“Jay–” I objected, hurt, unbelieving that he would gang up on me in such a way. He only cast me a glance, and began to herd me from the room. Tara had turned back to the chart on her desk; no sympathy there. The others were shuffling to see to their orders. I did not envy them. I could not believe them.
Jay took me by the nape of the neck once we were outside and steered me toward the Dorm-wing – our name for the barracks – just off-set from the center of camp.
“Jay,” I tried again, my voice breaking as soon as it was just him and me. “You know Fly won't last a minute on the battlefield.”
“Fly has never been anything but a good, solid horse, Willow. You can attest to that. Give him some credit – there's no reason to assume he'll be so easily bullied out of good form in the face of a little war.”
It was more than I expected him to say to me, but I could not credit him for it, because he was wrong. 'A little war' was a gross injustice to what Fly would be facing out there. We had all heard the stories; we knew what the present armies of conquest sheltered in their ranks.
“He's all but retired, Jay. He can't even go out on the rubble without coming home lame.”
“Stop.”
He had exhausted the reserves he kept for conversation, then. Reasoning with him was pointless, at that point. But I couldn't help it. Who else would fight for Fly? He was supposed to be put out to pasture in his state, to live out the rest of his days in peace and indulgence. Not be recruited for war. There could be no career for him there. His career was behind him.
I skipped to keep up with Jay's brisk pace, lest he drag me into the ground in his purposeful wake. His grasp had not left me. I suppose I was not to be trusted.
“You can't do this. You can't let her do this. Fly will be useless to them; a complete waste of a life.”
Jay said nothing, relentlessly towing me onward. To my surprise, he steered me into the men's panel of the Dorm-wing. The whole thing had been constructed out of slabs of debris and pieces of structure salvaged from the wreckage, and he led me clear to the back where a door had been re-plastered to some makeshift wall pieces, creating a storeroom of sorts where the men kept some of their personal gear. He retrieved a key from under one of the bunk-stacked mattresses and unlocked the storeroom, holding the little token in his mouth while he thrust me in.
“Sorry, Willow,” he said around the metal of the key, and then he pulled the door closed in my disbelieving face.
*
When the raid fell, I heard it through the crude walls of my confinement. Horses whinnied as their order was disrupted, calling to each other as they were separated. I closed my eyes against it, not wanting to recognize Fly's voice among them. I did not think I could bear it.
The tears of betrayal had dried on my face, tasting like salt and leather on my lips. The leather was a comfort, a fond sentiment throughout my past. I ran my hand over the suede seat of a saddle that kept me company in the storeroom, appreciating its texture. It offered a sort of solid tenderness there in my moment of disheartenment, something I desperately needed.
Oh, Fly. I'm so sorry.
That was all there was for it, and it left me in a state of brokenhearted resentment.
Stern voices could occasionally be heard among the disoriented cries of the horses, but they were incoherent, just disembodied assertion in the fray. Clang and clatter detailed the event, ringing throughout. I tried to imagine what it would be like to emerge to an empty stable, devoid of all those endeared animals we had come to know, having to start fresh, from scratch... Tara would do it – there was nothing else for it – but I found it devastating.
What would I do the following day? Cast about listlessly with everyone else? And the day after that? The only measly scrap of livelihood left to my routine would be climbing the trees just beyond the camp's boundaries and collecting the robin and blue-jay eggs that were produced there. With limited amounts of trees still standing, nests could be found in abundance. It was not the most comforting of tasks, though – not plagued by the factor of recognizing the key component of these nests more and more commonly as human hair. Harvested from the rubble. And as for the task itself – it was no rewarding thing taking from a struggling species, especially when I could sympathize. I certainly could not feel good about cleaning them out after we had been likewise raided.
When the action died down in the camp and someone came to let me out, I was surprised to find that it was someone other than Jay. The one I thought was Tawney – maybe Tony – stood there, one of the other young manure-muckers of Tara's camp. He looked in expectantly, ignoring the tear streaks on my face.
“Alannis,” he greeted in a neutral fashion. “You can come out now. He held the door wide, and I stood shakily from my sentence and stepped free of the provisional cell. Unlike the others, I thought a wave of sympathy touched his face as he stepped aside and granted me back my freedom, but I ignored it. It was useless to me, by then. Too late. If I were to acknowledge it, I would just as soon resent him for it, for bothering only when it no longer mattered.
Where were you when Fly needed someone to care? I allowed myself to fancy, and then I stowed the thought, lest morale be allowed to become even uglier in the wake of what had befallen our livelihood.
With my freedom returned to me, I might have hurried from my prison – had there been anything to hurry toward. But I knew what awaited me out there, and had no great enthusiasm to take stock of those empty stalls, the quiet barn, the gate of the training corral hanging open on its hinges. I may have pleaded with the non-existent sentries at my cell door to let me out, while I was imprisoned, but now...for what?
I trailed out of the Dorm-wing, numb with dread. They were all there, those people I couldn't name, standing around, not knowing what to do. Nameless and useless. But what was there to do? Purpose had decidedly drained from their bodies; bodies meant to work, used to laboring until day's end. The idleness was uncomfortable, uncanny. Proper etiquette evaded them.
