Disclaimer: I would like to take this brief moment to say that C.S. Lewis is the remarkable author of Peter, Edmund, Susan, and Lucy, not me. That's an incredibly silly thing to have to say because all of the English-speaking world, and more, knows that, but I feel compelled to say it anyway. The gypsies are my own creation, however, as are the scenes leading up to the Hunting of the White Stag. Thanks for your patience in reading this rather superfluous disclaimer!

Peter's Horse

All day he had been driven nearly to distraction; and now Peter lay awake in his bed staring up at the ceiling, that silver-robed spectre of sleep having either lost his address or forgotten he existed. He was in his most comfortable position: arms folded behind his head, his heavy blankets all thrown in a whale-backed lump at the end of the bed, and one foot crook at the ankle over the other. But still, though he counted satyrs until he was sick of them, he could not calm down.

His horse had been taken by colic that morning and their best attempts had not healed it. Peter had stood by and watched the animal walked carefully round and round the courtyard, then let out on the soft turf to roll, then wrestled with and finally given medicine—gross stuff that dribbled all over the stallion's lips—and all the while the horse's agitation increased. A stable-boy was with it now, but Peter was not satisfied.

With a sharp sigh that cruelly broke the gentle film of silence over his room, he flung vaulted out of bed and groped through the dark for his tunic. The window was open, and through it was getting on toward summer, the wind coming in off the sea was chill. With it came the eternal scent of salt and the soft drubbing of waves. On most nights it lulled Peter to sleep, but not tonight. Tonight he had inside him a small lump of fear cradled in the depths of his heart, for he had seen the effects of colic on horses—good horses at that—and it served to comfort him none. Unbidden the horrible sound of a knife being rammed through the thin part of a horse's skull, just between the eyes, came to him, jolting him a moment so violently that, for a heartbeat, he thought he had been struck. And then he was afraid it was a premonition.

At last he located his tunic and scrambled into it, pulling it down to his knees. It, too, was chilly from being off of him and being subjected to the steady cat's paw touch of the breeze; Peter could not help thinking life was being very unkind. But now he shoved his fingers through his wayward forelock, peering out into the moonshot darkness until he caught sight of his cloak. He let go his hair—it all fell back down into his face again—and snatched up the cloak, clasping it at his throat. Next he strapped on his boots, which had not been hard to find—he had bashed his shins against them the moment he got out of bed—and flung open his chamber door.

The guard in the hallway seemed a little taken aback to see his king up so late, but at a quick gesture he handed over his torch with a respectful, "Greetings, your Majesty. Are you well?"

"In body," replied Peter, striding on down the passage. The ring of his thick-soled boots made a dull, hollow sound on the stone floor as he went, broken off at some odd time whenever he chanced to cross a carpet. It had been a long time since he had first tread these halls, his feet hardly making a noise because he had been so young. And through the years the sound of his tread had grown deeper and farther apart as his legs lengthened and his strength increased. He was not a boy anymore; he was a man in his prime, a King after Aslan's own heart, and now he walked those quiet halls with a sort of bitterness in recollecting the boy he had been. The ghost-like memories of those past times whirled around him: Susan singing, Lucy laughing, dear Edmund standing with his eyes deep as the ocean. He remembered running headlong through the castle when the sudden array of warning from a guard's trumpet split the air and was cut short by a Calormene arrow. He had remembered his own blood running down him as he stood in the centre of the main hall, holding at sword-point a dark-skinned warrior. But then he shook the memories away; he had paused against a doorway to ponder, and now he pushed on, his steps even deeper and more hurried than usual.

A castle is never completely asleep at night. Almost every light was quenched save the guards', and through the halls and passages of hale-gloom came the click of heels brought together, the muffled clash of a fist against an armoured breast, and the softly murmured, "Greetings, your Majesty." And even as Peter crossed the main hall, a lean dun hound got up from the half-dead fire, yawned, and followed him out the door to the stables.

There was no wind in the stable wing. There was a tense air over the place, and being affected by it, Peter unbuckled his cloak and flung it over his broad shoulder. He was surprised to see, instead of the stable-boy with the ailing horse, a train of gypsies getting ready to leave. They had half a dozen jaded donkeys in something of a line near the main gate, each silly, solemn head lowered in resignation to its fate.

The High King paused for a moment on the outskirts, uncertain for the first time in a very long time. There were two boys with the donkeys—slight, wisp-like things with leathern feet and dark faces—no more, but it seemed to him that there ought to have been a greater number of people in the caravan. He turned around as a voice disturbed the solitude.

"Hurry up, you've hand your rest. Your donkeys are waiting and I'm itching to see you gone. You're not fit to be in the King's stables."

Out of the nearest building—the carriage house with its gable adorned with blue marble and statues of equines—came three women, each from a successive generation. The middle-aged woman had her hand on her mother's stooping back, and her other hand clamped over her daughter's shoulder in such a protective gesture that it pained Peter to see. Stepping out, he addressed the man who had spoken. "Do not chide them for coming to my gates," the king said sternly, ignoring the frozen look of terror that had taken each face when he revealed his presence. "Where else," he went on, "will they hope to find mercy is not here?" Then he turned and kissed the woman's hand—it smelled of roses and long roads—and said in his kind, rich voice, "Aslan speed thee."

Her eyes shone with gratefulness as she sank low beneath his sea-grey gaze. "My lord," she said, "thy heart does thy Lion credit. If thou art so gentle and compassionate, surely thy Lion must be so in much fuller measure."

