by Mindy Klasky
To her surprise, she wished he had showed a trace of wistfulness.
“Tell me,” he said.
She told him of her encounter with Zana. When she was done, he nodded. “As you say. Soon you will be free of me, and I of you. Here is how I propose to do it.”
They talked deep into the night.
A fortnight later, in the brightness of a springtime afternoon, a solemn knock resounded on the door of the cottage.
Aerise answered. Outside stood the vintner and the headman. Both hung their heads, avoiding eye contact, and shifted from foot to foot. The headman coughed. “Lady Cooper…”
“What has happened?” she asked with alarm.
“Your husband went fishing today at the rapids with a group…”
“Yes. I know.”
The headman cleared his throat. “He slipped on a wet rock and fell in. He did not come back up. The men are still searching, but they have not found his body, and it has been too long now to hope. He…he has drowned.”
Aerise let her face contort more and more with each word. When the headman said “drowned,” she whirled, fell to her knees just inside the cottage, and pulled at her hair, wailing at the top of her lungs. The men hovered over her, trying to mutter condolences. She blocked them out, concentrating on her performance. Try as she might, she could not summon tears. She had not expected to. Not for him. But the rest of the act came surprisingly easy. She heaved and thrashed and wailed. They could not see her face to observe the lack of weeping, and they were only males. She knew they accepted her reaction as true grief.
And soon, so would the whole village.
The vintner told her she could stay in the cottage until the replacement cooper was hired, and assured her that would not be for many months. Out in the fields the grape canes had barely started to show green growth and the crush was months away. There were plenty of barrels on hand until then—the late cooper, the vintner remarked with appreciation, had been an industrious tradesman and had prepared plenty of stock.
Aerise had no fear that she would find new living arrangements by then. Though not with Zana. The one thing that might stir certain elders to recall one Aerise daughter of Makk would be a sudden acceptance of a Baymouth cooper’s wife into the household of another daughter of Makk.
The only hardship remaining was that she was still obliged to drag about, pretending to mourn. It was many weeks before she allowed her step and posture to display the verve that churned within. As soon as she did so, village bachelors began “accidentally” crossing her path. They offered to do small favors for her, from repairing her hen coop or splitting fresh cord wood for her hearth, and bit by bit she said yes to some of these overtures, preparing food for them in exchange.
She judged it best to wait a year before she wed. But it was apparent that as far as the community was concerned, less than that would not be taken amiss.
She saw Morel only one more time. On midsummer night, she slipped away from the solstice celebration in the town center and made her way down to the river.
The moonlight on the water became the white gleam of his body, emerging. He did not come alone. Beside him rose a girl child, looking to be about seven years old. She was robust and round-cheeked like Aerise had been at that age—not lithe like her father.
Aerise held out her hands. The girl clasped them.
How warm her hands were. Full of life’s vigor. Aerise gazed until the moon hid behind the leaves of a river alder, making her offspring’s features too dim and ghostly—too much like what she was.
At the last, Aerise leaned in and gave her a kiss. She smiled.
Her daughter smiled back.
“My true name is Rahella,” the girl said.
When they separated, Aerise was reminded of the moment the Cursed Folk foster mothers had cut the cord, that day she gave birth by the meadow. The severed parts would never be joined again. This was surely the last time she would ever see this child of her body.
Morel waited in the shallows. When the girl reached him, he cupped her chin. Seeing the tenderness of the gesture, aware of the pride in his eyes, Aerise could not hate him. Forgive him? No. But understand him? Yes. For him, it had not been enough to bring a child into the world. It needed to be a child as fine as Rahella.
The pair became intangible and walked off across the surface of the water. From time to time, until they slipped out of sight, Rahella turned to catch glimpses of her mother.
Finally Aerise climbed the bank and made her way along the river path to the village. It was not a short walk, but it seemed so.
No braids dangled from her head, tallying the number of her living offspring. She had no husband. For family she had only one aged sibling, not long for this world. But she had youth. She had time. And she had recovered her place.
She arrived back in the village murmuring a tune, and when the blacksmith’s sons asked her to dance with them around the bonfire, jostling and nudging each other to be the first to twirl her around, she laughed and said yes.
In Search of Laria
Doranna Durgin
The filly, at three days, was as perfect as a foal could be. After that she outgrew herself, and none of her parts ever matched. Her rump went high one day, her back long the next, her hocks straight on yet the next. Her ears turned too small…her head entered an extended phase of amazing coarseness. No one outside the Master’s barn gave her a second look unless it held pity.
The girl, at thirteen years, was small and refined, and when she grew, it was with perfect harmony of self. Her legs lengthened gracefully to the perfect limber proportions of a born rider. She never turned clumsy, never tripped over herself. Her figure remained lean and modest, and her menses came promptly and without pains.
But on the inside, she felt as the filly looked. Where the Master’s other young riders sought improvement and acknowledgment, she yearned for perfection, always falling short. Knowing, as they all knew, that their every moment was weighed and measured against the very ideal she sought.
