by C F Dunn
“Ellie, what are you doing?” I called, when she made to walk past without acknowledging me.
“What does it look like? I’m taking Lizzie out for a ride. She and Ollie are going to their winter livery by the coast tomorrow.” She stalked past and into the shadows of the arch, and then out into the sun again as she made for the paddock. I stood up, shading my eyes from the sun.
“Ellie!” I called. When she didn’t respond, I ran after her, panting and out of breath. “Ellie, wait!” She stopped, regarding me with disdain as I tried to control my breathing. “You shouldn’t ride – not after the last time. The baby…”
She shunted the weight of the saddle onto one arm and hooked a loose strand of hair out of her eyes. “What do you care about my baby?” She turned her back and walked on, crushing the dying grass under her booted feet. I tried to catch her, but her strength and stamina made my best efforts seem paltry, and I ran to keep up.
“But Matthew said…”
She flung the saddle over the fence. “What is it to you whether I have this baby? You would rather he were dead, like his father, so don’t tell me you care what happens to his child.” She clicked her tongue sharply and the pretty cream mare at the other end of the paddock looked up and trotted over, followed by Matthew’s big Morgan stallion, bronzed in the sun and lazily flicking late flies with his tail.
Ellie vaulted elegantly over the post and rail fence, barely encumbered by her now-evident pregnancy, which her riding jacket could no longer conceal. She heaved the saddle onto Lizzie’s back. I stayed on my side of the fence, gripping the rail in my frustration.
“Ellie, it doesn’t matter what I think or feel. Henry and Matthew told you specifically that you’re endangering yourself and the baby by going riding. This is ridiculous…”
She ducked under the horse’s belly, tightening the girth straps and adjusting the stirrup length. She swung into the saddle. Sensing tension, Lizzie darted forward a few steps, shimmied sideways, and then settled. Ellie wrapped the reins lightly around her hands and stared down at me with an imperious air worthy of her aunt.
“What do you care?” she repeated. “I’m a Lynes – didn’t you know – I’m invincible.” Bitterly, she jerked on the reins, pulling Lizzie’s head around and, kicking her flanks, drove the horse into a gallop. I watched them ride the shallow grassy slope into trees branded with the colours of an inferno, and out of sight. Ollie pushed his head through the rails and nuzzled my hands, looking for attention. I stroked his soft nose.
“I can’t blame her, can I, Ollie? She thinks she’s lost everything.”
From the paddock, I could see the quadrangle of buildings sitting solidly on their slope above the river, and my own home – four-square and handsome – rising above the Stables and the Barn – safe, solid, protective. From here, the distant sound of the river lay encapsulated by the stony banks, languid now that the mountain snow had long-since melted, depriving it of their swift legacy. I had not forgotten it had nearly drowned Flora earlier in the year when melt-water fed the spate, nor did I forgive it. One slip and my young niece had been consumed by the water. I searched the landscape for any sign of horse and rider, but saw none. One slip. I walked slowly back to the house feeling aimless and despondent in equal measure, unable to focus on the long list of tasks I had written for myself that morning.
The buildings were resoundingly quiet. Pat and Henry were taking a vacation, the occupants of the Stables were at work, and Matthew had been called to an emergency operation in town which only he would have the stamina to perform.
I waited.
I ate my mid-morning sandwich to curb nausea, dutifully drank my milk, and waited for the sound of boots on stone, the click of the tack room door. I stood up, went into the courtyard and under the arch to search the swelling hills again, with eyes screwed against the sun.
I waited.
By two, my restlessness had become anxiety. I tried Matthew’s mobile but had to leave a message. Dan’s wouldn’t even do that, and Jeannie’s – I discovered when I heard its ringtone from somewhere in the Stables – had been left at home. I phoned Harry.
“Your sister’s taken Lizzie out but she’s been gone hours. I can’t get hold of Matthew, and Dan’s not answering his phone. I’m really worried about her; can you get home? Where are you?”
I heard him apologize to whoever he was with. “Baltimore,” came the short reply, “in an interview. I’ll try to contact Dad, and if I can’t, I’ll take the next flight back. Hey, don’t worry. Ellie’s tough. Really tough.”
