All the King's Horses

by Laura C Stevenson

  ‘The child has a point,’ said Mongan. ‘And even if he didn’t, the Rules don’t permit us to deny them what they ask.’

  There was a long pause – like, forever – while Cathbad thought it over. Then he sighed and turned to us. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘We will help you accomplish your mission.’

  ‘Hot diggity dog!’ exploded Colin. ‘That’s so cool!’

  ‘Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!’ I said at the same time.

  Mongan stirred uncomfortably on his rock. ‘Surely, you may not be thanking us later, little ones. It’s no holiday trip you’ve asked for.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ I said. ‘So long as Grandpa’s at the end of it.’

  ‘So be it,’ said Cathbad. ‘But because of your youth, we cannot take you to where your grandfather is directly. Instead, we will take you for short journeys along the road he has followed. If you find things on that road which threaten to harm you in mind or spirit, you may stop your mission, and we will help you return to your own world – as safely as we can.’

  I caught Colin’s eye, and I could see we were thinking the same thing: they were planning to take us for little ‘journeys’ into the Otherworld and scare us so much that we’d never want to go back. That way, they could say they’d offered to take us to Grandpa, but that we’d called the whole thing off, so they’d taken us home instead.

  ‘Er … if it’s all the same to you,’ I said as politely as I could, ‘we’d like to meet up with Grandpa right away.’

  Cathbad looked at us, and suddenly he seemed taller and darker. ‘You are in a poor position to bargain,’ he said softly. I looked away from the mist that swirled in his grey eyes to the endless green of the Outskirts – beautiful, silent, and miles from Mom, with no way of getting home on our own.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I whispered.

  ‘We won’t bargain any more,’ whispered Colin. ‘Short journeys are fine.’

  ‘That’s my sensible ones,’ said Mongan. ‘There’s dangers enough along the way without asking for more.’

  ‘Dangers!’ said Colin, his face lighting up. ‘You mean, real Faerie dangers, like Finn’s monster at Tara, or heroes screaming their battle cries, cutting their way through battles in those chariots with enemy heads hanging on the sides? Streams running with blood? Enchanted music? Ravens in dead trees? Don’t worry – we know all about those kinds of dangers!’

  ‘It’s other kinds I was thinking of,’ said Mongan, glancing at Cathbad, who was somehow the right size again. ‘No stories about them, to be sure, but none the less fearsome for that. With battles, enchantments and such, the Rules are still the Rules. But—’

  ‘—That’s OK,’ said Colin, though anybody could tell he’d prefer battles and enchantments. ‘Grandpa’s taught us to use our heads as well as our fists. No matter what kind of danger there is, we’ll pitch in, won’t we Sarah?’

  ‘Sure,’ I said firmly. ‘And once you’ve taken us to Grandpa, you won’t have to worry about us any more; he’ll help us find our way home.’

  ‘The way home’s the problem, surely,’ said Mongan, shaking his head. ‘Worse and worse, the further you travel. Suppose when you find your grandfather, he can’t help you?’

  ‘Oh, but he will!’ I said. ‘He’s not afraid of anything!’

  ‘He surely wasn’t,’ said Mongan, ‘but – well, on your heads be it. Shall we begin?’

  Cathbad’s white eyebrows rose. ‘I’m surprised you want to accompany them, my lord. I had planned to summon a minion for these early stages, there being so little danger.’

  Colin stared at Mongan. ‘You’re a lord?’

  ‘Surely – one of the great Sidhe, son of Manannan mac Lir1 himself,’ said Mongan. ‘But I try not to let that little accident of birth get in my way. The other Sidhe miss a lot of fun being too proud to leave the Otherworld. So if you’ll have me, I’ll guide you, Children of Lugh.’

  ‘Why are we Children of Lugh?’ said Colin. ‘Our father’s name was Peter.’

  Mongan grinned. ‘Lugh is the faery of light, and you two – thanks to your grandfather – have been enlightened. Come.’

  He stepped forward and held out a hand to each of us. I hung back, not feeling enlightened at all, and listening to something in me – the part that Grandpa said you should always listen to – that said there was more to be afraid of than some monster they might throw in to scare us. There was something we didn’t understand.

  ‘Come on!’ hissed Colin. ‘If we chicken out now, we’ll never find Grandpa!’

  Maybe we didn’t have to understand. Many a time, Grandpa had always said, people thought so much they never did what needed to be done. I looked at Mongan and Colin, took a deep breath – then reached for their hands. ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Let’s go.’

