A Whisper of Horses

by Zillah Bethell

  The fire crackled, snapping loudly as the wood in its heart burned itself to cinders and each of us kept checking Mouse to see that his little body was still sucking in air.

  “Mordecai won’t be able to do much on his own,” Knottman reassured us. “He’s really only brave behind his men.” His eyes looked solemnly towards me. “Still … might be time to bring this journey to a close, Serendipity. Might be time to go back to Ashdown.”

  “No.” I half stood. “No way! I’ve come this far and I’ll carry on until the very end. I’m not going to let Mordecai scare me off. Not now. Not ever. I set out to get to the edge of this country and I’m going to do it. With or without your sneaky help. If there are horses, which according to the Wizard there are”—Knottman looked at the Wizard and the Wizard nodded—“then I’m going to find them. I owe it to Mama, I owe it to the Professor, I owe it to Tab and I definitely, definitely owe it to Mouse.”

  Knottman stared at the ground. “I know,” he said quietly. “I know.”

  “You won’t stop her.” Tab grinned. “Bit mad if you ask me.” He twirled his finger around in a loop-the-loop fashion right next to his forehead. “Crazee.”

  * * *

  Over the next few days I’d catch Knottman looking at me. Every now and then I’d see him staring at the outline of my nose, or the way my chin rounded itself off, or the gap between my ear and my neck. And each time his face was covered with a confused, questioning sort of frown.

  And I knew that he was starting to think what I’d started to think.

  * * *

  “I need to know,” I said, as the Wizard finished up watering the small flowers that were growing up around the edge of Shy’s grave. He turned and looked me in the eye. “I mean, I think I already know … but I need you to tell me. The truth. All of it. For my sake. Not for my mama’s. Mine. It’s my turn now.”

  He straightened himself up and walked right past me, head down, along the garden path and back into the house. I followed as he made his way to the sitting room where Tab and Knottman were feeding slivers of bacon to Mouse.

  “Please. I want you to tell me about my father.”

  The Wizard stopped and pointed to an armchair. “If you want me to tell you, you’d better sit down.”

  I lowered myself into the chair as the Wizard folded his arms, scrunched up his face and paced back and forth, thinking it all through. Tab and Knottman gave up on feeding Mouse and watched the Wizard as he pieced everything together in his mind, reconstructing it. He reminded me a little of the Professor.

  “The other day…,” he eventually started. “The other day you told me that Caritas was responsible for your capture. And I told you that Caritas was jealous of Shy and Oleander’s friendship. Yes?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, that wasn’t the only reason that Caritas was jealous of your mother. You see Caritas was also madly in love with your father—probably still is. Obsessed with him. Not that he would ever have anything to do with her, of course—she would have been far too old for him. Quite wrong for a man of his position. But she had her little dream that perhaps, one day, they would be together.” The Wizard looked oddly nervous. “So to find out that you were Oleander’s daughter would have been horrific to her.”

  I saw from the edge of my eye that Tab was looking at me.

  The Wizard continued. “If she could ruin your hope, crush your spirit, then she would willingly do so. Without further thought. Stop you from doing anything as a form of revenge on your mother.”

  I got the impression that the Wizard was trying to avoid facing this thing head on, so I forced him to.

  “Please, sir … tell me. I need to hear it. Who is my father?”

  The Wizard sighed loudly and looked to the ceiling in hope that the angels would spare him this particular job. But no angels came.

  He stared me in the eye and tried to smile.

  “Your father’s name is Easterbrook.” He paused. “But you know him better as the Minister.”

  I seemed to stop breathing. My whole body stuck like mud to the chair. The wisps of questions and thoughts that I’d been having had now been frozen into fact.

  The Minister. My father.

  “Your mother loved him very much, you know. Loved him greatly. But then he changed.”

  All of a sudden I didn’t want to know. Didn’t care for the facts that just moments before I’d craved so badly. Why had I been so stupid? Why couldn’t I have just left it all alone and kept the thoughts inside my head? What was the point in knowing any of this stuff? It wouldn’t do me or anybody else any good. None of it was worth anything. It was all pointless.

  I found the strength to stand up, walked around the sofa and opened the front door. I needed air.

