Whisper

by Harper Alexander

  After one turn about the pen he nudged me in the shoulder, and I stopped to pet him, stroking his face. Then, since we were on agreeable terms, I seized a handful of his coarse black mane and swung up onto his back.

  And then the real fun began.

  If he had been ridden before, it had not been much. I could feel it in his uncertainty, in the way his ears flicked back to keep an eye on me. He did not know what to do beneath me, but I did not keep him guessing. I told him.

  This was a new kind of dance. A seamless duet. I cantered him around the pen, sitting comfortably behind his withers, before asking him to stop on a dime, back up, prance in place, bow – even jump over nothing as if some great log lay in his path. Perhaps there was one, in the world of ghosts and fantasies that was our playground.

  When my legs ached, I pulled him up and patted his neck beneath his mane. It was sweaty, arched with delight.

  The trainers all stood at attention around the pen, arms crossed or propped against the fence. I spotted Jay, too, glancing my way from where he was hauling feed from a shed, but his attention lingered only momentarily before he had turned back to his work, disapproving or indifferent or simply leaving me to my element. I could not help but wish it was him at the round pen fence, sharing in my experience. Him and me, in love with this horse business. Both of us equally invested.

  Maybe then he could help me teach the others what it was that I did. He would understand. Jay always got the dynamics of things.

  But longing for that was futile in this new place where we each had our places.

  Since I didn't have any more of a clue what to say coming out of the silent lesson than going in, and since I was no more inclined to freely admit my lacking ability to take command, I turned back to my class trying not to show my hopeless detachment and asked, “Any questions?”

  Eight –

  “You can't teach a person to whisper to horses,” Jay said to his food. “What nonsense.”

  “It got us jobs, didn't it?” I hissed obstinately over the crackle of the evening fire that burned between us, since I didn't disagree.

  “Are you shortsighted, or what?”

  I frowned at him, picking a crust of dirt from my knee. “You should be thanking me.”

  He scoffed around a bite of meat.

  “Where would we be right now if I hadn't sold our services on day one when we had the chance?”

  “Not on the doorstep of war.”

  “Oh, come on – you were the one caught following the Lieutenant's procession. You had the same ambitions.”

  “Mm,” he grunted, getting something out of his teeth with his tongue. “No.”

  I threw the crust of dirt at him, but it only sizzled and popped over the fire.

  “Hi,” a voice piped up over Jay's shoulder, and I squinted through the smoke at the girl who approached. She stopped by our fire, hip cocked as she bit her thumbnail.

  Oh, I thought. She's talking to Jay. For she could care less if the smoke continued to obscure me from her vision. She looked like someone straight out of the 50's, her blond hair short and dramatically curled, her lips painted bright red. Where had she gotten that?

  Jay hardly even glanced up, unimpressed. It was his meat he was interested in, and ignoring the rest of the world. And insulting me for good measure when the fancy took him.

  “I'm Cambrie. Cambrie Gale,” the girl said, a hint of sweet southern accent in her voice. She brought to mind honey bees and daisies. “Brie, if you want the short and sweet version.” She played with her fingers as if not knowing what to do with them. I imagine she would have stuck a hand out for introduction had Jay been looking at her, but he wasn't, and it was clear to see rejection was not what she had come to offer herself up for. She shifted from one foot to the other, just shy of looking flustered.

  “That's Jay,” I helped her out wryly, not so much because I had any inclination to encourage her, but because it presented the perfect opportunity to mock his attitude. Also as a wry assertion of my relevance, since she hadn't seemed to notice me yet.

  An uncomfortable little smile flicked my way. A hasty, unplanned acknowledgment. I smiled dryly back, at a face no longer looking at me. You're welcome.

  Only as Jay finished his last bite of meat could he no longer find cause to ignore her presence beside him. He let his eyes wander up, slow beads of mercury fighting gravity. “What can I do you for?” he asked politely, and she snickered, putting a hand to her red lips when he didn't bat an eye at the term that caused her amusement.

  Oh, Jay, I thought. You're such a tease. This was bound to be good.

  “I just thought I'd introduce myself,” Brie said, encouraged now that she had his attention. “Company runs a little scarce around here, unless you're one to stand in line to get yelled at with the rest of the camie-folk.”

  I cringed inside at her term for the well-respected men in camouflage.

  “It gets lonely, being a refugee,” she continued, and I felt the distant but well-mannered urge to gag at her lack of subtlety.

  “Sorry, hon, he already sleeps in my tent,” I spoke up before I knew what intended to come out of my mouth, and this time she looked at me. As did Jay. No one had expected me to be so blunt, so outspoken – least of all me, but I didn't suppose I could explain that to them after the fact. The damage was done.

  Her lips worked, uncertain how to salvage the train-wrecked atmosphere. I was thankful that the fire hid my blush, or I might have proved likewise at odds with the dynamic I had created.

  “I was going to ask for your name next,” Cambrie managed, the lamest save I had ever heard, but I couldn't tell if those were real or fake tears that shone in her eyes. If they were real, I was sure they were only tears of embarrassment. And with that, she turned on a heel and stalked away, unwanted.

