The Golden Winged Horse

by Maggie Joan

  Panic swarmed me in an instant. Just as I started to curse Dad in my head, a voice said, “I’m over here.”

  I glanced towards Dad’s desk to see Tristan, still encased in the glass dome, sat on Dad’s huge desk pad.

  I ran over to him and breathed a sigh of relief. “Thank goodness, I thought he’d hidden you where I couldn’t find you.”

  He lifted a tiny hoof and knocked it against the glass, making an ever so cute clinking sound. “He left you a note.”

  Looking down at his desk pad, I saw his scrawled handwriting in huge capital letters—THIS HORSE BETTER BE HERE WHEN I GET HOME OR SO HELP ME GOD, I WILL DISOWN YOU.

  Sitting down, I sighed, put my elbows on the desk, and rested my head in my hands. “Well, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if he disowned me.”

  “You don’t mean that,” Tristan said, twirling around in a circle.

  “Oh, I think I do. I can see why my brother got out of here as soon as he could. It’s like I’m a forgotten child. We’re self-sufficient now so why do we need parents is how Dad views it.”

  “I don’t know a lot about relationships but what I have learned over the years is that you humans have extremely complex ones. In my world, everything is black and white, clear cut, but here—” he shook his head, his golden mane turning into a shimmering wave “—here you seem to have this murky grey area where people can make excuses for justifying their actions. And it’s strangely accepted.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “In my world, if a child goes against their parents in the slightest manner, they are severely punished. Here, excuses are given and accepted.”

  I smiled. “It’s called compassion.”

  “Rules are rules where I come from. There is no in between.”

  “I met one of you last night.”

  He stepped back, as if in shock, bumping his golden behind against the glass. “Really? Who?”

  I thought over the conversation I’d had with the fairy last night and then remembered that I hadn’t actually gotten a name. “I don’t know. He didn’t give me a name.”

  “What did he look like?”

  I grinned. “He was very handsome. Carried a spear and a shield, topless, lovely muscles, fantastic blue eyes…” I stared off into the distance as I pictured the fairy as an actual man. Tristan cleared his throat. I jolted back to reality, my cheeks flaming with heat. “Sorry,” I said, giggling.

  “He could be one of about a thousand.”

  My jaw dropped. “You mean there’s more like him?”

  “Oh yes. All fairies are very good looking. It’s just how nature made them.”

  “Ah,” I said, pointing to the left side of my chest. “He had a red tattoo here. It was of a tree inside a horseshoe. And his trousers were like glittery jeans.”

  Tristan gasped. “Calico? You met Calico? Wow.” He performed a textbook piaffe and then cantered a perfect pirouette. “Unbelievable!”

  I couldn’t help but laugh at his restricted antics. I had no doubt if he had the room, he’d be galloping and bucking all over the place. “I’m guessing Calico is someone important?”

  “You have no idea,” he said, his whiskey brown eyes gleaming with joy. “He’s royalty, his mother is a Queen.”

  “How do you know it was him from my description? You said they all look the same.”

  “The glittery jeans as you call them are special trousers that can only be worn by royalty. Like your Kings and Queens have special clothes, so do ours. The tattoo on his chest denotes his nobility. We have eight royal families, all with different marks of their family bloodlines. Calico’s family are also clearly defined by their sapphire blue eyes.”

  “Calico,” I breathed. “Such a pretty name.”

  “What did he say?”

  I relayed the conversation between me and the fairy back to Tristan.

  “Fantastic,” he squealed. “So tonight you’re setting me free?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  I startled at the sound of Dad’s voice and jumped back. The chair slid across the wooden floor, only stopping when it hit the wall. Dad visibly cringed, knowing it would have left a black mark on his pristine white skirting board.

  “Dad…I…I thought you were at work.”

  He smiled but it wasn’t a warm smile, it was creepy…almost sinister. His hazel eyes were hard and unwelcoming. For the first time ever, I actually felt scared of my dad.

