The Witch’s Horse

I approached the stallion from the side to avoid surprising him. Last time I moved too fast he whirled to face me and charged a few steps in my direction. We were both grieving and missed Ebb. I was lost because I was  nowhere near done with my studies when she died. He was lost because they had built a living language between them and now it was gone. It had been made of breath, magic, movement and touch, beautiful things. I had four years as Ebb’s student. The stallion, Gravity, had twenty. Now we had inherited one another in a clumsy inversion. I was the new guardian for a magically educated stallion. He, himself, had inherited a half trained horse witch. The least I could do was move mindfully. But the most I could do I was afraid I might not accomplish, to learn all the spells in Ebb’s thick indigo book. To learn them and use them until they slotted into my body as solid as blood and muscle and bone. 

  If you think a horse being magically educated makes anything easier, you are wrong. Magic is slippery and wild and and powerful. It changes shape and moves in unexpected ways. And like anything, it is specific to its user. Not everything can be deciphered. Parts of it evade detection. Sometimes it shimmers far off, laughing. Other times it alights quietly in your palm. Also, magically educated horses haven’t been lead to believe that they must listen to all of humanity like domestic horses. They are allowed to keep their hearts for themselves and choose when to share them, if at all. Gravity was not ready yet. We were both stuck. 

  Most people don’t know that horse witches don’t wear flowing capes and pointed hats. Well, we don’t. Most of us wear leather boots tooled with runes and soles stained red for luck. Not even handmade, just store bought and carved with a needle tool. It’s not so easy to spot a witch as people like to imagine, and historically people have had some wild imaginations. We look like everyone else. We just wear a few things so that if we are out in public we can recognize our own. The boots with runes, red soles and a silver crescent moon for earrings or a ring or a pin. The crescent moon because it represents new beginnings. Auspicious for spells and manifesting new forms into the world. 

  The first time I saw Ebb she was riding Gravity and as she swept past I saw a flash of red on the bottom of her boot and felt a surge of wild joy in my chest that I could not understand. They say when you are ready, your teacher will appear. That is how it happened for me. 

   I still remember the very first thing she taught me: “Horse magic stops time," said Ebb, "always."

She looked at me quietly, while her hands slowly untangled her black mare’s mane. 

"It's not what the magic was made for, but it happens anyway. While you work, time goes still and waits. You don't age then, during those spells, and if you are interrupted you'll feel the fabric of time returning and wrapping you back into its sphere. It feels bad, being interrupted. You'll see."  

Ebb was a magnificent teacher. She was patient and kind and knew when to give direction and when to let you figure something out on your own. She was just as skilled with her horses, knowing just what spell to teach. She would help them find their balance over and over until just being near her brought them into deep alignment. We all felt calmer and stronger in her presence. 

   The magic itself was subtle. It wasn't full of smoke or fantastic transformations or huge wings where before there were none. Wings, Ebb had explained, take time. They are possible, even probable, but they appear slowly, feather by feather, spell by spell. It takes years to teach a horse to fly. They are big animals, after all. Heavy. And strangely, when the wings are complete, they're invisible. Such finely woven magic is only visible in certain light. It doesn't shout or announce itself. If it does it’s fake. 

   If I wanted to finish my own education I would need Gravity’s help. He was steeped in magic so thick that sometimes his hoof prints shone a little in the sun. He already had wings from his lifetime of magic with Ebb but whenever I drew near they flickered and disappeared. To me he was imposing, like a tall wardrobe made of dark wood. Heavy, impenetrable, locked. I didn’t have the key. 

Years passed and both Gravity and I grew older. I studied with my own horses, Wrenwood and Flute, and they even grew some of their feathers and their scapulas broadened a bit as they began to grow wings. I was progressing. Sometimes Gravity would watch me while I fiddled with a particularly difficult piece of magic, an old incantation that I learned from a torn piece of paper stuffed in Ebb’s bookshelf and his ears would flick back and forth and his neck would curve into the shape of a bridge. Would it hold? I let the thought go and got back to my own horses and my studies. It was a full moon and tonight I would go and seed the edges of the meadow with wildflowers once dusk had come. A witch’s meadow should be strewn with certain herbs and flowers both for her horses to eat as medicine and so that her craft could be more beautiful. I saddled Flute, filled my saddlebags with paper sacks of seeds and rode off to the vast green meadow where Ebb had taught me to ride. When I arrived it was nearly dusk, so I unsaddled Flute and let her graze while I waited for the sun to set. I mixed all my seeds together - alfalfa, sunflowers, clover, raspberry, dandelion and mint. I ran my hand through their smooth, cool texture and pictured the bright beauty they contained. As the sun set I got to work walking the edge of the meadow, tossing seeds into the soil I had raked clean and open the day before. I sang as I 

worked and I forgot anything but the meadow, my work and Flute grazing in the distance. As I finished I straightened up to see the moon low and glowing on the edge of the horizon. She was huge and orange like she had swallowed the sun as it set. Like she had dreamed the sun into being. My hands were tired from planting seeds and my back was sore so I stretched for a bit and then found my saddle in the dark. I carried it toward the edge of the meadow where Flute had been grazing. As I got closer I realized she was gone. The planting had taken a long time and she must have wandered home. I sighed and set my saddle down. I was just too tired to carry it. I turned one more time to look at the moon, but there was something coming toward me in the meadow. Something huge and dark moving with intention. For a second I held my breath and then I saw the curve of his neck like a bridge. The shimmer of expansive wings. The flicker of his ears as he considered this world again. 

I breathed out. It was Gravity. He was coming to meet me where I stood.