Chapter Two

Chapter Two

When I woke in the morning my mind was much clearer. I think the shock of the spirits had cleared out a great deal of the fever in my head, so I was able to rise and look about me, taking stock of my surroundings.

I was alone. The bed in the corner was made up, the fire was crackling gently under a slowly seeping pot of tea. The cloth over the windows were moving with the wind that came soughing through, a cold edge to it. I shivered and tested my hooves. The overland gallop had done nothing to better their condition, and they were in a sorry, sorry state. I knew that hobbling was the best I could do for a while. If, I thought wearily, my hooves don't get worse. They might give out altogether, and then I will be food for the tigers. I don't suppose they have tigers here in the North, do they?

I stumbled about the little house, clumsy because I was too large for the enclosure and because my limbs, after the hard run for seemingly endless days and nights, had got horribly stiff during their first rest. They hurt worse than my horn did, and if I weren't as much a stallion as I was, I might have cried at the agony.

My two-legger came to the doorway presently and found me trying out my legs. "Good morning to you," he said.

I nodded back. "Yes, I guess if it's good to be alive, it is a good morning."

He flashed a smile. "Are they so very sore?"

Caught in my pain, I laid back my ears. "Not really," I told him firmly. "I just feel a trifle light-headed."

His eye roved over me carefully before coming back to my face. I think he could tell I was in great pain, but he said no more about it. Coming in, he laid his cloak down on the table and leaned cock-eyed on a chair. "Are you level-headed enough to tell me about yourself?" inquired he.

"I am level-headed enough," I replied, "but it's the heads and the tails I can't make out. I know about as much of where I've come from as you do."

"Oh, you might be surprised," my two-legger told me. His blue eyes had lost their hard burn and were twinkling almost merrily. "I asked a Stag last night and he said he'd seen you running up from the northwest bend of the Archen River." His face suddenly grew serious. "He told me you were flying like the wind through a desert gorge, almost spent, but had the heart to reach the ends of the earth. What made you run like that?"

I swallowed. "Promise me," I begged him in a rasping voice that still didn't sound like mine, "promise me you will never make me go back to that place."

"What place?" he asked, eyes narrowing. The burning came back.

Gunnfus stumped into the doorway. "Sir," he said bluntly.

I was diverted from my answer by his stern face and tone. In one hand he held a horn, in the other he held a bow and quiver. One of his big booted feet was tapping impatiently.

My two-legger pressed his fingertips against his temples with a soft moan. "Of course, Gunnfus, yes, I am coming." He took the items from the little person, but turned at the doorway. I knew he was going to speak, and watched with a checked heart as the hesitant expressions ran one after another over his face. "Noon," he said finally, and walked out the door.

Noon. I hobbled to the window and looked at the sky. It was still very early morning; the sun had barely got through the trees. The lawn was grey with dewy gossamer; the sound of horses' hooves on the ground drummed dully in the air. I could not see round the edge of the house from where I stood inside, but I thought I caught the merest glancing of a cloak on the breeze.

Noon. Having a whole morning to myself in my new lodging, I wondered what to do with myself. I didn't dare go out on the lawn. The cover of night now gone, I felt a curious sensation the two-leggers would term naked. I backed away from the window and went to the fire.

A bang at the door startled me terrible. "Hullo!" I cried, lowering my horn before I realized it was Gunnfus. I had thought he had gone out with my two-legger but, by all appearances, he hadn't.

"You put that horn away," he told me sternly. "I'm popping out now; can you manage on your own?"

I frowned. "Of course I can manage," I assured him. But watching him go, though I didn't much care for his sternness and that look he had first given me, I felt terribly betrayed and alone. I felt like an animal in a cage, but still I didn't dare walk out that door.

So I was alone. I had made it but had nothing to show for my short-lived triumph except four cracked hooves and a hacked horn. The house, I quickly found, was not suited for equines, so I pottered about as carefully as I could like some mechanical creature on my stiff joints, poking among the trunk and crannies to amuse myself. I inspected the little door I had seen Gunnfus come out of the night before, and having got the latch off, pulled it open with my teeth to see beyond. It was a little stone room, quite cool and shadowy, with a distant scent of moss lingering around my hooves. And then I picked up a new, sharp, pungent smell that first surprised me, then intrigued me. I entered.

Little light could get in through the doorway, so I had to step aside and twist my head one way and get a proper idea of the room. It was large enough to hold me comfortably, though the chill was too much for my throat, and I found that the strong smell was coming from a body that rustled and shifted in the shadows.

"Hullo?" I asked softly.

No one answered. I went in a little further and peered closer. Then I found, to my propounded surprise, that it was nothing but a cow. She gazed up out of the darkness at me with a languid smile and silly, dark eyes. I left her to her hay and went back into the front room. I began to feel very depressed with my surroundings. What was the use? I had traded one cage for another. A dark cloud settled over my spirit.

I spent much of the morning in a half-doze by the sinking fire. I kept off my feet as much as I could. Then I found I had really dropped off to sleep, waking with the sun slanting into the west. Jumping up, I trotted uneasily to the door to peer out in the bitter hopes that my two-legger had returned.

