Whisper

by Harper Alexander

  The opportunist in me hesitated, wanting to eavesdrop. I was curious how Jay was really faring, and wondered if I might gain some alternate insight where talking to someone other than me was concerned.

  “Well are you her body-guard?” Cambrie was asking.

  “She and I go back a long ways, Cambrie,” Jay replied.

  “I mean no disrespect, but there are soldiers better suited to protect her.”

  “It's more than that.”

  “How long will you be gone?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine, if I don't get my head blown off.”

  There was a pause, and I pictured her pretty face turning distraught. “That's rough talk, Jay.”

  “Well, like you pointed out – I'm no soldier.”

  “If you...come back in once piece, I can take a rain-check on helping you with the horses, can't I?”

  “Rain-check,” Jay confirmed.

  “Please don't get your head blown off, Jay.”

  “If 'please' is all it takes, I'll be sure to try that with the guy that points a gun in my face.”

  With that, the conversation seemed to be over. I felt a moment of triumph for Jay blowing off Cambrie to go where I was going, but only until I remembered where I was going, and then I'm sure I shared her dismay. After all, my designated job in a combat zone was still only to ready the horses. I wasn't entirely sure Jay knew what he was asking for showing up as a unit of raw manpower needing to be directed. There were too many dangerous positions to be filled for his chances of 'put me where you need me' to be good. If he showed up as an un-designated volunteer, he could quickly land himself a sacrificial first-row seat in the line of fire.

  Fourteen –

  When we rode out, Jay rode away from the pack. Clearly, he was not trying to cozy up with the soldiers – he wasn't there to boast any entitlement, or to try to prove anything. He didn't want to be one of them. But he was going, for other reasons. Jay always had his own reasons.

  I rode with Toby instead, giving him pointers on his riding as we went. He wasn't a natural, but was coordinated enough, as a fire-torch-wielder, that he could manage without looking like a complete idiot. That was more than could be said about some people. He may bounce around a bit, but he didn't lose control of his mount while he did so.

  When I was not engaged like so with active tasks, I could not keep myself from dipping into that other spaced-out world. Reality could not hold me. It had become oil on the water of that other depth, a rainbow prism shimmering on a surface that I was sinking away from. I could see it there, far above me, but it was muted and so very distant.

  Then something would shake me out of it, and like water spilling away after a submersion I would stumble through the shallows, and blink around me, wondering what shore I had washed up on. The waves would sway around me for a moment, until I realized that sea-like motion was actually my horse rocking beneath me. Disoriented, I would try to swim out of it, dizzy for a few moments before the land came into focus. Then I would catch my breath, remembering to breathe here where there was air.

  “Don't worry,” Toby said, apparently seeing some ill or grim look on my face. “We survived once – how hard can once more be?” He smiled reassuringly. “It'll blow over just the same.”

  Just the same... That was all good and well for us, if he was right, but he didn't fully understand. 'Just the same' meant that how many more horses would die? I was only glad I didn't know the number.

  Because that would be the number of soul mates that I lost every time.

  *

  When there was no protective arena to find myself curled up in, the sleepwalking was not always such a good thing. My eyelids fluttered open to a disorienting landscape, dark and breeze-swept and marked by rubble. I blinked, but was not quite awake enough yet to shiver in the cold.

  We had not camped in the rubble. We had passed some, not long before pitching our tents, but a stretch of wilderness lay between us and it. Usually, I did not walk so far without awakening, without becoming aware of my surroundings, my destination, my intentions.

  Something stirred in the rubble. My bleary eyes darted to it, uselessly in the dark, and I wondered just what fantasy had prompted my feet to come back here. Surely there was nothing here worth seeing. Swallowing, I convinced myself to turn back without further ado. It would be fruitless to follow through with any intrigue; and by 'fruitless', I meant – I didn't like the sound of that thing shuffling in the rubble.

  Finding my balance, I turned atop the pile of debris that I had alighted on in my sleep.

