“She knows you’re scared. It makes her scared too.”
Halley stayed still.
Eden smoothed the mare’s mane, combing her fingers through the thick, wiry hair. “You’re okay, Athena, don’t be afraid.” The animal calmed, dropping its head still lower to the ground. “Let’s see if she’ll follow us,” Eden said.
They continued their walk towards the mountains. Athena walked quietly behind them, as if tethered to them by a long, thin cord. As the day wore on, the muscles in Halley’s neck grew tight. She kept flinching at nothing, imagining the horse to be darting forward to take a bite of her back.
When they grew hungry, they took time to eat, and to refill their meager stock of food from the surrounding trees. Bananas, mangoes, coconuts. The country was becoming greener as they approached the mountains, the runoff from the ice-laden peaks leaving fertility in its wake. The sound of rushing water trickled into her awareness. The first of the streams they were to ford rushed by at their feet.
Eden pulled out Gail’s large canteen.
Halley looked at her in surprise.
“I thought we’d left that with Gail.”
“She said we should keep it.”
“What’s she going to do without a canteen?”
“She said something about going home.”
They looked at each other, and Eden shrugged one shoulder. They filled and drained the canteen twice each, and then left it full. Halley strapped the full canteen over her shoulder. Having water again was reassuring.
Once they were ready, they faced the stream again. The crossing would be simple; there were dry stones laid in an almost straight path. Halley and Eden were able to step across without even getting their feet wet. Athena seemed happy to cross the stream too – but only after first stopping for a long drink and then shaking the water from her muzzle. She stepped casually into the shallow water and splashed her way across.
It was a minor crossing, but like all crossings, it triggered thoughts of what was being left behind. Halley stopped and looked back, staring across the small trees and the yellow tundra. Eden scampered up to perch on a thick tree branch. Athena waited.
So much had happened since they left the woods, Halley reflected: the final goodbye to Fernando; losing and finding Eden; healing Gail of her burning anger; meeting Athena the horse. But – the thought struck her forcefully, because it hadn’t occurred to her in a while – what had become of Trance? Halley became aware that he was back there somewhere. She could feel his presence, could smell him. She would have to face him again eventually.
The tall white horse stood nearby, its face hidden in the deep green grass, chewing with small grunts of pleasure. Occasionally, it lifted its head to reveal green lips covered with a foamy mixture of saliva and fresh grass, or to nip at the horseflies which teased its flanks.
Athena, that’s what Eden called her.
The mare lifted its large white head and stared at Halley with a questioning look, jaw still working, lips opening and closing to reveal long yellowing teeth and bits of half-eaten grass.
The mare didn’t do anything threatening. It just looked at her with those large, grey, wet eyes. Horses don’t usually have grey eyes, Halley thought. The mare’s eyes were wise, and their wisdom made Halley frown.
Something was building in Halley, and it wouldn’t go away.
Staring at the horse, at the way its mane curved over the edge of its neck, she could almost feel the dry coarse texture of the hair.
It was as if both her hands were gripping it tightly from above, as if her face was pressed down close to it and they were at a gallop. But she was seeing a black mane in her imagining, and the horse itself was brown. She hadn’t allowed herself to think about the day she was suddenly seeing in her mind in years.
Halley was young, twenty-one or twenty-two, galloping recklessly through the woods on Sampson. This had always been their path through the woods, ever since she was a little girl. They had ridden it so often that she and Sampson both knew every bump and rise, every fallen tree. He didn’t need her to guide him with the reins – he knew the way. Usually, she rode there for pleasure.
Today was different. Today she was flying from the fact that she didn’t know what to do. For the first time in her life, she didn’t know what to do…
Her memory moved away from her with a darting motion like a silverfish; she couldn’t remember anything else. Suddenly, her throat felt gob-stopped, like she’d swallowed something too large and it had gotten stuck in her windpipe. It hurt, this sensation, this fullness in her throat that stopped her speaking. She took a hand reflexively to her neck and massaged gently up and down the rings of cartilage, but it didn’t help. Her ears felt full, like she’d been swimming underwater, making the sounds of the forest seem dull and unrelated to her. Even her eyes were glazed, seven-mile-stare-like.
