All the King's Horses

by Laura C Stevenson

  I expected Colin to sneak down to my room, but he didn’t, and I was glad, because I didn’t want to talk. Part of me was still on that beach, between the terrible cliffs and the grey sea, listening to the rocks … keening. That was the word for that terrible lullaby. In the silence of the house, I half-heard it again, rising and falling in long, low moans. I crawled under the covers, shivering. The cocoa and everything made it feel as if everything had come out all right for a while, but now … now I realized that if we’d stayed on that terrible grey beach a little longer, we never would have gotten back, even though Manannan had ridden all that way to save us. If we hadn’t recognized each other … and we hadn’t, all that time … or known who he was … and we hadn’t, not at first …

  I shuddered and looked quickly around the room, to be sure I’d really gotten all the way back. I had, of course. I was lying under a pink quilt on my canopied bed, as far from Faerie as I could possibly get. But when I half-closed my eyes, the white dresses on the beautiful ladies in Grandmother’s pictures looked like sea-foam on the edges of waves that slithered towards me across grey sand, higher and higher. The horror of the land to which you journeyed lingers long after one has left it. I buried my face in my pillow and closed my eyes. It didn’t help; the sea-foam slid away, but I could still see the expression in Manannan’s eyes after he’d glanced at the stones, and in some kind of double image, the hero with the bronze shield, swinging his sword helplessly at the enormous grey waves.

  I could never have admitted to Colin that I was afraid to go back to Faerie. But I was.

  WE DIDN’T TALK about it for a long, long time. At first, I thought Colin was waiting until we left Grandfather and Grandmother Madison’s, but he didn’t say anything after we got home, either, so finally I just let it go. Not talking about it made a space between us, but there was a lot else going on, and it was easy to think we could patch things up when there was time. At least, that’s what I thought, and I was pretty sure Colin was thinking the same thing.

  Anyway, we got home. And Grandpa didn’t recognize us. For a while, I didn’t think much of it, because nobody else recognized me, either. Mom did this amazing double-take when she first saw me, and it was days before she stopped staring whenever I came into the room. As for school, the first time I got on the bus, everyone whistled, and at recess, all the girls clustered around, asking about the cut and the contacts and the sweater. But pretty soon, they saw I hadn’t really changed, so they went back to ignoring me, and things were just like they’d been – except Grandpa never did quite figure out who Colin and I were. Finally, I realized that though Grandmother Madison hadn’t been able to change me, something had changed him.

  It kept on changing him. By Valentine’s Day, he’d forgotten how to use a knife and fork; we had to teach him all over again at every meal, and finally it got so hopeless that we just let him eat with his fingers. Sometime around St Patrick’s Day, he started having trouble putting one leg in each side of his pants; Colin and I thought that was pretty funny at first, but one day he got both legs stuck in one pant-leg and hit his head when he fell. After that, Mom helped him dress – and take a bath, because he couldn’t do that by himself any more. Baths were awful; he seemed to think he was going to drown or something, and he yelled and struggled the whole time. Mom tried all sorts of ways of coaxing him, and some of them worked sometimes, but it got so we all dreaded Monday and Thursday nights.

  The clincher came the last day of the Easter vacation. Mr Crewes and Mom were at the movies (that happened once a week; I felt funny about it, but it was the only time Mom got out of the house except when she went shopping, so I didn’t dare tell her I wished she wouldn’t go), and Colin and I were home with Grandpa. Colin came running downstairs to show me something he’d read about, but before I could look at it, Grandpa started pacing around, looking very unhappy.

  ‘What’s wrong, Grandpa?’ I asked.

  ‘Come on,’ said Colin (he’d been really excited about whatever it was). ‘You know he doesn’t know what’s wrong any more. Maybe he’s hungry; I sure am – want a sandwich, Grandpa?’

  Grandpa nodded, so we took him into the kitchen, but when I turned to give him his sandwich, he was standing in a puddle. It only took one sniff to tell what kind of puddle it was.

  ‘Oh, Grandpa!’ I began reproachfully. ‘Why didn’t you …?’ But then I saw how embarrassed he was, and I stopped.

  Colin looked at me. ‘What do we do now?’

