Free All the King's Horses by Laura C Stevenson Page A

to the driver, and the driver steered the horses through the crowd. When they passed the last person, he touched the horses with a stick, and they came towards us at a gallop. The tall man laughed and looked up at us; then he put down his shield and waved. His hand glinted in the sun – not because he was wearing rings, but because his arm was made of silver. Suddenly I knew who he was.
    ‘Grandpa,’ I whispered – then I trembled all over for fear the Sidhe had heard me.
    But there were no Sidhe, and there was no cave. I was sitting up in bed, blinking because someone had just switched on my bedroom light.
    ‘Grandpa,’ I said, frowning. ‘Why did you turn my light on? It’s the middle of the night.’
    Grandpa gave me his lovely, empty smile. ‘Breakfast?’ he said hopefully.
    I looked at my clock; it was a little past twelve. ‘Grandpa, it’s not time for breakfast yet. Would you like me to take you back to bed?’
    ‘Breakfast,’ he said stubbornly.
    I got up and started to take him downstairs. Halfway down the hall, Colin slipped out his door, all lit up. ‘Boy oh boy! You
got
him! Grandpa, we’ve been looking and looking … !’
    ‘Breakfast time,’ said Grandpa.
    Colin stared … then he took Grandpa’s hook gently and went downstairs with us. As we passed the living room, we saw Mom sitting at our father’s old roll-top desk. She wasn’t writing letters; she was asleep with her head pillowed on her arms. Grandpa started towards her, but we coaxed him into the kitchen and got him cold cereal and milk. Neither of us ate. Or talked.
    When he was done, we led him up the back stairs. I was afraid he’d fuss about going to his room, but he went just fine; he even lay down on his bed when I asked him to. I covered him up, and we both kissed his forehead. ‘Good night, Grandpa. Stay there until morning, OK?’
    ‘OK,’ he said. And he closed his eyes.
    We waited to make sure he wouldn’t go and wake Mom, then we tiptoed out into the hall.
    ‘You saw him, right?’ said Colin. ‘In that chariot? That means he’s really in Faerie.’
    ‘You can’t say “really” when it was a dream.’
    ‘But it wasn’t! We couldn’t both dream the same thing!’
    ‘Not
our
dream – when he was in the chariot, he was in someone
else’s
dream.’
    ‘Which means . . ?’ His face fell. ‘Oh, I see.’ He turned to his door without a word.
    I just
couldn’t
let him go like that. So I said, ‘They’re faeries, remember? And They think if they keep confusing and scaring us, we won’t go back to the Otherworld. But if we don’t let being mixed up or scared stop us …’
    ‘Right,’ he said, setting his chin. ‘We’ll get to him. Next time, we’ll bring him home.’
    I gave him a thumbs-up and went to bed. And lay awake, wishing I believed he was right.
    Notes
    1 Pronounced
En -var
.

I FELT FUNNY when I sat next to Tiffany on the bus the next morning. I mean, if I’d had a family like hers, I sure wouldn’t have wanted anybody to know it – and there I’d been last night, spying on her.
If
, of course, I really had been at her house, or any of the other places we’d gone. But I didn’t dare think about that, because next thing I knew, I’d start thinking I couldn’t tell the difference between what was real and what I thought was real because I saw it in my mind, which was scary. So instead of thinking, I said, ‘Tiffany, do you like horses?’
    All of a sudden, she looked like a different person. ‘Oh, yes! Do you?’
    I nodded, feeling even funnier than I had before. ‘I used to ride all summer; my grandfather trained showjumpers.’
    ‘Your grandfather is a
trainer
?’
    ‘Not any more. He’s … retired. But all real horse people know who he is.’
    ‘Wow!’ she said, and her face was all lit up. ‘Tell me about him.’
    ‘Well, his father worked on a race-track in Ireland, and he came over here when Grandpa was a kid. First Grandpa worked racehorses, but he and his father