“The driver!”
Matthew rolled up his shirtsleeves, already soaked, and leaped into the wreckage. It appeared that he had not seen the van. My own instinct was to jump back into his car and abandon the scene, and I felt smaller for it, petty. I forced myself to follow him to the damage. I opened my mouth several times to scream a warning, let him know that Coulton was here, but my voice was overwhelmed by the storm and the brays of the horses.
The rain had already quenched most of the fire, and so we had a clear view of the crushed cab of the truck, the driver slack against the windshield, her neck twisted. That toothpick she’d been chewing had rammed straight through the flesh of her cheek, poking out like an exotic piercing. I gagged.
“Gone,” said Matthew, squeezing his eyes shut, trying to regain his composure.
Three of the four horses had flown from the transport and were spread across the road, already dead. The last we could hear screaming in fear within a cage of crushed metal. Matthew and I both tried to lift the trailer to free the animal, but it was quickly apparent that we did not have the strength.
“Its legs are broken,” I said, pointing. “It’s suffering . . .” I sat on the wet gravel and wiggled my good arm in through a gap. I clucked to the horse, softly. I cooed, hoping to calm it, have it come to my hand, nuzzle me gently, know me as an angel of mercy, a friend. Instead, the poor creature gnashed its teeth and howled, and I had to stretch myself elbow-deep to brush my thumb against the back of its neck. I felt it shudder, stiffen, release a final breath.
The crash site was quiet, the rain softening, the last flames dying out. Matthew sat next to me and closed his eyes. I couldn’t tell the origin of the wet across his face. He rubbed his fists against his forehead, scratched his neck. I was frozen in my crouch beside the transport, debating our best option: hide here with the dead horse in the wreckage, or break out into a run and hope that Coulton had been hurt, that his van was too mangled to keep pace with Matthew’s car.
“We haven’t had service for the past half hour, and I don’t know where we’ll find a police station, out here, middle of nowhere. We’ll have to figure out how to put up some sort of flare to warn other drivers.” Matthew got up and walked past the transport, out into the road. “There’s a second car!” he exclaimed, turning back to me. “Maisie, why didn’t you tell me?”
“Wait,” I whispered, pointing. Obscured before by the horse transport, we now could see the van, whose front was bashed in, but had otherwise survived the crash unscathed. Its airbags had deployed, and Coulton sat with his face half buried in a thick ecru balloon, apparently unconscious. Such a sight was more wretched to me than any gore I had just witnessed. Matthew made to move toward the van, but I dug my fingers into his shoulder. “Wait,” I said again.
Coulton was stirring. He raised his head, and his eyes opened. He moaned a bit. He rolled his shoulders back, stretching his neck, blinking. Then he turned his head. He noticed us. He smiled.
Matthew froze, then turned toward me, his eyebrows raised in question. Coulton unbuckled his seat belt. Coulton stretched.
Between the van and where I stood in the road next to Matthew lay the ruined bodies of three horses. A brown-and-white beauty, its throat slit by a rogue bit of metal, a clean bone poking from its glossy front leg. A slender roan, bleeding freely from the belly, tail eaten by flames. And the largest, pure black muscle, the sinews of its mouth, its heavy teeth, its eye socket, all visible, flesh and coat almost entirely burned away.
Coulton struggled to open his driver’s-side door. I took a breath. I went to the first horse, its white neck matted red, and I kissed the top of its head, watched it struggle to its feet. I went to the second, its entrails unwinding, and stroked its wet ears, saw it sniff at its own innards. I went to the third, its remaining eye open, and ran a finger across the one small still-soft patch of its nose. The eye went wild.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered to each of them. The horses stood silent around me. Coulton had exited the van, and was now frozen, staring at the risen beasts in terror. The large black stallion whinnied, the sound all the more fearful from its rippling, skeleton mouth.
“Attack,” I told the horses.
They descended on the van.
A Rope Around Her Neck
The black-eyed girl returns to the entrance of the bower where she was once buried, where the poisoned roebuck’s antlers wait, crowning the clearing. In any other wood, squirrels would have scavenged them for nutrients, shredding the shaft, teething on the tines. These rest untouched.
Born of the skull, an antler begins with a sweetness: a velutinous, nurturing blanket of fur. Like a child it grows and it hardens; sheds its caul, loses its velvet. When the seasons change, a buck will lose his antlers. New bone will grow in their stead into a crown of resurrection, leaving and returning with each cycle of the earth.
Helen, standing still behind a heather tree, blond curls matted, petticoat torn, watches the black-eyed girl caress the roebuck’s antlers. Helen shed her childhood late, but very quickly. She had known, when she let go of that tree limb, waited all the endless drop for the noose to crack her neck, that there would be no ever after. She had hoped, of course, to find Simon, her lover, somewhere, somehow, in the beyond. But Helen sensed that death could very well mean darkness, the same peace that dawned on them equally, and was content to have that be all—the same darkness felt together, as if seeing the same moon from two faraway parts of the earth.
She was surprised, then, by this forest. This perpetual limbo has been a frustrating detour. Helen takes a deep breath and steps forward so the black-eyed girl can see her. Kneeling, she kisses the back of the black-eyed girl’s hand.
“Please,” says Helen, “take me.”
For decades, here in this wood, Helen has tried to end her second life. She slit her own throat with a sharpened rock. She jumped from a thousand-foot maple. This time, she’d tell herself, this time I’ll get it right. But her efforts did not matter. Death was not hers to take.
“Please,” she whispers. The black-eyed girl touches the pink necklace still scarring Helen’s skin. She takes Helen’s hand and pulls her to her feet. They are the same height, their eyes level. The black-eyed girl smiles. She lays Helen down on a bed of moss, arranges her golden curls, tidies her dress. She kisses Helen’s forehead and closes her eyes with a palm.
27
We took the side road for a while before stopping to clean Matthew’s car. The sun appeared suddenly, wrinkling our wet clothes as it dried them, prompting a terrible headache. Matthew made me a new bandage for my arm. We did not look for the police.
“At least now I won’t worry he’ll come after me,” I said.
“I thought I’d seen him parked outside my parents’ house,” Matthew admitted, jaw clenched tightly. “I should have told you. I should have called in a report.”
“You did everything right.”
“Maisie . . .”
I shook my head, closed my eyes. We were silent the rest of the drive.
I WANTED A story to calm me, console me, make meaning of the events I had witnessed. I racked my memory, but found nothing. No knight had ever slain a rival with dead horses. No princess had lived happily with a prince who watched her summon beasts from hell. Those naughty little girls of Mr. Pepper’s held nothing, now, to me.