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prose_alchemistTitle: Night-Riders (Part III: Riding Lessons)
Author:![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
jordannamorgan
Archive Rights: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: G.
Characters: Ed, Al, and assorted original townsfolk.
Setting: General.
Summary: Another October finds Edward depressed—until the brothers get caught up in a family’s secret.
Disclaimer: They belong to Hiromu Arakawa. I’m just playing with them.
Ed slept deeply that night, but Al was glad to realize it was not the bleak, heavy-hearted slumber he had withdrawn into so much in the last few days. Of course, Al himself could not sleep—and the hours of the night felt longer and more nervous than usual, filled with wonderings of what the next day would hold. He tried to distract himself with a book borrowed from the Maddocks’ shelves, but his mind was restless.
He didn’t really know what he was worried about. Tor was certainly no kitten, and the idea of learning how to handle the big beast daunted him, but it wasn’t as if he could get hurt if he fell. Ed was far more likely to get himself banged up in the course of this weird caprice, and that wasn’t exactly a new concern.
Perhaps it was simply some kind of stage fright Al felt, an anxiety about making mistakes or doing something stupid. If anything went wrong, it might spoil the very secret the Maddocks were trying to protect.
Underneath all of that, though, a small part of him was excited. Playing the role of a ghost in a town festival was… well, not entirely something that could be called normal, but nothing like the dangerous, uncontrollable abnormality he had come to expect in his life, either. It was the kind of harmless adventure boys should have experienced now and then, a grand game of let’s-pretend such as he and Ed had mostly missed in their painfully short, reality-hardened childhood.
It still surprised Al that this scheme had captured Ed’s imagination. Brother was always so serious, so focused, and his tolerance for colorful frivolities was especially low at this time of the year; but for some reason, the Headless Horseman gimmick clearly appealed to him. Maybe a bit of fantasy was just what he needed to brighten that dark page of the calendar.
In any case, if it would really make Ed happy, that was more than enough reason for Al to go through with it.
Almost before it was light, he heard activity in the kitchen, and gladly abandoned his book in favor of more productive activities. Fay was busy laying out eggs and sausages and homemade biscuit batter for another tremendous meal. When Al offered to help with the morning chores, she sent him with Fawn and Jep to feed the chickens and cows—a task he knew well from his upbringing in Resembool, where misbehavior was apt to earn the sentence of a day’s labor on a neighboring farm.
Funny, but it didn’t seem so much like work anymore.
By the time Al and the children came back into the house, the table was spread with a mighty breakfast. Not surprisingly, Ed was awake, too. Al may not have been able to smell the aroma of Fay’s cooking, but he was sure it must have drawn his brother like a magnet.
“First thing after breakfast, we’ll go out and show you boys how to manage the horses,” Japheth declared, as he eased himself onto a chair and set aside the crutch he was using. “We can worry about fixing up the costumes if you decide to go all the way after that.”
“I was wondering about the horses,” Al remarked. “Doesn’t anybody in town recognize Tor when the Headless Horseman is riding him?”
Jep laughed. “Nope! We disguise the horses too. We cover ’em in dark blankets that are painted with phos—phospa—”
“Phosphorescent,” his mother supplied with a smile.
“Yeah. With glowing paint. Anyways, it makes ’em really look like demon-horses. We use the same paint on our costumes, too.”
“Sounds like a major production,” Ed observed, as he smeared a generous dose of homemade blackberry jam onto a biscuit. “I’m surprised you take in guests in the middle of all this. Don’t you worry about them finding out what you’re up to?”
Fawn shook her head. “Nah, when we’re busy getting things ready in the barn, they just think we’re out working the fields. Besides, visitors for the Festival always spend the days in town. They only come back here to sleep—and all the fun tires them out so much, they wouldn’t notice if the Headless Horseman was standing in our living room!”
“In the end, it’s good cover.” Japheth grinned. “Folks would never guess we’re doing all this while we’ve got strangers under our roof.”
After breakfast, Fay elected to remain in the house, to wash the dishes and begin another day of zealous cooking. Among other things, she had yet to prepare the candy the Night-Riders carried. This left the children and Japheth to escort the Elrics out to the stable.
“I know your brother said he doesn’t ride, but what about you?” Japheth asked Edward, as they crossed the grassy paddock that encircled the stable. “Any experience with horses?”
