Here's the first chapter from the sequel to In The Place The Wild Horses Sleep · 11:11pm Mar 6th, 2015
As I mentioned in my last blog, whilst it is a direct sequel, it also doubles as an original children’s novel (for older children – Mia is ten years old in this one). Though I’m well aware that people don’t come here to read original work, after the response Wild Horses got, I still thought it might be worth posting… at the very least, it helps keep things tiding over until I start writing pony stories again...
If anyone does read this, then any and all feedback would be incredibly appreciated. Honestly!
Much love to you all 
Mia Marie has been kidnapped by a unicorn! She calls herself the Queen of the Horses and swears that Mia is a princess – but Mia suspects a more sinister motive. Only by speaking with her dreams can she uncover the truth…
23rd December
1
The Queen Bows
It was Christmas Eve Eve, and wild horses were on the run.
It was Christmas Eve Eve, and from the car Mia watched as horses ran and horses galloped, and neighed and whinnied.
It was Christmas Eve Eve, and although Mia couldn’t know it, the wild horses were running for her.
‘Yo, Mia, are you listening? Ground Control to li’l sister, come in, over.’
‘Over,’ said Mia. But she didn’t look at Madeline in the driver’s seat, for more horses had appeared: six white and six black. Twelve horses rushing in the fields under a darkling sky. Twelve horses running through the wind and through the snowfall.
Madeline paid them no notice.
‘Mia, you are as subtle as tap dancing hippos rapping the national anthem. Your face is pressed against the glass. You’ve barely said a word all day. Something is bothering you – speak to me!’
Mia refused to speak, and her gaze remained glued to the horses. Madeline sighed. Pulling over, she turned the key in the ignition and plunged the car into silence – Christmas silence, which was the sound of wind pounding against the doors, the pitter-patter of snow on the roof, and the many secret noises of the country lane leading to their house by the sea.
In the field, the horses stopped. The horses waited. Twelve horses, then twenty of them, then thirty, staring with great black eyes set in solemn faces.
Madeline gave them as much attention as she would the beating of her heart. ‘Turn around, fuzz-brain,’ she said to Mia. ‘It’s Evie again, right? Of course it’s Evie, it’s always Evie nowadays. What are you gonna do, huh? Ignore her forever? Never speak to her ‘cause of one lousy fight?’
At last Mia turned around and met her older sister’s gaze, and there was a reason she hadn’t spoken a word all day: what was the use? She didn’t need to speak to let Madeline know how very scared she was. She didn’t need to say out loud how much she needed Maddy, or what it meant to have a sister who understood her well enough that she already knew the root of her worries…
‘Wh-what if me and Evie see each other again? What if—’
‘Shush, Mia.’
Madeline squeezed Mia’s hand. Mia squeezed hers back.
(Neither saw it, but in the field, thirty horses patted the ground in sympathy for Mia).
Then Madeline said, ‘Alright, filly, here’s how it’s gonna go down. We’re gonna go home. You’re gonna watch that Girl in Space episode you taped, and you’re gonna watch it in bed with loads and loads of snacks, it’s gonna be awesome. Tomorrow you’ll ring up Evie and straighten everything out, and then you’ll make sure to talk with her on Christmas Day too, and then you’ll be best friends again. Sound cool?’
Mia wiped her eyes with her sleeve. She hoped Maddy hadn’t seen the scowl on her face at the mention of the phone call. ‘Crisp sandwiches when we get back, yes?’ Maddy added after a pause.
Mia frowned a little. ‘You said you’d make me a pizza.’
‘Yeah, well, I say a lot of things. Crisp sandwiches here we come!’
With a grin, Madeline turned the key in the ignition.
Christmas silence drew in around them. Christmas coldness felt its way into the car.
‘Oh come on, Nessie, not tonight,’ said Madeline (it had been Mia, years previously, who had named the car after her favourite monster). She turned the key twice more, three times again, and once extra for luck.
Nothing happened.
And nothing continued to happen as Mia shuffled in her seat, breathed on her hands, rubbed her arms from the cold. All distractions from what truly bothered her: through the window, the horses’ gazes prodded at her skin. Soon afterwards, Madeline stepped into the cold to lift the hood of the old car, leaving Mia alone.
She didn’t feel alone.
The sensation came as suddenly as the snowflakes attacking her sister’s face. Within half a minute Mia struggled to remember what had made her so miserable that past week, so miserable, so very, very miserable – the idea of loneliness seemed as strange and alien as the moons of Pluto. A marvellous sigh escaped her lips as she bathed in friendship, though exactly whose friendship it was, she wasn’t sure. She didn’t know. All she knew was that they were golden friends who had loved her since the day of her birth, and possibly even beforehand.
She studied the horses.
The horses looked back at her, more of them, more and more, more, more. Two dozen. Four dozen. A hundred. ‘You are not alone,’ she imagined the horses saying. ‘You are not alone, Miss Mia, Mia Marie, Miss Mia Marie.’
