Growing Horses from Seeds

A winter sunset breeze carries me through low dark farms down mud lanes and puddled dirt tracks. I’m amazed at my speed. I windmill my arms and legs wildly to stand upright. I’m face to face with the glowering face of the man who calls himself the Farmer.

A pungent stench of cowdung and urine fills the air. I dig my hand into the pocket of my shabby jacket and hand him the two precious seeds. They’re small, almost shell like yet priceless. I can’t recall how they came to be in my possession but I’m guarded and wary. Can I trust him? The big fingers of the Farmer contrast with his delicate manner as he studies the seeds in quiet awe, gazing at their intricate texture. He quietly reassures me he will grow me two horses from the seeds. We both know it is an illegal practice and should he be discovered he will be punished severely.

I nod in assent, complicit, and turn, lifted by the delicate suspense of the twilight which carries me back down the lane into the black expanse of the moors. In my quiet elationI'm impervious to the chill of the sky.

I return to meet the Farmer. To my horror, half of the flesh of his face appears torn away, exposing the teeth of his skull. He has in his heavily accented anger been “rumbled” by a local judge and made to confess his crime. One of the seeds, he says in an appalled tone “had taken root and been destroyed”. However, unknown to anyone a horse has been fully grown from the second seed he smuggled to a nearby farm. He points along a lane winding along a windswept hill in the cracked green light. I turn to begin my journey.