The Horse Came Back Alone

The horse came back alone. Not that anyone knew it was gone from the stables, but after a quick asking around, Anthony found out that the shoemaker saw a dark figure galloping by on some horse. It was an hour after midnight, she said, when she woke up after a nightmare and went to her secret cabinet for a glass of something as clear as water from a mountain spring. Anthony thought it strange, that the horse came back. It was rather unusual for a horse thieve to release their catch. In fact, could it be even considered a theft if the horse is here, calm and unharmed? Anthony wasn’t sure. What was clear to him though, was the fact that the horse thieve didn’t really care for their belongings. Tony found a leather purse full of silvery looking foreign coins attached to the saddle and a cloth bag containing three apples, a piece of squashed cake and a wooden skewer. Anthony decided to keep these things, especially the bag of coins. He was, after all, just a poor stable boy working his ass off everyday in this shit hole of a town. A bag of money, even of foreign currency, always was a nice thing to have. Anthony hid it under his mattress.

At night, Anthony was woken up by a strange sound coming from the stables above which was his bed. It could always be just horses messing around, but this sound was too gangly to be a horse. No, it sounded like wind chimes, or a triangle. It couldn’t even be chains clattering together, so ethereal the sound appeared to Anthony’s ears. The boy got out of his bed and put on some trousers: it would be rather daring and unflattering to flash his naked ass into the face of whatever creature was down there. If not a creature, then the horses would be offended.
Climbing down the ladder, Anthony saw nothing. The horses were sleeping, the stables were dark and empty. But the sound persisted. Maybe it’s coming from the outside, Tony thought. He was just about to open the door when the danger of the unknown ran down his back and he took a step back and grabbed a broomstick. Armed with his deadly weapon, Anthony slowly opened a side door (not meant for horses) and stepped outside. It was a cold, breezy night. The stable boy saw nothing. Still, he remained careful, sticking the broomstick in front of himself to avoid any possible attackers.

After a minute or two, nothing and no one had emerged from the darkness. Anthony slowly let down his broomstick and looked around. The gangly sound was still there, hanging mysterious in the air. Anthony shrugged and turned to go back inside the stables when something caught his eye. Above the door, on a metal ornamented stick, there was a wind chime. It wasn’t here before, Anthony would’ve noticed such thing, chiming in the wind. Strange. However, the stable boy thought nothing of it. Maybe somebody hung it in the evening when there was no wind. Anthony shrugged again and went back inside, climbed up his ladder and hid under the covers. Soon he was asleep, lulled by the gangly chimes of the mysterious thing. He will figure this out in the morning.