I could find nothing for it, either. It was all there; the vision I had feared. We had been cleaned out in less than an hour.
Fly was gone with the rest of them.
An ache, albeit an angry one, sent its pangs through me as I stood before Fly's pen, gazing in at the emptiness where he used to be. Should have been. I could have screamed at Tara. Could have throttled Jay.
Except – where was Jay? I had not seen him, standing with the others. My anger flared. He had the gall to lock me up and allow what I loved to be torn from my grasp, but not the guts to face me afterward? He was supposed to be there for me when my world crumbled. Who else was there to be with me when everything was reduced to rubble? It was him, always him. How could he have done this thing, and then abandoned me to the consequences?
I hated him.
I loved only Fly, and he was en route to his doom.
Dolefully, I climbed onto the fence and pulled myself atop the highest rung, finding a comfortable vantage point for living out my misery. I stayed there as night fell, numb to the cold, gazing into nothing. Wallowing in the absence that was contained there.
It was an unsolicited intrusion when someone approached and cast about at my peripheral awareness. “Um – Alannis?”
I was loathe to acknowledge him, but, grudgingly, I did. I'm sure my gaze was not a pleasant sufferance.
“Jay is leaving.”
They were not words that I expected, and, even hating him, something in my heart stilled.
“What?” I said after a moment, my voice raw.
“He's gathering his things. If you spring now, you might catch him.”
Hardly able to process what he could possibly think he was doing, I peeled myself from the bar that was branding itself to my backside and hopped down from the fence. Jay was the last person I wanted to see, right then, but, inconveniently, he also happened to be the last person that I might wish to leave.
I wove my way through the camp, eyes peeled for any signs of him and h
is leave-takings. He couldn't just do that, could he? Not as swiftly as the horses had left us, and on the same eve. It was the second thing that day that he couldn't just do. That must have been some kind of record. I had never been without Jay since acquiring him near the tender beginning of my life.
The camp was already ripe with nostalgia. I felt as though I walked through a place from my childhood, returned to it after years had passed and it was not the same. Yet it had only been an hour. An hour since life was good, and now I walked through a ghost-town fog. My feet scuffed through the dirt, Jay's desertion the only thing drawing through that fog.
Near the camp's south boundary, I spotted his black-clad, lanky form, pushing its way through the idle-stricken horsemen that loitered there, his pack slung across his back.
“Jay!” I called ahead before he could get away. He glanced over his shoulder, slowing when he saw me. His face was unreadable, and he waited as if humoring me. “What are you doing?”
A moment stretched like the silence after a bad joke before he responded. When he did, it was a simple, “Leaving.” As if I could not see that. Frustration at the empty response bubbled up in my already upset stomach. I cast my arms wide in question, at a loss, pressing him. Jay was not one to be pressed, though.
“Why?” I was forced to demand.
“I'm retiring from Tara's services.”
I shook my head, not understanding.
“She let me go, Wil.” Sometimes, 'Willow' was shortened to Wil.
“What do you mean, 'she let you go'? This is your home.”
“Was.”
“Stop it, Jay. Tell me what's going on.” I had little patience for his conversing style when explanations were in order.
“Tara doesn't have need of us all, with the horses gone.”
“But...” What was I trying to say? I didn't understand what was going on, but it didn't make sense, him leaving like this. “Why you?”
He pursed his lips then, considering me.
“Why would you be the first to go?” I finished softly, confusion and loss making me pitiful.
Some fragment of discretion halted whatever answers had been hovering just shy of his lips, and he silenced them forever. “It's for the best,” he said, and I saw the doors of his compliance close to me.
My frustration peaked, and helplessness wracked me. It was inconceivable, that he could do this, but there he was, doing it.
“Don't go, Jay,” I whispered, knowing it was pointless. When Jay made up his mind about something, there was no dissuading him. I had just never thought it would come to this.
With a small nod that was little more than acknowledgment, Jeremiah Alistair turned to carry out the deed in spite of my most pitiable protests, shouldering his pack and pushing through the sober onlookers I had created a scene for.
Jeremiah Alistair – my Jay – a stranger to me that day, abandoning me to the confining nothing I suddenly had left.
Three –
In a cloud of dust jarred from the woodwork, I burst into Tara's office, demanding she present an explanation for Jay's actions. The entire world didn't get to betray me without answering for it. It could not be everyone's destiny to betray Alannis Wilde. There had to be some rationale in there somewhere, and I couldn't carry on like a compliant simpleton until I made the effort to demand what it was. They at least owed me that courtesy. Even if I wasn't worth much more than the stuff I cleaned up every day.
Tara looked up from her work, as if she had work to do with all of the horses gone.
“Mr. Alistair knows what's good for him, Alannis,” she said to me, as if that explained his departure.
“What is that supposed to mean?”
“It means, Miss Wilde, that I find myself in need of pruning my staff following the unfortunate events that this day saw unfold, and I am inclined to start with those that are a liability to me.”
I stood on the other side of her hulking, authoritative desk, blinking, trying to absorb the implications.
