2025/025: Ludo and the Star Horse — Mary Stewart

2025/025: Ludo and the Star Horse — Mary Stewart

You mean to keep faith with your friend... lead him as best you can along the path the sun is taking, through the good lands and the bad... The sun left my house this very day. If you can catch him before he reaches this spot again, your life's wish will be granted -- or else it will not, and who is to say which of the two will bring more happiness? [p. 54]

Audiobook (read by Paul Eddington) via the Internet Archive, as this childhood favourite seems to be unobtainable in ebook format. I adored this book when I was at primary school, and it holds up pretty well half a century later. 

Ludo is an eleven-year-old boy who lives in Bavaria, probably some time in the 19th century. One winter night, while he's alone at home, the family's elderly horse Renti escapes from his stable. Ludo is sure he'll be blamed, so he sets out through the snow to find Renti, who he's known all his life: who he loves. He falls into a cave and meets the Archer, a centaur, and is told that Renti is a star horse, like the horses who pull the sun's chariot. ( Read more... )