There Is No Horse

Hazel Coldwater was sixteen when she went up from Lantern Hollow to work her Auntie Peg’s stall on the quays at Cloudbreak. The stall sold hot paper packets to the ship crews. Hazel did the mornings. Auntie Peg did the nights and slept in between.

Hazel wrote home to Dad every week. She wrote in very small handwriting, because paper at the harbor was dear and she had noticed a great deal. Ferris the ferryman carried her letters down, as he carried everybody’s, and carried Dad’s back up.

Here is the first one.

Dear Dad,

I am here. I have a bed with a window, and out of the window there is nothing under the harbor but cloud, as white as a sheet on the line. The sky-ships come in over it with their ropes hanging down. Auntie Peg says I will stop looking at it by Thursday. It is Thursday.

The stall is at the bottom of the quay stairs, between a rope stall and a man who sells hats to people who have lost theirs over the rail. We sell potato cakes with cheese in the middle, two to a packet. I make them on the griddle and wrap them in paper, and the crews carry them up the stairs to their ships.

That is the plan. This is what happens. Every morning there is fog lying under the harbor, and at six o’clock it comes up the quay stairs as if it wants a packet too. It gets into the paper. By the time I have wrapped a packet, the paper is as soft as a dishcloth and the potato cakes are lukewarm. Lukewarm is the worst thing a potato cake can be. Even cold is more honest.

The crews are kind. Nobody has said a word against the packets. They haven’t got time. They say “Two, new one,” and “Ta, new one,” and they are halfway up the stairs before I have found the change. I know all their names already, because they shout them at each other all morning. The bosun of the grey ship is called Tam. She is about the size of two people and wears a hat with a bobble on it. She does not know my name. Nobody here does, except Auntie Peg, and she is asleep.

What I want is for them to come back for more. And I want one of them, just one, to call me something that isn’t new one. Auntie Peg says the fog is the fog, and the answer is to sell faster.

The quay cats have opinions. A ginger one sniffs every packet I drop and then walks off with his tail straight up. Auntie Peg says that is the worst review a packet can get on this quay.

I miss you, and supper, and the bells. Up here there is one bell, and it only does the hours.

Love, Hazel

P.S. When I gave Ferris this letter he asked if there was anything wet in it. I said only the news. He did not laugh, but he wrote something on the back.

On the back of the envelope, in square pencil capitals, Ferris had written: “Fog under. Bright above. Wind westerly, light.”

Nobody had asked him to. Ferris wrote the weather on every envelope he carried, the way other people sign their names. He had done it for so long that most of the Hollow read the back of a letter before they opened the front.

Dear Hazel,

Keep the paper in a bread tin with the lid on. Fog gets into most things, but I have never yet known it get into a bread tin.

Juniper did her bell round in a new best time on Tuesday and told everyone at the pump. On Wednesday she told them again, in case anyone had been out.

I miss you at supper. I keep cutting the bread for two, and then eating it, so it isn’t all bad.

I have put in a sugar lump, wrapped. It is for the ferryman’s horse. Give it to Ferris and tell him that is what it’s for. A man who carries letters that far up ought to have a horse, and a horse ought to have sugar.

Love, Dad

On the back, in square pencil capitals: “Fog under, lifting by noon.”

Dear Dad,

The bread tin works. The paper is as dry as a biscuit. Thank you.

The fog did not lift by noon. I told Ferris so when I gave him the sugar. He said it lifted at noon over the ferry landing, and the quay is not the ferry landing, and he would be glad to put that in writing. He did not seem to mind being argued with. I think he collects arguments about the weather, the way the hat man collects hats.

But here is the trouble now. I ran up the quay stairs with a packet to see what the crews get. There are sixty-one stairs. At the top, the packet was the temperature of a handshake. I think the heat gets out at the top where the paper is open, and goes up into the sky, because that is where everything here goes.

So I made the griddle hotter, to make up the difference. That was a mistake. Three batches came out scorched and tasted of toast. The ginger cat sat on one and would not get off. Auntie Peg says that is a different kind of review, and not a better one.

Everyone still calls me new one. Tam said “Ta, new one” this morning in a very kind voice, which was almost worse.

Ferris looked at the sugar lump for a long time. Then he put it in his top pocket and said, “I’ll see it gets where it’s going.”

Love, Hazel

P.S. A man came to the hat stall today who had lost his hat over the rail. The hat man says it happens eleven times a week, and twelve when the wind is in the south.

