Chapter Nine: An Education

If anyone's interested in finding out what the names in this story mean, go to 20000-names.com. That's where I get them from. With the exception of Theodore and Susie...
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The next morning, every muscle in Theo’s body had turned to marshmallow, and it hurt. He managed to bait Sashi into physically pulling him out of bed, which brought on quite a lot of giggling and the threat of yet more beans on toast. Theo countered by offering to make breakfast; Sashi accepted with caution, evidently wondering what he was planning. She submitted awkwardly when he cheerfully positioned her at the head of the table and arranged a napkin and a wilting flower in a jamjar in front of her, and watched with apprehension verging on amusement as he bustled about.
The balance finally tilted in favour of amusement when he served up slightly burnt toast topped with raspberry jam and peanut butter with all the flair of a French chef. She hit him with the napkin and laughed.
“I don’t know what I was expecting but it wasn’t this.”
“Just call me the connoisseur of the unexpected,” he smiled, sitting next to her. They ate in silence that was verging on companionable, but was awkward enough for Theo to seek conversation.
“So…how did you come to join the Society?”
Sashi raised one shoulder in a half-shrug, toying with a crust.
“Automatically. My parents were both members. My brother’s an automatic member as well, although he’s gone off to work for the French Society…”
“So it’s automatic membership for member’s kids?”
“Well, not really…if it’s possible to keep up the pretence about the Society that’s preferred, but my parents basically lived down here all the time and I was born down here. Got given a Jackalope when I was six, to make up for my brother being born…it just wasn’t convenient for me to leave.”
“Oh. Makes sense, I guess. So if you’re basically a second-gen member how come you’re stuck cleaning out the Hellhounds?”
She gave a flicker of a smile. “I don’t like killing things and Mr Adfair was kind enough to let me keep things alive instead. Aren’t you supposed to be learning something around now?”
“Oh hell, yes I am…hang on…”
Consulting the timetable, it was duly discovered that he should be going out to learn how to use spears, as would be taught to him by…
“Rowena?”
“Oh, yes. Rowena’s our resident spear expert. You’ll never see her without one if you go with her on a mission…she refuses to use anything else.”
“Even close up?”
“Oh yes. There are spears for use up close too. Some of them have spikes on.” Sashi shuddered. “Rowena has a large and rather nasty collection…”
Theo left for his lesson feeling as though he’d just been sent on a suicide mission.
Rowena was waiting impatiently in the archery fields, playing with her ponytail in boredom. Her arms were bare, and for the first time Theo noticed that they were heavily muscled; she was certainly much stronger than he was. Next to her were three of her favourite weapons; one javelin, one stone-tipped spear and one iron-tipped spear.
“There you are,” she said, immediately upon spotting him. “You’re thirty-four seconds late you know.”
“I am? Sorry,” Theo apologised, wondering why a delay of just over half a minute had engendered so much impatience in the girl. “But, uh, I’m here now.”
“Yes. Come on, we’ll start straight away.”
She turned and trotted off, leading him away from the people practising with bows and arrows, towards a deserted section of field. The instant they arrived she thrust the javelin at him.
“Have you ever thrown one of these before?”
“Uh, yes…we used to do it at school,” he answered, deciding to omit the fact that he’d never been very good and hadn’t so much as touched one in three years. This seemed to satisfy Rowena, at least for the time being.
“Show me,” she demanded. “Show me your throwing stance.”
Rummaging through his memory for the correct way to stand, Theo managed to arrange himself side on to the distant target, holding the javelin in his right hand, drawn back to throw. He felt amazingly awkward, especially while Rowena assessed his stance through narrowed eyes.
“Keep your arm straighter,” she told him, physically pulling his throwing arm back so it was to her liking. “Don’t grip it so hard! Along the palm…put the shaft between your index and middle fingers…that’s it. Okay, run and throw.”
Theo did his best. The javelin managed to land point-down in the grass a couple of metres away, paused, and then fell over.
Rowena shook her head.
“We got a long way to go,” she stated, retrieving the javelin. “Do it again.”
