In the Place the Wild Horses Sleep
On the night Mia ran with wild horses through her living room, everything was wrong.
Dinner was wrong – it wasn’t hot enough, and there were too many green things. TV was wrong – cartoons were over and Mother wanted to watch the news. But above all, the house was wrong. There were too many walls. There weren’t enough forests growing in the living room, an absence of mountains in the dining area, and a lack of wide open meadows in the kitchen. Inside her house, the cool wind didn't blow in the light of a blue moon.
Mother didn’t want to play with her any longer.
‘Enough,’ Mother snapped, putting down her work papers. ‘That’s enough mischief for one night. You’ve played well past your bedtime, little Miss Mia.’
Mia didn’t want to go to bed that night: her heart was filled with horses and her legs were full of running. Even so, she clipped and clopped her way upstairs to brush her teeth. Clip CLOP, she went. Clip CLOP. Clip CLOP.
‘Stop stamping, Mia. No more games, I’ve got to work now.’
Mia huffed. Mia whinnied.
Slamming her bedroom door behind her, she said, ‘Bed? Wild horses don’t sleep in beds. They sleep in fields, and they sleep in the moonlight. I’m not going to bed tonight – I can play all by myself.’ With that, she galloped around and around her bedroom, over a pool (her rug), over a hedge (her bed). But WHACK! She tripped on the rug-pool and bumped her head on the bed.
‘Go to bed, Mia,’ Mother said through the closed door.
Mia folded her arms. ‘Mum! Horses don’t sleep in beds. We sleep in fields and in moonlight, and we sleep in the starlight.’
‘Quite right,' Mother said. 'Horses don’t sleep in beds – but little girls do. Little girls with tired legs and tired arms and tired heads. You are not a horse. Go to sleep.’
For a long while, Mia glowered at the door. Then she threw herself under the sheets, and in a horse-proud whisper said, ‘I’ll find it. I’ll find the place the wild horses are, and they’ll be my friends and let me play all night long.
‘I’ll run where wild horses run,
I’ll leap when wild horses leap!
I’ll eat what wild horses eat,
I’ll sleep where wild horses sleep!'
Her wishes galloped through the open window and into the night. Past star oceans and sun forests, and in and out of a thousand glittering dreams. There, her wishes found the place where the cool wind blows in the light of a blue moon, and where the wild horses live…
Just as Mia was falling asleep, there came a CLIP and a CLOP, a KNOCK and a KNOCK upon the door. She sat bolt upright.
CLIP CLOP,
went the floor.
KNOCK KNOCK,
went the door.
‘Who... who’s there?’ she said. Her heart beat, beat, beat in excitement, for wild horses awaited outside her door.
‘Let Us in!’ said the wild horse in a midnight voice. ‘You are the filly in need of friends? We wish to see you!’
With a leap and a bound Mia got out of bed, and opened the door to let in—
A dark winged horse,
Deep night blue,
A night horned horse:
It’s true! It’s true!
The horse – a winged unicorn – had a mane of stardust, and there were stars in her tail. She stood smaller than the doorway but taller than Mia. Behind her eyes lurked wildness – yet it was a forgotten wildness, long since tamed (although no wild horse could ever be truly tamed).
Said the horse, ‘At long last, We have found you, Miss PLAY. We have found you and you shall come with Us.’
Something in the way the unicorn said PLAY made Mia chilly with wonder. She peered into the corridor. ‘W-where are the others?’
‘Little Mia, my beautiful little Mia, my precious, dear, little Miss Mia. We call Ourselves ‘We’ for We are a princess – Our name is Princess Luna! And We are the only pony here, come to take you to where the ponies dwell.
‘Where the ponies live and sleep,
And where the ponies run;
Where the ponies eat and drink,
Magic ponies, how fun!’
‘Do you wish to join Us on an adventure, Miss PLAY? The choice is yours.’
Mia hesitated. As friendly as the unicorn – the Star Pony – Princess Luna seemed, she clearly wasn’t a wild horse. Although maybe she could help Luna remember her wildness…
Mia nodded.
Then Luna kicked the door shut, and the room shuddered and shook like a wild thing. City lights were replaced with the white lights of stars. Houses became fields. Concrete towers became towering trees, and as Mia pressed her nose to the window, she saw, to her delight, that they were travelling through the countryside.
‘Welcome, Miss PLAY, to the Friendship Express,’ said the princess in her midnight voice to match her midnight looks.
In poking her head out the window, Mia discovered that they were on a train: a steam train no less, of which her bedroom was now the last compartment on the very last carriage.
White stars, cold stars,
Bright stars, yellow.
Red stars, cross stars,
Blue stars, mellow.
Loud stars, soft stars,
Singing stars, ringing stars,
Quiet stars, hushed stars,
Stars that Bellowed.
