Whisper
Harper Alexander
Copyright © April 2012 by Harper Alexander.
All rights reserved.
No part of this product may be reproduced
without prior written permission from the author.
Original cover images courtesy of:
LadyAyslinn.deviantart.com
mizzd-stock.deviantart.com
RavenMaddArtwork.deviantart.com
Cover design and art by:
Laura Gordon (dormantparadox.deviantart.com)
Prologue:
A man named Godfrey Wilde once told me that there is something latent inside everything. Some sleeping quality just waiting to be awakened. As dormant trees draw from their roots again in spring, so does this 'thing' turn green in its own season. It spreads forth, unfurls with a breathless realization. Sometimes, it may be so sudden that it comes as a shock, and may even wreak havoc on its very own host.
This was the case with the earthquakes.
Godfrey Wilde was a horse whisperer. A man of a lost art, in our evolving society that boasted more horsepower in its ecosystem than any of the live beasts that he preferred. For a long time, I did not understand the implications in Godfrey's words, but I suppose 'understanding' was the latent quality inside them. I see that now. At the time, it took the earthquakes to inspire the budding of my belief in his theory. The great fits of the earth that exploded from within, a nasty dual personality emerging when no one was prepared to ride such a thing out. We had thrived upon what no one suspected was the cocoon of our planet; only the earth itself knew when it was ready to evolve.
The renditions were devastating.
We, revealed simply as the parasites to a much greater beast, were left in those days seeking desperately some new piece of homeland, and some new way of life itself, to latch onto. Thus was born our age of wreckage, of picking up the pieces of a ruptured society. As technology failed and roads crumbled, the people reverted to the ways of the horse.
If Godfrey had survived the quakes, he would have been in heaven. As it was, he was one of many that went down that day, lost beneath the rubble.
He was right, though – about his theory. Years later I would understand that his knack with the horses was the latent thing he had sheltered inside him, awakened and in its place.
It wasn't until I was caught unprepared in a canyon frequented by wild horses – caught there when they descended like a dam breaking and thundered through that gulley, and the dust cleared and I was left standing – that people began to realize I had it, too.
Me, Godfrey Wilde's daughter.
A horse whisperer.
One –
A clatter rang throughout the camp, accompanied by the thundering tremors that sometimes made us brace for a quake. It was only the clamor of hooves, though, as another trainee got loose.
Shouts echoed in the wake of the escape-artist equine, but he stomped them into dust with his mischief-dancing hooves. He was a stocky buckskin, the beautiful image of golden-bodied glory contrasted by soot-dark mane and tail – a walking eclipse of night and day colliding, head held high to keep his trailing rope from tangling with his feet. I straightened from my task, spine cracking, ready as he came my way. The blood rushed from my head, leaving me feeling light and airy and somewhat euphoric as my encounter with the animal approached.
The euphoria was something I had gotten used to, always keen on painting the encounters like fantasies.
The buckskin approached with a wild look in his eyes. All horses have that look, somewhere inside. It seemed like a game to him, prancing just out of reach when someone got near enough to catch him. Jay emerged from the sidelines – always emerging from the woodwork, it seemed – to try his hand at intervening. He got closer than the rest.
As the buckskin evaded him, I stepped down from my pile of rubble. It was one of many we were still working to excavate, to smooth out and enlarge the boundaries of the camp. The buckskin perked his ears at the sound of rubble shifting beneath me, slowing slightly as I descended to stand in his path. I held out my hands, palm-up in offering, and his gait faltered completely, his nostrils flaring at the blood on my hands.
My lips parted with a flow of crooning words. People asked me, often, what it was that I said to the horses, but I could never really recall. I could not say if it was nonsense, or poetry, or motherly lingo that poured out of me. Only that there was a language, in those moments, that spoke through me.
The buckskin's heaving ribcage began to issue softer breaths, and his eyes were just starting to glaze over when Jay caught up. His gray gaze flashed up to mine as he sidled up next to the animal, breaking the trance I shared with the horse. My own attention flitted down to where he was retrieving the gelding's rope, a protest rising to my lips.
“I can take him,” I said.
“He'd only render those completely shredded,” Jay replied, indicating my hands. I glanced down, taking stock of the nicks. Turning the buckskin, Jay finished over his shoulder, the very subtle drawl in his voice monotonous as always, “You should wear gloves.”
He was a man of few words, which made it all but pointless to argue with him, so I did not bother to remind him I wouldn't have used the rope. The buckskin would not be led astray in his care, so I let it go.
Jay had been what I liked to call an endearing thorn at my side – 'at' being the key word – since the beginning. We had all but grown up together, when his father became a ranch hand at the small operation my father had run. The two of us had run a little wild together, getting under the horses' feet until we were old enough to lend a hand. Jay spoke little as a child and even less once he had the horses for company, but our love for the creatures and the work that went with them had sustained the bond between us over the years. It was only reinforced after the earthquakes ruined my home and claimed my father, and Jay's parents took me in. I had been seven at the time, and Jay an older-brotherly ten.
