King of the Wind (3 page)

Agba waited motionless, knowing she would want more and more. Her deep brown eyes studied him as if to say, “You are the source of all that is good.”

A great happiness welled up inside Agba. He nodded, seeming to understand her thoughts, then waited while she drank again and again.

When Agba came out of the mare’s stall, the other boys were beginning to lead their horses to the common trough to drink. He must hurry now if he hoped to get his corn ration first. He picked up a bag made of hemp and ran through a maze of corridors and down a steep staircase to the underground granary. At the entrance stood Signor Achmet, Chief of the Grooms. Signor Achmet was dark and bearded. In his right hand he carried a knotted stick, and from the sash at his waist hung a hundred keys. When he saw Agba, he gripped the boy’s shoulder with fingers as strong as the claws of an eagle.

“Why do you not eat with the other slaveboys? ” he asked in his cracked voice. Then with a sharp look he released Agba and began peeling an orange with his fingernails. His beady eyes did not leave Agba’s face as he ate the orange, making loud sucking noises to show how juicy and good it was.

Agba gulped. He studied his brown toes.

“Is it the mare?”

The boy’s eyes flew to the Signor’s.

“Is tonight her hour?”

Slowly, gravely, Agba nodded.

“Tonight, then,” the Signor said, as he wiped his mouth on his mantle and began fumbling for the key to the granary, “tonight you will not go to your quarters to sleep. You will move the mare into the brood-mare stable. You will remain on watch and call me when she is ready to foal. The all-seeing eye of Allah will be upon you.”

Agba’s heart fluttered like bird wings. The Chief of the Grooms was letting him stay with his mare! He forgot all the cuffs and sharp words. He bowed low, impatient to hear the sound of the key turning the great lock, impatient for the creaking of the door and the mingled odors of corn and barley.

The key scraped. The door creaked open. The warm, mellow smells leaked out.

Signor Achmet stood aside. Agba slipped past him into the darkness. Quickly his sensitive fingers sought the good, sound ears of corn. He filled his bag with them. Then he turned and fled up the stairs.

B
UT THE mare would not eat the corn Agba brought. She only lipped it, then closed her eyes with a great weariness.

Agba was troubled as he watered and fed the other horses in his aisle, as he ate his own meal of barley and goat’s milk, as he hurried to the brood-mare stable.

Signor Achmet must have been there before him. One of the stalls was wide open, and a lanthorn hung on a peg, sending out a feeble light. The stall had not been used since spring and had a fusty smell. Agba leaped upon the manger and threw open a tiny round window. It showed a patch of sky and the new moon.

“This is a favorable sign,” he thought. “A new moon. A new month. The foal will be strong and swift.” He took a deep breath of the cool summer night. Then quickly he went to work, filling bucket after bucket of sand from the huge sand pile behind the stables. Back and forth he ran, dumping the sand on the floor of the stall. Next he covered it with straw, spreading it out first with his hands, then trotting over it, galloping over it, around and around. At last he surveyed his work with approval. It would be a good bed for the mare!

Just as he was filling the manger with fodder, Signor Achmet, in flowing white robes, looked in. He tested the depth of the sand with a bony forefinger. He felt the straw.

“You waste the sand and the straw,” he said with a black look. “Half would do.” But the Signor understood Agba’s concern for the mare. “Fetch her now,” he commanded.

Agba’s bow was lost in the darkness.

“And you will summon me when she grows restless.”

Swiftly and silently the Signor turned upon his heel, his white mantle fluttering behind him like moth wings.

The new moon hung over Agba’s shoulder as he ran to get the mare. She was standing patiently in a corner of her stall, her head lowered, her tail tucked in. Placing a hand on her neck, Agba led her out into the night, past endless stalls and under endless archways to her new quarters. She walked slowly, heavily.

At the door of the new stall a tremor of fear shook her. She made a feeble attempt to go back, but Agba held her firmly, humming to hide his own nameless fears.

She entered the stall. She tried the soft bed with her feet. She went to the manger. Her nostrils widened to snuff the dried grasses, but she did not eat. She put her lips to the water cask but did not drink. At last she tucked her hooves underneath her, and with a groan lay down. Her head nodded. She steadied it in the straw. Then her breathing, too, steadied.

