by Alex Bledsoe
“You got all of that from one bad joke?”
She laughed. “As Epona’s hands-on agent in daily mundane life, I spend a lot of time trying to think like she does. I know she considers horses her sacred symbols and avatars in this world, so I guess I do, too.”
I watched more horses flit through the trees. They were quick and graceful in a way totally at odds with the terrain; were they even real? “So all your children get the chance to be trampled by these sacred horses on their fifth birthday?”
“No, not children. Just daughters. A taste of the nearness of death, before they grow old enough to give life.”
“Do any ever get more than a taste?”
“Yes,” she said sadly. “That’s what gives it value. Some are lost. But most survive. Epona is not a cruel goddess.”
“You did say she was a dying goddess.”
Nicole stopped and faced me. The moonlight hid her eyes in shadow, so I couldn’t read her expression. “Mr. LaCrosse, do you have any sort of spiritual life?”
“I’m usually too busy.”
“There are many gods and goddesses worshipped in the world. Most are no more substantial than the icons used to represent them. But the greatest gift a true goddess can give those who believe in her is the reality of her presence. Epona chose to become one of us. A human woman. And like all of us, she is prey to the frailty of the flesh she inhabits.”
“That sounds a little like a dodge,” I pointed out. “Not much of a goddess if you have to make excuses for her.”
Nicole did another one of those patient grins. “Her compassion and wisdom are the true signs of her divinity, not her mortal form. Death won’t part her from us. And the time she’s spent among us will become our legend, our mystery, the story that binds our hearts together, and to her.”
“You realize how that sounds.”
She shrugged. “I’d rather believe in something than nothing. I get the impression you feel the opposite.”
She had me there. We resumed our trek in silence, engulfed by the night. The fact that Epona knew about Janet did not convince me of her divinity; after all, news of the death of a princess tended to get around. I’d seen far too many unlikely things to simply accept divine insight without question. I had no doubt that, at the end of this trail, I would meet only some half-crazed mumbling wisewoman with a lot of stage presence, but I almost wished Nicole were right. To behold a goddess in the flesh might almost cure me of my bitterness.
We rounded a corner and found our path blocked by the same immense white horse I’d seen leading the herd that nearly trampled the little beribboned girl. This close I saw I’d gotten the gender wrong; this was a mare, and she regarded me with black, fathomless eyes. I recalled the apple-flavored redhead’s prayer: “By Epona’s white mane.”
The horse allowed Nicole to gently stroke her cheek, and the woman whispered something so softly I couldn’t catch it. Then the huge white head turned and again fixed its dark eyes on me.
Sweat popped out all over me as the mare scrutinized me. I knew what those slashing hooves could do. I forced myself to breathe as the mare took two casual steps closer and stopped inches from my face. She snorted at me, as if asking a question.
Time froze for the moment we gazed into each other’s eyes. Beyond the obligatory equine haughtiness, I saw real intelligence and certainty of purpose that could, it seemed at the time, easily turn violent. The mare shifted her weight, and the massive flanks rippled. She had a regal quality, and I wondered how this Epona person could call herself the Queen of Horses while this magnificent beast was anywhere near.
The horse actually seemed to nod, as if she’d followed that train of thought. Then she turned and walked with immense dignity ahead of us up the trail. When she disappeared around a bend, I realized I had held my breath. I exhaled loudly, and almost had to sit down right there on the ground.
Nicole put a hand on my shoulder. “Pretty powerful, isn’t it?”
“Pretty damn nerve-wracking,” I said. I took a deep breath and hoped she couldn’t see my hands shake. “I’m ready to get out of the woods now, thank you.”
“Just continue up the trail, then. You can’t miss her.”
“What about you? Where are you going?”
“I have to go back. But you’ll be perfectly safe.” She turned thoughtful again. “I wish I could be there when you meet her. It won’t be what you think.”
She touched my face much as she had the mare’s. It was both unmistakably erotic and, paradoxically, maternally tender. Then she walked quickly away down the path toward the village.
