But maybe with the weather changing, and a need to go on a schedule that couldn’t, by Cassivey’s whim, and needn’t, by Aby’s judgment, wait for spring—he could forgive her.
Still, —damn—
He began to shiver. He huddled there shaking his teeth out, took his hat off, put the blanket over his wet hair, wrapped his arms about himself under the blanket and slicker and tucked his feet up—he couldn’t feel his toes, but he didn’t think he’d been out there long enough for frostbite, thanks to Burn, all thanks to Burn.
<Bacon in dry bright sun,> he promised Burn, clenching his teeth to still the shivers. <Burn coming over the hill in the rain. Burn carrying the packs. Handsome, splendid, shining in the sunlight nighthorse.>
Burn lapped it up like cream; and Burn began to think of <fire, and dry bedding and bacon cooking,> which wasn’t as good as edible supper, but it was far better than the drip of rain in the real world outside.
<Wet, dripping wood,> Guil thought, there being very little convenient way to image a complete lack of any given thing—and Burn wasn’t much on the technicalities of fire-making. Burn knew it was raining, of course, and Burn hadn’t found a woodpile, or any trees, but Burn was hungry. There were three slabs of bacon in the supplies Burn’s rider had lugged an agonizing long way from Anveney—and that of course changed all logic. Bacon was here. <Fire> happened in Burn’s mind when Burn thought of it.
So Burn thought of <fire.> Burn did his part. Burn expected it to happen.
Well, so the one of them with fingers bestirred himself, teeth chattering, and, for a peace offering, took some beef jerky out of the pack, only then and shakily remembering that food hadn’t crossed his path at all today, either.
So it wasn’t bacon, and it couldn’t be bacon until the rain stopped, until he dried off, or unless a woodpile miraculously appeared, but Burn took the jerky as the best he could do under difficult circumstances, and simply thought <bacon.> Burn chewed the first piece, then heaved a gusty sigh, circled, Burn’s habit when he was tired, and sank down, precarious process in the cramped space between him and the storm, narrowly missing a vertical support pole, arranging himself so that Burn’s rider, who insisted on sitting, could feed him bits of jerky, two, of course, to the human’s own one, considering Burn had a far bigger appetite.
Burn was, overall, mollified.
Guil cut his thumb, he was shivering so, but, hell, there were worse fates. He had something to keep his stomach quiet, he was reasonably sure after a few bites that the food was going to stay down, which he hadn’t been sure of when the first bite went past his teeth, and his situation tonight, give or take the blinding headache and a slight nausea, was improving. He gave Burn less than Burn wanted, of course, but then, Burn was bottomless, and the supplies had to last a lot farther than Anveney Stone.
<High country,> he said to Burn, <snow and ice. Us walking.>
<Snow falling,> Burn agreed. <Rider shelters. Hunting spooks, playing in the snow.>
<Traveling the ridge. Snow and fireweed thickets, bright red in the sunlight.>
But he didn’t want to think where they were going first, or why, or searching for what. He shied away from that.
He thought of <here> instead. Aby had slept in this place. He’d suffered that one crazed impulse to bolt, before Burn had brought him here and come inside, all the same, leaving him no escape.
Except freezing to death in a rainstorm. He was saner than that. He’d not acted like it, spooking out, out there, but Burn had known he wasn’t rational, and Burn had duly taken him where he had to go.
So I’m here, woman, he thought in distress. What more do you want?
God, I should have heard you. Should have heard, when you said you couldn’t say your reasons.
It wasn’t easy to hold back with the horses involved. They’d met as juniors, they’d been naive, having no idea how to deal with people, how much to give away, how much to deal for—at least he, personally and sometimes painfully, had had to discover the rules.
He’d run whenever she came too close to him, he’d stayed whenever it looked comfortable. He was ashamed of it—but he was a skittish sort. He just didn’t know how to tell right and wrong even with her, let alone with riders he didn’t know, least of all with townsmen; and he supposed now in hindsight that he’d sensed for four years that Aby had something going in the Anveney business. When she’d been snowed in up on the heights last year—he’d wintered down in Shamesey alone; hell, he’d been mad, Aby’d tried to talk to him—he hadn’t seen it. He just hadn’t seen it.
Maybe she’d thought he was cleverer than he was. She always gave him too much credit. And she’d gone off this summer more than mad—she’d gone off hurt.
Burn, half-asleep, jerked his head up, shifted a foreleg, licked his face once, twice, urgently, until he elbowed Burn off.
Burn always had had a jealous, protective streak.
Burn had, he recalled of a sudden, interrupted him and Aby on their first night together, at a very personal moment.
He’d been a kid, embarrassed at his horse’s manners and mad as hell. Aby’d been helpless with laughter—able to laugh, when he couldn’t find it in him.
Aby’d ever after stood between him and quarrels he’d otherwise have had. Aby could generally calm him down. Guil, she’d say, you’re being a fool. And, Down, Guil. You’re wrong. You’re outright wrong. Listen to me.
Suddenly it was that year again, that giddy, all-or-nothing time, the moment, the night, the place, an open-air camp in early autumn, with the chance of frost. Two fool kids had started out in all good behavior trying to keep warm, they’d built a small fire under a cliff, on rock that turned out to be less than comfortable. They’d shared a blanket, chastely watching leaves from quakesilvers higher up the slope drift down into their fire and go in a puff of fire. You could see the veins in fire before they went to ash—quakesilvers were tough.
He’d said it was like seeing through the leaves. She’d always remember the image, because she thought it wonderful; veins of fire in a leaf gone invisible. It was their secret. It was the image she’d cast him… whenever she wanted him.
The horses had set at their own lovemaking, autumn being wild in the air—and two chaste fools had gotten, well… warmer under their blanket, and more reckless.
And at the worst—or best—moment Burn had just gotten curious and hung his nose over them to watch.
God. He’d chased Burn clear across that mountainside, swearing and bare-ass naked and embarrassed as hell—while Aby had rolled on the ground laughing and laughing.
Two fool kids, in a place and a raw edge of weather no little dangerous. But they’d been only kids, and invulnerable, and they’d had Burn and Moon with them for protection—what forethought did they possibly need?
First love. Never faded.
He dreamed awake: he drifted in that time, before quarrels, before mistrust or a promise ever passed between them.
In the mating season, when desires ran high and thinking was at an ebb.
The rain drizzled down, dripped miserably off the firelit evergreens, and the smoke of the campfire collected under the branches, whipped this way and that by mist-laden winds, stinging eyes and noses. They sat in slickers, black and brown, glistening with rain and firelight. Drips from the overhanging boughs scored on Danny’s neck no matter how he shifted his position at the fire, and Cloud sulked, standing off from the Hallanslake horses’ position under the trees.
Hallanslakers, it turned out, felt perfectly free to get into somebody else’s supplies, saying they’d pooled everything.