Dandelion: The Extraordinary Life of a Misfit Read online

  “And what would he be needing me for?”

  “It doesn't matter, does it?”

  “Sure and it matters! He might be wanting me to pull a cart!”

  “Do you see yourself pulling a cart again?”

  “No! Never!”

  “Well then, he'll not be needing you to pull a cart.”

  “But what will I be doing?”

  “Never mind that for now. Take it for granted, as a given, that it exists and that it's something you will love to do. Something you can do better than any other horse in the world. Something, though, that you could not do without a human.”

  “But where will I be finding...?”

  “It's not important for now. What is important is that you imagine such a person. Put him alongside the proud `you' you already carry in your head. He doesn't need a face for now. And now imagine how you would feel if you were just such a horse and there was just such a person and you knew yourself to be living a grand life. Tell me, how does it feel?”

  There was a chuckle in Dandelion's throat and joy in her heart as she looked at the picture in her head. “Why, it's grand I feel! As though I just grew. Stretched. Became powerful. In control of me life.”

  “Exactly!”

  “And is this then how it works, as Timothy was forever saying? You think of a thing. Imagine it. Want it with all your heart and ... then it becomes?”

  “Sure and it is. Except you forgot something.”

  “What? Quickly!”

  “You forgot the expectation part. You have to expect it. Act as if it has already happened.”

  “Yes. To be sure. I must expect it. And... who is this then that I am talking to? Is it...? Are you...? Can it be that you're me inner self?”

  “The very same! And at your service night and day. Only waiting for me chance to speak.”

  “And will you...? Are you... always there?”

  “How can I be any place else when I am yourself?”

  “So simple it is! So, so simple!”

  “Indeed!”

  Wild with joy was Dandelion, shivering and trembling with it. “Timothy!” she called, leaving her thicket like a fox before hounds. “Timothy, I found it! I found me missing part and I'm through with me antics forevermore. It's a grand horse I am and will be forevermore. Look at me!”

  But there was no answering shout. And though Dandelion searched far and wide, high and low, never a trace of him did she find.

  In a panic she was to find herself alone again, there still being so many questions to ask, so much still to understand, and she ran about the whole of a day calling to him before she calmed herself and saw his departure for the necessary thing it was.

  For certainly with him there, even knowing what she knew, she'd have plagued the life out of him, been after him to do her thinking for her. And she'd have stayed with him, procrastinating, afraid still to set out on a journey of her own devising.

  Grieved she was at the loss of him and sore in her heart to know she could never thank him for the grand gift he had given her. The gift of herself to herself. But he was gone. Gone to live whatever future he had fashioned for himself in his own mind while he waited for the snows to melt and for Dandelion to come to herself.

  And so she returned to her thicket a while longer, there to set about creating, thought by thought, a future tailored precisely for herself.

  FIFTEEN

  At the magic moment of dawn, the sky palest pink and all else black silhouettes, Dandelion, faithfully following the promptings from within, turned into the long gravel drive that would lead her to Lord Harrington's stable yard. A lot of thought she had given to the most advantageous place from which to launch her grand new life and she knew, despite its proximity to McCree's land and her past humiliations there, that Lord Harrington's estate was the most likely place from which to begin.

  Many, many times she had imagined the moment and now she lived it.

  A horse awaited her there at the turn. A beautiful, proud creature it was, lovingly forged in the deepest recesses of Dandelion's mind and sent on ahead to wait for her, its creator, to give it life.

  She was fearless, this creation of Dandelion's, with confidence radiating from her in an aura as brilliant as her burnished hide; a creature certain of her worth and jaunty in her eagerness to find and fill her place.

  Dandelion's gait changed as the two met, merged. She became her dream and as if in a dream, hooves lilting, moved through the brightening day to meet her future.

  Rounding the last curve, she came into the yard and saw what she expected to see, what she had seen on her first visit there long, long ago: tossing, querying heads at each stable's half-door. And every one of them amazed at the sight of her, none of them ever having seen, ever dreamed, of a horse unattended by man.

