Whisper (7 page)

“They're dead,” the Lieutenant said curtly, despite the trace of regret that diluted itself in her eyes.

And I was reminded again: this was war.

*

When it was dark in the camp and we'd had a dinner of rabbit in herb dressing, the uniformed division began to retire to their tents. I had to wonder how many of them were horsemen and how many of them knew nothing but combat drills and survival tricks and how to be resourceful when it was required of them. I noticed only one man not dressed in military camouflage, and assumed he was one that was originally a trainer. My eyes only followed him a few moments before the drooping of my lids got the better of me, though, and I rose to find my way to my own tent. Jay's silhouette was already moving about inside his, projected onto the mottled canvas by whatever light source he had scared up.

Pushing aside the cream-and-blue floral curtain that fell across the entrance to my shelter, I stepped into my shaded new quarters, squinting my bleary eyes so that they would adjust. I scuffed about the floor with my boots, searching for blankets, wishing I had attained a light source like Jay. It quickly became apparent, though, even through the numbing walls of my boots, that my floor was barren of all luxury.

I was back outside my tent momentarily, auto pilot taking me to Jay's shelter three tents down. I paused where his silhouette was projected onto the canvas, blinking at it, feeling the urge to caress the paint strokes of the ocean that were painted there. They were like rippling blue muscles on the shadow of his back.

Wondering abruptly where such an urge had come from, I shook my tired self out of it and moved on to the flap of the tent. The instinct to knock quickly found me feeling foolish standing there with my hand raised, and I tried a little harder to focus, putting my arm back at my side where it belonged. “Jay?” I called instead.

His silhouette straightened from where it seemed to be arranging bedding, and he stepped over a bundle of some sort and came to the entrance. Pushing back the flap, he stepped out into the fresh bite of the spring darkness. My breath made a cloud in his face.

“I don't have any blankets,” I announced.

Another time, he might have told me I'd be fine and sent me back to bed, but seeing my sleepy disorientation, he chose to humor me that time. “You can have mine,” he said, ducking into his tent to grab them.

In my compromised state, I still managed to notice that he seized the single article that he had to his own name. “Jay – no,” I protested rather pathetically, all but slurring my words. I could only hope my frown spoke for itself. “You'll freeze.”

He scoffed at me, lightly, but I couldn't divine if it was to defend his fur-skinned manliness or actually because my sleep-addled worries were amusing. He deposited the bedding into my arms and turned me around, pushing me back the way I had come. I was determined to be stubborn, though, not one to tolerate him pushing me around just because I was drowsy and easy to take advantage of. Never mind that giving me the means to keep warm did not really fall under the category of one human being taking advantage of another.

I turned back around, my frown deepening. “I didn't come to take your own blankets.”

“No? Then what did you come for; just to complain?”

“I...just take them back, Jay. I have my thoughts to keep me warm.”

His eyebrows cocked slightly at that, as if I'd volunteered information he didn't necessarily want to know. I couldn't imagine what he thought I had said, though. For that matter, I didn't know what I
was
saying. But I cast the blankets at his feet. He retrieved them with his brows still lingering in that funny position, though now it might have been more from amusement.

“Thanks anyway,” I finished before he could throw them back, this time likely in my face, and I turned back toward my tent. No bundle of relentless good will thwacked me in the back or parachuted down over my head, so I returned to my tent triumphant, irrationally smug, and cold.

I was sleepwalking before I got there, however, and the thoughts that kept me warm turned out to be schemes of spiriting myself to the stables in place of my tent, where I let myself into the arena and lay down with the horses. I was just sinking to the perfumed depths of my nightly euphoria when a pair of hands slipped into the waters of my dreams and hauled me out by the shoulders. My eyes fluttered at the interruption, seeing only the dark forms of sleeping horses, but I could smell Jay's pine soap and hear the murmur of his quiet voice at my ear, coaxing me up.

“Not tonight, Willow,” I heard him say gently, which for some reason I took to mean
Not on my watch
, and then he steered me from my desired resting place and cast me back into a respectable tent for the night. His, I discovered as he tucked me into the covers and I snuggled in, pulling them up to my chin. Then it was on with my dreams – of horses galloping through Thomas Kinkade paintings, splashing wet paint onto everything and rendering themselves works of art, and of following the shell-shaped hoofprints of one frothy white stallion, where he led me to one of the seven wonders of the world and reared up in the ruins of it, pawing at the sky as if to crack the one thing that had yet to be broken.

I wandered closer as if in a trance – too close; right beneath the arch of his great pawing hooves, where sea water rained down from his fetlocks and coursed through my hair, down my face, over my body. I tasted salt and rosewater and dew, and reveled in it like the first rain after a drought.

For me, it
was
the first rain after a drought. A drought of reality, of a world run by people, of talk of war and conquest where the only rain that fell splattered to the ground in the form of scarlet drops of blood.

Seven –

W
hen the euphoria ended, so then did my love affair with sleep. The end of the dreams marked the beginning of my day, and I was out on the arena fence by dawn.

The horses were ambling about, restless in their new home. Quietly, I hummed a tune to them, and they perked their ears to listen. The aimless notes drifted through channels of stirred-up dust, tickling through the hairs that made the horses' ears warm and fuzzy on the inside. They came to surround me, going from listless beasts to giant teddy bears in my presence. I held my hands out to them, and they lifted their muzzles to me, reading my palms with their whiskers. They lifted their heads higher still, using their lips to play with my hair, snuffing and whuffling the secrets of my future into my ears. It was a future of midnight, bareback rides, of taming wild mustangs, of breezing Thoroughbreds down tracks of cookie-cutter aerated turf.

