“It would help,” he said, ducking his head, “if you didn't go to war.”
And, lip quivering, that started my tears all over again. His shoulders slumped, but in empathy or long-suffering I couldn't say.
“The Demon Horses, Jay,” I wept. “They were...they were...real.”
What might have been the smallest breath of amusement – but grave amusement, somehow – issued through his lips and glinted in his eyes. But his head ducked again, and he didn't look at me as he spoke. It seemed that even in a moment of closeness, he couldn't bring himself to be direct. But perhaps it was the closeness itself that caused him discomfort. “You saw them?”
“They were just like in the stories. I thought the stories had exaggerated them – they just...they just usually do, but – but everything was true about them. Everything.”
He thought about that, and I tried to imagine him imagining what it had been like to see the reality of those things, in person, now very real memories. Memories he couldn't share, could only guess at.
One could only ever guess at the horrors of war. And this war...so much more enhanced by factors of wild imagination. Wild, terrible, unthinkable imagination, never truly real until it was boring down on you, tearing into you with mammal fangs, ripping everything you knew asunder even if you made it out alive.
*
I did not want to leave the tent, when a new morning came – fresh and ripe and grossly unwelcome. My eyes were swollen, the skin on my face tight from dried tears. I attempted to clear my throat, finding it scratchy and unresponsive. I wanted only to roll over and close my eyes again, aspiring only to be that blacked-out sentience of resolute denial.
I achieved this for another ten minutes. Then Jay pushed through the flap.
“Up you go, Willow,” he chimed, ducking in to rouse me. There would be no getting out of it, then. Jay would not allow me to wallow unchecked. I did not respond, but it didn't matter; Jay's hands were fishing under the blankets, fastening under my arms and extracting me from my nest of misery. I didn't have to do anything. “Let's get you fed.” Steering me free of the blankets, he drew me out into the cruel light.
I didn't bother telling him I wasn't hungry. I'm sure he knew.
The camp was considerably less busy than usual, with some soldiers out on enemy lines and others dead. We had only a few horses left, too, but the pens appeared to be undergoing preparations for new arrivals.
Jay led me to the vacated assembly of fire pits, where a few pans of hard egg remains were sitting overcooked over the ashes. He fed me straight out of the pan, shoveling spoonfulls of the bland grub through my lips. I swallowed as best I could until I couldn't take it anymore, and then I pushed his hand away.
“Come on,” he said, and I followed him away from the smolders to where he started his work for the day, and sat on the fence as he got to it. I wasn't sure how long he would indulge my idle company, but for the moment he seemed content to allow it.
My eyes were beginning to air out, but I knew I still looked like junk when Cambrie wandered up. She was in a little flowered dress today, her curls bobbing at her shoulders.
“Hey, Jay,” she puttered, and I couldn't help but notice how cutely she made it rhyme. I spared her a single glance, but my cares were elsewhere. I'm sure I looked indifferent or entirely disillusioned or both, but of course she was here for Jay anyway. My presence or any resulting vibes were irrelevant.
“Camrbie,” came his quiet response, a polite undertone in the midst of his work.
Cambrie smoothed her hands on her skirt. “Myles said the horses are comin' in. You said I could...help you with them? When they did?”
Jay paused ever so slightly, a brief conundrum passing over his face. If I'd been of a mind for it, I might have bothered with the obvious ridicule (at least in my own head): You? Helping Jay? In that dress? It would be him helping her, guiding her every move, letting her dance into his arms to avoid getting her pretty little feet tromped on by those crushing hooves. What a joke.
But I wasn't of a mind for it. Nor was I of a mind for triumph when Jay uttered a decisive,
“Not now, Brie.” It was an undertone, still, but straightforward enough to brook no contradiction. Surely any 'but, but, buts' would only demean her in my presence anyway. The disappointment on her face could not be missed, but a quick flutter of disconcerted lashes and she mastered the worst of it. She smoothed her hands once more over the olive and orange pansies that dotted her yellow-brown number, and let her scuffed ivory heels trail to a deflated halt in the dust. Where did she come up with these things?
