When he wakes from his fever, he still has four legs
and a tail. He is lying in the darkened cave, on the bed of moss the children
made for him—when? He is groggy and thirsty, and pain is spread like a
thorny blanket over his rump. Lifting his head takes more strength than he has,
but his movement rouses the black-eyed boy sitting cross-legged on the far side
of the little fire. In a heartbeat, the child is on his feet and bending to
look Sian in the eye. He smiles, the boy, pleased to find the manhorse looking
back at him.
“Water,” he whispers.
The boy understands his meaning whether or not he
understands the word. The skin is put in his hands, and when he struggles to
raise his head high enough to drink, the boy helps him. His hands are small and
gentle, with the long, spidery fingers that hint at large and gentle hands when
he is grown. Sian looks at his own hands, wondering, then his arm is jarred by
the boy’s encouragement to drink. He tips the waterskin to his lips.
Again, he drinks until his belly cramps. The boy
plucks the skin from his grip, tutting softly as he shakes his head. Sian
regards him sheepishly through a tangle of blond curls. His remorse earns
another smile, and a pat to the shoulder that he finds strangely comforting. A
proffered bit of cheese is refused, though; he has no stomach for solid food.
The boy—Joel. His name is Joel—stuffs the
cheese back in the sack. He poses a question, judging from the lilt at the end
of his utterance, and cocks his head inquiringly. After suffering a moment’s
blank stare, he slips a hand under Sian’s shoulder and tries a hopeful push.
The manhorse obligingly rolls onto his chest, forelegs tucked beneath him and
hind legs somewhat splayed. The motion irritates his hip. Glancing back, he
sees a mound of cloth piled atop the joint. He raises his brows at Joel.
Shrug.
Sian sighs. Silly to ask when he cannot interpret the
response. He guesses from the makeshift bandage that the arrow has been
removed—has he been stitched? A subtle flex of his far hind leg shoots a
lancing pain through the quarter. He gasps, and the leg twitches as if to throw
off the pain; better to lie still and wait for … who? Roanne?
Obliterating fear threatens, vying with fatigue for
the pleasure of crushing him. How has this happened to me; how? Why?
Why why why why?!
He is spooked by his own voice careening off the
cavern walls. Crying, he surges awkwardly to his feet and rears back when Joel
attempts to soothe him. His injured hip protests but the hind leg holds. The
boy is speaking—no, singing—as he approaches. Sian nervously retreats,
reluctant to be touched, reluctant to be soothed. Tears run hot and humiliating
over his cheeks, and his eyes rove the cavern, seeking a means to escape this
nightmare. He must yet be fevered, or at least still asleep, but if he is
asleep, why is he not dreaming of the girl with the straw-coloured hair?
A form takes blurry shape in the frame of the cavern’s
mouth. He blinks his eyes clear. One form, then another, taller and fuller than
the first, both mere shadows with the light at their backs. Sighting the change
to the manhorse’s face, Joel spins and exclaims: “Mam!”
Even Sian knows what that word means. The boy throws
himself at the woman in the cave’s mouth, jabbering fiercely in his unfamiliar
tongue. She catches him in one hand and sinks the other into his dark curls,
pulling his head protectively to her breast. Roanne leaves her side to approach
Sian; he sidles away, his eyes wild on a third figure venturing in from the
wood. She follows his gaze, then smiles to reassure him. “Kev,” she says.
Another name. Another pair of curious eyes, another
slackened jaw. Another human openly astonished at the improbable creature
standing before him. He is so intent on this stranger that Roanne is able to
lay her hand on his wither. He startles, steps back. His far hind hoof hits a
dint in the floor. A crippling pain bolts through his leg, into his hip, and he
lets out an anguished cry. Roanne grasps his hand in both of hers. Sian looks
sharply at her. Does she realize what she has done? Reflected in the darkness
of her eyes, he sees that she does. The hand atop his moves gently, stroking
lightly over his fingers while the other cradles his palm.
A swift smack parts them as neatly as any blade. The
woman is tall enough to meet the manhorse’s eye with nary a tip of her chin;
she is tall but not as tall, and there is no wonderment in her face when she
sees him up close. No awe, no bewilderment—nothing of what the children have
shown when they look on him. He is unsure, but deep in the eyes she has passed
to her son and daughter, he seems to spy a flicker of fear.
Her face reveals nothing. She is lovely, with high,
chiselled cheekbones and large, beautiful eyes. His gaze brushes her lips, and
for an instant he remembers the softness of a gasp against his palm. His heart
thumps a warning in his chest. If she smiles, he will know her—but he knows
this is not so. He does not know her … but does she know him?
She knows something.
Chattering impatiently, Joel tugs on her sleeve. Roanne
stands quiet, absently rubbing her smacked knuckles, frowning. The other boy,
Kev, hovers uncertainly near the cave mouth, an outsider drawn into the drama
against his will. His skin is fair, like Sian’s own. His hair is darker, and
his eyes are indistinct, but his height and frame speak of a similar breed.
Except that Kev is wholly human and Sian is not.
Was I ever?
Helplessly, he looks to Mam. Before he can meet her
gaze, she turns to her son and speaks in a low, urgent tone. He scampers to
obey and she directs her next words to Roanne. Sian has no idea what she says,
but the girl silently moves to his far side and her mother moves with her. Joel
says something to Kev, who reluctantly leaves his spot near the daylight. As he
drifts closer, Sian tries to catch his elusive gaze. Why is he avoiding me?
