A Whisper of Horses

by Zillah Bethell

  Nimbus gave a little shake of his head and his lips tickled up into a tiny smile. “I would have thought you’d be sick and exhausted of hearing about the flying machines by now, Dante. You know everything there is to know about the flying machines. In fact, you probably know more about them than I do.”

  The boy nodded as if he agreed with the Professor’s assessment.

  Suddenly Gry’s hand went up in the air beside me and Professor Nimbus jerked his head towards her. “Gry. What story would you like to hear?”

  “Professor … The crystal towers. Where the Aus live.” She looked around as if to see if anyone else was listening. “Are they really made of crystal?”

  Bracken gave a quiet tut as though the question was ridiculous.

  “The crystal towers? Made of crystal?” Nimbus shuffled in his seat. “No, no, my dear. They are not made of crystal—”

  “I’ve never been anywhere near one, you see—”

  “No, that’s right. You wouldn’t have done. None of you would have. But no, they are not made of crystal. They are merely made of glass. Just glass. That is all. When the sun does manage to shine through the clouds, they sparkle like crystal, it is true. But only because they are made from a type of reflective glass and because they are so tall. Now there’s a question for you. Who knows why the crystal towers are so tall? Anyone know the answer to that one, eh?”

  The room went quiet as some of the children turned towards each other to see if their neighbor knew the answer. Both Gry and Bracken turned to me.

  “The Gases,” I replied, my voice a bit of a croak from being silent for too long. “To escape the Gases.”

  “Correct, Serendipity. Correct.” Eyes fell upon me. “They were built to protect the Aus from the Gases. Well over a hundred years ago now. You see, the farther up from the ground you were, the more likely you were to escape the poison of the Gases. Well done, Serendipity.” He gave me a thumbs-up sign and I smiled back in reply. “But the Gases are a rather maudlin subject for such an early hour. Is there something else any of you want to discuss?”

  Now that my voice had broken its croak, I spoke up clearly. “Horses, sir.”

  “What was that?”

  “Horses. The horses, sir. Please tell us about the horses.”

  “Ah…” The Professor seemed to sigh and sink farther back onto his chair. “The horses. Now that’s a much more satisfying topic if ever there was one.”

  “What were they like? Did you ever see one? Are there any still alive?”

  “Alas, I have never seen a real horse in my life,” he said. “I very much doubt if anyone alive has ever seen a real horse. They died out far too long ago for that. Now all we have left are pictures to show us what they were like.”

  “And statues,” I interrupted. “There are statues too.”

  “Very true. The statues.”

  Bracken gave a bit of a mumble beside me. “I wish I could see a horse. All the fun stuff seemed to die out with the Gases.”

  The Professor looked a vermillion miles away. “Indeed, Bracken. Indeed.” Suddenly he jumped to attention out of his seat and clicked his fingers in the air. “I’ve got it. An idea. Do you all have decent shoes on your feet? What about a field trip?”

  chapter 4

  THE GALLERY MARKET

  WE FOLLOWED THE Professor out of the building, back past IMAX, back through the Shell building and back towards the Lahn Dan High. As we passed the Lahn Dan High, Gry pointed up and said, “S’funny. I can’t see your mama in your pod up there, Serendipity.”

  “Me neither.” Bracken came alongside us. “Washing day, innit?”

  “Hmm,” I answered, but I didn’t say anything else. My face felt all scrunchy. I noticed the Professor turn back to look at me with a quizzy type of expression.

  Marching on past the High, the older and middling children up front and the younger ones clip-clopping along behind, we turned onto West Minister Bridge.

  “Keep together, everyone. Over the river we go,” Nimbus shouted before spinning around and addressing us all. “Now, on the left as we cross you’ll see the remains of a building that was pulled down quite soon after the Gases. It was here that the leaders of Gray Britan would work out the new rules and laws that the people had to follow. It was called the Place of West Minister and”—he pointed at a particularly collapsed part of the building—“if you look very, very carefully just there, you can see the remains of a large clock that used to sit on top of it. Can you see?”