Theo did it again. And again and again, until his rather demanding instructor decided they’d done all they could with the javelin and she would allow him to actually lay hands on a proper spear.
She gave him the iron-tipped one first. It felt sleek and wicked in his hands, something designed to rain down death from a distance. It was exciting and it practically begged to be thrown, but it also felt more impersonal; you could hurt anyone with it. It wasn’t anything like a sword, which was up close and personal.
“There’s not all that much difference between the stone and iron tips but it’s up to you which you prefer,” Rowena said briskly. “I like the stone-tipped ones better as they don’t break as easily, but when they do it’s really nasty and can do even more damage to your target. All right…throwing a spear’s much like throwing a javelin, except it’s a little heavier. Look, I’ll demonstrate.”
She picked up the stone-tipped one with her left hand and held it with the ease of long practice. She took up position, aimed carefully, took a couple of skipping steps, and threw; muscles bunched and released in her arm, and the spear arced through the air and impaled the far-off target straight through the bull’s-eye. It was most impressive and the mark of a true master, unlike Theo’s first effort.
“Do it again.”
He did it again.
“You’re getting a bit better,” Rowena eventually conceded, after the twelfth or so effort. “You could do well, if you practice a lot.”
“Uh…thanks,” Theo said, rubbing his upper arms, which were protesting again. He suspected this was high praise. Rowena gave him a brief thumbs-up and grin, returning to cheerfulness now her teaching job was done
“Next time we’ll use an atlatl!” she exclaimed, gathered up the spears and the javelin and skipped away. Gathering that he was now dismissed, Theo wandered off himself, entirely in the dark about what an atlatl actually was.
There was another riding lesson afterwards. Susie greeted him with pricked ears, investigated him for food, found none, and put her ears back instead. Theo stuck his tongue out at her, and was startled by Hector’s booming laugh from behind him. The Horsemaster evidently found his relationship with the bay mare to be amusing.
After a couple of false starts he managed to tack her up and lead her out, and he only failed to mount properly once. This was encouraging, and Hector seemed pleased. And then he decreed that most of the lesson would be spent in trot, with Theo singing ‘The Grand Old Duke of York’ over and over again in order to help with the rhythm of his rising. This was not encouraging. But at least he didn’t fall off this time.
And so it was that when Theo, smelling strongly of horse and with watery horse drool wiped down his front (after the lesson Susie had had a drink, and then decided to check his pockets for carrots again, leading to a rather damp t-shirt), headed towards the library for his third lesson of the day, he was still humming a nursery rhyme. It had been engraved permanently in his brain.
“…The grand old Duke of York, he had ten thousand men…” he mumbled, pushing open the door of the library building. The curator of the museum gave him a cheerful nod.
“Looking for the library?”
“Yup. Through the door and round the corner, right?”
“Got it in one, son. First door on your right. Easy as anything to find.”
And so it proved. It would have been hard to miss the huge double doors with the massive sign reading ‘Library’ above them even without the directions.
The minute he entered a short, skinny woman wearing horn-rimmed glasses hurried over.
“Mr Theodore Hunt?”
Theo replied in the positive, and was promptly handed a fairly thick booklet.
“These are the books recommended for those entering the Society. Mythological bestiaries, books on ancient weapons for the most part. You are not expected to read all of them. The best ones to start with are highlighted.”
“Uhm, thanks.”
She gave him a bright-eyed smile and scurried away back to her desk. Slightly overwhelmed, Theo opened the booklet and searched for the first highlighted title, which turned out to be ‘The Complete Encyclopaedia of Mythical Beasts and Their Habits’. He duly went looking for it, and only then realised just how big the library actually was.
The main room was bigger even than Mr Adfair’s study, with a high vaulted roof and shelves reaching up to a balcony that ran completely around the room about halfway up the walls. On that balcony were yet more shelves, all filled with books. Through a door in the back Theo could see another huge room, also full of shelves which were full of books, and yet another after that.
It left him with a very odd feeling that the library was somehow bigger than the building that contained it, especially since the building had to contain the museum as well.
