Whisper (31 page)

You're not going to get rid of me that easily.

While he was holding still enough to notice stimulus unrelated to his own making, I slowly unfolded the piece of meat I had brought from its napkin. He caught wind of it immediately, his nostrils flaring to take in its bouquet.

“This is for you,” I murmured. “When you deserve it.”

A sound of vexation escaped him, at my insolence for standing in the face of his threats, and the nerve I demonstrated bribing him with delicacies. He would have none of it, his attitude told me. And to prove it, he grew provoked again, rushing the fence a second time and rearing up, clawing at the bars. His hooves slipped through – once, twice – punching at me. When that failed to deter me, he opened his soot-stained jaws and clamped right down on the top rung, shaking it like a wolf shook prey by the throat. His fiery eyes looked into mine, very personally threatening me.

The thought occurred to me: I had my hands full.

But nothing about my mission changed, looking this devil straight in the face.

Failing to impress upon me his impregnable ferocity a second time, the beast extracted himself from the bars after abusing them a bit longer for good measure, and dropped his weight back to all-fours.

“Good,” I said. “Now that we've been introduced, maybe we can move on.”

He snorted at me, though, spewing sparks in my face. I coughed at the hint of smoke emitted with the breath, and brushed the sparks off my shoulders. Safely delivered, I took a moment to consider him, up close. His eyes reminded me of the marbles I had played with as a kid – glassy orbs with fiery twists and swirls suspended inside of them. But these were dark, instead of clear, and the fire was alive. A churning pit of lava trapped in a crystal ball that bared the soul.

“You're not so terrible, you know,” I said softly, as if I could convince him.

But he threw his head up and screamed at the sky – a sustained, angry wail.

“I know what they did to you,” I went on when he let the sound chortle down in his throat. “And they should be ashamed of themselves. You don't deserve that.”

He turned his back on me, kicked the fence – and I took my eyes from him for the first time, letting them wander over the dark as if uninterested in his fits. “Well. If that's how you feel,” I allowed, unimpressed.

Since we seemed to be getting nothing out of one another, he opted to dismiss me as well, and took to trotting around the edges of his cage, restless and angry and set on pacing until someone acquiesced to his demands.

As he trotted by on his third round, I put my fingers through the bars, let them trail over his moving flesh.

He rounded at the sensation, bellowing in my face at the intrusion on his personal space.

“You're just a big bully, aren't you?” I said. “A big bully with a temper.”

And he proved me right by opening his mouth and hashing a spurt of flame through the bars. I had just enough warning from the furnace-sounding breath that he drew, and this time I stumbled back out of the way, my knees collapsing into a duck, to let the flame use itself up over my head. It was blistering hot, though, and after it was clear I felt the top of my head, finding some hair singed.

That was going to be a problem. I could not stand my ground where fire-balls were concerned.

The stunt seemed to have a negative effect on the creature, though, and I watched with interest as he lowered his head, twisted it slightly – as if babying his throat, trying to ease a painful angle.

“That hurts you,” I observed, straightening, my brow creased with sympathy. He puffed a few defeated-sounding breaths into the dirt, grains fanning away from his muzzle and leaving a smooth little crater beneath. A moment later, the beast's ribcage convulsed, and he coughed. Just once, but it was enough to convince me. Whatever mutation had taken place inside him...it was not well-adjusted. It was a burden. Something that battled with the other parts of his nature.

Pity softening me, I offered the piece of rabbit through the bars. He flicked an ear at me, tilting his head to eye the treat. His eyes were more bloodshot than before.

He was by no means ready to take food from my hand, and so he turned back toward the center of the pen, tossing his head with a moody groan as he picked up a trot.

You just aren't going to give it up, are you?

Realizing it was time to assume more drastic measures, I waited until he was across the pen, and then did that forbidden thing: I ducked through the bars, into the pen.

Suddenly, we shared the same space.

It was too much – he was aware of the intrusion the instant my unauthorized feet touched down in his domain, and he rounded on me with a terrible provocation alight in his eyes. This time, he charged me at a full gallop, his knees thrumming almost clear up to his neck – a vicious, crazed run. But I absorbed myself into the zone I knew so well, the same one I had used on equines of every nature for ages, and let him come.

The churn of his striking hooves slowed to a traceable pace, one that I measured with calculating, knowing eyes. My lips parted, and though it was drowned out by the drum of hooves and the rush of labored equine breathing, I began to whisper. I said, in those moments, the things that no one ever got to hear. The words that never made it so far as my own ears. I heard the slow-motion sound of hoof-beats and pumping breaths – the whispers that ran from my own lips only a distant echo of sinuous, ghostly nonsense. Whatever I chanted, it registered in nothing but the unseen minions of energy that floated in the air around me – charging them up, stringing them together, drawing them to me. They gathered around me like stirring spirits, creating an unseen current.

The demon horse came at me, showing no signs of slowing. His nostrils glowed with the fire that burned within him, making the trickle of blood that ran from one side a distinct streak of rust against the rosy backdrop of flushed orange. In the slowed world I occupied, I could track the flow of the blood by a single gleaming drop, like a petal that floats down a sludge-cold stream. It ran from the cave of his nostril, down through his whiskers and over his lips, where it was flung like rabid froth off his chin.

He was close enough, now, that I could see my reflection in his fire-bright eyes. A silhouette that burned in the windows to his soul. It was this visual that fascinated me, that kept me from anticipating the impact of the battering-ram that galloped toward me. The whispers trailed off on my lips – decreasing to a low, gradual ebb as the vision in those eyes drew me in. I found myself riveted, enraptured – thoroughly entranced in those final moments before impact.

