by Unknown
Imogen laughed in delight at the power that had been given to her, and with each hoofbeat she found herself growing stronger; more herself.
When she awoke – soaked nightdress clinging to her, feet caked in mud, and the sweet smell of the horse still in her nostrils – Imogen realised that she was no longer afraid. The white horse – the symbol of her tribe – became for her a symbol of personal strength; an assurance that she was loved.
It wasn’t long afterwards that Imogen finally landed a job she could like. Working in care allowed her to make use of the small spells that her father had taught her, though none of her clients would have recognised what she did for them as magic.
Years later, long after she had moved out and taken charge of her own life, Imogen would grow to regret that she had not put as much effort into caring for her father as she had those men and women with whom she worked. He still used magic, but now that Imogen was no longer there with him, his spells were less about protecting their own little world than it was about constructing a fantasy, into which he lost himself. His drinking had increased, and though Imogen did what she could, it took its toll.
He died penniless and virtually friendless, surrounded by the clutter of pointless arcane knick-knacks. Imogen considered giving him something of a Viking funeral – setting fire to the houseboat before freeing it from its moorings – but in the end she took the option of the impersonal and brief service at the crematorium, followed by tea and cake with family so distant she wasn’t even sure of their names.
Even with her father gone, Imogen still dreamed of the white horse. And when she truly needed him, he came to her call.
2
The car shuddered as they neared the crest of the steep hill. Steve trembled with barely suppressed rage, shifting back into first gear. Behind them, a queue was forming, and as they were forced onto the verge by a tractor coming in the opposite direction, the driver of the Mini who had been tail-gaiting them most of the way up leaned on his horn.
‘Oh, go fuck yourself, you hipster wanker!’ Steve yelled, and Imogen laid a hand on his arm, giving him a look that told him to stay in the car.
The old Steve wouldn’t have. The old Steve would have dragged the driver of the Mini from his vehicle and beat him senseless.
Eventually they were on the move again and pulled into the car park a short time later. Steve slotted the ancient Nissan into the last available space and shot a victorious glance into the rear-view mirror, clearly hoping to gloat at the driver that had been so impatient with them.
Imogen had hoped that a visit to the White Horse at Uffington would bring a little calm to their lives. But she had forgotten that it was the school holidays and as it was the first dry day in July for weeks, many other people clearly had the same idea.
She glared at a group of rowdy children as they raced up the hill, their hands clutched around rapidly melting ice-cream cones.
‘Little shits,’ she muttered. ‘Trampling all over my horse.’
Steve laughed. ‘It is hardly your horse, dear.’
‘No, really, Steve it is.’
He laughed again, before he saw that she was being serious.
The horse itself had been recently tended to, the grass neatly cut back to the chalk, the borders crisp. Imogen spread a picnic blanket on the ground and gestured for Steve to sit.
He hesitated, a look of doubt crossing his face, but eventually relented. Steve was new to magic. ‘What is that?’ he said. ‘It smells like bloody Dettol!’
‘Herb-infused oil. The aromatics are supposed to help you focus.’
‘Okay, fine. Let’s not be long about this, eh? People are starting to look at us funny.’
Imogen breathed the words of the spell. She called on her mount to accept another rider; to carry the man she loved away from the storm.
‘Sorry, no. This is no good.’ Steve was getting to his feet, reaching for his cigarettes with one hand and rubbing the smear of oil from his forehead with the other.
It wasn’t just his impatience with the magic, or embarrassment in being involved with so public a ritual – Steve was right; Imogen had reached out, and found nothing. No, that wasn’t quite true. There had been a sense of rejection. And then Imogen realised that the white horse truly was hers. No matter how much she loved Steve, he was not of her tribe.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said, gathering him to her. ‘You’re right. This was a silly idea. Let’s go find a nice pub for lunch instead, yeah?’
‘Now that sounds like the sort of magic I could get on with.’
