Duncan shook his head and blinked a couple of times. “That’s not natural,” he said.
“Of course it’s not,” Wildfire replied. “It’s magic.”
It didn’t really surprise him that a talking horse could accomplish magic—that the horse could talk in the first place was a form of magic, after all—but it did unsettle him. Magic was something beyond his understanding, a strange force that he could neither predict nor control. All the stories of magic revolved around dangerous and fantastical events, the sort that Duncan preferred to remain in stories rather than cross over into real life. He was no adventurer.
Thus, to preserve his sanity, he mentally stowed Wildfire’s odd magical ability away with every other strange item he had encountered since coming to Dame Groach’s estate. As long as he pretended everything was normal, he had no cause for worry.
A few days later, the horse had another surprise for him. “Can you give me just a single oat this morning?” Wildfire asked. “I think I remembered another spell last night, and I wanted to try it out, but I need something really tiny. I’ve licked my grain bin clean, so, if you please…” His voice trailed off expectantly, and he watched Duncan with a pale, steady eye.
“What’re you going to do to it?” Duncan asked suspiciously. Affable the white horse may have been, but trustworthy was another thing entirely.
“You’ll see. Maybe nothing. Maybe it isn’t a spell at all, or it won’t work when I try it. Just a single oat, please, and we’ll know soon enough.”
Duncan thought he should probably refuse, but he couldn’t withhold food from the white horse forever. Rather than prolonging his curiosity, he selected one tiny grain from the barrel of oats and dropped it into Wildfire’s feeding trough. Then, he stepped back a suitable distance.
Wildfire took position directly in front of the trough and lowered his head so that he was nearly at eye level with it. His whole body stiffened with concentration, and a strange stillness settled around him.
“Iec-thu,” he muttered. Immediately he recoiled. Grain spilled from the trough, overflowed onto the ground and piled up inside the stall. “Duncan, help,” said Wildfire faintly.
The pile was still growing, at a rate that would soon engulf the white horse and his stall. Duncan scrambled forward, unsure of what he could do. “Reverse the spell!” he cried.
“There is no reverse! Grab a shovel or something, hurry!”
Already grain was tumbling like a waterfall over the stall door. Duncan wrenched the door open and was nearly buried in an avalanche of oats. “Wildfire, do something!”
“Such as? I can only eat so much,” said the horse from where he was trapped at the back of the stall. He bent his head and nipped at the grain that pooled around his feet. “At least it tastes good.”
Thankfully, the multiplication of oats stopped almost as abruptly as it had started. Duncan laboriously extracted himself from the mess to survey the damage. A pile of oats chest-deep flooded the white horse’s stall and the area just in front of it.
Panic rose in his throat. “Make it go away,” he said.
“I already told you,” Wildfire replied through a mouthful, “there is no counter-spell.”
“Is there a vanishing spell?”
“If there is, I don’t know it.” The horse continued to munch on his oats, placidly content.
“Aren’t you the least bit concerned?” Duncan asked. “Dame Groach will be here in a few hours to take Goliath out for his morning ride! If she sees all of this, we’re both done for!”
“Oh, have you finally accepted that she’s a dangerous old witch?” Wildfire replied nonchalantly. “Look—I’ll try to eat as much as I can. Shovel some into the barrel, and give some to Goliath, and see if there are any sacks lying about that we can put the rest of it in.”
“We?” Duncan echoed skeptically.
“I don’t think you have time to argue semantics,” the horse replied. Duncan would have asked him what “semantics” were, but the lack of time really was the more salient point.
“Oats for you, Goliath,” he said, and he began to scoop a generous amount into the black horse’s feeding trough. Goliath tried to bite him and narrowly missed.
“Better hit him with the cane,” said Wildfire. “Make him forget how these oats got here. We can worry about making him forget altogether after they’ve been taken care of.”
“Again with the ‘we,’” Duncan muttered, but he obediently grabbed the cane and knocked Goliath on the nose with it. The black horse snorted and backed up a step. After a moment’s confusion, his dazed eyes honed in on his feeding trough, which he attacked with great vigor. Duncan rewarded him by shoveling in another scoop of grain.
The oat barrel had been half-empty before, but it was soon filled. Duncan discovered some grain sacks stacked in the tiny loft above the horse stalls. The sacks were old, and he worried that they might split if they were filled to capacity, but he had no other option before him. Wildfire and Goliath both munched away as he worked. He made certain to keep the black horse’s trough filled. Slowly but surely, the pile of oats diminished, hidden away in sacks that he stowed one by one at the back of the loft. Even after the last sack had been filled, though, a large pile of oats still remained.
“Got a wheelbarrow?” Wildfire asked.
There was the cart from the garden. He fetched it quickly and spent another hour running loads of oats to a slowly growing pile behind the small stable. He had never seen Dame Groach go back there, so he could decide what to do with the pile after she had left for her morning ride with Goliath.
When the surplus of oats was finally gone, he swept the area for stray grains and covered the ground with straw just in case he had missed any. For added measure, he placed a layer of straw over the oats that were still in Wildfire’s feeding trough. The white horse, having already eaten his fill and retreated to the back of the stall, cared not one whit.
