The third in the Eoss trilogy. Arran is a Kabbalist, a young professional man from the UK, and his accident comes at a critical moment in his love life. It also serves to deepen his emerging connection with one of the kingdoms of Hell.
He enters into an extended coma, during which he learns lessons about love and about the phenomenon of archetypes. The people around him get the chance to petition a Wishing Horse for three wishes, or for anything else they want.
Excerpt:
Arran was lying in his garden hammock, one afternoon in late June. He was listening to ‘Wild Horses’ by the Rolling Stones-a hint of lovers who hurt one another. Instantly, he was off through a portal.
This had happened to him time and time again. He was a crazy astral traveller, and it was all involuntary. One minute he would be dozing peacefully, his eyes half-closed, and the next minute he would find himself travelling away from the Earth to exotic places on the inner planes.
He saw a herd of wild horses galloping across a field of tangled grass, and he knew they were the horses from the Stones song. But something was wrong here. There was an evil atmosphere which he recognized as destructive love, and it was pervading everything-the woods and hills and whatever was beyond the horizon. It was warping all his sensations. Usually an astral atmosphere contains emotion, the flotsam and jetsam of human feelings, but this emotion was distorted, refracted into sadness.
The rippling waves of destructive love were funnelling down from that plane to the Earth, into films, novels, poems and television serials. That theme had such a wide appeal. So many were deeply stirred by the varied permutations of it: couples who fight, couples with a sado-masochistic relationship, adultery, murder of spouses, unrequited love.
Arran glided forward in a sinuous movement with arms extended out in front of him, as if he was swimming. He didn’t want a destructive relationship for himself, in fact he wanted to avoid one at all costs, but he did want to watch these horses.
Most of them were darker colours, but two alone were white so that they caught his eye: a mare and a smaller filly beside her which must be her daughter, so similar were they in appearance. Their manes and tails were a distinctive silver, bright as if reflecting a source of light.
The horses turned in a sweep, slowed down and halted as they reached the border of the grass where it met a sandy path.
“Lovely horses, who are you?” he asked, his voice barely above a whisper, looking especially at the two white mares. He wasn’t expecting an answer, but the larger mare opened her mouth and human-like words came out.
“I am Eoss. I was made to help human beings like you, but you’re the only one I’ve seen here in this region. This is my daughter Clexa, and it’s the first chance I‘ve had to spend time with her; she was taken away from me immediately by her father, the wizard. When I say her father-he didn’t make love to me, she was born from the four elements.”
“I’ve heard your name,” was all he said, and his mind cried, “where?”
Meeting these horses felt like coming home, and he no longer cared about his body beyond the portal. Let it sleep. It must be safe: this had happened many times before and it had never yet harmed him. He could follow the herd for hours, living temporarily with them.
“We will not be running with the horses here for long,” Eoss continued. “We don’t much like destructive love. Clexa and I would prefer a realm where we can heal people and save them from danger. But your destiny, I feel, is here.”
An overwhelming sorrow washed over Arran. The two mares were going to leave, and then he would be left alone in this maelstrom of cruelty. He must wake-wake as soon as they left. At the edge of his vision he spied the shape of a black demon, its body hairy like a gorilla and blazing red cinder eyes, and as he registered it, the demon looked pointedly in his direction.
He became afraid and pushed forward, still gliding but now with jerks, and he found himself brushing up against the black neck and dark brown mane of one of the stallions in the foreground.
Like the mares, this horse could speak. “I am Peridot,” he said. “I live here, in this realm. Get up on my back and I’ll take you away.” He nudged Arran’s arm with his nose.
Over to the right-hand side of the glade, Arran could see the two mares beginning to slip away, and he gave himself the command “wake!” But it didn’t work, and he remained in his trance.
In a panic he climbed up onto the stallion’s broad back, and the stallion galloped away. He had never done bareback riding before, and even conventional riding with a saddle and bridle he had only done a couple of times when he was a schoolboy, and a friend whose father was wealthier than his had taken him riding.
They remained in countryside, and they galloped through woods, plains and valleys. It was verdant and bright, although Arran couldn’t see the sun. But the atmosphere still had that sharp and bitter taste to it, which belied the pastoral look of the place.
As they sped along, Arran was wondering if he should see a therapist of some kind. Was it natural to keep sliding through portals and onto other dimensions? Now he was trapped here, fleeing at speed through an unfamiliar land.
At last Peridot stopped in a flowery meadow and lay down, and Arran rolled off his back onto the grass. The scent of the grass and feel of the blades against his chin reminded him of the Earth, and he could feel himself waking.
But just before he did, a bridle flew across the glade from nowhere, spinning and twisting, and landed right in his hands. It laced itself firmly through his fingers and palms right up to his wrists so that he almost expected to be still holding it when he awoke, but he was not. However, there were words echoing in his mind. “Now I’m your horse forever.”
