Then a presence came to them, <running, running in the wind. Holding tight. Snow stinging the face.>
<Damned fool,> Tara thought. <You little, damned …fool.>
She lost her balance—slipped and skidded on the ice. Mina had her arm.
A presence so… lost… so idly strayed from reality… came flitting through her senses.
<Flowers and snowflakes,> it imaged. <Sugar lumps. Biscuits.
Brionne with the horses. All the horses loving her. Brionne in the moonlight, in the snow… the numbing, gentle snow… >
“Get away from us!” Tara shouted into the dark.
<Wanting mama. Wanting papa… mama listening. Mama sitting with her Bible… thinking of Brionne. Papa… papa… papa—!>
<“Tara!”>
Luisa hurt her arm, she grabbed it so hard. She slid on the ice and Mina grabbed both of them.
<Papa!> went out across the ridge. <Wanting in. Wanting in—>
“It’s her,” Tara said. “It’s the Goss kid—God, stay here. Keep the gates shut.”
“Where are you going?”
<Marshal’s office.> The ambient was so live it didn’t need a horse near. <Luisa and Mina taking care of horses. Gates shut. Gates slammed.>
<Mama,> the voice cried on insubstantial winds. <Mama, let me in… >
Tara ran, sleet stinging her face—she ducked through the village gate and let it slam behind her; she ran not for where instinct or whatever drove her told her to go: instinct was screaming at her to go the other way. She ran against it—ran for reason, ran down the center of a deserted, sleet-hammered street, all the way to the end of the street, her throat hurting with the cold air. She ran up the wooden, icy steps to the marshal’s office and pounded her fist on the door.
She heard someone coming, footsteps inside. The feeling of presence behind her all around her—was overwhelming, a wave of living anger rolling toward them, from all around the walls.
“Who’s there?” the marshal called out. “Who’s out there?”
“Tara Chang!” she shouted back, holding to the rail—resisting the impulse to look back and see if anything was in the street. “It’s here—” she said, and got a chill breath as the marshal opened the door. The marshal’s wife was holding a pistol aimed at her: she paid it only passing attention. “It’s the rogue. It’s the kid. Brionne. She’s with it. She’s wanting her mama and her papa. You’ve got to send word down to Tuck—keep those gates shut. No matter what!”
“It’s a kid out there,” the marshal began. “We’ve got to shoot that horse.”
“It’s hell out there.” She found herself shaking. “It’s my partners out there. It’s our men. It’s that kid. We can’t help them. We can’t do anything but hold that damned gate, do you hear me? Get out there! Keep that gate shut, I don’t care who wants in! That horse comes with her and everything in the woods comes next! Keep it out!”
The marshal went for his coat and his scarf and his shotgun. “Watch the boys!” the marshal said to his wife. “If it’s the Goss kid—she might try to get to the boys! Keep that door locked!”
Tara stood there shivering in the wind, trying to keep her hand from freezing to the icy porch rail—trying to be deaf and blind and numb to the ambient. Mina and Luisa were with the horses. She knew.
She knew that the Goss boys were still in lockup.
She knew that Brionne was with the rogue.
She knew that Brionne was calling to all that was hers—her mother, her father, her brothers, her friends and acquaintances… every one.
Brionne had never gotten on Flicker’s good side. But she was calling to <Skip> and <Green> in the lame way she’d always imaged their names.
She called to <Mina and Luisa.> But not to her. Not to Tara Chang. Brionne hated her. She felt the lost presence flit past her in anger, and she ran for the camp, assaulted by the <lost, aching> ambient.
<“Papa!”> it wailed.
Shutters were opening. Lights from those windows flared out onto the snow, here and there down the village street. A door opened, a larger spill of light.
Answering that voice.
That was the way they heard it. The town was ready and armed for a rogue.
They heard a lost kid. They heard Brionne Goss wanting in, wanting rescue.
“Stay inside!” Tara screamed at the tanner, who came out on his porch. “That’s it, damn it! Get that door shut!”
She didn’t know whether he listened. She ran for the only source of help, half-blinded by the sleet, through the narrow gap of the Little Gate, into the rider camp—and had a clear sense of Flicker’s sending, that <white-white-white> shutting out the world.
But Skip and Green were absent from the noise. There was only a darkness wanting <out,> wanting <running, all running.>
“Mina? Luisa?” She ran for the den, skidding on the uneven ice—caught herself on the corner post as she came inside, unprepared for the darkness that rushed at her—<nighthorse,> was all she knew.
It flared past like a black rage and she pasted herself to the wall, blind and deaf to everything but <kill> and <bite> and <shoot > as it passed—
<Rider,> she realized then, and <Mina,> and she heard <white-white-white, > so intense and so close a sending that she couldn’t see where she was.
Gunfire, then. In the village, outside, she wasn’t sure. Shots were going off, echoing off the walls.
<“Luisa!”> she yelled, trying to get through the ambient, but <white-white-white> came down like blizzard. She wasn’t sure of Luisa’s whereabouts. She wasn’t sure of Green’s. She only knew Flicker’s, and she didn’t want to lead Flicker to disaster.
<Flicker standing still! > she sent and felt rather than saw her way—as if the whole world had gone to snow.
She reached the open air and the blast of the wind, she wanted <Mina,> and she went the way she’d sensed Mina go.
But she heard someone screaming then, into an ambient gone red and black amid the white, a voice beyond the village wall, a voice near the village gate.
<“That’s my daughter! ”> it cried—and she saw <Brionne standing outside the village gate, Brionne afraid, Brionne, Brionne, Brionne—wanting mama—>
An image of <gate opening> as <desire> and <killing anger> and <hunger> came flying together in the air, assembled itself in a rush that reached the heart, the mind, the gut, one creature, one self, one mind—anything else was <Enemy> and Tara was <Enemy.>
She thought she saw—sight came fleetingly through the <white>—the outer gate of the rider camp standing wide against the dark.
She thought she saw snow whirling about her—white, thick snowfall, and wind so loud she couldn’t hear the screaming or the howling it made. It just was, and the snow was, and the cold was.
<White> came up beside her, it brushed against her, it called to her, and her hands knew its shape, found its mane to clench onto, and her body knew where, as she launched herself, she would find <horse > and <strength > and <warmth.>
Then—then she was <astride> and <with> and, blind and deaf as she was, she became the whiteout, she became the blizzard— blind and deaf and <killing cold… >
Nothing could touch her. If she’d had another purpose she’d lost it. If she’d had another destination she didn’t know.