On the back, in square pencil capitals: “Fog under. Wind going round to the south.” And under that: “There is no horse.”

Dear Hazel,

Your ferryman says there is no horse. I have put in another sugar lump, in case one turns up.

Now, the packets. What you want is the Hollow fold. Wrap the packet the way you do now. Then take the last corner, the one that sticks up, and tuck it right under, so the packet sits on it. Then the heat has nowhere to go but round. Every stall in the Glowmarket does it, and Mora does it for the cake that goes out on the westbound post. I thought it was just how paper went. I have drawn it for you on the other side, with arrows.

Your aunt never folded anything properly in her life. Ask her about the midwinter parcels the year she was twelve. Then stand back.

Love, Dad

On the back, in square pencil capitals: “Fog thinning. Fair later.” And under that: “There is no horse. I ate it. —F.”

Hazel read it three times, and once more to be sure what “it” was.

Dear Dad,

It works.

On Monday I folded the first packet the Hollow way and ran up all sixty-one stairs with it. At the top it was still so hot I had to change hands. I came down and folded forty more. Auntie Peg got up specially to look at one. She said “Hm,” and went back to bed, which from her is a medal.

The crews came back. Not all at once. The deck boy off the blue ship came down at ten for two more and said “Same again,” as if he had been coming to me for years. Tam came back at eleven.

I asked Ferris what “it” was, in “I ate it.” He looked at me the way people look at you when you ask whether the sky is up. Then he said, “The sugar.”

Yesterday afternoon Ferris came to the stall. He has never once come to the stall. He stood at the back of the queue like anybody, and when it was his turn he said, “Two, please, Hazel. Folded.” He said it in his ordinary voice. His ordinary voice is the one he uses for calling across the cloud to the far landing. It is not a voice for a stall. The whole queue turned round. The hat man looked up. I think they heard it on the ships. Then Ferris took his packets and went off along the quay, and he did not look back or say anything else.

I never told him my name. Then I remembered it is on the front of every letter you send.

And this morning, Dad. This morning Tam came down the stairs with the grey ship’s crew behind her, and she called “Morning, Hazel!” right across the quay. I nearly dropped the tongs. I said “Morning, Tam” back, but by then she was halfway up the stairs. She waved her packet at me anyway.

The ginger cat sits by the griddle all morning now. Auntie Peg says that is the highest honor on the quay, and also not allowed.

Did you ask him to?

Love, Hazel

P.S. I asked Auntie Peg about the midwinter parcels. She said, “Your father talks too much,” and went back to bed again.

Dear Hazel,

I read your letter out at the pump. Juniper, who never stops for anything between rounds, stopped, and made me read the part about Tam twice.

No, I did not ask him. Nobody asks Ferris anything. He does a thing or he doesn’t, and either way he won’t talk about it after.

So thank him. Fold him a packet and say thank you. Don’t say it’s from me, though it is. Say it’s from you, which it is as well. Then hand it over and look at something else while he eats it. Ferris goes funny about that sort of thing. He always has.

And now I can tell you about the horse. I have known Ferris since before you were born, and there has never been a horse. If I put in a sugar lump for Ferris, he would carry it straight back down and leave it on our step. So it goes to the horse.

There is one in this letter. For the horse.

I am so glad, love. It will be morning when you read this, so: morning, Hazel.

Love, Dad

On the back, in square pencil capitals, there was only this: “Fair, clearing. Sugar received.”

From Ferris, that was practically a thank-you letter.

The next morning Hazel folded one packet before all the others and took it down to the ferry steps. The ferry sat at the bottom on its line, resting on top of the cloud the way a boat rests on a pond. Where it sat, the cloud dipped a little, like a cushion with a cat on it. Far across the white, the lamp on the other landing was still lit from the night. Ferris was coiling rope. She said thank you, from her. Then she looked very hard at the ships until he had finished. Ferris said the wind would hold till Thursday, and that the packet had been hot all the way through.

On her way back along the quay, Tam called “Morning, Hazel” from halfway up the stairs. This time Hazel had it ready, and called “Morning, Tam” straight back.

There were still plenty of people at Cloudbreak who called her new one. But two of them called her Hazel now, and the ginger cat sat by her griddle, which he did not do for just anybody. Auntie Peg, when she heard, said that for a new one it was not bad at all. And Hazel went back to work as happy as anyone has ever been at six o’clock in the morning, in a fog.