When I sat up, I was aware of the strangeness of being on a horse on my own for the first time in a very long time! There was a brief moment in which I felt this miraculous joy swell in me. This sensation I was feeling now was one that I thought had been lost to me forever. I was riding! And then Loulou swung her hocks and moved suddenly to the left and I lurched and swung with her. As I gave a startled squeak, I realised this was no time for misty-eyed memories. I was on a strange horse in the middle of a wild storm and had every chance of being thrown headfirst into the sea with no way of keeping myself afloat if I fell. So this wasn’t the time for fey daydreams, harking back to my old life. I had a task ahead of me, and I must not lose sight of it. It was up to me now to get my horse home.

“I’m all right,” I assured Pierre. “You can mount up. I have her now and we will follow you.”

Pierre ran to his mare, wading as fast as he could through the waves which now reached above his knees. He sprang up into the saddle, gathered up his reins and turned her into the prevailing storm so that he formed a blockade of sorts, taking the brunt of the weather ahead of us.

“Stay behind me!” he shouted over his shoulder. “It might shelter you a little.”

Riding in this way, yes, he made a decent enough wind break. And because I had no time to think about it, I found myself immediately adjusting to my new riding style in which my makeshift riding crop served the purpose that had once belonged to my now limp and useless legs.

Loulou must have been broken in by a gardian at some point in her life, but she was still half-wild, as all the horses here are. And I was half the size of the gardians she must have been used to in the past, so she could have easily thrown me. But she didn’t. I think she knew that we were trying to help her, because she kept me safe as we ploughed on together through the water. She understood the slightest shift in my weight or the touch of the makeshift reins, and I didn’t even need a twitch from the switch to spur her on.