As Agba stood on watch, his mind was a mill wheel, turning, turning, turning. He trembled, remembering the time he and the mare had come upon a gazelle, and he had ridden the mare alongside the gazelle, and she had outrun the wild thing. Agba could still feel the wind singing in his ears.

By closing his eyes he brought back the whole day. On the way home they had passed a wizened old story-teller in the streets, who, when Agba came near, motioned him close. The old man placed his hand on the mare’s head. Then, in a voice that was no more than a whisper, he had said, “When Allah created the horse, he said to the wind, ‘I will that a creature proceed from thee. Condense thyself.’ And the wind condensed itself, and the result was the horse.”

The words danced in Agba’s head as he watched the sleeping mare.
I will that a creature proceed from thee. Condense thyself! I will that a creature proceed from thee. Condense thyself!
He told the words over and over in his mind until suddenly the stable walls faded away and Agba was riding the South Wind. And there was nothing to stop him. No palace walls. No trees. Nor hedges. Nor rivers. Only white clouds to ride through, and a blue vaulted archway, and the wind for a mount.

With a sigh he sank down in the straw. His head dropped.

T
HE BOY’S dreams spun themselves out until there was nothing left of them. He slept a deep sleep. The candle in the lanthorn sputtered and died. The new moon rode higher and higher. Bats and nighthawks, flying noiselessly in the velvet night, went about their business, swooping insects out of the air. With the gray light of morning they vanished, giving way to the jangling chorus of the crows.

Agba woke. The stable walls had closed in again. And there was the mare lying on her side as before. But her head was raised now, and she was drying off a newborn foal! Her
tongue-strokes filled the silence of the stall, licking, licking, licking.

The boy watched in fear that if he took his eyes away the whole scene might vanish into the mist of the morning. Oh, how tiny the foal was! And so wet there was no telling what its color would be. But its eyes were open. And they were full of curiosity.

Agba’s body quivered with the wonder of the little fellow’s birth. He had seen newborn foals before, but none so small and finely made. In the distance he could hear the softly padding feet of the horseboys. He could hear the wild boar grunting and coughing in his hole behind the stables. He wondered if the boar really did keep evil spirits from entering into the horses.

Afraid to move, he watched the mare clumsily get to her feet. He watched her nudge the young thing with her nose.

The foal tried to get up. He thrust out his forefeet, but they splayed and he seemed to get all tangled up with himself. He tried again and again. For one breathless instant he was on his feet. Then his legs buckled and he fell in a little heap. Agba reached a hand toward him, but the mare came between. She pushed the little one with her nose. She pushed him with her tongue. She nickered to him. He was trying again. He was standing up. How spindly he was! And his ribs showed. And he had hollows above his eyes just like his dam.

“I could carry him in my arms,” thought Agba. “He is not much bigger than a goat, and he has long whiskers like a goat. Long and silky. And his tail is curly. And he is all of one color.
Except—except . . .” Suddenly the boy’s heart missed a beat. On the off hind heel there was a white spot. It was no bigger than an almond, but it was there! The white spot—the emblem of swiftness!

Agba leaped to his feet. He wanted to climb the tower of the mosque. He wanted to blow on the trumpet. He wanted to cry to the four winds of heaven: “A foal is born. And he will be swift as the wind of the desert, for on his hind heel is a white spot. A white spot. A white . . .”

Just then a shaft of early sunlight pierced the window of the stable and found the colt. It flamed his coat into red gold. It made a sun halo around his head.

Agba was full of fear. He opened his mouth but no sound escaped. Maybe this was all a dream. Maybe the foal was not real. The golden coat. The crown of sun rays. Maybe he was a golden horse belonging to the chariot of the sun!

“I’ll capture him with a name,” the boy thought quickly. And he named the young thing Sham, which is the Arabic word for sun.

No sooner had Agba fastened a name on him than the little creature seemed to take on a new strength. He took a few steps. He found his mother’s milk. He began to nurse, making soft sucking noises.

Agba knew he should be reporting to Signor Achmet. He knew he should be standing in line for his measure of corn. But he could not bear to break the spell. He listened to the colt suckling, to the mare munching the dried grasses. He smelled their warm bodies. A stable was a
good
place to be born.