‘So be it: but don’t go getting your horse shod! That’s part of the smithy’s trickery, see, the way your horse’s shoes have simply worn away so quickly.’
She fleetingly pointed towards their limping horse, the worn shoe in Rouger’s hand.
‘People who regularly ride around here pay for fairy enchantments to protect their horse’s shoes against the magic that causes them to rapidly deteriorate. If you’ve heard the tale of the princess, then you know there’s a high price to pay for the blacksmith’s skills.’
The girl had at last managed to still her horse. Even so, it continued to snort impatiently.
‘I’m sure there’s better ways of finding this princess,’ the girl insisted.
‘To be honest, it’s not the princess we really need to find: it’s the Fay Queen.’
The girl laughed bitterly.
‘Then all you seem to enjoy doing is seeking out danger, if you ask me! I’d make sure I’d avoid coming across the Fay Queen more than I’d avoid the smithy! A pretty young girl like you: she’d snap you up as soon as look at you!’
‘I’ve met with her twice now, and she didn’t “snap me up”: even the once! She took instead a friend of mine – a boy.’
‘A boy? Seriously?’
The girl seemed genuinely puzzled by this revelation.
‘I’m trying to rescue him,’ Luna added
‘Well, good luck with that!’ The girl laughed bitterly once more. ‘Perhaps I need to give you a more detailed warning about what you’re really seeking! About what you’re letting yourself in for.’
*
Chapter 20
The Devil’s Own Shoes
A girl’s first pony is quite often the one she will always love most above all others.
And so it was with June, who had even named her very first pony Juniper, as it bore similarities to her own name.
As Juniper aged to the point where she struggled to support June, however, the girl refused to sell her. Instead, she insisted on constantly searching for ways to keep her old but dearly loved horse healthy through special exercise, diets, and (oh, if only she could afford it!) fairy enchantments.
Naturally, although she enjoyed caring for Juniper, she missed the thrill of going out riding with her friend, April.
April, too, missed riding with June. And so one day, she arrived at June’s stable with a beautiful horse in tow, one she had borrowed from an old woman who had insisted it needed exercising: for she, of course, being so old, could no longer take her beloved mount out for the swift country runs it relished.
June bit her lip, feeling guilty that she was eyeing the wonderfully athletic horse with longing. She lusted to be in the saddle once more, racing over hills and hollows as if flying through the air.
She glanced back at Juniper with an apologetically wry pursing of her lips: then lithely slipped into the saddle of the impatiently waiting horse.
*
Hurtling across the fields and through the woodlands was even better than she had remembered.
It was like being in a glorious dream. She wanted to ride and ride, to ride for ever.
Even as the sun set, she refused to rein in her wonderful mount. April was increasingly finding it hard to keep up with her. It was as if the old woman’s horse was tireless or, at the very least, like June had missed the thrill of racing headlong across the landscape, and was now making up for lost time.
As the two riders raced, they were joined by a third rider.
The new rider was impossibly beautiful, her gloriously white mount even more gracefully athletic than June’s impressive steed.
The woman said nothing however, not even a word of greeting. She simply drew up alongside the two girls, grinning in excitement, challenging them to keep up with her by merely urging her horse on and on into ever greater bursts of speed.
They passed farmers, who complained at their carelessness, the destruction of their crops.
They passed shepherds, who bewailed the sudden scaring and fleeing of their carefully herded sheep.
They passed poachers, who bemoaned the frightening off of painstakingly tracked game, the premature setting off of carefully set traps.
April’s horse couldn’t keep up with this furious pace. April was frightened that her horse might end up lame, or they might both fall as they tired. The jumping over fallen trunks, the ducking beneath overhanging branches, was becoming ever more difficult to keep up. She began to fall back, calling out to her friend to slow down before any of them had an accident.
But June and her own mount were caught up in the fabulous thrill of the chase. They were only spurred on to greater efforts as the white-clad woman increased her own already furious speed.
At last, April realised she would have to rein in her own, fully blown horse to a complete stop. It was only as she fell way back behind her friend and the woman that it dawned on her that they hadn’t been riding alone after all: for all around them, there were other riders, and a large pack of hounds. It was a gloriously, rabidly aggressive hunt, glowing in the moonlight’s sheen like so many ghosts.
*
Naturally, April thought nothing of it when she returned home and June wasn’t there.
She had seen how excited her friend had been: how caught up in the thrill of the chase, the joy of the race, she had been.
Of course, she had heard stories as a child of the Fay Queen, the Queen of The May: but surely, she thought, no such ridiculously mythical figure could ever come between two such close friends?
By next morning, when there was still no sign of June or the horse, she began at last to recognise that her friend had been abducted by the fairies.
Yet no one else she talked to, when asking questions she hoped would lead her to discovering where her friend might be, recalled seeing or hearing any raucous hunt the previous night.
Yes, of course farmers, shepherds and poachers had all seen the two girls ferociously riding across the countryside; but they were on their own.