  We all tilted our necks over the edge of the bridge. One or two of the younger children climbed up on the side to get a better look.

  “Anybody know what it was called?” Silence and a couple of shakes of heads. “Nobody? Well … The clock was called Big Ben and it bonged every hour on the hour so that the inhabitants of Lahn Dan would know the time and could measure their lives by it.”

  “It don’t bong no more though, do it? Its bonging days are well and truly dusted.” An older boy with a big rolley head laughed to himself.

  “No.” The Professor seemed to be sad for a few seconds before catching his senses once more. “That’s not what we’re here to see, though. Our first stop is just around over there. Come on!” And he strode on over the sludge of the Tems and past the squashed skeleton of Big Ben, the rest of us following like midges.

  We rounded the corner and went a little farther before the Professor stopped once again and pointed. “There. That’s our first call of port.”

  Strange that I’d never really noticed it before. In the middle of the tumbledown mess of the Place of West Minister sat another man on a horse.

  “Who’s he?”

  “Looks a weird ’un to me.” Bracken smiled. “Gives me the shivers.”

  “The man riding the horse is King Richard the Lionheart.” Nimbus was giving off a very studious air. “He was a very brave king of Gray Britan a long time before even the times before the Gases.”

  “Still looks a weird ’un to me,” Bracken muttered and Gry gave her a dig in the ribs.

  “Lionheart?” a little girl with very matted hair squeaked. “Did he have a lion’s heart?”

  “What’s a lion?” A boy called Wedge gave a blank scratching-head type of look.

  Nimbus carried on regardless. “He led the people of Britan in a war called the Crusades. A big war in lands beyond the Emm Twenty-five Wall and even beyond the sea.”

  “What’s the sea?” Wedge scratched a bit more.

  “He looks very important.” Gry was studying the figure almost as hard as I was. “Was he an Au?”

  “Back in the olden days—the very, very olden days—there were no such things as Aus or Cus or Pbs, Gry. The edges were more blurred. Yes, there were kings and queens and lords and earls. And yes, there were the workers and farmers and coal diggers. But there were no Aus, Cus or Pbs. Those distinctions came in after the Gases.”

  “Were only Aus allowed to ride horses?” The girl with matted hair came towards the front of our little group. “I think only Aus were allowed to ride them. I don’t think they let Pbs ride them. They might fall off.”

  The Professor sighed. “Like I said, Persephone, there were no Aus or Pbs in the olden days. They didn’t exist. Anyone could ride horses.”

  “What? Anyone? Really?”

  Nimbus hmm’d and nodded. “Yes. Anyone. People think of them as being the reserve of the highborn and the rich but the truth is that horses were used by everyone and anyone. They pulled carts. They helped plow the fields. They carried messengers across the country. They gave races for fun. They did lots and lots of different jobs for lots and lots of different types of people.” Like Pbs, I thought to myself.

  The Professor turned to stare at the statue behind him. “Despite what the statues depict, horses weren’t just used for wars and battles. Kings were born to fight in the wars. Horses were not. Which means that even though King Richard the Lionheart was a very brave man, his horse was probably braver still.”

 
* * *

  The Professor led us up Parlyment Street towards Falgar’s Square, and halfway along White Hall we passed one of those scary posters of Commander Mordecai, the Chief of the Minister’s Police Force. His face was splattered all across Lahn Dan warning everyone about the dangers of doing anything against the Minister’s law. The eyes on the posters frightened you into being good and the long bubbly scar that ran down the side of his left cheek reminded you that the Chief of Police was not a man to be jumbled with. You found yourself going quiet and walking quicker past those posters as your blood ran to icicles.

  We all sped up.

  As we passed Nelson’s Column, the Professor pointed to its base and said, “Those are lions.” Wedge looked horrified.

  In the corner of the square, just up beyond the dried-up fountain, we saw another king on a horse. If horses existed today, I think the Minister would be riding one. Without a doubt. He probably wouldn’t ever get off it.