Imogen had met Steve in a park almost five years after her father had died. She had been sitting on a bench, reading a book in her lunch break. Steve sat down next to her and lit a cigarette, but she only looked up when he spoke.
‘Sorry if this seems a bit out of turn, but that’s not really the sort of book I’d expect you to be reading.’
Imogen thought about being offended, but he had a kind face and there was no malice, or mischief, in his gaze.
‘Oh, really?’ she said, ‘and bearing in mind we’ve only just met, what kind of a book would you expect to see me reading?’
‘I’m not sure. It’s just that you look too intelligent for, well, that.’
‘I wanted to see what all the fuss was about.’
‘And can you?’
‘Not really.’
‘Steve, by the way.’
‘Imogen, by the way.’
Steve had finished his cigarette and was staring at his hands.
‘Well, that’s my break pretty much over, so see you, Steve.’ Imogen said, getting up.
‘Yeah, see you later.’
The following day Imogen returned to her usual bench to read. There was no Steve, but there was a book, wrapped in clear plastic and taped to the wood. Imogen, had been written onto the wrapper in marker. Inside the book there was a note:
This is probably more the sort of the thing – followed by Steve’s phone number.
He was right; it was more her sort of thing. However, Imogen waited until she had finished reading the book before she called him.
She made sure that their first date was in a busy bar. It wasn’t that she thought Steve would try anything untoward; it was just that she didn’t want to take any risks with a man she had only met once.
‘That’s not the sort of thing I usually do, you know?’ He said. ‘Talking to strange women in parks.’
‘Strange? Thanks very much.’
‘No ... I mean ... oh, bugger.’
‘Take a deep breath. In through the nose, out through the mouth. That’s it. Now, start again.’
It had only taken a handful of dates for Imogen to fall in love.
Steve was damaged, but then so many people were, and she had a lot of experience in dealing with damaged people. He was kind, quick-witted when brought out of his shell, and unpredictable, in a good way. Steve found it hard to hold down any job, mainly due to severe depression. He had a problem with anger, but it very rarely manifested itself against other people. The first time they made love, Steve had insisted on keeping on his T-shirt, and Imogen had thought that odd, until his sleeves had ridden up and she had seen the scars on his arms.
Steve hadn’t worked for a year when they started dating, and though he was so clearly unwell, the benefit system was increasingly making life financially difficult for him.
‘I can’t do this, Imogen.’ He said, after yet another assessment meeting. ‘If it’s all on the inside, and they can’t see it, they just figure it doesn’t exist. Maybe I should fucking cut a leg off, or something. Fuck it! I just want someone to take me away from all this bullshit.’
The ritual at the white horse had failed; the gift her father had bequeathed to her refused to carry Steve. Imogen realised that she should have known; her link to the horse was just too strong, but she had been so desperate to help the man she loved that she would have tried anything.
Steve tolerated magic but he certainly didn’t h
old any faith in its results. It was just something Imogen did, as far as he was concerned. Imogen, however, knew how important magic had been, not just in her life, but in the lives of those she worked with. The small spells and cantrips that she wove into her therapy had most certainly benefited her clients, even if they hadn’t realised it at the time.
If her white horse would not accept Steve, then she would just have to create a mount for him that would. A fresh ritual was required.
The house they shared looked out upon a steep hillside, an old railway embankment at the top of which stood a row of allotments. Imogen had never been much of a gardener, though she kept the lawn and its borders in decent enough trim, enough not to draw the scorn of either neighbour, anyway. As she looked out on their garden, Imogen realised that what she was about to do may draw more than a few comments.
One afternoon, when Steve was out of the house, battling with ATOS, she experimented on a patch of ground with a trowel. Beneath the grass was chalky soil; it wasn’t quite the same brilliant white as the horse at Uffington, but it would have to suffice.