“Oh,” she said, her accent a charming, sweet drawl even applied to a single syllable.
Jay offered no further explanation or reassurance – which, if you knew him, was just like him, but if you didn't it probably stung a bit.
Get used to it, sweet Cambrie, was the only worthwhile sentiment that bothered to come to full term on her behalf. This world stings. It stung, and bit, and tore, and clawed...
The only thing for it was finding that island inside of yourself. A place to retreat. Not flattering yourself with pretty dresses and frills. Though perhaps it served the same purpose, I thought in hindsight. Pretending was pretending, after all. You would just survive a lot longer pretending only on the inside.
Or was the outer grit perhaps the greatest sham of any of it?
Perhaps we all were really just scared little girls inside. The lieutenant, Jay, everyone.
“Maybe later?” Cambrie proposed. “When you free up?”
“Maybe,” Jay acknowledged, but that was it.
Cambrie did spare me a glance, before leaving, checking the girl returned from war as an afterthought.
I'm fine, thanks for asking, would have been my next resulting thought had I cared. As it was I just let her look and be done with it, and take her leave.
Jay towed me through his routine, and I went along like a vegetable. Surely I was a nuisance, and I couldn't imagine he had much patience for my antics – or lack thereof – but then, he had never been to war and I just had, so perhaps his thinking was that he couldn't talk. After all, he had no idea the extent of what I'd been through, or what I'd seen. It seemed that was enough to warrant him giving me a break.
He helped me off and onto fences, letting me tag along like he was simply my designated babysitter for the day.
Then the new horses arrived, and it was the first distraction that drew my attention marginally off of the negativity dragging me down. I couldn't help it. The churning of hooves came to me over the distance, drawing my attention as the sound of brewing wildfire draws one's eyes over his shoulder, humming up through the ground, through my bones, making the fine hairs on my body stand on end. I could feel them coming like an unbridled stampede. Even though I knew they would be herded straight into the big arena at center, their approach inspired the same effect.
I hopped down from the fence of my own accord this time, wandering closer as the gate slabs were drawn wide to allow the herd's arrival. Then in flashed the grays and browns of the leaders, and the varying shades of those that followed. The arena gates were thrust open, and the sea of churning legs rushed in like the tide. My eyes flitted over them as they flashed by, pulling me into an almost instant hypnosis, where that voice inside me echoed on repeat:
Yes, I can hear the ocean.
It was at that moment that I experienced the greatest contradiction of sentiment for my gift that I ever had – such a sour mix of love and hate that I feared I might just combust, for lack of the two being able to coexist in my being. There before me stood my calling, my greatest source of therapy, and I longed to go to them, to walk among them, to feel and taste and breathe them and feel my world steady and become beautiful, nothing but beautiful, a thousand angels walking around me – but when I looked at those angels I saw a thousand opportunities to lose beloved friends by the dozens, should I allow myself to grow close to them. For the first time in my life I wanted to walk away fro
m horses and never look back.
But they called to me still. I couldn't walk away from them any sooner than I could walk away from gravity.
“Wanna help me with them?” Jay's voice drifted into my thoughts. He had appeared beside me, sleeves rolled up to his elbows, hands resting on his hips.
“What are you doing with them?” I spoke for the first time.
“Checking for lame ones. Separating the harder to handle, for schooling.”
I pursed my lips, nodded. It was all Jay required. He moved forward, and I followed.
It was inevitable that the attention of the horses cheered me up, to a point, because there was no way to be indifferent toward all those inquisitive, whiskered muzzles and fond nickers. Even the occasional delighted squeal slipped forth when I greeted one that was particularly keen on making a friend in this new place.
“On second thought,” Jay said, resting his hand on a bay's neck as he wove his way into my vicinity, “maybe you're doing more harm than good. How am I supposed to separate the hard-to-handles if you have them all on their best behavior?”