Ed grinned confidently, puffing out his chest a little. “Sure I have.”
If an eyeroll could be felt rather than seen, Al was quite certain he emanated such a sentiment just then.
“Brother, you tried riding a pony, just once,” he elucidated. “It was at the village fair in Resembool, when you were six. You fell off and skinned your elbow. And then you cried.”
Ed was walking ahead of him, his expression unseen, but it amused Al inordinately to see his shoulders tense and his fists clench.
“That’s why little brothers are so wonderful,” Ed muttered through his teeth. “You’re like a walking scrapbook of every dumb thing that’s ever happened to me!”
Al laughed. “Come on, Ed. You’ll only get yourself hurt if you try to pretend you know what you’re doing.”
“Well, you’ll both know all you need by the time this day is over,” Japheth chuckled. “Like I said last night, our horses are so well-trained, they could make the ride in their sleep. You just have to learn the right signals to give ’em, and that’s easy enough. Then all we’d have to work on is the costumes. I’ll bet we can get everything ready in plenty of time for you boys to see the sights at the Festival tomorrow.”
“That would be fun!” Al chirped.
They had reached the stable. Jep unbarred the door and led the way inside, lighting a lantern to dispel the early-morning dimness within. The illumination revealed a row of clean, spacious stalls occupied by half a dozen horses, with Tor first in line.
“Let’s see… Fawn, will you let Edward ride Patch?” Japheth asked his daughter, and turned to the Elrics. “That’s her horse. He’s the sweetest one of the bunch. You won’t have any trouble with him.”
Fawn obediently went to saddle her black-and-white pinto. Japheth moved toward Tor’s stall, maneuvering gingerly on his crutch, but Jep and Al were both quick to intercept the injured man.
“Don’t strain your leg, sir,” Al said brightly. “If Jep can show me how, I’ll saddle Tor.”
In the ensuing minutes, Jep guided the armored boy through the task of putting a saddle and bridle on the big horse. It made Al a little nervous, buckling the leather straps against a living animal’s hide—especially without a sense of touch to accurately judge whether he was making them too tight. However, Tor was as placid as ever, and he didn’t seem to mind the awkward efforts at all.
By the time Al led Tor into the paddock, Fawn had also readied Patch, and Ed was rather gingerly examining the pinto’s saddle. A moment later, Jep and Japheth brought out a chestnut colt and a dapple-gray mare, respectively introduced as Bailey and Willow. These were to be Jep and Fawn’s mounts for the training session.
“So… how exactly do we get on?” Ed asked warily, eyeing Patch’s stirrups as if they were live snakes.
“How do you think? Just grab hold and step up—like this.” Fawn demonstrated by swinging herself up into Willow’s saddle, with the ease of lifelong practice. “And don’t worry about Patch moving on you. He’s steady as a rock.”
“If you say so…” Slowly and with far less grace, Edward duplicated the girl’s movements. True to her prediction, Patch didn’t flinch, but Ed still looked highly nervous as he settled himself in the saddle.
Once assured that Ed was safely mounted, Al turned to regard Tor. The horse was enormous, even compared to the bulk of his own armor, but even so…
He shot Japheth a skeptical look. “You’re really sure it’s alright?”
“Trust me. You’ll both be fine.” Japheth smiled, taking hold of the bridle to pat Tor’s whiskery nose. “Climb on up.”
Hesitantly, Al stepped into the stirrup—his lack of sensation forcing him to carefully measure his every movement by sight alone. With a flutter of anxiety, he hoisted himself up into the saddle. Never had he been more conscious of his armor’s weight and metallic clattering, but Tor stood like a statue beneath him, neither spooked by the noise nor distressed by the heaviness.
“Geeze, you look even bigger on top of that thing,” Ed sniped from his uneasy perch on the pinto’s back.
Absent a tongue to stick out, Al had to settle for a verbal retort as Japheth handed him the reins. “Yeah, well, you’d better not get used to the view from that high up!”
“Who’re you callin’ so tiny he’d fall through the cracks in a sidewalk?”
As the morning passed and the sun rose higher in the sky, the Elric brothers learned the basics of how to make the horses start and stop, turn, and change their pace. It was easier for Ed than it was for Al; clipped verbal commands were often combined with a tug of the reins or a nudge against the animal’s sides, and even after long experience in calculating his unfeeling strength, Al was wary of how much pressure he applied to a living creature’s body. Fortunately, Tor was quick to adapt to the cautious touch of his peculiar new rider.