I continued up the trail for another few minutes and grew increasingly apprehensive. The horses in the trees chuffed and snorted around me. Finally I turned a corner and reached the heart of the forest.
The moon bathed the clearing in bright blue light. A small cottage lay at the center, with a stone walk that led to the door. Light from a fire seeped out around the closed curtains. Smoke rose from the small chimney.
Whatever spell the journey had cast on me was broken by this prosaic scene. No goddess lived here, just a standard-issue village conjurer. I’d find her huddled over her potions, or scrawling things in a mysterious black book. Certainly no transcendental being occupied this space. I almost turned around and left, but the nagging comment about Janet came back to me. How had she known about that? I could discover that, at least, after coming all this way. I started up the walk.
The cottage door opened. A woman stood silhouetted against the fire blazing in the hearth. She was slender, long-haired and wore a loose gown that wasn’t quite opaque. I couldn’t see her face.
“Hello, Baron Edward LaCrosse of Arentia,” she said.
EIGHTEEN
Even thirteen years later the trail leading to the cottage was still there, overgrown but easily passable. Pollen and insects danced in the afternoon sun. And the woods along the route remained the densest, most impassable I’d ever encountered. The equine creatures that once dashed impossibly through them were gone, though. Or perhaps their ghosts only came out at night.
My horse tossed her head and snorted. The irony made me smile: back then I’d traveled on foot to meet the Queen of Horses, and now I explored the ruins of her kingdom on horseback.
We’d gone about halfway when I encountered something I didn’t expect. A fresh human footprint marked the muddy ground beside a puddle. I dismounted and knelt to examine it. It showed the impression of an adult-sized moccasin sole. At that same moment I heard a distant, high shout. It wasn’t a scream or cry of alarm, just the kind of noise certain people make to draw attention to themselves.
My horse snorted nervously. I didn’t blame her.
My own tracks weren’t obvious, but I’d made no effort to hide them, either. Discretion seemed prudent, so I led the horse into the woods as far as the ridiculously heavy undergrowth allowed. I tied her out of sight, spoke to her as soothingly as I could and gave her some berries plucked from a nearby bush. Then I crept back to the very edge of the trail, staying just inside the forest. It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d find anyone else here, and I couldn’t just walk up to the old cottage until I knew what might be waiting. This would take a while.
It took, in fact, until dusk for me to make my way quietly through the underbrush until I was close enough to see the ruins of Epona’s home. Along the way I heard several other cries, from many different positions but all the same voice. Someone really got around. By the time I saw the house, I’d also spotted evidence of random destruction in the woods around it, and seen the glow of a big fire through the trees.
The cottage remained, although its roof had collapsed and the once-neat yard was now overgrown. Vines curled up the stone wall and in through the empty windows. This was normal, and I’d expected it. But the rest of the scene was far more appalling.
A dozen deer carcasses hung by their necks from a sagging rope stretched between two poles. They’d been field-dressed in the crudest possible way
, and the decaying piles of innards still lay on the ground beneath them. Their outlines were hazy from the insects swirling around them, and I was thankful I was upwind. A huge campfire, its flames licking dangerously close to the overhanging trees, raged between the hanging carcasses and the remains of Epona’s old cottage. A crude lean-to shelter had been built against the house’s nearest outside wall; I wondered why they hadn’t simply repaired the roof and moved into the building.
As I watched, a man emerged from the forest dragging two dead beavers. He wore ragged clothes stitched together from various hides, and his beard and hair were both long and unkempt. “John-Thomas!” he bellowed in a rough, bone-scraping voice. “Where the hell are you?” He seemed unconcerned when no one answered.
The man tossed the beavers near the hanging venison. He looked inside the shelter, then went to the fire. He stripped to the waist, revealing a tough mountain-trapper physique honed from a lifetime outdoors.
I knew the type, if not this particular guy. These dirt-crusted anachronisms roamed in all the unsettled places, living as kings among the other hairy beasts on which they fed. They were often romanticized by those disgusted with civilization, but one look at his grisly hanging larder convinced me this was no noble neo-savage. This guy enjoyed killing things whether he needed them or not.
