by Lucia Ashta
When we reached the stables, again I had to force my mouth shut, although I noted that flies were noticeably absent from one of their favorite haunts on Earth. Horse manure sat in silent, still piles, waiting for servants to shovel it. But that wasn’t what garnered my awe. The structure was elegant and breezy. The ceilings were high and open. It was more like an open-air home I’d have been happy to live in than a stable.
I soon discovered that the elegance of the stables was necessary to suit its occupants. I was no horse expert. However, even a novice would have been able to recognize that the dozen or so horses housed here were magnificent specimens. They were tall and strong, every muscle made for grace and efficiency of movement. Their eyes were bright and shiny. They held their heads high, aware that they deserved respect. They were spirited, yet not prone to spooking.
The moment Tanus approached one of the horses, I realized what these horses were: they were horses meant for war. They’d been trained to go into battle, and to contribute to a warrior’s strength and advantage. They possessed a calm strength because they had to.
Tanus opened the gate to a stallion with a rich brown, nearly black coat, and led him forward. Broad hooves came down in dignified steps until the stallion, a fierce beast, bent to nuzzle his nose in Tanus’ neck. It was in that moment that I recognized the obvious: Tanus was as strong a warrior as his horse was. He offered himself to me as a lover, and so I saw a softer side to him.
But what he shared with me wasn’t what he shared with others. It was as if he were a creature meant for the wilds, encased in a thick, protective shell, and he offered me the tenderness of his underbelly. He offered me the vulnerability he normally concealed.
Kai admired Tanus and Dolpheus as men and as soldiers because they were fearsome. It had to be. Tanus’ demeanor shifted entirely when his horse drew near. I looked to my left to witness a nearly identical transformation within Dolpheus, even if he hadn’t offered me his tender spots. When the men reached their horses, it was as if a cycle began, one that ran its course out of habit.
Dolpheus chose from an assortment of saddles hung from pegs on one of the walls, then began to saddle up his horse. Next he pulled additional weapons he’d tucked into his belt to transfer them to weapon holds on the saddle. Once his saddle was bedecked to his satisfaction with the additional glint of weapons, there were still several unoccupied pockets—in case they rode out to defend against an apocalypse, I thought. Why did they need so many weapons? I didn’t ask the question because I didn’t want to hear the answer. Already, I was working to steady my nerves.
Tanus was a few steps behind his best friend. He pulled out additional weapons from the back of his belt. Blades went into saddle pockets designed for them. When Tanus stalked back across the stable, he moved beyond the saddles displayed on the wall, to a cabinet I hadn’t noticed. It was recessed so that its front faded into the wall around it. Tanus popped it open and brought his hands to his waist, debating.
“You want a spake?” he called out over his shoulder.
Lila, Kai, and I turned our heads in unison to look at Dolpheus.
“Yeah. I’ll take one,” he said.
Our heads swiveled back to Tanus, as if we were rapt fans of a tennis match. He grabbed what looked like two maces, one in each hand, and moved toward his horse. Halfway to the stallion, he tossed the nasty-looking weapon to Dolpheus—my heart started pitter-pattering—who looked up just in time to catch it by the handle and avoid its metal spikes. The men strapped the spakes to their saddles. Then Tanus made another trip to the weapons cabinet, oblivious to our wide-eyed stares.
Hands back on his hips, he scanned the contents of the cabinet. “What else do you want?”
“Hmmm. How ‘bout a whip and a lasso? Oh, and a hook blade.”
After Tanus grabbed those and moved toward Dolpheus, I held my breath hoping he wouldn’t throw the blade. It looked wicked, and much like what I knew as a scythe. After the handoff, Tanus returned to the cabinet a third time, and the three of us onlookers edged closer to see inside it. It contained an arsenal sufficient for a small army, and when Tanus began to choose more instruments of violence, Lila spoke what I imagined the three of us were thinking.
“Holy hell, guys. What on O are you preparing for? A bloody siege? There’s no way you’ll need all those weapons. We’re just going to the splicing facility.”
