Soul Music - Death's realm

Binky walked away, slowly. This time there was no bunched leap of muscle power - he trotted into the air carefully, as if some time in the past he'd been scolded for spilling something.

Susan tried the curry several hundred feet above the speeding landscape, and then threw it away as politely as possible.

'It was very . . . unusual,' she said. 'And that's it? You carried me all the way up here for takeaway food?'

The ground skimmed past faster, and it crept over her that the horse was going a lot faster now, a full gallop instead of the easy canter. A bunching of muscle . . .

. . . and then the sky ahead of her erupted blue for a moment. Behind her, unseen because light was standing around red with embarrassment asking itself what had happened, a pair of hoofprints burned in the air for a moment.

It was a landscape, hanging in space.

There was a squat little house, with a garden around it. There were fields, and distant mountains. Susan stared at it as Binky slowed.

There was no depth. As the horse swung around for a landing, the landscape was revealed as a mere surface, a thin-shaped film of . . . existence . . . imposed on nothingness.

She expected it to tear when the horse landed, but there was only a faint crunch and a scatter of gravel.

Binky trotted around the house and into the stable yard, where he stood and waited.

***

Soul Music - p47-48