Doppelganger
by Pyjamas

Tristor Ackland stood, appearing to be focused on kneading the bread dough on the counter, but out of the corner of his eye he was watching his mother as she fidgeted in an anxious manner where she was standing. She was jittery; more so than usual. He was used to her acting a little strangely, because she always had done for as long as he could remember, but every now and then her agitation seemed to intensify and it always worried him to no end.

He was aware that his mother was a little less than completely sane. Even he, her own son, could admit that. She jumped at the slightest sounds and sudden movements, and lied about trivial things like where she had been when she went out. She went out often, and Tristor could never be entirely sure whether to believe her when she told him where she went. Often he woke up in the middle of the night to hear her making noise downstairs, sometimes even crying for no apparent reason, and she always seemed to feel the need to justify any of her actions. Usually she would become rather defensive, almost to the point of threatening anybody who questioned her, but her demeanour would never have given this away beforehand; she always acted to calmly, almost seeming quite timid.

Even though Tristor was young, barely seventeen years old, he was almost eerily wise when it came to his surroundings and the people around him. He knew that his mother was slightly crazy, and he knew very well what the other villagers said about her. Most of them had the decency to at least say things when she was out of earshot, but the more outspoken among the small community of Sohurst didn’t care whether she heard them or not. It was mostly things concerning his mother’s sanity, his origin and father, and general things concerning their family. Usually unpleasant and fairly rude things, and some of them were even mentioned to Tristor himself, most of which he knew to be untrue. One of the more popular claims was that his mother practiced sorcery, which was ridiculous. Almost rivalling this one in popularity was the murmur that their family was cursed.

He knew why, although he wasn’t quite sure if he believed it or not. It was because of his father running out on them; his mother had told him that it had happened just after Tristor was born, but she never went into any more detail than that. When he had been about six or seven years old, one of the elders of the village had been trying to explain to him that his family must have angered the gods, and they had expressed their displeasure by separating his mother and father. But that wouldn’t be enough; the separating of spouses was a sign that the family was cursed, and would be so for a hundred years, after which the gods would judge the family once more and determine whether they saw fit to lift the curse or not. So far in his life, the only thing Tristor could really complain about was the steadily declining amount of sanity in his mother, and he was certain that if there were a curse they would have suffered far more misfortune than that.

But he wasn’t about to go making assumptions about the gods. Their will could change from favourable to malicious in an instant. This he knew from the incident a few years ago when Dero had privately confided in him that he was questioning his faith, and then some of their best cows had been struck down with foot-and-mouth disease.

Anyway, curse or not, he defended his mother and family when he could but otherwise kept his mouth shut. He knew the way these villagers could get; if he started to exhibit too much unruly behaviour, it would just fan the flames of the rumours and give them something else to talk about.

Turning his dough, he watched as his mother twisted her fingers together awkwardly and paced the floor. It made him nervous, and he thought that he ought to say something. “Mother, what’s bothering you?”

She visibly jumped before turning to him and smiling in a fond, almost apologetic way. “Oh nothing, don’t worry about me. You should look out for yourself more often instead of making sure I’m feeling all right.”

He wished he could have told her that he felt a duty to look out for her, as her son and the only person who would defend her from the hurtful words of the villagers, but he said nothing.

“How are you doing with that bread?”

He kneaded it a few more times before shaping the dough into a form that resembled a loaf. “It’s just about done. It would not do any harm to bake it now.”

His mother, Cecile, picked the dough up just to make sure it had lost all elasticity before placing it on the baking tray and into the oven. She was still smiling as she did so, and Tristor was glad to see it. No matter how dubious her sanity was, it was always satisfying to know that he had pleased her in some way. Even though he looked out for her like a brother might look out for a sister, he still enjoyed feeling the trivial joys of being a son and making his mother proud of him. He seemed to be the only person able to bring a genuine smile to her face these days.

He began to clean the counter he had been using while she stood back and watched. There was a certain sense of awe in her gaze; he could feel it as if it was burning pleasant holes in the side of his head. She had told him on many occasions that she was happy to have such an independent and helpful son, and he did everything he could to help out because she owned an extensive property that needed more than one pair of hands to keep properly. Many of the properties in Sohurst were large, although by no means were all of them, due to the surprisingly small population. The nearest town, Wildevyrn, was almost three miles away and the two were separated by a small river with only two points of crossing, so it was unusual for anybody to go out or come in unless deliveries were being made.

