Equus

by Rhonda Parrish

  She took half a step forward, and lowered her head a little. I figured that was as good of permission as I’d ever get. I stepped up to slip the top loop over her head, but she shied away again.

  “It’s all right,” I said.

  She eyed me distrustfully, and snorted. Never going to happen. Now that I looked at it, the bridle seemed far too small to fit over her head in any case. Maybe Grandmother hadn’t realized how big they were. Or maybe she’d given me the thing simply to get me up here. To put me face-to face with these magical creatures.

  It would be just like her.

  I tucked it into my belt and walked to the mare’s midsection, keeping my hand on her side so she could track me. That’s where my plan fell apart. I could barely reach the top of her back, much less pull myself up on it. I tried anyway. I jumped and threw my arms across her, but my hands slid back across her smooth silvery coat. I tried it twice and failed miserably. She snorted and stamped, growing impatient with me.

  “Neshka!”

  My heart sank. My father strode across the dying plains-grass. It was now or never. I jumped as high as I could and slung my arms over her back. Miracle of miracles, I held on. I tried to scramble up her side but couldn’t pull myself. I wasn’t strong enough. Then my hands started to lose their grip. I whimpered, and plunked back to the spongy ground. Father’s strong arms grabbed me around my waist.

  “No! Let me go!” I shouted. I flailed at him, but not enough to keep him from picking me up.

  My world tilted. Tears blurred my vision. Then I felt something firm and cold beneath me, and a tingling ran up my back. My father’s hands released their grip on me.

  He’d put me up on the mare’s back.

  I sat there with my eyebrows up and my mouth hanging down, not daring to move. I thought maybe he’d eaten one of the silver-and-black mushrooms by mistake.

  “The mushroom fields are dying,” he said. “We’ll be lucky if we can last a month on what we saved.”

  “I’m sorry, father. I just—I just wanted to see.”

  “I know, Neshka. You’ve got adventure in your blood. And they chose you, just as I feared they would.”

  “Who chose me?”

  “The horses. Every now and again, they choose someone to ride them. I worried that this time it’d be you.”

  “But, why?”

  He chuckled, but there was no humor in it. “I was in a pose like this twelve years ago, in this very spot. But it was your mother on the horse, asking to leave.” His eyes grew distant. “You were little more than a babe, and I knew so little of children. I begged her not to go. For your sake, if not for mine.”

  “And you’re telling me this now?”

  “I worried if you knew, you’d let them choose you.” He gave me his sad smile. “Now I realize that was meant to happen all along.”

  “Come with me,” I said. “I’m sure she’s strong enough to take the both of us.” I patted her silvery back, marveling at the beauty of it. “Aren’t you, girl?”

  But he was already shaking his head. “The horses only ever take one. Besides, I’m needed here.” He untied the goat-skin pouch from his belt. It bulged with lumpy shapes, and I glimpsed the rainbow-colored hues of my favorite mushrooms inside. “Take these. They’ll keep for a little while, yet.”

  One of the silver horses made a long high-pitched keening sound. They lifted their heads, looking skyward. One by one, they heaved in a deep breath, and lifted up from the ground. The mare shifted beneath me, large and ponderous and impatient.

  “I’ll come back,” I said. “Once I figure out how to fix the rain, I’ll come back.”

  “It may not be something you can fix. If that’s the case, you must keep going. Find some other place to live. A place with shelter, and food. And a sky that isn’t broken.”

  He squeezed my hands in a gentle caress. A sob escaped my throat, and I threw myself over to embrace him. I’d have tumbled right back off the mare, if he hadn’t caught me. He squeezed me tight against his cheek, which was damp despite the lack of rain. Then the mare lurched forward. She was leaving, with or without me.

  Father pushed me back onto her and tangled my hands in her mane. “Go, Neshka. Go!”

  I’d just found my balance again when the mare launched herself from the ground. My stomach shot up into my throat. I cast a frantic look up back over at my father, who stood with hunched shoulders in our dwindling shadow. I nearly fell off again, craning my neck to watch him. I straightened and tried to get my bearings. The other horses danced in circles in the air above us, gliding back-and-forth as they drifted ever upward. They reached the silver end of the sky and disappeared into it, like fish slipping back into their watery homes. The valley grew distant and nauseatingly small below.