Mia glanced through the windscreen, all the better to check Madeline’s focus remained prisoner to the engine. She glanced at her hands, all the better to calm herself. Then, quiet, quiet, she opened the door and snow settled in her hair and horses settled in her heart. White fields tumbled for mile upon snowy mile, separated from Mia by low wooden fences, and in the field closest stood the largest horses she had ever seen – those first twelve with coats of brightest white and darkest black. Standing behind them were their fellow hundred horses. Two hundred! Three hundred!
She stepped closer, Crinch Crunch through the snow.
She stepped closer again, Crinch Crunch, Crinch Crunch.
In horse drenched silence she climbed halfway up the fence, and from her vantage point spied horses of every colour and size: brown and yellow, black and white. Their voices were in her ears, neighing, whinnying – Mia imagined that the snowflakes were the words of the horses crystalized so that, although she couldn’t understand what was being said, she could at least see that their words were wondrous. ‘You know, don’t you?’ she whispered. ‘You know about Evie, and that’s why you’re here. Because you’re wild horses, wild together, wild as one. You want me to feel better. You want to share your wildness…’
For a snowy moment, she wondered if her voice carried over the wind; then three hundred pairs of ears flicked up, three hundred heads were held a little higher. Mia’s heart pitter-pattered like the beat of hooves against the frozen earth. She was dizzy.
Looking back, Madeline was so caught up with the engine that she hadn’t noticed so much as a snowflake out of place, let alone the horses. Although Mia loved her sister, Maddy was television and video games, and a rusty car named Nessie; she was crisp sandwiches rustled up for dinnertime; she was an older sister who understood her in so many different ways, yet who could never get the wildness inside of Mia, never, never! Not in same way as these horses…
The herd split in half to let through—
A horse as tall as Madeline, and slender.
A horse with a coat of light brown which bled into white; over the brown half were sprinkled white dots; over the white half were scattered brown dots.
A horned horse, a unicorn. A unicorn whose horn was all points sharp and razor, swords, spears, the tips of daggers cut from flint. Mia winced to look at it; yet it was beautiful, shining with an inner light that pulsed, pulsed in time with the girl’s heartbeat. She longed to touch it.
An appaloosa unicorn with a gaze even sharper than her horn. Here stood the Queen of all wildness, the master of dangerous creatures lurking in the forests of faraway lands, and of places inaccessible to even the most fearless explorers. In an instant, Mia realized that the reason Maddy hadn’t spotted the herd had nothing to do with the engine, but that it was the will of the Queen that she and the others went unseen: there was magic in her horn, lending her complete control over who noticed them and who didn’t. What was about to happen was for Mia alone, wildest horse of all.
The Queen bowed to Mia.
Lowering her head, she bent down on her front hooves so that the tip of her horn pointed directly between Mia’s eyes; so sharp and terrible a horn, so beautiful, so deadly. Then the twelve bowed. The three hundred bowed. Here was Mia Hartman balanced on a wooden fence in the special gloom of Christmas Eve Eve, dressed in a jumper and dungarees, brown eyes open in shock, brown stick-up hair covered in snow. Here she was, small and nervous, and terrified of losing her best friend; and the Queen of the Horses was bowing, was bowing to her.
For the first time in days, Mia smiled. She shined, she beamed!
‘Have you come to take me away? Say yes! Oh please say yes, please, pleeease. I want to see where wild horses run and where wild horses leap. Where wild horses eat and drink, where wild horses sleep!’
The words came as though they had been with her for her entire life, but locked away – the sight of the unicorn acted as the key.
At last, the Queen stood back up. She stood up and winked.
‘Oi, blockhead! What are you playing at?’
Mia juddered, yelped, slipped backwards from the fence—
Right into her sister’s outstretched arms.
‘Whoa there, filly,’ Madeline said, standing her up and dusting the snow from Mia’s head. ‘Idiot! The wood’s slippery, it’s covered in snow. What were you doing up there, huh?’
‘Looking at the horses!’ Mia exclaimed.
‘At the horses, at the horses!’ chanted horrid voices in her mind. For the moment the words left her lips, she knew that they were the wrong words said in the wrong way: said in such a way that it was plain she meant them, ridiculous though they sounded.
When the sisters looked out over the field, the horses had vanished. No Queen of the Horses was there to bow to Mia; no twelve knights of the Royal Guard were there to greet them; no three hundred shook their heads and manes and stamped their hooves. There wasn’t a single hoof visible through the snowfall, and not so much as a hoof-print. ‘Th-they were there. Mad, I swear it, honest!’
Madeline Hartman was the best big sister in the world.
Although she couldn’t see it, Maddy heard the truth in Mia’s voice, and if ever it occurred to her to tease her little sister (it always occurred to her), right then she knew to keep the urge supressed. Instead, she knelt in the snow so that her eyes level with her little sister’s, and she found Mia’s hands and said, ‘Wild hooves.’
Rubbing her fingers against Mia’s hair, she said ‘Wild mane.’
Leaning close to Mia’s ear, she whispered, ‘Wild Mia.’
‘Come on, horse-face, Nessie’s all systems go again. There’s a ready salted sandwich in the kitchen with your name on it… or… I guess a pizza wouldn’t be too much hassle…’
Mia wiped her eyes, not realizing that they had been watering. ‘I prefer cheese and onion,’ she said back with a weak smile.