Cecile’s property technically belonged to her father, but he allowed her to live there while he and her mother moved away to a location better suited to their wants and needs, on the other side of the village. The property he left his daughter consisted of an average sized house, five acres of land and a large barn with a small, shed-like building beside it. Although his mother didn’t often take him there and wouldn’t allow him to go without her accompaniment, Tristor loved the barn. His mother kept horses, beautiful creatures, and the first time Tristor had seen them he had been completely entranced. His favourite was a magnificent black stallion that he remembered being called Brennan, and he could recall that the first time he’d seen Brennan the horse had sneezed in his face as he went to stroke his nose. His mother told him that Brennan was very restless and needed riding more often than the other horses because he always seemed to have far more surplus energy than they did, and Tristor had begged her to teach him to ride. It had taken a lot of begging and grovelling, but eventually she gave in and said yes, even if he hadn’t as yet had a single lesson. It was part of his mother’s lying game; every time she seemed to have time on her hands and he brought the subject up, she would suddenly remember that there was something else she needed to do. Tristor wasn’t stupid, and he knew his mother was avoiding it. As for why she was avoiding it he had no idea, but he knew that she would keep her promise sooner or later. When her condition started to improve, perhaps.

Until that day came, he would just help his mother to run their home and do as much as he could around the house.

His friends laughed at him; they saw his doing housework as a dent in his masculinity. Dero in particular was lazy around his own house and couldn’t understand why any male would do household chores of his own free will. It wasn’t something that Tristor could easily explain, but he wasn’t worried. He knew he was just as strong as the rest of the boys his age, if not more so. But, as he had tried to tell them, he felt a duty to help his mother. She was on her own, with no siblings of her own and her parents living on the other side of the village. He was the only person close by to help her. He didn’t see it as a knock against his masculinity; if anything, he thought it made him better as a person. Since he had grown up without a father, a male role model, he had adapted his behaviour to be like that of his male friends. That was how he knew that he was just as good as they were. But he also knew, even at his young age, how to run a home. He had been taught as he had been brought up. From an early age he had performed chores such as laundry, washing dishes and cleaning, and as he got older his mother had begun to teach him about managing finances and business. The only thing he didn’t really know much about was the horses, but that was definitely something he wanted to learn more about.

With his peripheral vision he saw his mother watching him contentedly as he wiped down the counter before she reached out and ruffled his dark hair with affection. She’s thinking about Father again, Tristor thought. She thought about him an awful lot, and often told Tristor stories about him. His name was Leon, and he hadn’t been from Sohurst originally; he was from the capital, from Ester. The two of them had never married, even though they had often spoken about doing so, and for this reason the rest of the villagers had never really accepted him. It had also been quite a large blow to the way they had held Cecile in their estimation, especially after she revealed that she was expecting, since sexual relations out of wedlock were severely frowned upon. They still were, and every time Cecile spoke about Leon she advised Tristor to save himself for when he was married. She said it was because she knew first hand just how cold and harsh the community could be when something went against their beliefs and expectations, although Tristor had never completely understood what she meant.

And he had seen the photographs of Leon that his mother kept, and every time she showed them to him she reminded him that he was the very image of his father. Tristor didn’t know whether this was a good thing or a bad thing. Leon wasn’t an unattractive man, not by any stretch of the imagination, but that didn’t change the fact that he had caused his mother emotional pain. Tristor didn’t want her to think about him every time she looked at him. He especially tried to avoid looking her in the eyes, because she had told him that his eyes were exactly the same, both in the shape and vivid green colouring, as she remembered Leon’s.

He rinsed out his cloth before hanging it over a heater to dry, and he turned to his mother with an amused and disbelieving glance. “You always tell me not to worry about you.”

She laughed. “Of course! You shouldn’t worry about me; you’re my son. I should worry about you, and I do. All of the time. I worry that you’re wasting all your precious time as a son trying to be a guardian instead.”

“I’m not trying to be a guardian,” he said. “Is it so awful that I worry about you? Apart from me, you’re alone in this house and you haven’t seen Grandmother and Grandfather for weeks. This house and all the land are far too large for you to take care of yourself, never mind the horses.”

His mentioning the horses was a subtle reminder of her promise to teach him how to ride. Perhaps when it finally happened, he would learn more about their care and breeding too. He hoped so. That way, he would be even better equipped when he eventually married and had a family of his own. One could never know too much about too many subjects when it came to taking care of oneself and making a living.