  ‘Clean up, I guess,’ I said. ‘I’ll mop if you take him upstairs and—’

  ‘– change him?’ Colin stared at me. ‘You know how he is about baths.’

  ‘So don’t give him a bath. Just use a washcloth.’

  He gulped. ‘I think you’d better do it.’

  ‘But Colin …’ I couldn’t finish, but I turned red, and he saw what was bugging me.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, turning red too. ‘Yeah. Well, come on, Grandpa.’

  He took Grandpa’s hand, and they went up the back stairs together. I got out the mop and the disinfectant, and I took care of the puddle and the drips that had followed them upstairs. Colin and Grandpa were in the bathroom; as I started back down with the bucket, Grandpa came out, wearing his pyjama bottoms. Colin has a lot of sense, sometimes.

  When Mom got home, she said we’d handled everything beautifully (she was especially happy about the way we’d run Grandpa’s pants through the washing machine, as if that had been the hard part). Still, I was really shaken, and I had a feeling Colin was too. I was right; ten minutes after Mom had kissed us goodnight, my door opened a crack and a light shone in.

  ‘You awake?’ whispered Colin’s voice.

  I sat up. ‘Yeah.’

  He made his way slowly across the floor. ‘Geez,’ he muttered, ‘what a pig-sty. OK if I sit on the bed, to avoid contamination?’

  I let that pass, partly because he was right; in the last couple of months, my room had started getting messy, and I’d sort of given in to it. ‘What’s up?’

  ‘I’m not sure,’ he said. ‘But I’ve been doing research. Look what I found.’ He handed me a book and his flashlight. ‘It’s what I came to show you just before …’

  I opened the book to the place he’d put a marker and began to read. Once upon a time, at the very edge of a village in Ireland, there was a cottage that always stood empty. Every year, it looked more and more forlorn, but nobody would go near it. One day, an old woman hobbled into the village. When the villagers greeted her, she said she had come because she had no place to live, and she had heard that there was a cottage there that nobody wanted.

  ‘That’s true,’ said the villagers, ‘but there is a reason nobody wants the cottage: everybody who has lived in it has disappeared, even the dogs and cats that lay before the fire. It’s death to go in it; do not try.’

  ‘I am very poor,’ said the old woman. ‘And I am so old that if I die today, I will lose only a few months of life. So I will live in the cottage.’

  All the villagers tried to persuade her she shouldn’t, but she just thanked them for their warning, bought a little oatmeal for herself to eat, and moved into the cottage. The first day, nothing unusual happened, so the second day, she swept out the cottage and set up house-keeping very comfortably. But the third evening, there came a knock on the door. The old woman opened it and saw a tall, beautiful lady.

  ‘Excuse me,’ said the lady, ‘may I borrow some oatmeal?’

  I looked up at Colin. ‘Criminy!’

  He nodded. ‘Keep reading.’

  The old woman hurried to her shelf and gave the lady all that was left of the oatmeal she had bought from the villagers. The next morning, there came another knock on her door; it was the lady again, and she was holding a bag of oatmeal.

  ‘I have come to pay my debt,’ she said.

  ‘There’s no need for that,’ said the old woman. ‘The oats have gone to good use, I’m sure, and I am happy I could help you.’

  ‘Thank you,�
� said the lady, ‘you have been very kind, and the Faer Folk thank you. Just beyond the back garden of this cottage is a Faery Ring, and we know what harm foolish mortals can do to paths to the Otherworld. But you are a woman to be trusted, and so long as you stay away from the back garden on moonlit nights, you may live here as long as you like.’

  The old woman thanked the faery, and on moonlit nights she was careful to stay in the front of her cottage. True to their word, the faeries never bothered her, and she lived happily in the cottage for the rest of her life.

  I shut the book. ‘Wow. So Jenny … I mean, that is what you think you found, right?’

  ‘Right.’

  I shivered. ‘What do you suppose it’s all about? I mean, why would They bother to disguise one of Them as a mortal when the rest of Them hover around the way They do?’

  ‘So They can make sure Grandpa is OK,’ said Colin. ‘Like that day she went to the Gordons’ with us.’

