Tammy’s Reviews > The Horse and His Boy > Status Update

Since the lions are gone, they decide to unpack, rest, eat, and share stories. Shasta tries to put on airs but he comes across as awkward so he sulks. The horses get along well and they compare their early life in Narnia. Bree asks Aravis to tell her story and she does so in the Calormen story-telling fashion.

He says that it’s obvious that he and the boy are running away. However, it’s also obvious that Hwin is running away, too. It offends Aravis that he is talking to her horse. As the title suggests, lots of tables are flipped here. To their POV, they are free people trying to escape the slavery of Calormen which shuts her up. After some mildly heated discussion, they agree to travel together. Combining!

Bree calls the humans quarrelsome (ha, ha) as he and Hwin compare similar backstories. I love the hint that Lewis teases here. After Aravis calls him a rude, common boy who stole his master’s horse, he says, “That’s all you know,” referring to the horse kidnapping him. However, there’s more at the end of the book and I shall be silent. In conversations, Bree takes an equal footing with the Tarkheena.

Shasta runs through a story in his mind and he wonders why the Tarkaan hasn’t accosted him. The rider doesn’t talk but the horse does! Then Bree talks to the talking mare and the Tarkaan finally speaks to hush the mare. When Shasta realizes she’s a girl, he speaks out, too. And so the quarreling couples begin! Classic Mercury! The Narnian in Hwin (the mare) confronts the Tarkina because it’s the mares escape, too.

When they stay together, the lions do not roar. They gallop together and they thought it was a fine race (more Mercury). The moon finally appears from the clouds and the rider is a slender, beardless Tarkaan. They reach the water and the horses swim out of reach from the lion. One lion roars angrily at the shore. Although the story is completely different, Pyramus and Thisbe comes to mind.

They bolt to the shore and it’s pitch black outside. They hear a lion roar which freaks out Bree and he gallops. He can handle battles, but not lions. They slow down and hear two roars plus the Tarkaan is galloping alongside them. Bree fears the lions while Shasta fears the Tarkaan because he’ll be hung for stealing a horse. More imagery of Mercury. The two horses sheer away from each other and the lions roar.

Shasta wants Bree to talk about his experiences in war but Bree thinks of it with shame because he fought as a slave. He’d rather right as a free Narnian. They traveled for weeks and on a moonlit night they encountered another horse. Bree can tell it is a quality horse, ridden by a trained horseman. He thinks it’s a Tarkaan riding a blood mare. They wait quietly until a cloud covers the moon. They trot to the shore.

He also finds 40 crescents and asks if they’re stealing. Bree’s opinion is they aren’t because they are enslaved and they are in enemy territory. Free Narnians should not steal. They need money to buy Shasta’s food because he can’t eat grass. There are times when he tried it (he was that desperate) and he could not. Bree decides to roll in the grass and Shasta laughs. The horse wonders if he’ll fit in with Narnians.

Ch. 2 After gorging on grass, Bree wakes up Shasta at noon. Everything hurts. The horse nuzzles him until he gets up. Physically, the boy has a rise in status. They are at the top of a headland on green turf sprinkled with white flowers. He has never been so far from the sea and he can’t smell the fish. The view dazzles him. Bree goes to the saddlebags and fines simple far, but the finest breakfast he’d ever had.

They take great pains to cover their tracks, which requires them to move slowly and quietly. At the top of the ridge, Shasta sees open and grassy, endless, wild and lonely and free. “For Narnia and the North!” which was what Lewis wanted to call the book originally.