“The horses…” his mother mused. “Yes, the horses need a lot of attention. The house not nearly so much so; you and I can only make so much work between us. And we can handle the land. I manage the horses now, do I not? You should be more concerned about your education for the time being. The gods have blessed you with intelligence, so you shouldn’t waste it.”

School… it was Tristor’s playground. The corners of his lips curved up in a sly smile as he moved to wash his hands. “I don’t waste it. I do more than well enough in school.”

“But your behaviour is appalling.” His mother shook her head. “Every year your tutor tells me about the havoc you wreak, and I always think that they must be talking about another boy. I simply cannot imagine you behaving as badly as they describe. To me, you have always been nothing other than polite and courteous. I don’t know how you manage to create such a different impression when you’re not at home.”

Tristor’s smile widened. “School brings out the worst in me, Mother. I apologise. But there is nothing I can do to help myself. I bore of being taught about subjects that I already understand, and need to amuse myself in some way.”

“I would prefer it if you amused yourself without disrupting the entire class.”

“I will try to restrain myself in future; however, I’m not making any promises.”

Cecile fixed herself a drink, sighing as she did so. “I suppose all I can ask is that you try, and as long as you do I’ll have to be satisfied. But please, try your hardest. Listening won’t do you any harm, and it would be nice to hear a completely positive report about you from your teacher.”

Although smiling convincingly, Tristor had no intention whatsoever of putting an end to his troublesome ways. Giving his tutor grief was one of the few pleasures in life that was so enjoyable it was worth all the trouble he got into for it. He wasn’t going to give it up just because his tutor had been complaining yet again to his mother. “As I said, I will try.”

As expected, his mother believed him. She believed anything if it was what she was willing to hear, whether it was realistic or not. “Thank you. I still can’t quite understand how you can turn into such a different person in school than at home.”

Keeping the smile on his face, Tristor averted his gaze and dried his hands. “It’s very simple. Here, I have no one whom I wish to annoy, and things to keep me occupied. I’m learning and being educated constantly. But there I merely sit at a desk and listen to a woman rattle on about topics I already know inside out. Even if I didn’t already know the work, I would want to disorientate her. She has such a patronising and superior tone to her voice.”

“Whatever your reasons, it is in the best interests of everyone if you just keep your opinions to yourself. Or, at least, keep them away from whomever they concern. You can manage that, surely?”

The innocent smile returned. “I said that I would do my best. Don’t worry about a thing, Mother.”

“I hope so.” She started to pace again, her agitation, which had almost died down, now back and making her antsy. “They barely accept us as it is because of… Leon. We don’t want to give them anything else they could use against us; we might not be so lucky next time.”

There was an instant here during which Tristor felt a little bad about causing chaos during school hours. He didn’t like it when the villagers talked about his mother in the way that they did, and sometimes even the way they talked about him, although this was a far rarer occurrence, and it would be awful if he were the cause of any of it. All he wanted to do was protect his mother, but all he would end up doing would be causing her more grief and distress. It wasn’t fair, especially since the way he behaved at school had nothing to do with her. She couldn’t possibly be to blame; she had always done everything in her power to ensure that he was well-mannered, chivalrous and a pleasure to know. In most cases, he was – she had done a wonderful job of being a mother.

He was just easily bored. And when he was forced to sit and listen to lectures about things he was already very familiar with, it didn’t take him long at all to become frustrated with the situation and need an outlet for it. His outlet just tended to come in the form of making jokes and pulling pranks in the middle of class. It wasn’t his mother’s fault, not even slightly. He didn’t understand how they could blame her when she had, in Tristor’s opinion, done a better job than a lot of the other mothers in the village. How many other sons could there be who spent an awful lot of their free time willingly helping with chores around the house?

Not many, Tristor was sure.

Perhaps they were just looking for things to confirm the idea that his family, the Ackland family, had been cursed when his father left. He could see where they were coming from, but he didn’t feel cursed.

He wondered if his mother ever did. She had never specifically mentioned the subject before, although Tristor didn’t know if it was because she was avoiding it or if it was because it just never came up in conversation, but now he found himself strangely curious. “They say our family is cursed.”

He watched for her reaction, and was almost a little disappointed when she didn’t give him an obvious one. Her expression didn’t change save the tiniest amount; she didn’t even look at him to give him any sort of hint as to what she was thinking. Raising her drink back up to her lips, she hesitated before taking a sip. “Yes. I know.”