  But the thing shifted again, and, provided with further evidence of its substance, I found I was not overly keen on turning my back on it after a second warning. Faltering, I faced the direction of the noise again, torn between getting the heck out of there and exposing my back, and remaining in its stirring presence.

  I had not made up my mind when a shadow moved. My focus jerked toward it, trying to track its movement. There were so many shapes and shadows, though, and I swiftly lost the grasping visual I had gleaned.

  Something rattled, like gravel dislodged to rain through the cracks of debris, and then plinked down the side of some pile.

  I backed up a step, as it became increasingly clear to me that I was not alone out here. My eyes were in no hurry to adjust to the dark.

  Another sound bounced off the quiet. Closer? It began to pick its way across the rubble with more consistency, sounding a bit like a dog digging through garbage. One of the hybrid cats, perhaps? Scavenging for scraps or some dead body buried in the wreckage?

  A moment later I could hear its breaths. Definitely coming closer.

  Coming dangerously close.

  I stole a glance over my shoulder, trying to pinpoint some sign of camp. Just how far was it? If I tried to make a break for it, would I only end up being overtaken in a scant few strides, downed out here in the wilderness where no one would soon trace me?

  When I turned back to the ruins underfoot, all intelligent deliberation fled the scene, however. The noise had paused – but it was because the culprit stood before me, staring me in the face. Hot breaths and glaring red eyes.

  The rest of its body blended mostly with the night, making conclusions beyond 'Dear God...' scarce in my mind. Dumb theories skittered through the thought that I could compose, until I at least recognized the family that this creature belonged to. It was a primate. Only after I recalled Sonya's words about gorillas did I realize that was the creature that stood before me.

  My throat went abruptly dry. The creature huffed its vile breath in my face, glaring with its fiery eyes – eyes like those the Demon Mounts saw the world through. Out of the corner of my vision, I could make out the contours of the beast's bulging muscles beneath its grungy coat of fur. This thing could grab me with its capable hands and deliver any kind of fate it saw fit with those brutal, dominant arms. Did it have an appetite for human flesh? I was fairly certain a mere bout of temper would do. No appetite required, here. Looking into those eyes, I felt as thought I had twanged his angry nerves simply by coming to exist in his line of sight. The line of sight that was his kingdom.

  I dragged in a shallow, painstaking breath, willing myself to melt into nothing. But it seemed breathing was an offense equal to any other, and suddenly the creature snarled in my face, beating a fist once against his chest before I scattered at one sign of those hands coming off the ground.

  He was after me like a shot, roaring in my wake, enraged at my nerve to pick up my feet and run. I scrambled over the rubble, my life in my throat, knowing I would never make it across that stretch of wilderness but unable to cancel the endeavor now.

  I was all too aware of him bounding on my heels, and as I careened over the debris he sent each piece of it crashing and sliding behind me. I had just launched myself from the last pile, aiming for that sweet, flat ground, when a crushing fist closed around my arm, seizing me mid-leap. I screamed as he wrenched me around, opened his roaring black jaws in m
y face. My suspended legs kicked at him, my feet clawing at his chest. I wrenched and writhed and fought to free myself, my shrieks ringing out across the dark.

  Whisper to him, a distant part of me urged, but there was no room to make an attempt between the snarls and the screams. Otherwise, it might have been worth a try.

  I was entirely too hysterical, in his grasp, to actually be aware of what he was doing to me. Trying to do to me. Succeeding in doing to me. I was just one big frantic tangle of resistant limbs, fighting it, doing everything I possibly could to deter the moment of being ripped to shreds. He grunted and snarled and wrestled with the unruly force that I proved to be in his arms, struggling for superior purchase, striving to get me in line.

  Then a peculiar third participant intervened, striking from the shadows. I heard an additional clatter of rubble, and the next thing I knew the gorilla was lurching, faltering, being beaten by something else. His iron hold slackened, and he turned, distracted, to address the intruder.

