Anthea stopped. She closed her eyes for just a moment and breathed deeply. Her hair itched. Her eyes felt sandy.
“Jilly,” she said as she opened her eyes, “if I’m not back by tomorrow night, keep going down the road to Bell Hyde.” She pulled the map out of her saddlebag and tossed it to Jilly.
Jilly didn’t catch it. It flapped to the ground at her feet while she stared at Anthea. “What are you going to do?” she asked again. “Anthea?”
“One of us has to get to Bell Hyde. One of us has to convince the queen that the horses need her protection,” Anthea said.
“But I don’t—”
“The horses love you,” Anthea interrupted her cousin. She felt a smile break out across her face. “Buttercup and Caesar especially. They know you. And you have been riding since before you could walk. You can do this, Jilly. You have to.
“Because I have to go after the mares and Leonidas, and when I find him, I’m going to pull him back to the road by. His. Tail.”
She kicked her heels into Bluebell’s sides. Florian strode alongside them. They left Jilly and the farmer and the other horses behind and headed between the high hedges.
There were rolling green fields ahead of them. They could see the marks of the tractor’s heavy wheels in the hard-packed dirt that rimmed the edge of the field. And going in a diagonal across it, trampling the tender shoots of whatever crop had been sown here, were hoofprints. Leonidas and the mares had gone through the hedge and straight out the opposite corner of the field. Anthea could see the ravaged hedge, and to her even greater despair, a copse of trees on the far side.
“Stupid forest! Why are there so many trees?” she muttered, finally agreeing with Jilly about the trees. She had Bluebell and Florian walk single file along the edge of the field, so that they didn’t do any further damage.
Once through the hedge, they found themselves in a dense copse, or possibly a last offshoot of the northern forest. There was no sign of the three missing horses.
Anthea tried to reach out to them, tried to feel their minds as Caillin MacRennie had taught her. But all she could feel was that she was scared, and more than a little angry at Leonidas for not staying with her.
She looked at Florian.
“Find them,” she said. “I-I can’t.”
Florian stepped in front of Bluebell and then he stretched his neck out and bugled. There was no other word for it: he bugled a call that made Anthea want to move closer to him, and Bluebell, too, stepping over until she was close beside the stallion without any urging.
They all three waited, hardly breathing, and then there was an answering call, followed by the sound of hooves crushing the leaves that littered the forest floor. Florian called again, and again was answered, and the sound of horses became more frantic.
Holly, a black mare with a white mark on her forehead shaped like a sprig of holly, burst through the trees with Juniper, a rich chestnut-colored mare, behind her. They clustered around Florian and Bluebell, whickering, bumping shoulders, shaking manes, nipping fondly at each other.
“Good girls, good girls,” Anthea chanted
They had twigs and leaves in their manes and tails, and the lead that had tied Holly to Leonidas had broken off short and wrapped around one of her legs. Anthea’s relief at seeing them, uninjured, cleared up her mind and she was able to welcome them through the Way as well as by stroking their necks and plucking some of the twigs out.
They waited just a minute, Anthea and Florian, and then Florian’s head came up and his ears went back. She felt a pulling on the sides of her head as though her ears had tried to do the same.
“Leonidas!” Anthea’s voice cracked as she shouted. “Leonidas! Come!”
She wondered if he would be offended at being called like a dog, but then perhaps his indignation would make him come faster. But there was no sound of hoofbeats coming through the wood, no crackle of leaves and branches. She thought she could sense him, but she wasn’t sure. How far away was he?
“Juniper,” she said, grabbing the bridle of the mare hovering by her right knee. “Where is Leonidas?”
Her head throbbed as she tried to use the Way to gather up Juniper’s scattered thoughts. She’d never tried so hard to communicate with a horse other than Bluebell or Florian before.
“All of you, be quiet,” she ordered.
Her stern tone made the mares even more jittery, and Florian stiffened, offended. Juniper pulled her bridle out of Anthea’s grip, but she snatched it back.
