Mother was horrified. "Mogwen Sion Pritchard!" Going the full distance with Father's name shows how shocked she was. "You can't . . . Why, it isn't decent. My own cousin a . . . racehorse? Indeed no, not while I still breathe."
Mother's lungs were functioning at their usual robust rate two weeks later as she pored with growing enthusiasm over Horse and Track while Father conferred with Arlington Mellish himself, a plump check-suited Englishman addicted to long cigars which he snatched from his mouth at intervals to talk out of partly closed lips as if his every word were guarded. Since security was impossible to maintain in the Red Lion public house, Mellish and my father ascended Cerrig Llan every morning for a week to conduct literally what a later generation would call summit talks. Each afternoon we all gathered to watch Aunt Milly canter in Madoc Meadow, Mellish emitting rapid grunts of approval from the edge of his mouth, Father pleasurably caressing his mustache. And Mother's eyes gleaming. You couldn't, after all, live sixteen years with my father and remain altogether immune to his genial avarice.
Mellish inspected Milly from forelock to fetlocks. He removed his cigar with lightning speed and snapped, "Good lean head. Muscular loins, nice level croup."
"Croup?" Father frowned.
"Rump," explained Mellish. He snapped Milly by way of further amplification then sprang back as she bared her teeth and lunged for his cigar.
"That's good, too," panted Mellish. "High-spirited. Mark of a thoroughbred." He replaced his cigar.
"Naturally Milly's a thoroughbred," Mother murmured a trifle stiffly.
Mellish continued his appraisal. He wrenched the cigar from his teeth. "Sixteen hands at the withers, I'd say. Hindquarters firmly developed." He bent. "Pasterns smooth and true."
"Pasterns?" Father was stroking his mustache almost ferociously.
Mellish straightened. "Ankles, if you like."
And that night, before driving off from Pontypandy, he offered Father the use of his training stables in Somerset.
"Expect you as soon as you can come," he puffed twice then whipped the cigar aside. "And Milly, of course."
A bubbling cold kept me from school. Mother and Father were in the village shopping for suitable stable wear. Aunt Milly grazed placidly in the garden. I had the house to myself. I don't know what impulse moved me, I had not entered Millicent's old room since her transfer to more fitting quarters. But now, in the quiet of a fading day, I pushed open the door and crept in.
It was a pretty room and neat, with a large window overlooking the valley. On a chair beside the bed rested a tattered book, from its decrepit condition obviously one of the collection bequeathed the previous winter to Pontypandy Library by a Welsh bard turned hermit who had dabbled heavily in Druidic mysticism and at the age of 104 was found dead on Cerrig Llan by a posse of town tipplers chasing a mountain goat for fun.
I opened the book where a pink feather marked the pages. They splintered like rust-flakes between my fingers; the print was tiny and half-obscured by footnotes, marginal notes, and notes between the lines, the scribbled interjections of the late bard. But I learned a few things, nevertheless. Aunt Millicent hadn't been the first around these parts to lose human form. Twm Shon Catti, a mountain scamp, had beaten her by a century, though what he had turned into wasn't clear. There was also a luscious witch named Blodwenwedd who changed rather pointlessly into an owl. Gilvaethwy hadn't known when to stop: he became a deer, then a hog, then a wolf, then a snake, and finally forgot what he had started out as.
Dusk crept down from Cerrig Llan. I found a match, touched flame to an oil lamp's wick and read on. My tongue fought aloud with the difficult words and the house crouched listening, now and then clearing its throat with wind gusts down the chimney.
What I was reading was nothing less than a text-book on sorcery, a handy "how-to" tome on transmogrification, a step-by-step guide in the art of switching shapes. To that of a lion for strength, a bird for its flight. To a horse for fleetness. A rabbit for . . . for . . . fecundity. I didn't know the word but I must have partly divined its meaning for I felt a spasm of regret that Aunt Milly had not become a rabbit.
Transformation was big league magic, attainable only by eating the fruit which grew from the sacred grave of Wyn Ab Nudd, the King of the Little People. While you ate, you wished like blazes. That old bard had eaten and wished, then, but as a mountain goat he'd had the singular bad luck to run into a covey of drunks. And Millicent, she too must have found Wyn Ab Nudd's grave, and . . .