  “One more thing,” Professor Nimbus said, as he took us up the steps to the Gallery Market. “There’s something in here I think you should see if you want to know a little about horses.” He nodded at me. “It’s rather impressive.”

  The market inside was thriving. A busy bustle of a day. The stalls were all set up with their candles and lamps to highlight whatever it was they were selling or trying to barter. We passed people selling pots and pans, raggedy shoes, hats, scarfs and furry ear mittens. Useful sticks of scrap metal. Busted-up umbrellas. Dried herbs and bottled spices. Strings and wires and musty old tools. There were traders selling clippers and scissors, blunt knives and holey socks. Some sold pictures of places from the olden days and maps of places that didn’t exist anymore. Others sold snapped snippets of toys and tired leathery bags. There were even some selling hot food that gave the whole Gallery Market a warm and snuggly cinnamon scent, and the Professor, seeing the wide-eyed looks of hunger on our faces, fished out a few coins and bought a couple of freshly baked wafers for us all to share. We broke them up and not a singular crumb was lost in the gloom, I’m pretty much certain of it.

  “If you look on the walls,” the Professor eventually continued, “what can you see?”

  We all gave a squint. Behind many of the stalls and the people who were manning them were—

  “Pictures!” A boy called Erasmus with sticky-out ears spoke up for the first time. “There are pictures. Paintings.”

  “Yes.”

  We could all see them now. Clinging to the dark walls like shadows. Squares and rectangles and ovals of paint. Faces and places.

  “You see, in the past this building was what was known as a gallery.”

  “The Gallery Market.”

  “That’s right. We call it the Gallery Market because it was once an art gallery. A place where people—anyone, mind you—could wander in off the streets and look at pictures that other people had made using canvas and paint.”

  “What was the point in that?” Mathias was getting a little fed up of the whole expedition and wanted to go back home to his bed.

  “Eh?”

  “A bit dull, isn’t it? Staring at pictures. They don’t do anything.”

  “The point was,” Nimbus stuttered, “to see things that you had never seen before. Places you might never go to. People you might never meet. To enrich your eyes and your senses with the unknown. Many of these paintings were very expensive and important—not that the Minister or the Party cares two toots for them, of course, because they serve no practical purpose.”

  We wandered through to another of the halls. Nimbus headed over to an old woman with a rag stall. “Excuse me, madam, but would you mind if I turned your lamp up just a touch? So kind. Thank you terribly much.” The Professor adjusted the oil lamp so that it was burning at its highest, before turning to face us all again. “The reason I have brought you here is to see this.” He pointed to the wall just behind the old woman’s head.

  “Whoa!” The older boys’ breath seemed to be sucked away and I cannot be completely and entirely certain that I didn’t make a similar flabbergasted noise myself. “That is freezing cool.” Mathias was impressed at last.

  The picture was enormous, a huge rectangle that seemed to take up the whole of the wall and tower over us. And on it was a handsome, soft brown horse, its front hooves rearing up in the air, its coat glossy. On its hind legs were white markings and its tail was like a great big thick brush. Apart from its size, the other extraordinary thing about the painting was that there was nothing in the frame except for the horse. No rider, no buildings, no trees, no fields. Nothing except the horse itself.

  “His name is Whistlejacket. He was painted many hundreds of years ago by a man called Stubbs.”

  “He’s beautiful,” I whispered half to myself.

  “He is,” Bracken murmured next to me.

  “Totally,” Gry agreed, the three of us all hypnotized by this incredible sight.

  The Professor came alongside and stood with his arms crossed to admire the thing for himself.

  “Fantastic, isn’t it?”

  “It is, sir,” I replied.

  “They say that the painter, Stubbs, did intend to paint someone riding him. But for some reason he decided to keep the picture just as it was. Empty. Pure.”

  “Good. I’m glad.”

  “Me too, Serendipity. Me too. I think that horses were probably at their best free of the reins of mankind. Don’t you?”

  For some reason I thought of Mama and I struggled to keep the thought and the feeling down in my chest. “Yes.”

