~BETH~
Some will say she is the most unusual thing to ever happen on Thisby. To some, that's saying a lot. To others, it's just another one of those things that could only ever happen on Thisby.
I cannot say on which day she was actually born, but I found her early in the morning on the first of September. She was lying on her side at the edge of our pond in the west field, so still that I had thought she was dead. A million thoughts raced through my head at finding a dead newborn foal in a field in which we did not keep horses: had her dam escaped from her pasture or stall and abandoned her after the birth? But we only bred our horses for spring foaling, so was she the foal of one of the boarding mares? Was there a break in the fence to one of the neighbors- perhaps the Privetts' or the Falks'? The uncertainty made me curious and I set down my bucket and approached her slowly- half out of dread, half out of caution.
I was about fifteen feet from her when I got my first whiff, and knew exactly what she was. When you're from Thisby, there's no mistaking that odor of rot and blood. She was a capall uisce: one of the monstrous water horses living in the sea around the island.
But in early September? This far inland after a night that had been calm? And right beside a body of fresh water? And at that, she was a foal! The capall who came ashore each autumn were, without exception, all adults. No one had ever seen a juvenile water horse anywhere near the land, ever. Even dead, she was a wonder.
But then her tail twitched, and a shudder trembled along her flank and I was dumbstruck. She was alive, but I dared go no closer. She may have looked like a helpless foal, but the cappail are not horses- they are monsters. I turned so swiftly, I tripped over the bucket I'd been carrying and its contents went flying. It briefly occurred to me that my father would be cross with me for spilling the meat, but I also knew that if anyone would forgive me for it in light of this new discovery, it would be my father. After all, there's no greater authority on the cappail uisce than Sean Kendrick.
I found my parents in the kitchen where they calmly sipped their morning tea. At my headlong, blustery, barely-coherent entrance, they'd looked up in alarm and set down their cups in unison. My mother had peered at me queerly and asked if I was sure of what I'd seen, but my father gave me no time to answer. He'd just clenched his jaw with that hard look of concern that becomes all too familiar as autumn wears on and the threat from the sea to his breeding stock increases, and ushered us both out the door.
Sure enough, the tiny capall was right where I'd left her. My parents had stared at her for a moment, hesitant just as I had been, before moving to action. My father approached the horse first, humming low as he'd moved, reaching for something in a pocket of his deep blue jacket. He palmed the small, dark object as he knelt behind the foal's head, humming and whispering something I could not make out. He'd gingerly laid his hand behind her ear and worked it slowly down her neck, palm pressing softly into her damp coat. He had removed his belt and looped it around her jaw, creating a makeshift muzzle. Meanwhile, my mother gathered up the bucket I'd dropped and run down, snatching the bits of raw meat from the grass where they'd spilled and placing them back in the bucket. I bent to help her, feeling more than a little guilty about her helping me with a chore that had been assigned to me, all the while keeping my father and the foal in the edges of my vision.
And all at once he somehow had the filly on her feet. Both my mother and I turned our attention to the pair, and after a moment's hesitation I ran for the gate that led into a small paddock just outside the barn, once used as a turnout for my mother's mare, Dove. But no horse lives forever, and this paddock and its adjoining stall in the barn had been empty since I was six. As I swung the gate open, I saw the expected look of disapproval furrow my mother's face. But I knew that she is a practical person, and this paddock was the easiest one for us to reach.
The filly trembled with each step, perhaps because of the iron buckle across her nose, perhaps from the weakness of being a newborn. But now that she was upright and walking, I could see her unusual markings unobscured. She was almost entirely black, except for a white blaze that began as a sharp point between her nostrils and widened like a spearhead as it traveled up her face. It widened across her eyes, then tapered again at her poll and ran the length of her crest, then down her withers and along her spine like a wide dorsal stripe, running straight and true along her brush of a tail. In profile she looked like a black horse with a white mane and tail; her white marking mirrored down the middle in a perfect stripe that widened only in the center of her face to encompass her eyes.
My mother, the bucket clutched tightly in one hand, joined me at the gate. A moment later my father walked the little filly past us and toward the stable. As they came within a few feet of us- the closest I'd been to this mysterious horse since I'd found her, I noticed three things: one, my father led her with the belt in one hand and the other moving through her mane, tying knots in the fine hairs as they walked. Two: the white of the blaze across her eyes had affected the filly's eye color. Instead of deep brown or blue or even white as most horses' eyes were, hers were the swirling grey of a stormy sea. Three: as she passed me, her ear and eye were solidly turned toward me. This was not lost on my father, who knew the body language of horses better than anyone on Thisby. He glanced once in my direction as they passed, and his expression was dark indeed.