A Whisper of Horses

by Zillah Bethell

  “The boy and his dog can come and stay with me,” growled a man in a threadbare cap, sucking on a pipe. We all turned round to get a good look at him. The beard that sprawled out of his face looked like a living breathing animal as he chewed on the pipe’s end, and his other hand reached down and patted the head of a slobbering dog with large bloodshot eyes that flopped exhausted at his feet. “Be nice for my Toby to have a bit of company.”

  Tab stared at me. “He’s going to eat me. I just know it. Look at him. Look at his beard. That’s the beard of a cannibal if ever there was one.”

  “Sssh,” I warned.

  “Da iawn,” Llinos eventually said as the muttering subsided. “So Serendipity will stay with us, and Tab and Mouse, you will stay with Morgan the Nets.”

  “Morgan the what?” Tab scrunched his eyes up to me.

  “And now, something I need to ask of all of you. Serendipity has traveled from London to be with us, and she is with us for a reason. She has come to West Wales in the belief that horses still exist in these parts. I for one have definitely never seen a horse—of that I’m certain. Rhodri has never seen one. Is there anyone in this room who has ever seen a horse in the area? Seen a horse or even heard of someone who has seen a horse?”

  Everyone chattered among themselves, Llinos repeating herself in Welsh to those who didn’t understand. I watched as they frowned and shook their heads and mumbled and scratched their brows. Nobody responded.

  “Anybody?” Llinos asked again. “Anything?”

  “There were the man and the woman, of course,” Mr. Nets called out. “Years ago now. They said they’d seen the horses, remember? The lady wanted to paint them. I don’t know if she ever did. That was a long time ago.”

  The Wizard and Shy, I thought to myself. That would have been them.

  “But the only horse I’ve ever seen is the Marie Llwyd,” Mr. Nets finished.

  “What’s that?” I replied. “What’s the Marie Llwyd?”

  “Oh, nothing,” Llinos said, casting a look at the craggy old man. “It’s just a tradition we do once a year. Someone dresses up as a horse and knocks on people’s doors, asking them questions and trying to be let into the house.”

  “Sounds daft,” Tab said.

  “It is,” Llinos agreed. “Has no one ever seen a horse? A real horse? Ceffyl go iawn?”

  The room just went silent and my heart felt like it had died on the spot.

  “Don’t mean there aren’t any?” Tab whispered. Then, in a quieter voice, “I don’t think this bunch’d know a horse if it stood on their foot.”

  But it wasn’t any good. My legs felt suddenly heavier than they had in a long while, and as Llinos came down from the stage and rested her hand on my shoulder, I tried shutting my eyes and wishing myself away from this place. Back to the dirt and fear and misery of Lahn Dan. Back to where hope didn’t exist and disappointment was just a matter of everyday life. Back to where everything had always been awful, always is awful and always will be awful. Especially now Mama wasn’t there.

  I found myself cursing the hopelessness of hope. Everything was pointless and I didn’t know whether to scream or cry, so I just sat there, dumb.

  The evening passed by in a blur. People took to the stage and sang songs, played guitars and violins and strange trumpety things, and everyone clapped and sang and foot-tapped along.

  The day dipped into darkness as we left the hall and everyone made their ways home. Tab and Mouse went off with the beardy man and I was buoyed along by Llinos and Rhodri. I guess I got changed, crawled into bed and fell asleep.

  But I didn’t really notice.

  * * *

  The following morning I met up with Tab.

  “He’s alright,” Tab explained. “I was a bit worried at first. I thought perhaps ‘Morgan the Nets’ might be a way of saying how he caught people in nets before cooking them and eating them. But it’s not. He’s a fisherman. He goes out and puts nets in the water and drags home any fish he catches. The people in the village buy them and eat them. And his dog is pretty cute too. Mouse spent most of last night running around and chasing him. I could barely get him up this morning. The house smells a bit, mind.”

  “You’ll be right at home then,” I chucked back at him.

