All the King's Horses

by Laura C Stevenson

  The next cheering-up thing that happened was that Tiffany sat next to me at lunch, instead of trying to sit at a table all by herself. It was so noisy we couldn’t talk much until most of the kids had left, but then she gave me a Tiffany smile and said, ‘You know Mr Crewes, that teacher I said was really nice? He was Downstairs today, and he told me he’d like to meet you. Would that be OK? He’s over there.’ She pointed across the lunch-room to a man who had one of those faces that would tell you he was a teacher in a line-up of a thousand people. He nodded in a friendly way when he saw us looking at him, but just as he got up, a short, square man teacher hurried up to him and started talking anxiously about something.

  ‘Who’s that?’ I said.

  ‘Mr Stegeth,’ she said, looking surprised I didn’t know. ‘Your brother’s teacher.’

  ‘Oh!’ I said. And right then, I stopped being worried that it was worry about Grandpa that was making Colin be ‘disruptive’ in class. After you’ve been in school awhile, you can tell when a teacher is the kind who teaches only the stuff in the textbook and feels threatened if kids want to know more. It doesn’t always mean the teacher is stupid – but try, just try, to tell Colin that.

  Mr Crewes took care of whatever was bothering Mr Stegeth in a few seconds and walked over to us. Most teachers would have started right in talking to me, but he let Tiffany introduce us, and he shook my hand. ‘Glad to meet you, Sarah,’ he said. ‘Tiffany says you and your brother transferred from Maple Street School. How are you settling in here?’

  ‘I’m settling in fine,’ I said, ‘but my brother—’ Then I remembered that Tiffany had said Mr Crewes had been Downstairs, and I thought, uh-oh. ‘Um … have you met him?’

  ‘I met him this morning. Just briefly. We didn’t have time to talk.’

  So they’d sent Colin Downstairs, and Mom couldn’t work things out because she didn’t know. I gulped. ‘Well, my brother is … like our dad – precocious. Is that the word?’

  ‘That depends upon what you need a word for,’ said Mr Crewes.

  ‘Somebody whose mind grows up before the rest of him.’

  He nodded, looking kind of interested.

  ‘It was a problem, even at Maple Street School, because it means he gets bored easily, and then he gets fresh. So last year, they skipped him. He was still way ahead, but it worked, because the classes were small and the teachers were really good – but I guess nobody warned this school, because they put him in Mr Stegeth’s class.’ Suddenly, I realized what I’d said, and I blushed.

  Mr Crewes didn’t seem to notice. ‘So it’s a matter of keeping him interested, is it? I thought so. Let’s see. Would your dad be willing to help him at home if Mr Stegeth assigned him more advanced work?’

  I shook my head. ‘Our dad was killed in Korea.’

  He gave me the kind of look grown-ups always give after you say that. ‘Oh, I’m sorry.’

  ‘That’s OK,’ I said. ‘It’s not your fault. But, about helping Colin at home, well, Mom used to do stuff with him, but now she’s pretty tired, because …’ I stopped. Telling him about Grandpa might have made it sound as if it were all Grandpa’s fault Colin was Downstairs.

  The bell rang, and Mr Crewes got up. ‘I tell you what. I’ll look at Colin’s transcript, and call the principal of Maple Street School. Then we’ll see what we can do. OK?’

  ‘That would be great,’ I said, and I felt lots better.

  We started into the hall with Tiffany, who had been listening the whole time. When he got to his classroom, Mr Crewes smiled at us – not a teacher’s smile; a real one. ‘Take care, girls,’ he said. ‘I’ll be in touch.’

  *

  Dinner was awful again. Colin had almost missed the bus home, though all the kids from his class made it in plenty of time. He knew I knew why he was late, but he didn’t say anything about it, so I couldn’t – so neither of us said much when Mom tried to make conversation. When she brought out a special cake for dessert, and still neither of us said anything, she looked hurt, and of course, that made things worse. Finally, after Grandpa had finished his piece and gone to pace around the living room, she put down her fork with a little clank.

  ‘I thought there weren’t going to be secrets.’