* * *
When Mam removes the dressing, Roanne forgets her
smarting knuckles.
“Ham-fisted,” her mother observes.
“I got it out,” Kev protests. He stands at Sian’s
shoulder, but he is ignoring Sian. The poor creature—the manhorse, not the
boy—is trembling. Aside from his cry when he stumbled into the dint, he is
utterly silent. Roanne would tell him how brave he is, if she knew what words
he would understand. She would put a hand on his back, too, but she might be
smacked again.
Joel returns with the bottle of spirit Mam has asked
him to fetch. His eyes widen on Sian’s open wound, and he blurts, “It’s not
blistered!”
Kev jumps forward to see. “No way!” He gapes over the
manhorse’s rump at Roanne. “Like my hand! Look, Roanne, it’s healed like my
hand!”
She knows. She’d seen when the dressing was removed.
What she doesn’t know is what to think.
Sian looks over his shoulder, perturbed by the nature
of talk he can’t comprehend. Mam stays him by putting her hand on his wither
and pushing, as if he’s a child she’s minding while preoccupied elsewhere.
“What do you children mean, ‘blistered’?”
Joel answers. “He was blistered, Mam. His hide around
the arrowhead was seared crisp like bacon.”
“Festered?”
“Blistered,” Joel insists. “Mam, I think the arrow was
magicked.”
“How would you know?” Kev demands. Mam and Joel ignore
him, so he tries Roanne. “How would he know?”
She shrugs. Her brother has a sense that she lacks.
“Show me the arrowhead,” Mam says.
Joel leads her to a different spot from where it had
been when Roanne and Kev first left the cave. “Don’t pick it up,” he warns his
mother. “It hurts like fire.”
“Did you touch it?” Roanne asks him.
He nods and she is satisfied. “That’s how he would
know,” she informs Kev.
Joel nods more emphatically. “It burns the skin that
touches it. Sian was fevered, Mam, but after Kev dug out the arrowhead, he woke
up and now his hide is healed. Except for the wound itself, of course,” he
adds, shooting a malevolent look at Kev.
“ ‘Sian’?” Mam echoes, curiously.
“It’s what we call him.”
Mam considers this, then lets it go—for now. The
manhorse’s wound needs prompt attention, so she busies herself cleaning,
stitching and dressing it. She works in terse silence, her brows drawn and lips
thinned. Joel assists her. Sian stands as if carved of stone, his lame leg
cocked and his eyes aimed straight ahead. His eyes are large, limpid, and
summer-sky-blue. They’re pretty eyes, for a man. Roanne doubts that he sees
anything beyond the cave mouth. His vision is turned inward, his handsome face
drawn with doubt and fear and pain. She wants to touch his face, to stroke his
cheek and reassure him, but Mam will not let her; not if she struck to make
Roanne stop holding his hand. Until that moment, she had only touched his
horseflesh, as if unable to accept that he is also a man, clad in skin like her
own, warm and soft and tawny from the sun. He stands taller than her, the
difference between a grown man and a little girl; she must reach up to touch
his cheek and that would be obvious, but with Mam intent on mending his hip,
it’s easy for Roanne to slip her hand into his without being noticed.
“What about this?” Kev wants to know, gingerly toeing
the arrowhead.
Mam doesn’t look up from her task. “Don’t you touch it.”
“You said it was a dark object. Who made it so?”
“If I was a mystic, I would be able to tell you.”
“But you knew it was magicked. You and Joel both
knew.”
Joel puts his back squarely to Kev, effectively
shielding Mam from further annoying questions. Roanne speaks quietly, mostly to
keep Sian calm with her voice, but also to shed some light on Kev’s confusion.
“There’s dark magic at the manor.”
“Lord Derrick,” Kev whispers, pale-faced. He glances
at the ground, then casually steps toward Roanne. She’s not fooled. He’s
scared. She has believed that her folk alone know the lord’s reputation, but
she sees now how silly that belief has been. Kev lives at the manor. Who better
to know the truth? Yet in all the wild things he’s told her, he has never said
a word against his master.
His green gaze catches her hand in Sian’s. She glares
murder at him, but he lifts his eyes to the manhorse’s face. Sian is taut,
strained, sweating slightly as he endures the attention to his injury. Roanne
can almost smell the fear in him. Fear, bewilderment, helplessness,
desperation. His quarters shift violently to one side as Mam starts to sew. Mam
scolds him in the next breath—or maybe curses him; Roanne can’t make out the
words—and he meekly shifts back into place. His breath sobs a little in his
throat, but he refuses to shed tears. Roanne smiles. “You’re doing well,” she
says, without hope of being understood.
He glances toward her and instead finds Kev still
studying his face. Something in the boy’s expression alerts him and when he
speaks, his voice is smooth and golden, like warmed honey. The sound is so
rich, so sweet, that she doesn’t care that she can’t interpret what he says—but
Kev can. Kev responds in the same tongue, his own voice showing him mercy and
staying in the lower range that will become its natural tone when he’s done
maturing.
To be continued …
copyright 2013 Ruth R. Greig