But not indestructible. That element of the Lynes gene had not been tested to its limit. Although Matthew had pushed the bounds of endurance many times in his life, and his family bore some of his attributes, how far these would go in protecting Ellie and her unborn child remained to be seen. And I didn’t want this to be the occasion on which her claim to durability was proved wrong.
I went out once more. A mordant wind lifted the heads of the dying grasses in a brief salute before it failed, and in a line over the mountains, banks of cumulus mustered over the far peaks, gathering like an army to advance on a valley too encumbered with the torpid atmosphere to move in defence. Even the luminous autumn colours, spreading like fire over the thickly wooded slopes, drowned under the weight of the static air. My skin prickled. Away in the paddock, an agitated Ollie snickered.
3:20.
I came to a decision. Running upstairs, I rifled through my wardrobe to find my short coat and riding boots, unused since Matthew’s birthday and, donning them, came back down again and across the courtyard to the tack room. Matthew’s saddle was slung glossy and heavy over its saddle tree; next to it, the bridle and bit. I lifted the leather headgear, drew the secured straps free, and turned it over in my hands. I recognized the bit, knew – roughly – which piece went where, but I had never paid enough attention when Matthew was tacking-up Ollie to be confident enough to do it myself. I attempted to lift the heavy saddle but felt my stomach strain, and rapidly let the saddle drop back, waiting for the twinge to pass. Now what? Next to the tack hung the spare stirrup leather Matthew used instead of a bridle when he took Ollie out bareback. I removed it, weighed up my chances of staying on the horse’s back with only the strap as security, considered them slim, and decided I had to try anyway.
Ollie eyed me sceptically as I approached but, whether out of habit or curiosity, jogged towards me when I imitated Matthew’s click, and let me stroke his blaze as I flung the stirrup leather like a necklace around his neck. Thunder rolled across the valley and the horse flinched. I glanced over my shoulder: the clouds breached the lower hills, spilling over the further ranges in swelling knots and in its wake, premature darkness. Still warm, the air bristled. Ollie sensed it; I felt it. He skittered a little, but steadied enough to let me mount him from the fence rail, balancing precariously for a second before swinging my leg over his back. I tried to remember the elements of bareback riding Matthew had taught me in the spring – finding my seat, letting the horse dictate my movement as he made a steady pace towards the trees where I had last seen Ellie.
Once beneath them, I realized I had no indication which way to go and decided to follow the faint trail through the thick undergrowth we usually took, kneeing Ollie’s flanks to keep him on track. Trees crowded thickly either side of the trail – stands of birch with silvered trunks and acid-yellow leaves, red and scarlet hornbeam, oak, and a purple-leaved small tree I didn’t recognize. In this shifting illuminated world, nothing seemed real other than Ollie’s snorted breath in the untouched air. Without warning, he veered off the path. Caught unawares, I clung to his mane and gripped his sides with my legs to stop me from falling.
“Ollie, no, this way!” I urged, tugging his mane and prodding with my right knee, but the horse kept stubbornly on in a direction I didn’t recognize. “Ollie, whoa! You’re going the wrong way!” I tried to halt him but on my third attempt gave up. He seemed to know where he was going, tracing a path invi
sible to my inferior senses. The ground rose steadily, strewn with boulders and broken branches, occasional vivid red blueberry scrub and low limbs that whipped against my hair as I ducked to avoid them.
The bare-branched trees became sparser as we edged around a rock outcrop and I was shocked to see how far the weather front had advanced across the sky in the short time it had been obscured from us by the trees. Now only a sliver of blue remained. Stripped of their leaves, the exposed branches linked fingers through which I could make out clearer ground ahead. Ollie needed no prompting. With a sense of urgency, he picked up his pace. I hugged his neck, keeping low on his back as his hooves struck stone beneath fallen leaves, sliding a few inches on the uneven ground, but always in the same direction until, quite suddenly, he lifted his head and let out a high whinny. Then I heard it too – a scream, but not human.
