Wild Horses (15 page)

“There are no wild horses in this area. Here among the Amish? Someone would capture them.”

Sadie opened her mouth to reply but had no chance to utter a word. Captain lunged and her body flew back as the seat tipped, then settled forward again. Sadie grabbed the lap robe, stifled a scream, and opened the buggy door on her side to see better.

Here was a figure! A crashing sound! There, oh my!

“Ezra!” she screamed. “We must stop Captain! We’re almost at the top of the ridge. These horses are following us. He’ll break! He’ll panic! Ezra, please stop.”

Ezra was holding onto the reins, staying calm.

“He won’t run away. He has more sense than that.”

“The top of the ridge is just ahead. There’s a wide bend, then straight down. The embankment to the left is hundreds of feet down. Please Ezra!”

She had to physically restrain herself from reaching over, grabbing those reins, and making him listen. If those horses emerged from the woods, if there was a stallion among them…

Sadie felt the hot bile in her throat. Her eyes watered and her nose burned, but she had no sensation of crying. It was raw fear.

The top of the ridge! Oh, dear God.

Despair as Sadie had never known sliced down her spine, like the ice water with which Reuben loved to attack his sisters. Now she was crying, begging, pleading with Ezra, but they kept traveling around that long bend, straight toward the dreaded embankment.

A horse! The clear, dark form of a large, black horse appeared beside the buggy. Two! They were on each side of them, streaming down from the woods with hooves clattering, manes whipping in the moonlight. Horses everywhere—black species of danger. Light in color to deep black—a whirl of hooves, wild eyes, lifted heads. They pounded on.

Now they surrounded the buggy.

Ezra yelled out as he lost control. Captain broke into a frenzy, lunging, rearing, coming down, and galloping on. The buggy was swaying, bouncing, careening left, then right.

The black horse in the lead was so close, Sadie could have touched him.

“Ezra!” she gasped. “Just try to stay…”

Her words were torn from her mouth as she felt the buggy whipping to the right. Captain was running neck and neck with the huge black horse, downhill now, completely out of control.

Sadie felt a certain pity for Captain, but inside she felt terror and a horrible fear as the black horse came closer, his mane whipping, his long forelock flying, his mouth open, reaching, reaching.

It wasn’t fair. Captain didn’t stand a chance. He was at a severe disadvantage with the blinders on each side of his head and with being hitched to the cumbersome buggy. He strained into the collar and gave everything he had, every ounce of sense and power he owned, but it was not enough. He was so loyal, and it made Sadie sad, this knowledge of how far a good horse would go to protect his beloved master.

The black horse reached out, his long, yellow teeth extended. His jaws reached the top of Captain’s mane and he bit.

Sadie’s world exploded as Captain went down. There was a sickening, ripping sound as the shafts broke, parting with the buggy, and they were thrown to the left.

She remembered Ezra’s yell of disbelief, her own hoarse screams, the buggy beginning to fall, and then she was hurled into a cold, white world filled with jagged pain.

Glass was sharp; rocks cruelly insensitive to human forms thrown against them. There was a roaring in Sadie’s ears, and she felt as if her head was severed from her shoulders. She screamed and screamed and screamed. The pain was excruciating, but she remained conscious.

The buggy! Oh, Lord have mercy! It rolled and crashed and tumbled.

Ezra!

Mercifully, then, everything went gray. A white, hot explosion inside her head turned her knowing into a blessed nothingness. She guessed she was dying now. So peaceful.

Something hurt. It was annoying. Why didn’t it stop?

Then she slipped into that softness again. It was so peaceful there, reminding her of the memory foam pillows her mother loved so much and told everyone about. If you laid your head on Mam’s pillow, it was firm and soft and supportive all at the same time. It seemed impossible, but wasn’t. Sadie’s whole body was made of memory foam. That was nice.

Ouch.

Shoot! It hurts. Stop that, Reuben. That ice is cold.

Reuben wasn’t made of memory foam. Just her. At least, her legs were made of memory foam. That was nice. Nothing hurt there.

Oh, it was so cold. She needed to stop Reuben from pouring that ice on her neck. Why was her voice so quiet? She was suffocating now. Great swells of horrible, dark ink enveloped her, wrapping her in murky, stinking arms.

Get away from me. I can’t breathe! Get away.

Fight, Sadie. You have to fight this.

She was stuck on the bottom, held tight by the inky, black mud. She was clawing, clawing, gasping, using all her strength. Memory foam was better.

Just let go. Let it go. You don’t have to breathe. Just lay back.

A great and terrible nausea gripped her. She clawed, swam, up, up, her lungs like a balloon with too much air. They would surely pop.

Someone smacked an icy rag against her face.

Stop smacking me, please. I have to throw up. Don’t smack me like that.

She burst to the top, retching, her face hitting the side of the cold gray rock. She tried gasping for great, deep, breaths of pure air to banish the black ink forever, but the horrible retching completely overwhelmed her.

Blood!

She tried sitting up, raising herself a bit. Where was all that blood coming from? If she could only stop heaving, throwing up, but her body wanted to rid itself of all its stomach’s contents.

All right. Think now.

She regained consciousness, of this she was certain. She just couldn’t see anything but blood. The ink was still there.

Raising one hand, she slowly brought up her arm. One arm. Okay. She touched her face, then recoiled in horror. The ink was everywhere. No, it wasn’t ink. She wiped weakly at her eyes now. Over and over, tiredly, back and forth, back and forth.

Clear the ink.

Grayish light was her reward.

Keep working.

Painfully blinking.

Why was a blink so excruciating?

Aah, now she could see white. And black. Stones. Rocks. Snow. Snow everywhere.

She reached to the top of her head with a shaking hand. It was still sticky from the ink that had stayed on her head when she burst through it. She brought her fingers down.

