Paint the Wind

by Pam Muñoz Ryan

  Persistent nudging and a low, throaty nicker roused Maya. She squinted at blurry white blotches. Someone hovered. She blinked and opened her eyes wider.

  Artemisia stood above her. The horse’s head dropped close to Maya’s body, the mane tickling her neck. The sun had almost disappeared, and the river lapped at Maya’s boots. She reached for Artemisia’s dangling mane but the horse backed away, just out of her grasp. Maya rolled to her stomach and pulled herself to her hands and knees. Needles of pain jabbed at her right foot and the boot felt much too tight. She whimpered. A wave of dizziness followed and she retched.

  Artemisia nickered at her again, as if insisting she move.

  Maya crawled to a tree, raised herself against the trunk, and huddled next to it until her nausea subsided.

  Artemisia walked farther into the grove, paused, and turned to look at Maya.

  “I’m coming,” said Maya. She gazed uphill, befuddled. Something was wrong. She studied the scene until she knew. Every tree had been defoliated from the blast of wind, and the entire vale was now carpeted with leaves. The naked white trunks of the aspens looked like candles placed haphazardly on the side of a lopsided cake. The grassy area closest to the river looked swept clean. Farther up the vale, the leaves had resettled in dunes of foliage.

  Maya took tiny hops, tree to tree, up the slope on her good leg until she found a shallow depression between several trunks. She dropped to the ground, pushing leaves and duff into a soft mattress, then positioned herself on top of it.

  She slipped off the canvas bag and the binoculars and then struggled to remove her right boot. It would not budge, and the pain was too intense to keep trying. Shivering, she lifted the hood of the jacket over her head and scooped more leaves across her legs for warmth. The sky grew darker.

  “Artemisia,” Maya called. “Please stay with me.…” She scanned the grove but didn’t see her. She reached inside her jacket, unzipped the pocket of her vest, and pulled out the small brown-and-white Paint. “Where did you go?” Maya strained to hear a friendly nicker, but there was no response.

  Instead, she heard a rustling and cringed. She grabbed a nearby branch and slapped the leaves near her legs to dissuade the voles and mice. She lay back and wished for a tepee with a zipper.

  MAYA’S THROBBING FOOT WOKE HER IN THE GRAY window before sunrise.

  The sky was still ashen, the grove silent. She sat up, her eyes darting through the trees until she spotted Artemisia on the hillside, browsing. “There you are.… You stayed.…”

  Artemisia lifted her head, looked in Maya’s direction, and then continued foraging for grass.

  Pain overshadowed Maya’s relief. Her right foot felt as if it were in a vise, and the wound on her arm now oozed pink syrup. She knew it needed to be cleaned, but she ached with cold, and the river water would be freezing this early in the morning. She pulled more leaves onto her lap and lay back, watching the sky brighten. A flood of worry overtook her. What had happened to Aunt Vi and Payton? Where had they been during the earthquake? Had they made it to the ranch? And Moose and Fig? Had they been at camp or pulling a trailer-load of hay? They might have gone off the road or crashed. Or maybe something worse had happened. She cringed at the idea. What about Seltzer and Golly? Had they survived? And what did they all think had happened to her?

  The sun climbed higher and the morning warmed. Maya fashioned a cane from a branch and shuffled to the river where she lowered herself for a long drink of water. Sitting on a log, she took off her jacket, vest, and shirt, peeling the fabric away from the arm wound and wincing when it stuck to her skin. She took off the left boot and sock and pulled her left leg out of her jeans. Still wearing the right leg of her jeans and the right boot and sock, she lowered herself into a shallow pool that was surrounded by a natural rock dam. The boot flooded. Cold, soothing water reached her toes, easing the pain in her foot. Maya allowed it to soak.

  She watched as Artemisia made her way to the river. Instead of her usual gracefulness, the mare walked with a sluggish and stiff gait. She stopped at the edge of the river, not twenty feet from Maya, and drank.

  “You must be bruised and sore, too. We both need to get better, Artemisia. But first, I have to get this boot off because it’s much too tight.…” Holding the heel and toe, Maya tugged and the right boot released with a slurp. She yelled out with pain.

  Artemisia’s ears twisted at Maya’s cry.

