Don't Let the Fairies Eat You (9 page)

The white hart appeared before him, followed closely by another, darker stag. The lord found familiar eyes watching him from beneath the ivory antlers, the same Tremley had seen before in his own reflection, burning intensely with a lust for the hunt. Then the lord saw nothing as the white hart’s head swung quickly to one side and the antler points scratched across Tremley’s eyes.

He fell back against the slope, shouting and swearing again, and both stags plunged their antlers into his thighs. Each shook his head, spraying the grass and dirt with Tremley’s blood, letting the scent cloud the air as the hounds appeared atop the slope. The lord’s screams rang sharply through the forest as the pack barreled down and savaged his flesh, and the dark stag listened with satisfaction as he and the white hart walked away.

The screams followed the two deer all the way to the clearing, now washed beautifully in moonlight, glittering from the pond’s surface and glowing over the abandoned skin of a boy. The white hart nuzzled the body, turning the boy over on his back, and then nodded to the dark stag. But the dark stag shook his head, stepping back from the skin of the boy named Baelin, and nudged the white hart.

The pale stag leaned down, licking at the boy’s mouth, and then pressed his face between his teeth. He pressed gently and squeezed his forelegs together, tight as he could, and bent his antlers back. His body cringed close to the forest floor and he pushed forward, stretching his hooves into where hands and feet belonged like a man slipping on a shirt. After another moment, the white hart’s eyes burned from within a new skin, and he clumsily stood on Baelin’s legs.

The boy looked up at the dark stag in the moonlight across the grove. They nodded to each other at once and turned their backs to the pond, the stag heading west, the boy heading east, one intent on trying his hand at ceasing to be the much-pursued white hart, and the other eager for a break from being a starving boy.

Hashal first saw the stallion as a red-gold streak rushing across the desert while riding home to his father’s ranch from market. He thought it was a mirage at first, and then when he realized it wasn’t, he thought it might be a fiery efreet, or Bokoraru, the Devil-Lion of the sunset lands that supposedly ventured into the grand desert some years.

But the mare he rode didn’t panic as they rode closer, and when she grew excited, he understood he’d seen a beautiful stallion that would win many races once trained. He whipped the reins of his own horse and kicked her sides, sending her galloping and whinnying. The sound of her cries made the stallion pause for a moment, long enough for Hashal to catch up and sling a rope around his neck.

The stallion reared up at first in anger, and then tried speeding off, but Hashal yanked fiercely on the noose, choking the beast, and kept the mare close on the wild horse’s hooves. The chase and struggle went on for three hours, longer than it had taken for Hashal to reel in any captured horse. Maybe the horse would’ve kept at it longer in a better climate, but even the red-gold stallion couldn’t fight forever in the desert’s hot sun, while Hashal had water for himself and his mare. Over the course of the chase, he’d driven and dragged the horse closer and closer to his father’s ranch, so that when the work was done, he led the animal straight through a tall, wooden fence where horses were broken.

Hashal’s father, Rush, and his mother, Danai, emerged from their stone house at the sound of commotion and stamping hooves. “We did well at the market,” he told them, handing his mother a satchel of coins, “but we did even better in my coming home.”

“What did you bring?” Rush asked, whose eyes were not so good anymore. “An efreet? A devil?”

“Neither,” Hashal said. “Once this stallion is trained, one of the men who rides in the sultan’s races will buy him for ten times the gold we’ve made from any other horse.”

“He is wild and beautiful,” Danai said softly, shaking her head. “You should free him.”

“Nonsense,” Rush said. “We’ll train him and sell him, and make our ranch proud.”

“I will train him,” Hashal said. “You rest, my father.”

Rush’s spirits seemed to sink, but Hashal’s mind wouldn’t be changed. He had brought the stallion and he wanted to see through to training the beast without hurting his aging father. He locked the stallion in the stables that evening with the other horses, every step being a struggle, and he listened to the animal huff and whinny through the night. “Go on and tire yourself,” Hashal said. “Tomorrow, you’ll wish you’d slept.”

On the first morning, he dragged the horse into the yard again to begin breaking the beast. Climbing onto the stallion’s back took ten minutes, and was the easiest part of the morning, as the animal rushed all over the yard without clear direction, heeding neither the rope at his neck nor the kicks of Hashal’s jagged riding boots. He slammed into the fence, bruising Hashal’s legs, and he frequently reared up on his hind legs, threatening to dump Hashal into the sand and crush him under hoof. At the end of the day, both survived, both worse for wear, and Hashal felt no closer to breaking the horse.

“Let me have a chance,” Rush said when Hashal entered the house that evening.

“You’re too old,” Hashal said. “That horse will break you instead.”

Rush left the room quietly and Danai sidled up to Hashal. “Let him help you in some way. You act like he’s useless and you’re breaking his heart. A broken man is hardly a man at all.”

Hashal said nothing. He would let his father help with the next horse, one that was less wild, and less special. On the second morning, he awoke to the sounds of a horse’s whinnying and a man’s shouting. He rushed up from his bed and out to the front of the house, where he found his father clinging desperately to the side of the red-gold stallion. The horse galloped to the fence and slammed his side into the thick wood, crushing Rush’s chest between beast and barrier. Hashal hurried to the yard, and the horse smashed into the fence a second time. Blood dribbled from Rush’s mouth.

When the stallion spotted Hashal, he rushed after his captor, stomping his hooves to crush the man’s legs. Hashal flitted behind the horse, grabbing the rope around his neck, and yanked hard. The stallion changed direction, slamming his side and Hashal’s father into the fence one more time, and then calmed down as Rush fell into the sand. Hashal hurriedly lifted his father’s upper body and dragged him out of the yard before the wild horse could regain his temper.

