Once I’m dressed, he nods and moves toward the door, clearly expecting me to follow. I walk behind him, noticing the holsters tied low on both thighs, revolver handles visible when his coat flaps open.
Outside he mounts a huge black horse, its flanks covered with white patches; he’s gripping the reins of another, smaller paint, holding it for me as I make my way across the snow. I mount, settle my skirts over my thighs, and accept the reins.
He eyes me. “You run, I’ll catch you.” Reins in one fist, the other gloved hand on his thigh. “Won’t go well for you, if I have to give chase.”
“I won’t run,” I tell him.
Besides, there’s nowhere to run. There is nothing around us but trees and snow and mountains off in the distance. It’s a frozen hellscape, and I have no clue where we are. So, no, I won’t be running away. He’s my only hope for staying alive, it appears. Staying here clearly isn’t an option, nor would I choose that even if it were. I’ll take my chances with this man.
“All right then. Stay close and keep up.”
He rolls his spurs lightly against his horse’s flank, and it glides into a smooth trot. My horse follows automatically, trotting just behind the other horse.
Twenty or thirty minutes of riding, and it becomes obvious we’re in the foothills of a massive mountain range, and we’re headed up into them, angling for a notch between two sky-spearing, snow-capped, craggy peaks. It is bitter cold and the light is fading.
So far, we’ve stuck to a path meandering through the forest. Not a road, nothing so grand as that. More of a narrow dirt track, once a deer path, perhaps, now used by people. In places, the trees are close together and the branches snap and ricochet against us.
Trees carpet the waist and shoulders of the mountains, and surround us in thick, impenetrable ranks of pine and spruce and fir, the mountains only visible sporadically when glimpsed between the thick branches covered in rustling branches and needles.
We begin to gain altitude and the horses are laboring under the cold and snow and terrain. We are close to breaking through the forest’s edge. Before us I glimpse a wide frozen lake, snow-blanketed, and beyond it is miles and miles of wide-open foothills bellying up to the rise of the mountains themselves. This new landscape is comprised of a series of rolling hills with open fields dotted here and there. Trees, birch and aspen, stand in profusion, their branches devoid of leaves. They are silent sentinels, marking our progress.
The sky above is clear blue, cloudless, a wide cerulean dome overwhelming by virtue of its expanse. It is bitterly, bitingly cold. I tug the hood of my coat over my head, burrow back into it, and rub the tip of my nose with a mitten. Despite my warm garments, the cold seeps into my bones.
We angle around the lake and, as we ride, I notice that my new owner’s head is never still, but always moving and scanning, and occasionally he twists around to glance at me or further behind us. The skirt of his duster is draped across his horse’s hindquarters, the edges pulled away to leave his guns free. He sits straight, spine flat and ramrod stiff, yet his body moves loosely and easily with the rolling walk of his mount’s gait. Broad shoulders and back, he holds his reins comfortably in one hand, which is resting on the pommel of his saddle.
“Where are we going?” I ask, finally summoning the courage to raise my voice.
“Home.”
“And where might that be?”
He gestures with the reins, pointing at the notch between the peaks. “Other side of those mountains. Three, four days ride, maybe. Depends on how much snow is in the pass.” He twists in his saddle, glances at me. “Why? You eager to get there?” There’s a thinly veiled hint of salaciousness to his words.
I shrug, trying for an indifference I do not feel. “Only curious.”
He doesn’t quite smile, but the ghost of a smirk touches the corners of his lips. “Only curious.” And with that he swivels back around to face forward, and says nothing more.
Home.
Three or four days in the wilderness, in the dead of winter, in the company of a man who owns me.
Tears prick hot behind my eyes, but I force them down. They will do me no good out here, and they will only freeze on my face.
Besides, something tells me tears will not move a man such as him.
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Copyright © 2016 by Jasinda Wilder and Jade London. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
THE BLACK ROOM: DOOR 2
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
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Jasinda Wilder
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The Black Room: Door Two Page 8