It wasn’t a particularly promising reaction, but then it would have been entirely unrealistic for him to expect something too drastically different, at least towards the more positive end of the scale. Tristor knew his mother was very superstitious, just as the rest of the community was and he could be at times, so it wouldn’t have surprised him if she had answered in a more negative manner. At least her anxiety hadn’t seemed to increase though, for which he was grateful, and it encouraged him to dare to push the topic a little further. “Do you believe we are?”

There was a long, tense pause while he waited for her to give him a reply; she was clearly having to give the question quite a bit of thought, which was something Tristor found a little odd. There was always the chance that she had just never really given the idea much thought before then, but he thought this unlikely for a person of his mother’s state and beliefs. Alternatively, he pondered as he watched her, she may have thought about it far too much in the past than was good for her health. If that was the case, she was having to decide what she should tell her son since any conclusions she would have come to would most likely have been uncomfortable and bothering ones. Or perhaps it was something else entirely; Tristor couldn’t be sure. He waited patiently, not once even for a moment taking his eyes from her, intent on catching even the slightest hint of discomfort or worry that she may exhibit.

But, somewhat surprisingly, there was none. His mother’s expression remained fairly neutral, neither showing signs that she thought the whole idea was poppycock, which to be honest would have surprised Tristor even more, nor betraying any fears she may or may not have had about the claims that her family had been cursed by the gods and would suffer great misfortunes for the next hundred years, at least. That was something else Tristor could never be sure about, although that could easily be attributed to the fact that he wasn’t a hundred percent certain that his mother believed the claims; did she think the curse was being played out presently? Or that it would manifest itself and make itself known in the future? Her neutral expression told him nothing. He assumed that it was either her experience as a liar that enabled her to do this, or her genuine indecision about how to best go about answering the question.

The pause lasted for such a long time that he thought he wasn’t going to receive an answer at all; his mother finished her drink and washed her glass up, her expression unchanging and without having given him an answer to his question. He even considered that maybe she had taken so long to come up with an answer that she had forgotten he had asked her a question in the first place. It wasn’t something that happened to her very often, he had to admit, but it was a possibility. Just as he was about to repeat himself, however, his mother looked over at him and gave a sad smile. “I will not try to go against the will or desire of the gods; if they wish to curse us, they are free to. But I do not see how I can be cursed when I have been blessed with such a handsome and intelligent son. You are going to grow into a fine young man, marry a woman worthy of you and have a family of your own. There is no doubt about that. If indeed we do carry the burden of a curse, I am sure it has not been passed down to you.”

“Perhaps not.” Tristor wasn’t going to take any chances by making Dero’s mistake and doubting the gods, but he didn’t want to displease his mother. Ambiguity was probably the safest reply method. “You avoided the question.”

She sighed irritably. The curse that had apparently been bestowed upon her family was clearly not something she wished to discuss. “Why are you asking about this now? They’ve been talking about it for your whole life, and the only other time you have brought it up was when you first heard of it and wanted to know why it existed. It’s best to just let it be, leave things alone.”

“All right, I’m sorry. I was curious.”

The bread came out well. It usually did; Cecile’s mother had made bread as a living, so Cecile knew how to make it just right. She had then passed her knowledge on to Tristor, who was still improving as he grew older.

Even Cecile had made a fair living for a while making bread before she decided instead to devote her life to taking care of and breeding horses. But Tristor had no plans to follow in their footsteps in this respect. He cleaned, did chores willingly, knew how to cook and didn’t mind staying at home, but he wanted in his future to earn money doing a job that didn’t resemble something a housewife might do. The horses intrigued him; he might take them over from his mother when she grew too old and frail to do a good job of it any more. Of course, that would require her to teach him the basics at least, and he was having difficulty persuading her to do so. But it was a possibility. Another thought that had crossed his mind was that he might like to grow up and be a carpenter. This was something his mother couldn’t teach him, but he knew other people who could. Smith Edgington was one of these people; he was also one of the village elders. Whether he would be willing to teach him was another matter, but for then it looked far more likely than the hope of being able to keep the horses.

