The White Horse

The narrator of this story is Nell. A friend of Nell’s rescued an old mistreated mare and gave her to Nell and Tig. Nell took great care of her as if it were her child. She learned to ride her and decided to name her Gladys. Nell's sister Lizzie came over one day to visit, when she was having one of her crises. A psychiatrist diagnosed her with schizophrenia and gave her pills that made her sluggish and apathetic. The psychiatrist told Nell that it would be extremely dangerous to reveal her condition to Lizzie. Eventually, they consulted a specialist and it turned out that the psychiatrist had lied about everything and the pills were unnecessary and dangerous to Lizzie’s health. Lizzie resented Nell for not telling her about the diagnosis. She became energetic again and was fond of riding along Gladys. In the meantime, Nell became pregnant. Lizzie left the farm, her crises stopped, and she got married. One night, the white mare escaped from the barns, ended up on the streets, and was killed by a car.

The Other Place

As a young adult, the narrator travelled a lot, going from job to job. During this time, her friends were all settled down with great families, while she was still wandering around single. She wondered whether she would always be alone and roaming or would she eventually settle down. At one time, she was living in an apartment in Vancouver and a similarly lonely friend named Tig came often to visit. He told her about when his three brothers almost killed him in a cruel joke by locking him in an icebox. They became close and spent a lot of time together. A few months later, she married Tig and lived the settled life she was always thinking about. She had often dreamed of being in an apartment similar to the one she had in Vancouver and of knowing that a child was locked away dying in one of the rooms. She wondered if the place in her dream represented the past or was a place in her future.

The Headless Horseman

The narrator of the story was a girl named Nell who was getting ready for her favourite day of the year, Halloween. Nell decided to be the Headless Horseman for Halloween, she had gotten the idea from a story she had read in her English class. She designed her costume and the head of the horseman herself, but no one understood her concept of why she was a headless horseman. After her unsuccessful attempt of being the headless horseman the year she was fourteen, she used the head of her costume to frighten her two-year-old sister. Years passed, Nell and her sister had both grown up to be young women. Nell had moved out of the village to live and work in the city as an independent woman. Her sister was still living with her parents. A few months later, Nell returned home to stay with her younger sister because her parents were gone for a vacation to Europe. Nell had come home after such a long time and she was really enjoying spending time with her younger sister. The two sisters spent a lot of time looking back and talking about their childhood memories. Nell mentioned the Halloween, when she was dressing up as the headless horseman but no one understood her costume. They both looked for the head part of the costume and managed to find it in the storage room.