  “Serendipity?” It was Tab. But I didn’t care. I couldn’t speak to anyone right now. My head was full of noise and my eyes were full of tears.

  I walked along the road and opened the rusting gate into the children’s park. There I sat myself down on a worn-away swing and cried, catching the drips in the palms of my hands.

  * * *

  “Serendipity?” It was Tab’s voice again.

  I didn’t know how long I’d been sitting there, but all of a sudden Tab was rocking gently forward and backward on the swing next to mine.

  “What?”

  “You alright?” He was soft and gentle and so unlike Tab that just hearing him made me want to smile.

  “Think so,” I replied, my throat all sore and croaky.

  “I think Mouse is getting a lot better,” he said. “Don’t you?”

  I grunted.

  “When old Moron threw his knife the other day … I thought Mouse was a gonna, I can tell yer.” The wind blew across us like dust and the sun fought a losing battle with some puffy white clouds. “Thought he was gonna die, I did. I was definite he was gonna die.” His voice paled away for a second before coming back stronger than ever. “Cos without Mouse, I might not be ere right now.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Well…” He thought. “I don’t know who my parents were. Never knew ’em. But whoever they were, they didn’t want me. That’s a fact.”

  I wiped the drying tears from my hands and turned to look at him. “They didn’t want you?”

  “No. They dumped me just outside the smuggler’s camp. In a box, apparently. A beaten-up old cardboard box. Wrapped me in a blanket and left me alone. It was Mouse who found me.” He grinned a sad sort of grin. “If he hadn’t been out tryin to find some scraps to nibble on, he might never have heard me crying and I’d probly have died in the night. From the cold or summat. No one would ever have known.”

  I reached across and squeezed his hand. “I’m glad he found you.”

  Tab nodded. “Yeah. Me too.”

  * * *

  It was another week before Mouse opened his eyes fully, lifting his head and wagging his tail when he spotted Tab. Knottman loosened the bandages and checked the wound again—not without the usual growls and whimpers from Mouse himself—before applying a new herb bag and weaving fresh gauze around the dog’s tiny body.

  The day after that, Mouse stood and hobbled over to a bowl of food that the Wizard had prepared for him, complete with extra oils and ground minerals. He gobbled and drooled and looked positively pleased to be stuffing his face.

  It was the day after that that I thought we should be leaving.

  The Wizard shook each of our hands in turn and patted Mouse, who was strapped snugly into Tab’s backpack once more.

  “Well,” the Wizard said, a tad sadly, “good luck. I do hope you see the horses. They were very beautiful from what I can remember. Tickle one on the mane from me. And from Shy, of course.”

  “We will,” I replied, my arms clamped around his waist, showing him more affection than he’d had in ages judging by his reaction. “We will. Thank you. And thank you for telling me about my father.”

  “Yes.” His voice quivered. “I’m … er … sorry
I did that. Perhaps it would have been better if I’d not said anything. Kept it all under wraps. Like your mother wanted.”

  I shook my head. “No. I’m pleased you told me. Sometimes I think it’s best to just goggle the truth in the face no matter how ugly it looks.” I gave him an extra squeeze. “And I’m old enough to handle it now. I think.”

  The Wizard patted me on the shoulder. “Good. Good.” We stood there in silence for a while, the only noise the shuffling and snuffling of Mouse in the backpack.

  “Er…” Tab was fidgeting like his feet were on fire. “There was summat I wanted to do.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out the tiny leaping robot that had brought us back to the Terrace. “I want to apologize, sir. I took this. From yer table. It was wrong of me. Sorry.”

  The Wizard took the small toy from him. “Thank you, Tab. I can understand. It’s easy to be tempted by such remarkable workmanship as this. You know, if you had asked me, I would have let you have it.” He held it back out to Tab. “You can keep it, if you’d like.”

  Tab shook his head. “Thank you, sir. But no. Because I took tha I nearly lost my Mouse ere, and, no offense, but my Mouse is worth more than a million squillion of anything—even clever little robots like yours. So thanks, but no thanks. I learnt me lesson. And sorry.”

  The Wizard suddenly looked sad again. “Promise me you’ll visit again one day, Tab, and I promise I’ll make one specially for you. Yes?”

  Tab grinned. “Oh yeah, sir. Ta very much, sir.”