  I looked up again in time for the sky to swallow us.

  The silver threshold held me in a dark, icy grip for three heartbeats that felt like an eternity. Then daylight bloomed on my face, and a wave of sweltering air enveloped me. We stood in a mirror-pool in a desolate muddy plain. Broken trees bordered the wide basin all around us. Not a speck of greenery colored the landscape. The sky was the color of cobwebs. The air smelled of rotting wood.

  The other horses trotted to the slippery bank and clambered up it. They did not fly here, and I got the feeling that perhaps they could not. The air felt thick and heavy, like an oppressive blanket that pressed us to the ground. My mare began to follow. I gave an experimental little tug on her mane. She faltered mid-step, but pressed on. I pulled harder. She halted so fast I nearly flew over her head. Ripples flowed out from her hooves on the smooth silver ground, like tiny wrinkles on an old mirror.

  An image began to take shape in my mind…water pooling here on the silver floor, flowing across it. Seeping through ever so slowly, to fall like rain on the tiny valley below. It all fit, or would have, if the basin weren’t bone dry. I touched the side of her neck with my fingertips in a gentle request. She turned in a slow circle, while I took stock of the muddy shoreline. It rose up like a dark brown wall, ten paces high and unbroken entirely around the rim. Well, almost entirely. There was a gap in that dark line to our left, away from the direction the horses had gone. I steered my silver toward it and she moved forward. She knew my desire, almost before I made it plain to her.

  The gap seemed impossibly far away. I urged her to go faster. First by thinking it, then by pressing my heels into her sides. She sped to a trot that jounced me up and down. Then a faster clip that nearly sent me tumbling off. I clenched my hands around her mane. Its familiar softness took my fear away. I leaned low against her, and pressed her sides again.

  She leaped forward, front and hind legs moving together, eating up the ground in great strides. It was somehow easier to hold on, to press my body against hers and flow with the bounding movement. The landscape became a blur. There was only me and the mare’s muscular back and the sparks flying from beneath her hooves.

  We neared the edge, and sat up straight. She slowed to a trot, and I felt an odd pang of sadness that the air no longer rushed past my face. The gap grew before us. It was twice as wide as the mare was long. Steep on both sides, and covered in dried, cracked mud. But this was the kind of mud that knew water, and grew parched when that water was gone. A streambed. The mare hesitated, but I nudged her forward again with my heels. The clip-clop of hooves caught my ears. The other silver horses had followed us around the rim. They whickered at us, tossing their heads, prancing with a nervousness I knew I shouldn’t ignore. Still, I pushed my mare onward, around a sharp curve in the streambed. We nearly rode right into the obstruction but she came to a halt as it rose up over us. One of the broken trees had fallen over across the stream, catching bits and pieces of debris until the entire thing was dammed. Only a trickle of water made it through, dribbling down the broken tree’s branches to pool in the hollow beneath it.

  “Steady, girl,” I whispered, and pressed in with a knee to turn her alongside it. That was easier than using my hands, and
she responded just as well. I grabbed a broken bough and tried pulling it free. The tree shuddered, but didn’t move. I could feel the pressure on it, the force of the water waiting on the other side. Our water.

  One of the horses whinnied. They looked over their shoulders at something I couldn’t see. A breeze picked up, a horrible foul-smelling breeze, from the direction they were looking in. I slid down to the ground. My boots squished in the mud at the base of the dam. I tried pulling the tree loose again, but couldn’t move it enough. Too little again. Too weak again.

  There was a leathery vine wrapped around the trunk, the kind that grew up the sides of trees like heavy ropes. This one was thicker than my arm, and a length of it had come loose to lie in the puddle on the ground. I lifted it, tested the strength. It might do.

  I scrambled up the dam enough to climb onto my mare’s back again, with the vine tucked under my arm. There was enough to drape it around her neck, against her chest. I used Grandmother’s bridle to lash it back together. Then I turned her away from the dam with a touch and a whisper. I pressed my heels into her sides. She took two steps. The vine went tight against her chest, and she hesitated.

