Forever and a Knight

by Bridget Essex

  The horse is jet black and has feathery hair cascading all around its huge hooves. It has a very muscular build, and it reminds me a little of the Budweiser Clydesdales, if the Clydesdales were pure black and looked angry. The horse has a long mane and forelock, and it's not wearing a saddle, bridle or anything tying it to a specific spot.

  It could, for example, saunter on over here and crush me in a heartbeat—if it wanted to.

  But it doesn’t seem to want to, which—in that moment—provides a small measure of comfort. It stares at me for a long moment from beneath long, black lashes; then realizing that I’m really no threat to it, it goes back to tearing up the grass around the campfire in gigantic mouthfuls, chewing them aggressively before tearing up more grass and repeating the process.

  “Nice horsey,” I mutter, standing up. I start shivering almost immediately. I’m only wearing my Scooby Doo bed shirt and those leopard-print bottoms (a fact that horrifies me, but what can I do?), and August has apparently given us a raincheck on that whole summer thing.

  But, if I’m being honest with myself, I know that it’s not really August.

  I don’t exactly think we’re in Kansas anymore.

  I pick up the top blanket and wrap it around my shoulders, glancing around at the drab, gray surroundings and the utter lack of gorgeous-woman-wearing-metal-pants.

  “Hello?” I call out into the clearing.

  The horse snorts and takes a step away from me, like I offended it, shaking its head and blowing air out of its nose.

  But other than that, there’s no reply.

  Well, the knight lady couldn’t have gotten far. I’m assuming this is her horse and this is her stuff. If I can find that woman, maybe I can get some answers out of her, figure out where the hell I am.

  And where the hell Boston disappeared to.

  I take a deep breath and hold the blanket tighter against myself, but a twinge of pain makes me glance down at my right palm—the palm that somehow, impossibly, I’d gotten a massive thorn stuck into last night, a thorn that went through my entire hand.

  It’s been bandaged carefully with thin strips of white cloth. And though it occasionally twinges, the pain is pretty minor, considering my hand was pierced through. It makes no sense that I'm not in a ton of pain.

  I stare down at the bandages with a brow raised for a long moment. Part of me wants to unwrap them, see what’s going on beneath them, see what happened to that wound, but I’m still a little woozy-feeling from blacking out, and I don’t want to encourage unconsciousness by staring at a gaping wound. I sigh and wrap the blanket tighter around my shoulders, ears pricked for any sound. Then I hold my breath and listen very carefully.

  The forest is purely silent. Except...

  I think I hear something off in the far distance, the really far distance. It sounds like murmuring. I don’t exactly want to get lost in these woods, but my stomach is beginning to turn in panic when I wonder what time it is, if I’ve missed the board meeting...

  Where the hell I am—stuff like that.

  So I set out toward that murmuring sound, making certain that I do my best to walk in a very straight line into the woods. I was in the Girl Scouts for all of one week when I was a kid, but I think I remember a few tips on how not to get lost in the wilderness. I think. Shivering and stepping very carefully around branches, vines and dead plants (I’m only wearing slippers), I walk forward slowly.

  I pause, turning to look back at the camp, making certain I can still see it. And I can: there’s that enormous black horse, not giving me the time of day and eating like grass is going out of style. There’s the small fire, busily licking at the remaining bits of wood in the circle of earth. There’s the brown blanket that I spent the night on.

  I hear the snap of a small branch close to me, and I jump out of my skin, turning to look back the way I was going. It was probably just a squirrel, I think, licking my lips, my mouth suddenly dry.

  But there’s nothing there.

  I’m not an outdoorsy kind of lady—not that you didn’t already realize that, since I live in the heart of Boston and rarely leave my beloved city. It’s not that these woods, as impossible and improbable as they are, aren’t gorgeous. Because they are.

  There’s just a lot that’s very strange about this situation.

  Obviously, numero uno: there shouldn’t be a forest in the middle of Boston. But let’s take that factor out of it.