  Jay was giving me a look.

  “What? You do,” I pointed out. Never mind that I'd been in his tent when he'd been in mine.

  Shaking his head, he dropped his napkin into his bowl and stood, and went after what I could scarcely believe seemed to be the very girl I had just cleanly gotten rid of.

  He didn't know what was good for him.

  I warmed myself by the fire awhile longer before giving in to what I knew was good for me, heading to Jay's tent for some sleep. I would have to see about some blankets when I had the presence of mind one of these days, but until then Jay wouldn't mind sharing one more night, and in the rare event that Cambrie convinced him she was lonely enough to need overnight company, he couldn't bring her back here.

  I was just about to drift off when I heard her giggle – what could only be her giggle – and I rummaged my way out of the blankets to peer out of the tent. Jay had walked her back to her tent, a good twelve shelters down the curve, and she was saying goodnight to her escort, obviously charmed. Or trying to charm him. Most likely both. I watched as he lifted a hand good-bye and strolled back along the curve, headed for our painted corner of the world. Our small, walled world.

  “How did your date go?” I asked as he sauntered by.

  As usual, he cast me a glance and walked on by. Rolling my eyes, I untangled myself from the blankets and rose to follow, pushing my way into the barren tent behind him.

  “She's pathetic, you know that, right?” I asked him.

  This time, his eyes met mine and stayed there. “She's a refugee, Alannis.”

  Alannis. Not the endeared nickname he had for me. I had gone too far. Was getting on his nerves. No endearment for me, after my antics. For some reason, that stung me in the face a little. I was just watching out for your back, I wanted to defend myself, but was that really what I had been doing? I swallowed instead, unprepared for his reprimand. For the seriousness of it. I couldn't simply allow myself to be reprimanded, though, and so I ended up pushing harder, saying,

  “Of course she's a refugee. Did you see her nails? She couldn't swat a fly without the risk of breaking them. There's no career of fight there.” She's a victim.
>
  Having said his piece, Jay lay down on his back, knees propped up, and crossed his arms over his chest. All he needed was the hat over his face. Stupid cowboy.

  I stared at him a moment as he settled into ignoring me, and then, resisting the grumble that bubbled on my lips, went and curled up next to him, not one to be dismissed so easily. Then, stubborn me, I slept with him on that cold, hard ground, like so many times before when we had traveled together over the unforgiving Shardscape, back when it had juust been him and me.

  *

  Over the days that followed, I acquired some admirers of my own. They lined up outside the round pens, all the young military men, catching on to the gifted young female in their midst. I wondered how many of them had chased Cambrie around, the only eligible female within reach up until my arrival – although I didn't know that I would ever call myself 'eligible', not with my love affair with dirt and exclusive interest in horses and my hair always falling in limp locks in my face. In any case, they took an interest in me, and I was hard pressed to ignore their throng on the sidelines. So I catered to them a little bit instead; it never hurt to flaunt the reasons these people had invested in me.

  Jay, for one, did not seem impressed. Every time I stole a glance in his direction, he was cleanly ignoring me and the show I was putting on, but I told myself he was just keeping busy like a good labor boy. It wasn't like it was anything he hadn't seen before. Besides, it wasn't for him. It was orchestrated as a source for self-gratification as I made ready to inform the Lieutenant that I couldn't do what she had hired me to do. If I was going to make that confession, I wanted to ascertain my value was well-established with or without the other trainers as part of the equation.

  With my confidence recharged, I put my subjects back in their pens and went to get the deed over with, knowing I couldn't get away with ignoring my human charges for much longer.

  The Lieutenant was in one of the stalls treating a horse's hoof for thrush with a bottle of bleach recovered from the rubble. The smell stung my nose. A good excuse to come back later, I thought, but chopped the tracks from in front of that train before I could invest in a ticket.

  “Yes, Alannis?” she asked as I stood outside the stall.

  “I can't teach it to them,” I confessed.

  “Reason given?”

  “I...they're not...horse whispering material?”

  “Good answer,” she awarded, straightening. “Put the incompetence on them so I'll still see your potential.”

  “I didn't–”

  “Relax, Alannis. It's a good tactic. You would do well to pretend you meant as much even if you didn't.”

  I shut my mouth.

  “So, what do you have for me, then? Can you train an entire camp of horses?”

  No pressure. “In theory. But of course it will depend on time constraints and the quality you're aiming for, and other similar factors.”

  “Well. Anything you can do will, in theory, make us better than what we are. So start there. See what you can do for us.”

  “I don't suppose you have any Demon Horse models on hand?”

  “I'm afraid not. The closest we have are some rowdy young soldiers.”

  “If they don't breathe fire, I doubt they would be of much service.”

  Just then, a bedraggled-looking member of the camp approached, but I couldn't remember seeing him before. All manner of grime was caked across his form, and I wondered what kind of training drill he had just been at. But when he spoke, his words were those of a wilderness-ravaged scout returning home.

