‘There’s got to be!’ said Colin. ‘She couldn’t even talk on the way home! She just stared out the window, like she was in some sort of trance.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘But unfortunately, you can’t get a kid away from her parents because they’ve made her unhappy. You’ve got to be able to prove they’ve hurt her physically.’
‘Oh,’ I said, suddenly remembering. ‘Mrs Gordon said something about that, the first time we went over there. Does that mean nobody can help her? Not you or the Gordons or us or anyone who cares about her?’
Mr Crewes looked out at the streetlight. ‘I’m afraid it does,’ he said finally. ‘At least it means nobody can make the law work for her, but—’
‘– That’s crummy!’ Colin exploded. ‘For Pete’s sake, why do we have laws if they don’t help people out?’
Mr Crewes looked at him. ‘What I was going to say was, there are ways we can help that don’t have anything to do with law. Counselling, for instance.’
‘A lot of good that’ll do!’ muttered Colin. ‘Social workers don’t have craniums.’
Mr Crewes tried not to smile. ‘They’ve helped a lot of kids, Colin.’
‘OK, OK.’
‘And you two and I will just have to try to get her out of herself. I know it doesn’t sound like much, but it’s important.’ He looked at us both carefully. ‘Do you understand?’
We nodded.
‘You’re good kids,’ he said, and I was afraid he was going to put an arm around us. But he didn’t. ‘Good night,’ he said. ‘See you Monday.’
We went to the Gordons’ on Saturday – without Grandpa, though Mom had usually driven him there with us before, because he’d caught a cold, and she was worried about him. It was probably just as well; the Gordons were really upset. Mrs Gordon was one of those women you see a lot of if you know horse people; she had this strict, determined face, and I’d always been a little afraid of her. But that weekend, she cried and cried, and it hit me for the first time that they didn’t have any kids, and it was more than the riding that made Tiffany important to them. Then, of course, there was Dandy in his stall, beautiful and friendly and wanting attention. Colin and I padded around as quietly as we could, mucking out, cleaning tack, and brushing horses; the Gordons said that helped a lot, but none of us smiled the whole time we were there.
The next week, it was even worse. Tiffany didn’t look up when we got on the bus, and she didn’t answer when we tried to talk to her. Some of the kids started to tease her, and we shut them up, but that was about all we could do. In class, she dreamed off all day, looking out the window and smiling. She still went out to the storm drain with me, but all she’d do was sit there, smiling that terrible sweet smile, and looking out the opening. I tried everything I could think of – talking, not talking, suggesting we play tether-ball, telling jokes – but nothing worked.
‘Tell you what,’ said Colin when I told him. ‘Let’s ask her over, and when she comes, we can go to the Gordons’. Her parents will think she’s at our house, and—’
‘– What if they find out and beat her up?’
‘Then Mr Crewes can get her out of there,’ he said, half-meaning it.
That’s where we left the idea, but by Friday I was so desperate I decided to try it. ‘Tiffany,’ I said, ‘would you like to come over to our house tomorrow?’
She looked out the bus window. ‘My parents won’t let me go anywhere. They say I’ll sneak off to the Gordons’.’
I glanced over my shoulder at Colin, wondering if he felt as cheap as I did. ‘What if our mom called your parents and said we were just going to be around the house all afternoon?’
Tiffany didn’t answer, but just before we got to our stop, she scribbled a number on a scrap of paper and gave it to me. That evening, Mom made the call; and when she came back downstairs, she looked sore.
‘Well,’ she said. ‘Tiffany’s parents have said she can come tomorrow afternoon if she comes on her bike (not our car) and if they can call her here every half hour.’ She shook her head. ‘And I thought you were exaggerating when you told me how they were. Poor Tiffany.’
Poor Tiffany was about it. It was rainy on Saturday, and her jeans and sneakers were soaked when she got to our house. Luckily, she was the same size I was, so we could fix that fast enough, but that wasn’t the real problem. It wasn’t exactly that she didn’t want to do anything – she said of course she’d love to put on a play, and of course she’d like to see the costume closet in the attic – it was that when we started doing it, she drifted off. The costumes were great (we’d been collecting them for years), and I was sure we could have gotten her involved in them if we’d had her to ourselves, but with her parents calling every half hour, it was impossible – especially since the phone upset Grandpa, and we had to dash down from the attic to get to it before he did. The last time it rang, we were too late; just as we got there, he yanked the phone out of the wall by the roots, and stomped down the back stairs with its cord trailing behind him. Tiffany jumped back with her hands over her mouth, and her eyes made me wonder if maybe her parents didn’t hit her, but Mom put an arm around her.
