CHAPTER FIFTEEN:
Dashed

Mr. Quayle, the stable master, regarded Dai critically. He was a tall, broad man with a rough dusting of wiry russet hair on his chin that was entirely at odds with the wild, wheaten curls on his head. His Head Groom livery was the same gaudy vermillion as Mr. Fisher’s. “So, you’re the new boy?”
After stumbling through the man’s strange accent, Dai shook his head. Although Quayle was a Manx name, his manner of speaking wasn’t Manx. Or Irish, or Scottish, even. But he certainly wasn’t English or Welsh, either. “Where are you from?”
“Saratoga.” At Dai’s confusion, Mr. Quayle elaborated: “New York. America.”
“Oh,” Dai exclaimed without meaning to. He had never met an American before. Mr. Quayle regarded him impatiently, so Dai continued: “Mr. Fisher said I might make a postilion.”
“You’re shrimpy enough. How old are you?”
“Sixteen.”
“Know anything about horses?”
“They are draggin’ the coal up to the cage in the mines, they are.”
“Those are ponies, not thoroughbreds. And that’s a job, not the animal. Know how to read them? Care for them?”
Dai shook his head.
Mr. Quayle sighed and scraped his palm across his beard. “They’re sensitive creatures. Don’t treat them right, you’ll get hurt. Killed, even. You need a firm hand. A calm and confident nature.”
Dai nodded.
Mr. Quayle pointed towards a wheelbarrow and handed Dai a rake and a shovel. “Muck out the stalls. Put the manure in the compost pile beside the garden.”
Dai removed his livery coat and hung it on a peg. He rolled his trouser legs up and got to business.
The first four stalls he came to were empty. Their outside doors opened into the same large paddock. He made quick work of them. Unlike in the mine, there was no incline, here. He could apply all his muscle and sinew to pushing the wheelbarrow. Soon enough, he had all the stalls on the west side of the stables cleaned and redecorated with fresh straw.
All save the last. A large stall, heavily reinforced with solid timbers around the opening for the split door, it boasted an equally reinforced chamber, where a huge, angry black mountain of an animal stamped heavy hooves and tossed its head with such vigor that Dai was sure it meant to trample him into bloody bits.
It paced the enclosed space, chuffing like a steam engine. Like the other stalls, this one had another, opposite door opening to the outside. Unlike the other stalls, when Dai peeked outside, he saw this door lead into a separate, sturdily reinforced paddock. The snorting, pawing beast was between him and the iron bolt for that door, so Dai could not fathom how he could muck out anything without falling victim to the frightening creature.
Mr. Quayle, who had been harnessing a team to a wagon, noticed Dai standing in the breezeway outside the creature’s stall. “Leave that one. That’s His Grace’s new racing colt. His sire’s Industry, but he’s a wild one. Supposed to race in the Derby next week, but he threw his jockey and won’t let anyone on his back. He’ll need to be twitched to be moved.”
Dai nodded, unsure what twitching was. Eager to leave the animal alone, he picked up the handles to the wheelbarrow, intending to move past the stall and over to the east side of the building, but his path was suddenly blocked by a huge, coal black head arching over the open top of the split door.
Nostrils the size of his palm flared and spattered slime on his arm. Dai stumbled back, falling down to the straw. The stallion bobbed his head, as if laughing at him, and then clamped his teeth on the handle of the rake. Before Dai could make a grab, the vexatious beast had disappeared with it.
Dai groaned and scrambled to his feet. He stretched up on the tips of his toes to peer over the stall door and saw the colt parading around with his prize. The tines of the rake scraped along the wooden walls, making quite a racket.
Unsure what to do, Dai glanced back for help, but Mr. Quayle had already left the stables with the wagon.
“I am needin’ that, I am,” Dai told the horse, who stopped what he was doing and looked over with pricked up ears. “If you give it back, I’ll give you…” Dai searched his pockets and produced one of the extra oatcakes Mrs. Hammett had given him that morning. “This.”
The stallion spit the rake on the floor and trotted over to him with a nicker. “Finally! I’ve been waiting all day for you!”
Dai blinked, stunned. Had the beast just spoken to him? “You can talk?”
“Of course I can.” The animal nuzzled his hand, big velvet lips teasing the oatcake from his palm with surprising gentleness. He chewed while he talked. “I’m your brother.”
“I know my mother’s wanton and licentious, but I am not thinkin’ even she’d go that far. And even if she did, I’m not thinkin’ she’d give birth to anythin’ quite so fine as you.”
The stallion whickered, head bobbing up and down. He was laughing. Dai was sure of it. Rankled, Dai climbed over the door and into the stall to retrieve his rake and go back to work. But the horse hadn’t finished talking:
“I’m only wearing this fine fellow. Ophion told me a new Sun Thief had arrived. It’s not often I get to speak with another Primal, so I dropped into this body to find you. And look at you! So tiny. Half the size of those puny humans!”
“Not quite ‘alf,” Dai argued.
“I’ve never seen a Sun Thief smaller than a grandfather oak. You must have been at the Beginning to be burnt into such a cinder.”