  Distantly, I was aware of lights coming on in the camp across the field. They were like fireflies, little beacons so far away, but small sparks of hope to my plight. They had heard me. They would come for me.

  Not caring what had intervened, I scrambled to get away over the flat of land I had reached, latching onto my brief grant of freedom.

  The primate did not take kindly to losing his victims, though, and he charmed his own way out of his assailant's reach and lunged to retake me. His hold closed around my ankle, tripping me.

  My chin hit the dirt, and stars cascaded across my vision. Then I was being dragged backwards, flipped over. It was dizzying, disorienting, and my vision still hadn't cleared. I caught a glimpse of those red eyes, the human-like black jaws with fangs, and something larger rising up behind the threat posed against me. But was it rising, or was it rearing? Were those hammers, or hooves?

  Whichever they were, they beat down on my assailant, stalling him again. There was a squeal, a snort, as the third creature in the mix fought on my behalf.

  I blinked the stars from my eyes, flipped myself over again. A second time, I strove to escape, crawling forward across the ground. And this time, the gorilla turned to defend himself in earnest, and the two creatures began to duke it out behind me. I scrambled through the brush, clumsily trying to get to my feet.

  The sound of disturbed rubble ceased, morphing into the swish of brush, and I knew the tussle behind me had made its way onto new ground – my ground. I could just as easily get trampled in its path as personally pulled back into its midst.

  I tripped the next time all on my own, falling flat on my own fool stomach again. The quarrel rustled dangerously close to my resting place, but I hauled myself crudely out of range, and then the sound of it was veering away in another bearing. I risked a glance over my shoulder, desperate to place them.

  I caught a visual of that loping primate body entwined with a larger, four-legged one, and could hear the occasional thump of a hoof-beat in the grasses.

  Then someone's hands were hauling me up, spiriting me away. I tore my eyes from the fight, focusing instead on finding my footing. Camouflage flashed at the corner of my vision, beside me, and only moments passed before we ran headlong into the midst of additional silhouettes, armed and staked throughout the brush on their way to rescue me.

  I breathed a breathless sigh – more like an exhaling gasp – of relief, delivered back into safe hands.

  “Don't shoot,” I gasped at one of them when I saw the bow and arrow in his hands. He let the string go slack, wondering at my command. There's a horse out there, I thought. Defending me.

  And, gradually, the sounds of a fight died down across the grassy distance. The snarls grew fainter, becoming baritone whimpers, and then there was only the sound of hooves pounding something, repeatedly, before there was no more sound at all.

  The armed soldiers glanced amongst themselves, exchanged some sort of signal, and moved forward to investigate while the one towing me took me safely back to camp. He deposited me outside of one of the tents, turning his eyes prudently to our perimeter. It seemed my screams had awakened everyone, I saw as I looked about; they all stood about looking anxious.

  Jay strode up, knelt beside me. His hand went to the back of my neck, as if to cradle me, but his eyes addressed the soldier. “What happened?”

  “Something attacked her,” the other man replied, and, seeing nothing of his fellow men or any creatures having tracked us back to camp, he looked to me. “What were you doing out there?”

  'Sleepwalking' would do nothing to save me any dignity, but I didn't know what else to tell him. “It was a gorilla,” I said instead, answering Jay. I leaned back against the tent – and his hand – and closed my eyes, drawing on my composure. “It was affected like the Demon Mounts,” my mouth kept working. “Altered, and...fearsome.”

  “There was something else,” the soldier added, and I opened my eyes.

  “It saved me,” I confirmed.

  “What?” Jay wanted to know, trying to make sense of the whole thing.

  I recalled the brief glimpses I had gleaned, solidifying the conclusion I had come to out there in the heat of things. “A horse,” I said, a little incredulous now that I had the presence of mind to think about it.

  Jay, however, did not seem surprised – at least, not enough that it was worth showing it. It was almost as if he could have expected as much. After everything else he'd seen with me, it was just following the pattern, wasn't it?

