The Winter Horses(4)

Kalinka had awoken early one morning, after spending the night wrapped in a ragged blanket under a cranberry bush, to find one of the horses—a mare—standing over her. Instinctively she knew that, although the horse was wild, the horse wanted to make friends.

“Hey,” she said. “How are you? Are you after these cranberries? Help yourself. I’ve had more than enough of them. Too many, probably.”

Kalinka sat up, stroked the horse’s nose, and let the animal smell her, recognizing that horses can quickly tell almost all they need to know about a person from her scent. At the same time, this made her frown, for she recognized it had been a while since she’d had a wash.

“Maybe that’s why you’re not afraid,” she said, stroking the mare’s nose. “Because I must smell as much of an outcast as you are. Maybe it’s just soap and civilization that makes animals distrust humans.”

She frowned again as her stomach rumbled loudly.

“Sorry about that,” she said. “The cranberries are tasty enough, but they don’t make much of a meal when you’re as hungry as I am.”

The mare nodded with what looked to Kalinka like sympathy.

“You wouldn’t happen to know where I could get something to eat around here, would you?”

The mare nodded again, turned around, and looking back at Kalinka as if inviting her to follow, walked on and led her about a kilometer or two away to a blue-painted cottage beside a small lake. The mare sniffed the air carefully as though weighing if it was safe, and then uttered a snort that Kalinka took as the all-clear to approach the place.

The front door was not locked, and quickly Kalinka went inside and glanced around the one neat room.

“This is nice,” she said. She especially admired a handsomely framed oil painting that was leaning against the wooden wall. It showed the veranda of a large white house with lovely garden furniture and flower beds and a beautiful lady in a long white dress. It reminded Kalinka of summers gone and—she hoped—summers yet to come.

“I dislike doing this,” she said, taking some bread and cheese for herself and an apple for the mare. “But I dislike starving even more.”

When she came out again, they both returned to the cover of the woods and ate the food she had stolen from the blue cottage. Previously she had stolen only from the Germans, which—given that they stole from everyone else—didn’t seem wrong at all; but it was very dangerous, and Kalinka had no doubt of what would have happened to her if ever she’d been caught.

Later on, the mare introduced Kalinka to some of the other wild horses, and she spent the night sleeping between the warm bodies of the mare and her stallion as if she’d been their own foal.

“That was the best night’s sleep I’ve enjoyed since I was at home,” she told the mare and the stallion when she awoke. “Thank you. I’m grateful to you. My old coat and blanket are getting a bit threadbare, I’m afraid. The wind blows straight through the holes.”

The stallion turned and galloped away with what seemed like indifference, but the mare stayed. And because Kalinka had nowhere else to go, she decided to keep the horses company for another day or so.

Which soon became one week and then two.

The wild horses didn’t mix with the other animals at Askaniya-Nova, and a longer acquaintance with them revealed to Kalinka that they were very different from the horses she had known before. The first time that one of the wild horses chased and fetched a stick like a dog was a revelation to her. They loved to play hide-and-seek, and they were fond of practical jokes: she lost count of the occasions on which her hat was snatched from her head and made off with, or a handkerchief nibbled out of her pocket with a stealth that would not have disgraced a competent thief. In the few moments Kalinka tried to find some privacy in the bush or behind a tree, she often found herself disturbed by a horse playing peekaboo. It was at times like these Kalinka was convinced that the wild horses of Askaniya-Nova were almost capable of laughter. Which was more than she could have said of herself. She seldom smiled, and she never laughed. After what she’d been through, it didn’t seem she had anything to laugh about.

Certainly, the horses were extremely vocal. The lead stallion made five basic types of sound—the neigh, nicker, whinny, snort and squeal—of which there was a wide range of subtle variations. After a while, Kalinka calculated that the horses were capable of making at least six different kinds of snort, and it was soon apparent to her that the horses could communicate with each other on what was a fairly sophisticated level. This enabled the small herd to work like a pack of dogs. Scout horses were sometimes dispatched by the lead stallion to look for better grass, and the same stallion quickly made the rest aware when his nose told him that wolves were close—although these knew better than to risk attacking the horses. This was hardly surprising, as Kalinka saw how the horses could be very aggressive with each other. She herself was bitten on a number of occasions—painfully, on the behind, when she bent over. She understood this was meant to be a joke, although it was not a joke she found very funny—and sometimes she was even kicked. Kalinka soon recognized that the wild horses were resourceful to the point of being devious: she saw them unlatch gates, steal food, ambush rival zebras and even count. The horses were extremely fast. They also possessed keen senses of smell, hearing and sight—much keener than her father’s horses’ and probably as keen as those of any wolf.