Amber and Willem Read online

  Amber and Willem

  Naomi Jessica Rose

  Copyright © 2020 Naomi Jessica Rose

  All rights reserved.

  For the incomparable Alice and Duncan

  Acknowledgements

  Thanks to the Milton Keynes Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror Writers’ Workshop, especially Scott, Andy, Rosie, Nigel and Luke.

  Part One

  Chapter One: Before

  Amber and Willem were born on the same day and both of them were charmed. Amber was born in the right place and at the right time, but Willem was not.

  Once there was a goose-girl. Her name was Solie and she lived with her mother in a tiny house at the edge of a village not far from Dalien’s town. Solie was the kind of person who is able to find the joy in everything. She was happy every day to wake up warm and comfortable, cuddled up to her mother in their bed. She was happy to walk out in the wonderful green world, even when it was raining, and to wander on the moor with the geese. Geese do not need much looking after and there was always plenty of time to idle and dream, and to run off to play with the village children.

  ​Just up the hill from Solie’s little house lived a family of horse-makers. That family had lived in the village for generations; in fact, it would be fair enough to say they owned the village, for their houses and outbuildings spread far out on to the moor and they employed one somebody, at least, from every other village family. Solie played with the horse-makers’ children, especially Galen, who was her own age. Galen loved Solie because she was so sweet and happy, and so pretty as well with her golden-brown curls.

  ​“Take care with that boy,” Solie’s mother warned. “You don’t want to break his heart! He’ll be the head of those horse-makers one day I reckon, and we’ll be living side by side with them still when that happens.”

  ​Solie laughed. “Don’t worry mama,” she said. “Me and Galen are nothing but friends.”

  ​The goose-women had lived in the village for generations too, and there were always two of them; a mother and a daughter, just one daughter, never more.

  ​“We don’t need husbands and we don’t need sons,” Solie’s mother said time and again, so Solie could not help but know it, like she knew her own fingers and toes.

  ​But then her mother died.

  ​How is it possible, Solie wondered, that everything can still be the same? For everything was the same. Solie had to do all the things her mother had always done, but she knew how to do them, even though she was still a child; it was not difficult.

  ​“I don’t understand,” she said to Galen. “Nothing has changed, but I feel so wrong.”

  ​“Don’t worry,” Galen said. “I’ll look after you.”

  ​But that felt wrong too, and Solie smiled at him, slithered out of his arms and fetched herself home to curl up in her too-big bed and cry herself to sleep.

  And one day, not much later, the strange girl came to the village.

  ​She’d walked over the moor, miles and miles, people said, with her pony. They had to say something, for the strange girl did not speak. Nobody recognised her; she had the look of a foreigner. She was thin as a lath, starving, and the pony was starving too. It lay down in the road in the village square and it died.

  ​The girl gave a pitiful cry then, and she collapsed beside the dead pony and would not be moved for days. People came out of their houses to look at her, and some left her food, but she did not eat it.

  ​It was a cold day, autumn, when Solie wandered through the village with her geese and found the strange girl lying there. The geese stared and honked and flapped at her in astonishment, and then they settled down all around her like a great goose-feather quilt to make her warm.

  ​“That’s a good idea!” Solie said, and she lay down too with the girl in the lane. She cuddled up to that girl like she had always cuddled up to her mother in their bed, and she began to feel warm and happy in a way she had always hoped she would again. “You have to come and live with us,” she whispered to the girl. “It will be all right.”

  After that the strange girl lived in the goose-women’s house with Solie till both of them were grown up. She would never tell her name, or anything about her life before she came to the village. Solie gave her a new name; Jessa, and in the end got tired of asking for stories and forgot that her new sister had ever lived anywhere else.

  ​“We’ll be goose-women together for all of our lives,” Solie said. And she wondered as she said it what would happen, for goose-women did not have sisters, they only had daughters, and Solie’s mother had not lived long enough to tell her how that came to happen.