  The minute our hands touched, there was a whoosh of something that sounded like music; when it ended, we weren’t in the Outskirts any more. We were standing in the living room of our house on Maple Street, only it was the Burkes’ now, of course, so it had their furniture in it. Totally ordinary. What a come-down.

  ‘What on earth are we doing here?’ said Colin, sounding disappointed.

  ‘Beginning your mission,’ said Mongan. ‘What else would we be doing?’

  ‘Shh!’ I whispered. ‘Mr Burke is snoozing on the sofa. We’ll wake him up.’

  ‘No, we won’t,’ said Mongan. ‘Not being heard is part of being invisible.’

  ‘But we’re not invisible,’ I objected. ‘I can see you.’

  ‘That’s a little effect I throw in for beginners, because they find it hard to work with people they can’t see.’ He turned to Colin. ‘Now, down to business. See those keys?’ He pointed to the table next to the kitchen door. ‘Pick them up.’

  Colin gave me a ‘what’s-going-on?’ look and scooped the keys out of the ashtray that was sitting on the table. Just as he shoved them into his pocket, Mrs Burke hurried downstairs. ‘What time did you say you’d meet Harry for that round of golf?’ she asked, jiggling Mr Burke.

  Mr Burke sat up with a snort. ‘Huh? Oh, golf. I said 3:30.’

  ‘You’d better hurry, then. It’s 3:15.’

  ‘Three fifteen!’ Mr Burke jumped up, grabbed his golf bag out of the corner and started for the door, glancing at the table, feeling in his pockets … ‘Um,’ he said, looking a little sheepish, ‘you wouldn’t happen to remember where I put the car keys, would you?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ said Mrs Burke, ‘not again!’

  She sighed, and they started hunting. After a minute, Mr Burke frowned and hurried back to the table where the keys had been. ‘Funny,’ he muttered, moving the magazines next to the ashtray, ‘I was sure I’d put them …’ He went on into the kitchen.

  ‘Quick, Colin,’ said Mongan. ‘Put them back.’

  Colin plopped the keys down just before Mrs Burke got to the table herself. She clicked her tongue. ‘Here they are, dear.’

  He hurried back into the room. ‘Where were they?’

  She pointed to the ashtray. ‘Right under your nose.’

  Colin laughed as Mr Burke dashed out the door. ‘That’s what Mom says when she finds things we’ve been hunting for. But when she forgets where she’s put her glasses, we have to turn the house upside—’ He stared at Mongan. ‘Oh! Is that what happens? You guys … ?’

  ‘Strictly speaking,’ said Mongan, ‘that’s out of our realm. Now and again, of course, we filch something from somebody that’s annoyed us, which has the same effect. Most of the time, though, mortals forget things all on their own – Come.’

  He reached out a hand to each of us, and next thing we knew, we were near the centre of town, on a street that had laundromats and stores with ‘Goods Bought and Redeemed’ in their windows on one side, and garages on the other. It was OK – Mom took our car to one of the garages, and sometimes the mechanic gave us each a third of his Three Musketeers bar – but it wasn’t a place you’d want to walk without a grown-up, unless you were invisible.

&n
bsp; Colin glanced at three teenagers in black jackets who were leaning against a boarded-up shop and looking at the hubcaps of a parked car. ‘Why would a faery come here?’

  Mongan grinned. ‘Because this is prime territory. Here, take my hands.’

  We did, and I thought we’d start to spin again, but he was just keeping track of us as he wove his way across the street. There were a lot of cars, and of course, nobody could …

  ‘Mongan?’ I said. ‘Are you sure they can’t see us? The guy in that green Chevvy …’

  Mongan grinned. ‘He just feels us. Some mortals know when there are faeries around.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Colin. ‘Like at night, when you don’t hear or see anything, but you know?’

  ‘Surely,’ said Mongan. ‘Though it’s not always us. Ghosts have their rights, too – This way now.’ And he opened the door to a laundromat, letting out a smell of soap and steam.

  I wiped off my glasses and looked at the clock on the wall. It said 3:15. Of course, clocks in laundromats never work, but still … I hurried to catch up with the others.

  Mongan was opening a dryer door. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘each of you pull out a sock.’

  We each did; the socks must have been in there a long time, because they sort of snapped, and their fur stuck out. ‘These OK?’