‘I can hear them singing!’ Mia exclaimed. Wrapping herself in her red dressing gown, she sat on the windowsill to listen to the singing of the stars. They sang in words known only to horses; and even then, only to those horses that still knew of the old tales, from the times when all the world knew that magic was real, magic was true.
Towering trees gave way to towering hills, and Mia spied a huge castle atop a mountain. Enormous, giant, ginormous; colossal, gigantic, gilossal. It was the biggest castle she had ever seen. Fairy-tale towers pierced the star-sprinkled night, and the stars shining above resembled an enormous horse, sleeping and smiling, with a horn and wings made of moonlight.
Soon after that, the train steamed to a halt in the castle grounds, and six ponies waited on the station platform for them: two horned, two winged, and two with neither horns nor wings.
‘I’m MAGIC,' said the purple pony.
'I’m KINDNESS,' said the yellow pony.
'I’m LAUGHTER,' said the pink pony.
'I’m HONESTY,' said the orange pony.
'I’m LOYALTY,' said the blue pony.
'I’m GENEROSITY,' said the white pony.
‘We’ve been waiting for you, Mia,' said MAGIC. 'Friendship is magic, but it’s no fun without PLAY.’
Mia bit her lip, wondering when they were going to run with wild horses.
For the time being, however, she was happy to let her new friends show her around. What a castle, what a castle! What a city! A marvellous jumble of white stone buildings grown up merrily messily around the castle.
There were ponies everywhere, and they lived in houses and ate outside cafes on oak carved tables. There were a hundred shops, selling hay and grass, flowers and seeds, and feed.
Mia saw fancy ponies and big ponies and little ponies. Ponies who were pink and purple, red and orange. Ponies green and ponies emerald. Ponies with blue fur coats and violet fur coats. There were ponies coloured colours she couldn’t name, and others wearing dresses, boots, hats, and suits, and saddles (for who? she wondered). There were singing ponies and performer ponies putting on shows for the passer-by ponies.
Amongst them all wasn’t a single wild horse. Not so much as a dozen. Not so much as
one.
‘We’re here!’ said MAGIC, clapping her hooves together. And there they were: at the gates of a fine old palace. ‘I’ve planned this all out by the book, you know. It’s going to be so much fun!’
Inside the palace was a hall, where everything was wrong, wrong, wrong. There was a feast of nettle soup and poached grass, honey roasted hay, spinach and cabbage ice cream (Mia made a different face for every dish). Marble walls kept out the cool breeze whispering under a blue moon; a humongous chess board made up the floor; and there was a severe shortage of forests and meadows growing through the cracks between the tiles.
‘When are we going to run?
When are we going to leap?
Where are the wild horses?
Where do the horses sleep?
Tell me,
Where?
Oh tell me,
Please!
Tell where wild horses sleep!'
But the ponies were too excited to pay attention.
Afterwards, Princess Luna led Mia to her new bedroom at the top of the tallest tower: a princess’s tower looming over a forest of spires. Her bed was soft and warm, and laid on the red pillows were red pyjamas with a pattern of hooves printed on them. The bath in the next room was neither too hot nor too cold. Everything was perfect, perfect! Save for the most important detail of all, which no amount of baths, pyjamas, beds, nor towers could fix…
The second she was alone, Mia slipped away.
Down from the top of the tallest tower.
Down, down, through Castle Town, running through the castle grounds.
Down, down, down to the station, where the steam train waited.
Down, down, down, down onto the tracks, because the train was silent. Stealing a last look at the castle, Mia set off in search of wild horses.
Silent night,
All is right.
Stars so bright,
Moon so still.
All is cold,
All is chill.
All is silent,
Silent night.
Mia swelled with happiness, until a loud THUMP made her JUMP. ‘Pray tell Us, Miss PLAY! Where do you think you’re going with the moon so high and with the stars a-chill?’
Luna had landed on the tracks behind her. Mia’s mouth went dry.
‘I’m… I’m sorry I didn’t say goodbye,’ Mia said. ‘You’ve all been so lovely! But I want to be friends with horses. That’s all I want. That’s the only thing I want.’
‘Is that not why We brought you here? You were in need of friends, so We came to the rescue!’
Mia shook her head. ‘I want to be friends with wild horses. Wild, wild, wild, wild, WILD! You ponies are nice, but you eat off plates! You sleep in beds! You have supper at playtime, and bed after suppertime. Mum didn’t understand and neither do you. You’re not wild enough.’
Mia felt hot, but not ordinary hot. The light of a match is no match for the heat of the desert. The heat of the desert is a lazy summer’s day compared with the belly of the Sun. And it was down the Sun’s throat and into Her fiery stomach into which Mia now tumbled. Suddenly, she couldn’t look Luna in the eyes.