"And so indeed he is," Peter assured her. He turned to the old woman and said, taking down his cloak, "Grandmother, the night is chill; take thee my cloak and blessing."

Though she was very old, old and shrivelled as a leaf in dry autumn, her eyes sparkled as she patted his hand. In a silvery, wispy voice, she replied, "Ah, if only I were young again it would come into my fanciful head to have you kiss me."

He laughed deep in his chest, catching for just a moment the startled look on the horseman's face. So Peter looked down and went to bid the little girl farewell. She was a tiny thing, probably because she lacked her milk and bread some days; she was barefoot and very brown. Her hair was thick as a thundercloud in August and black as jet; the moon shone a thousand shatterings of light off her tresses. In her ears hung rings of solid gold, weighing down her lobes. Her black eyes were incredibly huge but, Peter noticed, there was not a drop of fear in their depths. She is a lily among thorns! By the Lion, he thought, she might come before Aslan himself and not tremble at all. If only I had the heart of this one! He got down on his knees there in the dusty cold yard and took her little soft hands inside his big war-worn ones. Though she was only a child, she looked back at him with all the dignity of Queen Susan herself.

"Would you like a kiss?" Peter asked.

She thought for a moment, then quietly put her little arms around his thick neck and turned up her face. It might have been comical, but the seriousness on her face killed the chuckle in his throat. He kissed her sun-tanned cheek and gave her back to her mother, laying his hand on her head. The three turned and began to walk away. But just before they were out of whisper-shot, the girl turned around and said to, "Good-bye, your Majesty," and the expression in her eyes caused Peter's heart to stop.

There was remarkable depth in her meaning, and a sorrow the High King had only known in his own heart whenever Aslan went away. She might have known good magic—like laughter and waterfalls, and mother's lullabies—and had somehow divined a deeper tragedy in his future than the illness of his horse, because for sure she was shedding tears: big, child-like tears that were each somehow akin to the blood Aslan had spilled. Like the twang of a bow that had sent a deadly arrow straight to his heart, he was struck with an indescribable sadness and foreboding.

When he at last came out of his reverie the donkey's and the women and the two boys were gone, the horseman had left, and the yard was empty of all but himself until, quite suddenly, the stable-boy came to his side on the run.

"Your Highness! Your Highness! Your horse, he—the colic took him."

Peter looked from the boy to the gate in a blank way as if neither really existed. "Then," he said after a long moment of silence, "then I will have to ride a new horse when we hunt the White Stag tomorrow."

The boy hung his head, standing quietly by. "Yes, your Highness."

Peter did not sleep at all that night, and when he rose from his bed in the wee hours of the morning, the others noticed his pale face.

"Brother," Lucy said, coming to meet him, hands against his face. "Brother Peter, what ails thee?"

Edmund looked up from strapping his hunting knife to his belt. "It is his horse, fair sister," he remarked softly, his eyes full of deep compassion. "He was taken by the colic late last night."

"My noble brother tells the way of it," Peter nodded sadly, keeping deep in himself the troubling image of the gypsy-girl and her big, sad eyes.

But then they were off, riding their horses with the hounds all giving tongue happily around them, the sunlight coming up in the east over the sea behind them as they struck out into the wood. For a while Peter's mind forgot the girl and her words, forgot the hours of sleepless torment of the previous night, and was wrapt in the breathless chase of that flashing diamond-tail flickering like an uncertain flame just ahead of them in the forest. For a long time they chased that wondrous animal, and then, with a trick of cunning like a rabbit or a fox—whoever can tell which is the more cunning?—the Stag swerved just out of their reach and plunged like a trout upstream into the thickest, bramblest, most uninhabitable part of the wood.

Peter brought his new horse to a screaming halt. The others stopped around him, staring with dismay into the wavering growth. The others they had left far behind, having pressed on after Peter, who was driven by a curious sensation that he must follow and overtake the Stag. So now the four were alone, panting, giving their horses rein and rest. After a brief moment, however, they decided to push on, and getting off their horses they waded into the undergrowth. Susan got stuck on a huge briar and, losing patience, ripped free, leaving behind her horn, though she never knew it. Its glitter was lost in the foliage.

They had not gone far when, quite suddenly, they ran against something neither stone nor wood. Queen Susan gave a little cry of excitement, and the other two had to remark on it, for it was a strange thing to see in the thick of the wood: a metal beam growing up out of the earth as if it were pretending to be a common tree. But at the sight of it Peter's heart chilled. It was black, black as jet, and the sunlight shone on it in a thousand ways. The gypsy-girl came back, her eyes big as she gazed at him: Good-bye, you Majesty. He whirled around and looking into the east toward Cair Paravel, the sensation of horrible foreboding once again rising up from the pit of his stomach. He had left everything behind: his sword and shield, his crown, his hound, his horse now dead. Everything that tied him to Narnia was at Cair Paravel…far away…and now it was good-bye. But he could not tell the others so, not now. It would break their hearts. He shut his eyes and knew he had to wait for their fate to take them, quietly, wherever Aslan wished them. A small tremor of happiness stirred in his heart: perhaps this was the door to Aslan's country, this good-bye, this farewell. If so, he could bear it.

A/N: I considered calling this Peter the Lion-Hearted but that seemed a little too cliché. I considered naming it King Peter and the Gypsy-Girl, but that came across to me as rather suggestive, and that was far from my intent with this story (or any story, for that matter). So I landed on the horse, as Peter's horse was the token of the end times, so to speak, even though it never actually makes an appearance in the story. I do seem to be attracted to writing bitter-sweet stories, however…