Etta and the mare at the end of the field
About 5 minutes read slowly. For age 5, and any other small horse person who is not sleepy yet.
Etta was five, and she loved horses the way the field loves rain: completely, and all the time. Horses on her socks, horses on her cup, and one horse in her heart that was chestnut brown and taller than the house.
At the end of her street there was a real field, and at the end of the field there were real horses. Three of them. But the one Etta loved best was the mare, the oldest one, the colour of toast in the fire.
Tonight, on the way home from her bath, Etta had said the thing she always said: “Can we visit the horses?” And her mother had said the thing she always said: “They are getting ready for sleep.”
So they had walked to the gate, quietly, in the last of the light.
Horses get ready for sleep slowly. The mare was standing on three feet, one hind hoof tucked up, her head low and her eyes half shut. The other two stood near her, close enough that their sides almost touched.
Nobody was running. Nothing was being decided. The field was done with the day.
The mare lifted her head when Etta came to the gate, but only a little, the way you lift your head when you hear your own name in a far-off voice. She knew the small person at the gate. She was not worried.
“Goodnight,” Etta whispered over the rail. “Goodnight, toast horse.”
The mare let out a long breath through her nose, a soft twice-over sound, like the wind in a door that closes very slowly. That is what a horse says when it is settling.
Etta breathed it back. In through her nose. Out, long and slow. Twice over.
The grass in the field was going silver. A beetle walked a straight line home, tiny and busy, and even it looked as if it meant to be in bed soon. Far off, one bird said one last thing, and then nothing else needed saying.
The mare shifted her weight, and settled again, and this time the hind hoof went down and the head went lower, nearly to the grass, curled back toward her own warm side, the way horses sleep standing and resting at once.
Her tail hung still. Her ears hung soft, turned gently back, listening to nothing at all.
“She is asleep,” Etta breathed, so quietly it was nearly not a word at all. Her mother nodded, and Etta felt the nod more than saw it, in the dark, from the hand that held hers.
Etta slept that night in the middle of the house, in a bed with no gate, and no field, and no horses. But the road to sleep is short when you know the way, and Etta knew the way.
Past the beetle, going home. Past the gate, held quiet. Past the two small horses, standing like a chair around a friend.
Past the mare, breathing slow, twice over, in and out.
And the field went on breathing in the dark, patient, silver, and still.
Goodnight, toast horse. Goodnight, Etta.