Horses!

by Gardner Dozois

  Anny fell asleep in a corner, her head pillowed on a dog-blanket, while Granpa put on the cast. She didn't wake up until the cast was finished. She sat up, rubbing her eyes, peering at the tiny horse which slumbered peacefully on the table, at Granpa sitting on a stool beside it, waiting for the cast to harden. Had she heard something? Sleepily she wandered out of the exam room and into the waiting room. She heard a faint meow at the door.

  "Ace!" Anny dashed to the door, yanked it open. Ace walked casually into the room and she hugged him in delight, then sat back happily and watched his awkward attempts to wash his tail. It was so good to have him back! She picked him up and put him in her lap, and he purred noisily.

  "Excuse me."

  Anny looked up, startled by the strange voice, and saw the girl—one of the girls from the circus tent! Anny grabbed Ace and ran out of the room, shouting, "Granpa! Granpa!"

  "Who did you say?" Clark said. Anny was so excited, she wasn't making much sense.

  "The girl!" Anny said. "The circus girl."

  "Ah," Clark said. "Thanks, Anny. I wonder if she brought any money with her?" He tapped the cast, nodded absently, and placed the sleeping horse safely in a cage; it wouldn't do for it to roll off the table and break another leg. Then, whistling to himself, he strolled into the waiting room.

  A girl in vivid dark blue coveralls stood uneasily in the middle of the room, shifting from foot to foot. Her hair was long, straight and silky black, glittering with multifaceted jewels. She held a little metal box that looked like a cassette player, the sort that joggers carried.

  "What can I do for you?" Clark said.

  She hesitated, glancing over his shoulder at the doorway where Anny crouched half-hidden, then said, "I'm Huong O'Brien, and I—um, we've lost an animal. About like so, a little horse." She measured the size with her hands. "I've managed to trace its collar to here—do you have it?"

  Clark nodded solemnly. "Yes, my granddaughter found it. It's been injured—a broken leg—but I've got it casted and it should be just fine, given a little time."

  Clark saw Huong's lovely face fill with relief. "Thank goodness," she whispered. "First thing that's gone right all day "

  She followed him into the exam room, and Clark saw that Anny, with Ace clutched in her arms, had backed into a corner behind a dog cage without taking her eyes off Huong. Clark took the little horse out of the cage and put it back on the table: it was starting to wake up. Huong stroked the horse and brushed her fingers against the cast, frowning a little.

  "How'd you lose the little guy?" Clark asked.

  "Oh, well, it's been one of those days. The machine malfunctioned and the whole collection got loose, and when we activated the collars they were all supposed to come back, not all but one." She sighed, smoothing the horse's fluffy mane. "Poor little beast. It must have been trying to come back—it just couldn't manage." She looked up at Clark. "Thank you so much for finding it, and all. If I can do anything for you—"

  "There's a charge for the treatment, of course," Clark said smoothly.

  "A charge?"

  "Yes—it'll come to fifty dollars. Just tell your manager at the circus tomorrow, and as soon as he pays the bill you can come and get the horse."

  "I'm not sure I—" Huong broke off and sat down on a stool. She tugged nervously at her long hair, muttering to herself—something about studying zoology, not sociology or history. "Look," she said finally. "I don't have any money, and I can't wait until tomorrow. Surely there's something I could do for you, something that would be the equivalent of the payment you need?"

  Clark stared open-mouthed, wondering if she meant what he thought she meant. Surely not. But one never knew; circus performers were a very strange lot. He noticed that Anny had crept out of the corner and was watching Huong intently, apparently fascinated by her. Huong caught the girl's glance and stared back. "I don't think—" Clark started.

  Huong suddenly jumped up, went to Anny, and knelt in front of her. Anny stood very still, hardly breathing, as Huong touched her forehead and smoothed her wispy blond hair. When Huong moved her hand away, Anny reached out in turn, timidly touching one of the crystal jewels in Huong's hair. Huong smiled, then turned to Clark.

  "What's the matter with her?" Huong said.

  "Hydrocephalus," Clark said. "Not that it's any of your business."