There had never been any other rider with them.
No one, either, had seen anything of an old woman, accompanied by a magnificent horse.
April gasped in dismay.
She had helped the Fay Queen take and vanish completely away with her friend.
*
All April’s questions and enquiries regarding what might have happened to her friend resulted in the same shrugging of shoulders, the same speculation that June had obviously been taken by the Fay Queen. April soon realised that the only hope she had of finding her friend revolved around fairy magic.
Unfortunately, like June, she couldn’t afford the high cost of utilising fairy enchantments in her quest. She would have to head, rather, for the place where it was commonly held that you should always avoid: precisely because it was known to be a place of terrible magic
Even as she approached the smithy from the edges of the darkened moor, she could see the furnace blazing like the mouth of hell.
She could also hear the clanging of hammer on metal, a sound that could so easily be the forging of the chains that hold the souls in servitude.
All around her, the moor was as black as the coal that powered the Devil’s furnaces.
It was only at night time when the blacksmith worked on his most magical constructs.
He shod the Devil’s horses. If he knew the Devil, he might also know the Fay Queen.
He might, too, shoe the Fay Queen’s horses.
As April drew ever closer towards the fiery furnace, she heard a wailing, mournful tune being played on a violin.
She also heard people talking.
Two people.
One of the voices had the gruff, slow tones of an ancient man.
And the other was that of a young girl.
*
Dismounting her horse, tying him up to one of the rails that stood outside for precisely this reason, April entered the smithy.
Almost instantly, the voice of the girl vanis
hed, disappearing in mid sentence. The violin playing continued, however, its strains sad, melancholy.
The blacksmith was working on his anvil, creating the magical horseshoes for the Devil’s fabulously dark mounts.
There was no one else with him.
The violin hovered in the air above a chair, its bow and strings trembling as if being played by a particularly accomplished yet invisible musician.
The blacksmith glanced up as April entered. He grinned, wiped the sweat from his brow with a briefly raised forearm.
‘Evening, young missy,’ he said, the voice hard and harsh but full of welcome.
The violin continued to play. It had to be magical, of course. No normal violin could survive in this intense heat: its varnish would have melted, its wood spontaneously combusting.
The glow from the furnace covered everything in a bloody sheen. April had no real idea of what hell must look like, but this was surely close to the reality.
Even so, the blacksmith seemed surprisingly friendly to her.
‘I’m…I’m sorry to disturb you,’ she began hesitantly, ‘but I was wondering…wondering if you’d seen a beautiful woman pass this way?’
‘Well, to my mind, young missy, this description of a beautiful woman could refer to most women I know.’
‘Well…well this particular woman took a friend of mine…’
‘Hah, that woman, right?’
He grinned. He’d stopped off from his work now, holding his tongs and hammer down by each side of his massively muscular bulk.
‘You do know her?’
‘Aye, course I know her. And I’ve seen this new girl out riding with her too, who I’m guessing is your friend. But it don’t look much to me like this friend of yours is being dragged off unwillingly: she enjoys her night rides as much as the Fay Queen herself, from what I’ve seen.’
‘Ah, my friend only vanished last nigh–’
‘Only last night to you, young missy. For those in the Fay Queen’s realm, however, it could be a month, a year; or maybe even less than one second.’
‘Then if she’s enjoying it, like you say, she can only be enchanted–’
‘Enchanted’s the right word, young missy. She enjoys every second of riding like the wind over those hills and–’
‘Oh, please stop it, Volund! You know full well what the poor girl means!’
It was the girl’s voice once again, yet no one had entered the room.
The violin had stopped playing. It now hung in the air in an upright position. Its strings still quaked and shivered however, for this was where the girl’s voice was coming from.
‘Of course the girl’s friend has been charmed; if not magically, then by the new life she’s been offered!’
The smith turned to theatrically glare at the hovering violin.
‘I thought you said you didn’t want anyone to know you could talk!’ he said good-naturedly.
‘Well, what have we been talking about recently but how nice it is to help people in trouble? And here’s an opportunity for you to show our little chats have changed you for the better – as you claim – by helping this poor girl!’
The smith shrugged, raised his eyebrows as if being lectured to by an overly dominant wife.
‘All right, all right: if you wait on your horse outside, young missy,’ he said, indicating the door lying behind April with a dismissive wave, ‘you’ll see the hunt go past–’
‘Volund!’
‘What now?’
‘You know full well that the poor girl’s horse would have absolutely no chance of keeping up with the hunt in full flow!’
‘That’s true,’ April agreed, recalling the way the hunt had easily left her behind.
‘Well of course!’ the blacksmith stated emphatically. ‘But what horse could keep up, unless…’
His voice faded away, as if regretting even beginning his sentence.
‘Unless what?’
The violin asked the question as if already aware of the answer.
‘It would be too dangerous!’ the blacksmith declared, shaking his head miserably.
‘I’m prepared to risk it!’ April blurted out, even before she had any real idea what this dangerous action might fully entail.