  “Ha! Ain’t you the witless one?”

  “I think you mean witty.”

  “Maybe I do and maybe I don’t.”

  “You’re over the egg, Tab, d’you know that?”

  “Yeah, but I’m toasty with it!”

  “So what do you think?” I said at last, after we’d both stopped giggling. “Do you think these people know what they’re talking about? Do you think they’ve never seen horses?”

  “Dunno,” Tab said, giving Mouse a quick tap on the head. “Couldn’t really tell yer.”

  “Well,” I asked, “shall we go and see for ourselves?”

  Tab nodded.

  “Let’s head out of this town,” he started. “Then praps we can spread out, split up. Go across the fields and see.” He gave me a very glaring look. “If there are any horses, Serendipity, we will find them.” He winked.

  * * *

  We met up just after lunchtime.

  “Anything?” I asked hopefully.

  “I went south and a bit farther inland,” Tab said, Mouse panting at his feet. “The grass was so green and lovelier than any I’d ever seen around Lahn Dan … but…” His eyes told me the truth. “But I didn’t see any horses. Not one.”

  My heart was sinking faster than a pebble in a pond. “I went back towards that market town and skirted north and south. I didn’t see anything either. No horses. Nothing.”

  We stood on the edge of the village in silence for a while.

  “S’nice ere, innit?” Tab said as the sea breeze blew over us, bringing with it a particularly salty waft. “Fresh. Like just being ere does yer some good.”

  I had to agree, although my sorrow tried to drown out any sense of joy that might have been struggling to surface. Eventually I left Tab and Mouse to it, wandered down to Llinos and Rhodri’s house, rolled out onto my bed with four fresh rowanberry cookies and a glass of elderflower water and read some more chapters of Black Beauty.

  * * *

  The day after, Morgan the Nets invited Tab and me to go out fishing with him. We dragged ourselves to the harbor before the birds had cleaned their beaks even—the stars had just twinkled themselves out and the sky was summoning up the strength to put on a really blue burst later that morning.

  After the Gases, the seas had all retreated from the shores, pulling themselves back away from the edges, scared to touch the land that man was desperately trying to destroy. That’s what they used to teach us in storytelling, anyway. And down on the harbor you could see it was real. The sea started a long way out and the people of the village had built a long wooden walkway over the muddy sand to the place where the sea began and the boats sat bobbing. We met Mr. Nets and his dog at the start of this wooden bridge.

  “Ever been on a boat before?” he asked, his pipe firmly wedged into his face.

  “No, sir,” I replied. “Never even seen the sea before we came here.”

  His jaw dropped open and he nearly lost control of his pipe.

  “Never seen the … Well, bless me. Never seen the sea!”

  We creaked our way along the pier, Mouse and Toby chasing about under our feet. I may have walked an awfully long way from Lahn Dan, but that walk out to the boats felt like it was going on for days. After quite a while, the sea started lapping and slapping at the struts and beams of the wooden walkway. Alongside, boats filled with baskets and nets and sails were trussed up, swaying with the swell of the waves.

  “Now, Toby, you and young Mouse need to run along—no room for you on this trip, m’lad.”

  Toby gave a sharp bark as if he understood exactly what Mr. Nets was saying, before turning around and walking slowly away.

  “Arf!” he called back to Mouse, who promptly forgot all abo
ut his master and whizzed away to catch up with his new friend.

  “Well. Of all the—”

  “C’mon. Smells like a good day for fish.”

  “Smells?” I said.

  “Oh yes. Good smelling day, this one.”

  * * *

  I felt sick. The constant up-and-down, up-and-down was making my stomach do a cartwheel; it was slowly working its way up my esophagus and into the twitchy part of my throat. Any moment soon I was going to spill the beans. It was all I could do to hold on to the side and shut my eyes, persuading my brain that I wasn’t on a boat, oh no, certainly not on a boat. Definitely not on a boat.

