Soul Music

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.

" Quite so," said Susan. "I expect that seeing horses float in the air is silly, don't you?"

She slipped off the horse's back, and gave the watchers a bright smile.

" It's against school rules, anyway," muttered Lady Sara.

Susan led the white horse back into the stables, rubbed him down, and put him in a spare loose‑box.

There was a rustling in the hay‑rack for a moment. Susan thought she caught a glimpse of ivory‑white bone.

" Those wretched rats," said Cassandra, struggling back to reality. "I heard Miss Butts tell the gardener to put poison down."

" Shame," said Gloria.

Lady Sara seemed to have something boiling in her mind.

" Look, that horse didn't really stand in mid‑air, did it?" she demanded. "Horses can't do that!"

" Then it couldn't have done it," said Susan.

" Hang time," said Gloria. "That's all it was. Hang time. Like in basketball. Bound to be something like that."

" Yes."

" That's all it was."

" Yes."

The human mind has a remarkable ability to heal. So have the trollish and dwarfish minds. Susan looked at them in frank amazement. They'd all seen a horse stand on the air. And now they had carefully pushed it somewhere in their memories and broken off the key in the lock.

" Just out of interest," she said, still eyeing the hayrack, "I don't suppose any of you know where there's a wizard in this town, do you?"

" I've found us somewhere to play!" said Glod.

" Where?" said Lias.

Glod told them.

" The Mended Drum?" said Lias. "They throw axes!"

" We'd be safe there. The Guild won't play in there," said Glod.

" Well, yah, dey lose members in there. Their members lose members," said Lias.

" We'll get five dollars," said Glod.

The troll hesitated.

" I could use five dollars," he conceded.

" One‑third of five dollars," said Glod.

Lias's brow creased.

" Is that more or less than five dollars?" he said.

" Look, it'll get us exposure," said Glod.

" I don't want exposure in de Drum," said Lias. "Exposure's the last thing I want in de Drum. In de Drum, I want something to hide behind."

" All we have to do is play something," said Glod. "Anything. The new landlord is dead keen on pub entertainment."

" I thought they had a one‑arm bandit."

" Yes, but he got arrested."

There's a floral clock in Quirm. It's quite a tourist attraction.

It turns out to be not what they expect.

Unimaginative municipal authorities throughout the multiverse had made floral clocks, which turn out to be a large clock mechanism buried in a civic flower­bed with the face and numbers picked out in bedding plants.

But the Quirm clock is simply a round flower‑bed, filled with twenty‑four different types of flower, care­fully chosen for the regularity of the opening and closing of their petals...