Nessie purred with newfound life as the two sisters climbed in. Maddy drove them home. They listened to Christmas songs on the radio and didn’t speak, for crisp sandwiches were in Madeline’s head and peculiar thoughts danced in Mia’s.
It was Christmas Eve Eve. Her best friend was her best friend no more, but Christmas had already delivered its greatest present: for the first time since Mother’s death, she had friends other than Evie and Madeline.
It was Christmas Eve Eve, and wild horses were running.
They were running for her.
I'm reminded of the trucker rain god from So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish. Except, of course, that Mia enjoys her domain. In any case, definitely looking forward to seeing where you go with this. And "horse-drenched silence" is a wonderful phrase.
You know, it's a rare and beautiful piece of work that draws you in so far that when you reach the end, it's a shock like a cold bucket of water to the face.
Somehow, you crank them out whenever you touch the keys.
Absolutely amazing, pm with feedback shall be enroute n_n
The first feedback I can think of right now is: "I'd buy this." It's brilliant at combining the mundanities of modern life with wonderful fantasy. It has the same magical feel to it that In the Place the Wild Horses Sleep itself does.
The one minor nag I have is that I wonder whether the phrase "Christmas Eve Eve" might start grating if it were used too much. It's a phrase I like, but I'm not sure whether I'd like it so much if I saw it a hundred times.
But that's the only thing I can think of. Everything else is beautiful. Also, I approve of the up-to-date astronomy. :P
Are you a member of the Society of Children's Book Writers and Illustrators (SCBWI)? Check their calendar for events in your area. They can help you get this published.
Oh Yes! I still remember liking the first one so much. I think the same spirit is kept here. Great work, really.
There's just this sentence that bugged me a bit.
Second part, I'm... not sure what it means, precisely.
Excellent story, again! Well I could point out some words that confused me and the use of half quotation marks too but it turns out they're all just British words...
2855532
Mia is looking out the window and thinking about sneaking out of the car, to get closer to the horses, she checks to make sure Madeline isn't paying any attention to her.
oh yes :D There is something truly magical about the phrase "Christmas silence". (Also "horse drenched silence".)
2855462 Honestly, I'm not sure how much of this I'm actually going to post online (I'm really sorry, I should have made that clearer
). At the moment, my plan is to start sending it off to agents at the end of the month/beginning of April, and then see where I go from there -- I've got a big list of people who I hope might be interested, plus some experience of how not to go about it from the last novel that I queried. I have a lot more faith in this one. The reaction it's gotten from people here has been really encouraging, far beyond what I was actually expecting!
2855495 I wish I could crank them out, it would make life so much easier! Trust me, the first draft of this was absolutely abysmal, which makes lovely comments like yours so much more gratifying. Thank you very much, I'm glad you liked it
2855498 I read your message, will reply soon as possible
2855525 Nah, that's a perfectly fair comment about Christmas Eve Eve, and I had feeling that someone might pick up on it (it's also the reason for clarifying that it's December 23rd -- I was worried people would think it's a typo). It's useful to know that my hunch was right. Everything from chapter 4 onwards takes place on December 24th/25th so the phrase doesn't appear that much... even so, I think I might go and remove it from chapters 2 and 3 if people feel this way about it. Also, thank you for such a nice comment!
2855528 Huh, somehow I've never heard of them. Thanks for the tip, I will check them out immediately
2855532 You're not the only one who's pointed out that sentence, so I think that's a definite sign it needs to be revised. But thank you for reading this and commenting, it means a lot to me that people seem to have enjoyed it
2855657 I'm never sure which type of quotation marks to use. I mean, I was always taught to use the double ones, and yet whenever I pick up an actual published book, they always seem to use just the single ones... I guess so long as I'm consistent with them...
Also, many thanks not just for reading and commenting on the story I posted the other day, but this one as well. You're an absolute star
2855724 I kept having to go back to the original to make sure that I wasn't repeating myself left, right, and centre. 'Horse-drenched silence' was in the original draft of Wild Horses -- I got pretty confused when I couldn't find it again recently, having completely forgotten that I had taken it out
. Anyway, I'm happy that you liked this!
2855910 Consider that hippo line gone. It was right up there with 'Christmas Eve Eve' on the list of stuff I thought people might comment on.
I was trying to emphasise that this was taking place to the side of them, unnoticed, but reading it again I see your point. The sentence does a good enough job of that all by itself without the need for brackets, so again, consider them gone.
Arg, this wasn't a stylistic choice, it was a typo! Two typos!
Also, happy to have introduced you to juddered!
2855910
This drew me up short, as it's a familiar word to me. Turns out it's a Briticism, something I'd never realised.
2856610 2855532 It's a "garden path" sentence, meaning that if someone parses it from left to right, they will probably parse it wrong the first time and have to back up and re-read it. Writers produce these because thinking up a sentence goes in the opposite direction. It's like a Y in the road, where the reader comes at it from the bottom of the Y and takes the wrong branch, but the writer comes at it from the upper-left branch and isn't even aware there's a choice to make.