Straining his neck, Ollie pushed forward into the clearing. Ruby-robed, a crimson tide of blueberry scrub cut a swathe across the clearing from which dark boulders jutted like curses.
I saw Lizzie first – a pale cream mound that heaved and thrashed as we approached, and then lay still. There was no sign of her rider.
“Ellie!” I called, then more desperately; “E-llie!”
By a tumbled rock and almost obscured by scrub, an arm raised, waved, then disappeared as it fell back. I slid off Ollie, found my feet, steadied, and stumbled over the tangled ground, with bushes dragging at my legs.
Ellie lay at an angle against a rock, leg twisted sideways, her booted foot crammed between boulders. I didn’t need a medical degree to see she was in trouble. Protruding like a stump, the shin bone in her left leg warped the smooth fabric of her riding trousers. A dark stain spread from the distortion, travelling a little way up the channels the corded fabric made. Ashen-faced, eyes darkened by pain, Ellie licked her colourless lips.
“Lizzie fell,” she said, her voice coarse. “I think she’s badly hurt.”
I glanced towards where the mare lay, the bridle clinking as she lifted her head. Ollie stood close by, occasionally nudging her with his nose.
“Let’s see to you first, Ellie; I can’t help Lizzie.” I moved closer to get a better look at her leg.
“Don’t touch it!” she shrieked. “It’s a compound fracture.”
“Yes, I can see that,” I said quietly. “Tell me what I can do. Are you cold?” I took off my jacket, but she threw her arm out, pushing it – and me – away.
“You can’t do anything, you’re not a doctor. Get help.”
I looked at her skewed leg, the damp scratchy ground, and nodded. I took out my mobile and punched 911.
“Don’t be so stupid,” she said, her lip curling despite her pain. “You can’t get a signal here – do you think I haven’t already tried?” Only then did I see her own phone lying beside her. “Anyhow, you can’t call emergency services.”
“Why not?”
Again, that derisory lift of her lip. “And how would you explain this?” She waved a limp hand at her leg. “The bone’s already setting.”
I remembered Ellie and Henry re-breaking and setting Matthew’s shoulder after he had smashed it on a rock in the river. “Right, I’ll go and get help. I’ll be back as soon as I can.” Leaving the jacket within hand’s reach, I picked my way across the ground towards Ollie. He saw me coming, shied and stamped. I made soothing noises, took the stirrup leather in one hand, and led him to an outcrop from which I could mount. A rumble of thunder, closer than before, had his eyes rolling in terror. Lizzie screamed and Ollie jerked his head free, and ran. I watched him go until convinced he wouldn’t return, and then trudged back to Ellie. She looked at me as if I had done it on purpose.
“Sorry.”
She moaned, tossed her head from side to side and flung her arm over her eyes. “Sure you are,” she replied caustically, when the pain abated.
“There must be something I can do…”
“You’ve done enough already,” she spat, the glow of resentment and spite she exuded hardly discernible from the furious reds of the vegetation around her. She shivered.
I stuffed my hands into my jeans pockets and watched Lizzie struggle to stand – a pathetic, heart-rending image of desperation – but her legs gave way and she fell back, the saddle slipping further to one side. I hated seeing her suffer. I hated not knowing what I could do to help the animal. I went over – warily so that I didn’t startle her, calling her name softly – so close that I could see the whites of her eyes and the pain and fear mirrored in them. I sang to her – a lullaby from my childhood – and undid the loosened girth strap from her belly, and the buckles of her headgear. Then, still singing, I pulled the saddle free of her back, and the noisy bit from her head, and rested my hand there instead. For a clear minute she seemed calmer, but a flash of lightning sent her juddering and I backed away in case she lashed out with her legs. The dull air cooled – quite suddenly – as it stirred under a freshening wind and the first, sluggish drops of rain began to fall. Slowly at first, as if testing our resolve, then quicker, heavier, until they pelted the ground like battering rams.
I tugged the horse blanket from under the saddle and ran back to Ellie. Spreading it over the taller of the two rocks, and securing one side with stones, I sat beside her, holding the loose end to make an improvised canopy over our heads. The wind yanked the blanket and whined, rain drove against my legs and the sky darkened until only the time on my watch told me it was not yet dusk. But it soon would be.