“Don’t be stupid,” he muttered to himself. “It’s probably just some weird quirk of architecture…”
Rolling his shoulders in an effort to shake off the feeling, he went off in search of the encyclopaedia.
Eventually, with the help of the librarian Miss Terrwyn, it was located and heaved over to one of the reading tables, which groaned audibly as it was set down. It was a big book.
“That should keep you going,” Miss Terrwyn said cheerfully, and scurried off again. Theo looked at the book, which did not look back. It had a picture of a lion and a unicorn on the cover, probably out of some vague sense of patriotism, seeing as lions weren’t exactly a myth.
With a sigh, he sat down and opened it.
First thing first, he considered, was to look up some of those odd creatures he’d seen in Mr Adfair’s stuffed animal gallery, namely the Cat Sidhe and the Brag. The contents was beautifully illustrated and full of peculiar names; he ran his finger down the page and muttered to himself before locating the word ‘brag’.
Brags, it transpired, were more or less Kelpie Lite. They transformed into donkeys and lured people into riding on their backs, but they didn’t go in for the drowning and the eating, at least not directly; all they did was buck their rider off into bogs and run away laughing. Theo smiled at that; very childish behaviour for a mythical beast.
The next page detailed how to kill them. He skipped over that, vaguely disquieted by the talk of beheading and impaling, and looked up Cat Sidhe.
The first thing he discovered was that he’d been pronouncing it wrong; it was ‘Kett Shee’. They were fairy black cats with white spots on their breasts that haunted Scotland and apparently did little more than scare the pants off people; the book recommended killing them anyway, because there was also proof that they randomly attacked and savaged lonely walkers.
Theo skipped the killing talk there as well, and went to pick something else to look up. He chose kelpies, out of a vague feeling he ought to know a bit more about Susie’s ancestors, and turned to the relevant page. Turned out they came in several varieties; black, white, those that turned into women, those with dripping manes, those with bulrush manes; many also sported adhesive skin to trap their riders on their back. Included were several rather nasty stories, most of which involved children and some almost gleeful and decidedly lurid descriptions of them being eaten. Susie’s cheeky face floated into Theo’s mind, and he thanked his lucky stars that the mare was only half Kelpie.
He spent several more hours absorbed in the book, looking up the most outlandish creatures he could find and also some of the ones he already knew of, in case any of his ideas about them turned out to be very wrong. In the majority of cases, however, the old legends and stories were pretty accurate; only occasionally did the book point out, in a mildly patronising tone, a mistake that had been made or a misconception that had crept in over the years.
For the most part he overlooked the invariably detailed descriptions of how to kill them. A few instead were recommended for taming, which was more reassuring; but for the most part the information was informative and fascinating. He left the book only with reluctance, after being informed by the librarian that he should have gone to lunch an hour and a half ago. It was only luck, she said, that he had had another session in the library scheduled for after lunch; by the time he’d finished, though, it would be time for his next sword fighting lesson. Rather abashed, he nodded, thanked her and hurried out.
Sashi wasn’t in when he got back to the flat, but had left him a note in small, neat handwriting indicating the presence of sandwich-making materials and warning against attempting to cook anything. After bolting down a hastily-made cheese and salad sandwich with mustard, he rushed to meet Mr Aldobrandino, who greeted him with a raised eyebrow but kindly omitted to mention that his pupil was ten minutes late. He did, however, make Theo go through the positions he’d learnt the last lesson three times in a kind of unspoken punishment, both for the rapier and the sabre. Theo was developing a decided fondness for the sabre already, a fact which made Mr Aldobrandino grin for no readily apparent reason.
This time, after they had finished the next set of positions, he let Theo have a short sparring session with him near the end of the lesson. It ended with Theo flat on his back, after his teacher had demonstrated a cunning trick with his sabre and also his ready willingness to teach the hard way.
“This is not fencing, Mr Hunt!” he said cheerfully, offering a hand to help his winded student back to his feet. “I am teaching you to fight for your life! Now, again!”