  “It’s all right,” I said, willing her onward.

  The other silver horses would not wait. They turned and fled, thundering around the broken trees along the muddy bank. Mud flew from their hooves. The foul wind rose up and chased after them.

  “Come on!” I shouted. Maybe a bit loud. It startled the mare, and she surged forward. The dead tree shuddered and groaned behind us. Then came a deafening crack, and it gave way. A torrent of water twice our height swept toward us down the streambed.

  She bolted, scrambling up the sides of the streambed, nearly tossing me off while the water pounded down behind us, snapping at her feet. Five paces up, then ten. The mud-bank leveled off as we reached the top. She halted there, sides heaving, long enough for me to look back and watch the rush of water surge into the streambed and then flatten out to fill the basin. The broken tree had floated out on the initial surge and settled somewhere near the torrent. Far enough, I thought, that it wouldn’t jam things up again.

  The foul wind grew, and a distant roar rose up behind us. We dared not linger here. Yet as I turned to see where the other horses had gone, I saw that another basin lay on the other side of the mud bank from ours. This one was wider and more rounded than the roof that covered my little vale. The silver horses churned their way to its middle and dove, disappearing below the surface to some other fantastic world. Beyond that was another bank, and another basin, the water glistening under the faint light of the cobweb-sky.

  I looked back to the basin with the broken tree, the one that formed the roof of my snug little valley. I pictured my father and the others raising their faces as the first drops of new rain fell. With one press of my knees, I could dip down and share that moment of joy with them. Help my father rebuild the mushroom field. Live the quiet life he’d hoped to give me.

  Yet there was no way to know if the silver horses would return, since they’d watched the grass die. And they were my only escape.

  I missed my father already, but he was right. I had the blood of the adventurer in me. I turned my mare back to where the other horses had gone. I touched my heels to her sides. She leaped forward, to where other worlds awaited us.

  ***

  Dan Koboldt is a genetics researcher and fantasy/science fiction author. His debut novel The Rogue Retrieval, about a Vegas magician in a medieval world, was published by Harper Voyager in January 2016. As a working geneticist, he has co-authored more than 70 publications in Nature, Science, The New England Journal of Medicine, and other scientific journals. Dan is also an avid deer hunter and outdoorsman. He lives with his wife and children in Ohio, where the deer take their revenge by eating the flowers in his backyard. You can find him online at dankoboldt.com.

  A Mother Unicorn’s Advice to Her Daughter

  J.J. Roth

  Hide in plain sight. Let the dappled light through the forest canopy color your whiteness with camouflaging shadow. Let stillness be your friend when the hunter’s horn or adventurer’s voice carries through the vegetal quiet.

  Breathe without sound. Depend on secrecy and stealth.

  Once you are sighted, the hunt begins. Once the hunt begins, you are vulnerable.

  Be generous, but circumspect, with your gifts. Dip your horn in struggling streams when no one is looking. Draw its healing point along the withered bodies of sick ferrets and ailing fawns. Lay its curative spiral against the breasts of lost, unconscious humans, but stay out of their healthy fellows’ sight.

  Cover your tracks as you leave. If caught, you’re more likely to be destroyed than loved.

  This constant hiding may make you feel unreal.

  This is normal.

  Seek the company of your own kind. They are stronger than they look.

  Never let anyone tell you you’re only a legend. Those who say such things feel helpless in their own lives, threatened by those who are different. They’re the problem, not you. If you believe in yourself, that’s half the battle won.

  Never trust a virgin. And for the sake of all that is holy, never lay your head in a virgin’s lap. You may be caught and butchered, your horn ground to dust and sold as a remedy by glorified carnival barkers.

  This last warning may not be literally true—but it’s good advice, anyway. Most likely, some bored pre-Freudian made up the whole thing.

  But you never know.

  When you’re generous, helpful, and put others first, there are those who will take advantage.

  Don’t shave your chin whiskers or bemoan your lion’s tail.

  Don’t expect rainbows to shoot out of your ass, tinkly music to play as your life’s soundtrack, or sparkles to spray like pixie dust when you shake your mane.