Fate made partners of them, the girl and the filly. The girl cared for the filly’s every need, taught her proper stable manners, and finger-combed her silky mane and tail twice a day. In return the filly trusted the girl with her heart. And while the girl’s own heart was often too full of sharp-edged needs—approve of me, praise me, see me—sometimes she could quiet it, and then she could hear the filly’s, simple and equine and open. Lean on me, I like you. I can’t get that fly—would you? And most important, You and I are Us.
As the filly grew older, as the demands of her training increased, so did her pride and fiery sense of self. She would not be forced or bullied. She would not suffer fools who asked without the confidence to insist politely. She said not I accept, but I allow.
The girl’s name was Dal.
The filly’s was Laria.
As Dal, too, grew older, she learned the delicate balance of request, allow, and insist. She created of them a team. Dal and Laria. But in falling short of her self-imposed perfection, Dal remained incomplete. Hollow in her deepest self, where it truly mattered. And where Dal was not enough for herself, Dal and Laria could not hope to be complete. Despite their progress, their true excellence, part of Dal yearned always for the unattainable.
On the day Laria turned eight—greyed-to-silver with dark dapples at her knees and a mane and tail still shot randomly with black—Dal found a new halter hanging by her thrice-daily picked stall. Rich black leather with rolled cheek and nose pieces and bright brass hardware.
The touring halter. And beside it, the ceremonial long knife, gleaming and sharp and sheathed in pale leather. The one that was never to be drawn outside the touring routines, during which it would connect with the others for a finale of spiraling light and magics.
For each spring the Master chose his seasonal touring troupe, those who traveled from estate to estate, from performance to performance, showing the patrons that which they should support, and that to which they should as
pire. Otherwise, they might send their fine horses elsewhere for training. Or worse, they might bring in trainers who claimed to do in a season what took the Master years. After that, even the Master could only improve them, but never quite make them what they might otherwise have been.
Touring. Honor and responsibility and the scrutiny that came with it. The thrill of the teams coming together for performance, and the fiery flare of the final light magic—proof of equine trust and steadiness.
Dal and Laria would be the best, Dal vowed as she cleaned the hand-stitched performance bridle that emphasized the refined nature of the mare’s matured features. Still not a delicate head—no, never that, with that strong, straight nose, the flat planes of her jaw, the wide flare of her expressive nostril. Not delicate, but a thing of strong and wild beauty. Between the two of them, surely they would earn the acclaim she sought.
If deep want could outweigh the nature of things, Dal and Laria would have soared to perfection. But they were in truth no more than first-year tour partners. Not unexpectedly, tension crept into Dal’s back and legs, causing Laria to hesitate during those moments she should step out most boldly. And Laria herself had moments of distraction amidst the brio of her passage and piaffe—although Dal was as a horseman ought be, and blamed all of Laria’s mistakes on herself.
And yet her deep want grew deeper. The intensity of her desire turned cutting-edge sharp. She pushed onward for perfection, ever marking the goal.
Halfway through the season, the Master took Dal aside and spoke kindly, meaning well. He worried that Dal’s perfectionism would affect the mare’s joy in the work…that it would leave Dal bitter and used up, her potential wasted.
Yes, he meant it kindly.
But Dal, taking the mare from the performance ring to the stable, felt only humiliation. I’ll show you. And I won’t give up! She walked apart from the others through the narrow, sandy alleys of this coastal estate, moving stiff-shouldered and tenser than ever while Laria’s hooves plodded into the sand behind her. And though Laria’s heart spoke of contentment, Dal was alone in her misery.
Or not quite.
They’d seen Dal leave the ring. They’d seen Laria’s apparently docile demeanor. A mare of her breeding would line a man’s pockets with gold and fill his pasture with foals.
They found a place to cut Dal off.
“Hand her over,” they said, their long knives out. And when Dal stood frozen, Laria snorting and jigging in the suddenly menacing night beside her, they said more. “We won’t cut you. We’ll cut her.”
Dal, for all her lack of perfection, was a true horseman and could not let that happen. And so, hands trembling, she extended the reins, already silently vowing to find and reclaim the mare.
No one had counted on Laria.
She struck, snaking her elegant neck, snapping wicked teeth, breaking fingers. A second swift strike; she clamped down on a wiry biceps, flinging the man against the hard stone wall trapping them in this narrow alley.
But there was a third man, still behind them. Quaking, Dal snatched up the forbidden ceremonial blade, wrenching it from a resistant scabbard and past all safeguards. But when it finally came free, her hand filled with more than the wrapped metal coil of its hilt and more than the weight of simple metal. Sensation snapped around her, seeking…seeking…
Finding.
Finding Dal.
The long-bladed knife spoke to her. In an instant, it crept inside her, filling all the empty crevices of her soul. Her confidence surged; the blade guided her. She drew quick blood, came back to do it again.
The men didn’t want the mare so badly after all.
As Laria snorted and calmed and slowly lowered her high-held head, Dal quietly tucked the forbidden long knife into its scabbard and led Laria onward, her fingers twitching with guilt and relief.