In any case, Tristor wanted to do something practical with his life. He wanted to move, to be on his feet while he worked. The idea of doing something like keeping records and accounts, which would mean an entire working day of sitting down with very little physical activity, made him grimace, and he sincerely hoped that he wouldn’t end up doing something like that. His intelligence and his natural academic gifts were just that to him – gifts. Added bonuses that he could never see himself using to their full potential because that simply wasn’t what he wanted to do. This, he supposed, was yet another reason why he couldn’t sit still in school. He wasn’t going to use all these subjects, like history and mathematics, in his life, so he saw no valid reason why he should pay attention. It bored him. And it wasn’t even as if he was missing out; he could pick any academic facts, theories, techniques or patterns up in no more than a split second if it was necessary.

He made sure to express himself clearly at every opportunity so that his tutor, Miss Turner, couldn’t forget how unhappy he was to sit in a classroom for six hours a day learning about things he would never find it useful to know about. The next day, during a period of history, he felt the need to put his point across once more.

“As a result,” Miss Turner said, concluding her points and writing key words on the black board so that her students could take notes, “Greene virtually eradicated poverty on Bywinter Island. I’m sure you’ve all seen Greene’s statue down in the centre? Next time you see it, look very closely and you ought to notice tiny engravings of coins around his cuffs. Now you know why that is.”

A few quiet murmurs of the students disturbed the quiet peacefulness of the room at this new revelation, and Tristor yawned, stretching his arms above his head. “Greene was probably the size of Bywinter Island, and he eradicated poverty by sitting on it.”

This loud comment earned a collective laugh from many of his peers, and Miss Turner paused to sigh exasperatedly. “Shame on you. You ought to be thankful to him; he made this island what it is today. Your home, your family… your entire life would be different if he hadn’t stepped in when he did to fix all the problems.”

“So he made the lives of people he would never know – us – better, and still managed to fail at losing weight?” Tristor smirked. “That’s the signature of an inappropriate leader, I believe.”

More sniggers could be heard escaping from some of the other students. Miss Turner simply shook her head, turned back to the black board and told him to wait outside. She had learned quickly, and after the first few days in a row of Tristor behaving in a similar way to this, she realised that no amount of scolding and discipline was going to stop him. The easiest thing to do was to remove him from the room so at least he couldn’t distract any of the others.

For children of each year group in the village, there was a semi-separate building containing only one large classroom and two bathrooms, one for males and one for females. To a person from any other part of the island, these schools would have been considered very odd indeed. In the primary school, for all children up to the age of eleven, each classroom was connected to each of the others by a series of corridors. This way, children could be integrated with other children of different ages and teachers would easily access one another for the purpose of borrowing text books, for example.

The classrooms of the secondary school however, for children aged twelve and upwards, were not joined by corridors. Each was its own, isolated building; their weak common focal point was merely that they were all on the same plot of land. Aside from that, they were not linked. This made Tristor pleased, since it meant that whenever he was sent out of the room he would have to go outside, and he enjoyed being outside. The best thing about it was that the weather was usually warm and dry, so he was rarely exposed to miserable conditions when he was asked to leave.

He walked down the wooden steps to the ground, smiling as he heard the satisfying crunches of early autumn leaves under his shoes. Autumn was his favourite season; the leaves made nice sounds when he walked over them, everything turned to a rich and warm colour, the cruel heat of the sun was no longer so harsh but neither was it cold with wind strong enough to bring trees to the ground and raining as if it would never stop. Those days would arrive, in a few more months or so, but he didn’t like to dwell on such things; he would rather enjoy the colours of autumn while they lasted. As a result, it was during autumn that he upped his efforts to be sent out of class since he could only go outside due to the lack of corridors in the secondary school. Not surprisingly, his efforts always made a rapid decline during the more extreme winter months.

He stood and took his surroundings in. The end of the school day was nearing and the warmest part of the day was over, so the sun was on its way down from the sky. It cast a golden tangerine hue over everything – the trees, the buildings, the ground, and the people. Not that Tristor could see many people from where he stood; the schools had been strategically placed away from the centre of the village and further out near the woods. This had apparently been done so that the students wouldn’t be distracted from their education by the hustle and bustle of the outside world.

The sunlight was casting a shine across his hair, making it appear much lighter and more golden than it actually was. The leaves that carpeted the ground below his feet, although having already lost their original green, healthy colour, were a mixture of reds and oranges and yellows that all seemed to catch fire and burn when the mid-afternoon rays fell across them, and the trees were glowing with an intensity that couldn’t possibly be replicated. Although, Tristor thought, it would be wonderful if images as radiant as that could be captured adequately.

Perhaps one day he should try; become a painter, at least temporarily, and attempt to recreate the beautiful scenery that he could see so often. All of it – the sunlight especially, reflecting from the windows of the few buildings he could see and beaming down to bathe the entire island.

