by Judith Tarr
I was completely blank. There were things I was supposed to do, in the world I used to live in before this morning.
Cats. Food. Their bin was almost empty. So was my refrigerator. I could survive on the last bag of blue corn chips, but the cats needed something more substantial.
The longer I lived on the ranch, the harder it got to leave. I’d been taking longer and longer to push myself out on errand runs, and my friends in town had mostly given up on inviting me anywhere. Sometimes I thought I’d shrink to a tiny point of nothing and disappear, and the only ones who would notice would be the cats, because I’d have stopped feeding them.
That was the dark-worm inside my head talking. I knew it, but I was losing my ability to care that every word it whispered was a lie.
The papers in their envelope on the kitchen table changed everything. I couldn’t take it in. I couldn’t stay in the house, either. Suddenly I needed to be out as much as for months—years—I’d needed to be in.
I threw hay at the equines, threw ice in the cooler and the cooler in the truck and pulled myself in after it, and aimed it toward Tucson.
I’d meant to hit the pet supply and the grocery and then dive back into my safe zone, but I wasn’t going to be let go that easily. Tucson has strong magic of its own. It sends out a call, and the people who hear it have no power to resist.
It called me even before the ranch took me in. I came to visit Dorrie when one of her shows happened to be shooting in town, fell in love with mountains and desert and sky, packed up my East-Coast life and went west.
Thirteen years later, between the pet supply and the supermarket, I was abruptly, head-spinningly starved. The press of city was still almost tolerable, and I happened to be passing by the strip mall that happened—what a coincidence!—to contain my friend Caro’s restaurant, cafe, gathering place, sacred space.
The Women’s Side is concentrated essence of Tucson magic. What it is is what it says on the sign. Women’s space. No man has ever been turned away, but most of them will slide on by without even realizing they’ve done it.
The décor is spare and clean, the colors classic Southwestern: sand and terracotta and turquoise and dusky purple. The only piece of kitsch is an embroidery sampler that hangs by the cash register. In a frame of blood-red hearts and sharp-toothed flowers, it says, “Whatever You Do, Don’t Let Them Hand You Over to the Women.”
When I came in, with a pause while my eyes adapted from glaring sunlight to much dimmer interior, Caro was parked in the last booth on the left, reading the cards for a couple of sunburned, heatstruck tourists in Mystical Sedona tee-shirts. A few of the other booths and tables were occupied: locals, mostly, with coffee and laptops or tablets.
Caro didn’t look up, but she knew I was there. I ghosted past her to the patio. It was considerably warmer than the room I’d just left, but the tiled fountain in the middle and the pots of lemon and orange trees, and the raised beds of herbs and edible flowers along the ocotillo fence, cut the heat from blazing to tolerable.
No one else was out there. The bowls of water for the coffee-shop dogs were freshly filled, ready for the afternoon influx, but for now I had it all to myself.
For the first time in days, I could sit and breathe. This little bit of protected space absolved me of any need to be in charge of anything. All I had to do was sip the latte Bobbie-the-barista brought me and watch the hummingbirds attack the feeders that hung from the branches of the trees.
I could have stood to be a tiny jeweled bird with wings that spun into a blur. Sipping nectar all day. Defending my territory against all comers.
That was what my new employers had hired me to do. We could all pretend I’d signed on to be farm manager for a herd of pasture boarders, but I was more like a paranormal bodyguard.
That’s the hard part about being what I am. I can’t pretend something is normal when every hackle I have is standing straight up.
Not in a bad way, mind you. I hadn’t given myself over to the forces of evil. They were just not ordinary. Not even close.
Whatever these horses were, they needed protection. I could be sure I’d find out why. Probably, with my luck, I’d find it out the hard way.
I drained the last of my latte. Before I could do more than gaze sadly into the bottom of the mug, Bobbie appeared with a brand-new one.
“Magical barista superpowers,” I said.
She set a plate in front of me. “Magical chef powers, too. Organic and completely toxic-waste-free.”
