All the King's Horses

by Laura C Stevenson

  He started to shake me off, but when he looked at Cathbad, he did hush. Because suddenly Cathbad towered over us, his eyes cold and wicked. ‘Son of Lugh,’ he said slowly, ‘you have invaded the inner precincts of the Sidhe. You have tried to confide in a mortal about the secrets of Faerie. You have just accused Us of breaking Our word. Because of your youth and ignorance, We have not inflicted the punishments upon you that would normally be meted out to mortals who break the Rules. But it would be unwise to push Us further. There are far more powerful faeries in the Otherworld than the ones who played with you today; do not anger them.’

  We both looked away, and Colin mumbled, ‘Yes, sir.’

  ‘As for the journeys you have taken,’ he went on coldly, ‘if you give them sufficient consideration, you will see that they have filled their appointed purpose.’ He paused, then glanced at the door. ‘Your principal is coming back. We must leave.’

  ‘Won’t he be awfully upset if we aren’t here when he comes in?’ I said.

  ‘He has already lost all memory of seeing you this morning,’ said Cathbad. ‘As have the rest. Close your eyes until the world settles around you.’

  I closed my eyes, and everything began to spin. When it stopped, and I opened them, I was sitting in Miss Turner’s room, staring at my spelling list. Nobody seemed to notice I’d just turned up. Most of the kids were turning their lists into sentences; across the aisle, Tiffany was staring out the window with a dreamy smile.

  I looked back down at my spelling list, but all I could think about was what Cathbad had said about our journeys. If you give them sufficient consideration … Darn it, we’d been considering! And I was considering even harder, now. Talking with Cathbad had made me see how wrong I’d been on the bus. Whatever the minions might do, the Sidhe weren’t trying to keep us from going to Faerie and finding Grandpa. They were doing something different. I chewed on my pencil, trying to think what it was, but all I could come up with was something I’d sort of known already: that Colin’s changeling theory didn’t explain what was wrong with Grandpa. It wasn’t just that what he wanted to call evidence wasn’t the kind of evidence that allowed you to prove anything. And it wasn’t just that we couldn’t blame the house for making Grandpa worse, because he’d been getting worse before we got there. There was something else. One of those things that, when you saw it, made you say ‘Oh! Of course!’

  I quit chewing the pencil, but what I wrote, instead of a sentence with ‘expostulate’ in it, was A LOT OF GOOD THAT DOES. Because the only people who knew what was wrong with our theory – and thus, the only people who knew what was wrong with Grandpa – were the Sidhe. And Cathbad had just made it very clear that They did not appreciate the way we’d been trying to make things go faster. All we could do was what Grandpa said you had to do with faeries: be very polite, and let Them help you in Their own way, on Their own terms.

  I WAS AFRAID Colin would get feisty when I told him about waiting for the Sidhe to do things their way, but he just gave me a look that said he’d already figured that out. We hoped our reward for figuring it out was going to be another trip to Faerie, but it wasn’t. Miss Turner’s chalk disappeared almost every day, and the pennies Colin flipped at home came down heads every single time, so we knew They were around, but we stayed put. After a few days, we started to the Ring, just to see what was up, not to push Them or anything, but Mom stopped us. She’d heard that it was a place where burglars met the people they sold stolen stuff to (she called them ‘fences’, but she couldn’t tell us why). Colin pointed out that our statistical chances of being there at the same time as a robber or a fence were very low, but with things like that, mothers just don’t listen to statistics. So we didn’t go.

  It was frustrating, because Grandpa was having more and more trouble knowing who people were. Like, a few days before Thanksgiving, he got Colin mixed up with a stable boy at the Smithes’, and he kept telling him he should be in the barn cleaning tack, not in the house. Then at Thanksgiving dinner, he got both of us mixed up with the Smithes’ kids, who’ve been grown up forever, and he got so upset when we tried to explain who we were that he left the table and stomped upstairs. Mom tried to fetch him back, but he wouldn’t come, so we had to go on without him. It sort of scotched the holiday atmosphere.

