by Judith Tarr
Not everything is as big on the outside as it is in.
I closed the laptop. A quail parade marched across the driveway and into the mesquite bosque. No worries there about giant invisible predators.
Down beyond the bosque, a plume of dust curled up. Somebody was on the road, heading this way.
I made myself breathe. I wasn’t usually this blank this close to the client’s arrival, but it didn’t have to mean anything. It was probably another pink fluffball. Cat this time. Declawed. Soul crying out for mercy.
The dust rolled closer. The vehicle that raised it was a light grey pickup, newish and undented, but it obviously worked for a living.
It didn’t have a front license plate, so could have been from anywhere. Two people inside. Man and woman.
I was starting to settle into myself. The sense of something huge was still with me, but I’d stopped letting it matter.
The truck curved around the drive and parked up by the house. The driver must have seen me, but she also must have had directions from Dorrie. Which was as good a recommendation as I was likely to need.
I stayed where I was. They’d figure it out or they wouldn’t. It didn’t matter to me.
They came straight down the path toward me. She was about my size, more sturdy than slim, but she walked like an athlete or a dancer: light and balanced. I’d seen faces like hers in Minoan frescoes, pure Mediterranean, with long dark eyes and masses of curling black hair.
He was medium tall, lean and lightly built. His hair was long and straight, and his face was narrow, with a long nose and high cheekbones. He didn’t look anything like the woman, but then again he did. It was the coloring, and the nose, and something about the set of the eyes.
They were related, I was sure. Neither of them showed any sign of what Hollywood calls “a little work done.” Those were the faces they were born with.
That was so unusual for one of Dorrie’s referrals that I would have been interested even without the past half-hour’s worth of weirdness. I stood up, wishing I’d put on something besides my usual shorts and tropical shirt—then told myself to stop. I was what I was. It didn’t matter what they thought.
“Claire,” I said. I didn’t hold out my hand.
They didn’t seem to mind. “Elissa,” she said with a hint of an accent, “and this is my brother Philippe.”
I wasn’t getting anything from them but a kind of blank amiability and a sense that they expected me to know what they were here for. That made my skin prickle.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “You haven’t come for a reading, have you? Are you here for a tour of the ranch house? That’s another couple of miles down the road. It’s not open for the season yet, but—”
“We might have a reading,” Elissa said, “later. Will you show us the barn? There are pastures, yes?”
I blinked. That, I hadn’t expected.
No one had shown any interest in the horse farm since long before I moved into the old farm manager’s doublewide. It had been a small but choice show barn in the heyday of the Arabian boom, when everything on the place, including the Jack Russells, carried at least a five-figure price tag. I kept my equines in the old breeding barn, the mare motel as it’s called in these parts, which opened onto a couple of acres of highly intermittent grass. The pastures beyond that, which ran a good half-mile between the road and the wash, were given over to weeds and rabbits and occasional deer.
The fences were still up, though the electric along the top and bottom hadn’t been turned on in years. Sometimes I let the equines out there with all the connecting gates open, to be fierce wild and free for a day, but that was as much action as any of that land saw, this decade.
Now these two strangers who read as horse people were asking me to show them the facilities. I couldn’t exactly refuse. Dorrie’s family owned the land. If they’d decided to open the farm again, I didn’t have a whole lot of say in it.
I wasn’t being asked to weigh in on the people, either, but I could hardly help it. They knew what they were looking at while I walked them through the barn—empty of ghosts this morning—and the tack room and what used to be the breeding lab. They inspected the hot walker and the round pen and the stallion paddocks with their six-foot reinforced fences, circled the covered riding arena and the smaller outdoor arena that still carried the tracks of Emma’s ride last night, and walked with me down through the pastures.
Elissa did most of the talking. Philippe spoke English, but his accent was much thicker than hers, and I could feel him wanting to fall into French, or maybe Basque. Though I didn’t know why I thought that.
He ranged ahead of us or circled behind or wandered off on inspection tours of his own. He made me think of a very well-bred and somewhat nervous horse. If I looked through him, which I really wasn’t trying to do, I could see a whole herd of horses, beautiful shimmering creatures who danced with him in front of a silent crowd.
“So,” I said on the way back from the pastures, “you’re trainers?”
I was fishing. They hadn’t said anything about plans for the place, or mentioned their horses. They’d barely asked questions. Just looked, and listened while I pointed out the various features.
Philippe had gone ahead again, striding along the fenceline with a stop to peer at the hookup for one of the stock tanks. He’d already figured out that the water lines were functional.
Elissa didn’t answer my question. She said, “You watch over all of this?”
“More or less,” I answered. “There’s a foundation that takes care of the ranch house, runs the tours and maintains the exhibits. They’re mostly here on weekends between November and March. The rest of the time I have the place to myself.”
“I saw the sign for the house,” she said. “It’s not very near here, is it?”
“Not really,” I said. “We’re on the west end of the old ranch. The house is all the way down on the east side. Nobody stops by here unless they mean to.”
“That’s good,” said Elissa.