  "Hydrocephalus? Brain cells . . . destroyed?" Huong shivered, looking at Anny with pity. "I can repair the damage," she said. "Would that be payment enough?"

  "What the hell are you talking about?" Clark whispered. "I can repair it. Regenerate the brain. Let me take her back—"

  "Get out of here," Clark said tightly. God, what an idiot she must think he was, if she thought he'd fall for something like that! He was suddenly almost blind with fury; the only thing that kept his temper from exploding was Anny's presence.

  "You don't understand."

  "I do understand, and you're not laying a hand on my granddaughter." Clark caught Anny's arm, pulled her away from Huong. "You know she can't be healed. What would you do with her, put her in your freak show? With your freak horse? Get out, now, and leave her alone."

  Huong stared at him, her eyes huge. "I'm sorry," she whispered. "I—I don't know the customs—" Distraught, she backed away from Clark, fumbling in her hair to undo a clasp, and pulled the string of shimmering jewels out of her hair. She held them out to Clark and said, "Please. I have to go, and I have to take the horse. Please take these in payment."

  Clark started to shake his head, but then he saw the way Anny was staring at the jewels, her mouth open, her eyes shining. "All right," Clark muttered.

  Huong slowly dropped the glittering pieces, and Anny leaned forward to catch them, both hands cupped beneath Huong's. Then Huong reached for the little horse on the table.

  "Wait," Anny said softly. Clark stared in shock. Anny had put the jewels on the floor and had picked up Ace. She was holding the cat out to Huong.

  Huong hesitated, looking at Clark as if for permission to take the cat. He swallowed hard, blinking, wondering if he was dreaming again. What had gotten into Anny? Clark was more than glad for a chance to get rid of the cat, but he'd never imagined that Anny would allow it to be taken from her.

  "Anny, you really want her to take Ace?"

  She nodded solemnly.

  "Think about what you're doing! You can't change your mind."

  Anny nodded again, and firmly pushed Ace into Huong's hands.

  "Well, okay then," Clark said feebly. He felt badly rattled. He watched as Huong tucked the cat under one arm, the little horse under the other. She glanced from Anny to Clark, her head tilted quizzically as if she were about to say something-but she said nothing. With a last look at Anny, she gave her head a quick shake and hurried out the door.

  In the morning Clark woke tired and irritable, with the memory of Huong O'Brien giving him the chills. He stumbled down the hall to Anny's room and opened the door. She was asleep, hugging her pillow, and a gray cat was snuggled in a blissful ball beside her. Clark blinked and poked the cat, which looked up at him and glared with malevolent intelligence. Clearly it was not Ace.

  Gently he shook Anny awake. "Where'd you get this cat?" She looked puzzled. "It's Ace."

  "No it isn't. Look at it."

  She pushed herself up on one elbow and stroked the cat's perfectly ordinary gray head. "He's all better, Granpa," she said, and rolled over and went back to sleep.

  Clark stared at the cat, which stared back at him, all better, and he shivered. Every second he felt colder, with a dreadful fear building, and he got up and went to the clinic, almost running by the time he got there, and frantically he began to pull books off the shelves.

  An hour later, when Anny woke and went to look for her Granpa, she found him sprawled at his desk in the clinic, crying. She had never seen him cry before. There was a sloppy pile of books on his desk. Anny moved closer to look at them. The top book was open to a picture of the little horse she had found last nig
ht, and the plastic collar the horse had worn was draped atop the open book. Anny picked up the collar and looked at it. There were letters on it; she struggled to read them, but she would never know what they meant.

  Oligocene Field Trip: Cambridge University; March 14, 2076. Student: Huong O'Brien. Specimen: Miohippus.