At first, I thought it was part of my fantasy when a parade of zebras materialized out of the twilight dust and began to amble by the arena, jockeys in colorful riding gear perched upon their backs. But then I remembered the Lieutenant telling me of their presence here, and I watched in a rare, real-life fascination.

My friend horses broke from their new-found ease to regard the line of smaller creatures, breath flaring through their nostrils as they sought to identify these striped imposters. Reminded that they were different creatures, in the equine family but clearly regarded with an amount of unfamiliar suspicion, I couldn't help but wonder if I could likewise whisper to zebras.

I hopped down from the fence to follow them, curious about their morning workout. They only rounded one corner of the arena, though, and then another. They were now going back the way they had come, and were picking up a trot. The enclosed horses trotted after them, growing playful from the unexpected stimulation. When the zebras broke into a canter and curved around another rounded corner of the enclosure, I realized what they were doing. They were running laps, merely by using the outside of the fence as their guide, since the inside was occupied. And didn't race tracks have that inner rail as well? I reminded myself.

I climbed back atop the fence to allow for their path, tucking my feet onto the inside of the corral to keep out of the way. By the time they reached me the jockeys had given them their heads for a full gallop, and the miniature herd thundered – trundled? – past my perch.

They went twice around the arena, a forest of little sapling legs churning up dust. This seemed to be the wake-up call for the rest of the camp, and military personnel began to appear out of their tents. Commotion picked up like a train leaving the station; slowly, at first, with a few grunts and groans, and then faster and smoother as it went. Soon it was blazing along the routine tracks, making its rounds.

Jay emerged with the sun, from my tent where he had spent the night on the cold, hard ground. It wasn't an arrangement altogether removed from camping across the Shardscape, though, and that thought made me feel less guilty for kicking him out of his roost.

He strode along the line of tents, headed for the barns. Ready for a day's work, already, where I was still daydreaming on the fence. But I suppose he knew his place well enough without being told – mucking manure wasn't rocket science – whereas I did not know quite how to approach teaching other people to whisper to horses. For that matter, I didn't yet know who I was expected to teach.

At breakfast, I met the other trainers. There were five of them. Three women, two men. I could not help the feeling of disappointment that slowly ripened in me at the prospect of having to work with people, instead of horses. They all blinked at me, this gifted upstart being introduced out of the blue, and maybe it was just the reserved horseman look, but I was sure they were all sharing a mutual secret of dubious resignation at the prospect of having to work under
me
. They were professionals. I was a kid. A kid with tattoos and drug-like euphoric dreams, but I was sure neither of those things would boost my credibility in their eyes.

I cleared my throat, wanting to do something obstinate to prove myself yet all too skeptical about the mission myself, all too aware that my attempts at meeting the Lieutenant's expectations were liable to fall flat. I had had my doubts from the beginning, yet there she was bragging about what I could bring to the table. They all brought their morning coffee to get through the day, and I was supposed to bring champagne, cause to celebrate. If only magic was so easy to shake up and unleash. I imagined it, a simple potion in a bottle – popping its cork and letting fountains spew everywhere. A war won as easily as a million bubbles bursting.

We got to work as soon as possible, pulling one of the green Thoroughbreds from the arena as our guinea pig for the day. One of the women quietly volunteered as my first subject, willing to give me a chance. With nothing else for it, we met at the center of our choice round pen, and I took a breath to give her the first obvious piece of instruction.

But nothing came out. There was no obvious instruction, or first rule of thumb. There were no words for guidance, because I did not even know what it was that I did. There was only a big gray area, a place where ghosts and fantasies had their way with the world. I found myself there, sometimes, standing on a coordinate of blurred lines. Like where the corners of Utah, Colorado, Arizona and New Mexico were said to touch before the earthquakes ruined that, where you could get on your hands and knees and stand in four states at once. It was a place that clicked the way a deadbolt slides into the woodwork of a wall. Walls were meant to keep things out, but if you had the key, you could do it.

If you had the key.

If you didn't have the key, of course, you had to pick the lock. Fake your way through. And I could not describe to a person how to pick a lock. Even that had to be felt out for themselves.

This was useless. Useless, and we hadn't even begun. The bay Thoroughbred sniffed about the edges of the round pen, snorting at the ground. Halos of dirt fanned out from his breaths.

And so I didn't speak. I just began to do my thing, seeing no other alternative, vainly hoping I might find the words as I did it, or that demonstration might be enough in and of itself. I moved out, aiming myself at the bay's flank, driving him forward. He picked up his feet scarcely two steps into my advance, starting off at a trot, lifting his head from his quest of exploration along the ground. I followed him like the central gear on a clock face, making a small circle around the other trainer in the center, driving him along the fence. He was an extension of me. I let the side of me closest to his head fall away, inclining inward, and he pulled up and turned inward as well, following as allowed. Shifting immediately, I stepped over the imaginary line that kept me on his inner side, and angled my body back the other way, pressuring his outer shoulder to encourage the completion of the turn. He swiveled in compliance, and then I was aimed at his hip again, driving him the other way. When I wanted him to turn to the outside, I advanced on his shoulder, cutting him off, and he slid to a stop and made that turn as well.

This was all general procedure, nothing for the others to take note of except that they might typically use a lunge-line, whip, or lariat as a prop to aid them. It was merely a starting point that I liked, a stage of connecting with the horse, settling into our groove together.