Page 91 of Spring's Arcana
She approached cautiously, hot wind teasing at stray curls falling in her face. Was the horse bigger? How did you ask a magical conveyance to turn itself back into a motorcycle because you were scared of attempting to clamber into a saddle? “You’ll have to, you know, bend down a little, please. I’m short.”
“Oh, of course.” The horse sighed, a strange reverberating noise, and bent its black knees. It lowered itself with ungainly grace, settling with a sound of mechanical springs taking a heavy weight. “Climb aboard and whisper to me. Ilongto run.”
Who wouldn’t, built like that? Still, Nat hesitated. “Ranger said we come out here, get the Cup, and go back.”That was the deal, right?
“Certainly.” The horse’s head bobbed. It watched her very carefully, moving leafshade dappling its coal-gleaming flanks. The sweat was gone; he’d recovered from their initial journey beautifully. “But you are here, and he isthere. Besides, you need me. I can show you shortcuts.”
The heat pouring from the horse was different than the desert’s breath—damper, more clinging. The tree’s shadow shifted, soft petals sliding lazily on updrafts before descending in slow, gentle arcs.
Great clumps of blossom clung to the dark branches, but she could see no leaves. Outside shady shelter there was nothing but bright yellow sand rolling in waves to distant horizons, a single purple smudge that might be mountains. Was that north?
She couldn’t tell. The sun hung almost directly overhead, its gaze hammering endless dunes into submission.
The horse’s ears pricked; the bright bloody spot in his eye dilated. “Many shortcuts,” he continued, meditatively. “I can show you the edges of the stars’ own country, where not even the Eternal have walked. I can show you the past—the rise of empires, great battlefields sown with the dead. I can even show you the tiny events History depends upon, the things only known to the Scribe and his ilk. I can take you anywhere, Drozdova. Simply climb into my saddle, and I will be happy to.”
It sounded awfully enticing. She could be part of that galloping herd again, heart almost bursting with joy, loneliness a distant memory. The thunder would swallow her, and who knew? She might slip free and change in midair, her spine extending as her arms creaked and stretched, her face growing longer, longer, and brand-new hooves digging into dirt or flinging small rocks aside as she raced, forever a part, no longer separate.
She took another small, uncertain step towards the horse.
“That’s right. Come, escape the pain of your mother’s hatred.” His lip lifted slightly, and his teeth were just as painfully bright and sharp as Dmitri’s.
So even a horse knew Maria Drozdova hated her daughter. Nat inhaled sharply, as if struck; secrets children thought kept forever slice deep when articulated by a stranger. “My mother…” The words died in her throat.
“She will eat you, Drozdova. After you bring her what she wants so she can bargain with Baba Yaga to allow the theft of a native-born child.” The horse’s laugh was low and bitter, its lips moving rubbery over those razorsnap teeth, more fit for shearing flesh than grass. “Nobody told you, and you would not hear if they did.”
“You’re lying,” Nat whispered. Or perhaps she merely thought she did; her lips were numb.
“Besides,” the black horse continued, pitilessly, “the starving ones are gathering. And that thief won’t hold them from you forever. He might even give you to the hungry shadows, if he gains your trust and the Dead God’s Heart.”
Starving ones?“Gathering?” The word slurred; Nat sounded drunk. Vodka was a curative in the Drozdova household, but Nat had never been tempted to excess.
Everything lied. Why should she expect a motorcycle-horse with predator’s mouth to be any different? Nat swayed.Don’t believe it. Don’t believe anything.
The sense of missing part of a math problem was gone, though. The solution was there, staring smugly at her. A fact laid bare, as big and glossy and real as the horse sidling towards her, its heavy hooves soundless on the grit-sand of centuries.
“The starving ones are like black paper, lacking weight and substance until they feed. Koschei the Deathless has an ancient compact with their cousins, and he feeds them well.” The horse chuckled, a slow deep whinny. “Better consumed than weak,some say. But you won’t have to worry about that with me, little godling. I am of a different breed. Though…” He champed, teeth snapping together with deep clicks like billiard balls smashing each other on a field of green felt. Like Dmitri’s, in fact; the gangster-god made the same sound when he bit empty air. “I am hungry too. In my own way.”
I’ll just bet you are. The thought was a slap of cold water, and Nat shrank back, suddenly aware she had drifted close to the beast without meaning to. Her boots crushed the ghosts of spent blossoms; they faded with tiny puffs, melding into the sand. Had this tree filled the entire desert with its shed flowers? Did its roots reach whatever quicksilver fluid was in the Well?
She had the sinking feeling she didn’t want to know the answer to either question. “Dmitri said the ones who eat leave divinities alone.”
“They know when to fear, yes.” The horse shook his large, bony head, and it had stopped sidling. “But you are not quite divine yet, little Drozdova.”
Well, that was a relief. Sort of. “What are you hungry for?”
He laughed again. “Climb into my saddle and see. You are small and light, barely a mouthful. I will carry you far indeed.”
It would mean she didn’t have to ride in the gangster’s big black car. But it would also mean taking Ranger’s horse, and that would be an ugly way to repay Scrabble at midnight, not to mention cornbread and good coffee in the morning.
Don’t take it wrong, but I like you better. So far, Ranger was the only one who ever had. Dima, after all, hated Nat just as much as he hated her mother. Which was at least democratic of him.
Nobody told you, and you would not hear if they did. Well, Dima had asked if Nat thought Maria Drozdova would do this for her daughter if the positions were reversed. Maybe it had even been his edged way of hinting at…
It can’t be true.Nat’s shoulders stiffened. “You can take me back to Ranger. That was the agreement.”
The horse’s head dipped slightly, rose again. It looked an awful lot like a nod. “He is there and you are here, little one. Surely you realize such an agreement is easily… altered.”
You know, Darth Vader thought that way, and it didn’t work out well for him. Nat found her hands had turned into fists and the sweat was all over her back now, collecting under her arms; even her ankles prickled. Her nape was uncomfortably damp, and her hair, while dry, kept trying to stiffen at the roots.