  “I parked my car in the Mitchell’s drive and walked back. If you’d bothered to check the kitchen, you would have found me, but I knew you wouldn’t.”

  The Mitchell’s were our neighbours. Their house was identical to ours except their drive was to the right of the property, as oppose to ours being to the left. This meant all you could see from our front porch was their house, nothing of the drive or the garage.

  My heart sank. A cold sweat broke out on my palms. What was the next move from here?

  “That horse is going nowhere until I say so.”

  “Dad, you can’t—”

  He held up a hand and marched across the office towards me. “I can, I did, and I will. That horse is the key to your grandmother’s salvation. I’ve already explained my justifications to him. He knows about our history, he gets it.”

  “But he has a job to do.”

  “I know, but so do I. I have tried all other reasonable means to come to an agreement with the fairies, but they wouldn’t do anything so I’m afraid drastic times makes way for drastic measures.”

  I stood up and walked back to the desk, leaning my hands on it. “You’re wrong, Dad. This is wrong. How is it that your own child has to show you the difference between right and wrong?”

  “Right and wrong for what and for who? What I’m doing is right for your gran, Faye. All I want is for them to show themselves to the world and prove that my mom isn’t the liar she’s been branded for all of her life.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “The pictures, Faye. Of the fairies. Being called a liar for her entire life has eaten away at her like a disease. I know this is what’s making her dementia episodes worse. All I want to do is give her some peace. She deserves that, doesn’t she?”

  I felt deflated, like a pin had been stuck in me. I went to sit down and then remembered the chair was against the wall. “Yes, of course she does, but this isn’t the way to do it, Dad.”

  He narrowed his eyes and pointed a finger at the forest outside. “You don’t know anything about them, Faye. They’re stubborn, uncompromising, and hold such contempt for us humans, they can’t see past their own self-importance. They will cut their noses off to spite their face. Believe me, this is the only choice I had.”

  I grabbed the top of the glass dome and stared at my dad with all the defiance I could muster. “Then you leave me with no choice.”

  As I started to pick up the glass, my dad yelled a string of strange words. The glass clattered back down, and an echo of energy reverberated through the room, knocking me back into the chair. I didn’t understand his words but the energy fizzling through the room told me enough that I wouldn’t be freeing Tristan tonight.

  “I’m sorry, Faye. I just can’t let him go yet.”

  Dazed, I took a couple of seconds to gather myself together before sitting up straight and glaring at Dad with all my might. “Whatever happened with Gran, I don’t know, but if she lied there must have been a good reason, right?”

  “Yes. Your gran revealed the existence of fairies to the world. When the authorities started hunting them, she was forced to say she lied to protect them.”

  A lightbulb flicked on in my head. That’s why they didn’t like humans, didn’t trust us. “But getting them to say Gran isn’t a liar is only going to expose them again and make them vulnerable to being hunted once more, right?”

  Dad stumbled back a couple of steps. “I…I guess, I hadn’t thought of it like that.”
/>   “And would Gran be happy dying, knowing that she’s the cause of them being hunted once more?”

  “I…no,” he breathed. “She loves them, she always has done. She just wants them to validate her to the world.”

  “I get that, Dad, I really do, but this isn’t the way to do it.”

  He scrubbed his hands over his face and sighed. When his shoulders sagged, I knew I’d gotten through to him. “Ok. Just…just give me forty-eight hours to figure something else out.”

  I shook my head. “I made a promise to them, Dad. I promised that Tristan would come back to them tonight. Don’t make me break that promise. They already hate us enough, think we’re not worthy of their time and trust.”

  “Faye, I can’t keep everyone happy here, I’m sorry. My priority is your gran. Do you get that?”

  “Of course I do, but—”

  He shook his head. “Forty-eight hours, Faye. Please.”

