Imaginary Horses

The streets are busy. A throng of schoolchildren on a trip, brightly clothed and shepherded by several watchful parents and teachers. A pinstriped man with a glossy briefcase, shearing his path through everyone else, his eyes wide and nervous. Maybe an interview or an opportunity is waiting for him somewhere ahead - perhaps some prospect as shiny as the case swinging wildly from one clenched hand.

Two or three teenagers pass me from the opposite direction, their gazes darting uncomfortably from dark, eyelined eyes. Their transition is almost through - but still the body they are in is uncomfortable and somehow unfamiliar. The world of the laughing, pink-cheeked children on the school trip has flown away from them. The smell of salt and chips wafts in the chilly air, but I am not hungry.

Alone in these crowded streets, I seem like some kind of spectator. The whole scene is surreal and detached, as though I am not part of it at all. Everyone seems connected to the world but me - they think of nothing but their school trips and their restless children and their business interviews and their angst. But my thoughts are lacerated by the outside world when I see something I've never seen before here, in the middle of the city.

At the end of a narrow alleyway, I can see a pair of wooden doors, like stable doors, and in front of them four metal horses are galloping rhythmically like Christmas decorations though it's October. They dip and rise from the ground, over and over, and perched on some high seat behind them, holding their useless reins, is an old man with woolly white hair, running sceptical eyes over his eccentric horses as though they live and breathe like the rest of us.

It's as though a doorway to some crazy other world has opened in the middle of a busy city street - just down that alleyway is something as utterly different and completely unrelated to the world as I feel today. So what can I do but approach? I turn from my slow walk, and cut across the path of a group of harassed mothers and their toddlers.

The old man notices me as I come close, and salutes to me from his seat atop the wooden gates. He pulls on the reins as though he expects the fake horses to react, and calls "Woah!", and the metal horses gallop on regardless, their blind eyes fixed on me. The old man clambers down from his seat somehow, and grins at me with six teeth and several black gaps. I smile back uncertainly, almost turning to leave again.

"Ah!" he says suddenly, and I start at the unexpected sound. "You'll be wanting your horse shod then, eh?"
He indicates behind me, and I stare over my own shoulder at empty space, before looking back at him, nonplussed.
"I'm a farrier," he tells me proudly, stabbing a thumb at his chest. "I can shod your horse in ten minutes!"
Again, he points behind me at nothing, and it dawns on my clouded mind that he can see something that I cannot see - a spectral horse that does not exist but to him. I stare at him, wondering how to react to this extraordinary man and his imaginary horses.
"I can shear sheep too!" he said happily. "Got some shears back in the shop. Do you want to come through, please?"
My mouth opens and closes, but his gaze rests on me, and it is expectant.
"Uh...yeah," I mutter.
He turns, and leads me around the wooden gates, and I see a tiny hut-like structure behind, with swinging doors like some old cowboy film. I follow him inside, and see a single room, basically empty but for a grubby cupboard in one corner, and a set of rusted horseshoes hanging on the wall.

He goes to the cupboard, and opens it, presumably to search for his shears, but he is distracted by the bottles and jars inside.
"Ah yes," he says. "Had some of this food for years! Keeps forever! You want some quiche?"
I can't fathom an answer, but he carries on regardless.
"Yes, quiche was a delicacy back then. This place was gassed in the war, you know. Actually, this quiche was in the cupboard when it was gassed. Told you it lasts forever!"
He holds a jar up to my nose. The "quiche" is a mouldy lump of mustard festering at the bottom of the dusty glass jar.
"Don't worry! The gas didn't affect it!" he says quickly, noting my expression. "Mustard gas, they called it. But this cupboard's nice and thick. Kept it out, didn't it?"
He sets down the jar on the table. After a moment I suddenly notice that his fingers haven't marked the dust at all - there are no fingerprints on the jar. I touch it hesitantly, and immediately see a clean spot where my finger wiped away some dirt.

He's still watching me. I shake my head - it doesn't really matter. We're apart from the world - he and I. Neither of us seem to affect it in the way that others do.
"Found my shears" he chuckles, holding up the rust-encrusted implements.
"Oh," I say. "Good. You know, my sheep are needing sheared."
"Yes, I see that," he says, looking down at my feet where my sheep presumably stand.
He bends towards the spot where his imagination has conjured sheep out of thin air, and then straightens up, puzzled.
"You don't have any sheep," he says, in a sudden moment of clarity.
"No," I say.
He stares at my feet for another few moments, and then looks back at me.
"Oh well. It doesn't matter I suppose. Now, won't you take the quiche home with you? It's good for eating, but a bit too rich for my stomach!"
He laughs. Over the faint creaking of the metal horses outside, his laugh is strangely normal and warm. It seems to clothe me in normality in such a surreal setting.

"Now off you go!" he orders me briskly. "You've got things to do, people to see. You have to sort out your life, don't you? There's always somewhere to turn, you know! Even if you just turn towards an old fool like me. Now, off with you!"
I look at him, astounded, and suddenly what he's saying seems to make sense.

I look for him the next day. I trace the streets to the exact point where his metal horses and "shop" stood the day before. I take a piece of real quiche with me, a gift for making more sense than anyone else in this crazy world. But I can't find him. The galloping horses are gone - the shop is nowhere to be seen. The little old man with his woolly hair and strange smile has disappeared.

And suddenly it dawns on me - the imaginary horses weren't his after all, they were mine. But it doesn't matter, because the lesson taught was the same whether in his voice or the voice in my head - and my life has changed because of it, whether those horses ever galloped or not.