  After that it seemed like something went wrong every day. Grandpa started calling me Deirdre, which is Mom’s name – though he still knew who Mom was now, which logically he shouldn’t have. Anyway, he’d start talking to me (thinking I was Mom long ago) about shows she’d ridden in, and of course, that was our chance to learn about the side of Mom we’d found in the trunk – but it usually didn’t work, because we couldn’t figure out what he meant, and then he’d get angry. One time when Mom was out shopping, and Colin, Grandpa, and I were sitting in the kitchen, waiting for the soda bread we’d made to be done, he said ‘White horse – dressage’ over and over, until I got it and asked if he meant the Spanish Riding Academy in Vienna. He did, and bit by bit, it came out that he wanted me (meaning Mom) to go study there, and to pack right now. We knew better than to frustrate him, so we got a suitcase out of the cellar, playing for time until the soda bread came out and distracted him, but he got more and more upset, and we were really glad to hear the old Ford stutter up the driveway. When Mom came in, I told her quickly what was wrong. I thought she’d help us play along with Grandpa, but instead, she told him – lots more sharply than she usually told him anything – that nobody was going to Vienna, and he should stop bugging me.

  He stared at her for nearly ten seconds (which is forever if nobody’s talking); then he jumped to his feet and roared ‘Don’t live here! Call police!’ He did call, too, even though Colin and I hung on him and begged him not to. Of course he didn’t get the police, because the phone was unplugged, but he thought he had, and he paced around, waiting for them, until eventually he forgot who he was waiting for. When I went to tell Mom everything was OK, her face was all red and swollen. And if Mom had been crying … well, all I could think was, it would be nice if the faeries quit punishing us for pushing Them (if that was what They were doing) and took us to where Grandpa was.

  It would also have been nice if it hadn’t been Christmas, which had been the best part of winter when we lived on Maple Street. We’d always decorated the house the first day of Advent, and when we’d come home from school, it had smelled of Christmas tree, cookies, and spiced cider in a way that made you feel all tingly when you came in the door. Then there’d been our Christmas vacation visit to our Madison grandparents at their big house on the Cape. It was the only time they saw us all year, so they and their servants always made it a big deal, with lots of presents and fussing, and it had been a magical week, even though Grandmother and Grandfather Madison weren’t very magical themselves.

  This year, though, Mom said we couldn’t afford to decorate the house. We were upset (we’d been talking for a month about winding a chain of hemlock boughs and red ribbon up the banisters under the stained-glass window), but maybe it was just as well; even the little tree we got made everything seem sad instead of Christmassy. As for the visit to Grandmother and Grandfather Madison, I wasn’t really looking forward to it. You think more when you grow up; ever since last Christmas I’d wondered why Mom never got to go with us, and why they never wrote to her, only to Colin and me. And this Christmas, it hit me that we didn’t even have enough money for hemlock boughs, and Grandmother and Grandfather had a huge house and a limousine, and … I don’t mean I was greedy, or anything; it just seemed strange. I didn’t say anything about that to Colin, though. He was counting the days ’til we left, and I didn’t want to wreck it for him.

  Anyway, with one thing and another, I spent most of Advent wishing someone would cheer me up. Tiffany would have been the obvious someone, but after Thanksgiving, she looked out the classroom window more and more, so I guessed Christmas at her house was even sadder than at ours. She’d cheer up a bit if we could meet at recess in our storm drain, but
there was a lot of freezing rain, which meant spending recess in the gym playing dodgeball. When that happened, she just stood still until she got hit, then went to the sidelines and dreamed off again. Sometimes I let myself get hit so I could join her, but it was so noisy neither of us could talk.

  Then, two days before Christmas vacation, she gave me a big smile when I got on the bus. I sat down beside her and waited, but she didn’t say anything. Tiffany was like that, so I didn’t push, but it was a nice day for a change, and when we crawled into our storm drain at recess and she still didn’t say why she was all lit up, I forgot to be patient. ‘For Pete’s sake, Tiffany – tell me what it is!’

  ‘It’s nothing. I mean, it might not work out. Sometimes things don’t, with horses—’

  ‘– With horses! You’re going to keep a secret from me about horses!?’

  ‘Well …’ she drew a deep breath. ‘OK. Near where I live there’s these really nice people who have a stable, and for the last couple of years, I’ve groomed for them, and cleaned tack and mucked out stalls, and they’ve …’ Her voice was so quiet I could hardly hear it now. ‘ … they’ve been giving me lessons.’

