Free The Bride's Farewell by Meg Rosoff

scrub ponies. It branded him superior and strange all at once.
    Pell began backing him as soon as he was strong enough to bear her weight, and he didn’t act as if he minded, only at the beginning turned to look at the odd new thing. When he was three and a bit, they’d ride along the moors with Birdie and his mare, Maggs, just walking or jogging with a loose rein so he’d get used to the feel of her, until one day Maggs flushed a brace of grouse by nearly stepping on them, and the noise and the flapping startled her into a dead run with Birdie hanging on for dear life. Jack seemed to consider the situation before making up his mind to follow, and then off they went at a gallop. Pell imagined one of his legs down a rabbit hole while she died of a broken neck, but Jack seemed born knowing what to do with a field full of holes, and never put a foot where it oughtn’t to be. And that was only one of his talents, for that was also the day she discovered he could fly.
    For those poor souls who can only think of the terrible fear and danger of a runaway horse, think of this: a speed like water flowing over stone, a skimming sensation that hovers and dips while the world spins around and the wind drags your skin taut across your bones. You can close your eyes and lose yourself in the rhythm, because nothing you do or shout or wish for will happen until the running makes up its mind to stop. So you hold steady, balancing yourself in the wake, and unhook your mind from the everyday while you wait at the silent center of it all and hope that the feeling won’t stop till you’re good and ready for life to be ordinary once more.
    The problem being that she never was.

Seventeen

    T he Gypsy children passed their time running and rolling and darting in and out of the horse’s legs and bickering over anything edible. They took turns on Moses, who had feathered ankles and a steady plodding stroll, balancing on him like circus acrobats though he took no notice of them, flyweight creatures that they were. When one child lost interest in riding, it would slide off and allow a different one to scramble up in its place. Their mother didn’t interfere except with a look or a hssst to indicate danger. The activity and clamor of them distracted Pell from her troubles, for which she was grateful.
    After another day on the plain, they began to descend into a hilly vale and Esther stopped and said, “Look.” Pell followed the direction of her gaze, and for a moment her heart stood still in wonder. She had heard of such things but never imagined that she would see it with her own eyes. It faced left with all four limbs straining outward, its long curved neck thrown up across the hillside. It may once have been pure white, but now its outline bled into the surrounding hillside, and the graceful chalk body was dappled all over with flora, blurred, but with the clarity of its spirit intact.
    “Legend says he once had a boy rider,” Esther mused. At this, Esmé frowned, and glared at Pell, for there was no sign of the boy.
    They might have stood all day just looking, but Esther slapped the reins, and Moses lifted his mighty head and walked on. For half a mile the white chalk horse stayed on their right, changing position as they moved around it, until eventually they entered a wood and it danced off without them.
    By noon, the autumn sun had taken the chill off the day, and it was a beautiful evening when finally they left the main road. Esther stopped for a conversation with a small encampment of Gypsies by the side of the road, then led her family onto a tiny twig of a path that opened into a quiet meadow, hidden from the road by a long stand of dense hedge. While Esther built a fire and boiled the kettle, Pell turned Moses out to graze, watching as he stood switching flies. With the white horse still skipping in her head, Pell brushed tears from her eyes with an impatient hand.
    Elspeth fetched a china teapot and a stack of cups, holding the