From her perch in the tall tree, Eden watched Halley thoughtfully. One of her hands rested on the furry shoulder of the golden-maned lion-monkey, who watched Halley with equal attentiveness. At the end of the branch, hidden by some foliage, Halley’s movements were also followed by the piercing eyes of the eagle.
Eden whispered to the lion-monkey, “I wish she weren’t so afraid of poor Athena. They used to be such good friends. Halley was there when Athena was born, and Sampson was such a proud daddy, especially for a horse. I wish I knew what was wrong.”
Neither Halley nor Eden could remember. But the moonlight remembered. The tree roots and their shaken leaves remembered. The hard earth held the memory too, carefully sandwiched between bits of rock and soil; even a mudslide wouldn’t wash it away. The eagle had been there as well, a witness to what had happened. The eagle had seen it all, from on high.
Now, hearing Eden’s wish, the eagle turned to look at her with quick yellow eyes. It glanced back at Halley and seemed to contemplate and quickly decide something, because it began to walk along the branch sideways, towards them, gripping the branch tightly with long talons. As it moved, it turned its head sharply from time to time, monitoring the woods, taking care.
While Halley stood there looking puzzled, massaging the lock in her throat, trying to grasp something just out of her reach, Eden listened carefully as the eagle, with long curved talons gripping the tree, began to tell the story.
Children are always doing things which to adults seem impossible; the fact that the eagle could whisper the story aloud, and both the lion-monkey and Eden could understand every word was not in fact overly strange. Nor was the fact that Halley couldn’t hear them. It is simply the way of the world, when one is a child.
Partway through the eagle’s speech, Eden stopped it by raising one hand. “I don’t understand. Why didn’t I know all this?” She was frowning. “I know everything else about Halley’s life.”
The golden lion-monkey looked at Eden, and then cleared its throat. “How could you know it, if she didn’t?”
It was the first time the lion-monkey had spoken. The resonance of its voice and the certainty of its words surprised Eden. She wondered if the eagle would take offense.
But the eagle seemed to welcome the explanation. “Wise monkey,” it said. “You are right. If Halley doesn’t know something, you, Eden, won’t know it either.”
The eagle finished the story, and when it was done, Eden knew the whole truth. It made her very angry. She was furious about what had happened to Halley, but she was even madder that Halley had forgotten the truth. She clenched her small fists, and shook the tree branch in frustration. The sound of shaking leaves startled Athena and Halley, who looked up into the tree. Eden didn’t want to think about the eagle’s story anymore; she just wanted to move, to get away from it. She swung herself to the ground. When she was standing just beside Halley, she clapped her small hands together, hard, just once – this, she knew, would make Halley remember. It worked: the loud noise startled Halley, and cleared the way for a further memory.
Athena shuffled her feet. Halley felt her ears pop, as
if she’d been descending fast in an airplane, and had finally remembered to swallow.
Sampson, her bay horse, stumbled. Halley didn’t care: her mind wasn’t on him, or on the ride. The woods around her might not have even existed, for all she saw of them. Her mind was stuck on this unsolvable conundrum, of how to choose between two men. The same thoughts played over and over again in her mind, like a turntable stuck on a scratch, but they didn’t contain an answer. She had locked away the key to the puzzle; she had locked away the truth.
The ride through the woods was punishing, but she felt better for the pain; she deserved it for what she’d done.
A newly fallen tree blocked the path. Sampson saw it before Halley and he did his best to protect her, leaping high and clearing it with great effort. Halley knew in this moment she could have hung on; she could’ve stayed astride his strong, safe back. But she didn’t care to. She was too angry with herself for betraying Nick, for her inability to decide which man would be the love of her life. She didn’t have it in her to protect herself.
