I am Firn Hyde.

One of my oil pastel drawings - High King Bluefire of the

fantasy realm Terramagnia

Okay... I can't draw people... but an illustration from my work in progress, Sparrowhawk

Horses

Mine is a paradise-world of magic. It is set deep in the hills of the Highveld on a magic land called Imaginthia. Most people call it Hydeaway Farm, but it is my Imaginthia.

This is the land that I explore upon the back of a magic mare, a unicorn who lost her horn in a great battle and fell to this world we call Earth from high Faeryland. Her name is Skye, and she is beloved; my friend, my confidante, my soulmate. We are not horse and rider; we are equals. Sometimes I must lead; sometimes, she must lead. We have a bond of trust stronger than any heartbreak.

Skye stands 14.2hh and is eight years old; a golden chestnut mare with flaxen mane, star and stripe, and four white socks with ermine marks on two of them. Nobody knows her breed but the general guess is something crossed with a hackney. She is pregnant with the foal of my mother's Friesian/pinto stallion, Achilles, and will foal in October. She is the bravest, kindest, and gentlest horse I have ever met; generous and genuine, and yet spirited.

My sunshine

I'm busy schooling Skye to jump. We've been to one gymkhana in which she did amazingly well, beating several much more experienced horses to it, and a small show. But there's no ride like a ride with just you and your horse through your own enchanted woods were unicorns roam. That is a feeling like walking on a rainbow and flying with a wind. As some wise man said, To ride a horse is to ride the sky - which is true for me in more ways than one.

Skye is a fantastic horse. We bought her for a measly R2250, but a horse with such spirit, such heart, such courage is without price. Conformation-wise, she's also a good horse; a cob with strong back, heavy build, noble head and well-arched neck. She is very muscular with a good jump and a glorious canter. Skye is beloved.

Skye and I herd the cattle a lot, and Skye is a master of the art. She is a most amazing horse; I will never want another type. She is perfect. We are the best and the truest of friends; we depend on one another. Skye is my confidante, who will always listen. She's - well, Skye.

Then there's Mom's horse, a nearly four-year-old Friesian/pinto crossbred stallion named Achilles; a beautiful horse with stunning paces, the night in flesh and blood. We backed him a few months ago, and he is a pain to ride, because Achilles is as eager, willing, and forward-going as a thirty-year-old donkey. Our riding instructor, Kevin, recommended a running martingale in the end and this is radical because Kevin disapproves of martingales. If we finally get him to canter he'll be a very pleasant hacking horse, so Mom will have a great time, and I (top secret) will smuggle him out from behind her back now and then to see what a trail ride feels like on something other than a mare. Achilles is a clown. He chews his lead rein and has learnt that if he picks up a grooming bag betwen his teeth and shakes it hard enough very often a carrot will come tumbling out. Someone has yet to teach him that there is a difference between a hoof pick and a carrot.

The night in flesh and blood

My other riding horse is little Miss A. Her real name is Arwen but she's a dear little creature and not really the elfin princess she is named after, so I call her Miss A. She is a 14.1hh Nooitgedacht four-year-old. She's half mine and half my little sister Rain's. Miss A is a gangly grey roan with the most beautiful star upon her forehead and a dished face. She's as yet unschooled because we backed her when she was a two-year-old - Rain's old horse broke his leg and Rain had nothing to ride. Ironic that shortly after she was given two pretty horses she stopped riding. Sigh.

Miss A is a scatterbrained little creature, extremely loveable, sweet at nature, and gentle of spirit. She is perpetually slightly worried. She spooks at everything, she is nervous of almost everything, she loves everything she is not afraid of. She's a dear.

Northern star

My fourth and youngest horse is Little Siobhan, a two-year-old, part thoroughbred, part Boerperd and part Nooitgedacht. At first she was just plain Siobhan, but we got so used to calling her 'little Siobhanny' that later on the prefix became more or less part of the name. We got her when she was two months old. She was an accidental foal; Miss A got in with the stallions, bred with a Boerperd/thoroughbred colt, and the result was a dainty bay filly. Bay is a really dull colour but Siobhan is about the prettiest bay I've ever seen; gold copper, with a thick black mane that falls to her shoulder, ebony legs, two white socks and a thoroughbred's face and legs. I've heard that a thoroughbred cross can be a magnificent sport-horse so I've got my fingers crossed that Siobhan grows a little, since now she must be between thirteen and fourteen hands, no more, and you can't do much with such a tiny pony. Hopefully she'll get a lot bigger. On the other hoof Siobhan has a really cheeky temperament; she is our rascal, and loves to chew saddles, bridles, grooming bags, headcollars, lead ropes - anything, really; she ruined my last set of reins shortly before Skye trod on and broke them. One day I toddled off to go riding and forgot the bridle, so I wandered home again; when I got back, Siobhan had ripped the inside out of my riding helmet and was eating it. It was quite unscathed when I hauled all of it out of her mouth, so I just wiped the grass and horse spit off and plastered it back in. She was a real problem horse with no manners and also reared up on people; she was pretty mean. I rode her for the first time in August 2010 and she is now on the right road to becoming a good little pony.

