Soul Music

They were level with the stables. These were normally the home of the two horses that pulled the school coach, and the term-time residence of a few horses belonging to gels who couldn't be parted from them.

There is a type of girl who, while incapable of cleaning her bedroom even at knifepoint, will fight for the privilege of being allowed to spend the day shovelling manure in a stable. It was a magic that hadn't rubbed off on Susan. She had nothing against horses, but couldn't understand all the snaffles, bridles and fetlocks business. And she couldn't see why they had to be measured in 'hands' when there were perfectly sensible inches around to do the job. Having watched the jodhpured girls who bustled around the stables, she decided it was because they couldn't understand complicated machines like rulers. She'd said so, too.

"All right," said Susan. "How about ravens?"

Something blew in her ear.

She spun around.

The white horse stood in the middle of the yard like a bad special effect. He was too bright. He glowed. He seemed like the only real thing in a world of pale shapes. Compared to the bulbous ponies that normally occupied the loose-boxes, he was a giant.

A couple of the jodhpured girls were fussing around him. Susan recognized Cassandra Fox and Lady Sara Grateful, almost identical in their love of anything on four legs that went 'neigh' and their disdain for anything else, their ability to apparently look at the world with their teeth, and their expertise in putting at least four vowels in the word 'oh'.

The white horse neighed gently at Susan, and began to nuzzle her hand.

You're Binky, she thought. I know you. I've ridden on you. You're… mine. I think.

"I say," said Lady Sara, "who does he belong to?"

Susan looked around.

"What? Me?" she said. "Yes. Me… I suppose."

"Oeuwa? He was in the loose-box next to Browny. I didn't knoeuwa you had a horse here. You have to get permission from Miss Butts, you knoeuwa."

"He's a present," said Susan. "From… someone…?"

The hippo of recollection stirred in the muddy waters of the mind. She wondered why she'd said that. She hadn't thought of her grandfather for years. Until last night.

I remember the stable, she thought. So big you couldn't see the walls. And I was given a ride on you once. Someone held me so I wouldn't fall off. But you couldn't fall off this horse. Not if he didn't want you to.

"Oeuwa. I didn't know you rode."

"I… used to."

"There's extra fees, you knoeuwa. For keeping a horse," said Lady Sara.

Susan said nothing. She strongly suspected they'd be paid.

"And you've got noeuwa tack," said Lady Sara.

And Susan rose to it.

"I don't need any," she said.

"Oeuwa, bareback riding," said Lady Sara. "And you steer by the ears, ya?"

Cassandra Fox said: "Probably can't afford them, out in the sticks. And stop that dwarf looking at my pony. She's looking at my pony!"

"I'm only looking," said Gloria.

"You were… salivating," said Cassandra.

There was a pattering across the cobbles and Susan swung herself up and on to the horse's back.

She looked down at the astonished girls, and then at the paddock beyond the stables. There were a few jumps there, just poles balanced on barrels.

Without her moving a muscle, the horse turned and trotted into the paddock and turned towards the highest jump. There was a sensation of bunched energy, a moment of acceleration, and the jump passed underneath…

Binky turned and halted, prancing from one hoof to the other.

The girls were watching. All four of them had an expression of total amazement.

"Should it do that?" said jade.

"What's the matter?" said Susan. "Have none of you seen a horse jump before?"

"Yes. The interesting point is…" Gloria began, in that slow, deliberate tone of voice people use when they don't want the universe to shatter, "… is that, usually; they come down again."

Susan looked.

The horse was standing on the air.

What sort of command was necessary to make a horse resume contact with the ground? It was an instruction that the equestrian sorority had not hitherto required.

As if understanding her thoughts, the horse trotted forward and down. For a moment the hoofs dipped below the field, as if the surface were no more substantial than mist. Then Binky appeared to determine where the ground level should be, and decided to stand on it.

Lady Sara was the first one to find her voice.

"We'll tell Miss Butts of youewa," she managed.

Susan was almost bewildered with unfamiliar fright, but the pettymindedness in the tones slapped her back to something approaching sanity.

"Oh yes?" she said. "And what will you tell her?"

"You made the horse jump up and…" The girl stopped, aware of what she was about to say.