This time, Theo ended up flat on his back even faster.
“We will have you fighting like a master in no time!” declared Mr Aldobrandino, grinning in a way Theo felt was decidedly unnecessary. “Again!”

Chapter Eight: Mounted Cavalry

Author's Note: I apologise that this chapter is shorter than some of the previous ones. It's mainly because I ran out of things to put in the sword lesson fairly quickly; unlike with horses, I've never even touched a sword before. So yeah. x3 I apologise if anyone who actually knows about swords reads this. I got everything off the internet. Google is a marvellous thing.
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Susie managed to tolerate being tacked up and untacked three times, although she did contrive to make life difficult by jerking her head out of reach as soon as Theo came anywhere near with the bridle. But she did at least have the good grace not to bite him when he clumsily put the bit in her mouth, which was something. A little to Theo’s surprise the bridle, with its many leather straps and buckles to do up, was actually easier to put on than the saddle, which had to be placed correctly to avoid rubbing and not bunch up the padded cloth put underneath. This padding was apparently known as a numnah, for no reason Theo could see.
Eventually he managed to get everything on to Hector’s satisfaction, and Susie was led, with great reluctance on her part, out to the school at the back of the stables. Also at the back of the stables were a large spread of grassy fields upon which yet more horses, presumably the occupants of the empty stables he had seen, grazed peacefully. It was yet another minor impossibility, but by now Theo had given up asking how it all worked.
He was made to mount and dismount six times before he did it properly. Eventually he was allowed to remain up on Susie’s back, clutching the front of the saddle with one hand and the reins in the other and feeling incredibly unstable. There didn’t seem to be anything stopping him from simply falling off sideways except the stirrups, which merely seemed to be things to get his feet tangled in.
Hector clipped a lead rein to the bridle and regarded his pupil critically.
“Awright. First off, push your legs down far as they’ll go. That’s it. Stirrup needs to be on the ball of your foot, an’ put your heels down. As me old riding teacher used ta say, toes t’heaven and heels t’hell. There, good. We wanna have a straight line from your shoulder to your hip to your heel; it’s gonna be uncomfortable at first but you’ll get used ta it. And you don’t hold the reins inna fist! Go on, let go of the pommel-that’s the front o’the saddle to you. Thumbs on top and little fingers underneath. No…underneath the rein. There we go. Okay, to make her walk on, give her a nudge with your legs.”
With caution, in case she took it into her head to leap forwards and violently unseat him, Theo nudged Susie’s sides. Hector snorted.
“Harder’n that, laddie. Susie c’n be an awkward cuss.”
Theo obediently nudged harder, and his mount deigned to begin ambling forwards. They did several circuits at a slow walk, with Hector cheerfully picking fault with his position, and then risked a short trot. Trot turned out to be a lot bouncier than Theo had expected. He fell off.
“You okay lad? Anything broken? No? Up you get again then.”
They tried trot again. This time Theo didn’t fall off. He felt this was a minor breakthrough, until he was informed that for the most part when trotting he was expected to do rising trot rather than sit there like a lemon.
He managed not to fall off during his first instruction in rising trot, although he felt like he was going to and consequently attempted most of it bent almost double.
This was incorrect, according to Hector’s patient tutoring, and he was forced to remain upright. Susie spent the whole lesson with her ears laid back.
It was going swimmingly until someone with a broom walked unexpectedly out from behind the stables and caused Susie to dance sideways in paranoid shock.
Theo fell off again.
Once again, he was not allowed to feel sorry for himself.
“Haveta get back on the horse!” Hector boomed happily, pulling him up and boosting him up onto Susie’s back once again. “You ain’t hurt!”
Susie sighed. Theo knew exactly how she felt.
By the end of the lesson, though, he was feeling rather proud of himself. He could ride a horse! Kind of. The Horsemaster had expressed approval in him and said that if all went well he’d soon be off the lead rein. He led Susie back to her stable by herself and managed to untack her by himself as well, under Hector’s watchful eye.
He was then informed that now Susie was his pony, he would be expected to take care of her.
