Mrs. Quarterhorse

A bite from a diseased pig gave me a virus which I passed on to the rest of the world. The world hates me now (fair enough) except for my social worker (who is paid to not hate me), Tarpin across the street (who doesn't hate me for free), and a lady called Mrs. Quarterhorse who has asked me to arrange a s嶧nce for her. I don't know a thing about s嶧nces, but I'm able to accurately card-read the future (predicting pig bites and plagues notwithstanding.) I suspect Mrs. Quarterhorse's interest in me is mostly because my virus has killed millions. "History loves nothing more than efficient destruction," she explained once while preparing for us a late evening snack of rich cinnamon cocoa with butterscotch-drizzled graham wafers and mini-marshmallow skewers. "It will remember Nero, Mount Vesuvius, Jack the Ripper, Mrs. O'Leary's cow, and maybe even you if your blight drags on through the winter." I think she had intended this as a compliment, so I accepted it as such. I am nothing if not gracious, and these days I'll take whatever kindness I can get.

The following is an excerpt from an interview between publisher Georges Presse and the author.

GEORGES PRESSE: Considering the sickly state of the world today, why would anyone want to read a story about a plague?

S. C. MARCHERE: Mrs. Quarterhorse is not about a plague. How much of it have you read?

GP: The first three chapters.

SCM: There's less plague as you go on.

GP: What is the rest of it about?

SCM: It's half about me, half about Mrs. Quarterhorse, and entirely about how our fates intersect. We're surrounded by animals-dead ones mounted on walls, docile ones roaming underfoot, terrifying ones threatening our lives, and metaphorical ones everywhere else. We're surrounded by morons as well, unfortunately, and perhaps also by a few ghosts.

GP: Real ghosts, or ghosts of the past?

SCM: Real ghosts. But, I suppose, also some ghosts of the past.

GP: Ugh.

SCM: Ugh yourself. It's a story that spans generations, so ghosts of the past are to be expected. But mostly this is a story about the here and now, about our time and place, about what all this means in the great scheme of things.

GP: Pardon me?

SCM: This. You know, this. This! All of this! What does all this mean?

GP: You reveal the meaning of life? That's more than I would expect from a book whose cover features a bull in tweeds.

SCM: It's not a bull, it's an aurochs.

GP: What's an aurochs?

SCM: A sort of bull.

GP: The beast intrigued me enough to want to learn more about the story it illustrated.

SCM: Then it did its job.

GP: Tricked me, is what it did. The story turned out to be about a plague.

SCM: Oh, shut up. I put a lot of work into this book! It's a good story, the type of story I seek for my own bedtime reading. It's dramatic, suspenseful, exciting, and all told with good humour. And there's a mystery at its centre, one I don't mind admitting I haven't entirely solved, although I think all the necessary facts to do so are in the text.

GP: And for all that, I still have no idea what the book is about.

SCM: If I must narrow it down, it is about my newfound friendship with an extraordinary lady who elbowed her way into my life at exactly the right moment.

GP: And who would that be?

SCM: Mrs. Quarterhorse, you idiot.

Mrs. Quarterhorse is the first book in the Mrs. Quarterhorse series.