by Tijan
Morgan, then my nieces. They were my only priorities.
“We hit the southwest section with the first search, but we’ll go past it now. There’s still a lot of land out there.”
And animals.
And ravines.
And sinkholes.
And so many other dangerous elements.
He asked, “You really think you might know where your girl is?”
“If she was in most of her spots, she would’ve heard you and come to see what was going on. She would’ve helped, but there are a few spots where she wouldn’t have heard you. I’m going to go there first.”
He was looking past me and into the thick forest. “You know enough of the land not to die?”
I was asking myself the same question. “We’ll see, huh?”
He didn’t laugh.
Neither did I.
Morgan
I was in the river when Shiloh found me.
I ignored her. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to pay her attention, but it wasn’t weird for her to suddenly come to my side and stare at me. She usually did it when she thought I pocketed a treat for her while I was in the barn or if she wanted a scratch.
I didn’t want to. Not then and there.
I was lying in the river, floating with one hand holding on to a rock that stuck out from the bank. It was the best of both worlds. I didn’t have to worry about floating away and I was cool. It would get dark in a few hours, and the temperature was starting to drop.
She continued to stand above me, and when I still didn’t pay her attention, she stomped her hoof on the ground.
“What?” I looked up.
Her head was lowered. She was staring right at me.
A different awareness began through my body.
Something was wrong.
I stood and scrambled onto the bank, not taking my eyes away from Shiloh’s. “What?” I knew she couldn’t answer, but sometimes she showed me somehow.
She did neither.
She didn’t stop staring.
“What?”
Her nostrils flared, and she moved her body closer.
And she just stood there again.
I frowned but got onto her back. We’d gone for a run that day, and the herd was there. We’d been sticking closer to the other mountain during the last week. Something told me Shiloh didn’t want me on her back for shits and giggles.
Some of the other herd lifted their heads from drinking or grazing. Their ears were going all around.
They were sensing something, but I couldn’t make out if it was Shiloh’s weird behavior or another thing.
A few dropped their heads and went back to drinking. Their ears relaxed.
Only Shoal kept her ears perked up, and she swung her head to us.
“Okay.” I patted Shiloh. “You’re trying to tell me something, so just show me instead.”
As if she understood, she turned and left.
She carried me away from the herd and toward the lands closer to the house. I was still confused, but after she crossed another river, I heard him. Then I could smell him. It was the same body wash he used, but it had mixed with his own scent.
Brody was there.
Brody was close.
Brody was—
“Morgan!”
—searching for me.
I sat up straighter and made a clicking sound. Shiloh picked up her pace, and we were soon loping down a path toward him.
“Morgan!”
He was thrashing again.
I couldn’t help a smile because this is what he always did. He showed up, made a nuisance of himself in the woods, and needed to be rescued by me.
Shiloh stopped in the middle of our path, waiting for him to find us.
Sticks were breaking.
He was pushing branches out of the way, and sometimes the force would move half a tree. All sound traveled far, but so did his cursing, which he was doing a lot of.
“Fucking hell.” Whack! “Are you serious? I don’t remember the trees being so damn dense before.” Another whack! Crack. A roar. “Goddamn! Get away from my face.”
He broke through the last of the foliage and half fell onto the trail. It wasn’t a big trail, more like a game trail, and he hauled himself to his feet, stumbling forward as if he didn’t even notice he actually found the path he was probably looking for.
He was waving his hands around his face, swatting away gnats, and then Shiloh moved a hoof and his gaze jerked to us.
“Morgan!” He flung his hands in the air. “Morgan!” A wide smile was spreading.
He was coming to me. I could slide off Shiloh’s back and go to him. I should run to him as he ran to me. We would meet each other halfway and fall into each other’s arms, but then what?
I didn’t know.
So, I remained on her back.
I was drinking in the sight of him.
His eyes were alert and sober. They were just as dark as I remembered them. His hair was shorter. There wasn’t enough to grab a handful anymore, but it suited him. He had a little stubble of a beard showing, just a slight stubble. He could shave it, and his face would be smooth and clean like he kept it for the movie.
He was dressed in a long-sleeve shirt, jeans that molded to his form but were baggy enough to hike in. My gaze traveled to his shoes, which were sturdy hiking boots.
I noted the pack on his back and the baseball hat swinging from it.
He came prepared.
And he was just as gorgeous as he had ever been.
He’d put on some weight, but not fluff. I saw how his arms had swung and how the shirt clung to his muscles. It was all muscle. Finn would have said Brody needed to “bulk up.”
To me, he just looked mouth-wateringly gorgeous.
I wasn’t prepared for the sight of him.
I felt joy when I heard him before, and then the old stirrings started again.
I’d slept in the bed he used, smelling him and trying to lie to myself that the sheets still held his warmth. They did not. It was my warmth, and after two months, his smell was gone too. That was when I stopped returning to the cabin.
