All the King's Horses (13 page)

We both looked away, and Colin mumbled, ‘Yes, sir.’

‘As for the journeys you have taken,’ he went on coldly, ‘if you give them sufficient consideration, you will see that they have filled their appointed purpose.’ He paused, then glanced at the door. ‘Your principal is coming back. We must leave.’

‘Won’t he be awfully upset if we aren’t here when he comes in?’ I said.

‘He has already lost all memory of seeing you this morning,’ said Cathbad. ‘As have the rest.
Close
your eyes until the world settles around you.’

I closed my eyes, and everything began to spin. When it stopped, and I opened them, I was sitting in Miss Turner’s room, staring at my spelling list. Nobody seemed to notice I’d just turned up. Most of the kids were turning their lists into sentences; across the aisle, Tiffany was staring out the window with a dreamy smile.

I looked back down at my spelling list, but all I could think about was what Cathbad had said about our journeys.
If you give them sufficient consideration
… Darn it, we’d
been
considering! And I was considering even harder, now. Talking with Cathbad had made me see how wrong I’d been on the bus. Whatever the minions might do, the Sidhe weren’t trying to keep us from going to Faerie and finding Grandpa. They were doing something different. I chewed on my pencil, trying to think what it was, but all I could come up with was something I’d sort of known already: that Colin’s changeling theory didn’t explain what was wrong with Grandpa. It wasn’t just that what he wanted to call evidence wasn’t the kind of evidence that allowed you to prove anything. And it wasn’t just that we couldn’t blame the house for making Grandpa worse, because he’d been getting worse before
we
got there. There was something else. One of those things that, when you saw it, made you say ‘Oh! Of course!’

I quit chewing the pencil, but what I wrote, instead of a sentence with ‘expostulate’ in it, was
A LOT OF GOOD
THAT
DOES
. Because the only people who knew what was wrong with our theory – and thus, the only people who knew what was wrong with Grandpa – were the Sidhe. And Cathbad had just made it very clear that They did not appreciate the way we’d been trying to make things go faster. All we could do was what Grandpa said you had to do with faeries: be very polite, and let Them help you in Their own way, on Their own terms.

I WAS AFRAID
Colin would get feisty when I told him about waiting for the Sidhe to do things their way, but he just gave me a look that said he’d already figured that out. We hoped our reward for figuring it out was going to be another trip to Faerie, but it wasn’t. Miss Turner’s chalk disappeared almost every day, and the pennies Colin flipped at home came down heads every single time, so we knew They were around, but we stayed put. After a few days, we started to the Ring, just to see what was up, not to push Them or anything, but Mom stopped us. She’d heard that it was a place where burglars met the people they sold stolen stuff to (she called them ‘fences’, but she couldn’t tell us why). Colin pointed out that our statistical chances of being there at the same time as a
robber
or a fence were very low, but with things like that, mothers just don’t listen to statistics. So we didn’t go.

It was frustrating, because Grandpa was having more and more trouble knowing who people were. Like, a few days before Thanksgiving, he got Colin mixed up with a stable boy at the Smithes’, and he kept telling him he should be in the barn cleaning tack, not in the house. Then at Thanksgiving dinner, he got
both
of us mixed up with the Smithes’ kids, who’ve been grown up forever, and he got so upset when we tried to explain who we were that he left the table and stomped upstairs. Mom tried to fetch him back, but he wouldn’t come, so we had to go on without him. It sort of scotched the holiday atmosphere.