“’Course, most of ‘em don’t,” Mr Ahern said with disapproval, demonstrating how to pick out a horse’s feet. “But you’re supposed to and I hope you will.”
“Sure,” Theo said obediently. “If you teach me how, of course…”
“No problem!” Hector boomed, evidently enthused by the idea of a new willing pupil and effortlessly subduing Susie’s attempts to get her back leg away from his grip. “’Seasy when you get used to it!”
The next thing on Theo’s timetable that afternoon was basic sword fighting taught by someone called Mr Aldobrandino, who turned out to be a little old man with a light Italian accent. The first thing Theo saw when he walked into the room was a table with more types of sword laid out on it than he’d ever seen before in his life.
“Mr Hunt?” Mr Aldobrandino enquired, materialising beside him. “Yes? Good. First we pick out the best sword for you.”
Without further preamble Theo was ushered to the table and required to listen to his new instructor’s passionate spiel about all the different types of what was essentially still a length of metal designed to maim people. It was actually rather interesting; Theo had had no idea there was such variety.
“-Claymores, both two-handed and basket-hilted. Very good swords, Scottish you know. Mortuary swords, basket-hilted…sabres, lovely example here with the curved blade but here also we have straight-bladed sabres with a double edge. Rapiers of course, lovely hilt isn’t it? Also we have here an epee, though it is not a good offensive sword, more for fencing. Hunting sword, for finishing off prey…cutlass, my favourite! Broadsword of course, longswords of many types, bastard sword…”
There were many others, often with complicated foreign names that Theo found very hard to pronounce, and his attention was beginning to wander a bit by the end. His muscles were starting to register complaints about their treatment in the riding lesson and the innumerable lengths of sharp, shining steel laid out before him were becoming almost hypnotising.
“-For you, Mr Hunt, I believe we start with a rapier. You have a good rapier body, I believe. Maybe then the sabre. Mr Hunt?”
“Oh! Yes. Rapier, then sabre,” Theo repeated obediently. Mr Aldobrandino nodded with satisfaction and trotted to a cupboard from which he produced, much to Theo’s relief, a blunted rapier and a wooden curved-blade sabre.
“First you will learn how to hold this sword properly,” his instructor informed him, passing him the rapier. It was much heavier than he expected, and his muscles immediately howled at him. “Now…the flat blade stays parallel to ground at all times; this sword is designed for thrusting, you see. There are many ways to hold rapiers; we will try all of them and see which is best for you.”
Eventually, after Theo’s fingers had been manoeuvred into several different positions on the hilt, each of them uncomfortable in their own fashion, they decided to stick with the one where his thumb rested on the blade.
Then they actually started practising positions, and Theo quickly found that this was even harder work than learning to ride. By the time Mr Aldobrandino expressed the opinion that they were finished with his introduction to the rapier his arms felt about ready to drop off. He’d been using muscles he’d never even realised he had and they hurt.
Mr Aldobrandino grinned at him.
“Sore?”
“Very,” Theo admitted ruefully. The old man’s grin became positively gleeful.
“It’ll get you fit,” he announced. “Now I shall introduce you to the sabre.”
The sabre, it turned out, was held in an entirely different way, more or less between the thumb and forefinger. Naturally this caused different muscles to start complaining.
Eventually Mr Aldobrandino allowed that they might be finished with sabre positions as well.
“Next time we will begin sparring,” he said cheerfully. “You are a good student, you will do well.”
“Thanks,” Theo said in surprise, passing back the sabre. “I quite enjoyed it, thank you.”
“Sword fighting is good fun,” the old man nodded, grinning again. “Very enjoyable. Goodbye Mr Hunt.”
To Theo’s great relief there was nothing more on his timetable for that day. He staggered back to his accommodation, this time only getting slightly lost, and just about managed to climb the stairs, unlock the door and fall onto the sofa.
He was still there when Sashi returned from the zoo. She gave him a startled look.
“Are you all right?”
He raised his head with a rueful smile.
“Yeah, I’m fine, don’t worry. My arms are just going to fall off, that’s all.”
