Jennifer awakes on a beach at night, and meets Hrim-Faxi, the horse who draws the chariot of night in Norse mythology. Hrim-Faxi is wise and good, and he shows her the wonders of the night. Is he also an angel or is it all a dream? Jenny's Ride is spiritual without denominational references. A child on the verge of adolescence will be comforted by Hrim-Faxi’s final words: “Some day you will be too old to believe in me. But do not be sad about it, Jenny. Even then I will come to you in dreams so that you can be a child again.”

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2. Jennifer lived in an apartment building in a great city. The days
there were fun. There were school events and playing in the park with her
friends. There was the ice cream store down the street and the library.
Jenny loved to read stories of long-ago Greeks and Romans, and of far-off
China and France and Norway. But every night she would have to fall
asleep to the sound of traffic passing below her window. The drone of cars
didn’t bother her but their horns did; so too did the occasional yells of
people as they argued about something in the street below.

3. Jenny would try to think of more pleasant things as she went off to
sleep, like the time she'd visited a cousin who lives by the shore. She could
sometimes recall the sound of the sea as the ocean-water hit the beach in
breakers there. She could remember other sounds and sights from the
beach too ... great big noisy gulls flying just overhead, tall grasses on sand
dunes, and occasionally she’d recall even the smell of the ocean and the
feel of the breeze at twilight.
What fun it would be to go to the beach again.
Before going to bed one night Jennifer looked up at the moon that
stood over the space between her apartment building and the next.
Just a bit of twilight was still far down the street in the west. The air
was cool for July and that may be why the sky was so unusually clear and

4. the full moon so bright. In her bed she began to think about the sandy
shoreline. This would be a nice way to doze off. She shut out the sound of
traffic from her mind and focused on that beach; not in daylight as she
had seen it but as it must be at night with that great white moon lighting
the dunes.
There would be shadows in the dunes, she thought, and the breakers
would be silver as they rolled in to wash the sand.
Yes, it would not be too dark with such a bright moon; and no, it would
not be quiet. The breakers would seem very loud with no other sound to be
heard. This would be a really special night … so clear, so cool … the kind of
night there is in stories when wonderful things happen. I will pretend that I
am walking on the sand. It is cool and it is wet. On that sand hill there is
some wood that washed up from the ocean. Perhaps it came from an old
sunken boat. It could be very old … from a ship sunk long ago by pirates or
by a great storm on the water. Maybe no one lived. Their bones are still
under the sea.
How depressing. Daddy says I shouldn’t think bad things just because
it is night. I want to have nice dreams. I’ll think about the moon. It is so
bright that I cannot see many stars, just those few bright ones.
That very bright one where the sun has just faded must be the evening
star that people talk about … “Star light, star bright, first star I see tonight;
I wish I may, I wish I might, have the wish I wish tonight.” I wish that I
could stay awake tonight and see what happens when I’m asleep.

5. This is what Jenny thought as she walked on the beach in her mind.
Far away the beam from a lighthouse swept the sky and further yet there
was a little glow from a village. Jenny knew there was a bridge near the
village and that it crossed a little bay. There was nothing else to note
nearby. At first she could hear little else either. She could not hear the
horse that approached behind her for its trot was muffled by the roaring
sea. So Jenny was startled when very gently it came up behind her. She
was startled but not for long. After all, it was just a horse … even if horses

6. don’t belong walking all alone along the beach, at night. It had probably
gotten loose from its stable and gone for a walk just as she had. But oh!
you are so beautiful Jenny thought. He was big, bigger than any horse
Jenny had ever seen and she had seen quite a few police horses in the city.
They were big, very big, but not so big as this one that stood quietly
looking down at her. Yet he was not so big as to frighten a child. There
was nothing about him that would do that. On his neck he wore a bright
halter which shone in the moonlight. On his back was a blanket of stars. It
must be the moon on the leather, Jenny thought. But it is like those bright
stars themselves are your harness.
“They are.” The horse said.

7. Somehow it did not seem odd to Jennifer on this wonderful night
that a horse had just spoken to her. “Who are you?” she asked.
“I am Hrim-faxi. I bring the dew at dawn. Do not fear me, child.”
Jenny’s hand was already in his mane. “Why would I fear you? You
are so beautiful.”
Hrim-faxi did not answer but started to walk, and Jennifer walked
beside him. “May I ride on your back, Hrim-faxi?” she asked in the most
polite way she knew; and the great animal shook his mane once and knelt
so that the child could mount him. “Hold my mane and don’t let go no
matter what happens.” Rising, Hrim-faxi began to walk very carefully
along the beach. At first he walked on the sand and Jenny, on his back,
watched the sand and the moon on the sea. But when Hrim-faxi felt that
she was secure, he began to trot gently at the very edge of the water and
let the wavelets lap at his hooves and Jenny’s legs. The spray felt
wonderful.
“Where are we going, Hrim-faxi?”
“Where would you like to go? I have till dawn.”
The child thought. “You choose since you must be wise.”
“I am just a horse. How can I be wise, child?”
“Please don’t call me ‘child’; my name is Jennifer.”
“I know.”
“See, you know my name. You are wise.”
“Knowledge is not wisdom, Jenny, as you will learn. But for now...”
Hrim-faxi stood high on his hind hooves to know if Jenny would still hold
tightly to his mane ... “Good. I will show you the night.”
“Is the night wonderful?”