After that it seemed like something went wrong every day. Grandpa started calling me Deirdre, which is Mom’s name – though he still knew who Mom was now, which logically he shouldn’t have. Anyway, he’d start talking to me (thinking I was Mom long ago) about shows she’d ridden in, and of course, that was our chance to learn about the side of Mom we’d found in the trunk – but it usually didn’t work, because we couldn’t figure out what he meant, and then he’d get angry. One time when Mom
was
out shopping, and Colin, Grandpa, and I were sitting in the kitchen, waiting for the soda bread we’d made to be done, he said ‘White horse – dressage’ over and over, until I got it and asked if he meant the Spanish Riding Academy in Vienna. He did, and bit by bit, it came out that he wanted me (meaning Mom) to go study there, and to pack right now. We knew better than to frustrate him, so we got a suitcase out of the cellar, playing for time until the soda bread came out and distracted him, but he got more and more upset, and we were really glad to hear the old Ford stutter up the driveway. When Mom came in, I told her quickly what was wrong. I thought she’d help us play along with Grandpa, but instead, she told him – lots more sharply than she usually told him anything – that nobody was going to Vienna, and he should stop bugging me.

He stared at her for nearly ten seconds (which is forever if nobody’s talking); then he jumped to his feet and roared ‘Don’t live here! Call police!’ He did call, too, even though Colin and I hung on him and begged him not to. Of course he didn’t get the police, because the phone was unplugged, but he thought he had, and he paced around, waiting for them, until eventually he forgot who he was waiting for. When I went to
tell
Mom everything was OK, her face was all red and swollen. And if
Mom
had been crying … well, all I could think was, it would be nice if the faeries quit punishing us for pushing Them (if that was what They were doing) and took us to where Grandpa was.

It would also have been nice if it hadn’t been Christmas, which had been the best part of winter when we lived on Maple Street. We’d always decorated the house the first day of Advent, and when we’d come home from school, it had smelled of Christmas tree, cookies, and spiced cider in a way that made you feel all tingly when you came in the door. Then there’d been our Christmas vacation visit to our Madison grandparents at their big house on the Cape. It was the only time they saw us all year, so they and their servants always made it a big deal, with lots of presents and fussing, and it had been a magical week, even though Grandmother and Grandfather Madison weren’t very magical themselves.

This year, though, Mom said we couldn’t afford to decorate the house. We were upset (we’d been talking for a month about winding a chain of hemlock boughs and red ribbon up the banisters under the stained-glass window), but maybe it was just as well; even the little tree we
got
made everything seem sad instead of Christmassy. As for the visit to Grandmother and Grandfather Madison, I wasn’t really looking forward to it. You think more when you grow up; ever since last Christmas I’d wondered why Mom never got to go with us, and why they never wrote to her, only to Colin and me. And this Christmas, it hit me that we didn’t even have enough money for hemlock boughs, and Grandmother and Grandfather had a huge house and a limousine, and … I don’t mean I was greedy, or anything; it just seemed strange. I didn’t say anything about that to Colin, though. He was counting the days ’til we left, and I didn’t want to wreck it for him.

Anyway, with one thing and another, I spent most of Advent wishing someone would cheer me up. Tiffany would have been the obvious someone, but after Thanksgiving, she looked out the classroom window more and more, so I guessed Christmas at her house was even sadder than at ours. She’d cheer up a bit if we could meet at recess in our storm drain, but there was a lot of freezing rain, which meant spending recess in the gym playing dodgeball. When that happened, she just stood still until she got hit, then went to the sidelines and dreamed off again. Sometimes I let myself get hit so I could join her,
but
it was so noisy neither of us could talk.

Then, two days before Christmas vacation, she gave me a big smile when I got on the bus. I sat down beside her and waited, but she didn’t say anything. Tiffany was like that, so I didn’t push, but it was a nice day for a change, and when we crawled into our storm drain at recess and she
still
didn’t say why she was all lit up, I forgot to be patient. ‘For Pete’s sake, Tiffany – tell me what it is!’

‘It’s nothing. I mean, it might not work out. Sometimes things don’t, with horses—’

‘– With horses! You’re going to keep a secret from
me
about
horses
!?’

‘Well …’ she drew a deep breath. ‘OK. Near where I live there’s these really nice people who have a stable, and for the last couple of years, I’ve groomed for them, and cleaned tack and mucked out stalls, and they’ve …’ Her voice was so quiet I could hardly hear it now. ‘ … they’ve been giving me lessons.’

