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On that misty winter morning, Hekske (the little witch) woke up when Falke (the 9 year old witch apprentice) had once again snuggled under her moss blanket to keep warm and dry. After a relatively warm (and rainy and windy) spell during the first half of January, the weather had finally calmed down, but this also meant that temperatures had plunged to the freezing point, while the forest got engulfed in thick fog.
Later that day, after completing their daily inspection round of the cold and damp forest, the girls decided to perform a fun flight in the neighborhood of their home ‘Neigembos’ forest. After soaring upwards, the witches quickly discovered that the layer of mist was only a few hundreds of feet thick. So it became an unexpectedly beautiful flight under a glorious sun, with only the church towers of the villages protruding above the bright white mist blanket. The girls navigated from church to church, first passing over the villages of Denderwindeke and Zandbergen, before heading towards the church of Grimminge as their next orientation point. At that moment, the witches heard some sad laments from below. The girls got curious and decided to descend into the fog, where they found an old draft horse who was weeping. The witches gave a tender hug to the distressed horse, and the ever-chatty Falke asked why he was crying. He introduced himself as ‘Orange I’. The witches were surprised and when Falke remarked that it sounded like the name of a king, he smiled warily and explained he was some kind of king in a distant past. For many years he was the most famous of the noble breed of Flemish draft dorses and he had won lots of first prizes in contests. And as a pleasant side effect, he got the opportunity to father so many sons and daughters that he is now being considered as the founding father of the Flemish draft horse. But alas, success and fame are as fleeting as a sand mandala, and now Orange I is just an old and frail animal. One day earlier, he had overheard his owner whisper that he would soon be brought to the slaughterhouse. Hekske and Falke looked at the imposing horse and decided that his time hadn’t come yet. The girls opened the gate of his meadow and – under cover of the thick fog - led Orange I to the witch’s forest. As the horse was limping, they only made slow progress and it was already getting dark when they finally reached the forest. The next morning, the girls led the horse to the nymph’s pond and – despite temperatures around the freezing point – waded into the water until only their heads were above the surface. They gave an ice-cold bath to Orange I (who was in a grumpy mood and complaining about the cold continuously), after which they gently dried him with moss. Meanwhile, Lalita The Nymph had prepared massage oil according to a South-East Asian recipe, after which the 3 women gave an extensive soft massage to Orange I. This special treatment had a magical effect on the old horse and the next day his limp was completely gone. Even more amazingly, he was trotting around the central meadow with a gracious gait, completely rejuvenated. His grumpy mood had disappeared and he even invited Falke to mount on him and he took her for a ride around the meadow. After that, Hekske and Lalita followed her example and the 3 girls took turns riding on this majestic horse … filling the forest with yells and laughter for many hours.
And from that day onwards, Orange I became very popular among the forest animals, telling them many stories of his trips around Belgium and neighboring countries. And in the end, despite all the fame and glory of his younger days, his anonymous years as old and wise horse in the witch’s forest would by far be the happiest time of his life…
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In memory of Orange I (1863-1884). You can visit his statue next to the church of the tiny village of Grimminge in Belgium.
- Genre
- The Quiet Force of Orange I