The wind shifted, and the abysmal odor from the rotting meat hit me like a slap from an angry teacher. Combined with the dregs of nausea from my Poy Sippi head smack, it almost sent me over into a full-on fit of vomiting. It took real effort to get control, then mouth-breathe enough to continue observing.
“John-Thomas!” the big man yelled again. “It’s gettin’ dark! Don’t make me come find you!”
I considered my options. I didn’t want to spend all night hiding in the bushes, but at the same time I didn’t trust this guy at all. As I watched, he cut a piece of rancid deer meat, poked a stick through it and stuck it into the fire. After a moment he pulled it out, shook it to extinguish the flames and popped the charred venison into his mouth. Something about the way he did this, strutting with his hard round belly preceding him, did not indicate a man who’d welcome a stranger. And his companion, this John-Thomas, was an entirely unknown quantity.
I could stay or go. I’d learn nothing if I left.
So I stood up, walked into the light and said, “Hi.”
The big bearded man stopped and stared at me. I kept the fire between us. This close, the smell from the rotting deer was like a week-old battlefield.
“How’s it going?” I added.
Again he said nothing.
“Name’s Eddie. Just passing through, saw the fire. Hope you don’t mind.”
He said something I didn’t understand. I sighed in annoyance. “I heard you yelling before, so I know you speak my language.”
His expression didn’t change. Neither did the utter lack of sympathy or kindness in his tight little eyes. I kept my body language casual, although I was ready for anything. “Where you headed?” he rumbled at last.
“Poy Sippi. Thought I’d try finding my own way through the mountains. I don’t care much for the traffic you get on the main roads.”
He scratched something under his beard, and whatever tumbled out spread its tiny wings and flew away. I couldn’t tell if he was sizing me up for his confidence, or his cooking pot. “You best keep going,” he said finally. “Ain’t enough room for you here.”
“Not even a little time just resting by the fire?”
“It ain’t a cold night,” he said. His voice grew darker. “And we ain’t a damn hotel.”
Before this banter got any wittier, I heard a familiar whinny. I looked up to see my horse coming up the trail, led none too happily by a dark figure I couldn’t quite make out. This figure let out the same yell I’d heard earlier, and as the light reached him I felt a cold chill despite the fire.
He was younger than this other guy, and more slender. He had a cleft palate, and as he neared I heard the wet sound of his breath wheezing through the opening. One eye was considerably higher than the other, and his left hand sported fingers that were too small and too numerous. He wore nothing except crude moccasins.
“Hey, Paw-Paw,” he said, although the words were slurred and gummy. “Lookee what I found!”
“That’s good, John-Thomas,” the bearded Paw-Paw said. His voice had the patient quality of an easygoing parent. “We’ll butcher it up in just a bit.”
“Hey, wait, that’s my horse,” I said.
John-Thomas walked up to me, put his face way too close and stared. If possible, he smelled worse than the rotting deer. I knew what inbreeding could do in animals, but this was the first time I’d seen it manifest in a human being.
“Back up a little, would you?” I said as firmly as I dared, and reached to take the reins from him.
Before I could, he let out that same screech again. This close, borne on breath that could melt rock, I nearly threw up right in his malformed face. At the last moment he turned and sort of danced away toward Paw-Paw, still holding the reins.
“He’s good and plump, Paw-Paw,” John-Thomas said. “Just like we always like.”
“That’s true,” Paw-Paw said flatly.
Uh-oh. Did he mean the horse or me?
John-Thomas rushed over to me again. “Goodanplump, goodanplump,” he repeated. A mixture of his spit and mucus splattered on my face, and I reached up to wipe it off.
“John-Thomas!” Paw-Paw said sternly. The younger man backed away, still staring at me and continuing to hold my horse’s reins.
“That’s my horse,” I repeated.