  Jessa loved Solie, but she did not want to be a goose-woman. Her own life, its memory, had become so tangled and crumbled up that she could no longer make any sense of it, and the best thing seemed to be to forget, but she could not forget the horses. Jessa craved horsed just like she craved water and food and air to breathe, and she knew them too. She went and stood looking at the horse-makers’ horses every day, for hours. Those horses were so fine, so wonderful, she was mesmerised. Just a tiny wisp of a thing, she was, barely noticeable, but in the end they couldn’t help noticing her because she was always there. They gave her a job, and from that moment on she worked all day every day, looking after the horses with her heart singing.

  ​The horse-makers all worked hard, they had to. Even though they were the richest family in the village, there was great risk involved in their work, and little profit. Jessa’s head whirled after a day of riding youngsters and cleaning horse-houses, but she would not have any other life. She wondered how Solie could sit all day doing next to nothing and not go mad. But she never said her thoughts out loud and soon enough she married Galen, and left the goose-women’s house forever.

  Solie danced at Jessa and Galen’s wedding. It was summer, and who could fail to be happy in the summer, when the sun is shining and the birds are singing? I have not lost my sister, not really, she told herself; she has only gone to live next door. And I still have my beautiful geese and my house and my friends. I have the whole world! And days went by, and months and years until one day, when Solie was out on the moor next to the tarn with the geese, a group of young men rode by. Young soldiers they were, and all in mail shirts on their tall, shiny horses. But they stopped when they saw Solie, and one of them smiled down and spoke to her.

  ​“Do you know the way to Dalien’s town?” he asked.

  ​“Of course I do,” said Solie. And she gave him her happiest smile, the one that made her the most beautiful. “I can show you if you like.” And she let that man, that soldier, pull her up onto his horse and she left the geese on the tarn and rode away with him.

  The soldier’s name was Hans, and Solie had never met anyone like him; he was so strong and fine, so glad, and so handsome. They stayed together in a tavern in town and never stopped laughing, either one.

  ​“I have to go now, Solie,” Hans said one day, after days and days.

  ​“Go where?” asked Solie, confused.

  ​Hans laughed. “To war of course! But I’ll come back soon, and then we can be married.”

  ​And Solie lay in the bed without him after he had gone, and she wondered what she had done, for goose-women were not supposed to get married, any more than they were supposed to fall in love.

  Jessa found Milienta, the grey mare, where she expected to, under the poplars on the way to Pole hill. Milienta was expecting a foal; the most important foal of the year, it ought to be, but it wasn’t due just yet. The mare seemed well enough and Jessa decided to leave her, feeling a kick inside her own belly as she turned her horse for home.

  ​“What’s wrong with you?” she asked, for such strong movements were unusual for this c
hild. And then she felt something entirely different, a pull to her heart so strong it made her gasp. She knew what it was somehow, she just knew. Her own belly was large and round enough to be a nuisance, but Solie’s was larger. Jessa could feel, suddenly, her sister’s fear like something biting her, whether she wanted to feel it or not. Solie had gone into labour.

  ​Jessa pushed her horse into a canter, then a gallop and the two of them flew through the heather, fast and straight, Jessa bent low over her horse’s neck until a grouse flew up before them and the horse shied violently, throwing his rider in a wide arc and carrying on without her.

  Solie was surprised by labour for it was not what she expected; it was a desperate urge and a strange, fierce movement of her body, not pain at all, but still peculiar enough to frighten her.

  ​Hans had never come back, and he would not now, for he was dead; killed in his war. Solie could not bear to think about it, but there was the baby still wasn’t there, the baby who was going to be a new Hans for her to love? Solie was all alone in her little house and she was frightened, but she told herself not to be, and she went to find Jessa, for who else could she go to?

  ​“She isn’t here,” Galen said in his slow, quiet voice, but he took Solie in anyway.

