Mistress of the Runes

by Andrews

  Injured in a skirmish, I retreat to rest. My wounds are infected; I have a high fever, and in the night I writhe in delirium and, half asleep, roll into a ravine, too weak and fatigued to crawl out. Depressed, I make up my mind not to try to save myself. I close my eyes, awaiting my fate, and see the queen waiting for me, no doubt wondering where I am.

  I hear the sound of small rocks crumbling on the hilltop above me; then the rocks tumble down the steep slope, sliding over and around me. I look up to see my horse, slowly picking her way down the hillside toward me.

  “You can’t save me, go back!” I signal her, but she will not cease her precipitous descent until her soft muzzle comes to rest on my forehead. Certain I am breathing, she looks about, seeming to assess our situation.

  “Now we’re both in trouble,” I say. “You can’t get me out, mare, or yourself back up, and there’s nothing for you to eat down here.”

  But the horse has other ideas. She takes the back of my tunic in her teeth and slowly drags me farther down the hill, at one point rolling me as I moan in pain. Farther she drags me until I can see the edge of a small riverbed.

  She tows me into the water, deeper and deeper, until I am floating at the level of her back. With great effort, I pull myself shivering onto her, and she swims downstream a kilometer, maybe more, until the land flattens out and she can ride me to safety. The horse has saved me—not fighting the mountain but embracing the stream.

  I awoke murmuring, “Embrace the stream. Embrace the stream.” I was out of breath and covered in sweat, but had a new acceptance of what had happened to me.

  Every day the herd wakes up and decides who will be boss; it’s a title that’s constantly earned between sunrise and sunset. Unlike weak-kneed boards of directors, horses never designate committees to run the herd. Only one stallion leads the way. Of course, on any given day, without so much as a voting quorum, the number-two horse can sense a fatal sign of weakness or lack of desire and seize the opportunity to take over, and then the corporate and horse worlds merge again, as blind obedience to the new leader ensures everyone’s survival.

  Most likely many of my peers had been forewarned that my lunch with Mahiserat was the end for me. Most likely Hugh knew, and Jack, certainly Anselm and Kaloff and King knew, and perhaps even my senior staff. None had chosen to warn me; they were looking to their own survival and to which of them might become number one.

  *

  Madge gasped when she opened her front door and I told her before even entering that I’d lost my job. “Lost” was an odd euphemism for a firing. Maybe it referred to the loss one felt at no longer belonging.

  She snapped me up by the scruff of my self-pity. “Well, good! You weren’t using any of your creative talents!” She headed for the kitchen to get me tea and most likely to collect her thoughts.

  “It was an entertainment conglomerate! How much more creative could a business be?”

  “It was a boys’ club, and nothing creative could get past the parties and pussies and pitiful profits!” she shouted at me while alliterating.

  “I heard from Maxine and Hugh, both of whom seemed genuinely sorry I was canned, but their sympathy will wear off if they get my office or my leather furniture.”

  “That’s a pretty callous thought.” Madge frowned.

  “Whoever your leaders kill is the enemy. If you spend too much time mourning the dead, you’re a traitor.”

  “What about your secretary?”

  “She probably hasn’t noticed I’m gone.” I smirked. “But I got a nice voice mail from Zane Stephens, upset over my leaving.”

  “I should hope so. You saved her life.”

  “We’re all on the ledge at one time or another. No tea. I just wanted to stop by and show you what somebody mailed me.” I showed her the runestone, both of us knowing it was just an excuse for me to come by and talk to her.

  “A rock with arrows on it? Who sent you that?”

  “Hell, I don’t know. Could have fallen out of my own head. I’ve got to go meet Liz.” I sighed and kissed her on the cheek.

  She snorted like my mare at the show of attention. “Liz is still with you, is she? That’s the only thing you should care about right now. Focus on the two of you. This corporate thing isn’t real.”