  Maya gently pulled her wet jeans from her right leg and then stripped off the sock. At the sight of the grotesquely bruised and disjointed ankle, she felt sick again. Taking deep breaths, she willed her stomach to settle. “It’s worse … than I thought. It’s clearly broken.” Released from the confines of the boot, the ankle ballooned. “Maybe taking off my boot wasn’t such a good idea.…”

  Artemisia plodded back into the grove.

  Maya called after her, “Please don’t go far.” She submerged the arm wound. The sting made her suck in her breath through clenched teeth. She doused her arm several times, then rinsed her clothes in the river, too.

  After dragging herself back to the aspens, Maya spread out her clothes to dry in the early afternoon sun and sat on a rock.

  “Look at me, Artemisia. I’m sitting here in public in my underwear. I guess we’re not actually in public but we’re in the middle of … somewhere. Grandmother would have found this incredibly inappropriate.”

  Artemisia kept her usual distance but raised her head toward Maya and continued chewing.

  Maya noticed that Artemisia looked at her or came closer at the sound of her voice. “Nobody even knows where I am, except you, Artemisia. Do you think they’ll come looking for me? I hope they do … because I can’t walk. If they don’t come, would you let me ride you out of here? I need you to trust me, Artemisia … so I can get home … if they don’t come.”

  Artemisia took one step in her direction, but no farther.

  Maya sighed. Anchoring one corner of the kerchief in her teeth, she wrapped the cloth snugly around the gash in her arm and secured it. When her clothes were dry, she dressed. While it was still light, Maya ate one of the apples, then put out a handful of the molasses grain for Artemisia. The aspen grove had plenty of grass, but Maya hoped the horse would be tempted by the delicacy and come even closer.

  Maya zipped her jacket, tied the hood snug, and burrowed into the leaves. Weary, she lay back and watched the sky fade. She remembered the first day she had arrived at camp and Aunt Vi had said, “Don’t let that sky swallow you up.”

  Could it really do that? Could she just vanish? she wondered. A lone white dot appeared. Then another. And another. The heavens unfolded and the Milky Way emerged as a bright smear across the night drapery. The stars were so dense that the darkness barely peeked through the brightness. Maya gazed at the immense sky, spellbound. How will anyone ever find me?

  In the morning, the molasses grain Maya had put out the night before had disappeared and Artemisia browsed a little closer to Maya’s nest. As Maya took slow, painful steps to the river to rinse her arm and soak her ankle, Artemisia relocated along with her, staying near but too far away to touch.

  The pool in which Maya had bathed yesterday was deeper now and the rocks surrounding it were almost submerged. Two small trout swam in the well, pushed in by a surge of water overnight and now trapped. The pool was smaller than a bathtub and she could easily stand in it and use her vest as a scoop to flip the fish onto the shore. But then how would she cook it? Hunger grabbed at her stomach. She left the trout in their holding pen, found another spot in which to soak, and thought about the possibility of fire.

  Back beneath the aspens, Maya unscrewed a lens from the binoculars. She cleared an area of debris, built a rock circle, and fashioned a pile of tiny twigs over a mound of leaves. She’d seen the boys across the street from Grandmother’s burn leaves with a magnifying glass. Would this work? Maya angled the lens until a bright dot appeared on the tinder. How long would it take to capture the sun? Within seconds, a h
air of smoke drifted upward. Excited, she moved her hand slightly and the smoking stopped. She repositioned the lens and a thin, cloudy line lifted again. For an hour she made tiny trails of smoke but no flames.

  Her stomach cramped at the possibility of fish for dinner. At last, an orange ember glowed. She dared not move the lens and willed a flame to appear. “Come on,” she whispered, but the kindling refused to ignite.

  After dozens of attempts, Maya’s resolve crumbled. Frustrated, she gave up on the fire and ate the second apple. But she wasn’t satisfied, so she ate the last one, too. As the night sky presented another show of studded beauty, she put a handful of molasses grain on the ground not far from her feet.

  This time, Artemisia didn’t wait until Maya was asleep to walk over and nibble at it. Maya talked to her in a slow, gentle voice. “Do you know that song? The one about the stars? I used to sing it when I was little. ‘Twinkle, twinkle, little star …’ ”

  Softly, Artemisia nickered.

