“Three coins,” said Jori.
Tom tried to make it two,
then one,
then payment in a story
about a herd of stolen cows.
The saddle lay beneath a sack of oats.
Jori waited half an hour
for him to stop.
He paid three coins.
Jori lent him Belle until sundown,
and he rode toward town
with the saddle under him
and an empty hat for earnings.
He meant to tell his latest tale
beside the drinking trough:
how he had crossed a canyon
on a rope he’d made from grass.
He hadn’t found a canyon yet,
but Tom was working on it.
Halfway there, he heard a tune.
He stopped Belle to listen.
The tune stopped too.
He moved along.
It moved along.
The notes came out beneath his seat.
He looked at Belle.
She chewed the bit
and gave him no reply.
Tom rose a little in the saddle.
The music bent and broke.
He sat down straight;
the tune grew smooth.
It carried past the fence.
At the trough he called,
“A singing saddle!
Come and hear! A copper coin!
And after that I’ll tell you how
I found the thing inside a cave—”
“A shed,” said Jori,
who’d come to buy some feed.
“A very dark and distant shed.”
Tom rode a circle round the trough.
Four children followed.
The baker leaned out of his door.
The saddle sang a lovely tune,
until Tom twisted round to say,
“I’ve trained it to do that.”
The tune went thin.
A long note sagged.
He leaned the other way
to wave the baker closer,
and it stopped.
“Stage fright,” Tom announced.
Jori took Belle’s lead.
“Time for the horse to rest.”
“If I ride her through the night,
I might discover where this music comes from.”
“You’ll discover where my gate is.
You agreed to bring her back.”
Tom told the children,
“Tomorrow evening, then.
A concert here at five.
And afterward, the story of the cave.”
“Shed,” said the baker.
Belle drank.
The saddle did not answer
any of Tom’s questions.
It sang no words at all.
The next morning Tom returned
with three more coins to rent the horse.
Jori was going to the mill.
She offered to ride Belle there
while he walked alongside.
“Then I can listen closely,” Tom agreed,
“and tell you what I think.”
“Or listen closely.”
They left the yard.
Belle chose her steady walking pace.
Jori sat quietly,
with no grand wave to passing carts,
no twist to greet the miller’s boy.
The saddle hummed.
It filled the narrow road with notes
that climbed above the rattling carts,
then settled to a low, warm sound.
Tom put his hand against the leather
and felt it tremble.
“How do you make it keep on?”
“I’m sitting on it.”
“I sat on it.”
Jori kept her eyes upon the road.
Tom watched her boots,
her shoulders,
Belle’s slow, even steps.
He tried his own old wave
while walking at her side.
His elbow bumped the saddle.
The music stumbled.
Belle moved one step aside.
“Oh,” he said.
“Please watch where you are going,” Jori said.
Jori reached the mill
and got down for her flour.
The music stopped.
Belle nosed Tom’s pocket
for the apple he had brought.
He gave it to her
instead of saying
how many apples he’d once grown.
At five that evening,
Tom rode to the trough again.
The baker closed his door to listen.
The children stood back from the water.
Jori waited by the road home.
“Belle comes back before dark,” she said.
Tom had a speech prepared,
beginning with THE SECRET ORIGIN,
followed by nine things
he thought might be the secret.
He folded up the paper.
Belle walked her circle.
Tom sat straight and let her walk.
The saddle found its tune.
It rose and dipped,
then held one clear high note
so long the baker’s daughter
opened up her mouth to try it too.
Tom nearly turned to tell her
how he taught the saddle that.
He kept his eyes on Belle’s two ears.
At the end of one full circle,
the children clapped.
Two coins rang in his hat.
Someone called, “Another!”
Jori pointed down the homeward road,
where shadows covered half the dust.
“Tomorrow,” Tom said.
He kept Belle going toward the gate.
The saddle hummed its quiet road tune,
the same one he had heard
before he had an audience.
“You see,” he called behind him,
twisting round,
“that’s how a master trains—”
The saddle gave one sour honk.
The baker’s daughter honked it back.
At Jori’s yard Tom took the saddle off.
Belle went straight to her hay.
He put the leather on the fence
and tried to coax one more small note.
Nothing.
The children caught him walking home,
his saddle on his shoulder.
“Now I can tell you of the cave,” he said.
“The song,” they said.
He tried a note.
It sounded like the honk.
The smallest child put one coin in his hat.
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