  In Boston? It’s August. It’s sweltering out on the coolest of days. It’s a gorgeous, hot, end-of-summer time full of bikini-topped women, cold beers and hot dog vendors on the corners yelling about their famous mustard.

  Here, wherever the hell “here” is?

  It’s freezing. There are leaves on the ground, like it’s the end of fall, not the end of summer. There are bare bones trees in between the towering pine trees, and these bare bones trees are already bare because they’ve shed their leaves. The colorful carpet at my feet is made entirely of fallen leaves. There’s hardly any grass on the ground (though that horse back there is still finding a pretty great breakfast), and what’s left is dying or browning.

  It doesn’t make any sense. But when I hear another twig snapping, this time behind me, I’m expecting something to make sense. I’m expecting to see a squirrel, or absolutely nothing, like just a moment ago. And I do turn to look at what’s behind me, because I’m a little freaked out right now, and I’d really like to see something familiar. Like a squirrel.

  But that’s not what I see when I turn around and look back the way I’ve come.

  If I thought an enormous forest in the middle of Boston was weird, I had no idea how weird things could get.

  Because, right now, I’m staring at an enormous silver bear.

  To call it white wouldn’t be right. Its coat is absolutely the color of silver, and its fur shimmers in the half-light of the clouded sky overhead as if it’s lit from within. It looks like its fur is actually glowing, throwing light like an enormous, living disco ball, but that metaphor isn’t elegant enough for how the bear actually looks.

  Sometimes, really late at night (which is early morning for me, since I have to get up so early for my morning radio show), I watch nature documentaries, and while I’ve always thought there was a lot that’s noble about the polar bear, at the same time, I’ve always thought they’re kind of hilarious, too, the way they slip and slide on the ice, the way they play with each other like enormous puppies.

  There’s absolutely nothing funny or puppy-like about this bear.

  It isn’t a polar bear, for one. It can’t be—not with that color of fur. Also, it stands much taller than a polar bear. I know that the shoulders of a polar bear are about level with the head of a man...

  But this bear? This bear is twice as tall as I am.

  This seems to be the morning of enormous animals.

  But whereas I know that horse back at the camp—the horse I can see just beyond the bear’s shoulder, who keeps cropping grass like this isn’t a big deal, like it sees enormous predators all the time and finds them kind of boring—is completely domesticated...

  Somehow I know, deep down, that this bear is all wild.

  It moves slowly, lumbering along with a great deal of grace between the enormous trees, putting each paw down deliberately, and when I catch its eyes, it stands still on its four massive paws, paws that are the size of garbage can lids.

  It’s only about ten feet away from me as it lifts its massive head, blinking large, deep, bright eyes at me, sniffing the wind, its great nose wrinkling. If it wants to kill me right now, I know I’m dead. I’m already dead. There’s absolutely no way that I can outrun this thing in my slippers, and there’s no way I can evade her.

  I don’t know why I think this bear is a female; something just tells me that she's a she.

  But the bear doesn’t look hungry, and for some reason, I don’t think that she looks like she wants to kill me. In fact, her eyes are actually quite peaceful, the kind of eyes I
associate with cows or other herbivores—really quiet and gentle. But her eyes aren’t brown, like most animal eyes.

  In fact, they’re blue.

  They’re a kind of glacial blue, the soft blue that snow can become at twilight. They’re so light-colored, actually, that they seem to glow, just like her coat.

  The bear rambles forward slowly, taking one step at a time, and I’m too afraid—and, really, mesmerized—to move. So by the time she's standing right in front of me, my heart rate is accelerated, yeah.

  But I’m also filled with the kind of wonder I haven’t felt since I was a kid.

  Her massive head bends toward me, and then, very slowly and thoughtfully, the bear sniffs my face, her nose wrinkling about an inch from my own.

  I stay perfectly still, not breathing. I should be shaking in my slippers, should be bracing myself for her to open her large jaws and bite my head off, or rear up and swipe me with a single paw to oblivion. There’s something deep inside of me that’s telling me those should be my logical, instinctual reactions, instincts that have been finely honed over millions of years thanks to my cavewoman ancestors, running from predators to live another day.