Times were difficult after that, as the extent of the destruction was realized and the notion of recovery put into perspective. America was a shambles. Unrecognizable. Any regular means of survival paled into an irrelevant game plan, and the shelter I found with Jay's family quickly expired into the necessity for every able-bodied person to help pave the way for longevity. As horses became the most practical means of labor and transportation across the wrecked land – land now known collectively as 'the Shardscape' – Jay and I were able to find small jobs here and there until Tara had hired us on officially at her training camp, thanks to Jay's apparent salesman-worthy pitch on our behalf. I would never know what he said to her behind closed doors in her office that day, but it had done the trick. Thereafter we had aided in training and providing horses for the masses, if our clientele could be called that. Business was well enough, but there still weren't crowds lining up at our gates. The population, as yet unmeasured, had clearly been decimated from its previously thriving state.
Not a one of us could be sure the extent of what or who was out there. It was all we could do to pick up the pieces in a small region and glean little bits here and there as word of mouth brought them. Communication was just one of many things reduced to the cumbersome ways of old. Everything was broken, ruined, or otherwise shorted-out, and we could not seem to rebuild to any erstwhile relevant degree due to the recurring aftershocks that shook the planet.
Ten years had passed, and still the world held its breath and waded through the aftermath.
I tucked a strand of dark hair behind my ear and wiped my sullied hands across my tunic. Even our clothing was crude in those days, fashion a dead art in an industry suddenly based on survival. I remember, when I was little, dressing up in my mother's clothes, trying on the single pair of beautiful mother-of-pearl stiletto heels
she had for special occasions, dreaming of the day I would stock my own wardrobe as every little girl does. That day had remained a thing of childhood dreams, though, like so many other things tied to that distant world I was born into. As for the mother I so vaguely remembered, even less than I remembered my father, well...
Unfortunately, that latent thing inside my mother had been fate. She died in a vehicle accident – an evil hardly relevant to our world anymore. In fact, her death was one of the early factors that contributed to my familiarity and comfort in an old-fashioned world. Following the accident, my father delved even deeper into his preferred lifestyle with the horses as he developed a special hatred for the modern world.
Climbing back atop my pile of rubble, I heaved another piece of debris into the waiting cart. The muscles in my arms burned, but only as I neared the end of a full morning of the task. I could pack a punch with those arms if I needed to; a valid skill if I were to encounter any of the one-man-for-himself-ers that scavenged the wreckage taking advantage of who and what they could. I hadn't had to employ such methods as of yet, but I liked to know that I could. Jay didn't like to admit it, but he liked to know it, too.
He was protective that way.
Of course, he would just as soon protect me himself, but in desperate times it would not do to leave any one person devoid of defensive means should incidents prove inconvenient in when and where they chose to fall. Incidents had fit many adjectives in my time – 'convenient' had rarely been one of them.
I liked to point out that people wouldn't soon mess with me, anyway, for other obvious reasons – the most prominent being the array of tattoos I now sported across my body. I looked hardcore. Most of us did, thanks to a new method of vaccine going around. With the mass-deaths came unbridled decay, and with that, disease. In the early days when resources were yet to be depleted, a series of new vaccinations were created, crude because of demand but decently affective for the most part, once you got over being rather ill for a few days. The vaccines came in dark, inky substances, affective when placed just beneath the flesh, and so was born a custom of administration via tattoo gun. Naturally, people began to opt to have it administered in art form, and a trend of honoring things dead and buried began. A lot of people had the names of their towns or states – buried places that would not be likewise forgotten – or of loved ones killed in the quakes, beloved names immortalized on our skin. Names from how things used to be, and of spirits of loved ones we could not let go, protecting us against what had come to be. They were still with us, doing their part. I sported the name Virginia on my back. Godfrey on my wrist. Enduring guardians of old.
Jay returned momentarily, ascending my pile and beginning to toss chunks of the stuff into the cart. I paused, frowning at him, but the heaving muscles of his back were turned on me, so I was forced to speak.
“What are you doing?”
“Saving your appendages.”
Render...appendages... He may have been a man of few words, but he never failed to make sure the ones he did scrape up were well-versed, speaking well enough for his vocabulary by themselves.
“This is my pile. Get your own. There are plenty to go around,” I said. “My appendages will be just fine.”
“You can't calm horses with the smell of blood, Willow.”
“I just did,” I reminded him, obstinate. It was hard to be obstinate when he called me that, though. It was a nickname that had evolved in my younger days, when my obsession with horses peaked and he began to find me in the stalls as filthy and sweaty as any man, my hair an unmindful disarray that fell in my face. “Look at you,” he would say, brushing the draping locks out of my face. “You're like a willow.”
It had stuck, and he had rarely called me my respective Alannis since.
“I was almost finished,” I protested once more, but he was giving no sign of discontinuing his unsolicited rescue mission.
“Almost finished with a pile reminiscent of Everest,” he denounced. Reminiscent...
“Really, Jay.”
“Mm.”