There was no sign of him. The lawn was silent save for a wind that had got lost on it and took its time in the dancing by. There had been a time, I considered, when I could dance like that, but not now, perhaps not ever again. I pricked my ears to hear any sound of hoofbeats coming near. He had said noon, he had, I knew it! But it was past the noon hour already and—I got a horrid notion that he had come while I had been sleeping and gone on somewhere else already. The world was a big place and there were many toils in it. Surely he must be a busy person with more cares than a strange unicorn. I was tempted to be stung by that; I was an egotistical creature; most unicorns are to some degree. But I had been under the impression that the two-legger was the sort to really care. I had been proved wrong.

Lost in my desperation, I was startled by a scampering, wicking sound in the bushes near the door. I jumped and lowered my horn instinctively, calling out, "What, ho! Who goes there?"

A curious little creature with curiously big, black eyes popped its head out of the bush. With a little worm and wiggle it came out fully, flinging a great fluffy tail over its back. It was of a rust-like colour, rather warm and—wick, I guess I could say. Alive. But it was so strange and like nothing I had ever seen before. Like a reddish-brown rat. I raised a hoof, ready to ward it off if need be. "What on earth—!"

It laughed in a high-pitched tone. "Hullo," it said cheerily.

I lowered my hoof warily. "Hullo. If—if you don't mind my asking, what are you?"

Its silly pointed ears tipped back and forth for a moment. "Well," it replied, "I'm a Narnian."

My tongue tied up on the word. "Beg pardon, a what?"

It chortled. "A Narnian."

"A what?" I retorted. Meaningless words shed no illumination when repeated idiotically. I began to guess the creature was not all right in the head.

So, seeing I didn't understand, it got up on its hind legs, crumpled its little fists as it stretched as high as it could—it came hardly higher than my fetlock—and bawled in its unoiled, tiny voice, "A Narnian!"

I bawled back down at it, "Yes, I heard you. What does that mean? What do you do? Where do you live? What sort of species is a Narnian?"

It took a long, confused look at me, then shook its head as though to clear it. I began to wonder—it was an unpleasant thing to wonder—whether it was I who was the idiot. Being the bigger of the two I, of course, had the upper hoof, but when it came to a battle of wits the little flighty creature might be able to beat me, since I still felt tired and worn. Talking to it was not going to be a flick of the tail.

"So," it said, hesitantly, "what's your name?"

"Darjeeling," I told it solemnly. "Darjeeling Seymour Khan."

"Terrible mouthful," it said.

"Not really," I replied.

"Yes, it is."

I frowned. "Well, then, what's your name, if you're so eager to trample mine?"

"Nutkin," it said cheerily, getting up and doing a swift dance on its hind paws.

"You don't have a family name?" I inquired. "How do you tell yourself from the other Narnians? Presuming there are other Narnians."

It skittered in a rabid circle and twitched its tail to the raucous tune of an unnatural cackle. "Of course there are other Narnians! But we're not stuck up; we've only got one name apiece."

At that, I believe, I got really angry. I knew I wasn't from around here, I knew I was an alien, but this impish little creature needn't go shoving the naked sensation of being alien right in my face! I stomped both my forehooves and nearly screamed, "How dare you malign my name? My people are renowned throughout the forest! The wolves come ask of our wisdom! Get out of here, you wretch! Leave me to the one spot of ground I'm allowed."

The Narnian ran back a distance at my outburst, flashed its tail in the sunlight a few times, then scampered away, shrieking as it went. And then, when the silence fell between me and the forest, I began to feel horrid. I shouldn't have lost my temper; now I was even more alone than before. "Don't go," I whispered to the wind and the little creature called Nutkin. "I'm sorry, don't go." But of course no one heard my whisper, and the Narnian didn't come back.

Among my people, a noble death is more desirable than a shameful life. I discovered that I had threatened a little wisp of a thing, something that, physically, had no chance against my horn and hooves. I, Darjeeling Seymour Khan, pride of my father's heart, had lost all dignity, all kindness.

A hot tear gathered at the corner of my eye. "They made me one of them," I whispered. "The two-leggers turned me into the very thing I hated: a slave, a coarse, witless, evil thing. How devilish!" I stomped again. My hoof on the flagstones crashed, bringing back the hordes of memories of chains and darkness, jeers, eyes, black lips around white teeth. I would rather face the hungry tiger than go back into that horror. And now…I lowered my head. I had become that horror. I had been whipped enough to know how to whip back.

I lifted my hoof. Underneath the flagstone had been broken into several useless pieces. "Oh, woe!" I cried madly. "Can I do nothing now but destroy? Better I ended it all now."

With a resolved shake of my black mane I hobbled out of the doorway and struck out across the lawn. The sun was beginning to fall into the west, dying red over the horizon. To it I turned. Instinct told me there was wilderness out there, vast stretches of unpopulated land where I could lose myself. And as I went the chill of twilight swept around me, welcoming me in as though I were entering my tomb.