On the other hand, Al possessed the advantage of having no muscles to strain. Ed seemed to have grown much more comfortable in the saddle, and he showed no signs of tiring—but even as fit as he was, Al suspected he would later be terribly sore from the unaccustomed nature of the exercise.
Having learned to control the horses at a leisurely walk, the brothers graduated to a trot and then a canter. Finally, Japheth opened the paddock gate and let them into an adjoining pasture, where they briefly attempted the full gallop that was expected of the Night-Riders. Jep and Fawn led the boys on a short chase, and by the time they halted beside Japheth again, Ed was laughing between gasps for breath.
It was rather different for Al. Now that he felt sure he wouldn’t fall off or hurt Tor, the riding was enjoyable in its way for him too; but as with all other experiences, his lack of touch robbed it of an entire dimension, leaving much of his appreciation detached and abstract yet again. His steel was numb to the purely physical thrill of swift motion, the living energy of the animal beneath him. From the clues of sight and hearing alone, his fading memory of sensation could draw only the faintest idea of how it might have felt.
But he was happy nonetheless, because Brother had laughed.
“You boys learn fast,” Japheth said with a smile. “I’d say you’re just about ready for some of our Night-Rider tricks. Fawn?”
He glanced at the girl. She drew Willow back a few paces, and then leaned forward in the saddle, pressing the mare’s ribs with her knees as she murmured a soft command. The word was half-familiar, yet so abbreviated and swift as to sound almost like a foreign tongue—a curious verbal shorthand that must have been passed down through generations of experienced horsemen in this part of the country.
Whatever it was, the reaction was immediate and explosive. Willow reared up on her hind legs and let out a terrible shriek, pawing at the air with her front hooves, as if cornered by an entire pack of ravenous wolves.
Throughout this equine contortion, Fawn remained firmly fixed on Willow’s back. After a moment she gave another gentle signal, and the mare instantly grew quiet. Her hooves dropped back down onto the turf, and she stood still, as peaceful as if she had never moved at all.
Japheth chuckled approvingly. “How’s that for a demon-horse, eh?”
“I wanna try it,” Ed declared, his eyes lighting with determination in the face of a challenge. “What was it you said to make her do that?”
Fawn repeated the fluid signal. “And you have to give Patch a nudge with your knees at the same time.”
Ed fidgeted around in the saddle for a moment, as if trying to ensure he was seated as securely as possible. Then he took a deep breath, clearly gathering his courage, and tried to imitate the command. As an unpracticed first attempt, it didn’t sound quite right—but it must have been just close enough, because Patch obligingly repeated Willow’s performance, and reared up with a tremendous bellow.
Al watched in dismay as Ed hurtled from the horse’s back, describing a broad arc of flailing inelegance in midair… only to land stomach-first on the ground with a very loud thud.
Edward suffered two more ungraceful flights in the next hour, collecting a few bruises in the process, but he finally got the hang of taking Patch through his stunts without being dislodged. For Al’s part, the learning experience was decidedly on the scary side of exciting, but he somehow managed to stay in the saddle. Never one to suppose he might just be more skilled at something than his brother, he concluded his far greater weight must simply have made him harder to throw.
Around midday, Fay came from the house with a picnic basket and a blanket, and the brothers shared lunchtime with the family under the clear blue sky. More practice followed until late into the afternoon, when Japheth declared his confidence that Ed and Al had both the ability and the confidence to make the Night Ride. Jep and Fawn tended to the horses then, while their father took the Elrics inside. There was still a great deal of work to do—but not before everyone satisfied the appetites their hard riding had worked up again.
It wasn’t lost upon Al that Ed walked rather gingerly back to the house, massaging his flesh arm and his lower back. He had made himself sore, but he didn’t complain. All the same, Fay knowingly offered him a bottle of liniment, and he didn’t refuse it as he and Al went off to wash up for supper.
At least the meal was enough to take Ed’s mind off his aches. Fay piled the table with a heaping platter of fried chicken, biscuits and gravy, and another garden-fresh salad, followed by plump apple turnovers laced with icing. Afterward, there were samples of the candies she had made for the Night Ride: boiled-sugar sweets and caramel cubes and chocolate drops, all wrapped in squares of brightly-colored foil paper.