  These don’t define unicornness. The sooner you internalize this and believe it, the more likely you are to avoid depression or an eating disorder.

  Always remember: you are immortal, unless slain.

  When in doubt, run like hell.

  ***

  J. J. Roth lawyers at a tech company, parents her two school-aged sons, and writes literary speculative fiction in the interstices. Her work is forthcoming in Podcastle and has appeared in Nature, Urban Fantasy Magazine, and various semi-pro and small press venues. For publication information and updates, please visit J. J.’s web site at www.jjroth.net, follow her on Twitter (@wrothroth), or find her on Facebook (JJ Roth).

  Ladies Day

  Susan MacGregor

  “Just so you know, I’m placing two hundred crowns on your Dainty Dancer tomorrow.”

  Lord Henry Dinglecrumb loomed over Sissy, making her colour prettily. Sissy always coloured prettily. Me, he ignored entirely. “I pray she won’t let me down.” He punctuated this last statement with a bold wink.

  Sissy lifted her chin defiantly. Under that false show of pride, I knew she was delighted. She had been angling to capture Lord Henry’s attention ever since the opening of the Season, and though it was just May, she had already succeeded brilliantly. As long as Dainty Dancer won the Gold Cup on Ladies Day, Lord Henry’s marriage proposal was sure to follow.

  “If you have any doubts, perhaps you should focus your attentions elsewhere.” Sissy dismissed him, glancing over the ball crowd as if seeking a less boring man.

  With at least two hundred of Society’s best in attendance, there were many who would approach her at even the slightest indication of interest. She was Lord Sutherland’s only child, an heiress to a large fortune, with an impressive magical lineage to boot. She was also the classic English beauty—blonde, with fair skin and rosy cheeks. As for myself, I am dark-haired and a bit too tall for current tastes, her unmarried first cousin. I envied Sissy, but I knew my place and was resigned to it, always the spinster, yet content to remain her closest friend.

  Lord Henry burst out laughing as if she had made the funniest jest, missing her with an overabundance of s
pittle and spraying me instead. I gritted my teeth and strove not to dab at my face. Sissy smiled coolly, pretending not to notice. His laugh reminded me of a braying donkey, and not the English kind, but something of lower quality—American or Spanish, perhaps.

  “Oooh! Spirited! I like that,” Lord Henry leaned in closer, probably to peek down her bodice. He smelled faintly of cigars and gin. Other than his devastatingly good looks and his father’s fortune (although there had been rumours suggesting it was no longer as substantial as it was), I don’t know what Sissy saw in him.

  Someone cleared his throat behind us. Lord Henry spun about, causing his dark forelock to swing rakishly over his brow. I wondered how often he had practiced that move. Behind him, a tall, be-speckled young man of about thirty stood, his stance as awkward as a school boy’s and his expression earnest.

  “Charley, old boy!” Henry crowed. “There you are! I thought I’d lost you to those boring old tomes in the library!”

  “Uh, no. I was just checking Sir Robert’s collection. He had mentioned one of his texts displayed some unusual hieroglyphics…”

  Henry grabbed him about the shoulders and swung him about. “Don’t be dull, old man. You’ll put us to sleep. Ladies, might I introduce to you Mr. Charles Cavendish?” We bobbed Charles a polite curtsy, which seemed to make him mildly embarrassed. Henry blithely carried on. “Charley, here, has been studying ancient Egyptian magic—curses and that sort of trash. His area is world mythologies. When he’s not dusting off the shelves at the Ashmolean, he’s slumming about Africa and Europe. Bit of a blue stocking, our Charley. We were chums at Eton.”

  Charles turned a darker shade of red. Henry had insulted him, calling him an old maid and an intellectual—hardly proper in mixed company. The Ashmolean was the University of Oxford’s museum of art and antiquities. If Charles attended there, he studied with an exalted group of minds, indeed. I bristled, having been called a blue stocking, myself. I decided right then and there that I’d had enough of Lord Henry Dinglebits. Yes, I know, a childish bit of name-calling, but sometimes, one can’t help oneself.