  I flickered my eyes over to Tristan who stood with his head down and his ears drooping. The excitement gleaming through his eyes only moments ago had now been replaced with a dullness anyone could read as utter sadness. My heart strings tugged seeing him like that.

  “Look at him, Dad. He was so happy when he thought he was going home tonight.”

  Dad sighed. “Unfortunately, Faye, sometimes there is collateral damage and he just happens to be it. Two days, sweetheart, that’s all I’m asking for.”

  Did I really have a choice? “Whatever,” I said.

  He came towards me, arms outstretched, but I shied away and shook my head. He stopped for a moment before turning around and walking out.

  I let out a long breath, leaned my head back on the chair, and closed my eyes. Now what was I supposed to do?

  Chapter 5

  Dad actually left for work after that. I looked at Tristan, still the picture of sadness, and felt tears welling in my eyes.

  “I’m so sorry, Tristan.”

  “It’s ok,” he said. “Not a lot you can do now anyway, not after that lockdown spell he put on me.”

  “Is that what that was?”

  He nodded and then slowly folded his legs under him and laid down on the hard wooden base. “He’s essentially locked me in here by clamping the glass dome down. Nothing but magic will move it now.”

  “Do you know the spell to move it?”

  He shook his head. “Spells aren’t my area of expertise I’m afraid.”

  A thought sprang to mind, and I jumped up with enthusiasm. “All I need to do is speak to Calico again and it’ll all be sorted. He can give me the spell, right?”

  “I appreciate your eagerness but you’re forgetting it’s daylight.”

  “They’ll come out in daylight, I remember Gran telling me. I just need a bigger offering.”

  Tristan snorted. “I hate to burst your bubble, but they only come out in daylight by absolute necessity. I’m afraid a human isn’t deemed as that.”

  “But needing the spell to release you is.”

  He flopped back, his head squashed up against the glass. “They won’t know that’s what you need unless they come speak to you.”

  I sighed. “Ah. A total catch twenty-two. Guessing Dad knew that.”

  “Most likely.” Tristan sighed. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to force myself to sleep for a few hours, just to stop myself from thinking on things if anything.”

  “Ok,” I said, standing up. “I’ll come back later and see you.”

  He said nothing and closed his eyes. His long fluttery golden eyelashes lay softly against his cheek. He was so pretty, I wished I could keep him.

  Ambling into the living room, I collapsed onto one of the grey fabric sofas and resisted the urge to scream. If anything was going to make the relationship with my dad even worse, this would be it for sure.

  I spent the day watching mind numbing shows, just to distract me from life at the moment. As the hours ticked by, getting closer and closer to the time I should be releasing Tristan and proving myself to the fairies, a mix of nerves and guilt flooded me. I wondered if I should head out there and apologise, explain why I couldn’t release him, but remembering Calico’s hostility, I decided that may not go down too well.

  Darkness soon swamped the world, and after waiting up until ten o clock for Dad, I headed upstairs for a shower and then bed. I hoped and prayed Dad had a plan forming by now because his first day was over. One down, one to go.

  ***

  The next morning, after checking on Tristan, who was still somehow asleep, I grabbed some toast and switched the TV on to see the local news blaring away about the latest trivial matters. Just as I was about to change the channel, the next story came on, its introduction by the news reader catching my attention immediately.

  “In a strange twist of events, parents all over Tioga County are reporting that their children are not sleeping at nights. Now, children not wanting to go to bed may seem like a normal thing for most of us, but for the past two evenings, it seems no child has slept and is reporting rather disturbing nightmares and strange creatures plaguing their rest.”

  “That’s right, Tom,” said the female news reader. “And it’s not just one or two reports, we’re talking hundreds, all reporting the same thing.”

  As the woman carried on delivering the strange story, my instincts told me that without a doubt, this was linked to the magical little creature sat in my dad’s office. Immediately, I thought of Macie, who had a six-year-old brother. I battled with myself for several minutes, then threw caution to the wind and decided to call her.

