She was wearing a saddle and bridle.

“Come on, mount me,” she repeated.

He mounted and she took off at a gallop, fast as a Roman candle. Bumpety bumpety bumpety bumpety bumpety bumpety . . .

“Stop! Stop!” he cried.

But she only started running faster. At a certain point he was on the ground, having fallen, with his left foot caught in the stirrup and the horse neighing—no, she was laughing and laughing . . . The horse-woman then fell forward onto her front legs with a whinny, and, finding himself suddenly free, he ran away.

* * *

He couldn’t remember anything else, try as he might. He opened his eyes, got out of bed, went to the window and threw open the shutters.

And the first thing he saw was a horse, lying on its side in the sand, motionless.

He balked, momentarily bewildered. He thought he was still dreaming.Then he realized that the animal on the beach was real. But why had that horse come to die right in front of his house? Surely when it fell it must have emitted a faint neigh, just enough to set him spinning, in his sleep, the dream of the horse-woman.

He leaned out the window to have a better look.There wasn’t a living soul about.The fisherman who set out from those waters every morning in his little boat was now a tiny black dot on the sea.The horse’s hooves had left a series of tracks at the edge of the beach, on the hard sand nearest the water, but he couldn’t see where they began.

The horse had come from far away.

He hastily slipped on a pair of trousers and shirt, opened the French door, crossed the veranda, and stepped down onto the beach.

When he got close to the animal and looked at it, he was overcome with rage.

“Bastards!”

The beast was all bloodied, its head broken open with some sort of iron rod, its whole body bearing the signs of a long, ferocious beating.There were deep, open wounds here and there, pieces of flesh dangling. It was clear that at a certain point the horse, battered as it was, had managed to escape and started running desperately away until it could go no further.