“And that means,” she continued, “in case you haven't heard, that your Jay did an incriminating thing today, acting on your behalf instead of following orders. He may have locked you in that hold, but that did nothing to stop loyalties from making themselves known. So, while I am sorry to say it, you will be pleased to know – when the raid rolled in making its demands, Jeremiah let your beloved Fly go.”
*
The gates cracked wide against the walls of the camp, lying open like broken wings in my wake. In a sense, that's all Tara's camp was to me, at that point. It was an alien concept, abandoning a place that had been home so abruptly, but all at once there was nothing for me there. I could stay on and help Tara rebuild, but without Fly or Jay I may as well go elsewhere, and I felt as if I had left things on bad terms with Jay, even though we had parted on the terms that he chose. After learning of what he had done for Fly – for me – I couldn't just let him walk off into the world, exempt from what we had together because of his fool nobility. Guilt at what I had thought about him drove me as well, as if I had to redeem myself from it. Never mind that I had not actively done anything with it.
What he had done for Fly was more than just save him from the horrors of war. I did not know how much of a chance Fly stood roaming free at his age, having to scavenge for survival, but he had a better chance than going up against the Demon Mounts that marched in the aspiring Empire Armies. One heard tell of fire-breathing, fanged beasts, coats stained with blood and soot, hooves cloven as often as not, sometimes splitting off into respective claws entirely. As far East as we were, we had not been immersed in the fray of the North-Western conquests to see the evidence of those features, the extent to which the rumors were true. But those rumors came heavy as loaded dice – which was to say, they always showed the same numbers, always told the same thing.
Speculation surrounding the Demon Horses was ripe and hushed in those days, the center of many grave, superstitious, or fearful issues taken up in conversation. Some said the creatures had risen from the lava-spewing recesses of our earth when it was cracked open; others, that their unnatural features were the result of exposure to radiation or other toxic matter released when our society and all its operations, factories and labs were torn asunder. In other words: symptoms, not features. Along those lines, others still speculated that the horses suffered from viruses and diseases running rampant in our death- and toxin-tainted, medically failing world. It could be anything, really. But it was real, and terrible, and being harnessed instead of cured. I suppose it was inevitable that, while most of us focused on picking up the pieces, there were those opportunist types who saw the world's weakness and disorientation as their chance, and chose then to rally a conquest.
If the stories were to be believed, the conquest was led by a man named Gabriel, who was said to shelter visions of expanding a great empire in this new age. It seemed like overkill, to me, going to war to gain what was left of our world, but apparently that was how he wanted it – a place he could rebuild entirely.
All that was still mostly fairytale matter to us in the East, but it was the reason for the raids, for our straggling government gathering horses for its defensive army, so there had to be a decent amount of truth to what was taking place out there. And if they were beginning to raid the East, that could only mean Gabriel's Empire was becoming reality, or that his army was simply a wicked, wicked thing indeed, requiring as great a defense as could be mustered. Either one did not sound as if it boded well for a nation already struggling with recovery.
I heard the sound of someone closing the camp gates behind me as I cast out across the open land. I could imagine the look of dismay on their faces: What a shame. The Shardscape was unforgiving, and it was obvious enough that I was bailing out of that place of shelter off a whim. Impulsively immersing myself in the richly-sabotaged landscape without looking back. It would not be the first time I had done something impulsive, though. That tendency had debuted around the same time I began to revel
in the art of taming wild horses.
It was dark across the rubble, hampering my attempts at locating Jay. I skittered up onto one of the mounds, finding my balance in the unsteady mess as I surveyed the countryside for his shrinking silhouette. There were too many forms, too many textures vying for relevance throughout the territory. It was the sound of him, rather, that clued me in to is whereabouts. The faint gravelly evidence of his progress chaffed across the quiet, glancing over the surfaces of The Shardscape and echoing in its pockets. Then, I pinpointed his figure, all but camouflaged in spite of its motion. It flowed steadily Westward, making swift progress of the territory.
I pushed off after him, skittering down my pedestal of rubble and hastening to navigate my way across the natural obstacle course that stood between us. The copse of trees that I harvested wild bird eggs stood on my left, its black spires flashing by as I scurried after my expiring companion. The beady eyes of a thousand nesting birds watched me go.
Jay turned before I reached him, my pursuit too blusterous to go unnoticed behind him. I could not guess what his reaction would be to my tagging along, and getting close enough to make out his features in the dark did nothing to tell me. He was as unreadable as ever.
I rested my hands on my legs when I reached him, panting. I may have been a strong rider, but that used very different muscles than covering distance on foot – especially the manner of distance we boasted in the wake of the upheavals.
Jay eyed me, saying nothing as I recovered, waiting for my explanation. He could wait out a stopped clock, that one, and emerge with his patience intact.
I straightened, searching for words, realizing I hadn't prepared any. One did not think of preparing words when prompting an exchange with a lifelong friend, but, facing him, I found myself at a loss. Perhaps it was the pressure of his gaze, steady and waiting and... really rather unsympathetic, if you didn't know him. Maybe even if you did. Shifting awkwardly, I wrung my hands out, trying to think of the best way to make my case. The smell of lavender soap mixed with horse grime crushed forth as I did so.
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