She worked between sessions with her clients while Steve was out of the house, or ensconced in the lounge in front of the TV. Imogen kept the patch of ground where she had worked covered by a tarpaulin. This Steve did notice and when he asked about it she told him that they were having the lawn treated and that the chemicals involved were sensitive to sunlight. It was a bit of a stretch, but he went along with it.
It took her two weeks, and at one point she had to go out and buy some turf to cover up her mistakes, but eventually her gift to Steve was ready. As she looked down upon her work, she felt an affinity with the ancient artist who had bequeathed the horse to Uffington; though she doubted he had used week killer to aid him in his art. Imogen had focused all of her love for Steve into this horse, and all her hopes for everything that they could be together.
She wanted the reveal to be perfect, so that night she cooked them a special meal. The art of cooking was something of a ritual in itself and as she fried the steaks she recalled her father reciting a beautiful poem over a thick ragout. He had done it to make her laugh, but there had been a purpose and a power to his words.
She was almost tempted to hurry Steve as he ate. The sun was setting and it was vital that the light be just so when Imogen made her big reveal. When Steve reached for the bottle, she stilled his hand. ‘There’s something outside I want you to see.’
‘What?’
‘Just put down that down and follow me, okay?’
The evening air was full of the scents of cut grass and turned earth. Above them, at the top of the embankment, people quietly toiled on their patches of land. The edge of the sun had not yet touched the roof of their house and it bathed the garden in a soft, amber glow. Ignoring the midges dancing around her arms, Imogen gestured to the tarpaulin.
‘Grab that top edge and help me roll this up; gently though.’
When Steve saw what was beneath the sheet, he frowned.
‘What did you do? Why have you torn up the lawn?’
‘No, no ... you’re not seeing it properly. Come and stand with me at the bottom of the hill and then you will.’
She took his hand as they stood together.
‘Oh ... oh, it’s a...’ he said
‘Yes?’
‘A horse.’
She could have leapt for joy. ‘More importantly, Steve, it’s your horse. It’s your mount – a symbol of my love and a sign of your inner-strength.’
‘I don’t understand.’
‘Meditate on this with me, and tonight he will come for you and bear you upon his back. And things will get better, Steve. They did for me.’
‘Sorry, but have you lost your mind? And how much, how fucking much, do you think this is going to cost to repair? We have no money, Imogen. I tolerate a lot of your airey-fairy bullshit because I love you, but this is going too far.’
Steve marched back in the house, slamming the kitchen door so hard that a crack shot up the pane of glass in its frame.
Imogen looked at her horse, which really didn’t look all that much like a horse, and wept.
3
That night, the horse came not for Steve, but her.
Imogen was awoken by a sound like someone snapping bundles of dried twigs. Moonlight shone through the thin curtains, and when she drew them aside, the moon was perfectly framed, sitting dead centre in the upper pane. Its light picked out everything that was happening in the garden below with startling clarity.
The horse that Imogen had made was pulling itself up out of the earth, its bones crackling like ice as they formed themselves from the inadequate ground. It rose on legs that seemed too thin to support it, and perhaps they were, because it screeched as it tottered forward. Its head was little more than a distorted, grinning skull and Imogen gasped as it opened and closed its mouth with a clack clack clack.
She turned to look at the bed, but Steve was fast asleep, nor did she want him to wake – not to this.
Hastily wrapping herself in a dressing gown, she hurried to meet the horse.
When Imogen opened the back door, she saw that the horse had given itself a more substantial form in the time it had taken her to descend the stairs. Earth had given it bones, but the discarded tarpaulin had given it flesh; its tail was the broken end of a broom and its eyes were two dented tin plant pots. The pantomime horse that lurched towards her should have been comical, but when it lowered its head, seeking her hand, Imogen flinched back with a gasp. It whickered at her terror. Close to, she could hear it breathing – a hollow wheeze that sounded like the wind whistling through a vast cave. She looked to either side, fearful that the racket the beast was making would wake her neighbours, but both houses remained shrouded in darkness.
