All the King's Horses

by Laura C Stevenson

  But I’d been too late.

  Something began to hum, and the pool of coloured light we were standing in flickered with strange-shaped shadows. I dropped my fists, and before they’d even gotten where they belonged, Colin grabbed my hand. Because the faeries in the window weren’t mixed in with the trees around its border any more. They were moving – flying, walking, running – all in one direction. As we watched them, the hum got louder and turned into voices, and the faeries got bigger and bigger as the window crept slowly towards us … and in a second, we weren’t in the house any more; we were in a mountain valley, surrounded by a huge crowd.

  It was a crowd of faeries, of course – not the Sidhe, but the other kind. They were all going someplace, but they weren’t making much progress because there were so many of them. Most of them were on foot, but some were riding in chariots pulled by the weird creatures we’d seen the night of the bonfires, and the creatures were jigging and shying, and every couple of minutes, one of them bolted into the crowd. Then there was shouting and fighting, and everyone gathered around to watch, so the crowd moved forward even slower than it had before.

  ‘Criminy,’ said Colin. ‘What a mob! Who would have thought faeries— Oh! I see where we are! And look! They’ve finished it!’

  I braced myself against the crowd and looked where he pointed. Not far from us was a blue-black lake, half-covered with mist and looking as if it belonged to a different world from the noise and colours of the crowd. On its far side, at the top of a marble cliff so high that clouds wisped around it, was the faery palace, its four golden towers shining in the hazy sunlight. I stared at it, blinking as it blurred like a reflection, and thinking of Tiffany: ‘Oh! I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.’

  ‘Easy there,’ said Colin. ‘If you lose a contact in this crowd, it’ll be a goner.’

  ‘I’m not—!’ Suddenly, an idea hit me. ‘They were finishing the palace for that coronation, weren’t they?’

  ‘Yeah,’ said Colin; then his eyes opened wide. ‘You mean, you think this is it?’

  ‘Well, They said it was the biggest deal in Faerie, and this sure looks like—’

  ‘– Wow! Cool!’ He looked at me accusingly. ‘And you tried to stop me!’

  I sighed. ‘OK, OK. Look, see that willow by the lake? Let’s go and sit in it; that way we’ll have a good view and we won’t get mowed down by—Look out!’ We jumped to the side, and a runaway white bull missed us by inches; the swaying faeries in its cart laughed uproariously.

  ‘Right,’ said Colin. ‘The willow it is.’ And we elbowed and squeezed our way to it.

  It was one of my better ideas. Once we’d climbed as high as we could, we could see the whole crowd: two chariots of trolls who’d stopped their long-legged pigs to watch a fight over a goat cart that had just run down four leprechauns; a ramshackle cart of squabbling hobgoblins pulled by a horse-hoofed dog; a bevy of lovely little nixies wafting along in watery dresses; three selkies romping up the hill in sealskin cloaks; a band of black dwarves marching grouchily in tight formation, with gold chains and sapphire-studded belts.

  ‘Geez!!’ said Colin suddenly. ‘Do you realize what this means?’

  ‘What what means?’

  ‘Our being here. I’ll give you a hint: where did I ask the faeries to send us?’

  ‘To—’ and suddenly I saw. ‘You mean, you think Grandpa’s … here?’

  ‘You got it.’ He bounced up and down on his branch.

  ‘Wait a sec! We don’t know the faeries send us to where he is. I mean, last time—’

  ‘– was last time! This time’s got to be different because everybody in Faerie is here, and so if he’s been in Faerie, like our theory suggested, then he’s got to be around.’

  ‘If. But we aren’t sure he has been in Faerie. That’s what we were—’

  ‘– Oh, great! We aren’t sure! So there’s no need to look for him; we can sit here—’

  ‘– I didn’t say that! I just don’t want—’

  ‘Hush!’ he said. But he didn’t need to, because above the noise of shouting and laughing and singing, I heard trumpets. Instantly all the faeries were quiet, and they drew apart in two groups, leaving a wide path between the lake shore a little way from our tree and the top of the hill. All of them looked towards the mountain. Turning, I looked, too. ‘Oh wow,’ I breathed.

