All the King's Horses (24 page)

‘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.’

Colin 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 right 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.

Cathbad raised his hand again, and the ten trumpeters began to play – not a fanfare this time, but a melody so beautiful that it made you want to laugh and cry at the same time. As they played, Mongan and Manannan marched slowly
out
of the cave, bearing a black circlet on a green pillow. When they reached the king and Cathbad, all of them turned and walked to the two tall stones. Cathbad covered the ground with a silver cloth, and the king knelt on it. The trumpeters’ melody came to an end, and all the faeries leaned forward, watching.

Carefully, Cathbad took the black crown from Manannan and Mongan’s pillow and walked towards the king’s stone. Standing in front of the king, he lifted the crown high, and slowly lowered it. As it got closer to the king’s head, the crown grew brighter and brighter, first gold and red and green, then a blur of white. As it touched the king’s head, it blazed so brightly that even the faeries put their hands in front of their faces. When we looked again, it was simply a gold circlet, decorated with rubies and emeralds – but its light wasn’t all gone; it hovered around the king. Slowly, majestically, he stood, and suddenly the air was filled with the music of a harp. The cheer that had started around the amphitheatre died into a wondering murmur.

‘What is it?’ I whispered to Epona.

‘The Gift of the Otherworld,’ she whispered back. ‘It has been withheld from our kings for so long, only the very oldest of Us can remember its being given. But now it is offered. The king may
have
his heart’s desire – the thing he has wanted most, all his life.’

Colin and I exchanged looks; she must have known what we were thinking, because she smiled sadly. ‘What he asks for must be tangible. There are some things that even the Otherworld cannot give.’

I pursed my lips and looked slowly around the amphitheatre at the thousands of faces, all shapes and sizes, still, watching – waiting for the king to state his heart’s desire. None of them was the face I wanted most to see.

Suddenly, all those faces changed, and I looked towards the stones just in time to see the king say something to Cathbad and Manannan. The two faeries looked at each other as if they’d been turned to stones themselves, and Mongan, who’d been standing by them, began to argue – you could tell by the way his hands moved. The king said nothing; he just waited. We strained our ears so hard they hummed, and everyone else – even the Sidhe – leaned forward, trying to hear. Finally, Manannan nodded slowly, and Cathbad made some announcement in the faerie language. A ripple of excitement went all the way around the amphitheatre. Next to me, Epona murmured, ‘Impossible.’