  ‘There aren’t!’ said Colin, much too fast.

  ‘Come on,’ said Mom. ‘I know something’s wrong, and you know there’s no way we can fix it if you don’t tell me what it is. Is it school?’

  Colin’s face told me he’d die rather than make her worry about him, so I said, ‘No, everything’s fine at school; it just takes time to make friends.’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Colin. ‘Really.’

  Mom looked from one of us to the other, and I could see we hadn’t fooled her. But she just said, ‘Maybe we should read something aloud. We haven’t done that for a long time.’

  ‘That’s a good—’ Something crashed in the living room. We all jumped up, and there was Grandpa, piling a chair on top of the coffee table. He’d started doing things like that after we moved; Mom said maybe he was trying to make the new house look the way the old house did. Anyway, it took us a long time to persuade him that the furniture was all right where it was, and by then, it was time for Colin and me to go to bed.

  ‘I mean it about reading,’ said Mom as she came in to kiss me good night. ‘We’ll start tomorrow, no matter what. Think of something exciting that we’ll all enjoy.’

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘Mom …’

  ‘Yes?’

  I was all ready to talk to her about Colin, but when she leaned over to look at me, I saw how tired she was, and how she hadn’t put on makeup or done her hair the pretty way she usually did. So I just said, ‘Nothing, Mom. I love you.’

  She started to give me a big hug, but there was a thump downstairs, so she hurried out the door, instead.

  I went to sleep feeling bad – about Colin, about Grandpa, about Mom – but a dream came along and saved me. I’d had it so often that in the middle of it I always told myself I was dreaming, but it started with something that had happened once. I was in Pennsylvania, and I was riding Fay, the Smithes’ pony, who was pretty big for me, then. It was my first lesson in riding a course, like they do in showjumping classes, instead of jumping one or two jumps at a time. Fay and I were trotting in circles; Grandpa was lowering huge jumps in the stadium jumping ring to two feet. That was the height I’d been jumping all week, but my hands were so sweaty I could hardly hold the reins.

  Finally, Grandpa beckoned us over to where he was. ‘Now, you’re going to take the little poles first – see there? Then the bricks. Then the brush.’ He went on through six jumps, and I sat there, feeling my heart bang-bang-bang and wondering how I’d ever manage Fay, who got pretty excited when we jumped just two little poles.

  Grandpa looked at me. ‘Sure and you’re not frightened, a fine jumper like you?’

  ‘Of course not!’ I said. And to prove it, I set Fay off at a trot towards the first jump, without even making a circle first. We made it over fine, but then Fay realized there were going to be more jumps, and she took off. I tried to pull her down, but she shook her head back and forth and tore on to the bricks, which seemed to grow as we got closer …

  ‘Hold it!’ called Grandpa after we’d shot over it. ‘That’ll never do!’

  Fay slowed down when she heard his voice, and I trotted her over to him.

  Grandpa wiped my eyes with his red bandana. ‘Tell me, what do I do when a horse goes too strong over jumps, not being able to hold him with only one good hand?’

  ‘I don’t know …’ I sniffled. But then I realized I did. ‘Oh. Is that when you sing?’

  ‘That’s m’girl. And how fast do I sing?’

  I thought about it. ‘Sort of slowly, like a collected canter.’

  He thumped me on the shoulder. ‘Now didn’t I tell you,’ he said to the air, ‘that this is the smartest six-year-old gal that ever rode a horse? You’ve hit right on it – you sing at the speed you want the horse to
go. And she will.’

  I looked sideways at Fay’s determined pony face. ‘You sure?’

  ‘Find out for yourself,’ he said. ‘I’ll sing with you, to start. Get a canter, now.’

  I made a circle at a trot, then asked for a canter. Behind me, Grandpa started up:

  When Irish eyes are smilin’

  Sure ’tis like a lark in spring …

  There was no way you could NOT sing when Grandpa sang that, even when you were frozen solid with fear, so I joined in. My voice squeaked, but Fay must have heard it, because she settled into a nice canter, and we went over the first jump so smoothly I hardly felt it.

