“A house. Cows. Sheep. Another house.”

James, a well-dressed six-year old boy sat with his parents in the third-class passenger carriage of a train. To pass the time, he named what he could see out of the window. With the train slowing as it reached the next station, his parents continued to ignore him, but he found it easier to see things in more detail. He enjoyed seeing the stone walls separating the farmers’ fields, and the thatched cottages off in the distance, barely visible over low rolling hills.

The train slowed further, and as James looked at a field just to the south, he saw something he had never seen before.

“Father?” he asked, not looking away from the window, but reaching with his left hand in the hope he could pull his father to see this also. “There’s something glowing in that field. Like a light, but many colours. That wasn’t there a moment ago.” His father shook his newspaper as a reminder to James that he was too busy to look at glowing things in fields. “Father?” James continued. “That horse in that field… that horse wasn’t there before.”

That horse took a moment to breathe. The air was calm and peaceful. He listened, and heard bird sounds he had never heard before. He looked up and saw small birds diving and swooping through the clear blue skies above. Swifts. He didn’t even know how he knew they were swifts, but he did. And he knew their full migratory patterns, how they flew from South Africa to this area in Southern England – oh yes, he was in England now – every year in late Spring, and rarely ever landed, preferring to spend all their time performing aerial tricks and eating insects in the skies.

He sniffed. From the air particles, he could tell he was in an earlier time. June 7, 1874, to be precise. That should throw the dragons off his back for a little while. Continue reading “Chapter Thirty-Two: The Origin of Unpredictable Horse, pt. III” →