  With never a falter in her stride, Dandelion nodded a good morning to each and then, coming to the center of the yard, wheeled about sharply and waited. She was ready and willing at last to take her place alongside man. To become, in her giving and in partnership, more than it was possible to become alone.

  Grooms and lads left their work to gawk at the sight of her, none of them knowing what to make of her or what to do with her, and doing nothing until Lord Harrington, together with his assistants, arrived to send them scurrying. In a second a halter was on Dandelion's head and Lord Harrington at her side.

  “And what the devil is it we have here?” he demanded of the gawkers.

  “Looks to be a runaway, sir,” one of the quicker-witted observed.

  “A runaway, is it? Well, get it tied up and out of the way then. There's me horses to be attended to. No doubt some vexed owner will be by later to fetch it home.”

  Thinking the problem of Dandelion dealt with, he turned away to the day's business, only to turn back for a second look at her.

  “It's reminded I am of that filly old man McCree - God rest his soul - lost a time back,” he said to his veterinarian. “Are you remembering?”

  “I am indeed, and I'm thinking you're right though I had to look more than once meself to be sure of it. Wouldn't think it now were it not for the Arabian head. Flourished it has wherever it's been. Improved beyond the imagining. A pitiful thing it was in McCree's time.”

  “That's a strange turn of events then, isn't it?” Lord Harrington mused. “A horse disappears, what...? Must be a year gone. And then turns up here alone, and not a mark on it.”

  “Aye, strange indeed,” the veterinarian agreed. “McCree swore the gypsies made off with it. Said they were welcome besides. Said the horse had a poor disposition and had been a trial to him from its birth. It's trying to remember, I am, what he was after calling it. A flower name, I think it was... A daisy, perhaps? No, that was the old mare's name. Wait... it's come to me now. It was a dandelion!”

  “Never mind with the name of it,” Lord Harrington snapped. “It's more concerned I am with what's to be done with it, McCree being dead and gone and his missus moved away to Dublin.” Abruptly he turned away.

  “Make inquiries,” he called back over his shoulder. “Get the woman's address. Tell her the horse is here.”

  “And the horse, sir?” a groom asked.

  “Put it in a stable for now, out me road. Damnation, half me morning's been wasted on it already. Bring out me horses!”

  Overjoyed Dandelion was, to be led off and put in a stable; to see her experience becoming, more or less, the blueprint she had laid out for it. No thought had come to anyone's mind to turn her away, nor had she been labeled one way or another, thus all roads remained open to her, just as she had expected them to be. Moreover, they had seen, remarked on, the change in her. A grand start it was to her plan.

  No sooner was she put in a stable than her head was out over the half-door, watching the action from the viewpoint she had coveted from the first. All was chaos until the horses to be exercised formed a ragged line and went off to their morning's work, trailing Lord Harrington and his entourage in their wake.
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  With the last of them gone and peace restored, Dandelion saw there remained a stranger, a young, slight man she had not noticed before and she watched him closely. He was uncomfortable, ill at ease with his surroundings and himself, and sullen with boredom. His walk was uneven, strange to her eyes, and he steadied himself with a stick.

  Aimlessly, trailing his discontent like a dark cloud, he limped from here to there and back again with no more idea of what he did or where he went than a leaf tossed by the wind. He looked into stables not noticing that their occupants were gone. He watched the smithy work without seeing that he formed a shoe. He nodded to lads hurrying by without seeing the faces of any of them. His emotions - bitterness, self-pity, anger - were as clear to Dandelion as the nose on his face and just as familiar. After all, hadn't she'd lived through them all herself.

  She nickered softly to remind him of her presence, and when he looked her way, tossed her head in what she thought to be an encouraging manner.