‘I meant dangerous for me!’
‘Volund…’
The violin managed to make his name sound like the most terrible admonishment.
The blacksmith shrugged resignedly.
‘I’ll have to shoe your horse,’ he said.
With a raised hammer, he indicated a number of ancient, worn horseshoes fixed to one of the walls.
In the light of the furnace, they appeared to glow as if made of fire.
‘Those old tatty things…?’
April thought he must still be playing some awful joke on her.
‘Old and tatty they might be, young missy,’ the blacksmith commented as he strode over to the wall and took the shoes down, ‘but that’s only because they’ve had a lot of use – the Devil’s use!’
*
April had feared that shoeing her horse with the flaming shoes – for they did indeed blaze with their own fire, not with a reflected glow as she had first supposed – would cause him to rear fearfully. Under the blacksmith’s tender, expert hands, however, the horse remained strangely placid.
‘They retain some of the Devil’s own power,’ the smith explained as he hammered the nails home. ‘Though I’m not sure even he realises that, thankfully.’
It was only then that April realised they weren’t horseshoes after all.
They were used to shoe the Devil’s own hooves.
They were the Devil’s own shoes.
*
Even at a slight canter, the flaming hooves lit up the road around her as April made her way into the woods.
She listened for sounds of the hunt.
For the baying of hounds. For the strained blaring of a horn. The thunder of hooves.
She didn’t have long to wait.
The hunt came tearing towards her through the thick weave of forest.
They tore up the thickets, the undergrowth, even small saplings. Nothing was allowed to stand in their way if it blocked their path, if it slowed down the ferocity of the chase.
What were they chasing?
April couldn’t see.
She didn’t know of any animal that moved that fast.
The riders laughed, they whooped, they cried out in utmost joy. Their mounts whinnied and snorted, crashing relentlessly through the snapping, crackling undergrowth, as if they were a raging fire. The pack flowed ahead of them all, a smoothly running stream of black and white, of elated yelping and howling.
As the hunt tore about her, April wheeled her own mount around – and joined in with the furious chase.
*
Through flooding rivers, through fields of corn, through seemingly impenetrable woods. Through quiet villages, through cobblestoned streets in deserted towns.
Over hills, over hedges, over walls, over hayricks, over houses.
The hunt charged on and on, crossing county after county.
Stagecoaches foolishly out at night reined to a halt in terror as the hunt passed before them. People threw open their windows to complain at the noise, at the idiots carelessly barging all over their rooftops: then instantly slammed their shutters shut, wishing they had never even woken.
The riders would leap from a church tower half jumping, half flying. They would leap onto a farm roof, soaring into the air as if weightless.
Their speed was frightening, impossible – unimaginably exhilarating.
Despite her excitement, April worried for her horse, wondered if she could keep up such an unbelievable pace. But her horse seemed every bit as elated as she was, eagerly bowing his neck into the run, neighing with pleasure as he soared over obstacle after obstacle.
His hooves flared, sparked. Behind him, he left blazing hoofprints in the soil, even the streams. Hayricks set alight, thatche
d roofs of cottages smouldered, ancient wooden bridges burnt as if they were bonfires straddling rivers.
‘Tut tut: you really are such a trouble causer, aren’t you?’
The Fay Queen was effortlessly galloping alongside April, mocking her with a malicious grin, a highly amused glint in her eyes. Her great white horse pounded the ground, the roof tiles, the waters of the rivers.
Everything was flashing by so quickly now. The Fay Queen slipped slightly to one side, allowing April a clearer view of the rest of the hunt.
And there, at last; April spied June.
June was riding as April was: abandoning any sense of care, of reason. June urged her own mount on pell-mell, uncaring of the consequences. She was oblivious to April’s presence, her focus being only on the hunt, on the prey that ran so far ahead of them all.
‘All this noise!’ the Fay Queen cried out over the thundering hooves, the baying pack. ‘We could wake up the Devil himself, don’t you think April?’
She laughed, gave a nod of her head to indicate a field way beyond the very front of the hunt; and April saw at last who they were chasing.
His hooves flashed, as if made of fire.
He laughed, enjoying the chase, enjoying leading them all a merry dance.
His teeth glowed, his eyes glowed, glowed as if made of fire.
The Devil was having a wonderful time.
*
‘You do know,’ the Fay Queen said calmly to April, now riding directly alongside her once more, ‘that if the hounds catch you, they’ll make a tasty meal of that pretty little horse of yours?’
‘But they’re not–’
‘The Devil take the hindmost!’ the Fay Queen chortled mischievously; and suddenly, she was no longer alongside April.
But then, neither was the hunt.
The hunt was now way behind April.
And she had taken the place of the Devil as the hunt’s sought-after prey.
*
Unlike the Devil, of course, who had been enjoying the chase, April realised her own life – and that of her horse, Veras – was in danger.
She urged Veras on, bending low in her saddle and whispering in his ear that he had to run, run, run – run for our lives, Veras!