  “Lieutenant.”

  “Private.”

  “I come from Restoration.”

  “Res–”

  “It's the new face of the region that was once your home.”

  “Official, now, is it?”

  “They're moving on. Gabrial's armies are marching East from there.”

  “East across the Shardscape from Restoration,” Sonya mused. “That's precisely what I don't want to hear.”

  I did the math, recalling the few times I had seen a map of the United States how it used to be, before it was one big mash-pot of ruins. Colorado would be straight across from Missouri, with only Kansas in between.

  “If he hems us in with the majority of the wreckage, it'll be his turf,” the Lieutenant said. “Our horses can't compensate for the rubble as their battlefield. We need to get to K.S. territory, where there's open ground.”

  K.S. Kansas.

  “We are to meet them?” asked the scout.

  “Unless we plan to let him move into this half of our country, yes. Kansas is the middle ground, and our greatest potential battlefield. Let's seize it and hold it.”

  He nodded and briskly departed, apparently knowing the drill. The Lieutenant turned to me.

  “Does your whisper work on the move?”

  “You want me to come with you?” I asked in surprise.

  “This move is vital. We need an edge, Miss Wilde. You're all we've got in that department. Like I told you, we have a distinct lack of fire-breathing creatures among our ranks. No clawed ones either, coincidentally. Just one that whispers.”

  I considered for a moment – as if I had the right to weigh my options and refuse. Did I even have that right in the face of war? Was she asking me along, or was it a condition?

  Jay would not be happy.

  He lost any measly scrap of authority he held over your head the moment he contrived to walk out on you, I reminded myself. He had already done his part looking after me. All that time traveling cross-country, getting us into Tara's camp, pulling me out of that gulley, and then, that thing with Fly...

  He had done his part. More than done his part.

  “When do we leave?” I asked, pushing Jay from my mind. If he could contrive to walk out on me, I could do the same thing, couldn't I? And anyway, I would be back. It wasn't like I was leaving forever – it was just a job. Unless I died, but that was a concept much too radical to introduce on a day's notice. Surely I wouldn't be right out on the front lines, either. I was just the horse trainer in the camp.

  “First thing in the morning,” the Lieutenant replied, already striding off to start seeing to preparations. The smell of bleach washed over me as she passed, and I caught my breath – but it was hard to say if it was from the acrid stimulus or the abrupt realization that I was going to war.

  Nine –

  A crazy idea came to me later that day as I was casting about pretending I knew what went into preparing to march for war – but really it was just one in a pattern, of late, and this time it was sparked by another.

  Lady Alejandra, the resident gypsy who crafted tents, found me as I was thinking: whispering to horses was well enough, but I was going to need to devise some semblance of actual lesson plan, because it would not simply be as easy as whispering into those fuzzy listening ears and imparting all of the sentiments required for a scenario I didn't actually have on hand. I couldn't just lecture them like a school teacher and tell them to do their homework, and to be ready for the test. It was a much greater art than that, a much more precarious line of communication. I could get them to do certain things, at a given time, but I couldn't ramble on about what something was going to look like and be like and how they ought to perform when and if they came up against said subject at some point in the future. I could really do very little without some sort of prop to make them understand, to condition them with.

  “So you're off to war,” an unfamiliar voice broke into my thoughts, and I let the haze drain away to regard the speaker, like dirty soap water down the windshield of my mother's car back when she used to put me inside before washing it. While the hose blasted the windows I was in my own little underwater world, and then the gunk would wash away and the light would shine through and there would be my mother's face as the spray glided off, smiling in at me, looking like a beautiful watercolor painting. For a moment that's who I saw before me now, until I pulled myself together and shut that taboo memory of cars
from my thoughts. Ironic, that some of my fondest memories of my mother involved cars.

  The woman before me was thin, somewhere in her fifties or sixties, with beautiful wild gray hair and canny brown eyes. I thought I recognized something Native-American in her skin tone and bone structure, but there was something else as well.

  “War is not for the faint of heart,” she continued, because I had yet to pull my act together enough to form words.

  “War is never for anyone, is it?” I managed, not certain how to hold my own in any deep conversation brought on by a stranger. I stuck my foot upon the bottom rung of a pipe corral to redo the laces of one of my boots. They netted like a corset all up my shin.

  “Yet there is a difference between a commodity and a liability.”

  Right. “All I know is war is not for the innocent, either, but they die in it all the time,” I said, not sure what she was getting at. She wasn't trying to imply I was faint of heart, was she? She didn't even know me.

  “You do an amazing thing with the horses.”

  I stole a glance at her, pursing my lips. But there was no need to not be polite. “I'm Alannis,” I said, sticking out a hand. Perhaps we could find our way back to the right foot in this impromptu introduction. Or, if she didn't want to shake my grimy hand, I would know for sure that she and I would never click.

  To her credit, she took it. She had slender hands, but strong. I could feel the veins and knobby knuckles well, but also a good bit of meat in her palm. “Lady Alejandra,” she said.