For a moment Sashi looked worried, then she tentatively smiled.
“Did Mr Aldobrandino work you hard?” she asked sympathetically, kicking off her shoes. Theo nodded and put on a pout, closing his eyes.
“And your Hector too. Oooh, I’m going to die.”
Sashi’s smile widened a little. Theo peeped at her under one eyelid.
“Go on, say it.”
“Say what?” she protested, a little alarmed.
“Tell me I’m a melodramatic idiot who ought to be put down at once,” Theo purred. “Go on, I know you want to.”
She took a second to realise he was joking, but then her smile returned.
“All right. You’re a melodramatic idiot who ought to be put down at once. And you’re only getting beans on toast for dinner.”
“Hey!” he protested. “I’m suffering here. Beans on toast?!”
“Beans on toast are good for invalids,” Sashi informed him. “You’ll get them ‘till you’re well again.”
She looked so serious Theo’s mouth dropped open.
“…Really?”
There was a pause, and then Sashi grinned wickedly.
“Of course not. Just until you stop being a melodramatic idiot. Savvy?”

Finally Chapter Seven: Horse Sense

Sashi cooked the next day’s lunch.
She had been very polite about Theo’s efforts, but he was man enough to admit that, with pasta, crunchy was not the way to go.
After a beautifully prepared and not at all crunchy bean and couscous salad had been devoured, Sashi enquired as to what he was supposed to do now.
“Says here I’ve got a riding lesson,” Theo informed her, perusing his timetable. Sashi smiled.
“Then I’ll take you to meet the Horsemaster. Mr Ahern. He’s very nice, you’ll like him.”
“Uhuh,” Theo said, a little unconvinced. He was sure the Horsemaster was indeed a very nice man, but he’d always been a bit wary of horses. He’d never met one face-to-face, admittedly, but they were big animals and often on television they ran away with people, when they weren’t being treated as some kind of automaton.
But he obediently followed Sashi down to the stables, there to be left in the care of Horsemaster ‘Call me Hector’ Ahern who took to him immediately.
“Lookin’ forwards to meetin’ all the horses?” he boomed cheerfully, patting Theo on the shoulder with one huge hand. He was a big man with a broad and enthusiastic face who radiated goodwill to all men and especially those who liked horses. From what Sashi had told Theo on the way down he was also the Society’s undisputed expert on horses, donkeys, zebras, pegasi, unicorns and anything else even vaguely equine.
“Thanks for bringin’ him along, Sash,” he told Theo’s companion. “You gonna hang around?”
Shyly Sashi shook her head. “I’ve got to clean out the Hellhound pens. That’s a big job and I better start it now.”
Before anyone could object she had slipped away, leaving Theo alone with the Horsemaster and a lot of long faces regarding him with mild interest over loosebox doors.
“Ever met a horse before?” Hector enquired. Theo shook his head, and the man grinned.
“Didn’t think so. I better start your education now, then, huh? C’mon.”
He led Theo through rows of looseboxes until they fetched up outside a corner box whose grey occupant immediately stuck their nose into Hector’s hands, demanding a treat. He laughed and rubbed the white nose.
“This here’s Alyssa and the nicest mare we got in the whole stable. Sweet as a little lamb, she is, not like some. Wouldn’t hurt a fly, which would be why I’m startin’ you off on her. Right. Now, you must never offer a horse you don’t know a flat hand, yeah? They think there’s a snack there and bang goes one of your fingers ‘cause they ain’t always so observant when it comes to things what feel like carrots. Offer a closed fist, so they can smell. Go on. No sharp movements, remember that they’re prey.”
Obediently but rather nervously Theo proffered his fist to the mare. She sniffed it politely; it appeared to meet with her approval, because she regarded him hopefully with her brown eyes and gently butted her nose into his shoulder.
“She wants you to give her a scratch,” Hector informed him as he looked helplessly at the man. “Loves her scratches, does Alyssa. Reach round and rub her neck, just there under the mane. No, harder than that; she ain’t made of china. Ah, you hit the spot just there, look at her!”
