SJIS Investigates
The Horse Whisperer
Warren Z*
*SJIS [email protected]
My second assignment for that most distinguished publication, the SJIS, found me in a remote farm on the west coast of Scotland. Unfortunately I had to travel in the SJIS company car as my beloved dirigible was too badly damaged from my previous adventures through time to conform to the stringent air travel legislation of this country. I wouldn’t have guessed that it was so expensive to repair a dirigible. I’d always assumed I could easily attain a few repairs from a standard SJIS expenses claim. However, my once insufferable but now kind and interesting secretary drove me so it wasn’t all bad!
The other reason I was in the middle of nowhere was because the supreme editor-in-chief, in all his grand wisdom, thought it was more likely for me to stay out of trouble if I undertook such a low profile assignment. I was to visit and interview a local celebrity: a man who claimed to be a psychic. His famed powers were, however, low grade as his talents only stretched as far as horse whispering.
My plan was to ask all the questions I was contractually obliged to and leave as quickly as I could, so as to assure a positive outcome and hopefully make those first tentative steps out of the supreme editor-in-chief’s bad book. It was an impressively hefty leather-bound tome that required a team of seven men to lift, while his good book was small enough to be proportional to his pet mantis Eric Deathclaw.
I was greeted by a rather rotund fellow, Mr Theodore McRumpleton himself, in a brown tweed suit with a bright purple Mohican on his head, whilst upon his face he wore a green moustache shaped like the shoes of those he supposedly conversed with. After greeting each other pleasantly he led me to the stables where he kept his prized horses and best friends, whose conversational skills were, he told me, unlike any human he’d ever met. I decided now would be as good a time as any to start the interview.
“So, how did you first get into horse-whispery?” I asked.
“I was at the UK International University of Essex studying genetics at the time when I first discovered my amazing psychic powers,” he said in his thick Scottish accent “It was my turn to tend to the animals we kept on site when I heard someone speaking. I soon realised it was the horse I was standing next to and he was thanking me for the hay I was giving him.”
I yawned. Well, it had been a long and tiring journey in a cramped metal box on wheels. Also his tale bored me.
“I soon learned to speak with all the horses,” he continued “and as my powers grew so did my fame, until everyone at university and in my home region knew of my talents. Now they come to see me whenever their horses seem unsettled, even before going to a vet.”
“I see. I see. Very interesting,” I lied “What can you learn from speaking to a horse apart from their current health?”
“Oh, all sorts. I’ve learnt so much about all the different types and grades of hay and straw as well as how the species of grass underfoot affects trotting and galloping.”
“So mainly horsey stuff that most people would imagine they’d talk about?”
“Yes and no. Horses do talk about that a lot but they also reveal Secrets of The Universe.”