  And I saw more warmth in her translucent blue eyes than I’d seen in years. “Thanks, Madge.”

  “Get out of here. And don’t get maudlin on me. You know I won’t put up with that.”

  *

  Liz spent so much time at my place that she was almost living with me. We were even discussing putting her house up for sale. I was passionate about her and could not let her out of my sight.

  Tonight we were settled in on the couch researching Samuels and the ferryboat operation as I ran my hand idly up the inside of her thigh and she kissed me so passionately I was instantly light-headed and pushed her back onto the couch, untying the ribbon at the top of her cotton slacks.

  She giggled and redirected my hands to the day’s mail on the coffee table. “Can’t I just kiss you without it turning into something else?”

  “Not like that. That was a come-fuck-me kiss and you know it,” I said, smiling and only half focused on the reply to my letter to the San Francisco Historical Society. Opening it, I found a response to my inquiry: a picture of an older, portly man with white hair and beard, looking like a rich merchant of the 1800s. The short paragraph below it said that this was Edward Samuels who, during his lifetime, had a commercial ferryboat operation and lived in a three-story flat on Telegraph Hill, now listed in the historical registry.

  I looked at the address sticker more closely, then jumped up and ran to retrieve the package the runestone had arrived in. I compared the two addresses. “Okay, this is uncanny,” I said, continuing to stare. “This package with the runestone was mailed from the same address on Telegraph Hill where Edward Samuels lived back in the 1800s. How could that be?”

  “Let’s find out,” Liz said, postponing lovemaking in favor of reverse-searching the address, finding a phone number, but no Edward Samuels next to it.

  I called the number, and an elderly woman answered. When I asked if this was the Samuels residence, she replied that it once was. I then asked if she had recently mailed a package with a runestone in it to someone in Dallas, and she said, seeming quite pleased, that she had.

  I told her I had received it.

  “Brice?” she asked, in a tone that an old relative might use if she hadn’t heard from me in years and couldn’t believe it was me. Her voice speaking my name sent a shiver up my spine.

  “Yes,” I said tentatively. “Do I know you?”

  “It’s hard to tell.” She laughed lightly.

  “Well…how did you find me?”

  “I just follow my dreams, and they generally tell me what to do,” she said in a bell-like voice.

  “But my address is—”

  “In the dreams, dear,” she interrupted in a tone that indicated I was a little thickheaded. “If you’re ever in San Francisco, you must come and see me.”

  “I will. What does sending the rune mean?”

  “You know about runes, Brice,” she said, slightly chastising. “They’re oracles. You’ve always listened to oracles. I must go now.” And she hung up.

  “What did she say?” Liz asked when I flopped back on the couch stunned into silence.

  “Do you know her?”

  “She thinks I do. She’s kind of daffy, mailing runes to people from her dreams.”

  “Did you ask her about your dreams—the battle?”

  “No.”

  “Call her back.”

  I dialed the number and let it ring and ring; the woman didn’t answer.

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  We were worn out from driving back and forth several times a day from our two city homes to the ranch construction site, then driving over to see the horses. So the minute the house was habitable I decided we should move to the ranch, having kept my part of
the bargain and given Liz every piece of me.

  Admitting I had done so, she agreed to the move and put her home up for sale, despite the longer drive to get to work. We were both idealizing our future on the Ponderosa.

  The moment the last metal screw went into the ranch building and the last hinge went on the pasture gates, we gave notice to everyone—good-bye to Liz’s old oil-town mansion, my condo, and Paula’s exclusive barn. We all headed for the ranch.

  *

  We knew we had to have two items: a horse trailer to get the horses to the vet and an all-terrain vehicle to haul trash and logs, pull the riding mower out of muddy ditches, and a million other dilemmas one could get into on a ranch.