Siobhan of the glorious mane

I wouldn't cope with all these horses if I wasn't taught by, drum roll, Kevin, a very good instructor; a horse whisperer, only he won't admit it. When we first saw him he frightened the daylights out of us because he's six foot three with long hair and an earring.  He's a bit mad so he fits right in.

When I grow up (growing down, sideways or diagonally would probably be inconvenient) I want to be a writer and a horse whisperer. Admittedly I'm already practicing for both of them, but I mean I'd like to be proffessional. I schooled Skye myself (with Kevin's help). When I got her she was three years old, skinny, and very wild; it took me a year just to get her tame enough to be easily caught. Now, she is a well-mannered, basically schooled mare, and this year we'll learn to jump nice big courses. Skye's too heavy for the higher jumping levels, but she'll do well - she jumps very precisely, making sure she clears it, very sure of her feet. I'm schooling Arwen now and (again with Kevin's help) I backed Achilles, being the first person to get on his back. I put Siobhanny in her place as well and with help backed her almost uneventfully.

My favourite horse breed is the Lipizzaner, next to Friesians, Andalusians, Lusitanos, Arabians and Percherons (I love anything heavy and hairy or "baroque" style). We're very lucky, because the only Lipizzaner school in the world that has the Spanish Riding School Seal of Approval (apart from the School itself) is only an hour's drive to the north of Hydeaway Farm. They have performances every Sunday at 10:30 at the Lipizzaner Centrum in Kyalami. I fell in love with their 14-year-old Courbetteur, Favory Modena, a stallion as white as the spirit of winter and as graceful as the rising tide, of that wonderful breed of almost-unicorn, which you cannot breed, only hope for, cannot see, only sense. You know an almost-unicorn when you see one. Don't ask me how. You just know.

On the whole, horses must be my favourite animal. Their grace and glory, nobility, courage and wonder appeals to the world. Whatever their breed, a horse is a horse; it radiates the spirit of the horse, gentle, yet fiery. Wherever man leaves his footprint, there lies a hoofprint beside it.

Our past has been borne on his back,

All our history is his industry.

We are his heirs,

He our inheritance.

The Horse.

This excerpt from  Tribute to the Horse is only part of a most beautiful poem.

I spend about an hour (more if I have two or three horses to school) a-horse per day. I relish this hour of freedom, the height of my day; as Winston Churchill said, "No hour is wasted that is spent in the saddle." We have reasonably good facilities with a big farm to ride out in, a large 60 x 40m arena and a lunging ring (which admittedly falls apart when it gets kicked, but at least it's something.)

And there is one more quote that I would like to share with you. It describes in uncanny perfection the grace and glory of our four firestorm horses as they gallop free together in their great paddock, hooves flying, eyes bright, joyous neighs tearing from their throats: Ah, steeds, steeds, what steeds! Has the whirlwind a home in your manes? Is there a sensitive ear, alert as a flame, in your every fibre? Hearing the familiar song from above, all in one accord you strain your bronze chests and, hooves barely touching the ground, turn into straight lines cleaving the air, and all inspired by God it rushes on! ~ Nikolai V. Gogol

The Arts

Apart from horses I am also a great lover of art; which is more or less the same thing, I have to add. Writing is my art. Words! I love words; I love to play with them and make them ripple and flow like clear spring water, love similes, metaphors, onomatopoeia (isn't that a stunning word?), accents, euphony, cacophony, hyperbole - words.

And even more than words I love a good story. I try to write them; sometimes I succeed. When I write, it is not me writing. A story floats wild and free on the wind, twisting, seeking, finding a person with a pen or a keyboard and a dictionary and some spare time, and then it drifts into their heads and prowls restless until the writer takes hold of it and helps it develop and writes it down before it flies free again. I love characters, too, especially mine; they're such fun, and excellent company. They follow me in a wave of whimsy and nobody else can see them, and to tell you the truth I have to open my eyes, and open them again to really see them. I believe in magic; simply because it exists, and denying it would be rather stupid.

I write fantasy; wild, free, rollicking fantasy. I wrote three or four novels of plain fiction, and then in a tidal wave another four fantasy novels followed, each one better than the previous one. Currently I'm writing three; one set in the world of Unicorn Continent in the country of Kerrapydra, which is about a knight-to-be and his mustang and entitled Sparrowhawk; the other is about seven horses, a quest and a homecoming and called A Promise for the Horses; and the third is set in Earth and about a renegade Andalusian colt, it's called Moonrise at Midnight.

I wrote my first novel when I was nine and a half. It was called Pinto and it was about a pinto stallion and his name was (you guessed it) Pinto. It was pretty awful, but quite an attempt, for a nine-year-old. I sent it off to the publishers and they spat it out and said Eew. They also said Try Again Later so a year later I sent The Reign of the Golden Hope to them. The Reign was my first fantasy. Needless to say, they spat it out again.