‘It’s OK, dear,’ she said sadly. ‘He wants to stop the phone from ringing, and he’s forgotten how to answer it. There’s another phone downstairs. I’ll call your parents right away.’
She hurried down the front stairs, and we heard her dialling. But we also heard the side door slam, and when we ran to the window, we saw Grandpa striding up the little hill between us and the Ring, still carrying the phone.
‘Criminy!’ said Colin. ‘We’ve got to catch him!’ And we all dashed downstairs.
‘Sure you want to come?’ I asked Tiffany as we ran up the hill. ‘You’ll get wet again.’
‘That’s all right,’ she said, ‘it’s my fault he went out.’
I was just going to say it wasn’t, when we got to the top of the rise, and she peered ahead through the drizzle. ‘Oh!’ she said. ‘I know this place! My dad stops off here to give stuff to a friend of his. Gosh! Your grandfather’s almost at the entrance ramp! Suppose he—’
And she took off, jumping over old tyres and piles of junk. You’d never have thought Tiffany could run like that, but she was over the second guard rail by the time we got to the first. Grandpa ducked behind a refrigerator when he saw her; she stopped the way she would have if he had been a horse, and held out one hand coaxingly. Right in the middle of the Ring.
‘Tiffany!’ I yelled.
‘Back up!’ yelled Colin. We raced up and grabbed her, but the minute our hands touched hers, there was music and spinning and colours, and when it stopped, the sun was out, and we were standing in an enormous green field with groves of trees and rolling hills.
‘Oh no!’ whispered Colin. ‘They’ve got us.’
‘Maybe it won’t be so bad,’ I said. ‘I mean, it’s pretty here.’
Tiffany looked all around, and her face slowly changed from the way it had looked all week to the way it had looked when she first saw Dandy. ‘Where are we?’ she breathed.
‘Er … it’s hard to explain.’
‘Never mind then,’ she said. ‘It doesn’t matter. It’s just … I think I’ve been here before. Not really, of course. But … you know those places you always go in dreams?’
‘Oh!’ I said. And Colin and I looked at each other – because we’d both realized it was the place we’d seen her daydreaming about when we’d gone to her house with Hob and Lob.
‘If it’s the place,’ she said, looking more and more excited, ‘there should be horses … oh, here they come!’
She pointed to the left, and I saw a couple of horses at the top of the hill behind us. Tiffany whistled, and one of them nickered and started down to visit; a few others followed him, and in a minute, the whole herd of horses we’d seen in Tiffany’s daydream was walking towards us, snatching up mouthfuls of grass as they came.
‘Aren’t they beautiful?’ said Tiffany happily. ‘I’d neve
r want to be out in the open with a herd this big anywhere else. But here, they seem to know they’re safe, so they never spook, and they’re very careful.’
She was right. As the horses circled around us, there was no pushing or nipping or jostling at all. Tiffany walked between them, stroking faces, patting necks, straightening manes, and talking, always talking, the way Grandpa had in the barn. By the time we caught up with her, she was on the far edge of the herd, patting a mare that stood between her and a foal.
‘Look!’ she called softly. ‘A new filly.’
We helped Tiffany convince the mare that we wouldn’t think of taking her baby away from her, and after a minute, she let it step around her and sniff us. It was covered with dark brown fur, but you could see it was going to be black, and it had an adorable white star. Tiffany leaned over and kissed it, and the little thing rubbed its head against her.
Colin patted the mare, looking at her appraisingly. ‘If Grandpa is here, he’s going nuts,’ he said. ‘I’ve never seen so many terrific horses. I wonder who they belong to.’
‘They belong to all of us,’ called a beautiful golden voice. ‘But they’re in my care.’