When Dal woke the next day, she found only a hollow memory of her confidence, her competence, her sense of completion. The quiescent knife lay in its scabbard, tucked neatly beside her boots.
She reached for it—but trembled with sudden trepidation, and withdrew. What if her long-sought confidence had been only a transitory thing, a terrible taunt of what life could be? What she could be?
For a moment, she didn’t dare find out. But then she didn’t dare not to.
Her hand closed over the hilt.
The knife spoke to her.
The evening’s performance…
Magnificent.
Relaxed, confident… Dal released her tight back and let Laria’s fire flow through them both, channeling it into brilliant piaffe, fiery passage, precise one-tempi canter lead changes, a crackling sweep of dancing light for the finale. The audience gasped and pointed, and the Master was speechless.
Dal didn’t mind. She didn’t need the man’s praise. Not anymore.
She knew they were the best.
At the next estate, Dal and Laria dazzled the audience anew. For three nights running. After that, the Master allowed them the same individual recognition as the seasoned performers, and the contrast of Dal’s youthfulness drew even more accolade.
Always Dal wore the long knife. Always she walked Laria back to their stabling alone, one hand on the knife hilt and the other on Laria’s withers, not mindful of or needing the praise she now accepted as due. Some thought it was modesty, but in truth it was simply that she already knew.
The best.
Most importantly, Laria was happy. She nuzzled Dal soft greetings; she coyly arched her neck when Dal offered treats, lipping them gravely from her palm. She reached for the bit when Dal held out the bridle. And she spoke to Dal with her heart. I’m important. Let’s dance together. And, in the most intense of moments, oblivious to the audience around them, You and I are Us.
She never said no. She always said I accept.
Until one night Dal walked Laria back to her stall and her thoughts were too full of her own success to allow room for Laria’s contentment.
For Dal knew what she was. The knife told her. The knife filled her.
The best.
The next day, after a shortened warm-up, Laria trotted into the performance distracted, disconnected from the us of them. And Dal forgot to ask.
Dal told. She demanded. She ordered.
After an instant of surprise, Laria offered more than she’d ever given before. More than her heart, more than her will. Not smoothly, not gracefully, but then…then she gave Dal her power. For that moment, she gave Dal her very sense of self.
Afterward, the Master inquired of Laria’s well-being. She was young, he said, and wondered if the strain of maintaining her own brilliance had tired her.
Dal ought to have said, “It was my fault.” She ought to have said, “I’ll take care of her.”
Dal said, “She got lazy. She’ll behave for the next show.”
And Laria did. But in the following show, she said I’m not sure in an honest equine question, and Dal told her do it now. Laria’s tail flicked and her ears wavered, but she re-balanced herself through dint of will alone. Their finale lacked its now-usual brilliance.
As time passed, Laria’s willing joy under saddle slowly dulled. Her lovely, once-relaxed tail showed ever more of her wringing temper. And yet the patrons saw only her movement, and marveled over such an accomplished young partnership.
The Master saw the tail, the irritation often displayed in Laria’s finely expressive muzzle and nostrils, a flare of protest muffled by the etiquette of her training. You shout at me, she was saying. Your legs and hands are rude to me.
And I cannot feel your heart any longer.
Sometimes, Dal heard her. And sometimes late at night she wondered at the changes in herself. But in the morning, the knife would speak to her, and she would forget her doubts.
“Laria seems unhappy,” the Master said, before an evening performance. “Are you well, Dal? You are yet young; perhaps I have asked too much of you. You strive so hard, when you must simply allow yourself to be. And Laria, to be.�
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But Dal had no idea what he meant.
The very next evening, Laria went out to dance, sorrowful that she and Dal were no longer they. Tension coiled in her hindquarters, prevented her from reaching under herself for the lateral work; lacking support from behind, she was unable to lift and free her shoulders.
She tripped.
She hesitated.
She said, I can’t do it tonight. Please hear me.
She needed Dal to hear her. To restore her trust. To heal their partnership.
Dal said—
Do it.
And Laria said no.
In front of them all, she said no.
Dal, pale and tight-lipped, rode out the explosive denial. She sat deeply as Laria leapt high, as she plunged across the performance ring, wild and untamed and blazing through a score of steadfast horses—as if in their obedience, they could balance Laria’s fierce and deliberate defiance.
But no one blamed Laria. They saw her desperation, her trust and love scattered across the ring along with their carefully choreographed patterns.
Laria said no.
She finally stopped before the Master, stiff and horrified and yet ready to do it all over again if Dal asked for so much as a step from her.
“Dismount,” the Master said quietly, nodding at the orchestra. It sprang back to life, reviving the performance. Dal, disbelieving, hesitated.
“Dismount,” the Master said again. “Stable her. Instruct one of the handlers to tend her. Not you. Ask nothing of her along the way. Nothing, do you hear?”
“I hear,” Dal said, though she didn’t. She led Laria from the ring and outside the ornate performance hall—Laria steaming with the heat of her distress, Dal cold and angry, far too certain the mare had failed her. They trod an exquisite path of crushed shells to the stable, together and apart at the same time, until uncertainty caused Laria to plant her feet.