Tanus spared Lila an eyebrow-arched look before resuming his inspection of the compact armory. “It’s far better to be prepared than to wish for it.”
My father used to say, “Better to have and not need than to need and not have.” It was startling how similar Earth was to Origins, yet simultaneously how different. Some words, behaviors, and situations were identical. Others, radically opposite and entirely new. I couldn’t fathom how this was possible. How could life on two entirely distinct planets be so generally familiar?
“But it looks like you’re arming for war!” Lila insisted.
Tanus grabbed a few more shiny, pointy metal items I didn’t know the names of before answering, “Have you paid attention to what’s been going on outside the royal city lately?”
“Like over the last century and a half,” Dolpheus added as he cinched his saddle.
“Of course I’ve paid attention,” Lila snapped, but her tone lacked its usual confidence.
“It’s worse out there than you think,” Dolpheus said. “And we never know where we’re going to end up or what the situation’ll be once we arrive.”
Lila didn’t say more, but Kai stepped forward. He looked down while he spoke. “Might I perhaps borrow another weapon? All I have with me is my sword and the knife I grabbed inside.”
“Sure,” Tanus answered. “Come on over. What do you want?”
“May I take this bow and this backquiver?” The quiver was packed with arrows.
“Are you any good with a bow?”
“I’m pretty good,” Kai said, cheeks pink.
“Excellent. We could use an archer. Dolpheus and I prefer close combat.”
Lila didn’t say or ask anything, but she walked up to the cabinet while Tanus and Kai were examining the bow and picked up a knife. She took it without a sheath and slipped it into her mutable leggings, metal against flesh. I squirmed imagining a knife that sharp against my bare waist.
Once Tanus and Dolpheus finished preparing their horses, they chose one for each of us. Kai saddled up his own, but Tanus and Dolpheus readied the horses for Lila and me.
“Do you think you’ll be all right to ride?” Dolpheus asked Lila.
“I think so,” she said, but her voice quivered.
No one asked me, and I wondered how many things I would be presumed an expert in before the day was over. I wouldn’t consider myself an equestrian, but at least I’d ridden horses before. There were some sacred locations and a few focal points of storms on Earth that could only be accessed on foot. When the trek was a long one, we employed horses.
“There,” Tanus said. “She’s all ready.” He patted a striking, proud mare on the rump. The mare flared her nostrils and shook her head up and down a few times. Kai was already astride his horse, and Dolpheus was helping Lila up. I waited for Tanus to help me, but he didn’t. When he noticed I was just standing there, he chuckled. “What? You want me to help you up?”
I had wanted him to, but now I didn’t. I could be as proud as the mare. I grabbed hold of the saddle’s horn and moved to hoist myself up. He stilled me with a hand to the small of my back. When I turned toward him, he smiled. “It’s just that you’ve never let me help you before. I’d be honored to assist you.”
“Thanks, but don’t bother.” I fitted a boot into a stirrup and lifted myself into the saddle.
Tanus’ smile remained in place. “Head on out then. We’ll be right behind you. We have just one more stop to make before we leave.”
That stop was at the kitchens, and only Tanus and Dolpheus went in. They emerged with sacks of dried food and canteens and slippe
d then into our saddlebags without mention.
“The Poole Path?” Dolpheus asked.
“I think so,” Tanus said.
They kicked their horses into a trot. The rest of us had little choice but to follow. The power of my horse surged between my thighs as she followed their lead without effort. My horse was part of an army, as were those she followed. That seemed to make me a soldier too, one without a clear sense of loyalty. I doubted I was the first soldier who didn’t understand exactly what she was fighting for before heading off into the inevitable with a vague sense of foreboding.
