~~~~~
Penny was her usual mile-a-minute self at breakfast and told everyone that I had taken over for Mister Humpity the night before and had showed “promise” as a first-class mount. It did little to speak to my authority as head of staff.
After breakfast when the child was released into the wild, I was able to set about reorganizing the staff’s list of duties.
When I met the lady of the house at eleven she was all business about her ideas for the event on the weekend. Caterers had been hired, and some landscapers were coming later that day for me to deal with. At the end of the meeting I felt as if I had earned my pay.
“Very good, Mister Cork,” she said as she rose with grace. “You are very good at your job.”
“I aim to please, ma’am,” I said. “I hope to always give exceptional service.”
“We expect no less,” Mrs. Hobbson said.
“And Mister Kentworth could not supply it?” I became bold, I suppose because there were so many things that were not adding up in what should have been a perfect household.
She looked at me with ice blue eyes and nodded. I thought I saw something other than anger in her look. Fear.
I spent the next hour working with the gardening staff to prepare them for the landscapers and caterers. This left me at the south end of the great lawn near the woods. I found myself alone. Well, almost.
“I see you, Penelope,” I called. “You can come out.”
A black-haired head popped out from a bush. “I’m supposed to be sneaking like a spy,” she called back. “You’re not supposed to be able to see me.”
“Well, I do,” I said. “You’re not invisible like Mister Humpy.”
“Mister Humpity,” she corrected. She stepped out from the bushes and trudged over to me. “A spy don’t need to be invisible,” she said. “Just crafty!”
She walked right up to me and stared up at me as if in challenge. “What’cha doin’ out here? I thought you was gonna butler the house?”
“My job is to make everything in the house run smoothly, Miss Penny,” I said. “And sometimes that involves things outside the house.” She took to walking along side me as I moved toward the main driveway to take me in a long loop back up to the house.
“I’m tired of walking,” she said after a minute.
“Well, ask your friend to ride you,” I said with a smart aleck grin.
“You scare him. He doesn’t like you,” she said seriously.
“I’m sorry for that, but I don’t mean to be scary.” We were walking past the barn. “You’re not scared of me, are you?”
“Nope,” she said. “You’re not scary.”
“Then, do you think you could tell me something?” We stopped by the corner of the barn and I looked down at the tyke with a serious face.
“What is that?” She returned my serious look.
“Do you really know why Mister Kentworth went away?”
She surprised me again with a very direct answer.
“Oh, I know,” she said.
“Well, would you tell me?” I said. I wanted to shake her to make her tell me but realized I could not seem too anxious.
“Okay,” she said with nonchalance. “But it’ll cost you.”
“Cost me?”
“Nothin’ for nothin’,” she said sagely.
We stared each other down like two horse traders. At last I said. “What do you want in exchange?”
“A horsey ride,” she said.
“A horsey ride?”
“Yes. But the way I want it.”
“Okay.” I said. “As soon as I get–“
“No, not later,” she said. “I want a ride now. I’ll tell you about Mister Kentworth while you ride me around the barn.”
It seemed a fairly cheap price for the information I wanted, but I did not want to be seen surrendering to the child. Still, ten minutes of discomfort were worth finding out the answer to the mystery.
“Okay,” I said. I turned around and offered her my back.
“Oh no,” she said. “Horses have a flat back and have four legs. Last night that was more of a piggy back.” She looked like she had considered the whole matter very carefully.
“Do I have to?”
“Yep.”
She left me no choice so I got down on all fours. “Hop aboard, M’lady.”
She giggled and immediately climbed aboard. “Gitty up!” she commanded.
“Not until you start to tell me,” I said.
“Okay,” she said. “Take me to the barn, and I’ll tell you all about Mister Kentworth. You see, he didn’t like Lord Gob at all!”
I felt a fool, on my hands and knees with a child on my back, yet to find out what I wanted it seemed a reasonable price. “Mister Kentworth left because he didn’t like your invisible friend?”
“Yup,” she said. “Go faster!”
“How is it that he left because of that?” I felt absurd conducting an interrogation of a child while on all fours. “That seems pretty extreme.”
“That’s a big word.”
“I mean, that seems pretty serious.”
“Well Lord Gob is pretty serious,” she said. “And he doesn’t like it when people don’t believe in him.” She kicked me in the flank lightly. “Go faster!”
I moved forward at her command, all but ignoring the kick for my shock at her statement. “You got a man fired because he did not believe in your invisible friend?”
“Oh, he wasn’t fired,” she said between giggles.
“But he left,” I said. “You must have told your parents about his disbelief and they fired him.”
