[FFML] [Narnia] To Please Bree

[Angus MacSpon]

Set just after the events of "The Horse And His Boy".
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To Please Bree
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By Angus MacSpon


There was this vexing question of rolling.

After everything else was said and done, and Bree and Hwin went to live
in Narnia, he was still uncertain of whether a real Narnian horse ever
rolled in the grass, or whether such a thing would be a horrible affront
to a horse's dignity.  There were other questions as well -- both of
them knew so little about Narnian customs -- but this was the one that
really bothered him.

Hwin claimed not to care much; but in a way, that was just as bad.  Only
think of the embarrassment and shame if they met a Narnian horse while
*Hwin* was rolling but Bree was not!  The horse would ask, "Whatever are
you doing?"  And it would surely come out that Hwin didn't know that she
wasn't supposed to do it, and that Bree hadn't stopped her because *he
didn't know either*.

So when, after the battle and seeing Cor and Aravis nicely settled in
Anvard and everything, Bree and Hwin finally went into Narnia to stay,
Bree had worked himself into a mass of nerves.

He was comforted somewhat by the lovely countryside that they passed
through, and by the quiet homely kindness of everyone they met.  A lot
of the Narnian folk had heard about the doings in Archenland, and not a
few of them had heard that Bree and Hwin had been involved.  So everyone
wanted to meet the horses, and in fact the two of them had a very good
time.

As luck would have it, within a week or so they came across a small herd
of Narnian horses, who very politely invited the two to run with them
for a few weeks and see how they liked it.  Hwin said "Yes, thank you"
at once, and then of course Bree could hardly say "No".  But he would
have liked to.

The trouble was that it was a glorious Narnian summer, and everywhere
they went there were beautiful rolling meadows and glens, and Bree
wanted to roll like anything.  But none of the other horses were
rolling, so he didn't feel that he could do it either.

What he did not know was that, within an hour or two of them joining the
herd, Hwin had quietly asked one of them whether Narnian horses rolled
in the grass, and when that horse said, "Yes, of course," she had to
explain the whole thing.  And very soon, all the horses knew about
Bree's fears; and so they deliberately refrained from rolling, just to
see what Bree would do.

A week or so went past, and Bree became more and more miserable.  He
kept on seeing particularly inviting patches of grass and absolutely
longing to roll in them, but seeing that nobody else made a move, he
felt that he couldn't either.  So the herd moved on, and Bree did not
know that all the other horses were watching him with great amusement.
To make matters worse, every now and then, a few of the horses would
trot away from the herd and have a quiet roll while Bree wasn't looking.
Hwin thought it was a little cruel -- she was in on the joke, of course
-- but one of her new friends persuaded her to go along with it, and she
reluctantly agreed.

Well, there came a day at last when the sun was too bright, and the
grass was too green, and the scent of clover in the air was too sweet,
and it all became too much for Bree to resist.  He waited until most of
the herd were drinking from a brook, and then he sneaked away through a
nearby stand of trees, found a particularly inviting spot, and he rolled
like anything.

And a few minutes later, when he got up, snorting and blowing, he found
that the whole herd were standing around him, watching him, with the
most extraordinary look on their faces.  He could hardly know that they
were all struggling not to laugh.

He started to stammer, "Er -- I -- well --"  But before he would work
out what to say, the herd leader looked around carelessly and said, "Oh,
all right then.  Just to please Bree!"

And in a trice the whole herd was down in the grass, rolling.

Before long, of course, one of them started laughing, and soon everyone
was laughing except Bree.  After a while somebody explained the joke,
and Bree was properly mortified.

He did see the funny side eventually, but it took him a while because,
over the following weeks, whenever one of the horses wanted to roll, he
would start by saying, "Just to please Bree!"  But in the end, as Bree
settled in to Narnian ways, he saw the joke and managed to laugh at
himself as well.

The curious thing was that it caught on.  When their herd met another
herd, and the new horses heard one of them saying, "Just to please
Bree!" they insisted on hearing the story, and a few of them started
saying it too; and in a few years it had spread to all the horses of
Narnia.  And centuries later, when a horse wanted to roll in the grass,
as often or not he or she would start by saying, "To please Bree!"

By that time, though, the original story had been lost, and most of them
thought (when they thought about it at all) that they were saying it in
honour of an ancient Narnian horse hero.  And perhaps they were right.

It was a kind of immortality, in a way; and we can only hope that this,
too, would have pleased Bree.

END


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Angus MacSpon                                  Email: macspon at ihug.co.nz
ICQ: 65719513                          http://shell.ihug.co.nz/~macspon/