I couldn’t see through her at all. She was perfectly self-contained. Which should have put me on edge, but somehow it didn’t. She was strangely comfortable to be near, like someone I’d known forever.
Past lives, my friend Caro would say.
By the time we made our way back up to my part of the property, we were all well and truly baked, and the water bottles I’d insisted we take with us were empty. I more than half expected Elissa and Philippe to get in their truck and drive enigmatically away, but they accepted my invitation to come into the house and cool off, and were agreeable to the concept of iced tea.
The cats came out for them. Even shy little Roswitha emerged from her daytime den to mewp at Elissa and curl up in Philippe’s lap.
I have a serious weak spot for a man who gets along with cats. With orange William in my own lap like a furry, purring watermelon, I said, “You can tell me why you’re here now. I’ll try not to say anything objectionable.”
Elissa smiled. Dorrie must have warned her. “You’ve heard of Le Cirque Equestre, yes?”
Of course I knew about the ultimate traveling horse extravaganza. Dorrie had done promos for it—one of her sidelines in between spates of showrunning.
“They’ll be in Scottsdale this winter, won’t they?” I said. “They’re in what, L.A. now?”
“Burbank,” she said, about the time my brain caught up with my mouth.
I’d seen every one of the promos. Being horse people, I had barely noticed the human-shaped objects on or around the horses. If I pushed myself, I could make the memory a little clearer.
Gorgeous snow-white stallion in crimson and gold trappings, doing the ancient dance that turned into modern dressage: he’d had a rider, of course. Small and sturdy, masses of Minoan curls, profile straight out of Knossos.
Then I understood the herd I’d seen through Philippe: the six white stallions who performed at liberty while the man in the plain white coat alternately guided them and left
them free to play. He was sitting in my kitchen, scrubbling Roswitha’s chin.
I don’t get starstruck. I’ve talked to too many stars’ animals.
But—Cirque Equestre—!
I didn’t squeal. It was a near thing. So was pulling myself back to thinking like a practical person. “We’re a long way from Scottsdale, if you’re looking for a place to keep the horses,” I said. “Unless—it’s in between gigs?”
“We have our stabling arranged,” Elissa said. “Also our training center.”
That was a relief. Really. This place wasn’t nearly up for an operation that size, even if those incredibly valuable and beautifully trained horses could have lived rough in pastures.
Which left me puzzled. “What can I do for you, then? You don’t seem to need a communicator. If you don’t need stabling—”
“Actually we do,” Elissa said, “but not for our troupe. We have a small herd of our own horses, that we had kept at home in France. Not long ago we had to move them. They were in Canada, where the Cirque is based, but that hasn’t been satisfactory. They can’t stay with us; we travel too much, and it’s not the life they thrive on—unlike our show stallions, who all choose to come with us. They want, need, a quiet place. One that is safe. Where they can settle and be content.”
The longer she talked, the stronger her accent become, till she was almost singing the words. That sense of hugeness was back, like some enormous winged thing hovering overhead.
Not a dragon. Nothing so intelligent. This was pure predator: all hunger and teeth.
Away toward the mountain, I heard a roll of thunder. The sun that had been slanting through the windows was dimmer; wind tugged at the trailing branches of the pepper tree.
Elissa didn’t react, but Philippe had gone perfectly still. Roswitha crouched in his lap. Her thin stripey tail was twitching.
That was enough of that. The weather could do what it did, but whatever was trolling the sky could make up its mind to leave.
Driving it away was not a good idea. It gave me the feeling of a very, very, very large gila monster—and those, you can’t shoo out of the road. They turn around and come at you with those venomous jaws wide open.
What you do is lure them elsewhere. You give them something to fixate on and get them moving with it, till they’re off the pavement and in the desert where they belong.
I showed this thing a nice little weather system down by Rocky Point, a thunder cell full of lovely crackly lightning. That was something to sink its invisible fangs into, and it was heading out to sea, which was a good thing for the people on the coast.
All that happened between two long breaths. I sucked the second one in and let it go, and pushed as hard as I could against the sudden wave of ohgodtired.
Elissa reached for my hand. Philippe had a grip on her free one. It was like a long drink of water after a morning in the Arizona sun.
I said the first thing that came into my head. “How many horses?”
Elissa let go my hand. I was sorry: it was lonely and a bit cold without her, but the exhaustion had gone away.
“Seven horses,” she said. “Six mares. Stallion.”
“Breeding herd?”
“If it suits them.” That was a strange answer, but as I keep saying, horse people are strange.
“Pastured together?”
She nodded. I was starting to get a sense of something in back of her. It had a definite flavor of horse, but not your usual version.
They were watching me. The taste of it said mares, and when I closed my eyes, I counted six in a circle around me. Nothing about color or size—that didn’t matter to them.
Every other non-wild horse I’d ever met has had some form of what I have to call damage. Or maybe domestication is a better word. Humans control their world. There’s nothing they can do about it, and they’ve learned not to try.
These weren’t wild. They knew us very well. Liked us, even, or at least found us tolerable. But that was a choice. Any one of them could choose not to have anything to do with us at all, and no human being could force her to change her mind.
