This One Magical Day
Jolene
The landscape whips beneath us in a blur of greenery and rolling hills and forests and seascape. We follow the shoreline north until wide beaches give way to towering cliff faces, against which the sea throws itself with white-spraying violence.
We fly north for over an hour.
Eventually, we slow and the nose flares up and we settle gently to the earth. We’re at an airfield…sort of. It’s not an airport by any measure of the term. There’s a handful of half-barrel hangars lining a long strip of close-shorn grass, with pylons marking distance and outlining the landing strip. And…that’s it. The sea is in the distance, visible only as that subtle shift in the skyline, a sense of the earth falling away from the sky. The rotors slow and the roar of the engine mutes and fades, and the pilot exits and opens the passenger door. Wes hops down and then his hands grasp me by the waist and he lifts me down easily, setting me on my feet and brushing his lips against mine, almost accidentally.
There’s no one here, just our helicopter, and the pilot, who heads without a word or backward glance for one of the hangars.
I glance at Wes. “Now what?”
He just grins and doesn’t answer.
After a moment, the answer is made clear: an enormous horse trots into view, pulling a carriage. The horse is absolutely mammoth, even from a distance. It’s mostly black, with a few splotches of white on its flanks; its feet from the hocks down are booted in a thick billowing mane of white hair as voluminous as its actual mane…which is, in a word, fabulous.
“Oh my god, that horse!” I gasp. “It’s incredible. Do you know what kind it is?”
Wes shrugs, laughing. “Nope, but we can ask.”
The carriage is ornate, white with a plush red leather interior. The driver is a burly middle-aged man with boulder-like shoulders and a shaggy brown beard, wearing a flat cap and, I swear to god, an actual briar pipe clenched in his teeth.
As he approaches Wes and me, he tugs one-handed on the reins. “Whoa, fella. Whoa.” The carriage halts precisely beside us, the opening aligned exactly in front of us; the driver tips his hat, pulling his pipe from his teeth with a brilliant, welcoming smile. “Evenin’, sir, madam.” He has a faint Irish accent. How perfect can this be? “My name is Michael, and this fine, fancy fella is Magnus.”
I’m in awe of the horse. He—and it is, very visibly, a he—is gargantuan. His shoulders are nearly at my head height, and he’s thick with muscle, broad and hard. His coat is silky and glistening, glossy black with those two splotches milky white on either flank and the white boots of thick fur at each hoof.
I glance at the driver. “What kind of horse is he? Can I pet him?”
The driver smiles at me kindly. “He’s a Gypsy Vanner, and of course you can. Just let him smell your hand, first. He’ll nuzzle you to tell you it’s all right after that.”
I shuffle closer to Magnus, and his big dark eye regards me sidelong. His head bobs, and he turns to look at me straight on. I extend my hand, palm out, and his wide nostrils flare, blowing hot breath on my hands. I smell hay on his breath. He bobs his head again and whickers, a low mutter. His nose is velvet against my hand when he nuzzles me, and I rub his nose, and then pet the white blaze running up between his perky, swiveling ears.
“There’s nothin’ he likes more than to have his ears scratched,” Michael says. “Unless it’s a carrot.” And with that, he reaches beside himself and tosses me a carrot.
I catch it and show it to Magnus. His thick lips curl back and he shows me huge flat whitish-yellow teeth, and I let him take the carrot from me—he snaps off half, and I keep the part I’m holding. He crunches noisily, and I scratch his ears while he chews. His eye is fixed on me, liquid and dark brown and wise and deep. He nudges me, lips wiggling as he snuffles my shirt and my cheek with whiskery lips, hunting for the rest of the carrot he knows I have. I give it to him, and it vanishes into his mouth with a loud snap and grinding crunches. I scratch his ears again, and he wiggles his head side to side, as if to get me to scratch higher and then lower, this way and that.
Michael drapes the reins across the footboard, descends and rounds the rear of the carriage. Wes climbs in first, and then Michael hands me up. There’s a thick wool blanket folded on the rear-facing bench, but it’s a warm evening, not too hot and not cool yet either. I cuddle in close to Wes as Michael settles back into the driver’s seat, clamps his pipe in his teeth and grabs the reins.
He taps them lightly against Magnus’s back with a grunted, “Giddyap, Magnus. There’s a boy.”
The huge horse lunges into a smooth trot, and we head toward the sea in a northwest line. A gull’s caw overhead, is answered in the distance. It’s early evening, now. The sun is plunging with subtle speed under the horizon, huge and red-orange and bright, staining the sea a scintillating barrage of colors.
This is happiness.
Wes’s arm is around me, and his heart thumps steadily against my ear. He’s solid and warm and comforting. I can hear the sea in the distance.
Michael twists in the seat and gestures with his pipe. “Mind if I have a puff?”
Wes just shrugs, giving the decision to me.
“Not at all,” I say. “Go ahead.”
He keeps the reins clutched in his fist, putting the pipe to his teeth. He hesitates as if to make sure I’m watching, glancing at me with a sly sideways grin, and produces a flaring spurt of flame from his fingertips in a neat bit of prestidigitation, and then with a hollow-cheeked suck, the flame bends toward the pipe, bursts upward as a plume of smoke wafts skyward, and then he puffs again and the flame once more bends toward the pipe bowl.
He rubs his fingertips together, and the flame vanishes; he puffs once, twice, and then blows a plume of grayish-blue smoke to the sky. There’s a gentle breeze blowing, and it pulls the smoke away, but I get a whiff—it’s sweet, and not unpleasant.
Magnus trots steadily northwest, and the sea grows closer and louder, and the gulls gather in ever greater numbers, white W shapes wheeling and dipping and flapping and cawing.
