Unforgotten(20)

“I didn’t mean—” I start to argue, but Zen has already swung the crate up onto his shoulder and turned away. He waits for a lull in the traffic of horse-drawn carts and riders before crossing the street.

Why does he have to be so stubborn? He’s worse than the horse.

With a sigh, I trudge around the front of the cart and stomp up to Blackthorn. He jerks in response to my brusque approach and pins his ears back close against his head in his default sign of aggression. But this time I’m not tolerating it. Maybe it’s Zen’s foul mood rubbing off on me or my own lingering disquiet from my dream this morning, but I’m done putting up with this horse’s attitude. I snatch the reins and give them a yank. Blackthorn whinnies his complaint.

“Listen,” I say firmly, looking him directly in his big black ball of an eye, “enough is enough. Either you learn to like me or I punch you in the face. So what’s it gonna be?”

I sincerely doubt the horse understood the words that were coming out of my mouth, but he seemed to comprehend the meaning just fine because suddenly it’s like he’s an entirely different animal.

He lets out a small snort, his ears perk back up, and his head bows slightly, as though he’s submitting to me. I’m actually fairly surprised that my approach worked and I let out a snort of my own.

Maybe Mr. Pattinson was right. Maybe I simply needed to stop being afraid of him first.

I pull the reins over his head and give them a gentle tug. Obediently he picks up his feet and follows me without complaint or resistance.

“There,” I say to him as we reach the hitching post. “That wasn’t so hard, was it? Isn’t it so much better now that we’ve dealt with our issues and can behave like civilized beings?”

He doesn’t respond but I take his silence as acquiescence.

I loop the leather rein around the wooden post and pull the end through. “Now if we can—”

A scream that turns my blood to stone rips through the air, causing both me and Blackthorn to startle.

My head whips in the direction of the sound and in an instant all my surroundings vanish. The putrid odor of the city is lifted onto an invisible breeze. The pandemonium of the bustling marketplace drips and fades into unrecognizable shapes and colors. Like someone threw a cup of water on a fresh painting. The boisterous racket of people and rumbling carts just kind of slips away into a faint hush. Like the sound of the world submerged in water.

Then all I hear is the screech of wooden wheels scraping against the coarse dirt, the wail of a terrified horse as it’s jerked into an unnatural twist, and the rough, angry bellow of a driver as he tries unsuccessfully to steer the massive, unwieldy wagon around the young man lying unconscious in the middle of the road.

A spiral of red apples fans out around his beautiful face, the empty, inverted crate lying a few feet away. His damp dark hair is matted to his forehead and his skin is as pale and gray as the sky. I have no time to think before the wagon starts to overturn. I watch the heavy, rounded roof topple and plunge right toward Zen’s head as the first drop of rain lands on the tip of my nose.





10

TORN



I must be flying. If my feet touch the ground I don’t feel it. The only thing I feel is the cool air whirring past my face, knocking off my bonnet, tangling recklessly through my hair. And then …

Gravity.

Fighting against me as my hands cut through the closing sliver of space between the top of the descending wagon and Zen’s skull. Gravity pushing back. Hard and relentless. Thrusting the massive cart toward the earth with the force of a thousand men.

It wants to win. It wants to crush him. To take him from me forever. To leave me stranded in this foreign time alone.

But I won’t let it.

I fight back. Bending my knees for leverage. The wood digs into my hands, splintering off and piercing my skin. I let out a shallow grunt as I lift with all my strength, planting my feet firmly against the ground, straightening my legs, and with one final effort, I stand, shoving the wagon away.

It turns upright again but is spinning far too fast to stop there. It keeps rotating, breaking free from the slender poles that attach it to the horse that is now lying on its side, breathing heavily. The wood snaps easily and the wagon continues revolving, roof over wheels, round and round until it finally crashes into a row of merchant stalls and sputters to a halt, teetering precariously on one of its diagonal edges.

A woman screams again. I presume it’s the same one but I don’t look up to verify. I look only at Zen, bending down, waiting for him to open his eyes. Waiting for the confirmation that he’s okay.

Did I get there fast enough?