The horse had her against the wall now, its tarpaulin skin snapping in a sharp wind that seemed to have come from nowhere. Even with her heart in her mouth, and panic surging through her, Imogen managed to hold out a steady hand. With a screech that she felt deep in the pit of her stomach, the horse reared back; its hooves struck sparks from the ground as it landed. Imogen realised that this thing she had made was far too dangerous to leave in the world. There was no way she was going to allow Steve to ride the horse – the love and hope that she had poured into it had become soured somehow, making it into a nightmarish puppet of a thing. No, this was her creation and so she would be the one to ride it.
As soon as she had this thought, the horse stopped its stamping and snorting and lowered its head once more.
When she straddled its back, Imogen expected the horse to crumble beneath her, so fragile did it seem. Instead, the rough cloth of the tarpaulin moved like flesh as it turned away from the house; behind her she could hear the soft swish of its tale.
Imogen reached down to pat the horse’s flank, whispering soothing sounds into one of its cloth ears. As soon as she touched it, the beast was off – clearing the back fence and pounding through the allotments beyond. Though Imogen shook with the thunder of hooves, the horse’s passage left no mark upon the earth.
A savage wind caught her robe and whipped it away, leaving her naked and clinging to the horse’s neck. Imogen, however, felt no cold, only an exhilarating rush of liberation.
They followed a dual carriageway as it carved its way through the countryside; the cars that passed them no more than gentle whispers and smudges of crimson light. The low moon ushered forth a blanket of frost from the land, revealing the ancient pathways; shadows moved upon them, some distinctly human-shaped, others most definitely not. Waiting for a break in the flow of moonlit figures, Imogen turned her horse onto the midnight road.
All sense of movement abruptly ceased and Imogen urged the horse on with a gentle nudge from her heels. After a brief moment of confusion, she realised that they were moving – faster than they had been before, the landscape rising and falling around them like a verdant sea; her mount’s hooves a silent blurb beneath her.
Imogen
hadn’t been sure of where they were going, but when she saw a vast hill rising in the distance like a whale breaching the surface, she realised that there could only ever have been one destination.
The white horse blazed from the hillside, its graceful curves alive with the promise of movement and power. The moment she saw it, Imogen couldn’t help but think of her father – how his gift had saved her, though none of his rituals or spells could do the same for him. The raggedy, weird thing that lurched beneath her now was much like he had been: a creature full of good intentions, but one ultimately broken.
Her mount came to a halt at the bottom of the hill. The strange conical mound of Dragon Hill rose to their right and, atop it, Imogen thought she saw somebody dancing, but when she looked closer there was nobody there. A warm breeze brushed against her face; the smell of warm leather and tobacco filling her nostrils for the briefest of moments.
She waited for something to happen, but neither the horse she rode nor the one above her made a move.
There were some who claimed that the horse carved into the hillside at Uffington wasn’t a horse at all, but a dog, or even a dragon. Imogen could see how such interpretations were possible, but only she knew the truth behind the creation of the chalk figure. One thing that she hadn’t realised until now, however, was that her horse was a she – more, she was a mother.
From out of the night, galloping along the sacred earth of the secret pathways, came the white horse’s children, each bearing a rider of its own. They flowed past and through Imogen, a spectral river returning to its source atop the hill. She could make out none of the riders, so blurred had their features become through death and time, though she could feel their link to her; all the selves that she had been, and would be, deep in her heart.
Just as the moon touched the edge of the earth, the horses stopped their prancing at the brow of the hill and looked down upon Imogen and her horse – waiting.
Imogen dismounted and lead her ragged horse up the hill. As she neared the vast chalk figure, the mount that she had made began to come apart: first its tail tumbled to the ground, next its tin-pot eyes fell at her feet, and soon her horse was nothing more than a ragged bit of tarpaulin, gently flowing over the earth, to settle at the hooves of the white horse.