Al watched Ed’s enjoyment of the food with a familiar rueful gladness—and he resolved firmly that if he ever got his body back and could eat again, the Maddocks were among the first people he wanted to visit.
When supper was finished (and pockets were discreetly stuffed with extra helpings of candy), it was agreed that they should start work on the costumes at once, leaving ample time the following day for the brothers to properly experience the Harvest Festival. With that plan in place, the Elrics and the Maddock children trooped out to the barn nearest the house. It was normally used for storage, but at Festival time, it became the headquarters for the family’s secret schemes. Fay sent with them still more treats to nibble on as they worked: a jug of apple cider, and a tray of warm maple-glazed doughnuts.
Inside the barn, Jep and Fawn lighted several old carriage lanterns, providing plentiful light to work by. The place was better than an antiques bazaar, piled with several generations’ worth of cast-off furniture and equipment and boxes of unknown treasures. The visible oddities included everything from a broken-down tractor to an entire set of ornate dining-room chairs.
“You could build a whole other house with all this stuff!” Ed remarked, examining a wooden rocking-horse the children had long outgrown.
Jep laughed. “Yeah, we hardly ever get rid of anything. You never know what might end up being useful on a farm—especially at Festival time. Like the old clothes and things we use to put together all this.” He beckoned the brothers to a steamer trunk, which he unlatched and opened, revealing piles of folded fabric and garish masks.
“These are your costumes?” Al asked.
Fawn nodded as she began lifting out the bundles. “Our family’s made up a lot of different characters in all this time, so each year we can play whichever Night-Riders we feel like doing. They all have their own names and stories. Here’s Screech-Owl—our mom’s favorite.” She set aside a dark gray-and-brown bundle, topped by a silk mask upon which a layer of real feathers had been painstakingly sewn.
“And here’s the Headless Horseman’s costume.” Jep drew out a long, tattered black cloak, followed by other midnight-colored garments that looked a hundred years old, like the elegant but half-decaying clothes of a storybook villain. Finally he produced a metal frame that appeared to be meant to fit onto a man’s shoulders.
“The Horseman’s flaming head goes on this. Uh… we use carved pumpkins that are lighted on the inside, and covered with that glowing paint I told you about,” he added a little sheepishly, as if embarrassed that there was so prosaic a reality behind the Horseman’s ghostly illusions.
Ed moved in to examine the frame and clothes interestedly, giving Al a few appraising glances. “Yeah, this is gonna need some work. Instead of using Japheth’s costume, I think we’d better just redo the whole thing from scratch.” He grinned at Al. “It’ll take more than that to cover you up.”
“Well, we’ve got enough junk to make just about anything!” Jep exclaimed, and gestured vaguely toward a corner. “There’s a big roll of canvas over there someplace, if you wanna use that. I’ll bet you could fix it up quick with alchemy.”
“Which costume do you like, Brother?” Al asked, studying the bundles Fawn had laid out. A toad, a bat, a skeletal death’s-head, a leering little goblin, and several other finely-made masks of carved wood or stitched and painted fabric stared back at them.
Edward regarded the rogues’ gallery slowly and thoughtfully. Then he turned away, shaking his head, as a faint smile played over his lips.
“I’ve got an idea of my own. Jep, Fawn… would your parents mind if I borrowed that scarecrow in your cornfield?”
At this suggestion, the children’s eyes lit up, and Jep beamed at Ed. “I know they wouldn’t—that old thing has never scared birds, anyway!”
Nevertheless, Ed stopped at the house to ask for permission before he and Jep went out to uproot the scarecrow. Soon it was brought back to the barn, where it was disassembled into its separate parts: a tall battered hat, a frayed old cloak, a flour-sack head with crooked X’s of stitching to form its eyes and jagged mouth.
“It’s perfect,” Ed declared, with a mischievous gleam in his amber eyes.
© 2010 Jordanna Morgan
Chapters: 1 :: 2 :: 3 :: 4 :: 5 :: 6 ::
Author:
jordannamorganArchive Rights: Please request the author’s consent.
Rating/Warnings: G.
Characters: Ed, Al, and assorted original townsfolk.
Setting: General.