  ‘Not them,’ said Mongan. ‘They match.’ He frowned. ‘Colin, m’lad, you’re a mathematical one, they say. What’re the odds of forgetting to put two matching socks in a dryer?’

  ‘That depends on how many socks were there in the first place.’

  I swapped one of the brown socks in my hand for a blue one and shut the dryer door. ‘It looks like about a week’s laundry. So say, seven pairs.’

  ‘One in thirteen,’ said Colin. ‘If each pair was a different colour to start with. But if there were four brown pairs and three blue pairs—’

  ‘—You’re making my head spin,’ grunted Mongan. ‘Take my hands, and we’re off.’

  ‘What about these?’ I said, holding up my socks.

  Mongan grinned, took the two socks and threw them high into the air. As they started to come back down, they disappeared. ‘There,’ he said, chuckling. ‘Off to sock limbo.’

  ‘Where’s that?’ I asked.

  ‘It’s where all the forgotten socks go – and a fine time they have of it.’

  ‘Wow!’ said Colin. ‘I’ve gotta try that!’ He opened the dryer, but Mongan stopped him.

  ‘No you don’t, lad. That was just a demonstration; any more’s against the Rules.’

  ‘Aw, come on,’ said Colin, reaching in. ‘Just one!’

  Mongan grabbed his hand. ‘I said, that’s against the Rules!’ He grabbed me, too, and I braced myself for the whoosh.

  But this time, there was no whoosh. First, there was nothing at all – just me, sort of floating. Then slowly, slowly, things began to appear, floating too, but just out of reach. For a moment, I thought, my gosh, he’s shut us into the dryer! But it was much bigger than a dryer, and the things around me were moving too slowly … no, I was moving, in sort of a spiral, and going the other way was everything we’d ever hunted for – riding crops, curry-combs, boot pulls, lead-ropes, homework papers, library books, lunch money, spoons, mittens, barrettes, Tinkertoys, safety pins. I began to get dizzy and sort of sick, but I didn’t dare close my eyes, because something kept telling me that in the middle of all that stuff there was something I had to find, but I couldn’t remember what it was. So I stared, hoping that something would remind me … but gradually, everything faded, and there was nothing again, and suddenly I had a terrible feeling that Mongan and Cathbad had forgotten us, and we were lost for ever, like all the other stuff, which meant no matter how hard Mom looked, she’d never find us, and we’d never get back …

  Then – wham! – we were walking into the front yard with Grandpa between us. Mom was running up the hill from the warehouses.

  ‘Thank heaven!’ she said, panting. ‘I went up the tracks as far as I dared, but I had to turn back because …’ She gestured towards the 3:15 train as it roared by, blasting its whistle at the crossing. ‘Where did you find him?’

  ‘By the river,’ said Colin. ‘He was fine – just looking at the water.’

  Mom gave Grandpa a hug. ‘Come on into the house, Dad. You must be cold. I’ll make you some tea.’

  Grandpa smiled his beautiful, empty smile and followed her inside.

  ‘Wow,’ I said to Colin. ‘As Grandpa would say, there’s a grand future for you in lying.’

  I expected him to be pleased (usually I don’t bother to tell him he’s done something right); but instead, he looked sore. ‘What the heck do you mean by that!?’

  ‘Come on! There we are with Grandpa, and no way to explain how the faeries got us to him, let alone into the front yard – and you make up that river story, smooth as glass.’

  ‘Faeries!’ he snorted. ‘You’re the one who’s got a grand future in lying!’

  ‘Hey, you don’t have to pretend to me, remember? I was there, too!’

  ‘Sure you were,’ he said, in a voice like lemonade without sugar. ‘But finding Grandpa down by the river wasn’t interesting enough for you, so you wanted to embellish it.’

  ‘That’s not so, and you know it!’

  He shrugged. ‘Have it your way, story-teller.’

  I hit him – hard. He swung at me, but I caught his fist with my guard. That made him really angry, and he started punching so fast that I began to think how bad things would be ever after if I lost (which I never had) when Mom ran down the steps and pulled us apart.

  ‘What on earth are you doing!?’ she said, holding each of us by the shoulder.

  Neither of us said anything, but not just because the answer was obvious. When we’d asked Grandpa to teach us to box, he’d said no. ‘See, your mother’s like her mother – it grieves her to see matters settled in the ordinary way. So we don’t want to be causing her tears; she’s shed enough of those already.’ He finally gave in, but only if we promised never, never to have fist-fights at home, only in Pennsylvania. Up until then, we’d never forgotten that promise. I was so ashamed that I couldn’t look anywhere but down.

