Author: John Royce

“The Legend of the Great Horse” trilogy is a journey through history by a modern horse-rider. The story begins with a foal being born to a family with a horse-crazy youngster, Meagan. This horse carries Meagan on an adventure through history.

The new foal, Promise, is actually a Great Horse of legend with the ability to travel back to its previous lives. A mishap occurs and a frightened Promise bolts with her young rider back into time, galloping far into the distant past and leaving Meagan alone with only her horsemanship skills to help her survive.

The first horse of history that Meagan encounters is a small wild broodmare in a band being hunted by humans circa 20,000 BC. The reader knows this, but Meagan must make her own discovery that she has gone back in time.

Now, the wild broodmare isn’t talking (other than time-travel, the story is realistic and fact-based). The mare connects with Meagan through its natural curiosity, an important if perhaps unexpected trait of the species. Meagan remembers her own grandfather’s opinion that horses were the “nosiest animal in Creation.” He called curiosity a fatal weakness of the species … well, that and a fondness for oats.

The fact that a large prey animal would be so naturally curious is part of the mystery of the equine soul, but it is something we share in common. An interesting note is that the horse Meagan meets is not very different in character from the horses she knows from her own modern experience some twenty thousand years later. Horses are a much older species than humans, and their instincts as prey animals still survive.

The independence of the “wild” spirit of horses meant that mankind was forced to adapt to the horse in order to obtain the animal’s strength and speed. It is our genius as humans that we can “see” things from another’s perspective, and it was this ability that made our close partnership with horses possible. In the case of horses, we have not changed them: they have changed us…