Summary: Another October finds Edward depressed—until the brothers get caught up in a family’s secret.
Disclaimer: They belong to Hiromu Arakawa. I’m just playing with them.
Ed slept deeply that night, but Al was glad to realize it was not the bleak, heavy-hearted slumber he had withdrawn into so much in the last few days. Of course, Al himself could not sleep—and the hours of the night felt longer and more nervous than usual, filled with wonderings of what the next day would hold. He tried to distract himself with a book borrowed from the Maddocks’ shelves, but his mind was restless.
He didn’t really know what he was worried about. Tor was certainly no kitten, and the idea of learning how to handle the big beast daunted him, but it wasn’t as if he could get hurt if he fell. Ed was far more likely to get himself banged up in the course of this weird caprice, and that wasn’t exactly a new concern.
Perhaps it was simply some kind of stage fright Al felt, an anxiety about making mistakes or doing something stupid. If anything went wrong, it might spoil the very secret the Maddocks were trying to protect.
Underneath all of that, though, a small part of him was excited. Playing the role of a ghost in a town festival was… well, not entirely something that could be called normal, but nothing like the dangerous, uncontrollable abnormality he had come to expect in his life, either. It was the kind of harmless adventure boys should have experienced now and then, a grand game of let’s-pretend such as he and Ed had mostly missed in their painfully short, reality-hardened childhood.
It still surprised Al that this scheme had captured Ed’s imagination. Brother was always so serious, so focused, and his tolerance for colorful frivolities was especially low at this time of the year; but for some reason, the Headless Horseman gimmick clearly appealed to him. Maybe a bit of fantasy was just what he needed to brighten that dark page of the calendar.
In any case, if it would really make Ed happy, that was more than enough reason for Al to go through with it.
Almost before it was light, he heard activity in the kitchen, and gladly abandoned his book in favor of more productive activities. Fay was busy laying out eggs and sausages and homemade biscuit batter for another tremendous meal. When Al offered to help with the morning chores, she sent him with Fawn and Jep to feed the chickens and cows—a task he knew well from his upbringing in Resembool, where misbehavior was apt to earn the sentence of a day’s labor on a neighboring farm.
Funny, but it didn’t seem so much like work anymore.
By the time Al and the children came back into the house, the table was spread with a mighty breakfast. Not surprisingly, Ed was awake, too. Al may not have been able to smell the aroma of Fay’s cooking, but he was sure it must have drawn his brother like a magnet.
“First thing after breakfast, we’ll go out and show you boys how to manage the horses,” Japheth declared, as he eased himself onto a chair and set aside the crutch he was using. “We can worry about fixing up the costumes if you decide to go all the way after that.”
“I was wondering about the horses,” Al remarked. “Doesn’t anybody in town recognize Tor when the Headless Horseman is riding him?”
Jep laughed. “Nope! We disguise the horses too. We cover ’em in dark blankets that are painted with phos—phospa—”
“Phosphorescent,” his mother supplied with a smile.
“Yeah. With glowing paint. Anyways, it makes ’em really look like demon-horses. We use the same paint on our costumes, too.”
“Sounds like a major production,” Ed observed, as he smeared a generous dose of homemade blackberry jam onto a biscuit. “I’m surprised you take in guests in the middle of all this. Don’t you worry about them finding out what you’re up to?”
Fawn shook her head. “Nah, when we’re busy getting things ready in the barn, they just think we’re out working the fields. Besides, visitors for the Festival always spend the days in town. They only come back here to sleep—and all the fun tires them out so much, they wouldn’t notice if the Headless Horseman was standing in our living room!”
“In the end, it’s good cover.” Japheth grinned. “Folks would never guess we’re doing all this while we’ve got strangers under our roof.”
After breakfast, Fay elected to remain in the house, to wash the dishes and begin another day of zealous cooking. Among other things, she had yet to prepare the candy the Night-Riders carried. This left the children and Japheth to escort the Elrics out to the stable.
“I know your brother said he doesn’t ride, but what about you?” Japheth asked Edward, as they crossed the grassy paddock that encircled the stable. “Any experience with horses?”
Ed grinned confidently, puffing out his chest a little. “Sure I have.”
If an eyeroll could be felt rather than seen, Al was quite certain he emanated such a sentiment just then.