“No,” she insisted. “They didn’t fire him.”
“Then why did he leave? Where did he go?”
She giggled almost uncontrollably as I came up to the door of the stable. “Go?” she said as we entered the door to the stable. “He didn’t go anywhere.” She hopped off my back and danced away toward one of the stalls. “Mister Kentworth didn’t go anywhere.” She went to a stall where a tall white stallion was snorting restlessly.
“If he didn’t go anywhere,” I asked as I reared up on my knees to stretch my back, “where is he?”
The giggling child tapped on the nameplate on the door. “Silly,” she said. “He’s right here.”
It was then, to my surprise, I saw the name on the door; it said ‘Mister Kentworth’!
“What do you mean?” I asked.
The little girl patted the stallion on his nose. “Right here, silly,” she smiled. “I turned him into a horse.”
“Stop lying, Penny,” I said. “Now tell me what really happened to Mister Kentworth.” I let the annoyance in my voice tinge my statement.
“You shouldn’t call me a liar,” the child said. Her eyes narrowed and her lips twisted into a snarl. “I don’t tell fibs!”
She raised her arms above her head in a gesture, as if she were some junior Prospero summoning the winds, and laughed. “I told you you’d make an even nicer horsey and I meant it.”
I was sure my eyes were playing tricks on me for the child seemed to glow with a strange and eerie light then, like summer lightning in the distance yet crawling luminously along her tiny form. Her eyes went from sky blue to glowing like blue flames.
“I like to play horsey,” the dark haired vixen said with an evil giggle. “And I’d like to play with you some more.” She crooked a finger and I felt compelled to fall forward onto my hands again. Only now instead of falling onto my open palms my hands had balled themselves of their own accord into fists. I fell onto my knuckles, only my knuckles were changing. To my astonishment my hands began to alter, changing into something not quite human. In a short time it was clear to me what they were becoming — hooves!
I looked back up at her to see the moppet was smiling evilly. “You’re gonna be just the bestest horsey,” she said. “Mister Kentworth was mean to Lord Gob. You were nice to him — even if you scared Mister Humpity. But I know you didn’t mean to.
You’re not mean.”
My clothes split off me of their own accord, my shirt and trousers peeling off like the skin of a snake. My legs were legs no longer, now they were the hindquarters of an equine beast!
Just then Lucia Hobbson came into the stable followed by the entire household staff, cook, gardeners, maids and all. The lady of the house was dressed in riding togs and had her jet-black hair pulled tightly into a ponytail.
“Now then, Mister Cork,” she said as she approached me with a leather and metal bit and halter harness. She approached me with a smile on her sensual lips and her eyes shining but I backed away from her. “Take it easy. It is better to accept your fate than fight it. I’d say ‘ask Mister Kentworth,’ but that would be pointless.”
She slipped the harness over my head and forced the bit into my mouth so that in a few moments I was nothing more than a harnessed beast.
“Head up, Mister Cork,” she said. “Conformation is everything!” She laughed, an echo of her daughter’s evil giggle.
Penny came skipping across the stable and opened a side door where three of the most horrid things I have ever seen entered. One was a small winged woman, one a lumbering reptilian, and the third a thing very much like a shaggy elephant in miniature.
Lady Flit, Lord Gob and Mister Humpity themselves!
The three grotesqueries followed the little girl faithfully and, when she motioned them, stepped to the side of the barn and awaited her call.
Penny said in a cheerful tone, “Are you all ready to play horsey with me?”
I could do little but toss my head and pull on the reins in Mrs. Hobbson’s hands.
“He’s just a little skittish,” the woman said to her daughter.
Penny laughed. “I’ll fix that,” she said. She took the reins from her mother and with a nimble step vaulted to my back.
Her weight was negligible but the mere fact that she was seated on my back in a saddle was disturbing. She pulled on the reins and cried, “Okay, let’s go, Mister Cork.” She tried to get me to move toward the three grotesque forms standing along the wall.
I resisted and she slapped my rump. “Come on,” she called, “let’s go for a ride.”
Her mother saw my reluctance and said, “Oh, you think you are mad, Mister Cork? Or that your eyes are playing tricks on you? Penny!”
The little girl, taking her cue from her mother’s implied order said, “Okay, Mama, I’ll make them go away.” She clapped her hands and, to my shock the household staff, Mrs. Wilson, the maids, the gardener, the gatekeeper and all the others, simply vanished!
“You see, Mister Cork,” the dark haired mother said, “Penny does have imaginary companions, but they are not those three. It’s all the rest of us.” And with that the lady faded away leaving me alone with the moppet and her monsters.