  “Ah, the runaway,” he said by way of greeting, “The Dandelion.” Slowly he hobbled towards her. The accents of his speech were strange to Dandelion's ears though she would have understood his meaning without words. He spoke in a harsher, more precise manner than the soft brogue she was accustomed to and she learned later that he was from England, a nephew of Lord Harrington's come to recover from the shock of having half his leg blown off in the Great War.

  “And where did you run from?” he asked, drawing alongside and reaching up to scratch her head.

  Again she nickered and pawed the half-door, her thoughts going out in welcome.

  “A lost horse,” he mused. “Well... And aren't we all lost one way or another?”

  He frowned at his own words, and a surge of anger and resentment caused him to bring his stick down sharply against his game leg.

  “Yes, you might well look startled,” he said bitterly as Dandelion stared at his leg, for the sound was not that of wood against flesh but that of wood against wood.

  “Wooden legs have a way of sounding strange,” he explained. “They feel strange too. Bloody awful, in fact. Be glad you've all your own, though if you hadn't they'd be merciful and shoot you to put you out of your misery.”

  To comfort him, Dandelion nudged his shoulder with her muzzle as though to say, “Don't be taking on so! Sure and you could have lost the both of them!”

  “Humph,” he grunted and took his leave.

  Dandelion was sorry to see him go and she called after him and rattled her stable door with a forefoot to bring him back. She liked the man and wondered if perhaps he might be the one - the faceless one - she had put alongside herself, a vital part to her imagined future.

  She had seen him in her mind as very kind, as she sensed this man was underneath his despair, and she'd seen him with a need to grow and change as strong as her own. Her imaginary person would be looking for assistance and she, calling upon all her abilities and her new-found knowledge, would willingly provide it. Not that she had been so foolish as to determine, ahead of time, the specific manner in which the two of them would accomplish their goal, her common-sense knowing it to be something that would evolve and grow out of a combination of shared abilities.

  Still, she had not thought to deal with a man as crippled inside as he was without, as this man plainly was. Perhaps then he wasn't the one. She could only wait and see.

  SIXTEEN

  Time! Time can be a burdensome thing when one's future hangs in the balance, so to speak.

  After all, it's one thing to choose and create in the mind a fine master plan, another to allow the passage of time necessary for it to become physical. The more so when the blueprint calls for others, beside the creator, to fill it out. Because, of course, no scenario can come into being, as it were, without the willing consent of all the players.

  Dandelion could imagine Mark - for that was the stranger's name - playing the role she had set aside for a human, with all the fervor of her heart, and not a bit of good would it do her if it did not fit in with the expectations he carried, however haphazard, in his own head.

  Powerful indeed is the magnet of the mind, but it can no more attract to it ideas opposed to its own, than a magnet can pick up paper. The attraction has to be mutual.

  So Dandelion had to bide her time, and wait to see if Mark was in any way drawn to her, at the same time keeping her mind open - scanning - so to speak, for others who, by their own wishes and desires, might be willing and able to fill her plan. It became then a matter of patience. A quality Dandelion still struggled to master.

  Still, there are harder things to learn in life than patience, as Dandelion came to learn in the small paddock she was put into while waiting word from the widow McCree.

  There she learned to dodge and fight the doubts that came like gnats to plague her in her long hours of waiting. “After all,” they whispered, “for all your fine airs and graces you're still locked behind fences and gates, your life dependent on the whims of humans.”

  And with the doubts, came their twin, fear. “What if the inner voice was wrong?” it hissed. “And it was a mistake to return to Lord Harrington's. What if Mark sees in you only what the others see? A runaway. A strange-looking relic of the life of one old, now deceased farmer. And what if Mark decides to leave this place tomorrow and never return? What then, oh, feather-brained dreamer? How long before another kind-hearted stranger comes this way? And what if the good mother McCree instructs your immediate sale? Or your death? What then? What if?”

