The Everlasting

I MADE A dismaying discovery that day: A journey which takes only a few paragraphs in a book takes considerably longer on horseback.

Especially if the horse is old enough to draw a pension, and the woods are thick enough that there are no straight or obvious routes, but only slim game trails that weave and curl among the trees.

After a long day spent either clinging grimly to the horse—who was not actually a horse, but a clever device for flaying the insides of one’s thighs—or limping grimly alongside it, we had not even reached the edge of the Queen’s Wood.

I lay on my back that night, shivering and aching beneath my bad-smelling fur, trying not to whimper every time I moved my legs.