“Brother, you tried riding a pony, just once,” he elucidated. “It was at the village fair in Resembool, when you were six. You fell off and skinned your elbow. And then you cried.”
Ed was walking ahead of him, his expression unseen, but it amused Al inordinately to see his shoulders tense and his fists clench.
“That’s why little brothers are so wonderful,” Ed muttered through his teeth. “You’re like a walking scrapbook of every dumb thing that’s ever happened to me!”
Al laughed. “Come on, Ed. You’ll only get yourself hurt if you try to pretend you know what you’re doing.”
“Well, you’ll both know all you need by the time this day is over,” Japheth chuckled. “Like I said last night, our horses are so well-trained, they could make the ride in their sleep. You just have to learn the right signals to give ’em, and that’s easy enough. Then all we’d have to work on is the costumes. I’ll bet we can get everything ready in plenty of time for you boys to see the sights at the Festival tomorrow.”
“That would be fun!” Al chirped.
They had reached the stable. Jep unbarred the door and led the way inside, lighting a lantern to dispel the early-morning dimness within. The illumination revealed a row of clean, spacious stalls occupied by half a dozen horses, with Tor first in line.
“Let’s see… Fawn, will you let Edward ride Patch?” Japheth asked his daughter, and turned to the Elrics. “That’s her horse. He’s the sweetest one of the bunch. You won’t have any trouble with him.”
Fawn obediently went to saddle her black-and-white pinto. Japheth moved toward Tor’s stall, maneuvering gingerly on his crutch, but Jep and Al were both quick to intercept the injured man.
“Don’t strain your leg, sir,” Al said brightly. “If Jep can show me how, I’ll saddle Tor.”
In the ensuing minutes, Jep guided the armored boy through the task of putting a saddle and bridle on the big horse. It made Al a little nervous, buckling the leather straps against a living animal’s hide—especially without a sense of touch to accurately judge whether he was making them too tight. However, Tor was as placid as ever, and he didn’t seem to mind the awkward efforts at all.
By the time Al led Tor into the paddock, Fawn had also readied Patch, and Ed was rather gingerly examining the pinto’s saddle. A moment later, Jep and Japheth brought out a chestnut colt and a dapple-gray mare, respectively introduced as Bailey and Willow. These were to be Jep and Fawn’s mounts for the training session.
“So… how exactly do we get on?” Ed asked warily, eyeing Patch’s stirrups as if they were live snakes.
“How do you think? Just grab hold and step up—like this.” Fawn demonstrated by swinging herself up into Willow’s saddle, with the ease of lifelong practice. “And don’t worry about Patch moving on you. He’s steady as a rock.”
“If you say so…” Slowly and with far less grace, Edward duplicated the girl’s movements. True to her prediction, Patch didn’t flinch, but Ed still looked highly nervous as he settled himself in the saddle.
Once assured that Ed was safely mounted, Al turned to regard Tor. The horse was enormous, even compared to the bulk of his own armor, but even so…
He shot Japheth a skeptical look. “You’re really sure it’s alright?”
“Trust me. You’ll both be fine.” Japheth smiled, taking hold of the bridle to pat Tor’s whiskery nose. “Climb on up.”
Hesitantly, Al stepped into the stirrup—his lack of sensation forcing him to carefully measure his every movement by sight alone. With a flutter of anxiety, he hoisted himself up into the saddle. Never had he been more conscious of his armor’s weight and metallic clattering, but Tor stood like a statue beneath him, neither spooked by the noise nor distressed by the heaviness.
“Geeze, you look even bigger on top of that thing,” Ed sniped from his uneasy perch on the pinto’s back.
Absent a tongue to stick out, Al had to settle for a verbal retort as Japheth handed him the reins. “Yeah, well, you’d better not get used to the view from that high up!”
“Who’re you callin’ so tiny he’d fall through the cracks in a sidewalk?”
As the morning passed and the sun rose higher in the sky, the Elric brothers learned the basics of how to make the horses start and stop, turn, and change their pace. It was easier for Ed than it was for Al; clipped verbal commands were often combined with a tug of the reins or a nudge against the animal’s sides, and even after long experience in calculating his unfeeling strength, Al was wary of how much pressure he applied to a living creature’s body. Fortunately, Tor was quick to adapt to the cautious touch of his peculiar new rider.