Alyssa’s eyes had drooped down to almost closed and her ears began to splay slowly sideways. Hector Ahern beamed his approval.
“She’ll have you standin’ there for hours if she gets her way,” he said affectionately. “But you gotta remember, Alyssa’s a good girl who likes people but they ain’t all like that. Some of the ones we keep here, if you ain’t the right person or you don’t approach ‘em right they’ll take a lump outta your arm before you c’n say Jack Robinson, though most of ‘em are just plain scared of people. It’s the ears you gotta watch, at first; after a while you’ll get the littler clues but the ears are a good place t’start. Alyssa’s ears, right, sideways like that, that’s a relaxed beastie what doesn’t give a damn. Pricked right up, they’re curious, they wanna know what’s going on; that or they’ve seen somethin’ interestin’, like a food bowl or a friend o’theirs. But you gotta watch if they put their ears back because they ain’t happy, and if they’re flattened right back on their neck you better leave ‘em alone sharpish. Once you get t’know ‘em better you can tell when they’re just feelin’ a bit snappish and when they’re really upset, but when you’re jus’ learnin’ it’s best to be wary.”
Theo absorbed this as good sense, still scratching at Alyssa’s neck. His fingers were getting tired and he wondered if the mare would object to his stopping; but when he cautiously withdrew his hand she did nothing but sigh in a resigned manner. Mr Ahern had wandered away down the row of boxes, and now he beckoned his pupil over to meet a delicate chestnut mare.
“Now this ‘un, she’s more nervous, but go on, introduce yourself, she won’t hurt you…”
Over the course of about three-quarters of an hour Theo learnt more about horses than he had ever learnt in the whole of the rest of his life. He learned not to creep up behind them, not to let his fingers get in the way of feeding them things and his feet get in the way of their hooves, a lot of horsey vocabulary (white horses were not white, they were grey. Except when they were white…apparently, the decider was pink skin), and more than he really wanted to know about the fates of those who had underestimated these creatures. The Horsemaster seemed to have an endless stock of these rather horrible stories.
And yet, his undoubted enthusiasm and love for the animals was infectious, as was his good humour, and Theo found himself enjoying it all immensely. The horses were still a little worrying; they seemed to decide whether they liked him or not arbitrarily on the spot, and react accordingly without any warning he could see; but they certainly weren’t as scary as he’d vaguely expected them to be and one or two actually really seemed to like him.
He’d got rather a shock the first time one of his companionable scratches had led to the horse returning the gesture with her lips on his shoulder, but apparently this was perfectly natural and indeed very friendly and called mutual grooming.
One or two of the horses also tried to bite him for not much reason, but this apparently wasn’t to be taken personally.
It was while he was carefully introducing himself to a rather nervy piebald gelding that Hector glanced at his watch and said,
“Do you want to pick out your own beastie now?”
Theo’s startled reaction made the piebald toss his black-and-white blotched head in sudden alarm and retreat to the back of his stable.
“You mean a horse of my own?”
“Yeah, sure! A horse is a hunter’s best pal. Get you places a car never could, and c’n be yer best friend to boot. Well, some people think cars is better but they’re talking outta something that ain’t their mouth.” The Horsemaster made a dismissive gesture, and grinned at Theo. “We got a bunch of new ponies only a few days ago, you c’n pick from them, there’s only a few that ain’t suitable for newbies. Over here.”
He led Theo over to a row of slightly separate looseboxes, six in all, but before he could introduce the first grey head that poked inquisitively out a stable hand ran up.
“Hector? Hector, could you take a look at Brianna’s leg? That idiot Itzal took her out again this morning even though I told him he shouldn’t and now it’s swollen up like a balloon again.”
Hector Ahern’s face darkened and he glanced at Theo.
“Stick to these guys, none of ‘em’ll bite you. You’ll be fine, you’re already good with ‘em. I’m coming, Mark.”
He strode off after the stable hand with some purpose, leaving Theo alone with a curious equine nose snuffling at his shoulder and a sense that he had just been complimented.