We looked around, and there, coming out of a grove of oak trees, were three stocky brown mares with glorious manes and tails, their coats shining in the sun. One of the mares walked half a length in front of the other two, and on her back was a lady in a dark brown dress and long red-gold hair with a lot of grey in it. She wasn’t beautiful the way women are supposed to be beautiful, but she had the most wonderful face I’d ever seen, and something in it told me that we were as safe as the horses were, even though we were in Faerie.
‘Welcome, Children of Lugh,’ she began; then she saw Tiffany, and something changed – just a little – about the way she looked.
‘This is our friend Tiffany,’ I said. ‘She’s here because … well, we didn’t mean to come ourselves, and it was totally an accident … but she’s been here before in dreams …’
‘Indeed she has,’ said the faerie rider, looking at Tiffany with a smile that seemed sad.
Tiffany slid one arm around the filly’s neck, staring. ‘Who are you?’ she whispered.
‘I am Epona,’ said the lady, ‘and I have charge of all the horses in Faerie.’
‘Even Enbharr?’ said Colin, forgetting his manners.
‘Even Enbharr,’ said Epona, and her smile wasn’t sad at all, now. She slipped off her mare and walked towards us. ‘He is the sire of this little one.’
Tiffany stepped away from the filly as if she were afraid she shouldn’t have touched it, but Epona shook her head. ‘There is nothing to fear,’ she said. And then, in exactly the same tone of voice, ‘Come here, child.’
We looked at each other, wondering which one of us she’d meant, but then the filly started towards her with a funny baby prance, and we realized she’d been talking to it. She stroked its neck, then ran her hands down its legs, and Colin and I glanced at each other; she really knew what she was doing. When she was finished, she put her arm over its withers.
‘She’s perfect,’ she said affectionately to the mare.
Tiffany nodded, but Colin nudged me and drew me back a little way. ‘Should we tell her about Jenny and Grandpa?’ he whispered.
I glanced over my shoulder and I found myself looking straight into Epona’s deep brown eyes. They didn’t scare me, the way Jenny’s eyes had when I’d met them at the Gordons’, but they told me that she already knew that we knew about Jenny and Grandpa – and much, much more. I shook my head at Colin, feeling very young and stupid.
Epona turned away, looking thoughtful; then she said, ‘I have to take a young horse to the new palace of Faerie; would you three like to ride there with us?’
‘Oh yes!’ we said, all together.
‘Very well, then.’ I didn’t see any signal, but the two brown mares that had been on each side of her stepped forward to Tiffany and me, and a dappled grey pony trotted out of the herd and stopped in front of Colin. I vaulted on my mare (thanking Grandpa in my mind for teaching us how), and in a minute we were following Epona’s mare and a pretty black three-year-old through the fields. Our horses were … well, Grandpa had always told us (and anyone else who would listen) that a good trainer wanted to make his horses move as beautifully when they had someone on them as they did when they were free. I’d understood, of course, but I’d never felt what he was talking about until right then. There were no reins or stirrups, but the horses were so perfectly collected that we could trot along without bouncing at all – and when we came to an oak grove and Epona started to canter, Tiffany laughed for the first time since I’d met her.
I brought my mare up next to hers. ‘Isn’t it great?’ I said. ‘We should sing something!’
Her face changed a little. ‘I don’t know any songs. My parents don’t like me to—’
‘– All it has to be is something cantery,’ said Colin quickly. ‘Like a nursery rhyme.’
Tiffany frowned, and I thought, gee, she doesn’t even … but then she smiled. ‘What about Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall …?’ she said, right in time to the horse’s feet.
‘Perfect!’ I said. And we joined in.
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.
All the king’s horses and all the king’s men
Couldn’t put Humpty together again.
It was perfect – so perfect that we said it over and over, until Epona looked back at us, and we realized how stupid nonsense must sound to a faery. I suppose that should have shut us up, but it made us silly instead, and we laughed so hard that the hills around us began to echo.
