I am supposed to go alone.” He stroked the mare’s neck, swung his legs to one side, and slid the long way down, bracing himself for a jolt. But he found that he landed lightly on his toes in the snow. “Thank you, John. Thank you very much. Good-by.”
The smith nodded briefly, then busied himself with the horse, and Will trudged off in some disappointment; he had expected a word of farewell at least. From the edge of the trees, he glanced back. John Smith had one of the mare’s hind feet clenched between his knees, and was reaching his gloved hand for his tongs. And what Will saw then made him forget any thought of words or farewells. The smith had done no removing of old horseshoes, or trimming of a shoe-torn foot; this horse had never been shod before. And the shoe that was now being fitted to its foot, like the line of three other shoes he could now see glinting on the far smithy wall, was not a horseshoe at all but another shape, a shape he knew very well. All four of the white mare’s shoes were replicas of the cross-quartered circle that he wore on his own belt.
* * *
Will walked a little way down the road, beneath its narrow roof of blue sky. He put a hand inside his jacket to touch the circle on his belt, and the iron was icy-cold. He was beginning to know what that meant by now. But there was no sign of the Rider; he could not even see any tracks left by the black horse’s feet. And he was not thinking of evil encounters. He could feel only that something was drawing him, more and more strongly, towards the place where in his own time Dawsons’ Farm would stand.
He found the narrow side-lane and turned down it. The track went on a long way, winding in gentle turns. There seemed to be a lot of scrub in this part of the forest; the branching tops of small trees and bushes jutted snow-laden from the mounding drifts, like white antlers from white rounded heads. And then round the next bend, Will saw before him a low square hut with rough-daubed clay walls and a roof high with a hat of snow like a thick-iced cake. In the doorway, paused irresolute with one hand on the ricketty door, stood the shambling old tramp of the day before. The long grey hair was the same, and so were the clothes and the wizened, crafty face.
Will came close to the old man and said, as Farmer Dawson had said the day before: “So the Walker is abroad.”
“Only the one,” said the old man. “Only me. And what’s it to you?” He sniffed, squinting sideways at Will, and rubbed his nose on one greasy sleeve.
“I want you to tell me some things,” Will said, more boldly than he felt. “I want to know why you were hanging around yesterday. Why you were watching. Why the rooks came after you. I want to know,” he said in a sudden honest rush, “what it means that you are the Walker.”
At the mention of the rooks the old man had flinched closer to the hut, his eyes flickering nervously up at the treetops; but now he looked at Will in sharper suspicion than before. “You can’t be the one !” he said.
“I can’t be what?”
“You can’t be . . . you ought to know all this. Specially about those hellish birds. Trying to trick me, eh? Trying to trick a poor old man. You’re out with the Rider, ain’t you? You’re his boy, ain’t you, eh?”
“Of course not,” Will said. “I don’t know what you mean.” He looked at the wretched hut; the lane ended here, but there was scarcely even a proper clearing. The trees stood close all round them, shutting out much of the sun. He said, suddenly desolate, “Where’s the farm?”
“There isn’t any farm,” said the old tramp impatiently. “Not yet. You ought to know . . .” He sniffed again violently, and mumbled to himself; then his eyes narrowed and he came close to Will, peering into his face and giving off a strong repellent smell of ancient sweat and unwashed skin. “But you might be the one, you might. If you’re carrying the first sign that the Old One gave you. Have you got it there, then? Show us. Show the old Walker the sign.”
Trying hard not to back away in disgust, Will fumbled with the buttons of his jacket. He knew what the sign must be. But as he pushed the sheepskin aside to show the circle looped on his belt, his hand brushed against the smooth iron and felt it burning, biting with icy cold; at the same moment he saw the old man leap backwards, cringing, staring not at him but behind him, over his shoulder. Will swung round, and saw the cloaked Rider on his midnight horse.
“Well met,” said the Rider softly.
The old man squealed like a frightened rabbit and turned and ran, blundering through the snowdrifts into the trees. Will stood where he was, looking at the Rider, his heart thumping so fiercely that it was hard to breathe.
“It was unwise to leave the road, Will Stanton,” said the man in the cloak, and his eyes blazed like blue stars. The black horse edged forward, forward; Will shrank back against the side of the flimsy hut, staring into the eyes, and then with a great effort he made his slow arm pull aside his jacket so that the iron circle on his belt showed clear. He gripped the belt at its side; the coldness of the sign was so intense that he could feel the force from it, like the radiation of a fierce, burning heat. And the Rider paused, and his eyes fl
ickered.
“So you have one of them already.” He hunched his shoulders strangely, and the horse tossed its head; both seemed to be gaining strength, to be growing taller. “One will not help you, not alone, not yet,” said the Rider, and he grew and grew, looming against the white world, while his stallion neighed triumphantly, rearing up, its forefeet lashing the air so that Will could only press himself helpless against the wall. Horse and rider towered over him like a dark cloud, blotting out both snow and sun.
And then dimly he heard new sounds, and the rearing black shapes seemed to fall to one side, swept away by a blazing golden light, brilliant with fierce patterns of white-hot circles, suns, stars — Will blinked, and saw suddenly that it was the white mare from the smithy, rearing over him in turn. He grabbed frantically at the waving mane, and just as before he found himself jerked up onto the broad back, bent low over the mare’s neck, clutching for his life. The great white horse let out a shrieking cry and leapt for the track through the trees, passing the shapeless black cloud that hung motionless in the clearing like smoke; passing everything in a rising gallop, until they came at last to the road, Huntercombe Lane, the road through Hunter’s Combe.
The movement of the great horse changed to a slow-rising, powerful lope, and Will heard the beating of his own heart in his ears as the world flashed by in a white blur. Then all at once greyness came around them, and the sun was blacked out. The wind wrenched into Will’s collar and sleeves and boot-tops, ripping at his hair. Great clouds rushed towards them out of the north, closing in, huge grey-black thunderheads; the sky rumbled and growled. One white-misted gap remained, with a faint hint of blue behind it still, but it too was closing, closing. The white horse leapt at it desperately. Over his shoulder Will saw swooping towards them a darker shape even than the giant clouds: the Rider, towering, immense, his eyes two dreadful points of blue-white fire. Lightning flashed, thunder split the sky, and the mare leapt at the crashing clouds as the last gap closed.