  It was Knottman’s turn.

  “You know where I’m going, don’t you?”

  I nodded and smiled at him. “Ashdown.”

  “I think I’m needed there. I mean, nobody back at Ashdown has any idea how to change a flange sprocket.” He grinned. “Mordecai has gone now, I’m pretty certain of it. And anyway”—he pulled his bag tighter around his shoulders—“I think you need to do this last bit alone. Finish it the way you started it. The two of you.” It went through my head that I hadn’t started this journey alone but with the Professor, but the thought whistled itself away quickly. “Also,” Knottman went on, “I promised Molly I’d show her how to make a proper apple crumble.”

  Molly? The sparkle in his eye made it all clear. Molly. Of course.

  chapter 31

  THE END OF THE WORLD

  WE TICKED DAYS off like naughty children and the blisters on our feet helped to fill our socks and slow us down. One morning, the sun burst through the clouds and the heat fed all the way through to my bones, piling on the hope. We straightened our rucksacks and pushed on.

  We were surrounded by lush countryside that seemed to level itself off the farther we trudged. Wild and un-dapper with scruffity bushes and pokes of trees, the sky live with dust clouds of birds.

  Suddenly, Tab stopped.

  “What is it?” I asked.

  He sniffed. “Can you smell that?”

  I sniffed again. It was true; the air smelled different.

  “The sea,” Tab said. “I fink it’s the sea.”

  * * *

  We pushed on, the hedges either side of us twisting with the road. Left then right, right then left again. Small lanes leading off in all directions, signposts flailing with their names. On we marched, Mouse and Tab hobbling like wonky toys. We eased up another hill and then, at the top—

  The sky had never looked bigger. The whole world had never looked bigger. It was like staring into another universe. Everything just stretched and pointed away into a distance my tiny brain could never have imagined.

  “The sea.” I smiled.

  The land that we stood on tumbled down for about a mile to the mud and the mud seemed to slip away and into the gray of the sea. For the first time ever I could see, hear and smell the sea.

  “That’s it,” said Tab. “The end of the world. We made it, Serendipity.” He patted me on the back of my rucksack. “You made it.”

  * * *

  We took the road down to the houses that seemed to cluster about the bay. Just above the tiny town, we passed a field full of men dragging and pushing old-fashioned farming machinery. Some were digging, whilst others were on their knees, prizing vegetables out with their hands.

  “Hello!” we called over to them. The ones who noticed us stopped their work and looked, smiling and waving back at us. An oldish guy hobbled over, his hat all faded and crumpled on his head.

  “Shmae. Diwrnod hyfryd. Sut alla I eich helpu?”

  “Er…” The two of us looked at each other. Perhaps the man was drunk.

  “We … was … wondrin”—Tab spoke louder than he normally did—“if … there … was … orses.”

  The man stared blankly back.

  “Yer know. Orses?” Tab did a little skip about pretending he was riding a horse.

  The man nodded. “Saesneg, eh? Arhoswch funud. Rhodri!” He seemed to be calling over to a younger man. “Saesneg!”

  The man dropped the plow thing he was pushing and ran over to us, pulling the gloves off his hands.

  “Hello,” he said, leaning over the trimmed hedge and holding out his hand to us. “My name’s Rhodri. It’s not often we get English people in this part of the world.” His voice sounded normal but with a slightly strange, strangulated back-of-the-throat warble.

  “English?”

  We shook his hand and introduced ourselves.

  “Everyone around here tends to speak Welsh. There are only a handful of us who speak proper English.”

  “Welsh?”

  “Yes. Come with me. I’ll take you down into the village.”

  “You in charge round ere?” Tab asked as Rhodri climbed over a gate to join us.

  “Me? In charge? Good heavens, no.”

  “Then praps you better take us to the person who is in charge? I fink we need to talk to them.”

  “Oh, there’s nobody in charge. Not here.”

  We stumped on down past the first of the houses. A sign covered in moss revealed the last part of the town’s name to be HAVEN—the first part being too thick with slimy green fuzz to see.

  “No one in charge?” Tab seemed amazed. “Wha? Not even a Mayor or a Minister? A King or a Lord?”

  “No. None of those.”