  In the lilt of Irish laughter

  You can hear the angels sing …

  We took the second jump just right, and the third, and the fourth … and suddenly there was just the song, and Fay and me jumping fences in some green and wonderful place that went on and on, knowing we could jump for ever without getting hurt or scared.

  When Irish eyes are happy,

  All the world is bright and gay.

  And when Irish eyes are smilin’

  Sure they’ll steal your heart away!

  ‘Very nice,’ said a dry voice from somewhere very near.

  I opened my eyes and saw people standing by my bed, which meant I’d woken everybody up again by singing in my sleep. ‘I’m sorry, Mom. Sorry, Colin. Didn’t mean to—’ Then I realized it wasn’t Mom and Colin; there were three of them, one very tall, and two about my height. They were wearing cloaks with hoods, and the stuff around their eyes lit the room with a strange orange glow. I dived back under my covers, hoping I was still dreaming.

  ‘Are you afraid, Child of Lugh?’ said Cathbad’s voice. ‘I have brought two minions to help you continue your mission, but if you have decided that the dangers—’

  ‘—of course I’m not afraid!’ I said, jumping up and groping for my glasses. ‘Should I get dressed?’

  ‘It will make no difference,’ said Cathbad. ‘You will be out with night-elves, so you will have to clothe yourself in many different shapes.’

  I pulled on my sweatshirt and made a sloppy pony-tail with the first rubber band my hand fell on. ‘I’ll have to what?’

  One of the night-elves laughed. ‘You’ll have to do what we do. Watch.’ Suddenly, there wasn’t an elf where he was standing, but a bush. Then the bush changed into a cow, which got halfway changed into an elephant … the floor started to creak, and Cathbad said something in a language I couldn’t understand. The cow-elephant changed back into the elf.

  ‘Let’s go and find your brother,’ said Cathbad, stretching out his hand.

  When I took it, the room suddenly got larger, and I was flying with three bugs, out my door and past the hall nightlight, which seemed much more beautiful and interesting than it ever had before. When we got to Colin’s door, we landed and crawled underneath it; then I was standing by his bed between the elves. One of them took my hand in his left hand and touched Colin’s shoulder with his right. All of a sudden, I could see Colin’s dream – not the way you see things in a movie, but in my head, as if I were dreaming, too.

  Colin and I were in our car, with me in the front passenger seat and him in the back, which meant I’d won the toss. We started down a steep hill, with a curve by a tree – and he suddenly realized he was supposed to be driving. He leaned over the front seat and turned the wheel so we missed the tree, but we kept going down, and his feet were still in the back, so he couldn’t reach the brakes. He yanked on the hand-brake, but nothing happened, and we shot towards a brick wall, going faster and faster … the dream popped, and Colin turned over and hit out at the elf next to me.

  ‘Easy there, m’lad,’ said the elf, backing away.

  Colin blinked at us in the light from the street lamp outside. ‘Sarah, is that you?’

  ‘I think so,’ I said, looking down – and so far as I could see, it was me, exactly as I’d been in my room. ‘Cathbad is here with two night-elves.’

  ‘Great,’ he muttered sleepily, grabbing his sweatshirt. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To the world of visions, eventually,’ said Cathbad. ‘I will not be with you; I have a ceremony to attend to. But the elves will accompany you. This one is Hob, and this one is Lob.’

  ‘Glad to meet you,’ we said, shaking hands. As soon as our fingers touched theirs, all four of us slipped through the crack at the side of Colin’s window and spun down into a pile of leaves. We lay there a moment, quivering; then a big puff of wind sent us whirling around the streetlight and spinning up over the warehouses. On the far side of the tracks, it dropped us, and we went scuttling through the used-car lots into a street filled with tumble-down houses, circled one of them a couple of times, and fluttered down lightly on its porch.

  ‘All right, little ones,’ said Hob’s voice. ‘Through the keyhole – here we go.’