With that, it was settled. It was how he settled most things. I might have glared at him for good measure had he presented me with the chance, but there was only the un-acknowledging side of his head for addressing, focused to keep his short, light-brown hair the only feature turned to me.
We worked together filling the cart to the brim, and then he hopped down and wiped the sweat from his brow with the back of his arm. His black sleeves were rolled up, exposing lanky but muscular forearms.
“What, do you expect me to thank you?” I asked when he stood there, though he seemed only to be admiring our work.
He said nothing, indifferent to my existence as he turned to leave. But I knew such indifference wasn't valid, because he had bothered to help me in the first place. It was our way. Brotherly love, some might call it. I was somewhat of the brother he never had, except that, sometimes, he proved more of a gentleman to me than a brother figure would warrant. He had to remember I was of the female species sometimes, I supposed, and reminding me had to go along with it.
I was not certain what the latent thing inside Jay was in those days. He was a hard one to figure out. It would come to me, though, I knew it would.
Breathing in the smell of settling dust for the day, I turned toward the heart of camp and left those edges to be taken up again the next day. One of our labor steeds would be hitched to the cart to haul the debris away, and the camp would expand ever outward, growing with business.
That was, if it wasn't pulled up short by the raids.
Two –
When the first raid came, we were lucky enough to have some semblance of warning via one of our scouts. Of course, 'lucky' meant only that we had warning. It did nothing to prevent the raid from serving its purpose.
We stood in Tara's office as the news was broken, surrounded by her musty furniture and salvaged treasures, which stood about her desk and atop a makeshift mantle as a collection of broken, tarnished trophies. The set of red leather chairs that stood behind Jay and I both sported large gashes slashed into the material, tearing open the cushions as if someone had taken knives to them. That was how most things came out of the rubble. Whole, un-mussed entities were rare, prized artifacts, like the miraculously preserved relics archaeologists sometimes found buried in the ancient grounds of their digs, and met with near the same level of enthusiasm.
“What are we going to do?” I asked after the scout relayed his message. The glance he gave me was rueful, in the way someone pity's a child's naivety. The look Tara gave me was more stony, as was often her persona of choice. She was a hard woman, never mind her sweet honey-colored hair and sparkling blue eyes. She never left home without her stern mask of practicality and famous stomach of iron.
“This is a raid, Miss Wilde – orchestrated by what little government we have left.”
“So we just let them come?”
“This was never a black market operation. The law can still have its way with us.”
“There is no law,” I protested.
“There are wars being fought, Miss Wilde. Please don't make anyone's job harder with your sentimental two cents.”
“Sen–”
“Shut up, Willow,” Jay urged quietly, doubtlessly for my own good. I snapped my mouth shut, feeling slapped.
Feeling slapped by it all.
“How far out are they?” Tara was addressing the scout – Rolph, I thought his name was. But I couldn't be sure; I had the tendency to pay more attention to the horses than the people.
“A few hours. They will be here by nightfall – maybe sooner.”
Tara placed her hands on her desk, leaning into them slightly. She did not show her weakness for long, though. With a ruthless straightening of her spine, she resigned herself to it. “Ready the horses,” she gave the order.
“Ma'am–” someone else interjected, and a wave of gratitude washed through me that someone else was on my side.
“Let's
not fight the good guys here, men,” Tara responded, practicing her authority. I had to imagine her ruthlessness was as much to keep her own protests under wraps, for it could not be easy for her readying the entirety of her equine stock for seizure upon someone else's whim. I refused to believe it was easy for her to just do that.
“But – Fly,” I objected again, my panic rising as the worst of the impending seizure occurred to me. Fly was my personal mount, the beloved steed that had been with me since I was a child. A gift from my father. “He's too old for war.”
Tara spared me a glance then, but her face was hard. The dust seared into the lines of her face looked darker than ever. “Too old for war, Miss Wilde?” she challenged ruefully. “No such thing. You can never be too old to die.” It was the hard truth, a terrible piece of logic.
Unbidden desperation welled up in me as the cruelty of the coming event painted its premonition in my gut. I was not prepared for it, could not fathom simply offering up my beloved Fly for an unforgiving fate of certain death, not just like that.
It seemed Tara could see as much on my face. “I cannot have any of my people inhibiting a raid, Alannis. You will not stand in the way of this.”
It was an order, but one I could not readily cope with. What good was following an order if I would not want to live with myself the rest of my life? I couldn't conform to that. But, as my desperation was an open book, Tara proceeded to invest in further measures. Drastic measures.
“I know that look,” she divined relentlessly, but she had turned to Jay. “Please ensure Miss Wilde does not leave the confines of the Dorm-wing while the raid plays out. I cannot allow her interference.”
Jay nodded, and the betrayal doubled. It was ironic how the world could turn the tables on a dime and transform all the people you trusted most into people you suddenly hated with a passion. They could be ruthless, in a pinch. I had never given them the credit they were due. No – I had given them too much credit. How could I have not seen they never really had my best interests at heart? How had I believed anyone really cared about me, really had my back, when survival was key in this world?
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