The red mare’s new Horse Trainer comes to take her for her morning walk. We talk about stories. He says he can’t tell stories. So he and his mum and I decide that we are going to tell a story together.
We take one line each. It’s surprising difficult.
But we get going and the red mare moseys along in time to the laughing voices and we end up with an invisible horse flying off a cliff and rescuing a small boy from certain death.
The grown ups are exhausted by this time, and the two of us fall silent. The red mare blinks her eyes. But Louis turns out to be not only a natural Horse Trainer, but a weaver of spellbinding tales.
He is off, unstoppable. There are seven-headed dragons and dreamy unicorns and sparkling beams. (I slightly miss the bit about the sparkling beams, but I think they were using their power for good rather than evil.)
By this stage, the teller of tales is giddy with his own exuberant imagination. His mother and I exchange giggly looks. He is calling out his epic to the sky, to the mare, to anyone who cares to listen. He doesn’t care about the critics or the laws of physics. He is telling his story, beyond interruption or cavil.
I laugh and laugh. I think: I need to put this boy in a bottle and give him to all my writing students. They, too, think they can’t tell a story. (Everyone I’ve ever worked with has a gremlin voice inside their heads which says: you can’t, you can’t, you can’t.) But my boy proves my great belief - if you just let yourself get started, if you release the dancing creation within, nobody can stop you.