  But as I stare up at this silver bear, as the breath finally comes out of my nose because I can’t hold it in any longer, as that single gust of mine fills up the air in front of both of us like smoke...I realize something extremely odd.

  I’m not afraid of her at all.

  She gazes down at me with those wide, blue eyes, and I stare back at her with my chin tilted up, holding that eye contact.

  There’s something so gentle in that deep, blue gaze that it takes my breath away.

  It reminds me of when I was a little kid, and I went to see Santa Claus for the first time (that I can remember, anyway). I went with my sister, Ellie, to see him, holding her hand tightly while we stood in line, being scared senseless, because our parents had told us how important this was, going to see Santa and tell him what presents we wanted. We weren’t a religious family, so I’d never had any experience with the idea of someone who was so much vaster than me. And, to my kid mind, being able to give presents to children all in one night was pretty damn vast.

  Now, don’t laugh—but when I went up to sit on his lap that first time, when I looked into his kind, blue eyes...I felt a lot of awe. I was six years old. I believed, utterly, that this was the guy who could travel the entire world in a single evening and give presents to every single good girl and boy.

  He was a miracle to me. And it was, of course, just some guy in a suit, hired to be a mall Santa...but he certainly played the part very well. He was kind and really did laugh like a bowl full of jelly when I told him that I didn't want a Barbie—I wanted a G.I. Joe. He put his finger alongside his nose and winked at me warmly. He talked with me a long while, I remember. It was probably only a minute or so, but to a kid in awe of something so much bigger than her, it meant a lot to me. I can say that that's the first time that I felt awe or wonder that big, as I talked to Santa.

  And that’s what this bear reminds me of, as I stand nose to nose with her and am not afraid: awe, wonder and magic. Stuff I've not thought about in a very long time.

  I sigh, then, and that’s what makes the moment pass. She blinks her eyes slowly, and then, tortoise-like, she turns her bulk gently to the left, like a Mack truck backing up, and she begins to lumber back the way she came, putting one paw in front of the other and not looking back.

  But, as she turns from me, her shoulder brushes against the front of my blanket just a little. I didn’t think to move out of the way (I’m pretty sure I’m in some sort of shock). I glance down to look at the few silver hairs she left behind on my blanket, and I glance up just as quickly.

  But when I glance up?

  She’s completely gone. Disappeared. Like she was never here at all.

  I stand stock still for a moment, my heartbeat beginning to thrum loudly against my ribs.

  What just happened?

  I look back down at the blanket covering me and reach up my hand, brushing my fingers against the few silver hairs that are still there. They glimmer in the soft light beneath the trees. These prove she was here, that this just happened.

  I glance around again wildly, but there’s absolutely no place she could have disappeared to. She’s simply vanished, and though the silver hairs remaining prove that she actually existed, that I did actually see her with my own two eyes...it’s still the weirdest thing out of many weird things that have happened to me recently.

  I blink, turning, dazed, and keep making my way further into the forest, stumbling forward.

  I have no idea what to think about what just happened, so I simply don’t.

  But it’s not long—only a few more steps, really—until I find out the source of the murmuring that led me deep into the woods and, for a heartbeat, I can take my mind off of the disappearing bear. I've reached the top of a little embankment, and down below me a small creek winds its way through the woods, bubbling happily over stones. That’s what was making the murmuring sound—the water. It’s bubbling cheerfully enough, in fact, that it looks like this is one of those settings used for filming a magical fairy tale movie.

  But magical fairy tale movies, that I can recall, don’t usually feature a naked woman swimming in a creek.

  I stare, because I can’t help but stare.

  She hasn’t seen me yet, where I’m standing up on the bank. Even though it was pitch black last night, I still recognize her as the woman I fell into, the woman who pointed a sword at my heart, the woman who'd worn armor...but she’s certainly not wearing armor right now. Or anything else for that matter. Okay, maybe it’s been awhile since I saw a naked woman, but it’s not just that (or the fact that I, occasionally, have the mind of a twelve-year-old boy) that keeps me staring.