I lifted the lid of rosemary and olive oil ciabatta, and found beautiful, perfect caprese: fresh mozz that had probably been made this morning, tomatoes and basil from the garden, a glisten of olive oil, a spritz of lemon from one of the trees.
Bobbie was already gone. I heard voices inside: the tourists exploring the gift shop, with commentary. It was a cheerful sound, like birds chattering at each other. I ate my sandwich and let the sound flow over me, with the bubble of the fountain for counterpoint.
I was back in focus. I was also deeply calm. I might not be ready for whatever was coming, but I wasn’t deer-in-the-headlights, either.
Caro stopped me on the way out. “Wait up a bit,” she said while she wrangled a tray loaded with orders for the table of ten in the middle.
I sat in the booth where the cards were neatly stacked and squared. I don’t read the cards; they’re not my practice. I have a solid respect for those who do.
Caro is really, really good at it. I watched her take care of her customers, still in my zone of calm.
Caro is tall and solid. Her mother was a civil-rights activist in the Sixties. Her father was Hopi, from First Mesa—where outsiders don’t go. She takes more after her mother than her father, with her mahogany skin and exuberant hair, but she has her father’s eyes and cheekbones.
She belly dances for fun and occasional profit. I could see that while she moved around the table: the delicate way she set her feet down, and the smooth sway of her hips. It was like watching one of the horses move, a kind of peaceful pleasure.
Once she had the table settled, she took a short detour through the kitchen and finally made her way back to me. She was a little out of breath. “Sorry! Things got into a pile all of a sudden.”
“No problem,” I said.
She looked me over. Her eyebrows went up. “If I didn’t know you better, I’d ask what you were on.”
“Patio vibes,” I said.
I paused. I felt a weird reluctance to tell her the news, though there wasn’t any obvious reason not to. The papers were signed; I hadn’t seen anything resembling a nondisclosure agreement.
I sucked in a breath and said it. “I got a job this morning. Someone wants to board their horses at the ranch, and I’m the manager.”
“All right!” said Caro with the brilliant flash of a smile. “One of Dorrie’s friends?”
I nodded. “Not the usual breed of idiot. These are real horse people. They travel—a lot. They need a place to keep their horses while they’re on the road.”
“That’s wonderful,” she said. “Congratulations.”
I didn’t tell her who the people were. That seemed right just then, though I knew she’d know when it was time. “I’ll be picking everybody’s brains, once they get here and I find out all the things I don’t know. It’s a long step from two horses and a mule in a mare motel, to being in charge of somebody else’s horses.”
Her smile stayed just as bright as ever. I made the mistake of thinking I could get out of there without drilling any deeper. Then she said, “We’ll be here if you need us. Me. Emma. The whole circle, if it comes to that.”
I shivered down deep. Caro and Emma I call friends. The circle they belonged to, the Women of the Woo as they called themselves, had never taken me in. Or, no: they’d always been willing. I hadn’t.
I wasn’t now, either. I met Caro’s quiet stare. “Premonition?”
She rolled her shoulders: not exactly a shrug. “Don’t get to telling yourself
you’re alone.”
I did my best to pin her with my glare. “All right. Tell me what you’re seeing.”
“Nothing,” she said. “It’s just a feeling.”
It is not a good idea to ignore one of Caro’s feelings. “I’ll keep it in mind,” I said.
She let me go. I almost hung back, almost tried to extract more from her, but I had a feeling of my own about that.
When I climbed into the truck, I found something new in my bag: one of the Women’s Side’s gift bags. Inside was a compact but highly effective protection kit. Sage, salt, lavender oil, rosemary. A bottle labeled, a bit wickedly if you know anything about horses, Storm Shield. A handful of stones: malachite, black tourmaline, a sliver of obsidian sharp enough to cut.
That wasn’t only from Caro. I could feel-smell-taste the whole circle on it. As to how they’d even known . . .