Red! Blood. It was coming from her head, falling into her eyes. She had a gash in her head. Oh, it was so cold.

Where were her legs? She better check.

Reaching down, she found one. The other. Was that her foot? Way out here? Turned like that? She better fix it.

Willing her foot to move, she felt a stab of pain unlike anything she had ever known. A scream escaped her, only it wasn’t really a scream, more like a hoarse moan, as she laid her head against the gray, cold stone and fought to stay out of that horrible hole—that place she had been and clawed her way out.

Breathe now. Slowly. You can do this. Count. Just count and bear the pain.

Women were created to bear children, so pain was not unfamiliar or unbearable. It was certainly not going to put her back into the ink. She was afraid if she went there, she would never be able to claw her way to the top again. It had taken every ounce of life and energy she could muster to get out, so she had better focus on staying conscious.

That was important.

All right. Leg broken, yes. Gash in head, yes. Nausea, yes. Might have a smashed stomach.

It was very cold. She might die.

How long did people live in the cold? And survive? She tried to think of books she had read. No clue. She guessed as long as one breath followed another, she would live.

She thought of Mam, Dat, Leah, Rebekah, Anna, and Reuben, all at home, all happy and secure in the knowledge that she was being taken to the singing by the beloved Ezra.

Where was he?

Where was Captain?

A shiver of fear.

The horses? Where were they? Oh, that black stallion—as dark and sinister as the devil himself. But still, he was a stallion. Protecting his mares. Keeping his turf.

Dear God in heaven, my leg hurts so terribly. Please help me. Send someone to find me. I’ll die out here. Wolves will smell my blood. Or mountain lions. I heard they introduced the wolves back into the wilds of Montana to manage the elk herds. Smart. Unlucky for ranchers.

Her thoughts wandered away from her prayer.

Where was the buggy? Was she at the bottom of the embankment? Or halfway down?

Leaning away from the gray rock, she tried to assess her surroundings.

Oh, that blood in my eyes. I have to stop it somehow.

Her breathing stopped completely, but her heart beat on as the howl of a wolf split the air in two with that mournful, undulating wail of the wild. One clear howl brought chills and fear of the awesome creatures into Sadie’s world of pain.

Momentarily, she surrendered.

Okay, this is it. Tumbled down a cliff, half dead, and wolves will finish me. No one will ever know what happened. Posters tacked on telephone poles in town—at the post office, the IGA. Missing. No picture. She was Amish. Just information.

No, they would find her. They would!

Another howl hit a high note, joined by more voices now and more long, drawn-out calls of the wolves.

I must get out of here. I have to try.

She leaned forward, her hands clawing the snow, searching for a handhold, anything to propel herself forward. Blood spurted, a fresh, warm stream flowed down her forehead and into her eyes.

I must stop this bleeding first. With what?

Reaching up, she touched her covering, still dangling on the back of her head. Gratefully, she pulled it off and rolled it into a type of tourniquet. Her hands shook. They were too stiff.

I can’t do this.

Slumping against the gray rock, she bowed her head as hot tears ran down her face. Tears and seeping blood mixed together and dripped into the snow.

It was hopeless. Maybe it would be easier to just let go now. She could go to the memory foam.

I would just let go—but I’m afraid of the ink or whatever that horrible stuff was. Why was it like that?

She looked up.

Where was the road?

She couldn’t have fallen very far off the road. She heard a car but saw no lights.

Oh, yes. The buggy fell. Ezra must have fallen along with it. Captain ran away, attached to the shafts. So no one on the road at night would have any idea of the accident.

Oh, Mam.

Dat.

Somebody come find me.

She could feel her strength ebbing, going out like the tide. They had been at the beach once, along the bay, and she watched the tide come and go. Piers that were almost submerged at one point in the day stuck way out of the water later that same day. Reuben said—he always knew these things—that it was because the world tilted on an angle and spun as fast as it could go, and the water tilted back and forth with the moon’s force. Amazing.

Well, the tide was slipping out for her, and she didn’t know if it would come back.

So tired.

She closed her eyes.

Just for a minute, I’ll rest.

The wolves aren’t close yet.

No ink this time. That was a relief.

Just a white light. So white. So bright.

Stop yelling at me.

No. I said, no.

Mark Peight. Go away.

But wait, Mark was a small boy. That was odd. His hair was not cut close to his head like the English. So innocent. So … so pathetic?

She reached out her arms.

Come, Mark Peight.

But wait.

Behind Mark Peight—a large, rotund man. He was smiling, talking, persuading. He had a whip. A real whip. Not a quirt.

Come, Mark.

That bright light was so annoying.

“Sadie! Sadie! Can you hear me? Wiggle your toes. Lift your finger.”

Well, forget that. Duh, people. I can’t do that.

“I think she’s hearing us, but she doesn’t seem to be able to do what we’re asking.”

“Sadie! Sadie!”

What in the world was Mam doing here on Sloam’s Ridge by the gray rock? She had better get up to the road. She’d fall and hurt herself. And now she was crying, rocking herself back and forth, back and forth, moaning, mumbling.

“
Schtup sell
, Mam.
Do net
.”

“We’re going to inject a solution into her veins. If she is close to being conscious, this will completely revive her within 30 seconds. If it doesn’t work, she will sleep much longer.”

Who was that?

The lights were too bright. She couldn’t open her eyes. She wanted to leave them closed. The lights reminded her of summer daisies when the sun hit them just so in the morning when the dew was still on them.

So beautiful, daisies. You are so beautiful.

T
HE FIRST THING SADIE
remembered seeing was the brilliance of the green and red in the large Christmas wreath on the wall—the shining, white wall. The Christmas wreath was much too bright. It made her eyes hurt.