to ignore how the ceremony would take away the boy I knew for ever and also the fierce warrior girl who had loved him. It already had. Those children were gone.
I n his stable office, my father folded his ledger and reached for a drink though he’d only recently finished his morning coffee. “You’re going to run Pegasus today?” he asked me.
“A mile and a quarter at half speed. His head’s been a little low. I thought I’d try the chain snaffle.”
“Good girl,” he said, but his eyes were flat and detached as I ran through the rest of the morning’s duties—which of the horses were on gallop day, which were resting or in tendon boots, the feed ordered, deliveries scheduled. Since I’d failed at boarding school, this was my life. He organized the breeding and ran the farm, and I was his head boy. I wanted to be indispensable, but I would settle for being useful.
The groom, Toombo, had brushed Pegasus’s coat to a lacquer and now boosted me into the saddle. At two, Pegasus was massive already—a notch more than seventeen hands. I was tall, too—nearly six foot now—but I felt like a leaf in the saddle.
In the yard, the morning was as clear as glass—the same as the last ten or twenty or a hundred mornings. We passed under the large wattle tree where a pair of grey-whiskered vervets chattered from one of the lower branches. They looked like two old men with their leathery black hands and thin, disappointed faces. They’d come down from the forest or escarpment looking for water, but our cisterns had run desperately low, and we had none to offer.
Over the hill, the dirt track stretched down and away through broadly terraced fields. In better days, our crops had spread around us in every direction, rich and green. When you walked through the chest-high maize, your foot would sink into the moist earth up to your ankle. Now the leaves curled and cracked. The mill still ran continuously, grinding
posho
that then waited in canvas bags to honour our contracts. Grain-filled rail carriages still streamed away from our station at Kampi ya Moto towards Nairobi, but no one was getting rich from any of it. My father had borrowed against chits at high interest and then borrowed more. The rupee was plummeting like a grouse full of bird shot. Where it was now, no one really knew. The creditors seemed constantly to change their minds, and my father’s debts slid up and down a ladder almost daily. But our horses had to eat. They needed crimped oats, bran, boiled barley—not bleached patches of lucerne. My father had built his bloodstock from love and gut instinct and the thick black studbook with lists of names going all the way back to sires like magnificent princes. These were the finest horses there were. He wasn’t going to let anyone or anything take an inch more without a fight, not after he had worked so hard.
When Pegasus and I reached the open track, we paused and settled, getting our bearings, then I opened him up. He charged out like a coiled spring, lengthening along the flat grade, thrusting through the rhythms of his stride—fast and perfect, close to flying.
I had foaled him myself when I was fourteen and home for a spring holiday—watching Coquette’s trembling labour and overjoyed that I could be there for it. Coquette had delivered healthy foals every few years since the terrible birth of Apollo and the coming of the siafu ants, but I still didn’t want to leave her side for a moment and took to sleeping in her loose box for the last few weeks. When the foal finally came, I broke open the slick, translucent birth sac with my hands and gently tugged him by his small perfect front hoofs into the loose straw bed. I nearly shook with happiness and relief. It was the first time I’d ever been midwife on my own, and there’d been no mishaps. My father had trusted me and didn’t come into the stable at all until dawn as I held Pegasus in my arms, a bundle of wet heat and bony folded limbs.
“Well
I n his stable office, my father folded his ledger and reached for a drink though he’d only recently finished his morning coffee. “You’re going to run Pegasus today?” he asked me.
“A mile and a quarter at half speed. His head’s been a little low. I thought I’d try the chain snaffle.”
“Good girl,” he said, but his eyes were flat and detached as I ran through the rest of the morning’s duties—which of the horses were on gallop day, which were resting or in tendon boots, the feed ordered, deliveries scheduled. Since I’d failed at boarding school, this was my life. He organized the breeding and ran the farm, and I was his head boy. I wanted to be indispensable, but I would settle for being useful.
The groom, Toombo, had brushed Pegasus’s coat to a lacquer and now boosted me into the saddle. At two, Pegasus was massive already—a notch more than seventeen hands. I was tall, too—nearly six foot now—but I felt like a leaf in the saddle.
In the yard, the morning was as clear as glass—the same as the last ten or twenty or a hundred mornings. We passed under the large wattle tree where a pair of grey-whiskered vervets chattered from one of the lower branches. They looked like two old men with their leathery black hands and thin, disappointed faces. They’d come down from the forest or escarpment looking for water, but our cisterns had run desperately low, and we had none to offer.
Over the hill, the dirt track stretched down and away through broadly terraced fields. In better days, our crops had spread around us in every direction, rich and green. When you walked through the chest-high maize, your foot would sink into the moist earth up to your ankle. Now the leaves curled and cracked. The mill still ran continuously, grinding
posho
that then waited in canvas bags to honour our contracts. Grain-filled rail carriages still streamed away from our station at Kampi ya Moto towards Nairobi, but no one was getting rich from any of it. My father had borrowed against chits at high interest and then borrowed more. The rupee was plummeting like a grouse full of bird shot. Where it was now, no one really knew. The creditors seemed constantly to change their minds, and my father’s debts slid up and down a ladder almost daily. But our horses had to eat. They needed crimped oats, bran, boiled barley—not bleached patches of lucerne. My father had built his bloodstock from love and gut instinct and the thick black studbook with lists of names going all the way back to sires like magnificent princes. These were the finest horses there were. He wasn’t going to let anyone or anything take an inch more without a fight, not after he had worked so hard.
When Pegasus and I reached the open track, we paused and settled, getting our bearings, then I opened him up. He charged out like a coiled spring, lengthening along the flat grade, thrusting through the rhythms of his stride—fast and perfect, close to flying.
I had foaled him myself when I was fourteen and home for a spring holiday—watching Coquette’s trembling labour and overjoyed that I could be there for it. Coquette had delivered healthy foals every few years since the terrible birth of Apollo and the coming of the siafu ants, but I still didn’t want to leave her side for a moment and took to sleeping in her loose box for the last few weeks. When the foal finally came, I broke open the slick, translucent birth sac with my hands and gently tugged him by his small perfect front hoofs into the loose straw bed. I nearly shook with happiness and relief. It was the first time I’d ever been midwife on my own, and there’d been no mishaps. My father had trusted me and didn’t come into the stable at all until dawn as I held Pegasus in my arms, a bundle of wet heat and bony folded limbs.
“Well
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