At the approaching footsteps of my parents, I snuffed out the lamp, closed the book and ran downstairs, my mind a riot.
"Why," asked Mr. Conway next morning, "are you so interested in Wyn Ab Nudd's grave?"
Bald and beaked, Mr. Conway was our history teacher. If anybody could tell me where Ab Nudd was buried, it had to be old Beaky Conway. And once I knew, then I would go there, snatch some fruit, smuggle it after bedtime into Milly's stable.
I felt sure she must be wishing herself back in her old shape, she had only transmogrified for a bit of daring, she never got much fun out of life really, but a joke was a joke and time now to end it. Moreover, Milly had been with us since before I was born and she was, in some ways, closer to me than either parent. So I was all for restoring her, library tweeds and all.
"I was reading about him," I answered Beaky Conway thoughtfully.
"Well, child." Conway's nose hooked down at me as if to pierce my heart. I wondered suddenly if Beaky—of course Beaky—knew about the grave, had guzzled fruit from it and almost but not quite changed into an eagle. "Nobody knows for sure where King Ab Nudd is buried. Some say beneath Bala Lake. Others, the crown of Cerrig Llan. Personally," he chuckled sepulchrally and I tensed for feathered wings to spread from his underarms and claws to burst through his polished boots. "Personally, I suspect he is buried nearby. Perhaps the mound on Farmer Pugh's land."
The mound. Of course. I had read how in olden times they burned the bodies of the Celtic kings and put the ashes in pots and raised huge heaps of earth and stones over them, and many such mounds we took today to be natural hillocks. "There is such a mound, child," Mr. Conway loomed over me, his eyes flashing down the bony comma between them, "in Farmer Pugh's apple orchard."
The sun was a molten penny dipping beyond distant Bala Lake, the sky overhead a purple silence. The road home to Pontypandy curved out of sight behind the bare slope of Cerrig Llan. I was nearly halfway up the mountain overlooking Farmer Pugh's orchard, and there it was in the middle, the mound, crested with apple trees and encircled by ash like petrified high priests. A wind stirred and the trees whispered and scraped their branches on the wall as if they knew someone was watching. It was a lonely spot all right, but I had to go through with it, had to climb that wall . . .
When I shinned back out again, my pockets were stuffed. Dusk had fallen. Rooks cawed above my head and the nearest tiny lamplight in the Pugh farmhouse glimmered a thousand miles far off. Choir practice echoed remotely from Goronwy the Sin-killer's chapel, but holy music was no match for the unnameable force I suddenly felt tug-o'-warring me back to an age of dark ritual among cromlechs, crags and Druids' circles. The apples I'd poached now tingled through good Welsh cloth to my goose-pimpling skin, and with a yell I ran headlong down the mountain and covered the last mile from Cerrig Llan to our safe house faster than any future Bannister.
And I was too late. Father and Aunt Milly had just departed for Somerset.
Just how Arlington Mellish, who had bought part ownership in Millicent, satisfied the Jockey Club, those traditional arbiters of the British turf, concerning her pedigree when none of her ancestors could be found in the General Stud Book, is and will forever remain a tightly guarded Mellish secret. Anyway, Millicent proceeded to win several county events with ease and it was only a matter of time before Father talked of entering her for the Glamorgan Plate. Father was just home from Somerset on what he called a brief furlough from the field.
"The Glamorgan Plate?" Mother glanced up f
rom the Racing
Calendar she was studying. "Do you think Milly's ready for the big time yet?"
"Mellish does," replied Father at once, and rewarded Mother with a smacking kiss for her display of professional caution. I could see he was proud of her.
The main event of the South Wales racing season, the Glamorgan Plate was run at Ely, a mile-long oval course not, in those days anyhow, exactly Ascot. Much of it in fact curved out of general view behind huge commercial hoardings.
But my chief worry of course was to get the apples into Aunt Milly. The original looted fruit had gone moldy by now (magic or not), requiring a second poaching foray into Farmer Pugh's orchard.
I took the apples down to Ely with us, but when I thrust one at Milly during the short period Mother and I were permitted to the paddock, Father swept my hand away and Mellish confirmed sagely from the corner of his mouth that whole apples might well give Millicent stomach cramps.
