Page 22 of Rainshadow

Inside Bane’s stall, the horse was wild-eyed and frothing at the mouth, but didn’t seem lethargic or ill like Mars did. He tossed his head when she reached for him, looking down at her with mistrust.

“Come on, boy,” Flora said, clipping the lead to his halter with some difficulty, steadying him with a hand on his muzzle.

At first he didn’t seem to want to leave the stall, but once she had tugged him out, he nearly dragged her to the paddock. The winds had picked up and the sky was already dark, like the day had already given up. The sea, below the rocky cliffside, was breaking with explosive force. Flora could hear it, a noise that combined cacophonously with Bane’s labored, anxious breath.

She released him into the grazing paddock and, right away, he cantered, tossing his regal head, so that tendrils of his mane fluttered in the wind like gray silk ribbons. The rain slicked his hide, and he glistened, glittered, in the low light. He ran, shimmering in the mist, whipping his tail, his hooves pounding, thundering. He looked so beautiful, and somehow defiant, like he was making a protest. He circled the paddock over and over, three, four, five times. Flora watched him, astonished, as he took one more turn around, then another, then started galloping as fast as he could and, right as she thought he would crash over it, launched himself over the fence. It was a beautiful, terrifyingsight, and it took a moment for Flora to understand what was happening. Then, she ran. She had never run so fast in her life.

“No,” Flora screamed. “No!” She chased him, breathless, knowing each step was more futile than the last. Still, she ran, screaming, “Bane! Bane! No! Bane!” She heard Sylvia behind her, but didn’t understand what she was saying.

He ran straight for the cliff, for the crashing sea. He didn’t stop, didn’t even slow as he reached the edge, didn’t make a sound as he leaped, looking like something from myth, and for a moment, Flora half-expected, vainly hoped, that he might fly.

He didn’t, though.

He disappeared, dropping silently, over the edge of the cliff.

Flora turned for a moment and saw Sylvia on Zeta, horse and rider both black in the swirling gray. She must have already mounted Zeta when she heard Flora scream. She rode bareback, and only had one light hand on the rein. Even without a saddle and stirrups, she had perfect form, her heels angled down, her back as straight as a rod. She would overtake Flora quickly, though not quickly enough. Flora kept running hoping that somehow, maybe…

Bane, the most beautiful horse Flora had ever seen, was a wet, crumpled stuffed toy at the bottom of the cliff face, his elegant legs bent into unnatural angles that increased the feeling of unreality. Flora could not, would not, comprehend what she had just seen, and a part of her still expected him to get up and shake himself off, just as she had expected him to fly.

Sylvia, for a moment, looked like she would follow him, urging Zeta toward the edge, but she pulled up at the last moment and rode the edge of the cliff so deftly that it made Flora’s chest tighten, like any moment the horse and rider would go tumbling over the cliff. For a moment, Sylvia stopped Zeta,who danced beneath her, still agitated. It looked like she might be crying, but it was impossible to tell in the wind and the rain. Then, she trotted back toward the barn. Flora walked in a few moments later, and saw Sylvia putting Zeta back into her stall. The two women looked at each other.

“Animals would rather die than live with evil. People will adjust, accept. That’s the difference between us.”

“Evil?” Flora scoffed. “Who’s evil, Sylvia? What’s evil? What is everybody talking about?”

Sylvia didn’t look at Flora. She didn’t speak. Flora felt exasperated, flushed, and furious.

“All I’ve ever wanted to do was help you, Sylvia.”

“Oh?” Sylvia asked, scoffing. “I think there are a few other things that you want.”

Sylvia turned, then, and walked back toward the house. Flora couldn’t believe her complete lack of emotion. No, she had emotion. She was actually laughing! It was like Sylvia didn’t even care that her beautiful horse was dead. It made Flora furious.

The rain was coming down, by then, in sheets. Flora didn’t care. She went back to the barn, grabbed her bag, and started the walk home. She wouldn’t come back. How could she?

Sylvia had finally won.

11

For days, Flora left her house in the morning as though she still had a job at Rainshadow, walking into the morning mists with purpose and nowhere to go. She couldn’t explain to her mother what happened, couldn’t tolerate being blamed. She didn’t know what she would do at the week’s end when she had no money to show for her efforts.

She walked, instead, to the little library in the tiny downtown area on Anderson Island. She sat, flipping through local newspapers, looking for job postings. There were none on the island, and no matter how she tried, she could not imagine how she could move to a new place without any money saved. Even a cheap apartment in Seattle required a security deposit of hundreds of dollars, and she was terrified at the prospect of sharing a house with someone she’d never met, so she read the classifieds looking for roommates, but never replied to any of them.

Then she saw the ad for the mounted police unit.

Seattle was looking for equestrian police, and the more she read the requirements, the more she began to believe that she might actually, really have what it took to get hired. She could run a mile and do fifteen push-ups, she didn’t do drugs, andshe knew her way around a barn. Last and most importantly, the Seattle PD would pay a moving stipend to new hires, one thousand dollars, enough to secure a decent one-bedroom apartment in Seattle.

Horses, money, security, wasn’t that everything she wanted?

No.

She wanted Rainshadow, wanted to be there, wanted to be a part of it. She wanted to see Ethan again, thought of him every day. Part of her fantasized that he would come, beg to have her back. None of that mattered, she reminded herself again and again. The universe, cruel and unfair, had seen fit to give Sylvia a beautiful house, beautiful horses, a beautiful life, and a beautiful man. Her bitterness, so palpable, was the real evil at Rainshadow, a pulsing, oozing evil that soiled everything, making a beautiful, perfect place into something ugly. Bane, Flora thought, couldn’t stand it anymore, and had chosen death.

Flora asked a librarian for help getting on the computer. She sat, hen-pecking the keyboard until she had written a cover letter and resume. Then she walked to the post office, folded her papers into an envelope, bought a stamp, and dropped a whole new possible future into a clanging blue mailbox.

That night, curled in her bed, listening to a book on tape she’d picked up at the library, Flora’s mom rapped on her door.

“You have a visitor.”

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