The camp buzzed with preparations. Everything was forced into quick order, even though the process seemed like chaos. I tried not to steal glances out across the shrinking strip of landscape between us and our advancing foes, but the weight of their approach was like the elephant in the room. It became a swift obsession, constantly checking the distance they had covered to gauge the arrival of the conflict. An unhealthy obsession, because what I found never put me at ease. It only caused the invisible fist closing around my throat to constrict, making it harder and harder to breathe.
You're going to have to do it, I told myself as the reason for our presence there drew close to its realization. You're going to have to go to that other place. The one where the hooves of wild horses thrummed with my heartbeat, where riding on the back of one of the elegant creatures made me a queen, a heroine – whatever I needed to be. The place where everything became a romantic conjuring of the paradise of imagination.
I closed my eyes in a brief, dismayed hesitation, not wanting to go there. It was bad enough that I was conditioning false confidence into the horses – must I resign myself to the same naïve delusion? Must I depend on my fantasies in this life? If I was going to die, I suppose it didn't much matter, but there was still a part of me that felt it was not honorable to be reduced to that. A part of me that wished I had what it took to disband childish things and stand for something real.
But that was a fantasy, if ever there was one. Me – standing for something admirable in this life, fighting alongside the stragglers of my country driven by nothing but a sense of willful honor and pure courage. That was never going to be me.
There was nothing for it but to do what I had to to get by. It was the best I could hope for.
Clad in additional protective garments that could only be described as makeshift armor, the Lieutenant found us as she was pulling on a pair of traction-rich leather gloves. “You would do well to get yourselves on a pair of mounts as this unfolds,” she advised. “If Gabriel's forces prevail or get through, your best chance will be to run for the hills.”
“What hills?” I asked, and I wasn't sure if it was in jest or challenge, but it made a relevant point either way.
The Lieutenant made only an expression of wry, grave agreement, and then she was leaving us to our fates behind the lines.
“I assume you know how to ride?” I asked Toby, not looking at him.
“Enough to cling to a handful of mane as my lifeline,” he confirmed, and it was just another case of the best we could do.
*
When our military forces dispersed onto the battlefield and gathered in formation to meet Gabriel's army, Toby and I were mounted and on edge in the vacant camp. I clutched a sharpened wooden spear in one hand, and it felt like some clumsy post that wasn't meant to be carried. Toby looked more used to his, but he hadn't turned his into a spear. His remained a respective torch, something he knew how to handle very well. And if he could perform like any of the fire-breathers I had heard stories of, he could prove a decently fearsome opponent should he light the thing on fire and take to swinging it around like a martial artist. Such would make me think twice, if I were the one poised to close in on him.
“Maybe we should ride double,” I suggested lamely, sounding a little bit ill.
“What?” he asked, noticing my attention on his steady hold and my own lack of confidence in my weapon-bearing stance. “Don't be ridiculous. You can probably use the horse as a weapon simply by sending a wave of telepathy that tells him to strike the brutes in the head with a hoof.”
“Her,” I corrected him without thinking.
“Exactly,” he said. “I can't even tell if they're male or female. I can hardly tell my right rein from my left. You have a distinct advantage where horse-driven matters are concerned.”
“All the more reason for you to want to ride double. I'll man the horse, you can man the weapon. Together we might form an acceptable unit.”
“Seriously?”
“Seriously, we might? Or seriously, am I serious about doing it?”
“The latter.”
I hadn't realized it until that moment, either, but when I opened my mouth to answer I found that I was serious. “I would at least feel better not...dying by myself,” I admitted. “It would feel better if there was someone”–I paused, unsure how to put it, but really there was a simple truth to it–“right behind me. So I could feel like someone has my back.” Normally, I might not make such a confession, or request, but facing my possible demise, the social rules I had constructed for myself didn't seem altogether very relevant. I would much rather betray them and arm myself with the last comfort available to me.
He looked at me a moment, blinked. “Well, if you think it's worth a shot, I'm not opposed to it. You could be on to something there.”
I smiled a little – a twitch of relief. “Alright.”
“Your horse or mine?”
Biting my lip in thought, I gauged the two horses' attributes. “Yours is bigger,” came my conclusion, and he nodded, shifting, as if to make room for me.
Giving Lake a pat, I slid off her back, whispering a sweet nothing into her ear before going to join Toby on his big chestnut. She dozed, soothed, and I was relieved that she was now free to flee into the 'hills' should the worst come to pass.
“Scoot back,” I prompted, and when he glanced at the reins in his hands, I added, “He'll be fine.” Laying a hand on the chestnut's neck, I stilled his urge to fidget, and the only motion that stirred across his body as Toby dropped the reins was the ripple of a muscle in his neck. Toby scooted backward onto the gelding's rump, and I loosened the girth of the saddle and pulled it off, laying it to rest on the ground. Then I bent my knee so the sweep of my leg would not catch Toby where he sat, and I swung up onto the gelding's tall back. He was nearly seventeen hands tall.