  On the lake, the mist swirled and parted; out of the still water rose ten grey horses ridden by tall Sidhe in red tunics and gold cloaks. There was no splashing, and no waves; as they trotted towards us, the water was black and quiet under the horses’ feet, and it reflected the Sidhe’s streaming cloaks against a perfect image of the palace. When they got to the shore, the riders raised silver trumpets to their lips and blew a fanfare; as it died away, a cavalcade of horses swirled out of the lake. Leading them was a bright chestnut horse, carrying a rider whose silver tunic and gold cloak shimmered in the long sunlight. Behind him came two deep black horses that cast no reflection, ridden by a Sidhe in a black cloak and a magnificent red-haired woman who looked like a queen. Three stocky brown mares came next; Epona, peaceful and lovely, was riding the one in the middle, flanked by a woman with hair that rippled like a stream over the shoulders of her blue cloak, and a grey-haired woman carrying a harp. As they reached the shore, the whole cavalcade began to canter, and one beautiful horse after another flashed past, each ridden by a Sidhe in a different coloured cloak. After the last one had passed us, the company slowed to a walk and the trumpeters blew another fanfare. Whispers spread through the crowd, and the Sidhe halted in two columns up the side of the path, looking back at the lake.

  For maybe half a minute, there was nobody; then Mongan and Manannan appeared out of the mist, riding horses the colour of sea-foam, and dressed in sea-green cloaks lined with gold. As they trotted towards the crowd, the mist vanished as if they’d pulled it away, and a team of horses, one white and one black, sprang out of the lake, pulling an ivory chariot decorated with silver and gold carvings, and driven by … the king. There was nobody else it could be: he was wearing a deep purple cloak with ermine edges, and everything about him told you he was like the heroes in Grandpa’s stories. He was tall, with white-blond shoulder-length hair like Finn Mac Cumhaill’s, and his face told you he’d seen terrible things – wars and deaths and maybe even the Underworld – but was past being scared because he Understood. He was past being a show-off, too: his horses were snorting, all set to gallop across the lake and pull up in a cloud of Faerie dust, but he held them in a collected trot as if the reins were threads of silk.

  At the shore, his hands moved just a trifle, and the horses stopped, standing like statues. The king looked around him at the eager faces of the faeries and the wonderful, calm expressions of the Sidhe – then he stretched out his arms to the side and said something in a language we couldn’t understand. He didn’t speak loudly, but his voice spread out over the whole crowd, ringing from the lake to the top of the hill. When he finished, all the faeries cheered, and the roar was so loud that Colin and I pressed our hands over our ears.

  Finally, the noise died down, and the king drove the chariot up the hill between the lines of Sidhe. After he had passed, the trumpeters turned and followed him in pairs. So did the Sidhe – all except Manannan and Mongan, who turned and rode towards our tree through the parting crowds of faeries, their faces very stern and serious.

  ‘Uh-oh,’ muttered Colin.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, and I would have stepped in front of him if we’d been on the ground.

  The two horses stopped below us. Mongan and Manannan didn’t bow; neither did we. We just looked at each other, and when Manannan’s sea-green eyes met mine, the sunlit colours of Faerie faded into the background, and I saw caverns so deep and dark that I shivered.

  ‘Children of Lugh,’ he said finally, ‘the Faer Folk cannot disobey your commands, but you have come here against Our better judgement. Spare yourselves pain; let Us send you back.’

  Col
in looked at me, then away at the lake. ‘You won’t … I mean, what you’re talking about isn’t … that beach, is it?’

  ‘Surely not, lad,’ said Mongan quickly. ‘We’ll never send you there again.’

  That was good to hear, but by now, of course, we knew there were other dangers in Faerie. ‘Is it that if we don’t go back now, we can’t get home at all?’ I asked.

  ‘No,’ said Manannan. ‘We will send you back as We always have.’

  ‘Then why does your better judgement think we should miss this cool stuff?’ said Colin.

  ‘Because if your eyes open at the right time, you will see things that terrify all mortals,’ said Manannan. ‘And even if you look at them courageously, they will cause you grief.’

  Colin gulped and gave me a scared ‘what-do-you-think’ look. And I thought. I thought about all the times we’d told ourselves the faeries were just trying to scare us by warning us against things that turned out to be scarier than we could possibly imagine. I thought about our theory and everything I’d been feeling was wrong with it. I thought about Colin, and how much younger just-turned-ten was than almost-twelve, even in somebody precocious. And I was all ready to say …

  But then I thought about pneumonia, and the way I’d felt when Mom had hung up the phone, and the way Colin’s face had looked when he sat on the stairs. And I thought about the fact that we were here, and that Grandpa might be here, and that Darwin and Einstein had gotten from almost right to really right because they’d kept on looking and thinking, even when they’d realized their beginning theories were too simple.