SIXTEEN
IT TOOK several hours to reach the splicing laboratory by horseback, but I was glad for the time, even as my tailbone and inner thighs ached from the repetitive motions I wasn’t accustomed to. It was the first chance for true reflection on my part, without the concern or curiosity of the others nagging at me like the buzzing of insects. The mare continued her steady gait without any encouragement from me. So I drifted away, not to the place of reflection for which I’d hoped, where there was the chance perhaps to begin to figure out the events since the electrical storm on Earth, but to a place of nothingness, where at least my mind could be at rest, where anxiety didn’t gnaw at my insides, wondering what was to be of my life now that I found myself on an alien planet.
It was in this space without parameters that I entertained lazy thoughts that drifted upward, fluffy clouds instead of steel boxes with rigid sides and corners. I recognized the loose threads of what desired to be love. Even though I’d resisted loving a man before (other than platonic love for my father), I acknowledged the unexpected flutters in my heart.
Love was dangerous. It was how people broke and never recovered. Broken hearts gaped and oozed and bled until they were drained of life force, until all that was left for their owners was to go through the motions of each day, knowing that they’d already faced the worse they’d ever face.
Tanus was different than any other man I’d known—theoretically, I supposed he classified as an alien, but that’s not what I meant. With him, it wasn’t just a going-about-the-motions of something expected of me—falling in love and marrying was one of the goals of normalcy on Earth. Tanus made the suggestion of loving him far too easy. For him, it was a fact: He and I loved each other. It was becoming increasingly challenging to discredit this fact when I felt the stirrings of love burgeoning inside.
I could love Tanus. I knew that I could. I just wasn’t sure if I should allow myself to. Or if I had any real choice in the matter. I’d been mostly robbed of my free will since I first looked into that pristine lake in a basin created by an ancient alien meteor. (And now I was on an alien planet. Oh, the irony.)
Riding in the last position of our group, I watched Tanus with impunity, at the easy way in which his body moved along with his horse’s motions. His shoulders were strong and squared to whatever fortunes lay onward. His focus was intent and fixed ahead, with regular sweeps to all sides of us, just as was Dolpheus.’ The demeanor of the two men told me what they hadn’t spoken in words. We were in danger, riding as we were out in the open, along a series of overgrown trails.
Once we abandoned the safety of Tanus’ estate, we traveled in silence until we reached the end of the trail Tanus and Dolpheus referred to as the Poole Path. When we prepared to leave it, Tanus called us to a halt and tossed me a veil from one of his saddlebags.
“It won’t convince anyone that you’re a Devoted, but I hope it’ll be enough to conceal your true identity.” He trailed his gaze up and down my body then. And even though I didn’t know what a Devoted was, from the suggestive glint to his eyes, I guessed it was someone that looked much less sensual than I did. “You’ll still probably look suspect to any passerby, but at least they might not realize you’re the dead princess. As long as you hide your eyes. So make sure not to make eye contact with anyone we might come across. If they see your eyes, they’ll know. Even if they won’t know how it’s possible, they’ll know it’s you.”
That was one advantage to being presumed dead: The dead didn’t often return to the ranks of the living. Unless someone spotted the cosmic swirl of my eyes, the automatic assumption would be that I was anyone but the dead princess.
“Let’s just hope we don’t cross anyone along the way,” Dolpheus said. “Few Oers use horses for travel anymore. Even the poor can buy an outdated flying machine for less than they can a good horse. The trail’s overgrown. Our chances are looking good right now.”
“So why do you guys use horses then, if hardly anybody does?” I asked.
“Machines are predictable and dependable. Until they’re not. Until they break down or are tampered with,” Tanus said. “Neither Olph nor I rely on machines for our survival, if we can help it.”
Dolpheus added, “Machines are lifeless, totally incapable of responding to emotion, no matter what their inventors say about them being able to feel and all that nonsense. Machines can’t feel. Not truly. No way. Horses, on the other hand, can feel much of what a soldier’s experiencing. The surge and the fight of battle. The pace of it. The immediacy of the threat. They have instincts as much as a soldier does, sometimes much more heightened even, and when a soldier and horse learn to work together, they can combine their instincts to become a superior force in battle. If you bond with your horse, he becomes an ally. And a true ally is something of great value upon O, where treachery and corruption is more the norm than the exception.”