“Scoot in,” I urged when I was comfortable, and Toby rearranged himself so our combined weight was centered on an acceptable part of the horse's back. From there, I leaned forward to unfasten the throat latch and nose band of his bridle, and, pushing the reins over his head, I relieved him of the harness. Having to deal with reins would only get in the way. Then I moved him to where my spear was leaning against one of the vacant tents, and retrieved the weapon for good measure.
“Shall we keep an eye on events?” I proposed, and Toby replied over my shoulder, sounding closer than I expected somehow,
“Let's go.”
We moved from among the tents, out into the first fringes of the expanse where the battle was to take place. It was impossible to see anything past the tails of the formation, but I decided it was a comforting sight when the alternative was a restless line of Demon Horses chomping at the bit to advance.
“Are you ready for this?” Toby murmured in my ear, sounding guarded.
“That's a stupid question,” I all but snapped. “Shut up and man your post.”
“On it,” he responded wryly, and nothing changed.
Tails swished in the ranks of our forces, and now and then a horse stomped a hoof at a fly, or from impatience, and my heart twinged at what they didn't know they were in line for. I had to wonder how the horses in the front row were faring, with the Demon Mounts visible and threatening before them, but so far nothing had broken out in chaos. Perhaps my sessions with them had done some semblance of good.
As the minutes dragged by, something went tauter and tauter inside me. It had to be growing disgustingly close to the moment war would break loose, and my heart sped up with anticipation. My breath became like an ocean inside of me, the tide a gushing current that went in and out, in and out. I recalled taking the horses to the beach as a child, delighting in the shallows and shell-hunting while we took a break from riding, as Jay stood by and watched, unimpressed with the scene when horses weren't involved. He had always been better suited to matters involving dust and dirt; sand just didn't quite do anything for him. “So,” he said a little mockingly after I raised a shell to my
ear and stood there stupidly enchanted. “Can you hear the ocean?” And of course it was silly, seeing as the ocean itself was right behind me.
But – Yes, I thought now. I can hear the ocean. It was inside of me. All around me. There was a storm brewing on the ocean, and any minute all hell would break loose, and the tide that was an army of horses would come in. It would crash upon this shore, and we would charge through the shallows, dive into the depths. Then the ocean would turn red. All the empty shells that were vacant tents on this beach would be trampled, mangled into twisted canvas tatters, like seaweed coiling about the horses' hooves. When it was all over the heaps that littered the beach would be varied in nature, but as with seaweed the flies and gnats would come to feast. The metallic taste of blood would be in the air where salt might have been.
I could almost feel the sea breeze on my face as we stood rooted in waiting there. It was fresh, and ill, and cold. So very, very cold. Cold enough to numb, to ice over my fear and unease, leaving me comatose in the face of what pended. And in that coma, there lay the world of unconscious things that preyed on my defenseless mind, the things that liked to feed me their spell-like concoctions and keep me pulled under.
I could imagine a mother-of-pearl horn protruding from the chestnut's forehead – like one of my mother's beautiful stiletto heels, but exaggerated, made grander as a weapon. I could feel the soft security of pegasus-like wings spreading out over my knees from the horse's withers, holding me in place on his back – instead of the heavy deadweight of doom that had crushed down on my shoulders a moment before. The sun glinted, rather than glaring, in my eyes, and the wind was a water-like comb in my hair that made it dance in dramatic slow-motion rather than whipping it in my face.
I had stepped into my personal paradise, where nothing was ever short of beautiful, one way or another. A false rush of courage rose up in me at the gratifying delusion, and at that moment I was prepared to put my heels to the chestnut's sides and urge him forward, ready to penetrate our army's formation and join their ranks. It was only the slow-motion reel of that crazy, life-like motion picture that stopped me from doing any such thing, before reality had its say and beat me to the punch.
Before my dazzled eyes, there was a ripple in the army's formation, and just like that the two poised forces jostled into motion and erupted into mortal conflict.
Twelve –
They fought with spears, and knives, and make-shift clubs, and other things that didn't bear thinking about. There was even the occasional rider toppled by an arrow, or gunshot. There was flame, too. Spurts and blasts of it, billowing between horses or snaking through their legs or lighting manes and tails on fire. Before ten minutes had passed the battlefield had turned into a smokey nightmare, the sky becoming dark, the ground becoming charred.
When one of our horses came galloping back to camp, riderless, its mane a billowing flag of flame, I snapped out of my daze long enough to jump down and go to her to put it out, soothing her as best I could, but then the terrible scene unfolding around me drank me back in, and I returned to my numb state; a disbelieving witness. Everywhere was chaos, painted with cries of anguish and acts of wickedness and the red and black colors that were death and pain and loss. There was no way to make that beautiful.
The only beautiful thing in the world after that could be forgetting. The only thing for it was the depth of the fantasy I would have to immerse myself in after it was all over in order to forget what I had seen. It was an unhealthy depth – the kind that can drown a person, if they're not careful. A depth that had long whispered sweet nothings in my ear, ripe for seducing me completely now. I would go to that depth of long-buried treasure to escape the demons of long-buried tragedies and new ones alike. I would dive into those deep, blue, abyssal arms, and they would numb me with their chilling, seductive embrace.
