“Thou must bear this Lady,” the blue lad said, indicating me. “Thou must carry her on her search for her lost foal, and bring her back safely to her father. I will travel with thee, assisting. An we find the foal not, but the Lady is safe, payment will be honored. Agreed?”
“How can a horse comprehend all that?” my father muttered skeptically. But the Hinny surveyed him with such uncanny certainty that he could not protest further. The Hinny now oriented on me. I held out my hand and she smelled it, then sniffed along the length of my arm, across my shoulder and up to my face. Her muzzle was gray velvet, her breath warm mist with the sweetness of cured hay. I loved her that moment.
The Hinny turned back to the blue lad, one ear moving forward with agreement. My father found himself unable to protest; he too was enthralled by the mare. And it seemed but a moment until arrangements were complete and we were riding out, the Hinny’s canter so gentle I could close my eyes and hardly know we were moving, yet so swift that the wind was like that of a storm. I had never before ridden a steed like her! It seemed but another moment, but when I opened mine eyes we were miles from my village, proceeding west toward the interior of the continent where the greatest magic lay. The groves and dales were passing like the wind. No horse could maintain such a pace, so smoothly—yet the Hinny ranged beside the blue stallion, now and then covertly turning a sleek ear on him; she desired the service only he could serve. I wondered fleetingly whether it could be like that for me as well, with only one man destined to be my husband. Little did I know how close to the truth that was, and that he was as close to me then as the stallion to the Hinny.
“Whither do we go?” I asked the lad.
“The wild horses should know where thy foal has strayed,” he replied. “They range widely, but my steed is searching them out.”
“Aye,” I said. “But will they not flee at the approach of our kind?”
He only smiled. Soon we spied a herd, and its stallion lifted his head toward us, and stomped the ground in warning. But the blue lad put his two hands to his mouth, forming a conch, and blew a whistle-note, and at that signal all the horses relaxed, and remained for our approach.
“They respond to thy whistle?” I asked, perplexed.
“They know my stallion,” he said easily. So it seemed. The wild stallion was a great buckskin with dark legs, not as large as the blue stallion. The two sniffed noses and thereafter politely ignored each other. The Hinny was ignored from the start; she was not quite their kind, being half-breed.
The lad dismounted, and I followed. It had been a long, fast ride, but both of us were excellent riders, and both our steeds were easy to use. They grazed, for horses are ever hungry. We passed among the small herd—and strange it was to be around these wild horses, who never ordinarily tolerated the nearness of man. I was in young delight. They were mostly fine, healthy mares, with a few foals, but one among them ailed. The blue lad went to this one, a spindly colt, and ran his hands over the animal’s body, and the dam watched without interference while I stood amazed.
“What’s wrong with him?” I asked, for I could not determine the malady. I, who thought I knew horses.
“Spirit worms,” the lad responded absently. “A magical infestation, common in this region.” Then he said to the colt in a singsong lilt: “Comest thou to me, the worms will flee.” It was nonsense verse, a joke—yet suddenly the colt perked up, took a step toward the lad, and there was a ripple in the air as invisible yet ugly somethings wriggled away. Instantly the colt seemed healthier, and his dam nickered gratefully. I realized that a little encouragement was all the colt had needed; he was not really sick, merely undernourished.
The blue lad approached the herd stallion and said: “We search for a lost foal, that went astray yesterday. Hast thou seen it, or dost thou know aught of it?” The stallion glanced at me as though requiring news from me, and I said: “It is a filly, only a month old, pure white and lovely and helpless. I call her Snowflake.” The stallion snorted.
“He says he has not seen the foal,” the blue lad said. “But he knows of one who collects white foals, and found one in this area, and that is the Snow Horse.”
“Where is this Snow Horse?” I asked.
“He knows not, for the Snow Horse ranges far and associates not with ordinary equines. Only Peg can tell where he might be now.”
“Peg?” I asked, perplexed.
“I will take thee to her.”
