Peter Beagle - The Line Between

When the cart stopped jouncing and shaking so much, I knew we must have turned onto the King's Highway, and when I could hear cows munching and talking softly to each other, I dropped into the road. I stood there for a little, brushing off lint and wool bits, and watching Uncle Ambrose's cart rolling on away from me. I hadn't ever been this far from home by myself. Or so lonely. The breeze brushed dry grass against my ankles, and I didn't have any idea which way to go.

I didn't even know the king's name — I'd never heard anyone call him anything but the king. I knew he didn't live in Hagsgate, but in a big castle somewhere nearby, only nearby's one thing when you're riding in a cart and different when you're walking. And I kept thinking about my family waking up and looking for me, and the cows' grazing sounds made me hungry, and I'd eaten all my cheese in the cart. I wished I

had a penny with me — not to buy anything with, but only to toss up and let it tell me if I should turn left or right. I tried it with flat stones, but I never could find them after they came down. Finally I started off going left, not for any reason, but only because I have a little silver ring on my left hand that my mother gave me. There was a sort of path that way too, and I thought maybe I could walk around Hagsgate and then I'd think about what to do after that. I'm a good walker. I can walk anywhere, if you give me time.

Only it's easier on a real road. The path gave out after awhile, and I had to push my way through trees growing too close together, and then through so many brambly vines that my hair was full of stickers and my arms were all stinging and bleeding. I was tired and sweating, and almost crying — almost — and whenever I sat down to rest bugs and things kept crawling over me. Then I heard running water nearby, and that made me thirsty right away, so I tried to get down to the sound. I had to crawl most of the way, scratching my knees and elbows up something awful.

It wasn't much of a stream — in some places the water came up barely above my ankles — but I was so glad to see it I practically hugged and kissed it, flopping down with my face buried in it, the way I do with Malka's smelly old fur. And I drank until I couldn't hold any more, and then I sat on a stone and let the tiny fish tickle my nice cold feet, and felt the sun on my shoulders, and I didn't think about griffins or kings or my family or anything.

I only looked up when I heard the horses whickering a little way upstream. They were playing with the water, the way horses do, blowing bubbles like children. Plain old livery–stable horses, one brownish, one grayish. The gray's rider was out of the saddle, peering at the horse's left forefoot. I couldn't get a good look — they both had on plain cloaks, dark green, and trews so worn you couldn't make out the color — so I didn't know that one was a woman until I heard her voice. A nice voice, low, like Silky Joan, the lady my mother won't ever let me ask about, but with something rough in it too, as though she could scream like a hawk if she wanted to. She was saying, «There's no stone I can see. Maybe a thorn?»

The other rider, the one on the brown horse, answered her, «Or a bruise. Let me see.»

That voice was lighter and younger–sounding than the woman's voice, but I already knew he was a man, because he was so tall. He got down off the brown horse and the woman moved aside to let him pick up her horse's foot. Before he did that, he put his hands on the horse's head, one on each side, and he said something to it that I couldn't quite hear. And the horse said something back. Not like a neigh, or a whinny, or any of the sounds horses make, but like one person talking to another. I can't say it any better than that. The tall man bent down then, and he took hold of the foot and looked at it for a long time, and the horse didn't move or switch its tail or anything.

«A stone splinter," the man said after a while. «It's very small, but it's worked itself

deep into the hoof, and there's an ulcer brewing. I can't think why I didn't notice it straightaway.»

«Well," the woman said. She touched his shoulder. «You can't notice everything.»

The tall man seemed angry with himself, the way my father gets when he's forgotten to close the pasture gate properly, and our neighbor's black ram gets in and fights with our poor old Brimstone. He said, «I can. I'm supposed to.» Then he turned his back to the horse and bent over that forefoot, the way our blacksmith does, and he went to work on it.

I couldn't see what he was doing, not exactly. He didn't have any picks or pries, like the blacksmith, and all I'm sure of is that I think he was singing to the horse. But I'm not sure it was proper singing. It sounded more like the little made–up rhymes that really small children chant to themselves when they're playing in the dirt, all alone. No tune, just up and down, dee–dah, dee–dab, dee … boring even for a horse, I'd have thought. He kept doing it for a long time, still bending with that hoof in his hand. All at once he stopped singing and stood up, holding something that glinted in the sun the way the stream did, and he showed it to the horse, first thing. «There," he said, «there, that's what it was. It's all right now.»

He tossed the thing away and picked up the hoof again, not singing, only touching it very lightly with one finger, brushing across it again and again. Then he set the foot down, and the horse stamped once, hard, and whinnied, and the tall man turned to the woman and said, «We ought to camp here for the night, all the same. They're both weary, and my back hurts.»

The woman laughed. A deep, sweet, slow sound, it was, I'd never heard a laugh like that. She said, «The greatest wizard walking the world, and your back hurts? Heal it as you healed mine, the time the tree fell on me. That took you all of five minutes, I believe.»

«Longer than that," the man answered her. «You were delirious, you wouldn't remember.» He touched her hair, which was thick and pretty, even though it was mostly gray. «You know how I am about that," he said. «I still like being mortal too much to use magic on myself. It spoils it somehow — it dulls the feeling. I've told you before.»

The woman said " Mmphh," the way I've heard my mother say it a thousand times. «Well, I've been mortal all my life, and some days…»

She didn't finish what she was saying, and the tall man smiled, the way you could tell he was teasing her. «Some days, what?»

«Nothing," the woman said, «nothing, nothing.» She sounded irritable for a moment, but she put her hands on the man's arms, and she said in a different voice, «Some days — some early mornings — when the wind smells of blossoms I'll never see, and there are fawns playing in the misty orchards, and you're yawning and mumbling and

scratching your head, and growling that we'll see rain before nightfall, and probably hail as well … on such mornings I wish with all my heart that we could both live forever, and I think you were a great fool to give it up.» She laughed again, but it sounded shaky now, a little. She said, «Then I remember things I'd rather not remember, so then my stomach acts up, and all sorts of other things start twingeing me — never mind what they are, or where they hurt, whether it's my body or my head, or my heart. And then I think, no, I suppose not, maybe not.» The tall man put his arms around her, and for a moment she rested her head on his chest. I couldn't hear what she said after that.

I didn't think I'd made any noise, but the man raised his voice a little, not looking at me, not lifting his head, and he said, «Child, there's food here.» First I couldn't move, I was so frightened. He couldn't have seen me through the brush and all the alder trees. And then I started remembering how hungry I was, and I started toward them without knowing I was doing it. I actually looked down at my feet and watched them moving like somebody else's feet, as though they were the hungry ones, only they had to have me take them to the food. The man and the woman stood very still and waited for me.