He had a few moments to admire all he could see before Miss Turner came to join him outside. She was a tall woman, of average build and middle-aged, but her face betrayed the weariness that came with the years and made her appear older. Her strawberry blonde yet greying hair was pulled back into a tight bun, and the wrinkles around her eyes deepened as she frowned at Tristor. She was perhaps the most tolerant tutor Tristor had had as yet; most of the others before her had resorted to rather drastic measures in efforts to curb his unruly behaviour, although none had been proven to work.

She stayed on the top step, emphasising her height and therefore her superiority to him. “Let’s not beat around the bush. The way you are in class is unacceptable, as I'm sure you well know. I’m aware that you consider yourself quite the comic, and I’m also aware that your friends and peers encourage you. But this is no excuse. If you must make comments like the ones you just made at all, please wait until you have been dismissed. It isn’t fair for you to be disruptive when there are others who wish to learn.”

Tristor remained silent, his gaze wandering. He knew it was pointless to reply to these lectures, and therefore he no longer wasted his breath on them.

His teachers, however, always seemed to take this as a sign that he was being rude or not listening to what they were trying to tell him. Miss Turner sighed, opening the door to the classroom again. “Sit at the back desk, please. If I hear so much as a peep out of you for the rest of the day, I shall ensure that a letter is sent to your mother.”

He did as he was told, not at all ignorant of the undercurrents of what she said. She thought his mother was mad too, just like everyone did. She was one of the people who couldn’t quite keep her opinions to herself all the time, but tried to bite her tongue when she thought she might say something for the sake of being polite. It was clear that she felt quite uncomfortable when she was in his mother’s presence, and every time they encountered one another she always tried to excuse herself as hastily as possible.

In addition, she knew that Cecile thought the world of Tristor, and as a result knew that if she passed on a bad message Cecile would become quite distraught. This was the only reason why his teachers ever threatened to tell his mother about his behaviour, Tristor was sure of it. They knew he didn’t want his mother to feel disappointed or to experience any heightened emotions because of potential consequences and her wellbeing, so he would do as they asked him to. It made him angry that they would use such a delicate and personal matter to their advantage, but there was little he could do about it, especially while he was still in education.

He had to grin and bear it, allowing his boredom to get to such extremes that he was sure he too would end up stark raving mad. Needless to say, he was in a foul mood when he returned home later that afternoon. His mother picked up on it like mothers had a particular way of doing and asked him what the matter was while she was sewing up a hole in one of her cardigans.

“It was a tough day, that’s all.”

She smiled. “When I’m through with this, I’ve got something that will cheer you up.”

“I appreciate the thought, Mother,” he started, suspecting her of having planned something he wouldn’t enjoy at all or something they did on a regular basis, “but-“

“I’m going to take you down to the barn,” she interrupted. “You haven’t seen the horses for some time, and I’m sure Brennan must be missing you. He likes you, you know. I’m convinced that he only grows more and more restless the longer he goes without seeing you.”

The suggestion, if it could even be called one with the certainty his mother had used when ‘suggesting’ it, brightened Tristor’s day instantly, and he certainly wasn’t going to protest lest his mother change her mind. He was only taken to the barn once every few months, and even then that was only if he was lucky, so he never passed up an opportunity when one arose. He was fidgeting and unable to help himself while his mother finished her work on her cardigan, and he thought he might erupt with furious impatience; she wasn’t hurrying; if anything, she was working more slowly than she had been when he walked in the door. Maybe she was doing it to make him angry. No – that was one of the, if not the, most ludicrous ideas in the world. She always talked about his prospects, his wellbeing and his happiness, and she wasn’t the kind of person to deliberately annoy anyone, especially not her own son.

When she stood up and slipped on her sandals, he was already practically out of the door. He couldn’t wait, nor could he hide his enthusiasm. Not that that was necessarily a bad thing, mind you; he wondered if it might show his mother just how much interest he had in the horses and how serious he was about learning all he could about them.

She led him through one of their fields. The grass was beginning to grow quite long; it was almost at the point where it needed to be waded through. Tristor wondered why there was no path trodden in through the ground; did his mother not always take the same route to the barn? It seemed odd until he reminded himself of his mother’s state of mind and realised that there was often no reason or motive behind some of the things she did.