Dai huffed and stuck his hands in his pockets. He had endured so much ridicule on account of his small stature. A talking horse making sport of that same predicament was the final outrage. “You’re not even ‘uman,” he countered. “At least I’m a man.”
“Why is that? I prefer these four-legged bodies. They’re so much swifter.”
“Not as swift as wings.”
“Which you seem to have misplaced. Why is that, brother?”
“Why are you callin’ me brother?”
“We’re both born of Wind and Sun, Earth and Sea.”
“If we are born of the same parents, why you are a talkin’ ‘orse and I am…me?”
“You fell into a human baby. I fell into this stallion. A Sun Thief of your size should know why they’ve taken the physical form they’re in. You must have fallen very far to have forgotten so much of yourself. ”
“That’s what the coblynau say.”
“Perhaps it is your age?”
“I am sixteen, old enough to remember most things. About bein’ ‘uman, that is. I am not rememberin’ much about my dreams. Except for the mermaid. And the dragon. And Ophion.”
The stallion whickered again, bobbing his head in laughter.
Dai grunted in annoyance, curling his hands into fists inside his pockets.
“Oh.” The horse regarded Dai with a large, glistening eye bracketed by strands of jet-black forelock. “You’re not joking? You really don’t know who you are?”
“I’m afraid I don’t,” Dai admitted.
“Open that confounded door.” The velvety nose swept pointed at the door to the paddock. “Let me out of this horrible jail, and I’ll show you.”
Dai looked over at the door. He chewed his lip, unsure if Mr. Quayle would be happy if he let the animal out. But it seemed cruel to keep anybody away from the sun and wind and sky, so Dai pulled back a bolt the same diameter as the handle of the rake. He swung the door into the grassy paddock and smiled at the way the breeze swept in around him and the sunlight caressed his face.
He felt the horse’s head nudge his back, and began to step aside to allow the animal past, but as he lifted his foot that broad nose darted between his ankles and swept up in a flash. A sharp pain tore into his gut as the bony head slammed up into his crotch and launched him skyward.
He curled instinctively, to avoid slamming his head against the eaves, and found himself rolling along the maned neck. He clutched the long, coarse hair blindly, spreading his legs to brace for the shock of landing, only to find himself straddling the animal’s broad, muscled withers.
He clung on desperately as the horse trotted around the small, reinforced paddock, jolting Dai’s tender crotch with each step. “Stop! Stop! I don’t know ‘ow to ride!”
The colt gave him that chuckling whicker again. “Of course you do! Just hold on!”
Dai felt the powerful muscles of the animal’s back gather and bunch beneath him and then suddenly they both launched into the air, sailing over the sturdy, reinforced fence that had to be a good seven feet tall.
“Ahhhhh!” was all Dai could manage as the blue bowl of the sky drew so close that he ducked his head and buried his face in the horse’s mane.
He expected a solid shock and to go tumbling over the horse’s head once they landed, but instead all he noticed was a rushing, rolling sensation, as if he had been swept up in a whitewater river made of air. He heard the thudding of hooves moving at such a rapid pace that they sounded like the clatter of rail cars.
He cracked his eyelids open and lifted his head just in time to see the massive stone arch bracketing the gate to the estate. The equine statue atop the arch loomed over them. He wasn’t sure how they had managed to travel here from the stables in what could only have been a few steps, but there was no time to ask.
Luckily, the gate was open, and they sailed through the archway and out past the big stone wall. They thundered down the road, and across the bridge spanning the railroad tracks and then through the woods at breakneck speed.
He had never ridden anything before. Not even a goat or a dog or a pit pony. But he was quite sure it wasn’t supposed to feel like this. The stallion moved faster than anything he’d ever experienced, except for his own wings when he dreamt of Beli Mawr and the mermaid.
His fear melted into wonder. He sat up taller on the horse’s back, laughing at the sensation of joy and freedom the galloping horse granted him.
It was like flying!
They emerged from the dappled dark of the forest into the bright sun. They swept over hedges and across the fields, scattering startled sheep in their wake. He was about to ask where they were going when up ahead, between the coal black ears, he saw a huge circle of standing stones rising up from the velvet plain of green ahead.
As soon as his eyes focused on them, the stones seemed to leap forward and surround him, but he knew it was the horse who had somehow brought them there to the center of the circle with a mere thought. The stones echoed the hoofbeats back to them as Dai’s mount gamboled and cavorted around them like a mad goat. “See? Remember now?”
Dai squinted at the way the sunlight reflected off the stones, who seemed to have faces, but not human ones. “What is this place?”
“It’s where you first fell, if you’re who I think you are.”
“First fell?” He glanced up at the sky. It seemed to him that the stones all supported some huge lens, like the one on Henry Talbot’s photogenic device. Through the lens, he could see all the way into the heart of the sun, where the light was so bright that he could just barely make out the manes and wings of the two lions that pulled the chariot of Beli Mawr.
His jaw dropped open at such an astounding sight. The lions snarled at him and roared with tremendous force. The sound knocked him off the horse’s back and slammed his head against the altar stone so resoundingly that his wits left him in a bright flash.