And I couldn't help it – a small smile cracked. And I wasn't sure, but I thought the faintest shade of triumph sparkled in Jay's eyes.
*
By that night, Jay's previous persuasion had lost its charm; I could no longer be kept out of the arena by night. After dinner I followed Jay wordlessly to our tents, pretended to retire without a fuss, and then slipped out to make my way to the dark arena. The horses turned to greet me at first, but then parted to let me through, folding together again behind me to cover my tracks. I curled up in the center of the pen, and they formed a protective circle around me, and it was there that I slept, and slept at peace, for the next three nights of feigned blissful ignorance.
Thirteen –
For three days, we worked with those new horses. Sorting, separating, training, regrouping, and training some more. Toby and Jay met by way of Jay jutting his head in the direction of the new fellow on the first day and asking, “Who's this idiot?” followed by a “Hi, pleasure to meet you” as soon as the other young man was within range. And the funny thing was, I knew he meant both equally.
We didn't all three work together very often, seeing as Toby's job was to aggravate the horses in a way that only I was expected to address, but the two of them got along well enough that once the whole what-the-hell-is-a-firebreathing-idiot-doing-here-with-the-horses thing was overlooked. So Jay and I evaluated horses, Toby and I fire-proofed them, and Jay and Toby exchanged a few words here and there where only manly perspective would do, and when talking failed, they carried things.
It was an agreeable enough system, but it couldn't last. Just as we were getting comfortable, a runner came in. He addressed Sonya's second-in-command, Collin, but then Collin came straight to me.
“Alannis,” he said, and my heart sank. It was numbness, though, rather than despair, that came to full term inside me with his next words, for it was my only practical refuge; “The Lieutenant requests your return to enemy lines. You can leave with the next drive.”
*
I don't know quite how long I stood there, not processing, but it was long enough to draw Jay to my side, unless Collin's exchange with me was notable enough to do that by itself. He did not make any inquiries, but cast me a sidelong quizzical look to the same effect.
“I'm going to war again,” I revealed drably.
I cannot imagine what that kind of thing must have felt like, to him. He was not one to cave and gush any protest that put feelings on high display, but the facts remained assuredly tragic facts: I was only a girl – certainly just the girl of the two of us – close enough to his sister, being shipped off to war without any say on his part. Without even any inclusion of him in the issue. Surely he could not take kindly to that, in any shape or form. Surely that had to strike him down, in some way.
But he only ducked his head, then gazed out toward the far edges of camp, eyes as distant as if he could find the horizon there. A brisk breeze lapped at his sleeves. The only sign of his private opinions making themselves known manifested in the tight clench of a muscle at his jawline.
Finally, a single question: “When?”
“The next drive. Two days.”
Not much time.
“Toby too?” came his next question.
“I – yes. I guess so.” Naturally. We were a team now, after all.
Jay said no more, but I could only imagine what he was thinking. This was not the way things were supposed to go. Things had become backwards, completely skewed. And what was he to do about it?
What a messed up time, he must think, when the women went to war and the men were helpless to do anything about it.
*
Jay had never been a helpless soul by nature, though. He may have spared me his opinions on the matter, but those in authority in the camp were not so lucky. I heard him, later, making those opinions known. A cowboy telling off the soldiers.
I didn't know whether to cringe or find myself flattered, and so I clung to my neutral air, trailing to a halt outside of the barn office to listen. Anyone that could inspire Jay to say as many colorful words on their behalf as Jay was currently saying should be flattered, though, that was the simple truth.
“...send the women when you could risk your own necks?” he was challenging in a raised voice. “I've never even been to your fancy dress-coded workshops and brotherhood-bonding camps – whatever it is that makes you all apparent 'soldiers' – but it's not rocket science to know it violates some greater, obvious code of honor to send the women before your damn selves. Do you have to be a damn general to make something of yourselves? Get out there and sacrifice your own necks. Not the necks of the beautiful creatures that carry our damn babies.”
