For some weird reason, Martin still found himself alive at the end of the horse ride. Not well by any meaning of the word, but alive. In particular, he felt that this had done nothing to improve his opinion of horses. He might even have developed Equinophobia, or whatever fear of horses was called.

The end of the non-existent road led the pair to a quadruplet of buildings. A farm of some kind. The horse walked too gingerly - at least according to Martin - towards what he assumed to be the stables. Curiously enough, Martin spotted a distinct lack of functional gates. Sure, there were fences here and there, but the gates were all open. For some reason, the horses inside considered it too much of a bother to escape. A farm for apathetic horses? Well, considering everything else that hadn’t made sense the last few days, why not?

His own mount trotted over to a water-holding rectangular box and helped itself. This gave Martin the much-desired opportunity to climb down without personally experiencing the consequences of Newton’s First Law. In layman’s terms, now that the horse had finally stopped, he didn’t need to be wary of continuing forward when dismounting.

The dismount was successful, at least if standing at the end was not a requirement. The continued motion of the horse had at some point numbed him to the pain and forced him to remain seated. Finally down on the ground again, his legs relished in the opportunity to turn into mush. Maybe they had been so for a while already.

Considering his state of near-constant pain, both from his wound and increasingly in his butt, Martin had lost his sense of time. He was reasonably sure it had been more than an hour, but he couldn’t tell if it had been close to two or four. At one point, he had been so out of it he might have slipped out of consciousness, yet somehow not fallen off.

Before he really had a chance to examine exactly how bad of a state his body was in, he turned towards the sound of someone approaching. It was a woman, somewhere around his own age. She looked to be about average height, wearing a rough shirt and overalls complete with tall rubber boots. Clothes to work in. To top it off, the woman had fairly long, light blonde hair worn in a long braid. Her beautiful face reminded Martin of someone, but he couldn’t quite place her anywhere within his memories. He was reasonably sure that was not a face he would forget easily.

“I’m glad to see my hunch was right,” she smiled warmly at him. Martin could neither confirm or deny that the statement made any sense without context. He waited for her to go on. It was obvious that she was very eager to explain.

“No doubt you’re confused. Let me help you inside,” she offered a hand. To Martin’s surprise, she was a lot stronger than she looked. Either that, or he had some prejudice about blondes and muscles which he hadn’t quite admitted to himself.

“Thanks,” he grunted following another pang of pain from his side, forcing his hand up to stabilize the wound. The woman did not fail to notice it.

“That wound doesn’t look good. I was actually planning to invite you to lunch and discuss your current predicament, but on second thought it seems that we’ll have to do it in the opposite order,” she commented, her worry seeping into both her words and demeanor.

She turned to the horse that until recently had been trying to shake the living daylights out of Martin. “October, go fetch June and July,” she asked it more than ordered it. Martin could read between the lines that the horses were closer to her friends than her minions, which he found slightly puzzling. He found it a lot more puzzling that the horse seemed to understand what she said, or at least act accordingly enough that he couldn’t tell the difference.

After offering Martin a seat, she promptly dashed back and forth to fetch various items. Three horses walked up to her like they were summoned by the Queen. With just a few verbal instructions, they pulled a horse cart out of a building. The old type you’d expect to see in a wedding or maybe Christmas. They positioned themselves exactly where the horses were supposed to be tied up, allowing the woman to easily fasten the necessary straps. After fetching two baskets, and a bundle of cloth, she returned to the patient again.

Martin’s mouth may or may not have been hanging open after the show. It was not particularly spectacular, but just as impressive nonetheless. She offered her hand once again, helping him onto the cart. He noticed a smirk on her face.

“Looks like you agree that horses are good for something besides being the ingredients of sausages,” she victoriously beamed at him.

In a situation like this, there was one obvious question to be asked. Who had lost their sanity; he or she?

The cart started rolling as the horses pulled with perfect synchronization. “You still don’t recognize me?” the woman asked teasingly, not even bothering to hold onto the reins. It was pretty obvious she didn’t need to, either. The horses seemed completely capable of finding the way on their own.

The continued lack of recognition was clearly evident on his face. He caught that she was eager to see him surprised, and planned on giving her what she wanted. Which meant playing along for now.