  I swallowed hard. ‘I’m going to stay,’ I whispered to Colin. ‘But if you want, you—’

  He bit his lip, but he shook his head – twice, because I raised my eyebrows the first time.

  I looked down at the faeries. ‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘But we want to stay.’

  Mongan looked at Manannan. ‘I told you they were loyal.’

  ‘You had no need to,’ said Manannan. ‘Very well, Children of Lugh. Drop down behind us, and we’ll be off.’

  Colin gave me a here-goes look and dropped down behind Manannan; I swung down behind Mongan, and we set off, withers-deep in swarming faeries, towards the clear path up the hill. When we reached it, Colin asked Manannan why he wasn’t riding Enbharr, and I felt better, because it meant he was cheering up.

  ‘Enbharr has other duties today,’ said Manannan. ‘All of Faerie honours its king by coming to the coronation – including Faerie creatures. Most of the horses will attend as mounts for the Sidhe; but of course there are mares with new foals and horses too young to ride. So they may honour the king, Enbharr escorts them to the top of the hill after it has been opened.’

  Colin stared up at the hill. ‘It’s going to open?’

  Mongan grinned. ‘Not by itself; Cathbad understands the ways of the land.’

  ‘You mean, he—?’

  ‘Patience,’ said Manannan, and we cantered up the hill. At the top, the other Sidhe and their horses were standing in a huge circle around a cave like the one the Seer had dreamed in; two tall stones that rose out of the grassy crown in front of it, but two places in front of a double gate to a sort of paddock were empty. We pulled up there, and Manannan raised his right hand. Below us, the noise of the crowd below us died down into an expectant silence.

  Mongan grinned at Colin. ‘Watch carefully, Son of Lugh,’ he whispered.

  As he spoke, the crown of the hill began to sink, as if it were a lump of clay and some giant had put his thumb in the middle of it, pressing the centre down, down, down, and pushing the sides outwards. I stared, and I could see Colin was trying to figure out the physics of it, but nobody else seemed surprised; even the horses acted as if having hills turn into valleys was an everyday thing. Actually, it wasn’t a matter of hills and valleys; when everything stopped moving, there was a grass-covered amphitheatre with a road winding down it; what had been the top of the hill was now a field at the bottom, with a cave at one end and two stones in its centre.

  I was still taking it in when Mongan, Manannan and the other Sidhe on our side of the amphitheatre turned their horses around. ‘Look,’ whispered Mongan. ‘Here they come.’

  He pointed towards the lake; I looked just in time to see a herd of horses swirl out of the water in a blaze of grey, chestnut and bay, their manes and tails flying. As they galloped towards us, Enbharr exploded out of the water behind them with an enormous bucking leap. Then he was everywhere, his grey mane flying like foam as he nipped a mare here, cut off a two-year-old there, driving, driving the herd across the quivering reflection of the palace and up the hill between rows of cheering faeries. As they reached the top, he thundered up the near side of the herd with his ears flat back, nipping and shouldering the outside horses so they turned towards us instead of heading down into the amphitheatre. Quickly, Mongan and Manannan moved our prancing horses to each side of the gate that had been behind us – and the whole herd poured between us into the enclosure. As the last mare and foal fled through the opening, Enbharr stopped in two plunging strides and stood across it, snapping at the youngsters who circled back.

  Mongan and Manannan reached down to the gate and rode towards each other to close it. When they reached the centre, a little curly-haired faery ran in from the side and shot the bolt.

  ‘Careful,’ said Mongan. ‘Enbharr’s not the creature here that he is in the pastures.’

  The faery nodded and looked up with a shy smile.

  ‘Tiffany!’ Colin and I shouted it almost together.

  The Sidhe turned towards us, murmuring in surprise; Manannan made a sign to hush. But it was Tiffany who hushed us. She smiled as if she hadn’t heard a thing, and something was wrong with her eyes; when she looked in our direction, she seemed to look right through us.

  The trumpeters blew a fanfare, and Mongan and Manannan pulled their horses back into the circle. I looked over my shoulder, watching Tiffany slip into the crowd of faeries.

  ‘I told you what you saw here would cause you grief,’ said Manannan’s voice, quietly.