  Riding the Nightmare

  by

  Lisa Tuttle

  Lisa Tuttle made her first sale in 1972 to the anthology Clarion II, after having attended the Clarion workshop, and by 1974 had won the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer of the Year. She has gone on to become one of the most respected writers of her generation, winning the Nebula Award in 1981—which she refused to accept—and publishing widely in markets such as Interzone, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, The Twilight Zone Magazine, Analog, Other Edens, Zenith, and Pulphouse, and in horror anthologies such as Alien Sex, Night Visions, and Women of Darkness. Her short work has been collected in A Nest of Nightmares and A Spaceship Built of Stone. Her other books include a novel in collaboration with George R.R. Martin, Windhaven, the solo novels Familiar Spirit, Gabriel, and Lost Future, the nonfiction works Heroines and Encyclopaedia of Feminism, and, as editor, Skin of the Soul: New Horror Stories by Women. Her most recent book is a new collection of her short work, Memories of the Body: Tales of Desire and Transformation. Born in Texas, she moved to Great Britain in 1980, and now lives with her family in Scotland.

  Here she offers us a chance to ride the Nightmare, but it's an offer you'd better refuse . . . if you can.

  Twilight, l'heure bleue: Tess O'Neal sat on the balcony of her sixth-floor apartment and looked out at the soft, suburban sprawl of New Orleans, a blur of green trees and multicoloured houses, with the jewels of lights just winking on. It was a time of day which made her nostalgic and gently melancholy, feelings she usually enjoyed. But not now. For once she wished she were not alone with the evening.

  Gordon had cancelled their date. No great disaster—he'd said they could have all day Sunday together—but the change of plans struck Tess as ominous, and she questioned him.

  "Is something wrong?"

  He hesitated. Maybe he was only reacting to the sharp note in her voice. "Of course not. Jude ... made some plans, and it would spoil things if I went out. She sends her apologies."

  There was nothing odd in that. Jude was Gordon's wife and also Tess's friend, a situation they were all comfortable with. But Jude was slightly scatter-brained, and when she confused dates, it was Tess who had to take second place. Usually, Tess did not mind. Now she did.

  "We'll talk on Sunday," Gordon said.

  Tess didn't want to talk. She didn't want explanations. She wanted Gordon's body on hers, making her believe that nothing had changed, nothing would ever change between them.

  They're in it together. Him and his wife. And I'm left out in the cold.

  She looked up at the darkening sky. As blue as the nightmare's eye, she thought, and shivered. She got up and went inside, suddenly feeling too vulnerable in the open air.

  She had never told Gordon about the nightmare. He admired her as a competent, sophisticated, independent woman. How could she talk to him about childhood fears? Worse, how could she tell him that this was one childhood fear which hadn't stayed in childhood but had come after her?

  As she turned to lock the sliding glass door behind her, Tess froze.

  The mare's long head was there, resting on the balcony rail as if on a stable door, the long mane waving slightly in the breeze, the blueish eye fixed commandingly on her.

  Tess stumbled backward, and the vision, broken, vanished. There was nothing outside that should not be, nothing but sky and city and her own dark reflection in the glass.

  "Snap out of it, O'Neal," she said aloud. Bad enough to dream the nightmare, but if she was going to start seeing it with her eyes open, she really needed help.

  For a moment she thought of phoning Gordon. But what could she say? Not only would it go against the rules to phone him after he'd said they could not meet, but it would go against everything he knew and expected of her if she began babbling about a nightmare. She simply wanted his presence, the way, as a child, she had wanted her father to put his arms around her and tell her not to cry. But she was a grown woman now. She didn't need anyone else to tell her what was real and what was not; she knew that the best way to banish fears and depression was by working, not brooding.

  She poured herself a Coke and settled at her desk with a stack of transcripts. She was a doctoral candidate in linguistics, working on a thesis examining the differences in language use between men and women. It was a subject of which, by now, she was thoroughly sick. She wondered sometimes if she would ever be able to speak unselfconsciously again, without monitoring her own speech patterns to edit out the stray, feminine modifiers and apologies.

  The window was open. Through it, she could see the black and windy sky and there, running on the wind, was the creamy white mare with tumbling mane and rolling blue eyes. Around her neck hung a shining crescent moon, the golden lunula strung on a white and scarlet cord. And Tess was on her feet, walking toward the window as if hypnotized. It was then that she became aware of herself, and knew she was dreaming, and that she must break the dream. With a great effort of will, she flung herself backwards, towards the place where she knew her bed would be, tossing her head as she strained to open her eyes.