“Besides,” Tanus said, “it’s far better to face the possibility of your death with a creature that possesses his own sense of death’s finality. It’s not quite as lonely, in the end, if death’s coming for you, if your horse is there with you. A good horse will care if his owner dies, just as his owner will mourn his horse’s passing.”
“Agreed,” said Dolpheus. “If without a horse, then better to be alone. A machine’s no substitute for something living. The machine-assisted soldier risks disconnecting from the pulse of life.”
“And that’s dangerous,” Tanus continued. “How can a soldier make wise choices if he’s disconnected from the beat of life? How can he choose to further the survival of one thing over the oppression of another… if he can’t truly feel the rhythm of life and therefore death?”
“He can’t,” Dolpheus said solemnly, making me think they’d had this discussion before. “He becomes a pawn of whoever’s giving the orders, unable to distinguish right from wrong.”
I noted that Tanus and Dolpheus seemed to view themselves first as soldiers, even though I’d asked why they preferred horses when no one else seemed to—outside of the scope of fighting, in circumstances like the ones we found ourselves in now. I wondered how many fights they could have possibly been in, if battles were their first consideration. Neither one of them looked much older than me, and I was in my mid-twenties. But clearly they considered themselves experienced soldiers, enough so that they could contemplate the bigger picture behind violence and war or whatever particular form of atrocity they waged upon this planet.
They hadn’t been as forthcoming in any of their previous explanations. They halted our progress to offer me a thoughtful answer to what I thought was a quick question with a quick answer. They were passionate about their horses, that much was evident. I thought I understood what they meant. It was similar to the difference between being outside in nature, where one could hear the calls of birds, the buzz of insects, and the scurrying of small animals, and being locked in a cold, padded cell, abandoned to the madness of one’s own mind. I was glad to be atop the mare. I could appreciate her elongating muscles, rhythmic respiration, and regular clip-clop of hooves that beat out a sense of regularity. I experienced my heart soaring and my breath deepening every time she tossed her mane to one side, revealing her personality.
Besides, my day had been full enough of the incomprehensible to add to it any attempt to transport. I’d heard Tanus’ warnings to Kai about the dangers of transporting, how one’s body dematerialized into fragme
nts invisible to the bare eye and how only skill at the process could guide one to put it back together again. I remembered the tales of Humpty Dumpty from when I was a girl, and I didn’t wish to share the egg’s fate: All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty back together again. The words were likely different than how I remembered them, but the moral of the story was particularly applicable. I shouldn’t go taking myself apart if I didn’t know how to reassemble myself. That seemed like wisdom for continued existence on whichever particular planet I happened to be on.
Tanus assumed I could transport, only I knew that I couldn’t. Tanus assumed a lot of things about me. I hoped none of his assumptions would be put to the test anytime soon. I was grateful for Kai’s inexperience, since it spared me from explaining more of what I couldn’t do, more of how I wasn’t who they all thought me to be. Kai, however, looked miserable to be the one that forced this trek upon us. Tanus and Dolpheus, accustomed to leading soldiers into battle, noticed.
They acted in unison even though I hadn’t noticed them speaking. They dropped back to either side of Kai’s horse, a high-spirited, honey-colored mare. I couldn’t make out their first words to him, but before long they became more boisterous. Kai laughed; it was a soothing, warm sound that invited me to laugh along with him, even if I didn’t know what he was laughing at. I smiled, and focused my senses on their conversation.
“It’s more fun to travel this way than transporting. Trust me,” Dolpheus said.
“Ugh. Yeah. That’s for sure,” Tanus added.
“I tell ya, man, it feels so weird the first few times you transport. You can actually feel your whole body squeezing itself, as if it were trying to fit inside one of Lila’s little mad experiment vials,” Dolpheus said, and Tanus laughed. “That’s before you feel your body stretching out so far that you think there’s no way you’ll live through it.”