  “Ain’t there someone who makes the decisions? Someone who controls everything that goes on here?”

  “No. Nobody. We all take care of each other.”

  We leant hard back against the steep hill as it staggered down towards the bay, our ankles straining.

  “We work for ourselves and we work for everyone else. Seems simple enough to me.” We steered right onto a road behind the mudflats and Rhodri pushed open a door on the front of a creamish-colored house.

  “Llinos! Mae gennym westeion.”

  A pretty woman came out from the kitchen area drying a plate with a tea towel.

  “Oh. Helo.”

  “Maent yn english.”

  “Really? Hello.”

  “Hi.”

  “Yeah. Hi.”

  “This is my wife, Llinos,” Rhodri said proudly. “Llinos, this is Serendipity, Tab and … er … Mouse.”

  “Lovely to meet you all,” the pretty woman said, grinning. “I’ve some cookies just out of the oven. Would you care for some?”

  chapter 32

  BISHOPS AND CLERKS

  “HAVE YOU SEEN…,” I ventured eventually, my belly full stuffed with six loganberry cookies. “Have you ever seen any … horses in this area?”

  The husband and wife looked at each other.

  “No.”

  “Me neither.”

  I couldn’t believe it.

  “What? Never?”

  “No.”

  “I’d remember if I had.”

  I sat there dumbfoundled. Surely they were wrong? They must have seen horses.

  “Perhaps there are other people who’ve seen them? Yes?”

  They looked at each other again.

  “I don’t think I know of anyone who’s seen horses, do
you?”

  “No, I’m certain no one in the village has seen horses. Even though there have always been the rumors. But you know what rumors are like. Not very often true.”

  It couldn’t end like this, could it? Had the Wizard and Shy been mistaken? Had their map sent me on one enormous goosey-goosey-gander chase? Was it all just one big, unfunny joke?

  “We’ll ask the whole village tonight,” Rhodri said, seeing my reaction. “At the village concert. We’ll find out then.”

  * * *

  The village hall was filling up. Young men, old men, young women, old women, children and dogs seemed to take up the seats that were laid out row upon row. We sat up at the front and everyone’s eyes burnt into the back of my neck.

  “Ope they’re not gonna eat us,” Tab whispered in my ear.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I dunno. Just get the feeling they might wanna eat us. If they do, can I just say it was nice knowing you.”

  “Tab.” I sighed. “Despite having traveled so far and seen so many things, you can still be the number one idiot in the world, you know?”

  He nodded in agreement.

  “But if they do eat me, try to make sure that Mouse don’t end up in a kebab or a fricassee or summat.”

  The burble and gurgle of noise settled down and a man took to the stage. He looked like he’d put on a fresh shirt for the occasion, but his face was sunburnt and leathery and his chin unshaven. He addressed the crowd. In Welsh. At one point the audience laughed, but Tab and I didn’t understand so we just looked at each other like we were all lost. He carried on talking for a while, sounding to me like he was listing things.

  Rhodri leant over to us and said, “That’s Mr. Llewellyn. He keeps an eye on all the farming and the livestock and gives us advice on which areas we should be putting our efforts into over the next few weeks.”

  “Sounds like he’s the boss,” Tab replied.

  Rhodri smiled. “Like I said, there is no boss. We all pull along together. Mr. Llewellyn understands numbers, that’s all.”

  After a while, Mr. Llewellyn left the stage and the crowd clapped him as he returned to his seat. Then Llinos stood up and climbed the steps.

  “Good evening, everybody,” she said. “I hope you don’t mind if I do most of the talking in English tonight as—I’m sure you are all aware—we have some guests in the village.” She waved at us to get up so we did. Tab and I straightened and turned to face the people gathered in the hall. To my surprise they looked a friendly bunch, grinning and fluttering fingers at us, and I found myself grinning right back, nodding towards some of them. Llinos introduced us—including Mouse—before waving for us to sit back down again. “Before we get to the main reason for Serendipity’s and Tab’s visit, a small matter of housekeeping. Mine and Rhodri’s house only has the one spare bedroom, so we can only put up one of our visitors. Serendipity, will you stay with us?” I agreed with a nod. “Good. Now, is there anyone else willing to give up a spare room for Tab and Mouse?”