If Wishes Were Horses

Every night at midnight, the purple clouds came out to dance with the blushing sky. Spirals of far-flung galaxies wheeled overhead as other worlds across the vast expanse of deep, dark space went to bed. Stars peeped out from the swirling, amethyst clouds and Gareth found himself wishing upon each and every one.

Though his nurse would help him bathe in a milk bath of scented lavender and help him into his nightclothes, Gareth rarely went to bed feeling sleepy. Each night he listened for the sound of hoofbeats that would signal the return of the Queen’s battalion. His mother’s battalion. But the weeks had dragged on into months and now Gareth was accustomed to the other sounds of the castle after he had been put down for sleep. With his bedroom positioned right over the magnificent dining hall of the castle, it was easy to hear the loud laughter of his father entertaining the other adults and the clanging of pots and pans being soaped up after the evening feast. Just before midnight, the musicians would come to life like marionette dolls that had lain forgotten in a corner until their master snapped their strings to attention.

Waiting patiently with his head on fluffed, silk pillows, Gareth would run his fingers along the woodland creatures carved into the posts of his dark oak bed. The bed had first belonged to his grandfather, then his father, and now Gareth. Each generation it was passed down the royal line to the prince waiting to one day ascend the throne. But Gareth did his best not to dwell on such ideas and preferred instead to create stories about the little fawn and vole who peered back at eye level from the beam of his bed.

Gareth imagined them running wild and free out on the heather across the farming fields without a care in the world. In his stories, the animals crowded around his headboard had no fear of predators, for there were none in the fields of Gareth’s mind. The animals could play together unafraid of raiders and settlers from foreign lands. It was a world in which foxes and field mice were friends with owls and hawks flew just low enough to sing songs to the muskrats below. There was no danger, for these were the stories that Gareth’s mother had told him many seasons ago before the Great War began in Germany.

Sometimes Gareth would accidentally fall asleep as the world of his imagination crossed over into the land of dreaming. But most nights, he would lie in wait to hear that first pull of the bow string across the fiddle accompanied by the strum of a guitar. The adults downstairs roared their approval and Gareth could hear the clamor as lords and ladies took to the dance floor and began to dance. In his mind, Gareth would picture a courtly bear bow low to beautiful doe before they joined in with a swift jig to the melody.

When the music started, Gareth knew that the stars would soon begin to speckle the evening sky. He would alight from his bed and tiptoe across cool, wooden floor to the window. Throwing open the latch, Gareth let the warm, summer breeze whisper past his face as he turned his attention skyward. As the purple clouds began to swirl overhead, Gareth watched for the stars to blink into existence. He supposed that they were always there, just waiting to be wished on, but it felt like cheating if he could not actually see them.

As soon as the pinpricks of light shone down, Gareth would seek out the biggest and brightest star first before meticulously moving from left to right making his wishes over and over. The sounds of the fiddle and the shouts from the adults faded into fuzzy background noise as Gareth fixed his gaze on the ethereal sky and implored the celestial bodies above.

I wish that a princess would come to rescue me.

I wish that my mother comes home from the war soon.

Again, and again Gareth would throw his heart to the stars, all the while listening for the sound of someone, anyone, coming to find him in his father’s castle. Though Gareth made the same two wishes every night, he had never been so surprised as the night he heard a horse cantering across his father’s land when one of his wishes was granted.