8. “That must be a judgment. What time or place is more wonderful
than another? Some things seem wondrous but are only different. Do you
think your home is wonderful?”
“No. It is nice though.”
“Yes, nice; and wonderful to some children that I know who live in
the country.”
The horse said no more for a long time and Jenny held on to his
thick mane as little waves passed beneath his hooves. Wetting him, they
made his coat glisten even brighter, then they ran off into the sand again.
After awhile, Jenny saw that Hrim-faxi was a little further from the
beach. The water was under his hooves all the time now, and soon it would
be high enough to wash her feet.
“You aren’t afraid?” he asked
“No. Why should I be afraid? You are good.”
“Only God is good, child. But we try.”
“You called me ‘child’.”
“I forgot. Even the horses of the gods sometimes forget.”
“Is God your master then?”
“Of course."But not as you mean it. Long ago the Norse believed in
great spirits that they called their gods. I was the horse of the goddess
Nott, the night. She was beautiful and good. I am glad to have drawn her
chariot.

9. “You say they believed. But you are; so what they believed must have
been true.”
Hrim-faxi said nothing for many minutes. Then he stopped with the
wavelets breaking against his legs and the spray teasing the girl. “Your
mind is quick, Jenny. Tell me; since all that happens is from God, which is
more real to Him: you or what you think?” Jennifer could not answer this
and Hrim-faxi continued. “The Norse believed in their gods so they were
real to them and real to Him. It was a poor grasp of the Divine, but they
meant well and God understood if a good man thought of Him as Thor,
and of angels as great horses, and of the night as a beautiful woman. Even
now men do not fully understand, cannot understand. Do you think the

10. creator of the earth and stars has a beard? Maybe not; but can you
imagine the Divine in a better way without taking all your fine human
traits from Him? We cannot imagine a love that created everything that
is, but we can imagine someone with a beard who loves us enough to have
made us.
”For awhile Hrim-faxi said no more and Jenny knew that he was
thinking. Then he asked in a gentle voice “Do you believe in me, Jenny?”
“Of course. I can feel you and talk with you.” For just a moment
those last words seemed all wrong to the girl, but only for a moment. She
did indeed feel Hrim-faxi beneath her and surely she was talking to him.
A horse, she thought but said nothing. There was, after all, nothing to
say. She was talking to a horse, but a very special horse.
“Hrim-faxi raised his head and began to trot again, at first still in the
breaking waves but after awhile further out. Jenny thought it very
strange
that though she felt the cool spray she was not wet. Surely by now they
must be in deep water yet the big horse seemed to only wet his hooves and
Oh!, she thought, the stars in your harness seem even brighter than before.
Now the moon is as bright as it can be, but so too are all the stars in the sky.
They passed the lighthouse which somehow did not need to light
anything, even the sea, though its beam was very bright when she looked
down at it. Then she realized how high they were but could not dwell on
that thought since Hrim-faxi was soon on the bridge, no longer trotting
but galloping along it, seemingly as fast as he was able.

11. They rode along the bridge toward the horizon where the sun still
gave a line of light at the start of night. It seemed that they rode for hours
and never caught nor lost that line; and the bridge itself was different.
The stars were now no longer just overhead but beside and even below it,
and in the bridge itself. They shone along girders of brass, a roadbed of
onyx, and in towers of silver. At last Hrim-faxi rode off the span but did
not stop. With Jenny holding onto his mane. ... indeed almost lost in ... he
turned sharply and sped through the night down a road that ran between
tall old trees.

12. How large Hrim-faxi had become; Jennifer looked and felt like just a
little doll on his back. But he had told her not to be afraid and she would
not be.
Then in a clearing the horse stopped and bowed as though praying
or asking something of his God, with the old trees all about them. Jenny
found herself no longer on his back but watching Hrim-faxi across the
field which was not dark even though it was night, for it was lit by those
millions of stars that winked at them. After a long while, Hrim-faxi raised
his head and Jennifer knew that it was time to go somewhere. He spoke to
her and Jennifer was again riding a great and beautiful horse.

13. “Let us go with the night, my rider.” Turning west, Hrim-faxi rushed
into the sky, seeming to pull the night behind him. Jennifer had never felt
so peaceful in the dark before. This night was quiet, beautiful, and serene.
The moon was bright, not just hanging there, but alive with life. Through
the stars below them, Jenny could see cities and towns, roads and farms.
There were many happy families in those places but on the sad ones Nott
dropped a veil of sleep and peace. It was all wonderful. Hrim-faxi knew
the girl’s thoughts:
“Sometimes sleep is a gift from God,” he said and said no more.
They passed over the great Mississippi River and the plains, over the
Rocky Mountains and the desert and coast of California.

14. But now Jenny grew sleepy too and saw nothing and thought nothing
as Hrim-faxi drew the chariot of night behind him over the ocean, across
sleeping Japan and China, Mongolia, Afghanistan, Russia, and the old
cities of Europe.
It was not till dawn began to light the streets below that Jennifer
awoke. She went to her window just in time to watch night slowly ...
reluctantly she imagined … fade into the western sky.
What a nice dream, she thought. That is, it must have been a dream.
Here I am with my own bed. She wiped a drop of dew from the window.
But perhaps a dream can be real too in a way.

15. Then a thought came to her from nowhere:
“Some day you will be too old to believe in me.
But do not be sad about it, Jenny.
Even then I will come to you in dreams,
so that you can be a child again.”
Good night,
Sweet dreams,
Good night.