On the other hand, Al possessed the advantage of having no muscles to strain. Ed seemed to have grown much more comfortable in the saddle, and he showed no signs of tiring—but even as fit as he was, Al suspected he would later be terribly sore from the unaccustomed nature of the exercise.
Having learned to control the horses at a leisurely walk, the brothers graduated to a trot and then a canter. Finally, Japheth opened the paddock gate and let them into an adjoining pasture, where they briefly attempted the full gallop that was expected of the Night-Riders. Jep and Fawn led the boys on a short chase, and by the time they halted beside Japheth again, Ed was laughing between gasps for breath.
It was rather different for Al. Now that he felt sure he wouldn’t fall off or hurt Tor, the riding was enjoyable in its way for him too; but as with all other experiences, his lack of touch robbed it of an entire dimension, leaving much of his appreciation detached and abstract yet again. His steel was numb to the purely physical thrill of swift motion, the living energy of the animal beneath him. From the clues of sight and hearing alone, his fading memory of sensation could draw only the faintest idea of how it might have felt.
But he was happy nonetheless, because Brother had laughed.
“You boys learn fast,” Japheth said with a smile. “I’d say you’re just about ready for some of our Night-Rider tricks. Fawn?”
He glanced at the girl. She drew Willow back a few paces, and then leaned forward in the saddle, pressing the mare’s ribs with her knees as she murmured a soft command. The word was half-familiar, yet so abbreviated and swift as to sound almost like a foreign tongue—a curious verbal shorthand that must have been passed down through generations of experienced horsemen in this part of the country.
Whatever it was, the reaction was immediate and explosive. Willow reared up on her hind legs and let out a terrible shriek, pawing at the air with her front hooves, as if cornered by an entire pack of ravenous wolves.
Throughout this equine contortion, Fawn remained firmly fixed on Willow’s back. After a moment she gave another gentle signal, and the mare instantly grew quiet. Her hooves dropped back down onto the turf, and she stood still, as peaceful as if she had never moved at all.
Japheth chuckled approvingly. “How’s that for a demon-horse, eh?”
“I wanna try it,” Ed declared, his eyes lighting with determination in the face of a challenge. “What was it you said to make her do that?”
Fawn repeated the fluid signal. “And you have to give Patch a nudge with your knees at the same time.”
Ed fidgeted around in the saddle for a moment, as if trying to ensure he was seated as securely as possible. Then he took a deep breath, clearly gathering his courage, and tried to imitate the command. As an unpracticed first attempt, it didn’t sound quite right—but it must have been just close enough, because Patch obligingly repeated Willow’s performance, and reared up with a tremendous bellow.
Al watched in dismay as Ed hurtled from the horse’s back, describing a broad arc of flailing inelegance in midair… only to land stomach-first on the ground with a very loud thud.
Edward suffered two more ungraceful flights in the next hour, collecting a few bruises in the process, but he finally got the hang of taking Patch through his stunts without being dislodged. For Al’s part, the learning experience was decidedly on the scary side of exciting, but he somehow managed to stay in the saddle. Never one to suppose he might just be more skilled at something than his brother, he concluded his far greater weight must simply have made him harder to throw.
Around midday, Fay came from the house with a picnic basket and a blanket, and the brothers shared lunchtime with the family under the clear blue sky. More practice followed until late into the afternoon, when Japheth declared his confidence that Ed and Al had both the ability and the confidence to make the Night Ride. Jep and Fawn tended to the horses then, while their father took the Elrics inside. There was still a great deal of work to do—but not before everyone satisfied the appetites their hard riding had worked up again.
It wasn’t lost upon Al that Ed walked rather gingerly back to the house, massaging his flesh arm and his lower back. He had made himself sore, but he didn’t complain. All the same, Fay knowingly offered him a bottle of liniment, and he didn’t refuse it as he and Al went off to wash up for supper.
At least the meal was enough to take Ed’s mind off his aches. Fay piled the table with a heaping platter of fried chicken, biscuits and gravy, and another garden-fresh salad, followed by plump apple turnovers laced with icing. Afterward, there were samples of the candies she had made for the Night Ride: boiled-sugar sweets and caramel cubes and chocolate drops, all wrapped in squares of brightly-colored foil paper.