“Now, now, I’m sorry,” she soothed. “But we have to find Leonidas. Where is he?” She gazed deeply into Juniper’s eyes, and she snorted.
Scratching, pricking, burning. Anthea could feel it in her own mind as well, now that she was calmer and had seen that the mares were safe.
Brambles. He was caught in some brambles.
“Take us to Leonidas,” Anthea said, as gently as she could manage. “Please, Juniper darling?”
Juniper snorted again, but she wheeled and led them back into the woods. Holly hesitated, but Florian nudged her and they all trailed after Juniper, Anthea and Bluebell bringing up the rear.
It was a matter of minutes to find Leonidas, but when they did, Anthea drooped in despair. Juniper hadn’t understood what had happened to the runaway stallion, but Anthea understood very well.
Leonidas wasn’t caught in brambles, he was caught in a snare used for wolves or deer. A cat’s cradle strung between two trees, low to the ground, so that any segment the animal stepped in, no matter how delicately, caused the whole trap to tighten on its leg. Not only were both of Leonidas’s front legs wrapped with the fine wires of the snare, but his reins had gotten knotted into them as well.
Anthea had a clasp knife in her saddlebags, with a blade as long as her middle finger. It was wickedly sharp, and would do the job, but it would require her to climb around the legs of a large stallion whose mind was a moil of pain and panic.
She looked at the snare, and then at Leonidas. He looked at her. Florian nuzzled her arm, and she felt hope from him. No, not hope: certainty. Anthea would fix it, Florian knew. In his mind, she could fix anything.
“I hope Leonidas agrees,” she muttered.
At the sound of her voice Leonidas shifted, and the wires cut into his left foreleg even more. He neighed, pleading. His huge round eyes looked at her, waiting for her to make it all right.
“Okay,” she told him. “I will, I will help you. Then we will find Jilly, okay?”
Leonidas threw his head up and down, nodding.
Anthea closed her eyes, bracing herself. You must all be calm. Calm and still, she thought to them. She opened her eyes.
And saw Arthur staring at her from over Leonidas’s shoulder. She gaped at the owl. He gave a pleased hoot in reply.
“I left you at home,” she said in astonishment.
He hooted again.
“All right,” she said. “It’s no use arguing, I suppose. Let’s get Leonidas free.”
The problem of getting Leonidas free was not falling into the snare herself. She picked her way carefully over and around the snare, feeling sweat trickle down her spine, while the horses and Arthur watched. When she reached the first of the wires that were entangling Leonidas, she gingerly squatted on her heels. She opened the knife, gripped the wire in one hand, and hacked it with her shining, never-before-used blade.
With a twang the wire parted and whipped around. The end she held in her left hand slipped through her fingers so rapidly that she was glad she wore gloves, otherwise it would have sliced right through her fingers. As it was, the leather of her gloves was cut, but not all the way through, fortunately.
Cutting that one wire had released the tension of the snare, and now she could climb over the slack wires to Leonidas, who sighed with relief. His legs were still hopelessly entangled, but it would be only a matter of minutes to get him free.
But you must hold still.
He snorted. It was better than nothing, coming
from Leonidas.
Anthea sawed at the wires. It was much harder when they were slack. She had to pull them tight so that there was tension against the knife, but without cutting Leonidas. One of them was still wound so tightly around his left foreleg that when she tried to pull it taut to cut it, it sliced right into the muscle.
Leonidas screamed and reared. The wires that were still wrapped around his legs arced through the air with a singing noise. Anthea was sure she would hear that sound in her nightmares for years to come. A wire slashed open her face just below the left eyebrow, narrowly missing her eye, and a rivulet of blood obscured her vision. Dimly, Anthea heard Florian and Bluebell both scream in pain as well. She herself was too shocked to make a sound.
Leonidas freed himself and bolted deeper into the woods, frightened and in pain, trailing wires from his lacerated legs. The other horses stirred hectically, whickering and neighing with nerves, trampling the bushes, and risking further entrapment.