  “Hey, what’s up?” she said, answering the phone as cheery as ever. “Your gran ok?”

  I smiled. “Yeah…about that, do you think you can come over? I need to tell you something.”

  “Sure. Probably won’t be for an hour or so though because Tobias is being a little sod and Mum needs a break. For a child that sleeps like a hibernating bear, he’s suddenly decided he doesn’t want to sleep at all the past two nights. I don’t get it.”

  Guilt twinged inside me. “I might be able to help with that.”

  “What? How?”

  “Just head over as soon as you can.”

  Macie’s bye was drowned by a screaming child. I hung up, my heart racing, and realised I’d now set things in motion so that without a doubt, I had to tell her. With my reputation of being ‘away with the fairies’ ironically, Macie was going to take some convincing that this was real.

  My stomach growled at me, alerting me to the fact I hadn’t eaten yet. With my nerves on edge and my thoughts racing through my mind at a million miles an hour, I couldn’t face the thought of food right now.

  I started going through different ways to tell Macie exactly what was going on. Every time I thought of the perfect opener, I could picture her response—bursting into laughter and telling me I needed a trip to the doctor.

  Then a light bulb flicked on in my head. Tristan. He would be the only way to convince her that I wasn’t going crazy. I would just have to show him to her straight away, so she knew I was serious. I paced up and down the living room, chewing my nails, as I anxiously awaited her arrival.

  When I saw her car pull up onto the drive, I ran to the front door, my heart pounding and my body coated in a cold sweat. I opened the door and stepped out onto the porch, almost shouting in frustration as she took what felt like ages to get out of her faithful old Honda.

  “Come on then,” she said, smirking at me as she ambled towards me. “Tell me how you’re going to make my brother sleep.”

  “Hurry up,” I said, waving my arms at her to beckon her in.

  She frowned. “Are you alright? You’re all sweaty.”

  “I’m fine, just get in the house.”

  Macie stepped up onto the porch and I grabbed her wrist and pulled her into the house. I kicked the door shut behind me and started babbling at her.

  “The other night when you came to pick me up to go to Arby’s, I wasn’t watching a video on my phone, I
was talking to someone. In my dad’s office. There was someone, or rather something, in my dad’s office. Well, that’s wrong, he’s not a thing, but he’s not a person either, I don’t really know how to exp—”

  “Whoa,” Macie said, turning to face me and putting her hands on my shoulders. “Calm down. Take a deep breath.”

  I stopped for a second and closed my eyes. I sucked in a deep breath and then let it out. When I opened my eyes again, Macie was staring at me with a questioning worry filtering through her pretty green eyes.

  “Have you been eating peanut butter M&Ms again? You’re all hyper and freaky like when you eat them.”

  I rolled my eyes at her. “No, Macie, this is serious, listen to me.”

  “I’m being serious, Faye, you don’t look too good and you’re talking at a speed a racehorse would be jealous of. What’s going on?”

  “Will you just follow me into Dad’s office? Please?”

  She stepped back and scanned her eyes over my face for a few seconds. The silence and the wait for her agreement became too much to bear. Letting out a yell of frustration, I ran to Dad’s office, hoping she’d follow me.

  “Like I was saying, I’m sorry I lied to you the other night, but I didn’t know what else to do. I’d literally just discovered him when you came by and I needed time to figure my options out. I need your help, Mace.”

  “Why do you keep talking about a ‘him’?” she asked. “Have you got someone held captive in your dad’s office or something?”

  I couldn’t help but smirk. “Well, to put it simply, yes.”

  “Ok,” she said, stopping in her tracks. She put her hands up in a surrender sign. “Whatever weird kidnap plot thing is going on here, I don’t want anything to do with it, Faye. You’re my best friend and I love you, but kidnapping someone? That’s something I want plausible deniability about.”

  “Will you just come in here, please?”

  She shook her head and turned for the front door. “No, I’m sorry, but no.”