  ‘What brought this about?’ asked Mom in a quiet voice that was lots worse than yelling.

  ‘Nothing, really,’ I whispered.

  ‘Right,’ muttered Colin. ‘We just … disagreed.’

  ‘What about?’

  I snuck a glance at Colin, then we both looked up at Mom. She was almost crying, just like Grandpa had said. ‘Oh Mom!’ I said.

  ‘We’re so sorry!’ said Colin. ‘We’ll never, never …’

  ‘OK.’ But she still stood there, blinking tears away. Finally, she said, ‘Look. It’s hard on all of us, having Grandpa like this. But the only thing we can do about it is stick together.’

  This wasn’t the time to explain you could have a fist-fight and still stick together, so I didn’t. Which was a good thing, because she looked at us very closely and added: ‘That doesn’t just mean no fighting. It means no secrets.’

  ‘Absolutely,’ said Colin, looking at her, not at me. ‘No secrets, from now on.’

  Mom’s face suddenly looked a lot better. ‘Great,’ she said. ‘Let’s have some tea.’

  We did, and that was that, except after we went to bed, Colin snuck into my room.

  ‘Just in case you think I’ve still got a grand future in lying—’

  ‘It’s OK,’ I said. ‘You said no secrets from now on; the old ones don’t count, right?’

  ‘Just wanted to be sure you got it,’ he whispered, looking over his shoulder at the door. ‘And look, Sarah. We did see Cathbad and Mongan, and we went to the Burkes’ and …’

  ‘Oh, for Pete’s sake.’

  ‘No, no! That’s what I wanted to tell you! I don’t know if you can believe this, but I … forgot. Honest. Like on a test, and everything goes blank, you know?’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yeah, really. And like
after the test is over, when you suddenly remember the answer – bang, there it was: Cathbad and Mongan and the mission and everything else that happened before we got back and they told us Grandpa was down by the river.’ He shivered. ‘Spooky, right? I mean, you know the Sidhe are powerful and all, but if they can wipe out your memory like that—’

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, but then we heard Mom and Grandpa coming upstairs, and Colin whisked back into his room.

  I lay there in the dark, thinking about what had happened after we left the laundromat, and wishing Colin hadn’t left; it would have been nice if he’d been around when it all came back to me. But it was even spookier than I’d thought. Because it didn’t come back. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t remember finding Grandpa by the river.

  Notes

  1 Manannan mac Lir is pronounced Monn-un-aun Mak Leer

  THE NEXT MONDAY, the bus was late, which only happens when it’s pouring. After we’d been standing at our stop for about ten minutes, the little white dog we’d seen with Jenny bounced out of one of the warehouses, and a moment later Jenny followed it. She didn’t have an umbrella, so she was soaked by the time she got to us. ‘You want to wait in our place?’ she said.

  ‘Oh … thanks,’ I said, ‘but we couldn’t see the bus from there.’

  Jenny glanced at the warehouse, and I knew she knew we could have seen the bus just fine, but all she said was, ‘OK.’ Then she asked us what our names were, and where we’d lived before, and I kept thinking we should make room for her under the umbrella, and Colin stood on one foot, then the other, and it seemed like forever until the bus finally came. As we climbed on, I looked back, wondering why she’d stand in the rain just to talk to us. She smiled, showing brown stumps where her teeth should have been. ‘Have a good time,’ she said.

  A good time in Wheelock School – sure. Right after the Pledge of Allegiance, Miss Turner looked at Tiffany’s math worksheets and found that she hadn’t done any of the problems for the last week; so she said Tiffany would have to go ‘Downstairs’. I’d learned by now that meant the Detention Room. I offered to help Tiffany with her math so she wouldn’t have to go, but all that did was make Miss Turner look at my sheets, which meant she saw My Friend Flicka on my lap and took it away. Miss Turner went to the front of the room and wrote problems on the board, telling all of us we were falling behind the Russians because they knew more math (as if it was our fault that they’d just launched a second Sputnik). I was beginning to glaze over, when suddenly the piece of chalk she’d just put down disappeared. She stared at the tray, then at the floor, but it was totally missing, so she went to her desk and got another piece. Most of the kids didn’t notice (I guess they were glazed over, too), but it cheered me up.