So she didn’t grasp as tightly as she could, allowing herself to be flung from Sampson’s back, high into air, hovering for just a second before slamming hard, first into the tree above her, and then into the unkind ground. Her breath was thrown from her body, and she couldn’t get her chest to lift. She was gasping for air and panicking, and then with a start, she was breathing again. She started to sob: she hadn’t realized how badly she could be hurt. And it hurt so much. Sampson prodded her gently with his soft whiskery muzzle, worry in his brown eyes.
She could remember the rest clearly now: time in the hospital; several broken vertebra; disorienting visits from both Nick and her new lover.
Her physical recovery took six months. During this time, her new lover left her, and Nick moved away to start a new job. He called often, and after she was fully healed, he began to encourage her to move to his new town, to move in with him. She put it off; he grew angry. Though she kept saying she would come to him soon, she didn’t, and couldn’t understand herself why she didn’t. One day he told her it was over, that he couldn’t wait any more. She cried for weeks.
The white horse stared Halley straight in the eye, chewing grass, watching her. The small whiskers around its muzzle moved with the movement of the horse’s jaw, and made Halley uneasy. It did what horses do: it flicked its head in the air; it pawed at the grass by its feet to uncover fresh shoots; it twitched its long ears at the flies. These unthreatening things, these most natural of movements, all made Halley flinch.
She thought about riding Athena, and knew she couldn’t. I don’t want to get hurt again. She rubbed the small of her back. Anyway, riding for me…I did that when I was innocent, before I betrayed Nick. I’m not innocent anymore. She could still feel the devastation of losing Nick; it had remained with her always as a dull ache behind her eyes. She stared dumbly at the white horse eating grass. I still miss him. I miss the simplicity, the innocence. I miss his kindness. I miss myself, as I was before.
She noticed Eden. Her little friend had come down from the tree and was gently brushing the white horse’s long neck with her fingertips, looking away from Halley. She ran her small hand down its right foreleg, picked up its foot, and, with a piece of stick, gently picked it free of stones and hardened dirt. She moved with confidence.
“How do I get that confidence back? How do I get me back?” she whispered, feeling silly asking this sort of question to a little girl, but knowing Eden would understand.
Eden kept her eyes focused on Athena, and shifted herself around to lift up a back foot. She spoke quietly. “You’ve already begun. You can take down that fortress you’ve built, just like Gail did. You can simply take it down.” Eden looked up at Halley with big, bright, knowing eyes.
“Fortress?”
Eden didn’t reply. After finishing the last of the four hooves, she stretched up high on her tip-toes, and grabbed hold of the horse’s mane just above the withers. Jumping, she swung her leg over Athena’s broad back. She smiled broadly, ear to ear, and made a gentle clucking sound to encourage the horse forward.
Halley walked along beside.
So, Eden thought, reflecting on the eagle’s story, that’s why she’s afraid of horses. She felt the gentle rhythm of Athena’s walk shift her back and forth. That’s why she never rode Sampson again. I remember – she kept working at the stable, because she didn’t want to tell anyone she was scared. But the horses knew – she got bad around the horses. Eden reached down and massaged Athena’s withers. You didn’t like the jumpy way she handled you, did you? You wanted to make her go away, so you bit her and kicked her and ran at her. You were scared too, weren’t you? Her fear scared you. Eden rubbed Athena’s wiry mane between her fingers.
Eden knew: Halley was going to have to face what had happened that terrible night with Nick. She was going to have to remember.
The grass muffled the sound of their feet. Halley breathed the green scent of crushed grass stems and wildflowers, and Eden rode bareback at a gentle walk.
“Do you remember how to ride?” Eden asked, after a long while had passed.
“Of course,” Halley said, feeling a chill though the day was warm. “It’s just…I’m a bit scared. It’s been a long time.”
It hurt her neck to look up at Eden on the horse.
“Come on.” Eden reached down a small hand. “I’ll help you up.”
Halley took a step back, crossing her arms in front of her chest. The sudden movement made Athena toss her head in fright. “No. I’d rather walk.”