“Ellie, do you have matches, a lighter – anything I can use to signal with?”
“And why the heck would I have a lighter on me? I don’t smoke.”
This was going to be a long night. I couldn’t leave her, but I didn’t want the hours to roll by on waves of her vitriol, either.
“Ellie, whatever you might think of me, I didn’t kill Guy.”
She took her arm from her face. “Yeah? You sure about that? You might have fooled the police but I know it wasn’t an accident. You wanted him dead; he hinted as much.”
“I did – for a moment, no, well, two, actually – but when it came to it I couldn’t – wouldn’t – go through with it.”
“You mean you were too scared to do what you wanted.”
Staring through the rain into the darkness, I took myself back in time. “No, not scared. In the moment I would have done anything to protect Matthew and the family – and you – from what Guy was about to do. If anything, I was frightened…”
“Coward,” she hissed.
“… frightened I wouldn’t stop. I had so much to lose if I killed him, but Guy had so much more. At that final moment, I couldn’t do that to him.”
“So you say.”
“Yes, Ellie, I do.”
“So, what do you expect me to do – forgive you?”
“I’m not asking for anything.”
“That’s sure big of you.”
“I can’t change the past – any of it – but we have a future, and that is something we can do something about. I won’t live in regret, Ellie, and I would like to think we can find some common ground, for the family’s sake and our children’s, if not for each other.”
In the brief flash of lightning, I saw Lizzie writhe. Ellie must have seen her too, because in failing to hide a sniff, she brought her sleeve to her face and wiped it roughly. While the woman’s defences were down, I placed my jacket over her and scrambled to my feet, and went with cautious steps over the rough ground to the horse. She had weakened considerably, barely raising her head as I approached. I laid my hand on her head, stroking and talking as the rain beat down around us, then risked a kiss on her soaking muzzle, bestowing a blessing.
When I returned to Ellie, her voice had become small. “She’s dying, isn’t she?”
I squeezed beside her beneath the sodden blanket, avoiding her leg. “Yes.”
“I love her; she means the world to me. I don’t want her to die.” She tried to hold back a sob. Failed.
“Ye
s,” I said again.
Ellie’s levels of pain seemed to lessen even if the rain didn’t, and I guessed that her leg must have healed enough to make it bearable. I couldn’t shift the rock, though, and she remained skewered to the ground at an angle. By the time the rain stopped and the waxing moon played cat and mouse with the breaking clouds, not an inch of us remained dry. Less resilient than Ellie, the cold drove into my bones, making them ache. I sought refuge in sleep.
I woke to my hand being pinched.
“I heard something,” Ellie said, her voice loud in the stillness. Immediately awake, I strained into the darkness. It must have been sometime before midnight, judging by the moon. “There!” she said, fingers clutching my arm, as sharp points of light danced and swayed between the trees. I heard faint voices calling.
“Here!” I yelled, my voice hoarse, struggling to my feet and nearly falling over loose rocks. “We’re over here!”
The lights wavered, altered direction, converged, and from the silvered night we heard our names called.
“We’re both here. Ellie’s hurt,” I said as a figure approached with a powerful torch. The beam struck my eyes, momentarily blinding me, then Harry’s worried face became visible from behind the light. “Emma, geesh, we thought we’d never find you. Matthew!” he called over his shoulder. “They’re over here. They’re OK.”
“Ellie’s not,” I said quickly, as Matthew emerged, moving with ease between boulders and scrub. “Her leg’s smashed and she’s been lying on the wet ground for hours.” He joined Harry, already kneeling by his sister, making a swift assessment as she gave her own. He stood as Dan joined us, gave a brief description of her injuries, then came back to me.
“Are you all right?”
“Just wet and cold. How did you find us?”
“We didn’t. I returned home to find Ollie loose in the yard with his strap on, and Lizzie gone. It didn’t take much to work out what had happened and Harry confirmed it when he rang me. Ollie led us here. I doubt we would have found you until morning, otherwise.”