  ‘Um, look,’ I said (very carefully; I didn’t want to hurt his feelings), ‘that could only be true if Grandpa’s a changeling. And I don’t … well …’

  ‘Don’t hum around like that! I’m a scientist, not a baby! The changeling idea was just an early hypothesis – it was way too simple. But that doesn’t invalidate it entirely.’

  ‘Oh, come on! If you’re wrong, you’re wrong!’

  ‘Not so. What I’ve learned studying science with Mr Crewes is that you can be wrong, but on the right track. Like that guy who thought giraffes grew long necks because they had to reach up into trees for food. It’s silly, right? But he had the right idea about evolution; he just didn’t have enough facts to let him figure out how it worked. Then Darwin came along and—’

  ‘– Ahem!’ I said. ‘We were talking about changelings.’

  ‘We weren’t either! We were talking about hypotheses that are wrong but right. Like, our research shows that Grandpa isn’t a changeling, except in the way Mr Crewes said he was—’

  ‘– Would you please leave Mr Godalmighty Crewes out of it?’

  He sighed. ‘What I was trying to say was, research – this story – shows that Jenny is one of Them, and …’ He shifted uncomfortably. ‘Well, she did go to the Gordons’. And she’d never protect him like that if They didn’t have some kind of interest in him, right?’

  ‘OK, OK,’ I said. ‘But what kind of interest can They have?’

  ‘Beats me. That’s what I came to talk about. We need more research. Which means …’

  ‘… Faerie.’

  He nodded, and we both sat still, listening to the rain outside.

  ‘There might be another way,’ I said, finally. ‘This rain should melt all those disgusting drifts by the entrance ramp, so we can get to the Ring again. Maybe we can talk to Cathbad or somebody and … er … well, we’ve never actually asked Them what’s going on.’

  ‘What if They get sore, or send us to Faerie instead of answering?’

  ‘We could start by telling Them – extra politely – that we’d rather stay here.’

  ‘OK.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘I suppose we could try it Saturday.’

  ‘Not Saturday,’ I said. ‘Dandy’s coming on Thursday, remember? And we promised Tiffany we’d watch her ride him on Saturday.’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ he said quickly. ‘Maybe Sunday, then.’

  ‘Yeah.’

  He sat there a little longer, clicking his flashlight on and off. When he went away, I had a feeling we weren’t going to do it on Sunday, either.

  Tiffany didn’t say much on the bus the next day, but I would have known Dandy was coming even if I hadn’t been counting the days with her. Ever since Christmas, she’d been losing that timid look, and her smile had started being a real one. She was doing better in school, too; just before the holidays, she’d gotten an A on a math test, and Miss Turner had moved her up a group. I heard her tell one of the other teachers it was a miracle, but I knew better.

  Anyway, with three days still to go, Tiffany was looking happier than I’d ever seen her, and on Wednesday when we got out to the storm drain, she could hardly sit still. ‘Gwen called the Gordons to make last-minute arrangements last night,’ she said, smiling all over. ‘He’s coming tomorrow morning at ten. I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it!’

  ‘You’ll believe it soon enough,’ I said, trying not to smile back. ‘Starting tomorrow night, you’ll have three horses to shovel for, not two.’

  ‘Oh, that’s OK,’ she said. ‘I’ll shovel, and I’ll brush him for a whole hour every day, and I’ll clean his tack, and I’ll pick out his hooves, and I’ll pull his mane once a week, and …’ She went on and on, all bubbly and not like Tiffany at all.

  The next day, she wasn’t on the bus, which didn’t surprise me a bit; if I’d been getting a horse at ten, there’s no way I would have gone to school. Even as it was, I might as well have been at the Gordons’ as in class; I kept looking at the clock and thinking of Dandy leaving his old stable with Gwen, or unloading at the Gordons’, or settling in his new stall while Tiffany watched. On the bus, Colin and I talked about getting off at the stop two after ours and nipping down to the barn, but we decided Mom would have a heart attack between the time we didn’t show up at home and the time we called from the Gordons’, so we just went home.

  ‘It’s all right,’ said Colin. ‘She’ll tell us all about it tomorrow.’