I gazed at him, wondering why he wasn’t coming any closer. Then I realized he wasn’t approaching because of Shiloh.
She would kick him. She knew him, knew he was mine, but she wouldn’t allow him next to her without my restraint, and I couldn’t give it. I hadn’t yet.
I was still staring at him and experiencing all the emotions I tried to suppress for so long. It was why I stayed away. I had to forget him. I had to move on or I was going to do something drastic.
“What are you doing here?” My voice was hoarse, and Shiloh reacted to the thick emotion there. She danced to the side, her head flaring up.
I patted her absentmindedly, and she settled, but Brody backed another good distance away.
He held his hands up slowly, speaking low and fast, “My nieces are missing. I need your help to find them.”
“What?” They were here?
Shiloh shifted again, her anxiety rising with my own.
“I can explain everything later, but they’re somewhere on your land.”
My mouth dried. “Are there search parties?”
He nodded.
“They tried to find you first but couldn’t, so by the time they called me, eighteen hours had already passed.” He pointed behind him toward the southwest section. “They haven’t swept the east side at all. I have no idea where the girls went. No one does, but they would go past the fields. They wouldn’t have gone to the north side of the house. Everything slopes south. That’s where they would’ve gone.”
“How old are your nieces?”
“Nine and eleven years old. They’re smart, but they’re only . . .” His voice rasped in barely contained desperation.
“Okay.” I began edging Shiloh toward him. My legs tightened. I was telling her to remain calm, and I was running a hand over her neck to further soothe her because she was going to hate me
in a moment.
“What are you doing?” He eyed Shiloh as she eyed him right back.
I scooted forward on her and drew her body to the side of him. “You need to get on.”
“What?” His eyes almost bulged out. “No. She’ll kill me.”
“She’s never bucked me off. If you’re coming up, she knows it’s because I want you up here. She’ll allow it for now.” She would have to. Going on foot wasn’t an option.
He was still watching her, his jaw clenching.
Shiloh kept shifting around. She wasn’t happy about this, but she wasn’t bolting. Not yet.
“You have to get on. We can’t waste time. I can’t ride to get a horse for you from the barn, and I wouldn’t waste the time even if there were horses there. I can’t leave you out here alone.”
“I can find my way back.”
I snorted. “How?” I gestured to the side. “Which direction would you go?”
He pulled out a compass and smirked at me. “I’d go north.”
“That works if you’re in a straight line from the house. You aren’t.”
“I’m not?”
“You’re southeast, and you’re close to the next mountain. You go north, and you’ll walk right by the house. You won’t even see it.” I leaned down, my arm extended. “I love that you came, and I love seeing you right now, but enough’s enough. Get the fuck up so I can save the day.”
He started to reach for my hand but drew back at the end of my words.
His eyes met mine.
A bolt spread through both of us.
I needed him. That was all I knew in that moment, and he answered the look. He needed me too.
It was dark, deep, and almost desperate. They were all the same feelings I’d been tortured with since he left, but I was different. I had become different in his absence, and I wanted to tell him, but those words—like everything else—needed to wait.
He nodded and then his hand touched mine, and I felt the tingle like I knew I would.
I pulled at the same time as he jumped, and then we had a wild mustang beneath us. He was firmly settled behind me, and Shiloh was jumping all around. She was trying to buck us both off, but I held firm. Brody’s arms were wrapped around my waist, and if we’d both been naked, he could’ve been inside me already. But I was bent forward, whispering and crooning to Shiloh. I was asking her not to leave us, telling her we needed her help.
I spoke to her as if she were a human. “There are two little girls who need our help. We have to take him back. I can’t leave him out here. I love him, Shiloh. I can’t lose him.” Not again. She was still darting around, kicking her hind legs.
I began begging, “Please, Shiloh. I need your help. I will give you a whole bag of apples after this, but we need to find the babies. Two little girls. They’re the same age I was when your mother helped me.”
I didn’t know what did the trick—if it was my pleading, if she somehow magically understood me, or if she felt the desperation in me.
For all I knew, it was the promise of treats.
But in the next second, she swung around and bolted to the house.
I almost fell off from the abrupt change in her, but I grabbed her neck and held tight. Brody was plastered to my back, and I think maybe she realized the only way to get him off was to deliver him to the place he always went.
She tore through the woods at a breakneck speed.
She wasn’t smooth. She almost hit a few trees. She jumped a few times when I didn’t think she should’ve. She could’ve gone down, broken an ankle, but she kept going with sheer will. Her face was sideways at times, her body too. She was neighing and whinnying, and sounding terrified as we lumbered to an awkward stop a few inches from the fence line.
Brody and I both lifted our legs so they weren’t crushed, and I shoved Brody off. He jumped to the fence at the end of the field, and she jerked aside.
She was too crazed.
I was running my hand down her neck, but she was beyond listening to me.