  “You’re absolutely right, Artemisia. I sang it wrong. It goes like this:

  Ellie, Ellie, Ellie, Ellie …

  Ellie, Ellie, Ellie, Ellie …”

  IN THE MORNING, MAYA UNBURIED HERSELF FROM HER coverlet of leaves and called out to Artemisia. “Are you there, girl?”

  She sat up and spied the horse ambling toward the river. Relieved, she brushed the leaves from her clothes. “I’ve been gone for three nights, Artemisia, and no one has come to find me. Do you think they think I’m … dead?” Before she could bemoan her situation, a high-pitched whining distracted her. She swatted at a mosquito and then another, but it did no good. Swarms seemed to have hatched overnight. She tied the hood of her jacket around her face, but they found her hands, the injured foot, which was still too swollen for a sock, and the tender parts of her cheeks.

  She scooted to the river, where she found Artemisia rolling in the water, legs in the air. The horse emerged on the bank and wallowed in the dirt and grass. When she stood, she looked breaded, like a chicken cutlet.

  “I know, I know. That’s how you keep the bugs and flies away. I’ll try anything.” After rinsing in the river, Maya ensconced herself in her jacket again and dabbed a thick coat of mud on her cheeks, the tops of her hands, and the foot. The mud helped, but the mosquitoes still darted around her, singing their high-pitched songs. They even tried to bite through her jeans. Miserable, she huddled in her spot amid the trees and swiped at them all afternoon.

  By sundown, Maya felt weak from hunger. She pulled the canvas bag toward her, and Artemisia took a few steps closer. She scooped a handful of the molasses grain from the bag and set it out near her feet again. Her own stomach complained. Maya considered the horse feed and sniffed it. It was just oats and grass and molasses. It wouldn’t hurt her. She put a pinch in her mouth. It tasted like oatmeal with a little shredded cardboard. It wasn’t entirely awful, and her stomach quieted for the first time in days. She lay back, closed her eyes, and slept.

  Nightmares punished her: In a white tower, Grandmother washed her mouth out with soap. She ran to the window, jumped out, and fell, the world speeding past, her life disappearing. She found herself darting through a plain of sagebrush while a helicopter pushed her toward a net trap. She stumbled and fell. Unable to get up, she screamed while a mountain lion crawled toward her. Her father and mother swam through a pool of turquoise water to save her, but as hard as they stroked, they made no progress. Maya called to them for help. But their arms weren’t long enough to reach her.

  The next morning, it was more difficult to get to the river. When Maya stood, pain riveted from her foot up into her leg. This time, instead of struggling with the makeshift cane to get to the river, she scooted backward on her bottom, with her jacket beneath the stiff leg, pulling it along.

  All morning, Maya watched Artemisia graze at the top of the grove, drifting closer to the ridge. She said her name from time to time, just to see her head raise in recognition. By the time the sun was directly overhead, the horse had wandered over the rise and out of Maya’s sight.

  “Artemisia?” Maya kept her eyes rapt at the spot where the mare had crossed over and called her repeatedly. But there was no sign of her.

  Tears welled in Maya’s eyes. “Please come back.”

  Hours later, Maya’s cheeks were still damp from weeping when Artemisia reappeared. She walked into the grove as if she’d never been away, patrolled the perimeter, and stopped near a rock ledge where she peed a long stream.

  “Oh, Artemisia! I’m so glad you’re back. I have so much to tell you … and so much to ask you.… I need you, Artemisia. Please don’t leave me again. Look! I made a fire. This time I used only the driest leaves and it worked. It took forever to get started but I finally did it. It’s not a very big fire but it’s enough. And I’m cooking a fish. Grandmother would have never allowed me to try, and she would not be pleased. But … I … think … my mother might have been proud. Do you agree?”

  Artemisia paused and looked at Maya, then shook her head and made a long blow, her lips quivering.

  “Do you remember her, Artemisia? She didn’t give up just because Grandmother disapproved … and … neither did my father. I’m … I’m … proud of them.”

  Maya knew the fish was done when it began to slide off the stick. She laid it on a flat rock. The skin came off easily with a few scrapes from a broken branch. With her fingers, she pinched small bites from the fleshy areas. Maya reached into the bag and scooped out a small mound of molasses grain and piled it on the ground near the waning fire.