I breathed out the stab of annoyance. I did not want to be a herd animal in the woo. I worked alone. But I could be grateful for a gift.
“Thank you,” I said to the air.
I actually meant it. Caro might not hear my voice, but she’d know.
4
What looked like half the human complement of Le Cirque Equestre descended on the ranch bright and early Monday morning. They arrived in a caravan of half a dozen travel trailers, followed by a small fleet of trucks loaded with everything from fenceposts to absolutely gorgeous grass hay.
First thing they did was repair the roof of the hay barn. Then they unloaded the hay truck into it.
They were not all young, but they were all athletic, and they seemed to be broilproof. They took a lunch break at midday, gravitating toward the nearest available shade, but in an hour they were back out in the sun and dividing the labor. Some of them tackled the pasture fences, while others scoured out the barn and got the lights working and the water lines cleared and running.
There wasn’t anything for me to do. Most of them didn’t speak English—I heard snatches of French and Spanish, and what I was pretty sure was Basque—and the ones who did were polite but clear. They had instructions. I would be signing off on the work, but after they’d finished.
They were labor. I was management. I should observe the proprieties.
Fair enough, though it was more than a little bit uncomfortable to be watching while people worked. I retreated to my house, where email was waiting with the horses’ medical records and import papers, along with a stack of notes on what they were eating and when, and priceless bits such as, “Aemilia is very sweet but will bite if insulted.”
I memorized their names. Aemilia, Alicia, Eneida, Illyria, Matina, Zenobia. The stallion was called Bel. Short; simple. I liked that.
I wondered if I’d like him. Or if he would think I was too stupid to live.
Didn’t matter, as long as he ate what I fed him and let me handle him if I had to.
The horses were due to arrive the first week in November. With luck the heat would have broken by then, and I wouldn’t have to worry about that on top of all the rest of the ways horses can get sick or hurt.
When I came out in the evening to feed my three equines, the barn was almost done, and the fences were about halfway. The crew had parked their trailers in the drive in front of the show barn and run lines to the electric; they’d resurrected the toilet facilities in the barn, and were keeping them clean, too.
I’m not the kind of person who can walk up to a gang of people setting up a barbecue, especially if they’re complete strangers. I sidled around toward the mare motel, to find a small mob leaning on the rails, watching Ricky show off.
Ricky’s registered name is Flight Risk. Don’t get me started about breeders who think it’s funny to give a horse a name he’ll be seriously tempted to live down to. If he’d been a Thoroughbred or a racing Quarter Horse I could almost have seen it, but a Morgan?
The kid I bought him from hauled him around the local fun-show circuit under the moniker of Captain Kirk, which wasn’t quite as dire but didn’t fit him, either. He’s a lover, but he’s no fighter.
He was completely in touch with his inner Lipizzaner tonight. After a whole day of turning himself inside out to keep up with all the excitement, he wasn’t even close to winding down.
You’d think he was auditioning for the Cirque Equestre. He leaped; he spun; he kicked; he flew. He floated up and down, mane and tail streaming.
Rosie and Aziza were profoundly unimpressed. There was this thing called dinner, they informed me. They’d put themselves in their stalls to make it even clearer.
I shut them in and fed them. Ricky veered over toward his own stall, but then he spun back out into the open, snorting and farting and blasting around like a crazy thing.
It was going to be really interesting when seven new horses showed up. Meanwhile I settled in to wait him out.
The crew from the Cirque didn’t try to “help,” which won my eternal gratitude. They watched and laughed and applauded and said things that added up to, “Nice horse. He sure can move.”
It dawned on me, embarrassingly late, that they had been here all day and I hadn’t even started a crowd migraine. It was like having a flock of birds in the pastures. They didn’t belong here, and yet they did. It was right that they were in this place.
By the time Ricky finally stopped acting out the name on his papers and buried his head in his feeder, the last of the sunset had faded from the sky. The smell of roasting meat wafted from the crew’s camp, making my stomach rumble.