I’d never met horses who thought like this. Wild horses didn’t figure us into their calculations at all, except as a particularly dangerous and powerful predator. Horses who accepted us but kept their sense of self—that was completely different.
I had to work to get my mind back onto the practical human track. “You’ve seen the facilities. You could board them in the barn with turnout, with just a little cleanup and a few repairs. If you want them on pasture, I’m not sure—”
“That would be taken care of,” Elissa said.
Philippe nodded. “Fix the fences, clean and refill the water tanks. The hay barn—roof needs fixing.”
I had to figure Dorrie had gone over that with them. I’d deal with my feelings about that later, when I could be something resembling calm. “You’ll have a caretaker on the place? There’s an apartment above the show barn, though it would need—”
“There is a caretaker,” Elissa said. “That would be you.”
Of course it would. Dorrie has a brutal sense of justice, and this was just like her.
“I’ve never managed a horse farm,” I said. “I know how to look after my three, but I’m not sure—”
“Our horses are easy,” Philippe said. “Just make sure they eat and drink, and keep them safe. They do the rest.”
That might be simple, but no way it was easy. Horses are not easy. Horses are complicated, fragile, and hideously expensive. I had a hard enough time being responsible for my eclectic crew of equines. Someone else’s herd, a breeding herd no less—
“I’ve never handled a stallion,” I said.
“He’s easy, too,” Philippe said. Of course he would. He traveled the world with a herd of them. He’d probably grown up drinking mare’s milk and running with the colts.
I’m your basic American horse kid. Geldings as far as the eye can see, and the occasional—very occasional—mare. Rosie the mule was a radical departure, and I had the scars to prove it.
I happen to like mares. I didn’t at that point know if I liked stallions or not. I’d never known one well enough to tell.
“We’ll provide instructions,” Elissa said, “and show you what needs to be done, before we leave you to it. It is simple as my brother says. They’re very comfortable together, and they’ve lived in pastures all their lives.”
“No barns at all?” I asked. “I know we have a reputation for nonstop heat, but we have actual real winter. Even snow, sometimes. When the sleet comes down sideways, a horse wants a bit of help.”
“They will tolerate walls,” Elissa said. “They’re not feral. They’re all trained to saddle, and some of the ladies drive.”
I had to keep pushing. It felt like an obligation—though to what, I wasn’t sure. “What about foaling? I know absolutely nothing about that.”
“None of the mares is in foal,” Elissa said. There were resonances in that, but I wasn’t examining them right now. She leaned toward me across the kitchen table. “The ladies say you can do whatever they need. You listen, and you’re willing to learn.”
“And the gentleman?”
“The gentleman is obedient to his ladies.”
I had my doubts about that, but I’d already said I knew nothing about stallions. “All right,” I said. “Suppose I do this. I’ll need a lot of help, right down to knowing how much hay to order and what and how and when to feed them. Will I be expected to exercise them? Breed them? Know when to call the vet?”
“You will watch over them,” Philippe said. “Everything else is a list or an instruction, which we can give. And of course we pay.”
My upbringing told me to let that slide by. Money was an unmentionable, like manure disposal. Which might get to be considerable if all seven of them ended up in the barn, though I could probably get help with that. Emma was a master barn cleaner.
Right. Money. Which I needed. Badly.
So of course my mouth said, “How much?”
Neither of them even blinked. Elissa told me, concisely.
I did blink. Holy . . . “Per year?”
“Per month.”
Double and triple and quadruple holy heaven and hell below. “That’s the whole budget for the operation, right? Hay and feed and vet and—”
“That is for you,” Elissa said. “The rest you’ll oversee, of course, and there will be spreadsheets, which I despise, but there’s no help for it, is there?”
I don’t think I was supposed to laugh, but I couldn’t help it. It was just so preposterous. If this was real, if it wasn’t some awful joke or cruel scam, I wouldn’t have to scrape for cooler-repair money for a long time. Maybe ever, if the gig went on for a while, and if I was smart. I might never have to do another client reading again, unless I actively wanted to.
Never count your pennies before they’re in the bank. Mom always said that.
My freelancer self was ready to leap on it and never mind the torpedoes. Mom’s daughter said, “I have to think about it.”
Philippe and Elissa looked at each other. Elissa sighed a little. Philippe said, “Of course you have to think. Tomorrow, then?”
I should leap on this. It was a job. With horses. What was wrong with me?
I didn’t want to answer that.
They stood up. They were leaving. If I said I’d call, would I? Would I ever?
“Never mind,” I said. “I’ll do it.”
3
I signed papers. I even read them through to make sure I wasn’t agreeing to be an accessory to a crime. The numbers were exactly what I’d agreed to, and the first month’s salary would be in my bank account by the end of the week, though the horses wouldn’t arrive until November.
We had an impossible amount of work to do before then, to get the place ready. That would start next week. Meanwhile I had a job, and I hadn’t even tried to talk myself out of it.
My new employers left me with my copy of the papers and a promise to send me further instructions before the repair crew arrived. They both hugged me, European style, with the kiss on both cheeks. It must have felt like hugging a board.