  ‘Oh, Tiffany!’ I thought of that stable, which had to be near our house if it was near hers, and how if she’d just been willing to share, we could have …

  ‘I’ve been wanting to tell you,’ she said. ‘Honest! But I spend a lot of time at the Gordons’ (that’s their name) when my parents are … I mean, when my parents aren’t home. And they don’t like people to know that, so I just haven’t told anybody that I ride. Not even you.’

  I looked at her red face, and I thought how awful it would be to have parents like hers, and I quit feeling sore. ‘That’s OK,’ I said. ‘I won’t even tell Colin, if you don’t want. But if you’ve been riding all this time, that can’t be what you’re excited about.’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ she said. ‘It’s … well, the Gordons don’t have any students except me, so they don’t have a school horse. They started me on a pony they borrowed, and then when I was ready for something more advanced, a couple lent them a gymkhana pony that their kid had wrecked, and I rode him. After a year, I got him going really well, but this fall his owners came by and saw me jumping him, and they said “Hey, this pony is worth a lot of money!” and they told the Gordons to put him up for sale. So they did, and at Thanksgiving, he went to a really nice girl. Of course I was glad he’d found a good home, but …’

  ‘You don’t have to explain,’ I said. ‘I cried and cried when I said goodbye to my pony in Pennsylvania, and she didn’t even belong to me.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Tiffany. ‘But then—’ She looked up, and her eyes were shining. ‘Last night, just before I left, Mrs Gordon got a call about a really good horse. He’s four, and he belongs to a girl who’s just been offered a working student job in England, and she’s looking for somebody who’ll take him on a free lease. She’s having trouble finding someone, because everybody wants to start him over big jumps right away, and she says he’s too young.’

  ‘She’s right,’ I said. ‘Grandpa says there’s a special corner in Hell for people who jump four-year-olds, because it wrecks their knees.’

  ‘That’s what Mrs Gordon said,’ said Tiffany. ‘And she promised that if the girl (her name’s Gwen) leased the horse to me, I wouldn’t do anything more than cavelettis and one-foot gymnastic jumps with him.’ She smiled all over. ‘So Gwen said she’d trailer him to the Gordons’ Saturday afternoon, so I could try him out.’

  ‘Wow! And if you like him, he’ll be yours for a whole year?’

  ‘Not until April,’ said Tiffany. ‘You have to apply for working student jobs way in advance. But the Gordons don’t have an indoor ring, so I can’t ride much until April anyway.’

  ‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘And besides, it’s only four months. Boy, are you ever lucky!’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Tiffany, but she looked worried. ‘What if I’m not good enough? Mrs Gordon lets me ride her horse once in a while, but mostly I’ve just ridden ponies, and Gwen’s going to see that.’

  ‘Horsefeathers! If she wanted a fancy rider to school him, she could have one, right? It sounds like she’d rather find somebody who’ll ride him carefully and give him lots of love.’

  Tiffany gave me a faraway smile. ‘I could do that, all right.’

  ‘No kidding,’ I said. ‘Look, we’d better head back – they’re lining up.’

  ‘OK.’ But she didn’t move. ‘Sarah … the Gordons’ street is only two school bus stops after yours. Could you … I mean, would you like to come when I try out the horse?’

  ‘Wow! That would be … Oh wait, I can’t. We promised that we’d stay home with Grandpa when Mom went Christmas shopping with a friend. And we just can’t let her down.’

  ‘Your grandpa! Listen, when you told me he was Angus O’Brien, I told the Gordons, and you should have seen them. He’s their hero. So if I ask them if he can come with you (and Colin, too, if he wants) they’ll say yes for sure.’

  I looked away. ‘Um, Tiffany, about my grandpa. He isn’t like he used to be.’

  ‘I know,’ she said. ‘Mr Gordon told me; I guess he’d heard about it. But, well … you know how when you have a headache, and then you get interested in something, it goes away? Maybe if your grandpa saw horses again, he’d forget he was sick for a while.’

