Page 12 of The Horseman of Sleepy Hollow
Listening more closely to the cadence of his voice, I caught a lilting accent, faint but discernible. "You are of Irish ancestry, then."
Silence.
"How are you talking to me if you have no head?" I pictured a flaming skull floating bodiless near me, speaking on behalf of the torso that was binding my wound. The image drove spikes of anxious pain deep into my stomach.
"I have a head. Stop asking questions."
"I will stop asking questions when you stop answering them. How does your head go back on, then? Or did you—did you borrow Ichabod's head?" The question conjured a mental image more fearsome than the first.
"You know nothing about any of this. Keep your mouth shut, or I will stuff it with something."
"With what?"
"I—I do not know—a cloth, or something. Maybe a potato."
"How about a carrot? Do you have any of those?"
A few seconds of stunned silence, and then he said tightly, "Do you have any idea what you are saying, or do words simply spill out of your mouth?"
"I am hungry, and if I am to be stuffed with vegetables, I would prefer a raw carrot to a raw potato."
The Horseman made a choking sound, almost as if he smothered a laugh. "I suppose you should eat something. You lost a lot of blood. Not as much as the poor fellow under the bridge, though. I need to go and clean that up."
"Clean it up?"
"I must move the body. If he stays where he is, I may be discovered. I will bury him and wash the blood from the bridge. Everyone will think he left for another teaching post in some distant village. Or they will attribute his disappearance to a darker entity." The dull thunk of a bucket reached my ears as he spoke. "Stay here, and do not move. Try to sleep. When I return, I will get you something to eat."
My fingers twitched, eager to remove the blindfold as soon as he left; but he must have noticed the movement, because a second later he caught my wrist and wound it with thin rope, knotting it tight. My arm jerked upward as he tugged the rope, lashing it to something else—the bedpost, maybe.
"I cannot allow you to look around freely, or to kill yourself in some misguided attempt to run home." He grabbed my other wrist and fastened it the same way. I would have fought, but weakness flooded my body. The bit of energy I had summoned in order to question him drained away, leaving exhaustion behind.
"Sleep," he said. "I will return soon."
With my back speared by repeated flares of pain, and my hands bound, and my eyes covered, I had no choice but to drift off to sleep.
A harsh bang jarred me awake, and I writhed, confused and panic-stricken, gasping in terror.
"Hush! Hush now." A warm palm pressed between my bare shoulder blades. "You are safe."
"Safe." I burst into shrill laughter. "Safe, blindfolded and bound, in the haunt of the Headless Horseman. Yes, I feel very safe."
"Haunt?"
"Yes. Ghosts have haunts, places they haunt—or perhaps we are in hell after all."
"Does this feel like hell to you?"
The pressure of his hand on my back felt suddenly too heavy, too intimate. I could smell him—sour sweat and bitter smoke.
I wrinkled my nose. "It smells like hell."
His hand disappeared from my skin. "I am cut to the quick that you disapprove of mysmell. I have been occupied in washing blood from the bridge. Do you know how many bucketfuls of water it took? While you lay here at your leisure—"
"My leisure? You take me from the road and bind my wound, then you truss me up like a prisoner." I tugged against the bonds, but I was too weak from hunger to pull very hard.
"Shall I let you stagger home hungry and half-naked amongst the wolves and wanderers? I care not what they will do to you. But I doubt they will smell any better than I do."
"They cannot smell much worse," I retorted through clenched teeth.