“I told you, you’re too old,” Hashal said, wanting to smack his father. When he touched the old man’s neck, he felt no pulse, and no breath escaped Rush’s face. Hashal’s anger turned to the horse, and he shrieked and cursed until his mother emerged from the house in tears. They grieved for much of the day, and then wrapped Rush in cloth to be brought to the town for the fire priests to care for. Then they grieved a little longer.

Hashal’s grief turned to rage again by the end of the day. The red-gold stallion had been left in the yard at the mercy of the sun’s heat, but that was out of neglect, not retribution. Hashal fetched a whip from the barn and climbed into the yard, onto the stallion’s back. Then he beat the beast’s back, the horse-hair whip cutting away long stretches of the horse’s skin. The horse huffed and galloped around the yard, against Hashal’s commands, but not once did he whinny or shriek.

“Don’t you understand what a horse is?” Hashal shouted, his arm growing tired and sweat pouring down his face. “You’re not for killing! You’re for riding and carrying, and serving!” When he couldn’t lift the whip anymore, he dragged the stallion back to the stables with all the struggling he’d felt at the end of the last two evenings, while the horse seemed fine, as if he’d just arrived. “Do you see the others?” Hashal growled, pointing at the obedient, broken horses in the stables. “That is how a horse should be!”

When he returned to the house, his mother had dried her eyes and composed herself. “You must free that horse,” she told her son. “He is too wild to ever be tamed. He will not live as a broken horse—he will be a horse entirely, or not at all. You’ll kill him before he submits to you.”

“Then we’ll be even,” Hashal said.

On the third morning, he dragged the horse into the yard yet again and made for the whip first. This time he didn’t shout or curse. Hashal sat stiff as a statue and began beating the horse’s neck with the whip and his sides with his jagged riding boots, while the horse reared up or galloped circles around the yard. He paced the whipping so he wouldn’t tire his arm and kept two water skins on hand so he wouldn’t need a break, while the stallion endured heat, pain, thirst, and exhaustion.

After three hours, the horse’s gallop slowed. After two more, the stallion clopped along slowly. After one final hour, Hashal began directing the animal, first to turn right, which he did, and then to turn left. The beast obeyed.

Evening set in and despite his father’s death, Hashal smiled triumphantly as he led the red-gold stallion back to the stables. His father’s killer was conquered, and once trained, his sale would bring prosperity to the ranch. Other racers would buy lesser horses solely because they came from the same ranch and Hashal would have money to expand. In time, he would be ready to marry, so that future generations could tend to the horses while the family grew wealthier.

At the stables entrance, the stallion paused. Hashal jerked the rope once and the beast’s head bowed, but he wouldn’t move. “It’s over,” Hashal spit, pulling the rope again. “Join them.” He pointed to where the broken horses dwelled between slats of wood. When the stallion still wouldn’t move, he yanked the rope one last time.

The horse’s hair, skin, muscle, bones—everything slipped away in a limp pile, as if Hashal had ripped a blanket from the horse’s back. The flesh and bone thumped heavily into the sand, leaving a fiery form standing where the stallion had been. It reared up in a horse’s shape, flickering with flames against the reddening sky at dusk, and then sped toward Hashal with burning hooves.

Hashal ducked away just as the fiery beast lunged past him and flew into the stables. Smoking hoof prints scorched the sand, hay flickered alight at the fireball’s passing, and waves of flame spread across the stable walls and across the skin of the horses within. Their shrieks drowned under the roar of the wooden building’s inferno and the bellow of the creature that had emerged from the red-gold stallion like yolk running from a broken egg.

Danai emerged from the house at the sound of the horses’ screams and hurried into the yard. “Hashal, what’s happening?”

The explanation couldn’t form in Hashal’s mouth and he stared slack-jawed at his mother. It was as she’d said—the stallion could not be a broken horse. He would be a horse entirely or not at all. “I’m sorry,” was all Hashal could say.

The stables collapsed within moments of being set alight and the fiery horse form galloped through the wooden wall, past the yard, and plowed through the stone side of Hashal’s home. Flames erupted from the walls at the creature’s breakneck pace, and fire had taken the entire house by the time the creature burst through the other side. A red-gold streak tore off into the desert as the sun set, leaving fiery hoof prints in its wake, and nothing but ash remained where Hashal’s family ranch had been.

Winter came heavy and harsh one year, snapping like a mad dog at every man, woman, or child who dared set foot outside. It was a poor season for war, but the land of a lord in the western kingdoms seemed to suddenly have rubbed against the land of a baron in the cold lands, and so war briefly heated the fields and woods, with forges burning and clashing swords splashing the snow with sparks.

The final battle came in a field beyond a wretched wood, and the battle was almost as wretched, dying the snow red, black, and silvery with blood, bodies, and blades. Neither side routed, for messengers on both ends fell unconscious in the cold winds, and so the battle came down to the last few sword-blows of proud men, until only three were left.

None of them knew each other and their clothes were so stained with blood and dented by weapons’ blows that they couldn’t tell who was on which side. “We’re all against the winter, I say,” said the big man, Remkar.

“And we’re all on the side of the living, which is better than we can say for our comrades,” said the quick man, Bahn.

“I could argue with that,” said the wounded man, Leo. A mace had shattered one leg and a sword had deeply cut one shoulder. He could barely count himself among the standing because the other two men held him up, and anyone who lied down in this cold was as good as dead.