  Something pulled me up, and a tunnel whizzed by on all sides of me … then a long, strange-smelling hall tilted a few feet below me, then I zipped through another tunnel … and when I caught my breath, I was standing next to Colin in the shadows of a room lit by a TV and nothing else. It was supposed to be a living room, I think, but it was so full of unsorted laundry, half-eaten TV dinners, soda cans, bottles, and other junk, that you could hardly tell.

  ‘Sorry to be so quick,’ said Hob, ‘but I didn’t want to run into him.’

  ‘Her,’ corrected Colin, pointing to a woman asleep on the couch.

  Hob looked at Lob, and they both smiled – not very nicely. ‘Oh, she’s no problem,’ he said. ‘State she’s in, she wouldn’t see us even if we were visible. No, it’s him that’s the—’

  The door to the living room slammed back against the wall. Colin and I shrank into the corner as a man stumbled through it. The woman woke up and gave him a dirty look.

  ‘Shut it, can’t you?’

  The man slammed the door shut. ‘The light’s on upstairs. Where’ve you been?’

  ‘Where’ve you been, is more like it?’ she said. ‘And where did you get the money to go drinking?’

  ‘From a cash register.’

  ‘Yeah? Whose?’

  The man started up the creaking staircase without answering. That made her angry, and I thought she was going to run after him, but after she sat up, all she did was feel around the floor for the glass by the leg of the coffee table. When she found it, she pressed it against her forehead and shut her eyes.

  Colin looked at me, and I knew what he was thinking, but Lob just laughed. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘We’d never show visions like hers to beginners. We’re going upstairs. Slowly, now.’

  He led the way, and we followed. About halfway up, we saw the man standing in an open doorway, huge and black against the light that came from inside.

  ‘Now, look,’ he said. ‘We talked it over. We agreed. Supper, homework, bed. No reading on school nights – right?’

  If there was an answer, we couldn’t hear it.

  ‘So what are you doing?’ he demanded.

  This time, I was sure there was no answer. How could there be? Questions like that aren’t really questions; they’re accusations with a question-mark at the end.

  The man took a step further into the room and held out his hand. Somebody I couldn’t see slowly held out a book and whispered, ‘Don’t tear it up. Please. It’s from the library.’

  The man looked at it foggily, then threw it on the floor and stumbled forward, grabbing for something. There was a yanking noise, and the light went out. A moment later, the man came out, carrying a bedside lamp.

  ‘There,’ he said. ‘That takes care of it.’ He stood there a minute longer with his free hand on the jamb and his head hanging down; then he shuffled through another door, and we heard the sort of muffled thump a bed makes when somebody lands on it hard.

  Hob listened for a couple of minutes, then led the way up the rest of the stairs and into the little room. There wasn’t much in it: a bed, a little table (probabl
y for the lamp), and a desk and chair under the dirty window. I expected the kid in there to be under the covers, crying, but the bed was empty. A girl was sitting cross-legged on the desk, shivering. Something about the way she looked out at the clouds that were blowing across the half-moon – watching them, but not seeing them – seemed awfully familiar.

  ‘Oh!’ I whispered suddenly. ‘It’s Tiffany!’ And I was just thinking, poor Tiffany – she lives here? when the elves each took our right hands in their right hands and touched Tiffany with their lefts. Suddenly there was light everywhere, as late afternoon sun shone on a deep green field with ancient trees standing here and there. The field was filled with horses – chestnuts, greys, blacks, bays – all with perfectly groomed, shining coats. In the middle of the herd stood Tiffany, patting mares, stroking little foals, talking, talking, talking to them all in the kind of murmur Grandpa used to use. They nuzzled her dark, curly hair and rubbed their heads against her shoulder, looking perfectly happy. As Tiffany patted them, I caught a glimpse of her face, and I thought, that’s funny, I never noticed Tiffany was so pretty … Wham. I was back in the room again, with lights blinking dizzily in my head the way they do when you stand up too fast. For a second, I couldn’t figure out what had happened; then I felt cheated, because Tiffany was still in her wonderful daydream, and Colin was there, too, because Lob was still connecting him, but Hob had dropped me. I was just about to grab his hand – I really wanted to know where Tiffany was – when he raised it and shook his fist.