The grey pony in the first box was friendly but ultimately uninterested, as was the chestnut in the second. The strawberry roan in the third was far too small for him to ride; it looked like a child’s pony. The fourth pony greeted him with laid-back ears and a horrible face, causing him to scurry onwards to the fifth box, which held another chestnut who appeared to be sleeping; it flicked an ear at his greeting and glanced at him briefly but apparently he wasn’t interesting enough to merit actually moving.
The fifth pony was a bay mare with her back to the door, munching peacefully on her straw bedding. Theo leaned over her door and cleared his throat politely. This had prompted most of the other ponies to saunter up and examine him for food; this mare’s reaction was a little more extreme. Her head shot up and her ears shot back and she spun round and glared horribly at him.
Theo took several steps back in surprise, and the pair of them eyeballed each other from a distance with varying degrees of suspicion.
Eventually Theo realised he was having a staring match with a horse, and coughed a little embarrassedly.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” he said. “Really.”
The mare looked disbelieving, but deigned to inch one ear forwards. Theo advanced cautiously and held out a hand; she smelled it, and immediately flared her nostrils and put her ear straight back again. This was a little hurtful.
“Oh, come on, now you’re just being silly,” he accused. The mare looked down her nose at him; he leaned on her door and put out a hand to her again. After snorting huffily a couple of times, she deigned to smell it, and this time her ears crept forwards. Theo smiled.
“There. See?”
When Hector Ahern returned he found them in a wary truce, intermittently grooming each other and retreating in case either of them had some sort of betrayal in mind, like biting or putting on a bridle.
“Hello there,” he said, his unexpected voice causing the mare to speedily retreat to the back of the stable again. “Why’s Susie here?”
“Is that her name?” Theo enquired, leaning over the door and trying to entice her forwards again. “I like her. Is she available?”
“Eh, well, yes she is. But she shouldn’t be in with these guys. Susie’s…not a beginner’s pony.”
“Oh,” said Theo, rather disappointed. “Why not?”
“She’s half-Kelpie,” Hector said, eyeing the pony, who eyed him back. “She ain’t much for the drownin’ and eatin’ but she’s a hell of a one for the runnin’ away with you. Any of the others catch yer fancy?”
A little reluctantly Theo followed the Horsemaster down the other boxes while the older man waxed lyrical about their occupants, although he did admit that the roan was too small for him. They both agreed in the end that the grey, a comfortable gelding named Kimon, was the best one for him, at least to begin on. Hector cheerfully went off to get his tack, and Theo absently scratched at the gelding’s neck while Kimon opportunistically searched his pockets for food.
His thoughtful reverie was then broken by the sound of one of the horses kicking their door.
It turned out to be Susie, jerking her head up and down as she battered at the stable door for attention.
“Susie! Don’t be silly,” Theo said severely, approaching the mare, who stopped kicking the door and eyeballed him meaningfully. “You shouldn’t be kicking your door like that.”
The mare looked unrepentant, and a little smug.
“Don’t look at me like that.”
One ear went back, and she treated him to another meaningful stare, this time a warning.
“Oh, that’s nice! Can’t make up your mind if you want attention or not, can you?”
Susie kicked her door again, as though to show that she didn’t really need his attention, he was just convenient. Theo stuck his tongue out at her. She jerked her head and shook her mane at him.
They were still having a very similar dialogue when Hector returned with Kimon’s saddle and bridle. Pausing, the Horsemaster took a moment to watch them, and grinned to himself.
Then he apologised to Kimon and went away again, returning with a different saddle and bridle.
“All right, Theo m’lad, time for your first ridin’ lesson.”
“Okay.”
Theo gave Susie a last pat (she put her ears back at him, on principle), and began to move towards Kimon’s stable. But a clatter behind him made him turn back; Hector had opened the kickbolt on the bottom of Susie’s door. He gave the younger man a nod.
“Comin’ to see howta tack up, are you, or are you gonna go someplace else?”
Theo grinned, and hurried back.
“I’m coming.”