“Around here, things that get left belong to the people who pick ’em up,” Paw-Paw said.
“Yeah, well, where I’m from, we respect other people’s property.”
“I get his tongue, Paw-Paw!” John-Thomas cackled. “I get his tongue all for mine!”
“Okay, that’s it,” I said and snatched the reins from John-Thomas.
John-Thomas let out a squeal of absolute, primal petulance and ran off into the night. The horse moved next to me, nuzzling me gratefully with her big head. I did not take my eyes off Paw-Paw. “Not tryin’ to start trouble,” I said. “Just didn’t want him hurtin’ my horse.”
I was now thoroughly creeped out, and the last thing I wanted was to spend any more time with these two. The smell of danger was almost stronger than the odor of decay that clung to them. I’d return and search the cottage during the day, when hopefully they’d be out doing whatever they did. “Sorry to bother you fellas,” I said, and raised my foot to the stirrup. The horse whinnied, and only that high, sharp sound gave me the warning I needed.
John-Thomas came shrieking out of the darkness, eyes wide and a crude hatchet high above his head. He swung at me with all his strength and momentum, and I felt the wind from the blow as I barely stepped aside. He tumbled past me, rolled awkwardly and almost landed in the fire. But he caught himself, got to his feet and immediately attacked again.
I had time to get set, and blocked his hatchet arm with my own. I tried to grab his wrist, but his skin was too greasy and he easily twisted free. He viciously swung the hatchet at my chest, and again I barely stepped aside. He tripped over his own feet and fell, and this gave me time to draw my sword. When he turned and attacked again I was ready, and his own forward motion lopped off his hatchet hand at the wrist.
If I thought he’d screeched before, it was nothing compared to the sound he made now. He grabbed the stump of his wrist, dropped to the ground and practically convulsed with rage and pain. His thrashing kicked up a cloud of dust that glowed orange in the firelight. I looked around for Paw-Paw, but he had vanished into the darkness.
I had no desire to prolong this. I sheathed my sword, grabbed my horse’s reins again and swung into the saddle. Just as I was about to dig my heels into her ribs, a hand grabbed my jacket from behind and pulled me to the ground.
I landed right, so it didn’t knock the breath from me. Paw-
Paw raised a long trident-like spear over his head and hurled it straight down at my face. He roared, a full-throated adult variation on John-Thomas’ horrendous shriek. I rolled aside, grabbed his legs below his knees and shoved him onto his back. He broke the shaft of his spear as he fell.
He was bigger and stronger than me, and unlike his son was not foolish enough to lose his cool. He kicked me in the chest, got to his knees and produced a long, jagged knife. I’d seen the results of that knife on those deer carcasses, and it galvanized me into action. I slipped my own knife from my boot, rolled under his first blow and plunged my blade deep into his belly. I stood, using my legs to drive a two-foot slice across his stomach, then spun behind him, grabbed him by the hair and rammed my knee into his spine, hard. The impact made his intestines burst through the incision and splatter onto the dusty ground.
I released him and jumped quickly out of knife range, ready in case he threw the weapon as a last gesture. But he only stared down at his bloody organs for a moment, then fell forward atop them with a splat I’ll remember for a long time.
Through all this, John-Thomas continued screeching and thrashing. By now blood shot from his severed wrist, shimmering as it caught the firelight in great surging arcs. I drew my sword again and stepped over to him. “Hey!” I said sharply, and when he didn’t respond I nudged him with my boot. “Hey!”
He froze, absolutely still. The change was so sudden it made me jump. His only movement was the steady pump of blood from his wrist.
“I don’t want to kill you,” I said. “I’m sorry it came to this. Let me help you.”
The mismatched eyes in the malformed face showed no comprehension. He turned his head and saw his father, face down atop his own insides. He began to screech again, and flung himself at me with renewed fury.
He was weaker, though, and I was ready. I sidestepped him and brought my sword blade down in a hard, sharp blow to the back of his neck. His body hit the ground with a solid thud, followed a moment later by his head a few feet away.