Epona led us on, shaking her head; we quieted down and began to look around, because it was very pretty. We were riding towards a range of misty mountains, and the grass on the hills was filled with delicate spring flowers – and I thought of home, where the melting snow was uncovering weeds, rusty cans and broken bottles. The hills around us got steeper, and at last, we stopped at the top of one of them to rest the horses. Epona circled her right hand three times, but I was too busy staring at the view to ask why. Below us was a lake, deep, still and almost black. Marble cliffs of a craggy mountain rose out of its far shore, so perfectly mirrored by the lake that if it hadn’t been for the ripples of swans swimming in the water, it would have been hard to tell which cliffs were real and which were reflections. At the top of the cliffs, just below a peak half-covered by clouds, stood a palace. It wasn’t finished yet – two of its four towers still had scaffolding all around them – but the finished towers were tall and gold, and the walls glistened white and silver between arched windows that shone like diamonds. As we gazed at it, two swans rose out of the lake and flew majestically in our direction.
‘Oh,’ breathed Tiffany. ‘I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.’
‘Me neither,’ I whispered – then suddenly the swans circled us, banked, and landed a few feet away. The three-year-old shied at the great pounding of wings, and even my mare kept me busy. When I looked again, the swans were gone; Mongan and Cathbad stood next to Epona.
‘Welcome, Children of Lugh,’ said Cathbad, bowing to us.
‘And to you too, Fay Child,’ said Mongan, bowing to Tiffany.
All three of us bowed as well as we could, being on horseback; when we straightened up, something about the way the faeries were looking at Tiffany made me uncomfortable.
‘Um,’ I said, ‘we were admiring your palace. It’s … wonderful.’
Cathbad nodded. ‘It’s being built by the greatest craftsmen in the Otherworld for the king we will soon crown.’
‘And nothing but grief we’ve had in the building of it, with the rush and all,’ muttered Mongan. ‘It’s a good thing kings only happen once a century or so.’
‘The rush?’ I said, frowning.
Epona nodded. ‘It must be ready for the king’s coronation. That’s the greatest occasion in the Otherworld: everyone comes to honour him.’
She smiled at us. ‘All
the king’s horses and all the king’s men, as your rhyme says.’
‘Wow!’ said Colin. ‘Would that ever be a sight!’
Tiffany had been looking more and more excited. Now she urged her mare towards Cathbad. ‘Sir – if Sarah and Colin come to the king’s coronation, could I come, too?’
The faeries looked at each other; Cathbad cleared his throat. ‘Fay Child,’ he said slowly, ‘Sarah and Colin have unusual privileges. No other mortals can travel back and forth between the Otherworld and their own.’
‘I see,’ whispered Tiffany, looking down. Suddenly she looked up, her eyes wide open. ‘No mortals can travel back and forth! Does that mean I … can’t go back? Now?’
I looked at Cathbad’s inflexible face and suddenly went cold all over. ‘That’s … that’s not true, is it? I mean … you’ll let her … just this once … ?’
We all stared at the faeries; they were absolutely silent.
‘Please …’ I begged.
‘Shh,’ whispered Tiffany. ‘You don’t understand; I don’t want to go back.’
‘No, no, no!’ we both said together.
‘Yes, yes, yes!’ said Tiffany. ‘I want to stay here – always.’ She looked shyly at Epona. ‘I could help you with the horses.’
Cathbad laid his hand on the neck of Tiffany’s mare. ‘Fay Child,’ he said, ‘Mortals must live in their world, and faeries in the Otherworld. If a mortal child stumbles into the Otherworld, as you have, the Rules which permit her to return exact a concession, lest that child be damaged by eternal longing to return. Thus, you must go back to your world. And when you do, you can never visit this one again – in person or in any other way.’
‘Any other way?’ said Tiffany, staring at him. ‘You mean, in dreams?’
‘Yes. You will never dream of the Otherworld again.’
Mongan turned away and looked over the lake.
‘Not even … even in daydreams?’ whispered Tiffany.
‘Especially not in daydreams,’ said Cathbad. ‘For those carry you here most frequently.’ Tiffany looked at Epona, but the beautiful, sad face was just as firm as Cathbad’s. ‘It will be painful at first,’ she said, ‘but you won’t lose the Otherworld entirely. In fact, you will lose less of it than you would have if you had continued with your daydreams. If mortals dream of Faerie too often, gradually it slips away from them, and only the dreams remain. When that happens, they drift into the Grey Land, and no-one, faery or mortal, can save them.’
All the King's Horses Page 15