Anthea lurched to a standing position. She couldn’t see out of one eye, the side of her face was burning with pain; added to that she was hungry, thirsty, tired, and scared. But most of all she was angry. She didn’t want to be where she was any longer. She wanted to be in bed reading a novel and eating marzipan.
She had had enough.
“Be still,” she screamed at the horses. They froze in place.
Leonidas! In her mind she reached out to him, straining her gift as hard as she ever had before. Get back here right now, you horrible beast!
She pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and pressed it to her left eye to staunch the bleeding. She had heard that head wounds bled worse than anything else, and now she believed it. Looking down at her coat with her good eye, she could see that she was drenched in blood.
“I look like I work in an abattoir,” she muttered. Cocking her head, she couldn’t hear Leonidas returning, so she snapped her fingers at Florian. “Go get him; bring him here,” she ordered. “I know you understand. Go. Get. Leonidas. Now.”
Another snap of her fingers brought Bluebell to her side. The mare had a few small cuts to one knee and her chest, so Anthea pulled out her canteen and splashed water on them before pouring some on her own face. Blinking away water and blood, she looked at the other two mares.
They were standing in a huddle, their thoughts all jumbled. They seemed to be simultaneously in awe of and frightened by her.
“Good,” she said.
She heard rustling behind her, and turned to see a repentant-looking Leonidas being herded by Florian. Head hanging down, Leonidas shuffled over to Anthea. She rubbed his forehead and rinsed the cuts on his legs. None of them was very deep, but he was trailing bits of wire, which had snagged in fallen branches. Anthea sighed as she hung her canteen back on Bluebell’s saddle. He would never make it back to the road unless she got his legs free.
The horses all stirred as Arthur came flapping down from the branch where he had been sitting. If they bolted because of a bird, Anthea thought, a bird that they knew, she would … She couldn’t think straight enough to finish the thought. Her eye felt like it was swelling, which did not bode well.
Arthur landed on the ground in front of Florian, who bent his head down and snuffled at the owl. Arthur made an angry noise and moved around Florian, straight to Leonidas. Leonidas started to sidestep, but Florian snorted and he froze.
“Come here, little one,” Anthea said. “You don’t want to get stepped on.”
Arthur ignored her and began to nip at the wires around Leonidas’s legs with his sharp beak. Anthea reached down to grab him, but just then the tiny owl bit through one of the wires and they all slithered to the ground around Leonidas’s hooves, leaving him completely free.
“Oh,” Anthea said. “Thank you.”
He came over to her and flapped his wings just enough to get off the ground. She snatched him out of the air and put him on the pommel of Bluebell’s saddle.
We are going now, she told the horses. Back to find Jilly and Buttercup and poor Caesar.
She turned and looked at Bluebell. Anthea pressed her handkerchief to her bloodied face one more time, and then stuck it in her pocket with a sigh.
Bluebell bent her front legs until she was low enough for Anthea to simply fall into the saddle. Once she was in place, Bluebell stood with a proud shake of her mane.
“You are a good girl,” Anthea said, her voice thick. She stroked Bluebell’s neck. The best of mares. My favorite mare.
She reached out a hand to Leonidas, and when he came close enough she grabbed his bridle and then his reins and tied them to Bluebell’s saddle. He was hurt and skittish, and if he took it into his head to bolt again she wasn’t sure even Florian would be able to catch him.
Bring the others, she instructed Florian.
She nudged Bluebell with a heel and headed her through the trees toward the road, with Leonidas trailing behind Bluebell, and Florian herding the other mares like a collie dog with a flock of sheep.
When the bullet ripped through her side, Anthea honestly didn’t understand what had happened. The sound of the shot didn’t come for another heartbeat, and to their credit, the horses didn’t panic.
Which was good, since Anthea fell right in front of Florian’s hooves.
FLORIAN
Florian would never forget the sight of his Beloved Anthea falling to the ground. She didn’t cry or scream, but simply fell.
Everything stopped. Every horse froze. The foolish little owl, who had been on the front of the mare Bluebell’s saddle, flew silently to a tree and perched there, watching with his round eyes.