If she had, she would have been remembered that in the princess’s eyes lurked forgotten wildness.
Forgotten, but reawakened.
Luna placed a hoof on Mia’s shoulder. ‘If wild horses is what it takes, then though We don’t understand, we shall help you. Because you are loved, Miss Mia. You are so loved, although you do not always see it.’
A moment’s pause. Then Mia hugged the princess as though she were Mother – and a new wish came to her, one that she didn’t know how to put into words. Had it been granted, she imagined that time would have galloped backwards, and she would have known better than to tell Luna that she didn’t understand True Wildness…
‘I didn’t mean to shout at you,’ Mia whispered. But Luna simply smiled and didn’t say a word, then let Mia clamber onto her back.
Down, Down, Down the Star Pony flew.
Down the rail tracks.
Down the mountain.
Down to grass without end, to the place the cool breeze blows in the light of a blue moon. Where the wild horses run. Where the wild horses leap. Where the wild horses eat and drink, where the wild horses sleep.
There they were: Wild Horses.
They ate blue-green grass in the star-silence. They drank river water in the moon-quiet. They were mum horses and they were dad horses, and they were fillies and they were colts. They were the colours of the earth: they were black and white; they were brown with white splotches; they were black with brown splatches.
They looked fearsome.
They looked WILD.
Jumping off her friend’s back and running with bare feet against the wet grass! Wind chilled the bare skin of her arms, and her heart beat and beat and beat! But when the wild horses saw her coming they ran away.
‘STOP! WAIT!’
Wild horses listen to no-one, for wildness can be friendship, yet wildness can be cold and dark and lonesome. Indeed, when Mia shouted to the princess to help her catch up, she was met with the silence of a hundred horseless nights: Luna was gone. Mia was alone.
Yet even as her heart sank, she felt the touch of something soft wrap around her body and heard a whisper inside her head: wild voices. Warm as the warmest fire on a black December’s night. Comforting as the tightest hug, so though tears flowed freely down her face, she didn’t care.
MAGIC,
KINDNESS,
And LAUGHTER too,
HONESTY,
LOYALTY,
GENEROSITY too.
With love in her heart, Mia then knew,
Friendship is Magic and Magic is TRUE.
‘We love you,’ they said.
‘We love you
We love you.
We love you.
We love you.
We love you.’
Her heart pumped the words through her body, and the words changed her. Down her legs to the tips of her toes – but her feet were hooves. Down her arms and tingling in her fingers – but her hands were hooves. Up, up through her lungs and chest, to the roots of her hair – but her hair had turned into a long brown mane and her lungs were giant. Her pyjamas were red-brown fur sprinkled with white dots. Mia flicked her wild tail, and galloped, galloped into the night, wild horse that she now was.
‘This is Our gift to you,’ she heard Princess Luna say from nowhere. ‘Much love, Miss Mia.’
Mia tried to whisper thanks, but a neigh and a breigh escaped her lips. She fancied that she heard Luna laughing – kindly laughter, that of a friend’s.
All through the night and into the dawn, Mia ran with wild horses.
Sleet and rain and snow and hail,
Grass and mountain, hidden trails.
Through fields, plains, sun and heat,
Mia ran, ran; heart beat, beat.
And it beat, it beat, it beat: a horse’s heart, her own, her very own! She wanted to cry with happiness – yet not whilst there was running to be done with the wild horses.
She ran through the day and back into night.
Then the wild horses ran faster, and then the horses were gone. Above shone the moon. Above sang the stars, singing a horse’s tune.
Despite herself, she longed for the soft bed in the tallest tower. She wanted to sink into a warm bath – but wild horses didn’t have warm baths. They didn’t have pyjamas to dress back into. They didn’t have cartoons. They didn’t have living rooms or bedrooms, or kitchens. Their mothers didn’t tell them to brush their teeth and go to bed. And when they ate greens, it was green grass ripped straight from the earth, and that certainly wasn’t hot enough for her.
Mia was lonely.
Straight ahead, in a vast field, there was a bed with a red blanket, lit by an electric lamp on a wooden desk. In the bed was Mother, asleep in the lamplight, and tossing and turning. Her work papers were scattered in the grass, along with her doctor’s uniform, along with her work bag and her work things.
Mia climbed into bed with muddy hands and cold feet, so tired that she didn’t notice she was a girl again. She still felt like a wild horse, although a horse warm and cosy in a familiar bed.
When Mother’s arms found her, Mia hugged back. Mother stopped tossing and turning. Mia turned off the lamp and switched off the starlight and the moonlight; then she pressed an ear against Mother’s chest so as to listen to the beat of a heart more beloved than her own, the most comforting sound in the world.
Mia fell asleep smiling.
Mother’s heart beat, and beat, and beat.
Author's Note
Chalk horses!