  * * *

  During the journey back, amongst grumbles about tired legs and sore feet, Professor Nimbus pulled me out of the crowd. Strolling along slightly behind everybody else, he put on a very serious face and started talking in a quiet difficult-to-hear way.

  “There’s something you need to know, Serendipity. As a member of the Cu class, and a storyteller for the young ones, I am entitled, under the rule of the Minister, to an assistant. Somebody to help me organize myself, to undertake research for storytelling. To keep this increasingly musty old mind in check, that kind of thing.” He waved his hand in the air as though swatting away a gnatty fly. “Previously, my assistant was old Mrs. Potts who—alas—slipped into the arms of death what must be two years ago now. Ever since then, I have managed on my own.”

  Suddenly, an Au with perfect hair and perfect skin, clothes clean and dazzling, flew past in one of their zoomy white modpods. The sight was so rare this side of the Tems—an Au away from their own zone—that everyone stopped deadly still in the middle of the road to watch. As the modpod hummed away into the distance, the crowds warmed back to life and continued on their way.

  “But,” the Professor carried on where he had left off, undisturbed by the incident, “I am not getting any younger and I am at the stage where a little help might now be more”—he struggled to grasp the right word—“appreciated. That is why I would like you to become my new apprentice.”

  “Me?” I was blown back.

  “Yes.”

  “Why me?”

  “Why not you?”

  “Well, I don’t know anything about storytelling, sir.”

  “But you can learn, my dear. There is a room in the house in which I live. It is yours now, if you agree. You can move in straightaway. You just need to help me put my stories into order and accompany me on any research trips. You will be a helper to me, to make my duties a little easier to bear as my bones grow ever older. I will teach you everything I know, and one day you will take my place. What do you say?”

  “Er…”

  “I have already cleared it with the Minister’s office. You are, as of this moment, relieved of your Pb lotment-tending duties.”

  “Well…” I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

  “Besides”—Nimbus’s mouth cracked into a warm smile—“I don’t much like the thought of you up there all alone in that pod of yours. Not now that your moth
er has joined old Mrs. Potts in the heavenly sky. Come and join me. What do you say?”

  chapter 5

  THE TELEBRACELET

  GOING THROUGH ALL of Mama’s possessions had been hard. Sifting through them to sort out what was useful, what I wanted to keep and what I wanted to chuck on the heap—it wasn’t easy. Most of her clothes were so dirty and torn that they wouldn’t even have been good enough for wiping rags. Even her sleep bag and mattress had seen better days. But, lifting the mattress to see if the underside was any good, something fell and tapped onto the floor. I picked it up and held it up to the light. It was a necklace. A longish, grubby-looking necklace with an oval-shaped dangly thing halfway along it. I’d never seen it before. In fact, the way it had been shoved deeply under the mattress made me think that Mama was keeping it hidden. But why? Why would she hide it from me? It wasn’t the most beautiful thing in the world. The dangly bit had tiny scuffed ridges and bumps across it—like a kicked-about stone—and the chain itself was blackened with years of filthy fingers and thumbs. Not a fancy, sparkling Au sort of thing at all. Not the sort of thing to polish and shine up and display in a cabinet. In the end, I just hooked it over my neck and tucked it deep down under my shirt so that no one could see. I would let it dangle near my heart.

  The Professor had helped me push the handcart across the river and towards the house in Bloomsbury. Along the way Gry and Bracken joined us and we all spent the afternoon setting up my tiny room. It had a bed and a table and a comfortable stuffy chair to sit on. The dirty, cracked window looked out over the back of the derelict Britan Museum and I could just about make out the calls of the Oxford Street traders.

  “Come up in the world a bit here,” Gry said, looking around the room. “An apprentice storyteller. Who’d’ve thought it?”

  “Me,” Bracken replied, tucking the bottom of the freshly made bed into place. “I’d’ve thought it. Always knew you’d do well for yourself, Serendipity. Too clever for just lotment work, you are.” She nodded towards Gry. “She thought so too, but she just won’t admit it.”