Lessoc Fountain - a fairy-creature tale

Ch. 10. 2 The Watching Woods

The enormous beast snorted and stamped his hoof on the ground inches from Cocot's leg. She gasped in fear, Soufflé's warnings and tales of the horse's victims that haunted it shouting out in her mind. This creature of darkness enjoyed the hunt, lived for the kill.

She watched, unable to move as muscle spasms rippled under his dirty coat through his wide shoulders and sagging back. He waved his head over her, as though summing her up, judging her size and weight, deciding where he should strike first.

From this close, she finally saw the Hunstman's dark fairy magic at work in the animal's eyes and hooves. She hadn't known what to expect, and she never would have guessed the truth.

Thousands of tiny black maggot-like creatures were worming and wiggling their way around in his eye sockets and burrowing through his ankles into the hooves. A shudder shook her.

The horse swung his head sharply down at her. She raised her hand, pleading silently for him not to hurt her. He sniffed and blew on her hand. Then her arm, and finally her shoulder and chest. If she hadn't known better, she would have said he looked at the embroidered raspberries and moon on her bodice for a moment.

"Cohcoh." The word scratched at the cliff edge and through the trees.

The horse pounded the gravelly path, breathing heavily.

Cocot pushed herself backwards. Reaching the rock, she pressed herself against it, inching upwards until she stood.

The wind moaned, an aching sound. Different this time. Cocot swore that ere was a faint echo, a far-off voice. Through the spruce's branches, she caught the glimpse of a jagged crevice.

The horse reared up and stamped down violently, nostrils flared and eyes wide.

Cocot whimpered, turning her face away and holding her hands up to ward off the blow. She felt his hot breath on them and the tickle of his sparse whiskers on her finger tips. Instinctively, she turned her hands from pointing upwards to laying flat, lest the horse think her fingers were carrots.

Carrots! She dug the carrots out of her satchel and offered them to the horse. He chomped down on all five at once and they had disappeared greens and everything a second later.

"You like carrots, don't you?" she asked.

Carrots.

How evil could he be, if he ate his vegetables?

She held up the spinach next and it vanished as fast as the carrots had. The horse sniffed the satchel, making Cocot envision herself flattened between the horse and cliff. When she moved away, though, the horse widened his eyes and huffed at her.

"Do you want more? I've got a garden full of carrots, cabbages, spinach and more," she said, stretching out her empty hands.

He stepped sideways on the narrow path, his head swaying slightly from her direction to the other, towards the road. But he wasn't looking at her—he kept glancing at the spruce behind her.

She didn't dare move a muscle. His ears twitched to and fro, and his wide eyes rolled. She cringed as tiny maggots came and went like synchronized swimmers surfacing for air before wriggling away.

The beast might have been evil once, but now he was old, sick and scared.

"Come home with me," she whispered.

He shied away.

"Come with me to my chalet, there are carrots and apples and grass in the field. I'll take care of you, as best I can anyway. I promise."

He sidestepped again, but looking at her now and not the great spruce.

"Can I pet your nose?" she asked, and touched the strange combination of velvet, prickly whiskers, and cool wetness. He held still as she rubbed the top and bridge of his nose with her fingertip, up to where the hairs met in a confused bundle, each one standing in a different direction than its neighbor.

"How about it?" she asked him. A shiver ran through his shoulder. It was risky. If she reached up, she could only just touch his knobby spine. Never could she control him if he grew angry or panicked.

At the same time as this thought crossed her mind, the horse nudged her with his head.

"You want to come with me?" she asked, pleased. His ears turned to her and he stared with one eye.

She went towards him. He stepped sideways. She smiled. "Follow me then."

The horse waited, so she inched around him, taking pains not to startle him with any sudden noise. From the other side, she clucked at him, like farmhands cluck at the plow horses. She walked backwards a few feet to see if he would come. After only a moment's hesitation, he started to follow, his limp showing as he walked.

She laughed—not at the dirty, sore ridden creature—but from pure joy that he was coming with her, that she could take him to her home and share her apples.

A song came to her lips.

"Meunier, tu dors, ton moulin va trop vite!" And she spun slowly to watch the horse, then the path, then the floating cotton in the air and the shadowed forest all around, except when she reached the verse where the mill wheel was turning too fast, and then she spun a little too fast herself, letting a little wildness into her feet where it once had sparked every day. They continued along the path until they reached the pine roots stairs to the road.

Soufflé was standing below in the dirt lane, all seven inches of him crackled with anger and his eyebrows slanted in disapproval.

"Why are you wearing that dress, and why is that thing following you?" he asked.

*** Thank you as always for reading!!! ***