  Artemisia walked forward and ate.

  If Maya had reached out, she could have touched her neck. But she held back, afraid she’d scare the mare away. Instead, she whispered, “It’s lovely to have you over for dinner. Please come again soon.”

  MAYA WAS BEGINNING TO LOSE TRACK OF HOW LONG she’d been in the aspen grove. Was it five days or six … or more? She retraced the days in her mind, making marks on the ground with a stick: the day of the earthquake, soaking in the river, finding the trout in the pool, the day the mosquitoes hatched, the day she had cooked the first trout, and yesterday when she cooked the second. Had she really been in the aspens an entire week?

  This morning there’d been no more fish in the pool. Now, the wind blew, and she couldn’t start a fire, but she didn’t mind because the stiff breeze dissuaded the annoying mosquitoes.

  The afternoon sky darkened. Maya felt too cold and shivery to soak in the river. She could barely move her arm. It had grown stiffer and redder and when she touched it, the skin felt hot.

  Artemisia browsed nearby, then walked into the clearing and lay down.

  Was she basking in the sun or taking a nap? Maya wondered. Maybe today should be a resting day for both of them. Maya reclined in a warm stupor. Her entire body droned with soreness and warmth. She had no strength or inclination to rise, and it worried her.

  Later, Artemisia lifted herself and walked to the river. She turned several times to nicker to Maya, as if asking her to come along.

  “I can’t.…” said Maya. “You go.…”

  Thick clouds blotted the evening sky and erased the stars and the moon. “It’s going to be very, very dark tonight, Artemisia,” whispered Maya. “Stay close.”

  Sometime during the dream-laden hours between midnight and daybreak, Maya awoke to a strange cry, like the wail of a newborn baby. The sound pierced through the vale.

  Artemisia snorted and made a series of high-pitched squeals.

  Maya sprang upright and stared into the blackness, then heard the rousing caterwauls of a cat and a terrifying commotion: wild screeching, claws scraping on rock, hooves grating, a horse’s scream, hissing, thuds on the ground, and the continuous pounding of running hooves. As fast as the fray had started, it ended with no sound at all.

  A mountain lion.

  Maya held her breath, her heart ricocheting. The darkness felt oppressive, and it was hard to breathe. A twig snapped. Maya jerked in the direction of t
he sound. Leaves crackled as something bounded through the grove. Steps came closer. Maya drew up her left knee, wrapped her arms tightly around it, and laid her head on top. She squeezed her eyes closed. “Artemisia,” she whispered, “please be okay.”

  The wind braced. A cloud shifted, and a snip of the moon appeared.

  Slowly, Maya lifted her head and saw the strange apparition. A cluster of anomalous white pieces, like a dismembered spirit, drifted before her. Maya rubbed at her eyes. She heard a nicker and soft blowing sounds. Her voice trembled and she whispered, “A ghost horse …” But Maya wasn’t afraid. There was something calming about the otherworldly being. Something graceful in the way the horse moved with a rocking motion, which almost hypnotized Maya and made her feel swaddled like a baby in her mother’s arms.

  As the ghost horse inched closer, its white parts grew larger. Maya watched with awe as its body emerged in its entirety, sidling so close that she could reach up and touch the underbelly.

  “It is you,” whispered Maya.

  Artemisia uttered her familiar nicker.

  “Was the mountain lion coming back for more? When it didn’t find Klee, was it coming after you? Or me? Payton told me that mountain lions follow their prey. We … we have to leave this place.”

  Artemisia dropped her head and nuzzled Maya, her mane tickling her cheeks.

  Maya reached up to stroke her warm head and neck, and this time the mare did not pull away. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  Throughout the night, Maya sensed Artemisia’s vigilant presence. Sometimes, when Maya stirred or whimpered, she felt the mare’s gentle snuffles, as if Artemisia was confirming that Maya was still safe and beathing.

  “That’s not good, Artemisia.” Maya had removed her jacket, pulled her arm from her shirtsleeve, and unwrapped the kerchief. The wound oozed yellow. “My arm hurts worse than my ankle.” Maya’s face pulsed with heat and she felt achy, inside and out. She turned her troubled eyes toward the horse. “Not good …”