Then came a man’s voice, shouting that he had caught them at last. Shouting that the wretched deer would not ruin his barley, not this year. And then the men burst through the trees, and stopped, and there was silence once more, for perhaps a pair of heartbeats.
There were three men, with rough voices, carrying guns. Two of them began to talk at the same time, one to wonder, loudly and coarsely, what kind of beasts they had caught, the other to shout that he had shot a person.
At this, Florian moved forward so that he was standing over his Beloved, guarding her as The Thornley had taught him to guard a fallen rider. Although she was not trained to fight, the mare Juniper came up on his flank, placing herself between the men and Florian. The mare Bluebell turned so that she was facing the men and Florian both.
What can we do? she asked.
The men continued to shout and rail, but they moved no closer, so Florian and his herd ignored them. The owl flew to another branch and looked back at Florian, expectant. From the tattered leaves and twigs, Florian could see that it was the way they had come.
Perhaps the owl was as smart as Beloved Anthea claimed.
Florian looked gravely at Leonidas.
Because of your foolish and headstrong behavior, she who is most beloved of mine is injured, he said.
Leonidas hung his head.
Now we must get her back onto this noble mare, Bluebell, and carry her to She Who Was Jilly. The owl will help to lead us.
At this last Leonidas raised his head in astonishment.
Forgive me, the mare Bluebell said. But my back is narrow, and the smell of blood is filling me with fear. Perhaps the Anthea … Beloved Anthea … should ride upon you, Florian.
The other horses quickly agreed, and there was no more time. The men were moving slowly toward them. Their shock at seeing Florian and the other horses had faded, been replaced with a curiosity that Florian did not like.
Florian moved back so that he was not above his Beloved. The smell of blood clogged his nostrils, and he was filled with rage. A twig cracked beneath a man’s boot and Florian snapped his teeth at the men, who drew back, but not far.
Beloved Anthea groaned. She moved feebly, like a new foal. Florian went to his knees beside her. He nudged at her with feelings of love and the mare Bluebell grabbed Beloved Anthea’s collar with her strong teeth and helped to raise her up.
“Florian,” Beloved Anthea whispered.
She slumped onto his back. Her feet did not find the stirrups. She grabbed a painful handful of mane as well as the knotted reins.
“My love, my love, do not forsake me,” Beloved Anthea whispered.
Go! Florian ordered his herd.
They ran.
25
RED SILK ROSES
They found the road easily enough. The horses had gone straight across the fields, moving from a trot to a rolling gallop once they left the trees, despite Anthea’s distressed gasps and Leonidas’s groans. But she was too frightened of the hunters and in too much pain to make a fuss.
Her left side was on fire, and every step Florian took sent a jolt of agony through her. She didn’t know if the bullet had gone through or was still in her side, but the bleeding seemed to have slowed. She dragged off her scarf and wadded it against her side, holding it in place under her coat with her elbow. She clutched Florian’s mane and reins with her right hand and prayed that none of the horses would panic and that the men wouldn’t start shooting.
They were still behind the horses, stalking them. They seemed to think that Anthea wasn’t human, calling for their dogs and talking openly of capture, of the best place to shoot “a monster” without hurting it, as though she weren’t there, as though she couldn’t hear their coarse voices.
They made it to the road, and then Anthea had to figure out where to go. Which way had Jilly gone with that farmer? Anthea could not remember passing a farmhouse before they ran into the tractor, so it must lie to the south.
“That’s good,” she said aloud. “We want to go south.”
Then Anthea started to cry. They were so close! So close to Bell Hyde, and the queen, and finishing their stupid, stupid quest! But she was shot, and blinded with her own blood, and Leonidas and Caesar were both hurt. Anthea wanted to run to the nearest farmhouse and beg for aid, but surely that was where the hunters had come from. It was all Anthea could do not to turn around and flee back to the Last Farm. Let Jilly have her glory, let her ride in triumph to the queen’s palace with a string of mares; Anthea just wanted to rest.