SHORT STORY
Horses of the Sun — Part 1
A fantasy of a sacred racetrack
This is a work of fiction.
Catalogue of Bets
2,214th Racing Season
Prize 1. A shoe from the winning horse, if you bet wisely. A horseshoe hung above a door will ward off evil spirits.
I suppose it doesn’t matter, Papa, if I write in the margins of your beat-up bet catalogue while the farrier pries a shoe from the hoof of my new filly, Edel.
I can still see the pencil marks from the last desperate bets you made trying to save our estate and my dowry, five years ago. It is now the 2,219th racing season, but it doesn’t matter that these pages are old. The superstitions remain the same. The prize for winning this particular bet is still a horseshoe.
The anxious father-to-be who bet on Edel to win her debut race hovers nearby, watching the farrier with an eye like a starhawk.
He reminds me of our neighbor Leonys back on the shore. He too won a horseshoe to hang over his door so that the fiend who plagued his barren wife, Adra, would flee. She became pregnant soon after — more a coincidence, I think, than the result of any magic in the shoe.
But after that “miracle,” the couple never ceased crowing about the immense powers of the Horses of the Sun. Adra often told me that I should go to the track to reverse your luck, Papa. I know she meant well, but I found it insulting for her to assume that betting on a horse could solve our problems.
Betting on horses, after all, is what caused our problems in the first place.
Edel twists her head around to look at me as the farrier finishes removing the shoe and puts her leg down, leaving her only one still-shod hind leg to stand on. I avoid her gaze. Your own fault for winning, I think bitterly. Honestly, what horse wins her first race?
I feel guilty for disliking an animal, but my resentment overrides it. Were it not for Edel, I’d never have come near the Sun Track. The very thought of being here burns a blackness into my soul. I hate it, Papa, and I hate you for making it necessary to come here.
Prize 2. With a successful bet, you may share your horse’s air. Inhaling a winning horse’s breath cures fever.
I wrap my coat around me, shivering as the sick woman’s brother hefts her up by her armpits from the litter in which she lies. Edel, still strapped into her chariot harness so that the grooms can hold her still, snorts, but she makes no move to bite or kick the woman suddenly shoved in her face.
The woman closes her eyes, breathing in deeply before her brother lays her back on the litter. He strokes her forehead gently. I feel a pang, Papa, because in her helpless sickness she reminds me of you.
Studiously, I look away from the siblings and focus my attention on the winning ribbon tied to Edel’s bridle. I still can’t bring myself to touch her. It is a struggle for me to get close to any horse, not just out of revulsion for how you lost our estate gambling on them, but because they genuinely scare me.
After all, a horse’s hooves reduced my strong, regal Papa to a cripple.
I know you were far from the only one to visit the Sun Track. Families of all sorts come here, driving up in their battered carts, or, if they are rich enough, their wire-framed chariots and jeweled wagons. But few of them are obsessed like you were.
Edel reaches her head down and nibbles at the sick woman’s blanket. The woman laughs. She seems to have improved already. Her face is less flushed; her expression more animated. She no longer looks dead to the world. This isn’t because of magic, of course. It’s just her delight in Edel. In spite of myself, I smile.
Her brother beams at me. “Thank you so much, Ka — Kahja?”
“Kaija.” What a wonder, that a winning bet can give people such hope and strength that they believe the horses themselves have cured them.
A horse, a horse. All comes back to a horse. You fell from a saddle horse, Papa, true, not an exotic specimen from the racetrack, but they’re all the same to me. Your betting on horses cost us our home; the horse that threw you to the cobblestones cost you your health.
So many doctors have said you will never again rise from your bed; only the Sun Guardians themselves, they tell me, could mend your cracked head. Even if your creditors didn’t hound me, I’d still need a king’s ransom in order to pay.
As the brother pushes his sister’s litter out of the barn, I heard the crowd roar: another chariot race. Priests will have blessed the horses, praying for the sun to light the fire of glory inside their hearts.
Technically, track bets are sacred, a covenant with the sun to grant favor to humans who take the chance — but that’s all it is. Chance.
Some invalids are cured of sickness, but others pick the wrong horse, lose their bets, and die. Beggars win lifelong good fortune, while others like you, Papa, are ruined. How can something so unfair be divine?
The crowd noise rises to a fever pitch, and I hear them chanting a word that takes me a moment to make out. “Ishq! Ishq!” Must be the name of a horse. Who will win the betting lottery this time, and whose lives will be destroyed?