  Suddenly I remembered how much happier Grandpa was when he looked at pictures of horses than he was the rest of the time. And I thought, hey, maybe that’s it – maybe he’s been getting worse and worse because there aren’t any horses to remind him of who he is. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Ask the Gordons, and if they say it’s all right, we’ll come.’

  The Gordons did say it was all right, and Colin thought I really had something about Grandpa’s needing horses to be Grandpa. So we were all set, but we agreed not to ask Mom if we could take him; she might have said no, and it would have made us feel bad to disobey her.

  It took a long time for Saturday afternoon to come, and when it came, Mom took for ever deciding what to wear, and we were sure we’d be too late to see Tiffany ride. But she finally left, and the moment the car bumped over the railroad tracks, we asked Grandpa if he’d like to go look at a horse. He jumped up right away, looking so happy that I forgot about feeling guilty.

  When we were halfway to the tracks, Jenny’s little dog ran out of the warehouses and barked at us, and she came out to hush him. It took me a moment to recognize her, though; her hair was clean, and she was wearing a decent skirt and a pea coat instead of her usual ratty clothes.

  ‘Going for a walk?’ she said. ‘Lots of traffic that way.’

  Colin and I nodded and started to go on, but Grandpa stopped and smiled at her. ‘Horse,’ he said. ‘Going look over horse.’

  ‘That’s nice,’ she said, giving him a smile that made me feel funny. ‘I like horses. Can I come, if I leave Bran behind?’ She pointed to the dog.

  ‘Well, um,’ I said, ‘we don’t really know these people …’

  But Grandpa interrupted me. ‘Come,’ he said, smiling. ‘See horse.’

  That did it; Colin and I couldn’t argue with two grown-ups, even if they were both a little crazy. So we waited while Jenny put the dog inside, and then she came with us. I was embarrassed at first, because I didn’t know how we could explain her to the Gordons, but pretty soon, I was glad she was there, because walking along the road was a lot different from driving down it. There were pick-ups turning in and out of gas stations and hardware stores, and big trucks backing out of lumberyards, and cars making U-turns in parking lots of supermarkets – and none of the drivers were looking for people, so we had to stop and run and dodge all the time. I was really scared for Grandpa, but Jenny took his arm and steered him through everything as if she’d walked in craziness like that all her life.

  ‘Thanks a lot,’ I said to her, when we finally turned off on the Gordons’ quiet street. ‘We really shouldn’t have …’

  �
�It’s all right, hon,’ she said. ‘I owe you a favour, remember?’

  A favour? Then I remembered the oatmeal, but too late to make some witty remark. Grandpa saved me by taking my hand and pointing around us with his hook. ‘Horse here?’

  ‘Close,’ I said. And it was pretty close. We passed five houses that looked like ours only not run-down, then three smaller, newer houses hidden by trees; then, just like Tiffany had said, we came to a sign with Gordon written on it. And there, at the bottom of the driveway, were Tiffany and two grown-ups watching a girl in chaps ride a liver-chestnut horse in a ring beside a beautiful little barn. The horse pulled up when he saw us, with his ears pointed forward and his nostrils wide open. I reached for Grandpa’s hand, but it was OK; he waited until the horse decided we were all right, then he walked quietly to the fence and settled down to watch.

  Colin gave me a poke. ‘Look at him,’ he whispered. ‘It’s working.’

  It was true. Grandpa really looked like Grandpa, with the expression that meant he’d blotted out everything but the horse he was watching. I stared at him, hardly able to believe it … then gradually he stopped looking like Grandpa, and started looking like the warrior in the Seer’s dream. I blinked, and when I looked again, Grandpa was just Grandpa, of course – but Jenny was looking at me with a funny kind of smile. I turned to watch the horse, feeling my cheeks get hot and wondering why Jenny, of all people, always made me feel so dumb.

  The horse was one of those Quarter Horses that are built like Thoroughbreds and make great jumpers. He was young, all right, but you could see Gwen had spent a lot of time with him, because he did everything she told him to, even though he was looking all around. After a few minutes, when she halted him in the middle of the ring, he stood without fidgeting, and I was impressed, because most young horses won’t do that in a new place.

  ‘You’ve done a great job with him, Gwen,’ said the man who had to be Mr Gordon. On our side of the ring, Grandpa nodded.