She reared up, and I let go.
I fell to the ground—hard—and heard Brody shout, but I rolled with it and went cleanly under the fence. I stood as Shiloh tore back through the woods.
I sighed. “She’s pissed at me.”
I saw people running down from the house, but I didn’t want to waste more time.
I thrust a hand at Brody. “Give me your pack.”
“What?”
I nodded at his sweatshirt tied around his waist. “That too. The girls will need warmth when I find them.”
He didn’t move, so I unclipped his pack from around his shoulders. It fell into my hands, and I started riffling through it.
He had all the essentials, even a lightweight tent and blanket.
I nodded my approval. “This is good. Really good.”
“What are you doing?” His voice rose. He gestured in the direction Shiloh tore off in. “She just took off. You have no fast way to find the girls.”
The people were closing in. They were through the first fence and would be down the field to us in no time. Finn, Abby, Gayle, and another woman I didn’t recognize.
I climbed back over the fence before securing his pack on my back. “What are your niece’s names?”
“Wha—” He cursed and then rubbed a hand over his face. “You aren’t joking, are you?”
“I have to go now. I can’t wait and answer their questions. I only have so long before dark falls. Their names, Brody. I need to know what to call them.”
“Ambrea and Alisma.”
I nodded and moved to step away, but he reached for me.
“Wait! They both have blonde hair. Ambrea’s is almost white, if that helps.”
It did. Any little bit did. “What do they like?”
“Brody!”
“Morgan!”
They were almost to us.
“What do they like, Brody?” I raised my voice.
“Uh—” He looked back at the impending arrival and then snapped back to me. “Unicorns and mermaids. They used to like princesses, but I don’t know if they still do.”
Unicorns. Mermaids.
I could work with that.
“I have to go.”
“Morgan!”
I ignored Finn and started running away.
“Morgan!”
I kept going, and once I was through the first line of trees, I started calling, but I changed my whistle. I kept going. I kept calling, and after I walked a mile, I felt the steps before I saw her coming.
She was walking toward me, among the trees, with her dark eyes and her ethereal white coat. She wasn’t fearful or frantic. She was calm. She was steady. She was coming because I needed her to help me save two little girls the same way she once saved me.
Shoal had come.
Morgan
I made my decision.
As I rode Shoal and she picked her way over the land, I knew this was the first of my last rides with this mare. It was nearing her time when she would go. I knew Shiloh was extra touchy because she would have a foal next summer. It was time. I felt it in my bones, and when he came back and I saw him again, I knew it was my time too.
This had come full circle.
I was the little girl who ran into the woods so long ago.
I was the one they sent a search party to find.
Shoal was the one who took me away then, and it was right that she was the one to go with me to find the girls.
I didn’t know if they would be alive when—or if—I found them, but I felt they would be. I glanced down at Shoal and corrected myself—when she found them. I was trusting her. If she picked up a new scent, she would alert me, but until that time happened, I was near tears.
I loved this mare.
She was my mother in ways, and most of the time, I felt as if my mom was a part of Shoal. Shoal always cared for me. She always watched over me, and after she had Shiloh, she guarded me from a distance. She was content to let Shiloh be
my sister. And just like any other sister, Shiloh would forgive me for forcing Brody onto her. It wouldn’t change what I felt coming, though.
Change.
As soon as he stood on that walking path, I knew I would be leaving with him.
She began resisting me then.
After all this was done, I would go and find Shiloh. I would make sure things were okay between us. I needed her, and even if my return trips back to her took longer, I would still need to come.
Shiloh was as much of me as Shoal was . . . as Brody had become.
There was a part of me that would remain wild. But there was a part of me that remembered I was also human, and that was what Brody unleashed before he left.
I didn’t understand it.
I would never understand why it was Brody who brought me back to life any more than I would understand the connection between us. It didn’t make it any less real, and I could no longer live without it.
I wanted to tell him about these changes and the decisions I had made. I knew there was a chance he had already moved on. He may have. Millions desired him, but I had plans.
I kept thinking about them as Shoal and I searched. Then, I didn’t know how much later, her ears perked up and she paused.
I looked up. There was a small hill toward the farthest corner in the south. I knew what was beyond it. It was the end of a creek that had wound its way around the mountain, the mouth of the creek that opened into larger river flowing toward the south. The current was strong, and if a kid played in the water there was a good chance they would be swept up.
If they were indeed up there, the only saving grace would be the logs that sometimes clogged the creek ahead. If someone were to get swept up and wasn’t able to break free, they had a good chance of grabbing on to some of the logs and pulling themselves to safety. It would leave them wet and chilled to the bone but alive. If this was the route the girls had taken—they were probably chilled to death.
I listened and heard nothing but the trickle of the water. Still, I urged Shoal ahead, and we crested the hill.
And there, like I thought, were his two nieces.
And they were alive.
Just like I had been too.