Just as Duncan placed the broom back in its corner, a tiny figure darkened the stable door.
“Keeping busy this morning?” Dame Groach asked in her cackly voice.
Sudden terror ripped through him. Had she seen him running back and forth from her window? “Yes, ma’am,” he said, and he ducked his head nervously.
She grunted. “The stable looks tidy enough. Bring me Goliath, boy.”
“Yes, ma’am,” Duncan said again.
The black horse had received half a dozen thumps with the cane over the course of the morning, but nothing in the last ten or more minutes. When Dame Groach retreated to her spindly step-stool out in the yard, Duncan quickly snatched up the cane. As the great black horse lumbered from its stall, he whacked its hindquarters. Goliath stood stock-still, and Duncan scrambled to replace the cane on its hook.
“What is taking so long?” Dame Groach called from the yard.
“Sorry,” Duncan replied. He hefted up the horse’s riding tack and trotted out of the stable. Goliath followed in a daze. “He seems kind of sluggish this morning. I might’ve fed him too much,” Duncan said apologetically.
She watched from her perch on the step-stool as he buckled the horse’s saddle and fit the bridle over its head. Goliath’s docility was nothing out of the ordinary. He always behaved in front of Dame Groach.
“How much did you feed him?” she asked after an intense silence.
Duncan hesitated. “I’m… not really sure,” he said. “He kept eating, like he hadn’t eaten properly in weeks, so I kept scooping the oats into his bin. I’m sorry,” he added with a tentative glance upward.
Dame Groach’s attention was fixed on the black horse. “Becoming quite the little glutton, eh, Goliath?” she said, and she tapped his flank with her ever-present cane. The horse started and turned a curious gaze on her. “Oh, we’ll run that extra feed right off you today,” she told him menacingly.
By now Duncan had secured the riding equipment. Dame Groach nimbly swung herself into the saddle and urged Goliath forward with nary a glance back
at her young caretaker. He watched them trot away until they disappeared into the lane beside the manor house.
His heart beat a nervous rhythm in his chest. He could hardly believe that he had not been caught in his deception, and even waited a couple of moments for the old witch to come riding back to the yard in seething fury. As the minutes slipped by and calm slowly returned, his logical mind took over. One thing he had to make certain.
“Wildfire,” he called as he returned to the stable.
The white horse peered innocently out of his stall.
“Don’t ever cast that spell again,” said Duncan. “Never, ever again.”
Wildfire snorted and disappeared back into the shadows.
“Hey! I’m serious!”
“I’m not making any promises,” the horse retorted. “You never know when something like that might come in handy. Oh, I won’t cast it in my stall ever again,” he added irritably, before Duncan could protest further. “It was far more potent than I remember. But as for saying I’ll never cast it again, forget it.”
Wildfire never left the stable, so saying he wouldn’t cast the spell there was almost as good as promising never to cast it again.
“Look,” said Duncan all the same, “we were lucky this time.”
“I knew you’d get it all cleared away before she came,” Wildfire replied. “You work like a dog.”
“How would you know that?”
The horse’s response was easily given. “You’ve been here for weeks and haven’t been caught in any mischief yet. On this estate, the only way that would be possible is if you kept yourself busy with your duties. Speaking of which, you’d better get started. I’m sure there are any number of chores that need your attention this morning.”
Duncan didn’t have the energy to argue. He didn’t know what Wildfire meant about getting into mischief, but he had never had time to consider anything mischievous, so he supposed that was the point. With only a grumbled farewell, he trudged away to the garden, quite a few hours later than he had planned. There was still the pile of oats behind the stable to take care of, but he’d had quite enough of shoveling grain for one morning. Besides that, he hadn’t the faintest clue where else to put them.
When Dame Groach returned an hour later, she seemed no more suspicious of him than when she had left. Duncan met her in the stable yard. From one glance he could tell that she had run Goliath into a lather. Whatever guilt he might’ve felt over this incinerated the moment he led the animal to his stall: Goliath tried to bite him again, and Duncan was back to their old routine of dodge-and-whack.
Dame Groach said nothing when he passed her in the hallway that evening either, and Duncan was faced with the startling realization that he’d gotten away with the escapade. He’d never gotten away with anything on his father’s farm. He’d received punishment for plenty of things he didn’t do, and that had been enough to keep him in line.
Not that this incident had been his doing, of course, but since he had been the one to indulge Wildfire’s whims, he felt complicit.
To his great relief, the white horse did not demonstrate any more magic spells in the days that followed. Duncan wondered if this was because he could not recall any more or because he thought better of showing them. Either way, it kept both of them out of trouble. The pile of oats at the back of the stable was gradually distributed across the estate, where hungry birds and insects could feed at will, and Duncan decided that the best action was to put the whole incident behind him, as though it had never happened.
Chapter 5
“Well,” said Dame Groach one morning when Duncan came down to breakfast, “it seems you’ve survived your first month.”
He hadn’t expected her to be in the kitchen—he never encountered her there, and he had just assumed she slept late in the mornings—but he quickly schooled away his surprise behind a mask of unconcern. “Yes, ma’am,” he said awkwardly.