  Today, we were getting to use the horse trailer for the first time as we hauled our horses out to spend their first night in our new home. Once within the ranch gates and safely inside the horse paddock, I stopped the truck and wrapped my arms around Liz, giving her a long, sensual kiss designed to dampen everything but our spirits, then, suddenly ecstatic with my life and Liz, I jumped out and entered the side door of the horse trailer to untie the horses. Liz opened the trailer’s wide back door, and that’s when I realized we were much better kissers than cowgirls.

  Unloading horses was trickier than it looked. The horses had to back up slowly and feel their way to the edge, then step down carefully. They were excited, and before I realized it, Rune was trying to turn around in the narrow trailer, despite Hlatur’s body blocking her way. I shortened her lead rope to stop her, moved fully into the trailer in front of her, and gave her the signal to back up.

  Once we had the horses out of the trailer, we removed their halters and they both took off as if they’d just seen Iceland again. They ran and kicked and whinnied and farted, then picked up speed and did it again. Their joy was indescribable. Hlatur lowered his head at a dead run and swept through a clump of Johnson grass, grabbing long blades of it as he ran and carrying it around the pasture like a flamenco dancer with a rose in his teeth.

  “Oh, I wish I had this on film,” Liz said. “I’ve never seen them so happy.”

  That moment I’d expected to see when I first laid eyes on Icelandic horses in Yakima—beautiful, proud, energized, dynamic animals flying through the fields—I was finally seeing on my own ranch. This was how Icelandic horses should look. This was where they should be. We watched them until they wore themselves out rolling on the ground, nipping at each other playfully, and finally, peacefully, grazing.

  “They love it here. I love it here!” I gave Liz a big hug. “I’m so excited I could eat grass.”

  *

  I drove Liz down to the main gate on the south end of the property, a gate we didn’t use because it was so massive. Turning to face it from the road, I asked her what she thought. She stood still for a moment, trying to figure out what I was asking, and then she saw it. The big CCR welded onto the gate.

  “The Chandler & Chase Ranch,” I said.

  “How did you get this done?” She had tears in her eyes.

  “It was the first thing I ordered the day I bought the land, and I know good ole boys who know good ole boys.”

  “You amaze me. First I couldn’t even get you to kiss me, then just like that you make this our place.”

  “Once I make a decision, I go with it. Sign of a strong, decisive executive—unemployed but decisive,” I said, rather proud of myself.

  Liz put her arm around me, and we stared at the big metal letters welded to the pipe rail as the setting sun hit it and cast a purple-pink glow across the giant iron letters that for us spelled happiness.

  “You took a big chance, Ms. Chandler. Suppose I had decided not to move out here with you, and you already had those big gate letters up there—”

  “I always have a backup plan. It would just be Celibate Chandler’s Ranch. Thank God I didn’t have to fall back on that,” I said, leaning in to kiss her, then pulling back just as quickly.

  In my peripheral vision I saw officers in flack vests tromping across our land, talking into their shoulder radios and waving assault rifles in the air. It looked like an attack by aliens. The SWAT officer approached and introduced himself.

  “We’ve busted twelve meth labs out here in the last three days. Group of ’em just went over the back side of your land last night in four-wheelers. We’ve got ’em on the run, but you need to be on the lookout.” The deputy handed me his card. “Mostly now they’re looking for computers, electronics, things they can hock to get the cash they need. Do you have a gun?”

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “Good,” he said, and with that the officers were gone, leaving us to contemplate meth dealers after dark.

  “Did you bring a gun?” Liz asked.

  “Yes, but when you’re nervous a pistol is hard to aim. I think we should buy a lighter-weight gun. We need another one anyway.”

  “I’d like to bring the horses into the barn tonight,” Liz said. “The meth-dealer alert makes me jumpy.”

  “We need country dogs out here. You know, eating scraps and scaring the hell out of people.”

  “I don’t want our dogs to eat scraps and be scary.”

  “Not scary to you, just scary to other people,” I said happily. “Dogs, guns, trucks. Overnight, I’ve turned into a redneck, but I’m beginning to see the logic in the lifestyle.”