  Tab on the other hand was loving it. Despite my tightly squeezed eyes, I could hear him jumping around, swinging the sail to Mr. Nets’s orders, casting out the ropes, dragging them back in, all the while fish flipping about in the bottom of the boat.

  “Great, innit, Serendipity?”

  “Yeah. Great.”

  “Mr. Nets, sir…” I’d never heard such enthusiasm in Tab’s voice. “Mr. Nets, what are they?” His silhouette through my eyelashes was pointing into the distance, so I allowed one eyelid to open.

  “Those?” Mr. Nets nodded towards some rocks jutting up out of the water. A long regular line of them, like the fingers of a slowly drowning man. “Bishops and Clerks.”

  “Eh?”

  “Bishops and Clerks. That’s what they call ’em. Don’t know why. Must look like some bishops and some clerks, I suppose. Whatever they were.”

  “And what’s that?”

  I turned my head a little—not too quickly, of course—to see a long, flat-topped island, craggy rocks leading up through mossy green to a grassy level.

  “That’s the Invisible Island.”

  “Invisible? But I can see it.”

  “Ah yes, but you couldn’t. Before the Gases. Used to be submerged. And then the waters subsided over time and—there it was. Rising out of the waters like a phoenix. Apparently. Before my day, of course.”

  “Do people live there?” Tab was overspilling with questions.

  “No. We tried using the land for farming—good land for growing stuff, that is—but it’s just too far offshore for regular use. We even put a couple of houses on there and some workshops with all the tools. But it’s been abandoned now for a couple of years. No one there anymore. Probably a whole load of vegetables ready for the picking just gone wild.”

  The trip seemed to go on forever and I clung to the side of the boat with white fingertips. The fish flapped and the sea splashed and slapped the vessel, giving me mouthfuls of salty water every now and again and making my hair sticky and wet.

  I thought back to that first train ride with Mr. Wessex and Mr. Trott—me all excited and excitable, and Tab refusing to budge from the safety of his pole. Today it was me who was fixed in place while Tab whooped it up and leapt about like a cat with a rat. Part of me wanted him to shut his face and sit down and stop rocking the boat while another part of me … well … I was pleased that Tab was feeling happy. Pleased that someone at least was feeling happy.

  chapter 33

  THE INVISIBLE ISLAND

  A COUPLE OF days later, Tab disappeared. We’d split up to look for the horses again, and I’d wandered the fields and villages, up and over the hills and mountains, but still I’d seen nothing. No horses anywhere.

  I was first to return to Haven. An hour passed. Then another. And then Mouse scampered into the village, puffing like his lungs depended on it.

  “Mouse,” I said. “What is it, boy? Where’s Tab?”

  Mouse just ran around in circles, barking madly.

  “What’s wrong with him?” Rhodri asked.

  “It’s Tab. Something’s happened to Tab.”

  We searched the edges of the village, calling his name and listening closely, just in case he’d hurt himself. Meanwhile, Mouse skittered about like electricity filled his skin.

  “Something’s very wrong.”

  We gathered at Rhodri and Llinos’s house—me, Rhodri, Llinos, Mr. Nets and some of the other villagers. It was as we were planning the search parties that we heard the voice.

  “Come out, Serendipity Goudge.”

  “It’s Mordecai!”

  “I have your friend, Serendipity Goudge. Come out now and he won’t get hurt.”

  I stood up, but Rhodri pushed me down again.

  “Stay here.”

  “But he’s got Tab.”

  “Stay here! And keep out of sight. I’ll deal with this.”

  Rhodri got up and went to the door.

  The rest of us moved near the window and peered out. Mr. Nets pulled me to the side and I was forced to look through the crack between the curtain and the wall.

  “Keep out of sight,” he said. Mr. Nets frowned at me. “Don’t let him see you.”

  Outside, Mordecai was stood in the middle of the road. There wasn’t any sign of Tab.

  “Serendipity Goudge! I warn you. If you don’t come out soon I will kill your friend, the ugly little smuggler boy. His life is in your hands, girl.”