  But when tomorrow came and we raced up the bus steps, Tiffany didn’t even look up. Colin and I blinked at each other; then he took the seat in front of her and turned around, and I sat next to her, but even though she must have known we were there, she didn’t say a word.

  ‘What do you suppose happened?’ whispered Colin as we got off.

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I’ll try to find out at recess.’

  But at recess, Tiffany dawdled all the way to the storm drain, and after we crawled in, she just sat there. Finally, I couldn’t stand it any more. ‘Tiffany, what’s the matter?’

  She didn’t say anything.

  ‘Gwen didn’t decide to sell Dandy or something, did she?’

  She shook her head.

  ‘Then he’s at the Gordons’? And he’s OK?’

  ‘I think so,’ she said, so low I could hardly hear her.

  ‘You think so! You mean, you weren’t there?’

  She shook her head. ‘My parents don’t want me to go to the Gordons’ any more.’

  I stared at her. ‘Not ever?’

  ‘That’s what they said.’

  I could hardly believe it. ‘But … but don’t they know about Dandy?’

  ‘That’s why. Because of Dandy. I told them about him Wednesday night. And they said I couldn’t go any more.’

  ‘You mean, they were angry because you hadn’t told them before?’

  ‘I’d told them before. So had Mrs Gordon.’

  ‘Then what were they angry about?’

  ‘They said I was their kid, and the Gordons didn’t have any right to get a good horse for me, so I couldn’t go back.’

  I tried to make sense of that, but I couldn’t. Finally I said, ‘Well, you said they didn’t like your going to the Gordons’ before, but they let you go after a while. They’ll probably change their minds this time, too.’

  ‘No, they won’t.’ She looked up with the smile I hadn’t seen since Christmas. ‘Don’t look so upset,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter.’

  ‘It does, too, matter!’

  She shook her head. ‘It really doesn’t matter what happens to me.’

  And that was all she’d say.

  After recess Mrs Turner sent my reading group to the library to work on reports, and as I finished checking out my books, Mr Crewes came in. I started out the door, trying to act as if I hadn’t seen him, the way I always did, but he caught my elbow.

  ‘Sarah, come into the conference room. I want to talk to you.’

  Of course I couldn’t say no, so I followed him. He closed the door carefully. ‘Tiffany looks ve
ry unhappy,’ he said. ‘Do you know if something’s wrong?’

  ‘I … I don’t think she wants anybody to know.’

  ‘But you know?’

  I thought of saying I didn’t, but that seemed wrong, so I nodded.

  ‘Sarah,’ he said, ‘I don’t want to make you tell me something you promised not to, but you need to understand. Some children’s parents don’t treat them the way parents ought to—’

  ‘– Sure. It’s called child abuse.’

  It didn’t sound very polite the way I said it, but he just raised his eyebrows and went on. ‘OK. If a teacher suspects one of his students has been abused, he can report it to authorities, and they’ll check up on it. Sometimes it makes a big difference to a kid who has had a terrible time and not dared to tell anyone. So if you think not telling me what happened to Tiffany will help her in the long run, think about it once more.’

  I did think about it, and all of a sudden, I remembered how he’d helped us with Grandpa on the playground that day, and how he’d gotten Colin into his class, and … well, whatever else you might think of him, he was good at solving problems. So I told him all about Tiffany’s riding, and how she’d finally gotten a good horse, and what her parents had done. When I got to the end, I swallowed hard and I said I’d appreciate it if he could do something.

  He gave me a funny look. ‘I’ll sure try,’ he said. ‘I’ll talk to Tiffany at lunch, and if I find out anything that makes me a candidate for your appreciation, I’ll let you know when I come over this evening.’

  I felt a little better as I went back to class, even though I wished he’d been angrier at Tiffany’s parents – and Mom hadn’t told us he was planning to come over. As it turned out, he didn’t stay very long; Grandpa decided he didn’t belong there, and when Grandpa decided that sort of thing, it was hard to talk him out of it. This time, he made such a fuss that Mr Crewes finally said he’d come back another time. But before he left, he took Colin and me out on the porch. ‘I talked to Tiffany,’ he said, ‘and I hate to say it, but I’m afraid there’s nothing I can do.’