“How many girls have you teased about horse sausage, anyway?” the woman asked, still playing the hinting game.

Horse sausage? He had hardly thought of it since primary school, and definitely not teased anyone about it, except …

The woman recognized the dawn on his face faster than he did himself. Her smirk widened.

“Caroline? Or Britney?” Martin blurted out, finally managing to connect the jigsaw pieces. He had, in fact, teased two horse-loving classmates of his about the horse sausage during primary school. He had held no hatred for the equine beasts himself, he just found it entertaining to lure out reactions from the girls based on the very same topic.

Digging a little deeper in his memories, he recalled that Caroline was the blonde one, while Britney was a brunette. Unless she had bleached her head, the one in front of her would then most likely be … “Caroline?”

The woman nodded, her entire face a big smile. His reaction obviously pleased her. She obviously wanted to explain more, but also give him a chance to ask some questions. Well, he was fine to oblige.

“But I haven’t seen you since … well, the only reunion we ever had,” Martin pointed out, “and that was some twenty years ago. How did you recognize me?”

“For someone as smart as you, you sure are a bit slow,” she smirked, still eager to play some kind of game. “Facebook, obviously,” she gave up on the game upon seeing more question marks written on Martin’s face.

If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.

Considering how social he might seem on the outside, Martin was not a huge fan of Facebook. His social skills only worked when meeting people face to face. Talking through social media was about as enticing as heading to a desert when you really wanted to go to the beach. Yes, there was sand at both places, but a big appeal of the beach was not the sand itself. However, keeping up appearances was important, so he maintained at least a rudimentary Facebook page, even if his uploads were as sparse as rain in said desert. His friends occasionally uploaded pictures of him, though.

“You’ve been Facebook-stalking me?” Martin asked with only the slightest hint of disgust seeping into his voice. That had not been intentional.

“I highly doubt it’s called ‘stalking’ to look up classmates once every few years,” she retorted, “I’m pretty sure that’s the very intention behind Facebook.”

To be fair, it was actually a pretty solid argument. With one question answered, Martin had just a few thousand more left. Rather than trying to set the pace, he guessed she would be quite easy to get going if she was prompted.

“Okay, you win,” he admitted, dispelling any thoughts that he bore any kind of grudge for being stalked. “So, could you please tell me what’s … going on?” he motioned first towards the horses and then himself.

“Certainly,” she nodded. “I guess I’ll start with the horses then. This is July,” the left horse let out a neigh, “and this is June,” the right horse followed suit. “And they are my familiars. You may find it somewhat hard to believe, but I’m actually what some may dub a druid. The magic-wielding kind.”

Martin was aware that Caroline excepted him not believe her. Well, he’d have to disappoint her this time. Not because her explanation made a lot of sense, but because she so extremely firmly believed it herself. Part of his talent was catching lies and truths. It wasn’t completely foolproof, particularly not on half-truths and withheld facts, but for straight statements like this, it was reliable.

That left two obvious possibilities; either she really believed magic existed and was wrong, or she really believed magic existed and she was right. From her statement alone, he would guess the former to be more likely. But having witnessed the strangeness the suits had produced at the party, the thought of supernatural abilities existing seemed much less far-fetched. Not to mention the horse’s behavior seemed a bit too impressive to simply chalk down to training.

The prospects of suddenly being able to learn magic gave him a warm, fuzzy feeling.

“Well, that answers some of my questions,” he noted without a hint of sarcasm. This earned him a questioning look from Caroline. Obviously, she had expected this to be a lot more difficult to explain, and she was not sure he wasn’t just making fun of her.

“I obviously don’t know exactly what being a druid entails, but I assume it includes controlling animals,” he said, catching a glimpse of a misunderstanding, “or talking to them.”

The beginning of a head-shaking motion quickly turned to nodding. “Yes!” she beamed, her enthusiasm as vivid as a preschooler, “You believe me! I didn’t think you would, you being inside the veil and everything.”

The veil? He motioned for her to go on, just as a bump in the ground caused the cart to tilt slightly. Not enough to really be a problem, unless you happened to have an infected wound in your side.

“Oh, I’m really sorry,” Caroline quickly excused, as if she had been responsible for personally digging the hole in the road. “I forgot you were wounded. Let me have a look at it.”