  “Who are you?” It was Rhodri’s voice. “What do you want from us?”

  “What do I want from you? I want nothing from you. What have you got that I haven’t got? That I would need? What do you know of the world, hidden away from everywhere in your secret seaside pit? All I want is the girl. Give me the girl and the boy will live.”

  “Leave these children alone. Let the boy go free and go back to your home. You are not wanted here.”

  “Not without the girl!” His voice was increasingly angry.

  “Never.”

  “Then the boy will die.”

  “You will not hurt that boy. If you do, I’ll—”

  “You’ll what? Kill me? Ha! I don’t believe you could kill a damned chicken.” The mood went silent for a few seconds before Mordecai spoke again. “You have until tomorrow morning. Bring the girl to me and I shall release the boy unharmed. My modpod is on the road out of the village. The boy isn’t there, so no heroic ideas about rescuing him or I’ll simply leave him where he is to starve to death. Tomorrow morning.” And with that he turned and walked straight back out of the village.

  “I’ve got to go,” I barked as Rhodri came back into the house. “It’s my fault that he’s got Tab. I have to go and get him.”

  “You’re going nowhere, Serendipity,” Rhodri said, his hands on my shoulders.

  “But he’s got Tab! The Minister wants me, not Tab. If I go to him now he’ll set him free.”

  “I don’t understand,” Mr. Nets began. “Why does this Minister bloke want you? What have you got that he wants so badly?”

  I thought back to the Wizard standing in his sitting room, wondering how to break the news to me that the Minister was my father.

  “I must go,” I insisted.

  “No.” Rhodri gave me a little shake. “That man out there won’t give Tab back. Not that easily anyway. He doesn’t deal in fairness. Doesn’t understand the word. I can see it in his eyes. Walking right up to him won’t do Tab any good, I can tell you.”

  “But what can we do? None of this is Tab’s fault. It’s all my stupid fault for thinking there might be horses here. It’s my fault he’s in danger now. It was all my idea.”

  “Ahem.” It was Mr. Nets again. “Sorry to interrupt but may I say something? I wouldn’t fret too much about the boy. He strikes me as resourceful and as sharp a young man as I’ve ever met. A night or so of imprisonment won’t harm him. Anyway”—he leaned in with a sort of wicked glimmer in his misty eye—“I have a plan.”

  * * *

  Before the day had pushed itself up over the horizon, I found myself being ferried over the sea in Mr. Nets’s boat once again, but the feeling in my stomach had nothing whatsoever to do with the bobbing of the waves. My concerns were for Tab.

  The night before, Mouse had snuggled down at the foot of my bed but he didn’t rest. Occasionally he’d get up, swivel himself around and grumbl
e and whine. His master had disappeared and he didn’t understand why.

  The whoosh and splash of the sea against the boat and the flicker of the dying stars on the water were nothing to me now. I felt numb as Mr. Nets carried me and Rhodri over to the Invisible Island. Behind us I could see the second boat.

  As we approached the small jetty on the island, the pilot of the second boat waved at us and carried on past to the other side of the raggedy rocky mass of land.

  “He’ll be waiting on the other, smaller landing spot. There are rough steps down to it—Rhodri will show you when you get there.” Mr. Nets jumped out and tied the boat to a pole. “Now remember, use the binoculars. The sun will catch on them. Make sure you are obvious when Mordecai looks across the bay. He needs to see you on the island; otherwise he won’t trust us.”

  Rhodri and I got out and Mr. Nets pushed off again. He nodded all dead duck serious and pulled the sail around to carry him back to the shore.

  The island was even greener than the mainland. The grass that grew along its edges was toppling over with its luscious weight—ideal for horses, I thought as we made our way across to the two brick houses. As we walked, we passed vegetables and fruits growing wild and uncontrolled in the ground, on bushes, in trees. Seagulls circled and dived above our heads.

  “It’s possible to live off this island, there’s so much stuff that’s been left to grow on it.” Rhodri looked around. “I haven’t been here for years.”