“Come and eat,” the crew leader said. She was about my age, with the leather-and-whipcord look of a person who’d spent her whole life working outdoors. I’d seen her up on top of the hay barn, drilling in new steel panels, and she’d been driving posts like a machine all afternoon.
She grinned at me now, teeth white in her dark-tanned face, and waved me off toward the trailers. Management didn’t always have to keep its place, then, especially if it was hungry.
They had chicken and pork and sausage sizzling on a grill big enough to handle half a cow, and a table loaded with everything from eggs to cheese to salad to pickled just about everything, and a barrel filled with ice and stuffed with beer and wine. It looked like a massive amount of food and drink, but they tore through it with a full day’s worth of appetite.
I filled a plate with a little bit of everything. I despise beer, but the wine wasn’t bad. The food was amazing: it tasted Spanish, but with twists and turns of flavor that added up to something distinctly different.
“Basque,” the crew leader said. Her name was Ohana. She made sure I had a place to sit, which happened to be in the middle of the crowd, and a comfortable chair to sit in.
I was being treated like a guest of honor. It wasn’t just Ohana being in charge and me sitting next to her. They were all orbiting around me.
That made me want to curl up and hide. I couldn’t slip away: I was right in the light, where everyone could see me.
When people started bringing me things, I really wanted out of there. They were little things: a string of blue beads, an African violet in a tiny pot, a carved horse no bigger than the end of my little finger.
I tried to refuse them. I even tried to be polite. But they seemed to have forgotten every word of English. They smiled and put their gifts on the table beside me.
Except the horse. I couldn’t resist that one. At first I thought it was carved from bone, but when it lay in my palm I realized it was stone. Maybe jade? It was creamy white and slightly translucent, and the horse was an arrogant little thing, standing with head and tail up as if daring the world to get in its face.
It was warm in my hand. It felt alive. It also felt very old, though I couldn’t place the period or the culture. Greek? Etruscan?
My fingers closed over it. “Really, this is lovely,” I said to Ohana, “but I can’t possibly accept—”
“It’s a great thing you’re doing for the lord and his ladies,” she said. “We want to thank you. It’s not very American
of us, we know, but could you find it in yourself to indulge us?”
She couldn’t have done a better job of guilting me if she’d hired my mother as a consultant. Every argument I had wheezed and collapsed, while the gifts kept coming.
When the party wound down, which wasn’t nearly as late as I might have expected, I had a basket full of gifts, and a more than decent buzz from the sweetish wine I’d been plied with at dessert. I had an escort to my door, as polite as an old-fashioned prom date, and they sang me in, a slightly rowdy, slightly plaintive song that might have been as old as the little horse.
Most of the gifts spent the night on the kitchen counter, but he took charge of the table beside my bed. When I slipped into a dream, he guarded the gate. It was an amazingly comforting sensation.
5
The crew finished in three days. They left a pristine barn with a fully stocked feed room, a beautifully electrified system of fencing, and both indoor and outdoor arenas repaired, dragged, and topped up with new sand footing where the old had blown away or worn down to nothing.
I was sincerely sorry to see them go. Half of them hugged me and did the kiss-on-the-cheeks thing. Ohana said for them all, “You will come and see the show when it’s set up. We’ll have tickets for you. With backstage passes.”
That, I didn’t even try to turn down. She grinned at me. “See you in Scottsdale.”
“For sure,” I said.
They drove off into the blazing light of afternoon. I stood at the gate and watched them go, till the last trailer turned the corner and disappeared.
Ricky hollered at me from behind the barn. It was still on the warm side, but the sun was getting low already, and the heat would start to drop by the time we hit the trails.
He was waiting for me at the gate, pawing impatiently. I threw his halter on him and led him into the beautiful new-old barn. He snorted at the changes in smells, but he was interested, not afraid.
He was braver than the ghosts. I hadn’t seen or felt them since the crew came, but they hadn’t completely gone. They were hiding in the shadows.