Al watched Ed’s enjoyment of the food with a familiar rueful gladness—and he resolved firmly that if he ever got his body back and could eat again, the Maddocks were among the first people he wanted to visit.
When supper was finished (and pockets were discreetly stuffed with extra helpings of candy), it was agreed that they should start work on the costumes at once, leaving ample time the following day for the brothers to properly experience the Harvest Festival. With that plan in place, the Elrics and the Maddock children trooped out to the barn nearest the house. It was normally used for storage, but at Festival time, it became the headquarters for the family’s secret schemes. Fay sent with them still more treats to nibble on as they worked: a jug of apple cider, and a tray of warm maple-glazed doughnuts.
Inside the barn, Jep and Fawn lighted several old carriage lanterns, providing plentiful light to work by. The place was better than an antiques bazaar, piled with several generations’ worth of cast-off furniture and equipment and boxes of unknown treasures. The visible oddities included everything from a broken-down tractor to an entire set of ornate dining-room chairs.
“You could build a whole other house with all this stuff!” Ed remarked, examining a wooden rocking-horse the children had long outgrown.
Jep laughed. “Yeah, we hardly ever get rid of anything. You never know what might end up being useful on a farm—especially at Festival time. Like the old clothes and things we use to put together all this.” He beckoned the brothers to a steamer trunk, which he unlatched and opened, revealing piles of folded fabric and garish masks.
“These are your costumes?” Al asked.
Fawn nodded as she began lifting out the bundles. “Our family’s made up a lot of different characters in all this time, so each year we can play whichever Night-Riders we feel like doing. They all have their own names and stories. Here’s Screech-Owl—our mom’s favorite.” She set aside a dark gray-and-brown bundle, topped by a silk mask upon which a layer of real feathers had been painstakingly sewn.
“And here’s the Headless Horseman’s costume.” Jep drew out a long, tattered black cloak, followed by other midnight-colored garments that looked a hundred years old, like the elegant but half-decaying clothes of a storybook villain. Finally he produced a metal frame that appeared to be meant to fit onto a man’s shoulders.
“The Horseman’s flaming head goes on this. Uh… we use carved pumpkins that are lighted on the inside, and covered with that glowing paint I told you about,” he added a little sheepishly, as if embarrassed that there was so prosaic a reality behind the Horseman’s ghostly illusions.
Ed moved in to examine the frame and clothes interestedly, giving Al a few appraising glances. “Yeah, this is gonna need some work. Instead of using Japheth’s costume, I think we’d better just redo the whole thing from scratch.” He grinned at Al. “It’ll take more than that to cover you up.”
“Well, we’ve got enough junk to make just about anything!” Jep exclaimed, and gestured vaguely toward a corner. “There’s a big roll of canvas over there someplace, if you wanna use that. I’ll bet you could fix it up quick with alchemy.”
“Which costume do you like, Brother?” Al asked, studying the bundles Fawn had laid out. A toad, a bat, a skeletal death’s-head, a leering little goblin, and several other finely-made masks of carved wood or stitched and painted fabric stared back at them.
Edward regarded the rogues’ gallery slowly and thoughtfully. Then he turned away, shaking his head, as a faint smile played over his lips.
“I’ve got an idea of my own. Jep, Fawn… would your parents mind if I borrowed that scarecrow in your cornfield?”
At this suggestion, the children’s eyes lit up, and Jep beamed at Ed. “I know they wouldn’t—that old thing has never scared birds, anyway!”
Nevertheless, Ed stopped at the house to ask for permission before he and Jep went out to uproot the scarecrow. Soon it was brought back to the barn, where it was disassembled into its separate parts: a tall battered hat, a frayed old cloak, a flour-sack head with crooked X’s of stitching to form its eyes and jagged mouth.
“It’s perfect,” Ed declared, with a mischievous gleam in his amber eyes.
© 2010 Jordanna Morgan
Chapters: 1 :: 2 :: 3 :: 4 :: 5 :: 6 ::
no subject
Date: 2012-02-04 07:57 am (UTC)I don't really know a lot about horses, but all the talk of them in this chapter read very fluidly (my experience with riding one is pretty much the same as Ed and the pony, just without any falling involved).
no subject
Date: 2012-02-04 11:38 am (UTC)I'm glad the riding scenes sound good. Alas, my knowledge comes from the horse books I read in my unfulfilled childhood longing for one. :Þ