  I mean...she’s beautiful.

  Maybe not everyone would think she’s beautiful. You’d have to like her type, but I do. God, I do. In the daylight, I can see that she’s completely muscular, with very few soft inches of skin. She’s pale, which somehow surprises me (I don’t know—I guess I thought a woman riding around on a horse would be a bit more tan), but then I note her shoulder-length straight hair is dark red as she rises out of the water a little, running her hands over her wet hair after she’s surfaced, eyes closed, head thrown back as the water drips into the creek from her body.

  It’s one of the most erotic things I’ve ever seen, her standing up in that creek, arching her back and letting her face curve toward the sun as she lets her head fall back, her hair dripping. My heart is thudding against my chest about a mile a minute, and there’s such a fierce ache and want that moves through me, I catch my breath.

  She straightens, running a hand over her face to wipe away the water, and that’s when she sees me. Even across the space between us, I can see that her eyes are dark brown amber, the kind of brown that glints and shimmers, like it has flecks of gold hidden deep within. She has a full mouth, and it’s soft now, with water pouring down her face, but it hardens into a thin line when she spots me. Her cheekbones are high, the curve of her neck leads down to her chest, and I can’t help but stare for a few seconds at her small, round breasts that float above the water.

  “Hello,” she says gruffly, thrusting her chin up as she narrows her eyes and stands up in the creek. Water pours down her body, and she strides out of that creek like she does this sort of thing—walks around naked—all the time. She has the confidant prowl of a predatory big cat. “Did you sleep well?” she asks me, and then she’s standing on the creek bank, sluicing water off her arms with her hands.

  “Uh...” I say with maximum articulateness. She glances over her sculpted shoulder at me with a single brow raised. When she raises that single brow, I go a little weak in the knees.

  Okay. I must have hit my head. What the hell is wrong with me? Yeah, as much as I'm devoted to my job and don't go on as many dates as I used to, I’m not actually dead inside: I find random women
attractive all the time.

  But when I look at her, it’s like a sucker punch to the gut. Well, a little more pleasant than a sucker punch—but it’s just as strong of a sensation. My attraction to her is off the charts, and all I've done is fall into her.

  I normally don't literally fall for women. It usually takes a bit more than that to get the old heart knocking against the ribs so much.

  “Let me look at your wound,” she tells me, her voice rumbling and deep, and with dripping hands, she turns and takes my bandaged hand. She undoes the bandage, wrapping the white cloth backwards around her palm, and her fingers are gentle, but I still wince and shiver as she unwraps that cloth and exposes the wound beneath. For half a moment, my focus shifts away from her gorgeous nakedness.

  I steel myself, take a big inhale of air, and then I chance looking down at my hand.

  The wound itself is about an inch long, which—on my palm—appears massive, but the gash in my palm is covered in a thick coating of cream-colored salve, and appears to no longer be bleeding, which I'm pretty sure is a good sign.

  “You heal well,” she tells me gruffly, spreading my fingers wide and peering down at the wound this way and that. Her fingers on the back of my hand are gentle as she raises my hand to her eye level and stares down into my palm.

  She inhales deeply, and then, rounding her mouth into a soft “o,” she blows warm air onto the center of my palm.

  My heart rate right now is off the charts, and little black points are starting to hover at the corners of my vision, not from seeing the wound, but because of her. There’s this unbelievably gorgeous woman, standing naked right in front of me, holding gently onto my hand and blowing onto it.

  “Uh,” I say again, ever so articulately, “what are you doing?”

  She glances at me, and once more she raises that single brow, her head to the side a little. “Close your eyes, milady,” she tells me in a soft growl.

  My cheeks are so red that I probably look just like that long-ago Santa Claus did, but for some reason, her tone brooks no argument. So I do it. I find myself closing my eyes.