  We brought the horses in and put them in the cushy stalls, kissed them good night, then stood in the doorway leading to our house, very pleased with ourselves. We could wander out into the barn in our nightshirts without going outdoors, check on the horses through the door that separated them from the breezeway, or hang our heads out our bedroom window and see them down the long porch, hanging their heads out of their stalls. I set the alarm and assured Liz that if meth dealers appeared, we were covered.

  *

  I playfully hauled Liz into the bedroom, kissing her at every step. As I began unbuttoning her shirt, she got the giggles, which made me laugh. Lovemaking was temporarily aborted.

  “What is wrong with us?” I finally asked.

  “We’re in shock from what we’ve done. I married a corporate executive who’s turned into Annie Oakley.”

  “I’ll be an executive again,” I said, “but my background comes in very handy out here.” I tried to kiss her and she pulled away again, still giggling.

  “Are you going to hold board meetings with the cows? I mooooove that we adjourn.” And she giggled more. “Who knew stock options meant Hereford or Guernsey,” she shrieked.

  “That’ll be just about enough out of you.” This time I kissed her decisively, and her muffled laughter turned into soft endearments.

  “I love you but I’m exhausted,” she said, slipping out of the remainder of her clothes and crawling into bed.

  “I completely understand,” I murmured as she turned her back to me and rested her body in the curve of mine. I massaged her shoulder and down her arm and into the bend of her waist and over her sensual hips and down her legs, retracing my steps and sliding my hand up the crevice between her legs and onto the delicate, incredibly soft areas that nestled there.

  She moaned and pushed her buttocks into my hand, and I slid my fingers into her and put my mouth on the back of her neck. Liz rocked into me, murmuring that I had tricked her.

  “A savvy television personality should be long past the tricked stage. I think you were coming on to me,” I whispered, then gave an involuntary sigh over how she came long before I was ready to let her go.

  She turned over to face me and kissed me with a mouth as wet as the vistas I had most recently visited. “You’re going to get it,” she threatened softly.

  “I was hoping.”

  *

  The next morning the sun came up over the back forty acres with nothing to obstruct it, not a building or car or person to get in the way. It filled the sky and fields and ponds with its glorious radiant light, and I felt as if I had found the only true church, as if God had visited me and had given me the
most blessed gift I would ever receive. We stood with our arms around each other, Liz and I, in the rapturous light of the rising sun.

  Then we fed the horses and led them out into their second and larger pasture. They flew around the five acres and whinnied and kicked. They too felt the magic of this place.

  Later that morning, we mucked the stalls where the horses had spent the night and turned on the barn radio to hear country music. A newscaster broke in to say a tornado had been spotted thirty miles south of us.

  I went outside and whistled up the horses, still unsure about when to put horses into a barn for protection. I figured if we had lightning or hail, they were better off inside, but I fretted; if the barn took a direct hit from a tornado they would be trapped inside and killed. However, I reasoned, if left in the pasture and the tornado blew metal debris into them at a hundred miles an hour, they would be injured.

  I had to make a decision and hope for the best, so I coaxed the horses inside by putting sweet feed in their stall bins. Then I closed the south barn door and put the big double latches on it, remembering the posted warning on the barn doors that strong winds could lift the double barn doors right off their hinges and toss them up on our roof, requiring a crane to retrieve them. The image of gigantic barn doors sticking out of the top of my roof stuck with me.

  “It’s headed right up the freeway. Local radar reports say it’s coming within a mile of us, if it stays on track.”

  “Shit,” I said quietly.

  Within a few more minutes the sky had grown dark, with a large wall cloud on the western horizon. It looked like a great black landmass moving in on us, its form made more ominous by the wide open spaces, where forces of nature take on gargantuan proportions. The winds were kicking up, pieces of hay and debris swirling around the porches; it was at once exhilarating and frightening.