“I suppose you’ll be wanting your pay,” she continued. There was a wicked glint in her eyes as she proffered a small drawstring bag.
Duncan took it with ill-concealed suspicion. It was light in weight, and when he tipped the contents over into his hand, only five silver coins tumbled out.
“That’s a lot less than sixty,” he observed with a frown.
“You don’t expect me to board you for free, do you?” Dame Groach replied, and he understood at last why she wore such a shrewd expression. “I’ve subtracted the cost of your food and your living.”
“Oh,” said Duncan. “That makes sense.” Then, he tipped the five coins back into the bag and stowed it away in his pocket.
Dame Groach looked at him as though he had just sprouted a second head right in front of her. Duncan wondered if she had expected him to get angry. Certainly she had never mentioned anything about charging him for his room and board when she offered him the caretaker’s position. Given the condition of the estate, though, Duncan thought she probably didn’t have a lot of money to spare. In truth, he’d almost forgotten the promised wages entirely. His father had never given him even a brass farthing, so money had little concrete meaning to him, and on an isolated estate such as this he had nowhere to spend it anyway.
In short, he was more than happy to receive the five silver coins. He thought he probably didn’t deserve even that much since he hadn’t exactly been performing his duties perfectly, but he wasn’t about to tell that to Dame Groach.
Instead, “Thank you,” he said politely, and he went about making himself something to eat.
She harrumphed and tramped out of the kitchen, back toward the front of the house. She was probably tired, Duncan thought. She didn’t usually get up this early in the morning.
Over the next several days, Dame Groach grew increasingly erratic in her behavior. She started to skip her morning ride with Goliath, and she would sometimes pop up seemingly from nowhere, both in the garden and in the manor house. Her new antics made Duncan wary; he whispered a warning to Wildfire one night, and the two of them took greater care not to interact with one another, lest Dame Groach should catch them at it. As a countermeasure to her new hobby, Duncan usually took the opportunity to ask her a question about his caretaking tasks.
“Am I treating those flowering bushes over there correctly?” he asked one morning when he found her sitting on a low, overgrown wall in the garden.
“You mean the oleanders?” Dame Groach replied.
Duncan paused and surveyed the row of white and pink flowers. “Is that what oleanders look like?” he asked with interest.
“What did you think they were?” she grumpily inquired.
He shrugged. “I’ve only ever seen the seeds. My mother used to have them every so often, but I think she had to buy them from one of the traveling caravans that passed through our village.”
“And she didn’t plant them?” Dame Groach asked with open suspicion.
“She was an herbalist,” he replied, and a frown creased his brows at the memories. “She used them for some of her mixtures, but she said the seeds wouldn’t grow in our area, that it was too cold and wet. How did you get them to grow here?”
“Never you mind,” the old woman said. “It looks like you’ve pruned them back at least once already.”
Duncan nodded. “I did about three weeks ago.”
“Cut them back again when the flowers start to die off. They should bush out more and flower again.” This instruction was given grudgingly, and she ambled away as soon as she finished.
“Thank you!” Duncan called after her. Then, he returned his attention to the overgrown garden around him. Most of the plants he recognized were poisonous. He mentally added oleanders to that list and thanked his stars that he had thought to wear gloves from the very beginning of his work there. Dame Groach certainly seemed like the sort of person who would have a garden full of poisonous flowers, but she might have warned him in advance.
That evening, as he rounded the corner in the back hall of the manor house, he dis
covered her exiting the forbidden closet beneath the stairs.
“You’re never to go in there,” she said severely as she turned a small brass key in the lock.
“Yes, I remember,” Duncan replied, and he continued on his way. He had no interest in snooping around her secret closet. A later review of his overstocked key ring, however, revealed a copy of the same brass key she had used to lock that little door.
“That makes no sense,” he muttered, and he shoved the keys back into his pocket. Very little about the manor house made sense, though. There was work enough to keep five people busy, but Dame Groach took little interest in it. Her sudden penchant for turning up in odd places seemed more like restlessness on her part than any attempt to supervise him, since she generally left again the moment he found her. As it was her estate, she had every right to turn up wherever she wanted, but Duncan still wished that she would resume her former routines. He had started to miss his conversations with Wildfire.
The white horse was even more adamant than he was that they not get caught conspiring with one another, though. He would not elaborate; after Duncan’s first warning, he had ceased speaking except in brief instances.
For Duncan, who had spent most of his life without friends, the sudden loss of this newfound comrade was more than disheartening. He hadn’t been this lonely since his mother had died.
“You, boy!”
Dame Groach’s rusty voice took Duncan by surprise early one morning. He had been on his way to the stable, but he stopped short and stared at the squat figure that stood in the middle of the yard. She wore a black cloak that pooled around her ankles, and she clutched her knobbly cane in one hand. His heart quickened at the sight. Had she decided to take up her morning rides again?
“Did you need me to get Goliath for you?” he asked, and he hoped that he didn’t sound too eager.
“No,” she said, to his great disappointment. “I’m going on a short trip. I’ll be away for exactly one week. That means I won’t pay your wages until I get back.”
Goldmayne: A Fairy Tale Page 5