Part One
Before the Journey…

Colm wiped sweat that was trickling down into his eyes and grimly dug his shovel into a pile of horse manure in one of the makeshift stalls.

'Why?' he thought. 'Why me? Couldn't Emma be at least partly to blame? After all, if she hadn't had a candle burning in the barn, none of this would have happened! She gets to be with the horses all the time, even when she's sleeping! Where as I'm not allowed within ten feet of them, at least since Dad found out about Dowager. But I wasn't even allowed to ride them before that.'

Colm angrily shoved the last pile of manure in the wheelbarrow and dumped it out. There! He was done at last. At that moment, Colm felt a strange, but compelling urge to go into the woods. He glanced around. No one was around, so he decided to go along with it and headed into the forest near his house. After a while, he stopped to rest and sat down on a log by a clear stream for a little bit. All of a sudden, he saw a black horse step forward and begin drinking out of the stream. However, this wasn't any ordinary horse. As Colm looked closer, he noticed it had pulsing orange lines all over the outside of its body, sort of like external veins.

"What the…?!" Colm gasped, and jumped up in surprise.

At the sound of his voice, the horse jerked its head up, its ears pinned back, and it bolted-straight at Colm.

Colm stood rooted to the spot with terror. He couldn't have moved if he tried.

'Oh no…' he thought. 'I am so dead.'

The horse continued to thunder towards him, teeth bared, but seconds before he would have crashed into Colm he jumped, soaring into the air with the greatest of ease, the back hooves missing his face by inches. Colm felt his muscles turn to water, then, a second later, everything went black. The next thing he knew, he was lying on the ground with Emma bending over him, yelling in his face for him to wake up.

"What happened to you?" she demanded.

"I, err, fell asleep," said Colm rather awkwardly, sitting up.

"No you didn't, it took me about five minutes to get you to wake up! I know you're a heavy sleeper, but it usually doesn't take that long," Emma said.

"Well then, maybe I was really tired," muttered Colm miserably. "Just leave me alone, okay?" he yelled angrily, then got up and stalking off. Emma sighed and followed. 'Typical,' she thought.