She forced him to lie down as best he could as she fetched a first aid kit from one of the baskets. With practiced movements, she quickly stripped the wound of the latest dressing and cleaned it of pus as best she could. Her eyes betrayed how bad she thought it looked, but she wisely said nothing. Not that he needed any words to pick up how worried she was.

While doing her best on the wound, she went on with her explanation. If nothing else, she thought it might distract him from the pain. “Well, you see … those that have knowledge of magic dub those with no such knowledge part of the ‘veil’. That includes, until recently, you, as well as almost the entire world population. Only a minority are aware of magic and with a good reason.”

She went on to explain that every living being had a mana pool of sorts, but that it would grow stale if it went unused for too long. By the time one reached adulthood, the mana pool would be completely frozen solid, leaving that person with no chance of ever causing magic to happen. But more than that, a frozen mana pool also radiated a dampening field around the user, which also made magic pretty much impossible in the vicinity. Thus, even if children theoretically had the possibility of casting magic, most of them never discovered it because any such effort would be dampened by nearby adults. Thus magic remained undiscovered for most of the population.

It wasn’t all negative, though. The very same dampening field also protected against hostile magic. It would just as easily stop a mind control attempt as a fireball. Only the subtlest of magic could be worked in the vicinity of veiled people, and even that required great skill from the user. Having lived his entire life within the veil, the prospect of him learning magic seemed a lot bleaker. Not impossible, but improbable. The fact that he was something of a pessimist did not help.

“Wait a moment,” Martin halted her explanation, “how come you’re able to work your magic despite my presence here?”

Caroline smiled. When teaching, nothing was better than an eager and discerning student. “Still quick-witted, I see,” she acknowledged his question, “it is definitely harder to communicate with them with you near. Though considering I have something like twenty-five years experience doing this, I consider myself fairly skilled at it. It also helps that the horses are smart enough to catch my meaning without having to completely spell everything out.”

Her gaze returned to the horses themselves. “Truthfully, while I may be a druid, I’m not a very good one. My only real skill is talking with horses. Oh, I know a few other tricks, but nothing mindblowing. Having said that, I don’t mind it so much. The stronger the druid, the more likely said druid will start hugging trees and ignore humans. Or even defend the forest or animals from humans. I’m not saying that it’s wrong, just that I’m very comfortable staying on the human side myself.”

Martin could only nod at that statement. It looked a bit awkward from his lying position, but the point still came across. Since he was no longer in a life-or-death situation (or more accurately ‘I will die if I fall off’ situation), his fatigue found this a good opportunity to rush in. In addition, he felt safer now than at any point during the last four days. Even before all hell broke loose, he had been pretty nervous to perform for the very cream of the society.

“Say, how did you find me?” he asked, trying to glean as much information as possible before passing out.

Caroline broke out of her gaze. “Mostly luck and a hunch,” she replied. “To be completely honest, I sent out five horses to places I suspected you might be. I needed only one such attempt to pan out, and exactly one did.”

Before he could ask any follow-up question, she explained that she had caught wind of the Missing Person announcement through some local media site and recognized him. The announcement also shared that he might be an important witness to the extremely brutal homicide resulting from the Aker Foundation’s charity event. She had put two and two together, figuring out that he was probably hiding somewhere, and sent out her equine friends to the five most likely places he could be. Having ridden to the Scout cottage several times before, she had guessed it to be one of the likely candidates for a hiding place.

Martin found himself questioning how a horse could find him when a group of cold-blooded killers had failed so miserably. Then again, he hadn’t exactly actively hidden when the horse had discovered him in the bed.

“Well, what can I say, except thank you,” he attempted a weak smile at her. He didn’t know how hot on his heels his pursuers were if any, but it certainly felt safer now.

“Well, what can I say, except you’re welcome,” she playfully retorted in a melodic voice, almost like she was humming a song. Maybe she was? At least she felt pretty smug about her apparent quote.

Martin really wanted to know why she had elected to help him out, but he felt himself drifting towards the sweet embrace of sleep. There was a more important question vying for attention first.

“Where are we headed?” he wondered out loud.

“I’m taking you to someone who can hopefully help you,” his old classmate responded. Something told Martin she was even less certain than her voice hinted. And that was his last thought before his brain decided that some shut-eye was in order.