The two of them didn’t speak during the short walk. It almost felt as if Cecile was beginning to regret her decision to take her son to see the horses. Although, he couldn’t understand why she might. It was clear that she had thought about it before he returned home from school, and thus she ought to have already evaluated whether the decision was a good one to make.

Tristor was still a little lost as to why she was against taking him to the barn regularly in the first place. He wasn’t a stupid boy. He knew not to frighten the horses, he knew not to touch anything that might look dangerous and he knew not to go to any of the places in or around the barn that his mother had specifically told him to avoid. It was not as if he was irresponsible or clumsy; the chances of anything bad happening because of him or a mistake he made were minimal; slim to none. It was as if his mother didn’t trust him, or if she genuinely expected misfortune every time her son saw the horses. He didn’t share her fears. On every other occasion, things had gone swiftly and easily. There were no disasters or tragedies. He frowned as he followed behind her, choosing to conclude that this was yet another product of her diminished health.

When they arrived, Tristor couldn’t help but admire the building. It was just as he remembered it – large and made entirely of wood, causing it to take on an old fashioned appearance. It almost looked as if it had been taken from a history textbook, and if he blinked he would realise that he wasn’t standing in front of it at all but merely looking at a photograph.

He could have sworn that it hadn’t and simply never would age; he couldn’t recall a time when it had looked newer, more recently constructed, than it did then, even though it had been around for decades. It must have been quite a sight when the building work on it had just been finished; no wonder his grandparents had clung on to the property for as long as they possibly could before they retired to their home on the other side of the village. His mother had told him stories of when she was a young adult, and she would constantly pester her parents to hand over the barn to her. It reminded him of himself, except that he wasn’t quite so blunt about it. He preferred the more subtle ways of approaching the matter.

He heard a horse give a neigh of delight at having visitors, and he hurried to catch up with his mother. He didn’t want her to think him ungrateful, after all. She might never bring him back again.

The first horse he sought was Brennan, his favourite, and he was glad to find that Brennan was the same impatient, restless, eager horse he always had been. “You haven’t changed,” he said, reaching up to stroke the horse’s nose gently as it shook its head. “When Mother has taught me to ride, I will take you out all the time. It’ll use up some of that excess energy you always seem to have, yes?”

Brennan gave no response other than continuing to shake its head in an energised manner and moving about in its barn space. Tristor smiled. He really had missed the horses. He moved to greet the others – Marcus, Johnny, Millicent and Steve – in turn while his mother looked on from where she was preparing food for them all. It was important, Tristor thought, that she could see just how much he enjoyed spending time in the barn with the horses so that in the future she would know he was more than happy to be handed the reins.

When Cecile had finished with the food, she gave some to Tristor so that he could feed two of the horses. Hunger was apparently the main reason at that moment for Brennan’s restlessness, for as soon as the food was placed in front of him he stopped making noise and pacing around in his space out of boredom. Marcus – the other horse Tristor fed, older than Brennan and dark grey in colour – wasn’t nearly as excited at the prospect of being fed. It seemed that his age was beginning to take its toll on him, and he no longer had that unmistakeable energy that the other horses exhibited.

With Tristor’s attention so heavily resting on the horses, he almost missed his mother speak.

“I’ll be right back, all right?”

“Yes,” he replied absentmindedly, and she left the barn. In a way, he was glad. This way he had time to spend and bond with the horses without being under his mother’s watchful eye, and he liked to think that it meant that she trusted him when it came to taking care of her animals. At least, that was how it seemed. And the more often she left him alone with them, the more he would be able to prove to her that he was absolutely worthy of her trust as far as the horses were concerned.

He moved back to Brennan’s space and leaned on the gate as the horse continued to devour its food. There was something about the atmosphere, about being the only human being around magnificent animals, which Tristor loved. He couldn’t quite put his finger on what it was exactly; but he could feel it. It swelled inside him and he knew then for certain, just as he had done all the other times before, that this was what he wanted to do with his life. He wanted to be around these horses and revel in this atmosphere all the time.

He simply stood and enjoyed the feeling for some time before he headed out to the back of the barn. Not all the time, but sometimes, there was a goat that liked to hang around and try to steal the horses’ food. Nobody seemed quite sure who this goat belonged to or if it had a name, but it wandered the village constantly and made efforts to gain food of some description from any available villagers. Cecile usually gave it food whenever she noticed it lurking outside behind the barn, and as a result it came back regularly when it couldn’t acquire a meal from elsewhere.