  I nodded, sort of frozen. When I finally turned back, I realized Manannan was in the middle of giving instructions. ‘ … then we will leave you and our horses with Epona, as we both must take part in the ceremony itself. You will stay with Epona until everything is over and ride out when she tells you to do so; and you must do nothing to interrupt the ceremony itself.’

  The trumpets blew another fanfare. Mongan drew our horses up beside Manannan’s, and we walked down the road into the amphitheatre. The Sidhe followed us, two by two, their cloaks blowing in the breeze. At the bottom, Mongan and I went to the right and Manannan went to the left; we met again at the far end of the field, looking between the strange stones at the cave. Behind us the Sidhe had formed a circle; above them, packed up the sides, sat thousands and thousands of faeries, whispering and giggling or waving to their friends as they waited for whatever was going to happen next. It was perfectly beautiful, but somehow, I felt as if all the colours and expectancy were only reflections on a window that I was looking through – and on the far side was a grey beach and a thousand staring rocks, half-covered by sand. Through the pounding of the colourless sea, I heard a fanfare from very far away. Dimly, I felt Mongan and Manannan slip off our horses, and saw them march across the field like shadows.

  A hand touched my arm, and my eyes cleared. Epona had drawn her horse between Colin’s and mine, her face full of concern. ‘You are distressed,’ she said.

  ‘It’s Tiffany,’ said Colin. ‘See, at home, she and Sarah were best friends. And here – well, we just saw her, up with the horses, and it was like we didn’t exist.’

  ‘For her,’ said Epona, sighing, ‘you do not exist. Nor does any other mortal. She has no memory of her mortal life.’

  ‘Omigosh,’ I whispered. ‘What have You done to her?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Epona. ‘What was done, was done by mortals.’

  ‘But she was all rig
ht when she left!’

  Epona looked at me, and somewhere in the depths of her eyes, I saw Tiffany, sitting on the bus, frozen … Tiffany, barely able to talk … Tiffany, looking out the window … Tiffany, looking like the warehouse people, only much, much younger. ‘Do you mean, she went … ?’

  ‘ … crazy?’ finished Colin, in a whisper.

  ‘Say rather that her spirit was extinguished,’ said Epona. ‘That is why We let her come here, though a child who comes here permanently is cut off entirely from the world of mortals, and thus from mortal time. She lives here as she would live there: in a world of her own, with no past and no future; but here, she has the horses she loves and cares for.’

  I swallowed a couple of times. ‘And she’s … happy?’

  ‘In her way. Yes.’

  That made me feel a little better, somehow, and when I looked at Colin, he looked less upset, too. But there wasn’t time to say thank you or anything else, because the trumpeters sounded the longest and most brilliant fanfare they’d played yet, and the king stepped out of the cave into the sunlight. He wasn’t wearing his purple cloak any more – just a gold tunic, tight-fitting black pants, and riding boots – but you could have told he was a king anyway. When the faeries saw him, the roar of their cheers rolled up the side of the amphitheatre into the clouds above the palace.

  Cathbad raised a hand, and the crowd hushed to hear him speak. Epona leaned towards me. ‘Because our king has been such a great one, the Sidhe have decided to give him the cloak of heroes. It is a great honour, because only a true hero can wear it; all the troubles in the world are sewn into its seams.’

  ‘What happens if the king isn’t a true hero?’ said Colin.

  ‘Then the land will swallow him up. There’s always that risk.’

  As she spoke, two of the Sidhe led a huge chestnut draught horse out of the cave; over its back was draped a cloak as black as a rainy night. It seemed to be very heavy; the Sidhe could barely lift it off the horse, and Cathbad had to help them unfold it and hold it above the king’s shoulders. Slowly, slowly, they lowered it, straining not to let it fall all at once. Not a horse stirred in the circle of Sidhe; all around the amphitheatre, the faeries were completely quiet. The cloak settled on the king’s shoulders, looking even blacker against his white-blond hair. He lifted up his hands and fastened its clasp. Suddenly, thunder rolled out of the clouds above the palace, and I closed my eyes, because I didn’t want to watch the earth swallow up that wonderful king, even if he wasn’t enough of a hero; but I saw a tremendous burst of light on the back of my eyelids, and I heard the crowd roar, so I opened them again quickly. The king was standing right where he had been, but the cloak around his shoulders was shining white. He swept it off and tossed it to the Sidhe, and the faeries cheered and cheered.