She struggled, flailed. I grabbed a wrist and pulled to help her sit up. When that wasn’t quite enough, Kobrah wrapped her arms around my waist and leaned back, adding her strength to the effort.
We got The Voice on her feet. Got her walking. By the time we left the bedroom, she was wheezing. By the time we got to the back door, her lungs sounded like damaged bellows, and I wondered if she would collapse before she reached the cart. She couldn’t open her mouth, so she sucked in air through her teeth.
How much time had passed? How much did we have left before someone noticed the horse was gone? Since we hadn’t come home by now, and knowing Chayne would be working tonight, Tahnee’s mother and mine would assume we had stayed with Kobrah and wouldn’t be expecting to see us until after breakfast. The second stage of the potion I bought was supposed to produce lethargy, so hopefully Chayne would fall asleep and not wake up until the daytime caretakers arrived.
Desperate, determined, The Voice took one step after another. I stayed beside her, having no idea what I would do if she fell, while Tahnee held the horse and Kobrah ran back into the house. She returned with a bundle, which she tossed into the back of the cart.
“Clothes,” she said.
Up to the blank marker stone that provided The Voice with the step needed to get into the cart. She grasped the sides of the cart and pulled. Kobrah and I pushed. Tahnee held the horse steady.
Then The Voice was in the cart, on hands and knees, panting from the effort.
“Lie down,” I told her, while Kobrah ran back into the house a last time to fetch a blanket to cover The Voice until we were out of the village.
I took my place at the horse’s head and sent up one more prayer to whoever would listen to me. Please, let the cart be strong enough to hold her. Let the horse be strong enough to pull the load. Please.
The horse leaned into the harness, straining to take that first step. But he did take that first step. And the next one. The cart moved. The axles didn’t break.
“Good boy,” I whispered. “You’re a brave, strong boy. Step along. That’s it. Good boy.”
Clip-clop. Clip-clop. That was the only sound besides the rattle of the cart’s wheels. No other sounds disturbed our village’s silence.
Two days’ journey to Vision in a coach with a team of horses that could maintain a trot for miles at a time. How many days with a half-starved horse who could do no better than a steady walk?
We had gotten out of the village, had left the last house behind us, and I was just starting to breathe easy when we heard clip-clop, clip-clop, clip-clop coming toward us.
I kept walking, kept up my whispered encouragement to the horse. Kobrah darted to the far side of the cart and hunched over to avoid being seen, while Tahnee remained near the back of the cart.
The man rode toward us, leading another horse. He seemed vaguely familiar, but it wasn’t until Tahnee let out a stifled cry of joy that I recognized him as the young man at the bazaar whom Tahnee had haggled with and flirted with.
And fallen in love with?
I doubt he knew who I was—or cared. He dismounted, shoved reins into my open hand, and leaped at Tahnee, snatching her off her feet as he held her tight.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry. You must have thought I failed you, that I wasn’t coming. The world . . . There were delays. I . . .”
Kobrah came around the side of the cart, her eyes on the horses.
“Do you need both horses?” she asked, and there was something in her voice, something in the way she moved that made us all tense.
“I . . .” He looked back at his horses, then looked at Kobrah—and then tried to shift Tahnee behind him without being too obvious about what he was doing . . . or why.
We’ve lost her, I thought. If we don’t let her go, she’ll destroy us.
I think Tahnee realized that too, because she looked at her lover and asked, “Could we ride double?”
We didn’t know what we were asking of him, didn’t know what the loss of a horse would mean to him or his family. But he knew, and he still went back to his horses, untied the second one, and walked it over to where Kobrah waited. Handing her the reins, he said, “Take the horse.”
After she mounted, she looked down at him and said, “May the gods and goddesses of fate and fortune shower your life with golden days.”
Then she rode back to the village. I didn’t know what she intended to do, but I knew the rest of us needed to get as far away as we could.
“You two go on ahead,” I said. “Tahnee’s travel bag is too big to carry on horseback. If I bring it to your family’s booth at the bazaar, will it get to her?”
“It will.” He looked in the direction of the village. “But that will leave you—”
“We got this far by working together,” I said, cutting him off. “Now we have to separate.” Thinking about the sign before the bridge leading to Vision, I looked at Tahnee. “Now we have to let our hearts choose our destination.”
Tahnee hugged me. Her lover studied my face, as if memorizing it, then said, “Travel lightly.”
He mounted his horse and pulled Tahnee up behind him, and the two of them cantered down the road, heading for Vision . . . and freedom.
I stood there, feeling so alone. More so because I wasn’t alone. But I couldn’t look at her just then, couldn’t offer any promises or comfort. I would save us—or I would fail.
“Come on, boy,” I said softly. “Come on. We’ve got a ways to go.”
The horse leaned into the harness, straining to take that first step.
One step. Another. And step by plodding step, we got a little closer to a dream.
6.
I have since heard that Ephemera takes the measure of a human heart and helps or hinders what that heart desires. I don’t know if that is true or not. I do know the horse shouldn’t have made it up the hills I remembered as being so steep. But he did make it. Sometimes I thought he’d break under the strain if he had to take another step up an incline, but somehow the hill always leveled out before that last step, and the descents were gentler than I recalled. I’m sure someone would tell me my mind had exaggerated some things on that first journey in order to make it a grander adventure.
I don’t think I exaggerated anything. The world changed itself just enough to give us a chance. Just as I believe the world changed itself that first afternoon when I spotted riders in the distance and knew they were men from the village, looking for us. We kept walking, and my prayer became a chant: Please don’t let them find us.
They should have found us, should have caught us. They never did.
Several days after leaving the village, in the hushed hour before the real dawn, I stopped the exhausted horse in front of the Temple of Sorrow. Standing on tiptoes, I peeked over the side of the cart, not wanting to stand at the back. The Voice looked at me, a question in her eyes.
“We made it,” I said. “I’ll get help.”
She couldn’t get out of the cart. For anything. I realized we had a problem the first time I smelled excrement. But when I went around to the back of the cart, dithering about what to do, the plea in her eyes was more eloquent than words. Every minute I spent caring for her was the minute that might make the difference between getting to Vision or getting caught. So I made my heart as hard and cold as I could make it, and I kept us moving until I saw the bridge and felt numbed by the knowledge that we had reached the city.
I hurried up the broad steps of the temple and rang the bell. Rang and rang and rang.
“There is someone on duty,” a voice grumbled as the door opened. “You don’t have to wake up the whole tem—”