Tristor liked to call this goat Jeremy, even though he was unsure whether it was a male or a female. Some of the other villagers, his friends included, had their own names for it. Dero called it Shelby, and Samuel called it Ronald. It made Tristor wonder what its real name was, if it had one. Unfortunately, he was never likely to find out whether it did or it didn’t.

He checked around the back of the barn, and when he found no sign of the goat he wandered the surrounding areas. He came up with nothing, which was a disappointment. Having only seen Jeremy a couple of times in the past, he wanted to get to know the goat better; since he was only familiar (and even then the term ‘familiar’ could only be applied in the loosest possible terms) with horses, and it wouldn’t do him any harm to know about other kinds of animals and their characteristics.

Upon returning to the barn he discovered that Brennan, unlike the other horses, had finished eating and had started to make noise again. He is unbelievably restless, Tristor thought. If only Mother would teach me to ride. It’s just what he needs to calm down.

He tried to quieten Brennan. He sat on the gate and reached out to him, smiling as the horse came closer and sniffed at his hand before slobbering over it. The noises it was making quietened to more muffled sounds even if they didn’t stop completely, and it brought back memories of the times Tristor came to the barn when he was tiny. To the best of his knowledge, Brennan hadn’t sneezed on him since that incident way back when and he hoped he wouldn’t in the future either. His own recollection was blurred and pieces were missing, but his mother had told him that he threw quite the tantrum at the time; he was all tears and screams and became very red in the face, probably through a mixture of childish anger and embarrassment.

He laughed quietly at the images his imagination supplied in place of his memory and retracted his hand as Brennan sneezed. As amusing as his implanted memory was, he didn’t want a re-enactment of it if it was as unpleasant as his mother described.

She came back into the barn and he looked up as she did so, and was pleased to see her smiling. Perhaps she could see how well he got on with the horses and how much he enjoyed spending time with them. It was a bonus that he could calm Brennan; it was a feat his mother found great difficulty in achieving most of the time.

But she said nothing referring to it; she didn’t mention anything of the sort. All she did was beckon him and say, “It’s time to leave. I think that’s enough excitement for one day.”

He wanted to ask her what she meant as she locked the door to the barn and led him away back in the direction of the house, but he didn’t. He didn’t say a word; it would be unwise to push his luck so soon after seeing the horses. At a later date, although he was sure to forget, perhaps he would bring it up again. He would certainly raise the point that he had single-handedly almost stilled Brennan while he was in a state of unrest, for there was no way in which his mother could be disappointed by that. It would add to his chances of keeping the horses when he grew older.

Nevertheless, the fact that he was allowed to spend so little time with them bothered him a lot more than he cared to admit, and undeniably more than he would ever mention to his mother. As he lay awake that same night, he couldn’t rid himself of the pure idea that his mother might not trust him. After all, she was by no means obligated to let him take charge of her animals if and when she decided to retire. She might never give him the opportunity to do the one thing he felt so strongly about doing. There would always be other horses, other occupations, but… these horses, this occupation, was right there under Tristor’s nose. It was impossible to ignore it, but near unbearable to know that there was a chance he would never be able to obtain it. And he couldn’t understand why.

What was his mother so afraid of? Was there a good, solid reason why she never wanted her son to go near the barn without her close by, and why she used any and every excuse available to her to avoid teaching him to ride the horses, or was it merely another undesirable product of her health? Her health… she hadn’t always been that way. It may have just been because he was young at the time and didn’t know any better, but when he was a young boy his mother seemed the picture of wellbeing. He could remember her showing no signs of madness at all, but somehow it had all crept up on her. Perhaps, he wondered, that was one of the effects of the curse on his family. The gods were making his mother ill, and there was nothing anybody could do about it. The village doctor refused to treat her, claiming that he would not stand in the way of the will of the gods, and so she was left to take care of herself. He doubted if she even realised that she was not nearly half as sane as she used to be.

The light of the moon beamed through his window, falling across his bed and his face, making the night seem far less dark and fearsome. The night sky was clear; the millions of stars sparkled in all their glory, and the only sound to pierce the still quiet was the occasional hoot of a bird, muffled because of the glass in his window. Plagued with his worries, Tristor could not find solace in sleep. This, the best form of escape, evaded him and forced his mind to remain horribly and inexcusably active. But, just as with his mother’s madness, there was nothing he could do. So he lay awake and watched the stars; even their enviable beauty, however, could not bring him comfort or relief from that which kept him watching.