  ​Galen was young and he had never seen a human baby born, but he had helped many horses bear theirs and there was little difference the way he saw things. Amber came easy and was soon sleeping side by side with her mother in Galen’s own bed, while Galen stood still and watched them.

  Jessa’s horse made his meandering way home as dusk was falling, and Galen was not alarmed, for Jessa often stayed out all night with the horses on the moor, and this one could easily have escaped a tether. Jessa was not like Solie. She was not soft or warm or happy, she was brave and tough, and she rarely spoke to anyone. Galen did not love her. He had married her for her skill with the horses, the skill that was so good for business, and that she would pass on, no doubt, to his children.

  ​In the morning he went out looking. He found Milienta under the poplars, but no sign of Jessa at all, and in the afternoon he stopped everyone working in the yard and sent them all out looking as well. They did not find Jessa till the next day, lying torn and bloodless in the heather with a tiny blue wraith of a child in her arms.

  ​No-one expected Willem to live, but he did. And Jessa recovered quicker than anyone would have thought too. Soon enough she was back out on the hillside looking for her grey mare and soon enough Milienta’s foal was born. That colt represented great hope to the family; he was to be a new breeding stallion, father to the next generation of wonderful horses.

  ​“But he will be Willem’s horse,” Jessa said, in a voice no-one could argue with. Jessa might not have been as pretty as Solie, but she could work harder than anyone, and there was no doubt that the horses she produced were fitter and finer than any that had come before.

  ​Galen felt something stir in his heart, for Jessa had almost died bearing his child and would never have another. “The two of them can grow up together,” he agreed. For surely this boy, their son, would be the greatest horseman in all the land.

  Chapter Two: Willem’s Horse

  Willem flung himself into the grass wearily.

  ​“Oh good, you’re here,” said Amber. “Now we can get going.”

  ​“I’m not going anywhere,” Willem said.

  ​“That’s not fair. I’ve been sat here half the morning already.”

  ​The geese never wandered very far; they were as lazy as Willem.

  ​“I’m not stopping you,” Willem said happily, closing his eyes against the warm spring sunshine.

  ​“But I want to ride Arrelestravandias! You said I could today. I’ve been waiting and waiting for you.”

  ​Willem wasn’t listening. He was laughing because the ganders were talking to him. Those ganders, telling a story and arguing about how it went like they always did. Amber knew what they were doing even if she couldn’t understand their language. Willem was laughing so much he had tears in his eyes and Amber found she was angry.

  ​“Shut up you mangy old creatures!” she said and the ganders did stop. They turned their heads and stared indignantly, and Willem opened his eyes and cast her the exact same look, for a moment anyway, almost as if he were a gander himself. But he couldn’t keep it up. Willem never could be cross, and anyway he generally gave in to whatever Amber wanted sooner or later.

  ​“This is the funniest one I’ve heard in ages,” he said. “I’ll tell you, but they haven’t got to the end of it yet.” Then he said something to the ganders in their language and set off laughing again.

  ​Amber summoned a large slice of her power and pulled Willem up. “I want to go riding,” she said.

  ​“All right.” Willem looked sad suddenly, pitiful and small. He managed to make Amber’s heart ache. But that was part of his power. He was doing it on purpose.

  ​“You can listen to them old ganders going on any time,” she said fiercely.

  ​“I said all right!” said Willem. “But just you think what you’re doing. You’ve been sitting around half the morning and you don’t like that, but I’ve already ridden that horse today for hours. He’s had me off four times and I’m fed up with him!”

  ​Amber glittered with triumph. She was sorry for Willem, but not enough to stop. “You don’t have to ride him any more, I will,” she said. “You can do whatever you like.”

  ​“No I can’t,” said Willem.

  Amber was allowed to ride the horses if Willem was there with her but she wasn’t supposed to ride Arrelestravandias at all; no-one was. Arrelestravandias was Willem’s horse, and no-one but Willem had ever ridden him, as far as anyone knew.