We were briefly introduced to the jockey, Cobey Sharpe, a ginger-headed man no larger than myself whose vocabulary was as stunted as his stature, resulting in a frequent reliance upon the word "strike" and its derivatives. When paddock colleagues warned Sharpe of the odd rumors surrounding Millicent's origin (she went to the post as "Millicent"), he had replied that he had struck a lot of queer things in his lifetime, he didn't care a strike whether she had been a woman, a witch, or even a striking walrus, she was a bay horse now, wasn't she, and strike him happy he would ride her. All the way to victory. This was especially sanguine of Sharpe because he had ridden in the annual Plate for twelve years and never won once.
The crowd roared they're off, the sun hurried behind a slab of cloud, and the horses leaped forward.
They thundered past us, streaming down the track, and Millicent shot into the lead at once. Father tossed his hat in the air as if she had already won. Arlington Mellish kept nudging him and firing from the side of his mouth, "Didn't I tell you, Mog?" They were on a first-name basis. "Didn't I ruddy well tell you?"
The horses vanished behind the hoardings. HANCOCK'S-WALES' BEST BEER blotted Millicent from view briefly but she reappeared still leading by a length and evidently with strength in reserve. They vanished again, behind PLAYERS NAVY CUT TOBACCO. Father rocked gently on his heels. "Got the race in her pocket, Milly has," he murmured happily. "Knew a drop of cider would do the trick."
Under the mottled green canopy of a hat she had bought for Ely, Mother's ears quivered. "Cider, Mog?" She turned to him. "Drinking, were you?"
"Not me, woman." He grinned and pointed. "Milly out there." He winked strenuously at me and his mustache ends oscillated. "Brought a pot of Farmer Pugh's cider down with me. Thought Milly might like some too. Dropped a spit or two in her pail. Give her more spirit, like."
At first, his words didn't register with me. Mother though was pained. "Mogwen Pritchard," she scolded, "you know our Milly never touched—"
"Dash it all, woman, it isn't slowing her, is it?" He lowered his field-glasses and gestured at the distant hoardings. `Besides, Arly said a little spit wouldn't do any harm. Right, Arly?"
"Not to worry," Mellish told Mother. "Apple cider never slowed a thoroughbred in my experience."
Apple cider. Farmer Pugh's apple cider.
Grabbing the field-glasses which swung from Father's shoulder I readjusted them and scanned the track. One by one the horses emerged from the shadow of the hoardings. I didn't see Millicent.
"Father." The climax of the race was approaching, and my small voice foundered in the roaring tide of excitement. "Father," I bawled. "Where's Aunt Milly?"
He glared at me, then turned to address nearby spectators. "Is my only son daft?" He retrieved his glasses and squinted. "Where's Aunt Milly indeed." He fingered the focussing screw with mounting panic. "Out in front, she's got to be." His voice trailed off. He rallied gallantly. "Blasted cheap glasses," he snorted. `Blurred or something."
But again he was silent. I looked up. "Not there, is she?" I said briskly.
The race was over. The crowds had gone, except for the Rhondda Valley contingent which had bet heavily on Millicent and were now contemplating Father ominously. Then everyone's gaze turned to the track. A small figure had popped from behind PROTHEROE'S ATHLETIC WEAR and sprinting towards us assumed clarity as Cobey Sharpe. His face was the color of chalk. So now was his hair. He didn't throttle down as he drew near, and every few paces he gasped, "O strike .. . strike me 'appy."
Angrily Father stepped forward. "Sharpe," he roared, "pull yourself together. Where's your mount, sir?"
"Struck if I know," panted Sharpe. Dodging Father, he accelerated and vanished over the fields into the sunset.
Father's jaw suddenly sagged. We all stared in silence at Aunt Millicent advancing timorously and unclothed across the turf. She clutched a saddle modestly before her and she trailed reins. She must have been wishing awfully fierce to be herself again, in proper shape. So all it had needed was Farmer Pugh's fruit or the juice thereof. And Father had provided it. Just a little spit, he had said. Trust Father.
He wheeled and stalked from the track. Mother flung herself at Millicent in welcoming embrace. Men nearby gulped, clenched their fists and averted their eyes. Only Arlington Mellish seemed unshaken. That veteran horse fancier continued to measure Milly with a connoisseur's eye but, I know now, there was a somewhat different glow in it.