‘Oh, Tiffany!’ I thought of that stable, which had to be near our house if it was near hers, and how if she’d just been willing to share, we could have …

‘I’ve been wanting to tell you,’ she said. ‘Honest! But I spend a lot of time at the Gordons’ (that’s their name) when my parents are … I
mean,
when my parents aren’t home. And they don’t like people to know that, so I just haven’t told anybody that I ride. Not even you.’

I looked at her red face, and I thought how awful it would be to have parents like hers, and I quit feeling sore. ‘That’s OK,’ I said. ‘I won’t even tell Colin, if you don’t want. But if you’ve been riding all this time, that can’t be what you’re excited about.’

‘No, it’s not,’ she said. ‘It’s … well, the Gordons don’t have any students except me, so they don’t have a school horse. They started me on a pony they borrowed, and then when I was ready for something more advanced, a couple lent them a gymkhana pony that their kid had wrecked, and I rode him. After a year, I got him going really well, but this fall his owners came by and saw me jumping him, and they said “Hey, this pony is worth a lot of money!” and they told the Gordons to put him up for sale. So they did, and at Thanksgiving, he went to a really nice girl. Of course I was glad he’d found a good home, but …’

‘You don’t have to explain,’ I said. ‘I cried and cried when I said goodbye to my pony in Pennsylvania, and she didn’t even belong to me.’

‘Yeah,’ said Tiffany. ‘But then—’ She looked up, and her eyes were shining. ‘Last night, just
before
I left, Mrs Gordon got a call about a really good horse. He’s four, and he belongs to a girl who’s just been offered a working student job in England, and she’s looking for somebody who’ll take him on a free lease. She’s having trouble finding someone, because everybody wants to start him over big jumps right away, and she says he’s too young.’

‘She’s right,’ I said. ‘Grandpa says there’s a special corner in Hell for people who jump four-year-olds, because it wrecks their knees.’

‘That’s what Mrs Gordon said,’ said Tiffany. ‘And she promised that if the girl (her name’s Gwen) leased the horse to me, I wouldn’t do anything more than cavelettis and one-foot gymnastic jumps with him.’ She smiled all over. ‘So Gwen said she’d trailer him to the Gordons’ Saturday afternoon, so I could try him out.’

‘Wow! And if you like him, he’ll be yours for a whole year?’

‘Not until April,’ said Tiffany. ‘You have to apply for working student jobs way in advance. But the Gordons don’t have an indoor ring, so I can’t ride much until April anyway.’

‘That’s true,’ I said. ‘And besides, it’s only four months. Boy, are you ever lucky!’

‘Yeah,’ said Tiffany, but she looked worried. ‘What if I’m not good enough? Mrs Gordon lets
me
ride her horse once in a while, but mostly I’ve just ridden ponies, and Gwen’s going to see that.’

‘Horsefeathers! If she wanted a fancy rider to school him, she could have one, right? It sounds like she’d rather find somebody who’ll ride him carefully and give him lots of love.’

Tiffany gave me a faraway smile. ‘I could do that, all right.’

‘No kidding,’ I said. ‘Look, we’d better head back – they’re lining up.’

‘OK.’ But she didn’t move. ‘Sarah … the Gordons’ street is only two school bus stops after yours. Could you … I mean, would you like to come when I try out the horse?’

‘Wow! That would be … Oh wait, I can’t. We promised that we’d stay home with Grandpa when Mom went Christmas shopping with a friend. And we just
can’t
let her down.’

‘Your grandpa! Listen, when you told me he was Angus O’Brien, I told the Gordons, and you should have seen them. He’s their hero. So if I ask them if he can come with you (and Colin, too, if he wants) they’ll say yes for sure.’

I looked away. ‘Um, Tiffany, about my grandpa. He isn’t like he used to be.’

‘I know,’ she said. ‘Mr Gordon told me; I guess he’d heard about it. But, well … you know how when you have a headache, and then you get
interested
in something, it goes away? Maybe if your grandpa saw horses again, he’d forget he was sick for a while.’