Then it hit. Like a tidal wave, it shattered my perspective, my whole world – flinging me like a rag doll and plowing me under. I don't know what I had thought – that the animal would stop short of harming me, just like any other. That it would dodge away at the last instant.

Perhaps I had known all along it would go through with it. But something greater had rooted me in its path, convicting me to the outcome.

In the blast between launching and hitting the ground, my star-stricken, suspended senses immersed me in a vision from my past. I saw it slide by me on a plane from another dimension, my flight through the air drawn out to witness the replay.

It was of my mother, laughing. Swinging me around by my hands as she spun in dizzying, joyful circles. A breathless merry-go-round of momentum that hung by the threads of my fingers. The world was a blur in those moments; there was nothing but her and me, our eyes and smiles connecting us, focusing us, centering us.

She ended the revolutions, like always, by pulling me upwards as she stopped, tossing me up into the air where I was weightless and dizzy for one single breathless moment before she always caught me, and hugged me to her chest.

But in the moment that she should have caught me, the real world intruded on my vision, and I hit the ground instead. It slammed the breath from my lungs, the world from my vision. I lay flat on my stomach, my rib throbbing, my head jarred to the side. After what felt like an eternity, air breathed back into my lungs, and I felt the sting of dirt against my cheek. My lashes fluttered, and dim visions of the world filtered through to me. I had not the motivation or sense to move, though, and so I laid there. Somewhere far-off, I was aware that I shared the pen with the demon horse, and was now laying vulnerable in the dirt, at the mercy of the creature's wrath.

But he didn't come back to finish the job. Perhaps knocking the sense out of me had been enough to satisfy him. Perhaps he thought the job
was
finished.

My heart throbbed in my head. A sickening feeling. Like a flopping fish, I thought – wet and unruly out of its intended catalyst.

For a time, I labored to bring breath into my lungs without straining what felt like a dozen injuries. I forced the swell of my lungs to increase gradually, popping things back into place one by one, and finally let out a sigh of relief and lay there enjoying the feeling of breathing in peace.

That's when a second source of breath whuffed nearby, and I felt a dusting of sand blow against the back of my neck. It was warm – warmer than any ordinary breath.

For a moment my breath stopped – but I eased it back into play, measuring it back to what it had been.
Maintain a neutral air,
I urged myself, not wanting to shatter any fragile moments as the demon horse inspected my downed form. I heard the creak of his joints as he moved a step closer, and let him sniff at my shoulder. He could sniff out something he didn't like any instant, I knew, and rear up with a scream to pound me to a pulp, but something in me promised he wouldn't.

A moment later, I felt his breath on my neck, and his whiskers tickled the exposed flesh there. I bit back a giggle. Giggles were surely not a language that this fellow spoke. He nudged my skull with his lip, then moved down my body, giving me a thorough sniffing. I knew I didn't dare move, and so I kept stock-still – even as my arm went to sleep, bent underneath me.

Working his way back up my leg, the creature stopped at my pocket, and I could hear him snuffing at the contents in recognition.

Ah, yes – the meat.

It must have been protruding to some degree, because he jostled at my hip only a few moments before finding purchase, and I felt the offering slide out as he extracted it. A smile touched my lips.

After devouring the morsel, he checked for more, still able to smell it on my clothing. There was nothing there, of course, but he seemed unsatisfied settling for as much – and the next thing I knew, he bit down on the pocket itself and the flesh that happened to be beneath it, and I bit my lip hard to keep from yelping.

Finding that what was left wasn't to his taste, he left off and sniffed around the ground instead, as if he might discover a few extra crumbs. Meeting only with disappointment, he lost interest in the game and momentarily moved off.

I drew a steadying breath, and dared to move a muscle for the first time. Keeping the motion slow and deliberate, I freed my numb arm and carefully pushed myself over until I lay half on my side and half on my back, able to keep tabs on things over my shoulder.

Alert to my movement, the demon horse watched me. He didn't immediately charge me again, intent on pummeling me into eternal submission underfoot, and I took that as an encouraging sign. There was a slightly softer look in his eyes now, as if the morsel I had brought for him had eased the worst of his temper. So long as I stayed in my position of submission across the pen from him, it seemed we were on cohabiting terms, for the moment.

Progress.

I sat there, scarcely moving, for what must have been an hour – maybe two. Letting him grow accustomed to my presence. Eventually he took to pacing again, rushing up and down the fence line, but he ignored me in the center of the pen as he did it.

Finally, I deemed enough time to have passed, and aspired to stand. I got to my feet at a maddening pace, my joints and bones creaking with every painstakingly ascended inch. When I had risen all the way to my feet, the beast stopped to face me, seeing what I was up to.

“Hey there, fox...” I whispered, acknowledging that we saw each other.

He looked at me a moment, then pawed the ground. It seemed more for effect this time, though, and I dared to hope the 'whisper' energies had finally started taking some effect.

He remained very showy with his aggressive abilities as I toyed here and there with pushing his limits, but it seemed we had satisfied the 'charge' impulse for the night. I was thankful for that, nursing my rib with every motion that I dared to make.

Every chance I got, I met the beast's eyes, trying to hold them – encouraging the practice of us looking into one another. At first his attention could not be held long with the practice, but it seemed to catch on more and more, until it was as if he actually saw something in me, and wanted to look deeper, curious about the nature that resided there. Eventually he met my eyes and didn't look away, and after holding his gaze for good, solid five minutes, something clicked in my instincts. It was time to take this a step further.