At that, I could not help but feel my cheeks color. That's taking it a little far, Jay. I was nowhere near pregnant with anyone's baby. And I didn't quite know what to do with the fact that he was capable of envisioning me in that light.
There was some murmur that I couldn't make out, probably something meant to calm him down, from one of the soldiers. But it only succeeded in drawing a loud,
“Oh yeah, like hell,” from the still-aggravated Jay.
Another murmur, this one sounding somewhat like a suggestion, followed by an immediate,
“Damn straight, I'm going. Or is hypocrisy what you got out of this?” I could hear the unmistakable sound of his boots as they began to plunk back toward the door, disgusted, and for a moment I was torn between fleeing so I wouldn't be caught and playing it off as if I were just walking up. He was out of that office before I could process a verdict, though, and so I just stood there as he strode out down the aisle. He couldn't miss me, but he made no acknowledgment, said nothing as he passed me up. It couldn't have been his plan that I would hear, but Jay would not be ashamed of his behavior. He was what he was, and had always been such. If he meant what he said, why take it back or try to smooth it over?
But now I was coming up with my own feelings of dismay and responsibility. Jay going to war too? Because of me? I turned on a heel, following him out of the barn. I found him already readying a horse for himself.
“Jay, you don't have to do this.”
He glanced at me, once, just barely. “What are you talking about?”
“This.” I gestured to his task. “You don't have to...go.”
Now, he did look at me – full-on, eyes aflame with impatience. “Oh, don't I?” he asked sarcastically. “Well thanks for letting me off the hook. Now that you've relieved me of that obligation, maybe I'll go read a book instead. Thanks for talking some sense into me where the others that shouldn't have bothered failed miserably as well. Mind your own business, Willow.”
“Jay... If you go... That just doubles our chances of one of us getting killed in the fray.”
He blinked at me, eyes still hard. “That's a stupid way to look at it,” he decreed, and turned back to what he was doing.
; I didn't have any good arguments, except the same ones he might have turned on me, and with the same desperation, so I let my lips resign themselves to silence on the matter. We would both be going to war, and that was that. I had no choice, and Jay had made one of his famous one-way decisions. I would do well to simply get myself ready.
I went to make sure Lake was prepared, checking her over with a thorough eye. She seemed to be in good form, so I patted her on the neck and went to find Toby. He was in the tack room readying his own gear. Tightening gas cans and binding his torches into a single bundle.
“Ready for another round?” I asked. I half wanted to lean against the door frame, just to achieve a casual illusion leading up to the ordeal ahead, but I couldn't quite bring myself to cheapen it that way.
He shrugged. “Half a dozen more riding lessons under my belt, anyway. That's something. Thanks to you.”
“Well I don't promise that my human tutelage counts for much. I'm strictly horses.”
A little grin perked the corner of his mouth. “Well maybe if you tried whispering to me in our next session instead of yelling at me so much, you'd find an additional niche.”
“Ha. You couldn't hear me, underneath the 'whoa, whoa, WHOAA' commentary you like to employ so much.”
He made a noise of agreement, bending back over his knot. “What about you?” he asked. “Are you ready?”
I ducked my head. “More upset about it, this time. Actually knowing what it's like, it's...harder anticipating it. But also...Jay's coming.”
“I thought you two were thick as thieves.”
“He's mad.”
“Ah. And thieves don't get mad at one another?”
“We're – complicated together.”
“Well. I'm no practicing expert on war, but I do hear it's wise to leave your personal life at home. Complicated or otherwise.”
A sad, wry smile touched my lips. “If I had a home, Toby, I might have such a luxury.”
*
When I walked by the tents that night, Toby and Lady Alejandra were hanging out in front of her canvas hut. Toby was smoking something (how appropriate). I nodded and shrugged my coat higher onto my shoulders, walking on by. I was about to duck into my tent when a familiar drawl made me take pause. It was drifting to my ears from the few corrals nestled behind the tents, and I was beginning to learn that wherever that sweet twang was flapping its gums, Jay was likely to be close by.
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