The lawsuits with which indignant Welsh gamblers threatened Father were dropped when a Jockey Club inquiry into the affair at Ely ended in frustration. Cobey Sharpe, discovered after a nationwide manhunt, proved wholly incapable of coherent testimony. Moreover, it was as well known to the Jockey Club as to everybody else that in Wales odd things are always happening, so due allowances have to be made.
And Father? He was silent for weeks while Mother berated him: Millicent's racing form had been impeccable, what right had he to tamper with it? But then, he had never fully trusted his own wife's relatives. And he was greedy into the bargain. Well, Mother said, that's what you got for overreaching. Teach him a lesson, it would.
Maybe. Then again, maybe not. Affluent Arly Mellish married Millicent following the Ely fiasco and carried her off to his Somerset retreat. And after a decent pause, we Pritchards descended upon the lovebirds for an indefinite stay during which Father freeloaded like wildfire.
They were happy days. Nostalgic perusal of Arlington's bound Horse and Track volumes would alternate with merry banter over whether he had lost his heart to a bay mare in Madoc Meadow or a shapely assistant librarian sans uniform on the Ely Racetrack. And Father, reaching for the fruit dish to sample one of Arly's unenchanted Somerset apples, would remark with consummate authority that it had, in any case, been love at first sight.
The Circus Horse
by
Amy Bechtel
A relatively new writer, Amy Bechtel attended the Clarion Writers' Workshop in 1984, and in 1988 made her first sale, to Analog. She has since become a frequent contributor to Analog, and has twice won that magazine's AnLab readers' poll for Best Short Story of the Year, once with the thoughtful and incisive story that follows . . . which demonstrates that once a choice is made, all the wishing in the world will not unmake it.
A practicing veterinarian with a doctorate in veterinary medicine from Texas A&M, Bechtel's Hollywood patients have included such movie stars as Mike the Dog and the Persian cat from the Fancy Feast commercials, and she also has performed surgery on a S00 pound tiger. She now lives in Rio Rancho, New Mexico.
* * *
Russell Clark saw a flash of headlights as a pickup and stock trailer pulled into his drive, and he sighed, put down his coffee, and went outside. It was eleven-thirty at night. He'd just crawled into bed and turned out the light when old Fred Brown had called, worried about a cow that wasn't getting on with a calving as she should. Clark supposed he should be glad Fred had brought the cow to the clinic rather than asking for a farm call, but he wasn't; he only wanted to go back to bed.
The truck
and trailer maneuvered, backing up to the chute; then the engine ground to a stop and Clark heard a godawful racket of reverberating crashes and bangs coming from the trailer. Fred Brown jumped out of the pickup and peered at his cow as if he'd never seen her before; Clark moved closer and saw the frantic black beast lurching back and forth, slamming her body against the trailer slats as hard as she could. Clark sighed again; he was tired—so tired—of unmanageable animals turning up at his clinic in the middle of the night.
"What in the world have you got here, Fred?" he asked.
"I dunno, doc," Fred Brown said. "Can't figure out what's the matter with her. She's my wife's pet, you know? She was calm as could be when I loaded her up."
Clark winced as the cow smashed her head solidly against the trailer door. "You ever trailered her before?" he asked. "Maybe the trip got her all excited."
Fred Brown shook his head, looking puzzled. "I've trailered her plenty of times, and she's never acted like this before."
"Let's wait a couple of minutes, then," Clark said. "See if she'll settle. How long have you seen her straining?"
"All day, doc, and she hasn't got nowhere with it."
The cow suddenly stopped plunging and stood with her face pressed against the trailer slats, sides heaving. She let out a long low bellow, which was answered by a shrill whinny and a crashing noise from within the barn. Fred Brown smiled wanly.
"Guess she's got your patients riled up too, huh, doc?"
"Guess so." Clark frowned and went to the barn to check on the animals within. Fred Brown trotted beside him, talking all the while. "Hope we get a good calf out of her. My wife, she's been looking forward to it. She's been going out to check on this old cow every night, you know?"
Clark nodded absently, listening to the restless shuffle of hooves circling in sandy stalls. He fumbled for the light switch and turned it on. The pony in the nearest stall plunged away from him, eyes rolling, and the goats bleated nervously as they milled about, butting at each other. An old mare pawed the ground, filling the air with dust. A peacock fluttered down from the loft and let loose a bloodcurdling wail.
Horses! Page 13