  And woke with a start to find herself still at her desk. She must have put her head down for a moment. Her watch showed it was past midnight. Tess got up, her heart beating unpleasantly fast, and glanced toward the sliding glass door. That it was not the window of her dream made no difference. The window in her dream was always the bedroom window of her childhood, the scene always the same as the first time the nightmare had come for her. There was no horse outside on the balcony, or in the sky beyond. There was no horse except in her mind.

  Tess went to bed, knowing the nightmare would not come again. Never twice in one night, and she had succeeded in refusing the first visit. Nevertheless, she slept badly, with confused dreams of quarrelling with Gordon as she never quarrelled with him in life, dreams in which Gordon became her father and announced his intended marriage to Jude, and

  Tess wept and argued and wept and woke in the morning feeling exhausted.

  Gordon arrived on Sunday with champagne, flowers, and a shopping bag full of gourmet treats for an indoor picnic. He gave off a glow of happiness and well-being which at once put Tess on the defensive, for his happiness had nothing to do with her.

  He kissed her and looked at her tenderly—so tenderly that her stomach turned over with dread. He was looking at her with affection and pity, she thought—not with desire.

  "What is it?" she asked sharply, pulling away from him. "What's happened?"

  He was surprised. "Nothing," he said. Then: "Nothing bad, I promise. But I'll tell you all about it. Why don't we have something to eat first? I've brought—"

  "I couldn't eat with something hanging over me, wondering .. .

  "I told you, it's nothing bad, nothing to worry about." He frowned. "Are you getting your period?"

  "I'm not getting my period; I'm not being irrational—" She stopped and swallowed and sighed, forcing herself to relax. "All right, I am being irrational. I've been sleeping badly. And there's this nightmare—the same nightmare I had as a kid, just before my mother died."

  "Poor baby," he said, holding her close. He sounded protective but also amused. "Nightmares. That doesn't sound like my Tess."

  "It's not that I'm superstitious—"

  "Of course not."

  "But I've been feeling all week that something bad was about to happen, something to change my whole life. And with the nightmare—I hadn't seen it since just before my mother died. To have it come now, and then when you said we'd talk—"

  "It isn't bad, I promise you. But I won't keep you in suspense. Let's just have a drink first, all right?"

  "Sure."

  He
turned away from her to open the champagne, and she stared at him, drinking in the details as if she might not see him again for a very long time: the curls at the back of his neck, the crisp, black beard, his gentle, rather small hands, skilled at so many things. She felt what it would be to lose him, to lose the right to touch him, never again to have him turn and smile at her.

  But why think that? Why should she lose him? How could she, when he had never been "hers" in any traditional sense, nor did she want him to be. She liked her freedom, both physical and emotional. She liked living alone, yet she wanted a lover, someone she could count on who would not make too many demands of her. In Gordon she had found precisely the mixture of distance and intimacy which she needed. It had worked well for nearly three years, so why did she imagine losing him? She trusted Gordon, believed in his honesty and his love for her. She didn't think there was another woman, and she knew he hadn't grown tired of her. She didn't believe he had changed. But Jude might.

  Gordon handed her a long-stemmed glass full of champagne, and after they had toasted one another, and sipped, he said, "Jude's pregnant. She found out for sure last week."

  Tess stared at him, feeling nothing at all.

  He said quickly, "It wasn't planned. I wasn't keeping anything from you. Jude and I, we haven't even—hadn't even—discussed having children. It just never came up. But now that it's happened . . . Jude really likes the idea of having a baby and ..."

  "Who's the father?"

  She felt him withdraw. "That's not worthy of you, Tess."

  "Why? It seems like a reasonable question, considering—"

  "Considering that Jude hasn't been involved with anyone since Morty went back to New York? I thought you and Jude were friends. What do you two talk about over your lunches?"

  The brief, mean triumph she had felt was gone, replaced by anguish. "Not our sex lives," she said. "Look, you've got an open marriage, you tell me it was an accident. I'm sorry, I didn't know you'd take it that way. I was just trying to find out what—forget I asked."