  ​It had been all right at first. Willem could not even remember the first time he had ridden his horse, that huge crested stallion, hardly a suitable mount for a young boy. Arrelestravandias had seemed somehow to know that he should be careful of his small passenger, but as the two of them grew, so that changed. Now the horse seemed filled to the brim with excitement and the spirit of adventure. He would fight Willem’s cautious direction and would always win, leaving Willem in the dust, battered and bruised and mortally ashamed.

  ​And it wouldn’t have been so bad if Willem could have fought and lost all those battles in private, but that was never how it was. There would always be someone there, his mother or his father, his grandfather, an aunt or uncle or one of the yard workers, or a crowd of them. And all of them thought the same thing; that the only son of Galen and Jessa could not ride. Willem felt his mother’s regard for him waver and wane. He noticed the way his father never looked directly at him, the way the yard people whispered to each other, and he tried not to think about it. He could ride the other horses well enough, most of them anyway, and he knew how to look after them, but he did not understand them, and he knew he never would.

  ​“Who are you riding Amber?” asked Kastie. “You should try Merch, he’s a horror, just your kind.”

  ​“I want to ride Theoline,” Amber said. “Is she in?”

  ​Kastie wrinkled her nose. “She is, but why bother?”

  ​Amber smiled. “I like Theoline,” she said, and she went to fetch a saddle.

  ​Amber could understand horses. She could talk to them too, for that was her charm, and the horses would always do anything she asked them to, gladly. Willem knew he ought to have been envious, but he wasn’t, not in the least. Envying someone meant wanting to be them and Willem did not want to be Amber, not even if it would make his parents happy. He did not want to be a human being of any kind; he wanted to be a bird.

  ​He had to ride Arrelestravandias to start with, but he was not afraid because Amber stayed close and she spoke to the horse, putting him under her spell like she always did. Soon enough he was able to switch to Theoline who was so like a bed to ride that Willem could actually lie down on her back and stare up at the birds in the sky.

  ​There was a merlin cir
cling way up under the clouds. Willem watched in awe, but he did not call her, for merlins rarely came when he called them and even if they did it would only be to offer insults. He called to a pair of pipits instead and they came to stand on his knees and peep a cheerful greeting, and Willem was suddenly overwhelmed. There was the merlin flying so effortlessly above and now these two, lighter than air with their sweet voices, so hopeful.

  ​“How do birds fly?” he asked them. It was no use asking this of birds, he had tried it countless times before, and it never reaped anything but confusion.

  ​“I came from my home,” one of the birds said. “The flavour of the air is different here, isn’t it?”

  ​“I want to learn how to fly,” Willem said. “Can you teach me?”

  ​“I learned your name when you told me it,” the bird said. “We don’t have names.”

  ​These were young birds; they didn’t know anything. “Do you know any magic?” Willem asked hopefully.

  ​“We must, or we wouldn’t be talking to you,” the other bird said. And they both flew away.

  ​Willem watched them go. He was convinced that birds’ flight was a kind of magic, something he would be able to learn if only he could find out how to get started. He knew how to learn after all, and he could do magic already. He had learned to look after horses and ride them, even if it wasn’t what he wanted to do. He had learned to read too, just about.

  ​Willem heard a linnet singing and her song broke his heart with its wringing of the wonder out of everything. He lay on the swinging back of his horse as she ambled on, and let the bird’s voice transport him into the clouds. But the song ended and a rook’s caw cut through the air instead, bringing him back to the real world. He sat up bewildered. The rook was in a tree with his whole family around him. Rooks were always worth talking to. He called to them, but they just laughed, so he asked Theoline to stop by the tree and stood up on her back to reach the lowest branches. Willem was an expert at climbing trees, and he was just a boy, small and light enough to get up to the top of most. He looked behind him and all around for Amber, but he did not expect to see her and he was right not to. She was nowhere within sight.