Archie and the North Wind Read Online Free PDF Page B

asked himself, taken captive years ago and still roaming the world in search of her lost parents? Were her horses human, or at least semi-human, like the cow in the story, and what dragon or beast or king kept her within his kingdom, guarded by thousand of invisible soldiers?
    She turned out to be none of these things, but exactly what she said she was – a Polish exile, a former ballet teacher and musician whose back injury had forced her to alternatives, and who had fallen in love with the ways of horses and now wished to set up a riding school here on the great white beaches that ran for ever along the very edge of the Atlantic.
    Where else could be better, where the horses could run free, in this marvellous combination of wind, water and air? Where else could be better than where earth ran out and only sea remained? What better for horses than the wind in their manes, their hooves on the sand, their burning feet constantly washed by salt water as they ran and ran and ran along the perfect beach?
    That too was only a version, for so many things were missed out of the story.
    Archie never heard it directly from Olga herself, but over the years Gobhlachan leaked out other versions of the story, much as you would add a window to a house, exposing an extra view, or sail a different way round the island to see the cliffs, or the mountains, or the caves on the far side. These clues had to be interpreted, of course, for Gobhlachan never told anything directly, as it were – he never sailed straight up the river, but carried his canoe of words on his shoulders, paddling up through creeks and streams, taking diversions, pausing, hesitating, turning back and resting, so that you always needed a personal compass to know where you were, or might have been. You always needed a non-existent map and dictionary to work out the country you might be going to.
    She’d been a revolutionary in the Uprising, and a novice nun. Her father had been a count, and her mother an unknown gypsy girl. She had spent time at all the great courts of Europe, and had run away to China when she was twelve. She could speak a dozen languages, and read the moon and the stars. She had been forced to marry a former Russian prince when she was fourteen, but had escaped on a ship to Egypt, where she had trained as a dancer. She could speak to the birds, tame wild horses and divine unknown wells.
    No wonder Gobhlachan fell in love with her. Unless, of course, it was the other way round: that she became all these things because of his love. But love it was, and gradually over time Archie was eased out of Gobhlachan’s life, as the sun extinguishes the clouds, or as the ocean erodes the land.
    This coincided with a rapid decline in Gobhlachan’s trade. Once the initial effects of the Siabadh Mòr were dealt with – once the pots and pans were repaired, once the barns and houses were rebuilt, once the ploughs and carts were remade – the need for the smithy’s services faded away. All that was left were Olga’s horses and the needs of the few natives who clung on to the old ways, keeping a horse when a tractor would have been much more useful, using a plough when a combine was much more effective, repairing things when they could now as cheaply be bought brand new.
    It seemed overnight – but of course it was years – that things changed. One day, horses were there; the next, none but Olga’s existed. One day, people walked to church; the next, they moved in rows on buses. One day, people would tell each other news; the next, they were all sitting in their living rooms, receiving news from places called Beirut and Baghdad.
    It was just a different story, of course: the fantastic was now out there, rather than near, happening to strangers on television rather than to themselves in their own villages.
    ‘Did you see that man walking on the moon last night?’ they asked each other.
    ‘Did you see that young naked girl going up in flames?’
    ‘Did you see the