  The other soldiers returned to camp after awhile, and they all compared notes. They confirmed that it had been a gorilla – 'had been' being the key phrase. It was dead, now – pounded into the ground. There was no sign of the horse.

  “There was a horse,” I whispered to Jay, staunch in my position, when his eyes consulted me. And I knew he believed me.

  *

  We rolled into camp in K.S. Territory after a taxing second-half journey and pitched our lot with the others. That brewing horizon drew my eyes like a magnet, but it was quiet and barren, nothing but a trampled memory paving the way for other battles to come. Soon enough it would flicker with heat-wave marching figures, an impending mirage that would quickly become all too real.

  There was no time to lose. When the others went to sit down for evening grub, I pulled Toby away to the corrals, and we got to work on the horses. Nobody intervened to insist on any kind of order – in truth, Toby started up his tricks without anyone taking much notice at all, for they blended right in with the campfires in the background. A task made almost cozy, except the horses didn't think so.

  I worked as peacemaker between the pyro-man and the equine, ignoring the growling of my stomach. It was impossible to have an appetite at a time like this, anyway. I couldn't imagine how the others could eat, except that it was probably necessary to feed their strength before battle.

  The horses were beginning to respond well to our tutelage. It seemed I was finding the words, in the language of the equines, to communicate the idea of coming to terms with the great beast that was fire. I could not say to any human being what those words were, for they did not translate, but I was beginning to see in my own way the paths that I needed to repave with whispers, the same way wind buries and uncovers streets – whole cities, even – in the deserts of the world. The same way water carves a cave into rock.

  Yes, I can hear the ocean.

  One trainee, a stony gray mustang-type with a smokey mane and tail, took to the idea of defying flame so well that he practically dared Toby to come closer, only tossing his head in mild aggravation to keep his face out of range as Toby treaded nearer and nearer and blew spurts right up to the animal's throat.

  Afterward, the mustang sported singed hair down his neck and chest, an effect that only complimented his already-smokey coat, and thus he was dubbed Char. A fitting name for a warhorse. And this one, looking at him after the session, I could safely say I had found one whom I thought just might have it in him.

&nbs
p; The Lieutenant came by, later, and I turned to her with a keen sense of success swelling in my chest, intent on announcing itself. “This one,” I said. “If any of these horses have what it takes, he does. He needs to be at the front of the line, wherever you need the most damage done.”

  “We have a special one on our hands?” she asked, interested. She rested her wrists on the top rail, looking in.

  I followed her gaze, considering Char. The nearby flames glinted in his eyes – but not in the fiery, wild way that I'd seen in many. In his, it just looked like keen, bold embers.

  “There's no fear in him,” I confirmed thoughtfully. “I've seen it before, in some wild ones. The mustangs that have roamed free for so long... They're programmed survivors. Built for hardship. They've killed wolves and crushed wildcats, outrun wildfires...” I turned back to her, a shared sense of sacred pride displayed in my voice. “They've gone against the grain and developed a frightful sense of confidence because of it. I imagine this one has done all that and more. He thinks the world ought to bow to him. Fire seems to be a minor inconvenience he can just as soon stomp into ashes when he's had enough of it getting in his face.”

  The lieutenant nodded, looking thoughtfully pleased. “Sounds promising. Let's have him ready to go.”

  “There's only one problem,” I said, running my eyes over Char's stance. He was standing patiently, but poised – like a god, who had all the time in the world – in the corner of the pen. “He isn't broken.”

  *

  “Well, shouldn't things that aren't broken be the easiest to fix?” was Sonya's response to the obvious conundrum, but I had to tell her it wasn't going to be as easy as that. This was not a horse who was going to submit to just anyone – and certainly not on short notice, under pressure. That defiance was too well established. That independence was too keen. I would do my best, of course, but he wasn't going to be ready. The next round was marching closer, and I could whisper to Char to my heart's content, but I couldn't nail anything into him, not by then.