Yes, Jay, I would think once more when it was over, cupping my hands over my ears to shut out the terrible sounds of the massacre. I can hear the ocean.
*
The battle was a triumph, on the record. Gabriel had not been present – it was a mere faction of his forces – and our group had overpowered the movement. Somewhat thanks to my training, apparently, but I was not gratified by that encouraging morsel. I was in my own world, jostling numbly atop Lake's back as a portion of us traveled back toward Safeguard, trying to find my way through the waves of my inner paradise to the island that I sought.
Since everyone else – everyone who was left – was weary to the bone from the wear and tear of battle, I suppose they didn't notice my withdrawn state. In truth, I fit right in. It was just as well, for I would not have been ready to come out of my shock, to break my silence. The Lieutenant was really the only one who made a habit of addressing me anyway, and she was not with us. In the state I was in, I could not rightly say why she was not with us – something about taking Kansas and holding it – and I did not much care. Perhaps we were to regroup and go back. Perhaps we were supposed to send back reinforcements. I didn't know, and it wasn't my business.
The trip back to Safeguard was an overall blur. I rode hypnotized by Lake's rhythm and the smearing landscape by day, and fell, exhausted, into my tent at night, where I dreamed I was elsewhere. Somewhere very far away and nothing like the real world, which left me disoriented but ready to be lulled again by Lake's rhythm in the morning.
When we rode into Safeguard and I saw Jay, something in me broke. He looked up and met my eyes, and I just broke – my numbness, my protective fantasy, everything that was keeping reality at bay. It snapped into pieces, stretched as far as it could go, and as Lake responded to my unconscious direction that steered her straight toward him, I slid from her back into his arms and wept like a fool. His eyes had been hard, meeting mine – in resentment or hurt or a jaded combination of the two – but it didn't matter. Somehow I still trusted him. Who else could I confide in? His arms caught me at first because they had to, stiff and rigid and impartial to further support, but as I cried into his shirt he overcame the hesitation, perhaps the grudge, and then they strengthened around me. He said nothing – I suppose there really were no words this time – but he allowed me my refuge in his embrace. There was no rocking me in consolation, no stroking my hair or crooning in my ear, but he allowed my presence, and his arms were strong.
It was almost dusk as we arrived, and as my weeping steadied into a flood with no end in sight, Jay found the presence of mind to steer me toward my tent – his tent? I didn't have the presence of mind to take note – and then he laid me to rest on the ground and fetched the blanket to put over me. Then he sat next to me and gazed unreadably down at my misery-wracked form, perhaps trying to imagine what I had been through.
“You fool girl,” he said at last, a factual murmur – but he did reach over to put a damp strand of hair behind my ear, as if to soften the impact of his opinion. After all, it wasn't as if his opinion mattered in the least at that point. The damage had already been done. I could only be grateful he was one to realize that. And it felt good, being his Willow again. That gesture was among the most comforting things in the world to me, even with its brevity and the supposed underlying disapproval that inspired it. It was never actually disapproval that radiated in his voice, though he deserved credit for trying. Jay was good at sounding callous, but in this instance he failed to cover up a nuance that was somehow much, much sweeter.
It was odd, but I felt the urge to tell him I was sorry, over and over, even though I was the one suffering because of what I'd done. Perhaps it was just nice to imagine that all I needed was his forgiveness to make the sorrow go away. Because I was sorry. I was sorry I had gone. But his forgiveness would not make what I had seen go away. It wouldn't make the deaths of those people, of those horses okay. There was nothing he or anyone else could do about that.
As if reading my thoughts, he said, “They died nobly, Wil.”
As if that was consolation. Yet, as I let it register, it somehow was, minimally. It at least caused me to
take pause considering the concept, which impeded my tears a moment.
“But what does that even mean, Jay?” I asked quietly, sounding breathy and so very small.
“Just that it means something. Things that mean something... I don't believe they just cease existing. I don't believe that they can.”
I didn't know if he was making any sense, but he was talking, and that was something. His voice was soothing, and I found that focusing on his words, they centered me. I could forget I had tears demanding to fall when concentrating on his preciously given words. On what this silent man thought about, meant, had to offer. Something made him tick, just like the rest of us, and perhaps for the first time I felt privileged to be the one most entrusted with the sentiments that secretly made his world go around.
The weight of that privilege drew my eyes to his face, and for a small time I forgot about my tears completely as I considered him. And then the world fell to pieces again, out of the blue, and every morsel of consolation the world had to offer just fed my tears.
Jay had been right. The imaginary Jay: I hadn't been ready for war. How I should have listened to that one voice in my head, instead of all the others.
“What if we all die, Jay?” I sniffed, as a bleak future littered with nothing but bodies settled in my mind's eye. “You, and me, and Lake, and Fly...”
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