“Okay.”
They walked in silence for some time, with much unsaid between them. Later, they came to the first of the foothills at the base of the mountains. They followed the gentle, flat path that was carved low on its flank.
“Tell me about Nick,” Eden said.
“Nick? Why?”
“I just want to hear about him.”
“He was everything to me,” Halley said. “He was my first love.”
She stopped speaking and looked at the ground.
“Was he very handsome? Did he look like Shaun?”
“Sean?”
“Shaun Cassidy! You know, silly. Da doo ron ron ron, da doo ron ronnn,” Eden sang with a giggle.
Halley smiled. “No. More like Dirk Benedict from Battlestar Galactica. He had this softness around his eyes when he smiled.”
“Did you love him?”
“Mm.”
“Why? Why did you love him?” Eden gripped Athena’s mane more tightly.
Halley thought about it. “He was very gentle. He took his time.” She smiled, remembering. “There were these beautiful love poems he wrote me. He used very thin, soft paper. It was baby-blue. I scotch-taped them to the wall by my bed, and when we weren’t together, I would just lie there and read them, over and over. I liked to run my finger over the paper and feel how soft it was.”
“Did you…?” Eden giggled. Her pause and her lifted eyebrow filled in exactly what she was asking.
“Eden!” Halley’s face reddened.
“I’m not that little. I’ve read about it.”
“Well…yes…eventually.” Halley’s gaze shifted to the upper left as she remembered. “That was the other thing that made me love him. I was very shy. All the other guys wanted to touch me too soon. I was always having to catch their hands before they touched me somewhere I didn’t want them to touch me. They wouldn’t listen.” She made a face. “Nick was different. He was patient. He waited a whole year for us to be together that way. I guess he taught me that love didn’t have to hurt, that I didn’t have to be afraid.” Halley shuddered.
“What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know. I just felt really awful inside. Let’s talk about something else.”
But they didn’t. They rode on in silence, and Eden kept thinking about what the eagle had told her.
When they came to the other side of the small foothill, they both stopped and stared. Standing
close to the edge of the path was a small wooden house, the first dwelling they had seen on their long journey.
“Wow,” Eden said.
“That’s an understatement.”
The house was under siege. It was built on a foundation of rough-hewn grey stone blocks, giving it an air of would-be sturdiness. But in the binding concrete between the stones, small plants had taken root, turning the concrete to dust with their fine, searching roots. The planking boards, which would have been painted once, showed only scar-like patches of flaking pink paint-primer. A porch encircled the house, but its seeming welcome was negated by the thickly spider-webbed boot scraper at the base of the front steps. The garden was long overgrown, dandelions gone to seed peppering the front lawn with yellow and white. The honeysuckle had sailed beyond its lattice, and now hung over the edge of the roof, cascading wildly down the opposite side.
It must have been the mountain retreat of a small family. But they had given it up, had abandoned it to the wolves long ago.
“I’m just going to take a look,” Halley said, climbing the wooden steps and crossing the weathered porch. Her eyes were fixed on the windows. With a musical crash of metal on metal on flesh, she ran right into a wind chime, hitting it smack into the center of her forehead. “Ouch! Stupid thing!”
It too was encrusted in spider webs. She pulled a few long lengths of them from her face and hair. When she tried to shake them off, they clung tightly to her hands as if unwilling to let go. Disconcerted, she rubbed her hands together briskly, balling the webs, and then plucking them off with her fingers. The wind chime continued to sing. Halley breathed out forcefully, and gave it a hard look. I hate the webs, she thought. It only took a moment to pull them off; the movement set the wind chime to ringing more loudly. The melody ill fit the scene. Halley reached up and quieted it with her right hand. Then she stepped around it, towards the house. With the heel of her hand, she rubbed dust from a window and peered inside. Light streamed in from several other windows. It was empty. Encouraged, she knocked gently on the door. It swung open with a gentle creak, and she smelled weathered wood and mildew.
Akilina: Out of the Woods Page 16
