The Brothers Lionheart

“I like it here,” I said to Jonathan. “Is it just as nice indoors?”

“Come and look,” he said. He was already standing by the door and just about to go in, but at that moment there was a whinny--yes, it really was a horse whinnying--and Jonathan said:

“I think we’ll take the stable first.”

He went into that other house and I ran after him; just you guess whether I ran after him!

It was indeed a stable, just as I’d thought, and there were two horses there, two beautiful brown horses, which turned their heads and whinnied at us as we came in through the door.

“This is Grim and Fyalar,” said Jonathan. “Guess which is yours.”

“Oh, go on,” I said. “Don’t you try telling me there’s a horse for me, because I just don’t believe it.”

But Jonathan said that in Nangiyala no one could manage without a horse.

“You can’t get anywhere without a horse,” he said. “And you see, Rusky, you have to go a long way here sometimes.”

It was the best thing I’d for ages--that you had to have a horse in Nangiyala--because I like horses so much. Think how soft their noses are. I don’t think there’s anything in the world so soft.

A pair of unusually beautiful horses they were, those two in the stable. Fyalar had a white blaze on his forehead, but otherwise they were just like each other.

“Then perhaps Grim is mine,” I said. Jonathan wanted me to guess.

“Well, you’re wrong there,” said Jonathan. “Fyalar’s yours.”

I let Fyalar nuzzle me, and I patted him without being a bit scared, although I’d hardly ever touched a horse before. I liked him from the start, and he seemed to like me too, at least so I thought.

“We’ve got rabbits, too,” said Jonathan. “In a hutch behind the stable. But you can look at them later.”

I might have guessed it!

“I must see them now, at once,” I said, for I’ve always wanted to keep rabbits and at home in town you just couldn’t have them.

I made a quick little tour around behind the stable, and there in a hutch were indeed three lovely little rabbits, chewing on some dandelion leaves.