Page 86 of Spring's Arcana
“I promised to bring something to Baba de Winter.” Nat took a deep breath. “But I didn’t promise togiveit to her, you know.”
His stillness was absolute for a few moments. When he spoke, it was softly. “Careful. You sounding like me, now.”
“It’s yours, isn’t it? It’s only right.” She studied him earnestly, and Ranger coughed, turning his head to scan the horizon. “I know you hate her. ButI’m not her.” There was a faint edge of surprise to the words, too.
Knowing the truth was not like speaking it. “No.” The gangster nodded, a fractional movement. “No,devotchka moya. You are not.”
“Okay.” As if that settled anything, she took a sideways step, then another. Dima was a statue again, only the drifting smoke betraying any life. “I, uh, I’ve never driven a motorcycle before. But I’m thinking that probably doesn’t matter, huh?”
“It don’t.” Ranger didn’t look at her, watching the gangster for any twitch, no matter how small. “Just get on, ma’am. He’ll take you where you need to go and bring you back. That’s the deal.”
Dmitri turned on his heel, stalking back for his car. “He better.” It was a soft, vicious mutter. “In one piece, too.”
“Okay.” Nat shrugged, loosening her backpack, and had a little trouble getting her left arm through the opposite strap. Ranger helped, then lifted the ’cycle and popped the kickstand up. “No helmet. Great.”
“Don’t need it, Nat. Won’t let you fall accident-like.” Ranger held the bike steady while she swung one long lithe leg over, and Dmitri settled against the back of his own vehicle again, making a small scoffing noise. “You’ll do just fine.”
The motorcycle shivered, accepting her slight weight. Its engine caught with a deep throbbing, settling into a chained growl. Nat flinched but reached forward, slim fingers clasping the handlebars. Her boots—too heavy for such graceful feet—settled in their proper places, and Ranger leaned forward, his mouth moving. Encouragement or last-minute directions, who could tell?
The man in the fringed dun jacket stepped back. The motorcycle rolled forward, glossy tires pawing lightly at cracked driveway. Natbit her lip, and she glanced at Dmitri, a flash of wide dark almost-terrified eyes.
He tensed, but the bike took a deep coughing breath and picked up speed. Now it blurred, flickering; chrome, wheels, and glossy low-slung sides stretched like taffy. A proud black head lifted, a white blaze like lightning glowed between two intelligent eyes sparkling with red hellfire; long clean limbs stretched and iron-shod hooves bit, striking colorless stars from pavement.
The girl’s body dropped into the rhythm of a canter—and what girl doesn’t love a horse, doesn’t already know how to ride? The knowledge lurks in them, breath and bone, part of an ancient compact between big grazing beasts and the women who patiently tamed them, knowing brutality might work for a short while but true partnership can never be forced.
Horses remember, too.
The canter became a gallop. There was a roar of displacement, shining black flanks bunched, and the stallion lunged forward. A black streak boiled innocent air, bearing away a slight figure, honey hair streaming from under her cap.
They vanished with a sound like tearing cloth. Ranger hooked his thumbs over his belt, a tuneless whistle escaping his lips.
Dmitri finished his cigarette, dropping the filter. A boot-toe glittered as he ground it out, a ruthless twist of his ankle. “You let Mascha ride your horse?”
“No,” Ranger said quietly. “Can’t say as I did.” The two men were silent for a long moment. “Might be a while. Y’all want some coffee?”
There was no such thing as peace between two such diametrically opposed beings, but a cease-fire was sometimes possible, sometimes allowed.
Dmitri nodded. “Da.” Then, grudgingly, he added one more word. “Spasiba.”
BLACK HORSE, CHERRY TREE
The handlebars stretched into reins, but were stiff metal at the same time. It was unsettling, feeling two such different things at once. There was the steady hum of an engine and the low sweet wind in her ears like riding her pink childhood bike; at the same time there was a gallop, jarring until something deep in her bones woke with a twitch and the rhythm of hoof-fall and brief lift melted her into a steady, ever-changing equilibrium.
It was just as wonderful as her voracious childhood reading said it would be.Black Beauty, Thunderhead,evenThe Black Stallion,not to mention the magazines at the library with red-jacketed girls in jodhpurs smiling as they clung to saddles.
Don’t be silly, Natchenka. No horses in the city.
Oh, but she’d dreamed, and she’d longed, and once she was done with all this, maybe she could return here and learn.
The black horse ran as if he felt her joy; he tossed his head and uncoiled in a leap over strings of barbwire holding the road back from prairie. Under an endless winter sky they galloped, clods spattering from those sharp, sharp hooves; the horizon blurred and green raced under iron shoes. The cold wind turned soft, then warm, and Nat’s lungs burned as the sunlight changed, a flood of gold.
The horse wheeled to the right, and there was a valley with bright icy-blue water foam-chuckling over rounded stones at its bottom. Willows reared on either side, their long winter-bare branches whipping past; one cracked close to her cheek and Nat flinched. But the horse neighed like an engine revving and tensed beforebulleting forward. He followed the river, leaning first to one side then another to keep his rider from the clutching branches—and that was wrong, it was winter, but now the trees were green.
A stony slope rose before them, the horse leap-climbing surefoot as a shaggy mountain goat, and now the prairie had turned green as well. Tiny dabs of blooming color spattered by too quickly to name the flowers they belonged to. Nat clung to the beast’s back, bending low, breathing in a good scent of hay and simmering heat touched with a tang of wild fur and freedom. Strands of black mane brushed her cheeks, a rough caress, and the rhythm wasn’t just under her now. It was in her breath, in her bones, in her pounding heart.
Her tiny bipedal self melted into something bigger, becoming a single creature with four hooves thundering as a massive heart churned, her vision flattening until there was a blind spot directly before her and the horizon widened on either side. A tail lifted high and proud, a sweet strong wind combing a long mane—her ears flicked, laid flat, her nose untangling a thousand different shades of grass, brush, flowers, the breeze bringing tales from far away where herds of her kind galloped for the joy of it, knowing no bridle but their own whims.
The footing changed, hoof-falls no longer sinking into sod but cushioned by dry, crumbling stuff. The prairie blurred, bleached and widening until there was nothing but rolling dun sand, the sky bright hot blue with a white coin hanging in its arms.