Then I wrote two novels full of absolute rubbish called Strength Lies in the Heart and Wolfpack. Both were really bad. Probably worse than Pinto in theme. But I got them out of my system and added a pair of short-story anthologies, entitled Animal Anecdotes and Book of the Beasts, which weren't too awful; I kept playing and playing and playing with one of the stories from AA and, two years after I originally wrote it, Castle Guard went from vague sort of phantom story to The Horse of Arthur, a rather beautiful story involving Arthurian legend and King Arthur's milk-white steed, Hengroen.

After AA and BB came Terramagnia, an innocent, quiet little fantasy that would never make the publishers without a lot of editing, but strangely deep and quite good, if it could be edited a lot. Its sequel, Quest for the Sword, was a real epic but ground to a halt. Months later out popped My Best Friend is a Werewolf. This was the first werewolf appearance in any of my stories, apart from a few villains here and there, and to my surprise I found that I actually really like werewolves. It was a pretty good novel, and it was a lot of fun to write. My hero was Ulrica, an enchanting, cynical, dark-eyed she-werewolf with a wicked sense of humour and a lion's heart. She was a live character. I couldn't control her; she bounded in and out of the story, wreaking havoc wherever she went, and it was all I could do to keep some sort of plot trailing dismally in her wake. She turned up in one of my dreams once and frightened the wits out of me. She rode a silver unicorn named Leonardo and she was wonderful. Her brother Fortis was even more wonderful even though he kept doing ridiculously brave things and getting wounded, so all the healers fussed over him for a few days and then he'd jump on his unicorn Emeralita and thunder off to the next brave thing.

My next novel, Ladiewolfe is set in the Deep Faeriewood (a country also explored in my novella, which was entitled The Black Unicorn of Faeriewood Forest before I got so embarrassed with that awful title that I changed it to Night Eyes.) The latest novel is called The Morning Star Mare and has been sent off to Maskew Miller Longman Publishers for their novel competition and we'll hear from them in January 2011.

In December I sent Ulrica to the Book Arts Bash competition. It fetched a Special Mention, even if it wasn't a finalist, which had me quite pleased. In late 2009 a short story Die Silwer Maanperd won Storiewerf Vonkelfiksie, a writing competition in Afrikaans. Shortly afterwards another Afrikaans short story, Nag van die Weerwolf, won the Holderstebolder Verjaarsdagkompetisie. Needless to say I am rather enjoying all five the books that came as prizes.

Not only am I a writer, but a reader too. My room is full of books. There are books on the shelves and on the desk and on the shelves on the other side of the desk; books piled on the tables and stacked in heaps on the floor, books supporting other books on the windowsill and a beautiful Bible (King James version) in the place of honour on my bedside table, which contains more favourite books. And I love second-hand books more than new books. Second-hand books have more bookishness, because second-hand books have been read. They have plain hardcovers and they smell of the enchanting, inviting, dusky smell of old paper.

Our library is pretty hopeless; in two years I have devastated the children's fiction. I read adult books just as much as I read children's books, if not more. My favourite authors include

And those are about all I can think of at this present moment. As you can see I read just as much fantasy as I write it. I'm also something of an amateur folklorist and love all fairytales; for a fairytale is the true essence, the real heart of a tale. Myths and legends are very close to my heart.

Apart from writing, I'm also in love with music. Music is like writing, only wordless. Chopin, Mozart, Beethoven, Vivaldi, Paganini, Strauss and especially Tchaikovsky and Debussy are much-loved favourites. I'm the lunatic in the teen world; I hate heavy metal and rock and roll and pop et cetera. Have you ever noticed that most of the singers can't sing, only shout very loudly at the tops of their voices (which resemble a hoof rasp most of the time) and none of them can write songs and none of them can play a guitar, only hit it hard until it goes twoooinngggggg.

Sadly my mother and father are hopeless and keep listening to the bad music listed above. Dad said that he'd always been warned that he wouldn't understand his teen daughter's music. He had not, however, expected to hear Saint-Saens and Mendelssohn, Wagner and Handel, Schumann and Berlioz and Brahms. Saint-Saens is another favourite, by the way, especially his Carnival of the Animals  - in particular, the Royal March of the Lion, Swan, Creatures with Long Ears and Elephant, which are all very good.

This is why I love to watch dressage to music; a noble horse dancing to a beautiful melody. A horse is a melody of sorts in any case...

I do have a favourite singer, though; Josh Groban. All the Hydes drool over him. We'd positively kiss his feet if we could (and if we were sure he'd washed them beforehand).

As for drawing and painting, I've never been very good at it (see the oil pastel picture above), but I love to do it. I painted all over my bedroom walls and I attend art classes, which are sooooo interesting.

Well, I must go now, and finish designing the rest of the website. I haven't described half my interest but, my friend, describing all my interests would mean describing the world.

I leave thee with just a touch of counsel. Open thy eyes, and look about thee. The world is wonderful, my friend, and the sky is blue; all that is nature is magic, and all that is magic is nature. There is so much to discover and so much to enjoy, that a lifetime is hardly enough; so fill thy lifetime, dear one, fill it with joy and magic, and thou shalt never find magic if thy eyes are shut.

Open thy eyes. Then open them again. See my world. Thou sayest: I cannot see.