With little time to spare Alpin and I began to make preparations for our trip to
Galicia. We had less than two days to make ready, but even with such little
time word got round that we were going to the end of the world and several
people dropped by to see us and give us advice concerning our trip and/or to ask us to visit friends and relatives of
theirs who lived somewhere on our way or
even out of it. Not being good at disappointing people, I said no to no one and
this made the planning of our route much more difficult. Intitially we meant to
take the Fairy Way there, because it is the prettiest, and, I thought, had to
be easiet, but this route of the fairies
turned out to be a much more intricate and convoluted route than any other,
precisely because fairies are so fond of detours for reasons such as visiting relatives,
checking on hidden treasures, watching mushrooms grow and granting wishes to people they meet
on the move. So finally we decided to take the route of our errands, that is,
one we designed to please those who had asked us to do them favors on the way
there. And, of course, to please Alpin, who had his own whims concerning where
to stop to eat and so on. He had been consulting culinary guides all the while
I was attending favor-askers and advice-givers and he had made a long list of
dishes worth tasting and places where they could be had.
Selecting what to take with us was also a
harrowing problem. By the time we were packed, it was not just us and our
horses, it was us, our horses and a team of ten pack mules, all loaded with
essentials like eighty six pairs of socks in case we should get a hole in one,
twenty four pairs of sandals and twelve pairs of boots though we were riding
there, not walking, and it was not likely we would wear any out, thirteen mobile phones with the best of
cameras , so we would be sure to call home every night and send a couple photos
as proof of life, a hundred and seventy five
rolls of toilet paper, useful for more than one might think, a hundred
boxes of kleenex, in case my allergy got bad if we ran into the wrong kind of
vegetation, half a dozen raincoats each and each included mules and horses
because the weather is famously damp there, eighteen Swiss army knives, a first
aid kit that would be the envy of the suppliers of a large hospital and more
salves and oils of insect repellent than I would have imagined existed, all
gifted to us by people who had concoted them themselves just for us on this
trip. This is only to give you a vague idea of the load we carried.Fortunately we counted with a pack of mules from Mum's stables, all willing to transport our baggage. Of course,
there was also the matter of Alpin’s food, mostly fresh and energetic, but I
won’t go into that now. My advice to you, should you want to do the way, is
simple. Take half the stuff you mean to and twice the money. But you probably know that already.
On the appointed day, I left home in the
dark, an hour before dawn and crossed Minced Forest, where I picked up the
leafy Vinny and his nephew Dolphus, who had decided to do the way with us. Then
we went to Alpin’s house, where his mother had to push and pull him off his bed
and drag him to the bathroom where she turned the shower on him and that was
when he woke up. We had to wait for him to have one of his gargantuan
breakfasts, and while he was at that, we put Frostina Isbert, Alpin’s magic
fridge, on an enormous wagon that would make her portable, and hitched that to
an even more enormous dragon named Skyhigh sent to help us by my uncle Gen. The
dragon was to follow us all the way to Finisterre and back, transporting
Frostina. Frostina was upset, because she couldn’t walk to Compostela and get a
certificate herself, but I told her there had to be a way people on wheelchairs
and such could get one and we would find it.
A word now about our steeds. I was riding
Dreamboat, Vinny was riding a bright red little dragonfly or devil’s steed
named Ember and Dolphus a smaller pink
one named Tearose. Darcy showed up
leading a wondrous horse to lend Alpin. It was probably the most interesting
horse he had in his stables. This was a magnificent gray and white stallion
that went by the name of Gabriot the Untiring. He was a very good-natured
philosopher horse who always took matters in stride. When Alpin got on Gabriot,
he ordered the horse to gallop off, and Gabriot began to stroll leisurely about
Miss Aislene’s garden, sniffing the flowers and basking in the early morning
sunlight.
Darcy never uses spurs or whips on horses, he
just whispers to them. So when Alpin began to shout and scream that he wanted
another horse, one that moved, Darcy said his brother wouldn’t be able to get
off this one until he had arrived where he was
going.
“What?” hollered Alpin, struggling vainly to
dismount. “I’m going to sit here all the way to the end of the world?”
“No,” said Darcy. “Not to the end of the
world. To where you are going. He knows where you need to be taken every time
you mount him.”
“How can I mount him if I can’t dismount
him?” complained Alpin.
“You’ll be able to dismount when you get
where you are going.”
“How can we get anywhere if he doesn’t move?”
“He’ll move when he needs to. Now shut up or
I’ll ask Mum to ground you.”
“Know, young Alpin,” said Gabriot, “I never
tire because I rarely run and never overexert myself. But I always get where I am going. I will set the pace for
this journey and we will get everywhere we need to when we deserve to. Neither sooner nor
later.”
"Can you believe this horse? Who does he think he is?"
I will not repeat what came out of my
friend’s mouth when he heard the philosopher horse speak out, but it was toads and snakes
alright. Neither Darcy nor Gabriot were impressed, however.
“As soon as I can get off this beast, you are letting me ride yours, Arley!” Alpin
finally turned to me.
Before I could refuse to do that, Dreamboat defended himself.
“Every time you clamber onto my back, you
will be tossed off. No one can ride me but my appointed horseman, and that is
Arley. I cannot be given away due to extortion, so don’t even try unless you
want to land on your arse time after time. It won’t take any doing on my part.
It will happen automatically, so I won’t tire either.”
Alpin threatened to call the trip off, but
when he saw how pleased we were to hear that, he decided not to.
When Alpin was ready, his mum said a tearful
goodbye to us. She gave me a
breathtaking hug and two kisses that made me enjoy her jasmine and lily of the
valley perfume even several hours
after. Which means I started out kind of
dazed, seeing flowery starlike blossoms and hearing little silvery green and
white bells ring, and I don’t even know how we got to our first stop.
All I remember is crying out, “On, Gabriot!
On, Dreamboat! On, Ember! On, Tearose!
On, Paradox and Premise! On, Change and Occasion! On, Cause and Effect!
On, Axiom and Dilemma! On, Ergon and Monad! On, Skyhigh, with Frostina!”
And we were all off to the Field of Stars,
which is what Compostela means.
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