  A grand thing it was that from the start Dandelion had created a fearless, confident mare into whom she had transferred her being for she would have nothing to do with the slime of doubt, the degradation of fear. She refused to listen to their whisperings and laughed at both of them. Scorned them. Trampled them underfoot with graceful pirouettes. Where the old Dandelion would have been overwhelmed and left whimpering, the new Dandelion acted as if she already trod the path of her success and reveled in it.

  “Sell IT!” came word from Dublin, but too late to do Dandelion harm. Too many days had gone by and not one of them had she wasted.

  A great fuss she had made of Mark whenever he passed her way, stopping whatever it was she might be doing to rush to the fence and call to him. Her obvious affection amused him, and he took to breaking away from his busy, preoccupied uncle to visit her, a pleased smile at her extravagant welcome on his otherwise gloomy face.

  It pleased him, too, that she kept all her attention for him alone, pointedly ignoring all others - the grooms and trades people from the village - who passed her way. Not for them would she stop her antics to pass the time of day, though they stopped to stare and call out to her, only for Mark.

  What antics, you ask? Why, the showing-off of every ability she possessed, to be sure.

  Like a horse from the famous Spanish Riding School in Vienna she was with her high-stepping, diagonal trot; her controlled canter that kept her almost at a standstill; her pivot from full gallop; the walks she took on her hind legs.

  And like a Derby winner she was when, at full speed, she saw corners not as a hindrance, but as a point of acceleration.

  And like a horse from the Wild West in her uninhibited bucking that took her from one end of her paddock to the other and across its middle besides.

  Oh yes, she showed off shamelessly, but didn't she have to, though? Only herself she had to show, and show herself she did. For how else was she to convince others of her natural abilities? Let them know she was more than she appeared to be? Besides, with her new-found self and an audience as well, wasn't she the happiest creature in all of Ireland? Indeed she was.

  Well, she's to be forgiven if she was brash. She was young still, only just in her fifth year, and convinced at last of her own worth. More than that, she was certain, with each passing day, that Mark saw her as extraordinary. Something to be worked with.

  She was right.

  “Bring me a saddle,” he called to a passing groom one day, when her exh
ibition had been particularly brilliant.

  “The horse has never been ridden, sir,” the groom called back. “It's not been broken to the saddle. Used to pull a cart...”

  “Bloody ridiculous,” Mark fumed. “She's far too good for a cart. It's lucky her spirit wasn't broken in the attempt. She deserves a second chance. She's got to be worth something to someone.”

  “I wouldn't want to be riding her, sir,” the groom said dubiously. “A wild, fiery thing she seems to me, left running loose for a year. And begging your pardon, sir, but you can't be teaching an old horse new tricks.”

  “I'm not asking you to ride her,” Mark said coldly. “As for the other… Well, we'll see. Bring out a saddle.”

  Dandelion forgave the groom thinking Mark a fool for wasting his time. How was he to know she was no ordinary horse, willing to plod through its days thinking itself lucky to put its nose in a feed bag at the end of it?

  Like a lamb Dandelion took to a saddle and a bit in her mouth again. Indeed, if Mark had asked for a barn to be put on her back she'd have tried to oblige.

  Still and all, she had to be artful. It was one thing to show everyone that she could gracefully and willingly carry a saddle and a rider on her back, quite another to appear so docile and manageable as to be no more challenge to Mark who now had a purpose to his days. As flexible as her blueprint was, there was no room in it for her to be shipped off to Dublin and sold as a riding horse. It was imperative that she convince Mark that it was he alone who could bring out the best in her.

  In that regard, she was helped by her rider, a reluctant jockey with no more desire to school a green horse than ride a goat and who thought himself belittled to be seen on the likes of Dandelion. Together, even with Mark calling out instructions, she made them appear stupid.

  “Bring the horse here and I'll show you,” Mark exploded at the end of a particularly trying session, the purpose of which had been to teach her to obey commands given by pressure from the rider's legs.

  Exasperated he was, angry that neither horse nor rider appeared to have made head nor tail of his shouted instructions.