Late one July afternoon, I went off for a walk by myself, feeling glumpy, which is one of Julian’s words for being stupidly miserable. Meena’s mother had been supposed to drop her off with us to stay the weekend, but something family came up and she had to cancel at the last minute. Between that and not being sure if I’d ever see Tamsin again—and not even knowing where the hell my cat was—I was glumpy enough to realize that I hadn’t been this glumpy in a pretty long while. Which only made me glumpier, dumb as that is.
There’s a place I still go to when I’m feeling like that. It’s on the downs, above the sheep pasture, what’s left of a shepherd’s hut. No roof, one wall, a few foundation stones, a few rainy splinters of a floor. Evan thinks it’s a hundred years old, no more, but it could just as easily be from Tamsin’s time, you can’t tell. I hike out there, and I sit on the ground with my back against that last wall and the sun on my face—or the fog, either—and I watch the butterflies and feel sorry for myself. Love it.
I was amazed to see the black pony grazing peacefully right by the old hut. There’s never anything bigger than a rabbit on that long slope, except for the sheep, away off—but there he was, stocky and small as the New Forest ponies, and black as Mister Cat himself, almost purple in the shadow of the wall. No saddle, no bridle, no shoes, mane and tail stiff with burrs, he never looked up as I came near, being so careful not to spook him. “Look at you,” I said, keeping my voice really low. “You’re wild—you’re a genuine wild horse. Hello.”
The black pony didn’t even flick his ears. I said, “You’re also a mess. I’ve got a friend named Meena—she’d spend a whole day currying you, combing you out. Me, I couldn’t care less, I’m not much into horses, Just shove over a bit, I want to sit down.”
He raised his head then, and I saw his eyes. They were golden as the rising moon, before it turns pale and small; they had long horizontal pupils, like Wilf’s billygoat, and they were too big for that shaggy, shanty face. And they held me. They made me come closer, one step after another, until I had one hand in that brambly mane and was just about to scramble up. I knew what he was, I remembered what Evan had told me—a fine black horse, absolutely black, inviting you to get on his back and take a ride—but I couldn’t look away. He blew softly through his nostrils and nibbled my sleeve, just like a real horse.
I heard Tamsin before I saw her. “Ah, no!” and it sounded like a trumpet, ghost or not. “That I’ll not have! Get from him, Jenny!”
The big yellow eyes let go of me, and I stumbled back so hard I almost fell down. Tamsin blew by me as though a hurricane were driving her and blazed up between me and the black pony, clearer and more solid than I’d ever seen her, even in daylight, she was so angry. “Rogue, scoundrel, swinger, is it thus you’ll dare treat my friend? When you’ve seen us together, when I’ve called you time and time to acquaint with her—”
And the black pony spoke.
“I do not come when I am called. You knew that once.” His voice was deep and even—no whinny in it, nothing like that—and his mouth didn’t move at all. But there wasn’t any question that it was him speaking. The voice went exactly with those eyes—the same eyes I’d dreamed those first nights at Stourhead Farm—it went with the way he held his head, with just a slight quirk in the neck, as he looked at us, and with what I felt looking back, which was a weird kind of calm fear. Nobody’s going to understand that. I knew what he was, and I knew he was dangerous—miles more dangerous than boggarts or billy-blinds or voices behind the bathtub. But I wasn’t afraid of him. I should have been, but I wasn’t.
Tamsin was still steaming, absolutely furious. “When I knew you, I’d her age, and you never would have done with me as you planned for her. You were kind to children then, Pooka.”
“I have never been kind to any,” the black pony answered her. “I am I, and I do what suits me. You understood that, too, Tamsin Willoughby.” But he lowered his head briefly before her, and she reached out to touch him—just for a second—before she remembered that she couldn’t. He said, “I did not grieve you gone. I cannot. But it suits me to see you again.”
She wasn’t letting him off that easily. “Aye, well, it does not suit me to find you cozening my Mistress Jenny to mount your back and be hurled into some mire, miles from her home. She is my friend, as much as you were—more—and you’ll treat her as you did me, or answer for it. Jenny Gluckstein, she’s called.” She whipped around to face me, one arm thrown wide, burning bright as a lacy cinder flying up the chimney. “Jenny, this creature is the Pooka. Pay no mind to the shape he wears, for he’s none of his own, and no soul neither. Ware him ever, trust him never, but when the wind’s right he has his uses.” She turned back to the black pony. “Say, have I proclaimed you fairly, then?”
“Indeed.” The black pony was cropping grass, not looking at either of us, not even raising his head when he said, “I see you, Jenny Gluckstein.” Nothing more than that.
“Come,” Tamsin said to me. I wanted to stay and talk to the Pooka, or anyway hang around and watch him a while longer, but there wasn’t any arguing with Tamsin in that mood. She swept ahead of me without looking back, and I followed her over the downs. I turned once, but the shadows around the ruined hut had lengthened a lot, and I couldn’t see the black pony.
“Evan told me about pookas,” I said when I caught up with Tamsin. “I thought it was just a story.” Tamsin didn’t say anything. I said, “He wouldn’t really have hurt me, would he?”
“God’s death, who knows what a pooka will do?” Tamsin’s answer came so short and hard and impatient that I actually stopped in my tracks, as surprised as I’d been to hear a pony speak to me. She knew right away, even though I was walking behind her, and she stopped herself and actually put her arms around me, which she’d never done before. I felt a tiny vanilla breeze on my skin, moving in my hair.
“Dearest Jenny, forgive me, forgive. I was most affrighted, as I’ve not been since… since I was just so affrighted for another—long ago, when I was as you are. My anger was never at you, but with myself, who even then knew far better than to call a pooka friend.” She stepped back from me, and she sighed a little. “He is no one’s friend—no one’s—yet he proved truest friend to me once, when none were by. You may trust him well enough now, Jenny, for he knows you as mine—but never forget that you will never know him. The Pooka’s mystery even to the Pooka, I think.”
“He really can change his shape?” I asked. Tamsin nodded. I said, “Could he look like you, or like my mother? Or Mister Cat? I need to know.”
“Always you may tell the Pooka by his eyes. All else changes, not those.” The setting sun at her back struck right through her just then, and made her face glow and tremble like a candle’s flame. I can still see her. She said, “He will not bait you again with such sport, have no fear. One day you may yet ride him to a safe ending, and no thorn bush. Come, Jenny, your dinner will be cold, surely.”
I think about that, too, her bothering to consider my needing to eat, when she couldn’t keep centuries straight in her ghost of a mind. She wouldn’t say anything more about the Pooka the rest of the way, because she was set on teaching me a song her sister Maria had taught her—the one who died of the Plague. It was a ripply, simple tune, repeating and repeating like a birdcall, but I’ve forgotten most of the words. It starts out like this: