Not Just Horses

The city fades into the countryside like a sunset. Gradients of urban sprawl to rambling hills and briars, and in between are the steps of the residential neighbourhoods and suburbs, the barns spaced out across acres, the train tracks winding between houses and then between pines. Somewhere in the more urban part of this transition is the carousel man.

His workshop is in an area outside of downtown, but there are other shops around his. His looks almost nothing like a shop. It is the darkest workshop you’ve ever seen. Even at night, when the shop is open, it is almost impossible to detect a lamp by which the carousel man must be working. The house used to be a sort of home for older children with nowhere to live, a place where they worked out jobs and stayed with six cots to a room, and figured out their careers in the shops around or the mill or bouncing around as assistants to butchers or bakers. To be converted into a workshop, it must have been hollowed out completely. The walls taken away, the windows replaced, the floors pulled up and scraped at until they were flat, then new hardwood pressed down again. My brothers reckon it must have cost more time and money than knocking down the entire house and building up something new, but that’s where the carousel man settled.

I don’t call him the carousel man for lack of respect, but for all his reticence. He’s gone to the same café across the street from the flat I share with my brothers and my da and never have I heard him say his name. Only customers know his surname, and I haven’t ever heard it, only a rumour that it’s foreign and incredibly hard to say. He looks like someone with a difficult name, all appearance that’s as hard to fit into your head as foreign sounds are hard to fit into your mouth. He’s as much a mystery as his carousel creatures.

I’ve seen him plenty enough when I’ve gone to fetch coffee or tea for da and my brothers. He stands in line without touching anyone, which, in a rush on a Monday morning, is a feat. He’s got fine features, the sort you’d think belong on King Arthur or some other hero, but they look like they’ve been reflected onto his face by a mirror held at an angle. It’s hard to say exactly whether his chin is delicate or sharp, his eyes large or round, his mouth somber or firm. I’ve stood behind him a few times, and I know he must have heard some of the men in the line speaking to me. But he’s never fingered a piece of my hair or called me Bridgette or asked why my father thought it was a good idea to let me out of the house on my own. He might think my name really is Bridgette. He’s glanced at me once, when I near stumbled into him at the counter. He apologized quickly and quietly, like he’d done something wrong.

I asked the woman at the counter if he speaks to her when he comes in. He does, she’d said. But where everyone else needs six or seven words, he can stretch one or two to get the job done.

I liked his quick glance at me, though. It was like watching a wave roll out toward the sea and then pause, because you wanted it to. I feel like I’ve been rolled about in his ocean-eyes.

Perhaps it’s the ocean that calls me to visit his workshop.

Making ends meet has gotten harder and harder now that I’m selling fewer carousel horses. I don’t like to make just the horses, but my other pieces cannot be sold on their own. They sit in the workshop while I work on their companions. Each one is a product of blueprints and sketches, held in the same brick-wide paper pad in the bottom drawer of my desk. The commercial pieces don’t really need plans, unless someone asks for a particular design on a saddle. But my fingers know where to carve the horses’ smiles, where to round out their hooves, how many teeth fit into that smile. These are the ones I sell, and these are the ones that most often find their way back to me. Not the others. They have not been released to the work yet.

The broken horses take more time, and their recovery is not as fuelled, fiscally, as their orginal creation was. They’re the result of a crate already unpacked, a foot slipping off the curb, a cuss and a drop. They’re children’s fingerprints wearing at the paint and gounging marks and putting weight on the lightest part of the leg. They’re bad weather and someone’s recklessness or forgetfulness, and nights out in the snow or rain or hail. But even these ones stay in the front of the workshop with me. No point upsetting things by bringing them into the back.

I don’t mind fixing up the old horses. It is like seeing a companion who has weathered the same stormy sea as you. It is another thing for my hands to learn. To jump from gilding the creatures in the back of the workshop to repairing the ones I have already seen. There is love in both, even if there is more joy in one. But the carousel in the back of the shop can wait. Even if things are getting impatient. One needs to make the rent.

And what am I to say? People like the horses. They always have. Even the broken ones, they wish for again. They ask for the horses again and again. It is only the beauty of them, marred or gouged, that disturbs them. They only want for the beautiful, if it’s possible.

I’ve been on the outside of his workshop so often that I feel stepping into it must be a change, of some sort. There should be a thunderclap, a gust of wind, a door slamming shut somewhere. Instead, it’s like walking into a dim Aladdin’s cave. There are dust motes, the kind that collect in particularly dusty places, though there is no dust here. It looks disorganized to me, but da says often that a person’s space always looks in top-shape to them and like it’s ready to be swept into the bin to others. But even with all the clutter, not an inch of it is dirty, except for the mossy smelling corners. The rest of it is bottles of paint and varnish, silver and wood instruments, cloths and sandpaper. And everywhere: horses. They lean like bicycles on the wall, legs rounded like they’re spinning on spokes. Their mouths are open, like they’ve been paused mid-cry. They’re every colour in the sunset and the shadows. Their eyes all look ahead and at me when I walk inside.

The carousel man it looking through a glass at something spectacularly small between his fingers. It is a piece of clockwork, and it surprises me. I did not think there was any clockwork involved in these horses, but he’s working a spring made of two different coloured metals around something shimmering in the piece. It all clicks into place on a saddle that looks a little too small for one of the horses. A pony? Either he or the table smells like paint. The saddle is a shade of blue-green that you can only see in a crashing wave. His eyes are focused, like he’s accidentally fastened them to the clockwork and couldn’t pull them away now if he were to try.

“Does that colour have a name?” I ask. Ma’s old watercolour paints always had names. There would be three shades of purple that she’d make stretch for years because they were expensive, and I thought it was easy, because they looked like the same purple to me. But they had different names, like “lilac”, or “lily stone”. My voice has gone quiet, like it’s ma that I’m speaking to. The carousel man hasn’t looked at me, but he doesn’t look surprised either.

“Probably. I don’t know it,” he says. He puts something in place between clock parts and hesitates. Maybe he’s gotten it wrong, because he pulls it out and puts it elsewhere.

“Can I have a look?” I ask. If he’s attending to something important, I don’t want to interrupt him just to have a go at his paints. He nods and I feel a little proud that I’ve earned enough trust to inspect the bottles on the table, like they aren’t just there to peruse already. One of them looks about the shade of the ocean. “Water weed,” I say. It’s a little disappointing. “I didn’t know the carousel horses needed gears.”

He tilts his head, which might be him saying, well, they do, and might be him not knowing what to say. I choose to believe the second, because I’d like to. It would be nice to believe the carousel man knows as much about speaking as I do. He’s pushing some more clockworks in the underside of the saddle and sliding a little wooden door closed over it. It sticks just a bit.

I say, “I’ve got nothing to do all day. Can I watch you work?” I have a fear of saying it so plainly, but ma used to say that some people don’t understand a question coming at them unless it’s an arrow pointing between their eyes.

I don’t think he’s heard me at first. He’s turned the saddle over. His attention’s walking itself over to a horse on the table that looks nearly done. “Yes,” he says.

Before she came in today, the tasks were straightforward. Sanding the edge of the teeth on one of the mare’s, finish the pattern on the bridle of a stallion. Have a look at the sketch for one of the other carousel animals to add to the back. All of it is solitary work, and some of it is secret work. Now things have to be shifted for her. I don’t mind entirely. There are always horses in the front of the workshop to paint and package.

I look at the girl a couple of times, quickly. She’s looking at the horses like she’s both pleased with what she sees and expecting more. A little like me, then.

I know my brothers hate to be interrupted at their work, but maybe the carousel man is different. Being quiet isn’t necessarily being unfriendly. He might not speak to anyone in town easily, but this must be an easy place for him. If the words are going to flow anywhere, it’s over the heads of all of these colourful horses.

“Do you choose all of their colours before you paint them?” I ask him. Ma didn’t always choose her colours, even when she painted what was right in front of her. Sometimes she painted the night sky with the sunset for reference. It always worked out anyway- the night sky came right after.

He shakes his head. His hair’s a little longer than most men wear it. It’s a wonder it’s got no paint in it, no sawdust. It looks nothing like the horses’ hair, though some say he puts his own hair- and his spirit- into the horses. But he isn’t crying, bleeding, or sweating, into the paint. The rumours are all wrong so far. He’s got paint for his brush instead of blood.  “Sometimes customers choose them,” he says. “Or I choose them and try to make them different.”

“Are they better if they’re all different?” I ask. I’m trying to think of how many horses the carousel man must have made by now, and to think of that many horses, all of different colours and patterns, makes me dizzy. I look at the table and the other bits of horses. Hooves and ears that look like they’re broken off, and other pieces. There’s a tail that looks like it belongs more to a fox than a horse, and the black, round end of a snout.

His eyes run over my face and away again. It’s like a wave has climbed up my cheeks. They feel a little warm with it. “They tend to be,” he says.

He doesn’t seem to want to talk, but he doesn’t seem to not want to. It might be all the same to him. “The horses always look like they’re trying to run. Do you ever get tired of horses or carousels?”

He keeps painting, and every time he adds a layer of paint, it is like he’s painting the horse into the world, making it more solid and real. He shakes his head. He looks as careful with the horses as he does in the café, touching nothing that isn’t necessary to touch. “Carousels, no. Horses. Not the making of them. But horses, sometimes.”

“Why don’t you just make something else?” I ask. “You know clockwork. You could make clocks. You could make-” I don’t really know anything that needs clockwork other than clocks, but the words are out there now. “-music boxes.”

“New things,” he says, “Are like toys to some people. I don’t want to make something just so someone else can throw it out. And people like old things.”

“They’re nostalgic. People like new things too, though.”

“People like nostalgia sometimes more than having to look at something new. New isn’t as easy on the eyes.” His eyes dart to me and away. The ocean whispers against my skin. “Would you want a horse that makes you think of your childhood or something else you’d have to tame?”

“Like it’s real?” I say. This is the kind of carousel-making I want to see. “That’s magic. You know, some people reckon you do magic here, with the horses.”

He doesn’t look surprised, and now I wonder if the times he is out of his workshop he hears what everyone says about him and his horses. He dips the brush in turpentine and swirls it around. He dips it in a second pot of turpentine and uses some soap in a rag to finish cleaning it. “Here. This is one of the first steps.” He takes a long piece of wood and begins to carve. It doesn’t take long before I see the shape of what it is meant to be, and this must be magic, because I can’t see something that isn’t there before it’s there. It is like he’s sharing his vision with me. The mane of a horse seems to have been waiting in the wood for him to cut it out. Wood curls tumble on the floor between out feet. He doesn’t pray or invoke a god as he cuts. His hands know all the ridges before they appear. His fingers trace the swirls in the mane before they’re there.

“That looks like magic to me,” I say. This is the sort of thing ma would have said is flirting, but the way he takes it doesn’t make it seem like flirting.

He smiles, but it’s the smile of the sun glinting in your eye. It’s something good happening when you don’t expect it. It is the promise of magic, and magic seems like a very good thing right now. I think this place could be ripe with it.

“What is that for?” I ask, pointing to the white tail that doesn’t belong to any horse I’ve ever seen.

“That’s for something else,” he says. “In the back. This one,” he hoists up the part of the mane, “Is for that one.”

We walk over to a horse against the wall. She’s wearing a caparison painted with poppies and her coat is the colour of sunlight on earth. He puts the main on part of her neck and it fits just right. It is only a part of the main. The rest must be waiting inside more wood for him.

“When she’s done, where does she go?” I ask.

“Wherever she’s needed,” he says. “Does she look too much like a mare?”

“No.” I knew she’s a mare for no simple reason. And no complicated one. She looks just as a mare looks, to me. “The tail isn’t for her brother is it?”

This time when I look at her, she catches me at it. She doesn’t hold my eyes for the sake of holding them. She means her question. It is strange to have someone pick at the details of my workshop. She can’t be much younger than me, but she seems much older right now.

“No. It’s for something in the back.”

I put the piece of mane back on the table and add it to the list of things to do tomorrow. Maybe gold for the mare’s coat. She could not have known it was a mare unless I gave it away somehow.

She is still watching me. Asking a question.

The light on the other side of the workshop windows is late and rosy. The workshop really is getting too dim to see perfect details unless you’re right up close. It’s the way a toyshop looks in a fairy tale, everything drowsy with gold and more colourful than the real world. The horses look like they’ve shifted with the changing shadows. Da will be wondering where I’ve been all day, and despite everything, it feels a little frightening to tell him exactly where I have been. It feels like I’ve been somewhere much more private all day. I still don’t feel finished here. There is something more in this workshop than the mane he made in front of me. Something more magical.

“I think you could make these horses come to life if you wanted,” I tell him. He’s brushing metal and wood from the surface of the table as if he’s about to start all over again.

“These horses can’t come to life,” he says. He doesn’t seem to think it’s strange that I’ve said it. His focus has been stolen away, but not his attention. He still looks at the horses before anything else. He doesn’t look at me at all when he says, “I can show you the back.” It doesn’t sound like anything more than what he said, but my heart is suddenly rabbit-quick.

I knew there was a back to the workshop, but I did not know that it could be so big. It’s as big as the front, and more otherworldy, because the windows are higher and here the light falls on everything instead of hitting it. One window lights a long line of animals that look like they’re already on a carousel. But the carousel isn’t round, and it isn’t made of horses. It’s winding as a river, and everything that rears, bucks, stamps, paws, leaps, canters, runs, is different. The creature whose tail is sitting on the table in the front of the workshop is a silver fox, only a little smaller than the blood-orange money in front of it. The monkey’s eyes are the colour of a gold coin. Something green and scaly with a long snout and tail in front of the monkey makes me feel watched. These animals are the magic that folk talk about, without knowing what they’re saying. I never believed in spells, but enchantment is different, and I’ve never seen anything more enchanting.

“I didn’t know there were so many colours,” I say.

“These are the ones no one wants to buy,” he says. “They’re not for sale. And they’re not done.”

Some of them are covered in plastic, but I walk up to one that isn’t. The monkey. Until I get quite close to it, it’s fur looks real, like I could slide my hands into it. I put a hand on its face, between its eyes, and bring my fingers down. It’s smooth as glass. I stand just in front of its mouth. Its eyes look at me or past me. I cannot even see the other side of the carousel from here, but the animals must go all the way around it. It’s just in shadow, where the light doesn’t reach. I hear shuffling and look at the carousel man. “I think they’re beautiful.”

If he’s flattered, he doesn’t say so. The sun-bright smile from earlier doesn’t come back. I know from my brothers that if he were interested at all right now he would at least be looking at me or standing closer. But it’s as though the monkey’s put more barriers between us than before. I don’t have the bravery to do more than I have today, and he either has less bravery than I do, or less wanting. I feel my cheeks sting, like I’ve jumped into salt water, but he isn’t looking at me, and there’s no good explanation.

I step away from the monkey. He looks at its face. “Is it really magic?” I’m asking now. It's definitely not flirting.

“I’m closing soon,” he says. “It’d be a good idea if you left.”

It’s not just his eyes that won’t land on me. His voice doesn’t want to touch me either. Everything is aversion. I feel I’ve tripped right in front of him on the street while wearing my nicest dress. I’ve called for his attention just in time to embarrass myself. It feels terribly foolish to hope for magic now. There was no magic in opening the back door of the workshop for me. He was just letting me glimpse the inside, to see that there is no magic. Maybe he’s hoping I won’t come back tomorrow.

So I won’t. And if da asks, I’ve never gone near the carousel man.

She walks out of the workshop very differently from the way she walked in. Not nearly half as timid, and not nearly half as hopeful. I lock the front door and find a bench in the back room to begin working on the fox’s tail. When the sun has vanished, I light the lamps and ignore the shadows moving.

They get restless until I have to go up to the carousel. I put my hand on the monkey’s face, where she had, and slide it up, in the direction of the monkey’s fur, toward its crown. Cold as glass, and then warm and soft. The breath on my face smells like sawdust.

It is not tame yet.

Art by Adam S. Doyle

Text by Lucie MacAulay

Restart

The world only took so long to make the first time. After that, whatever or whoever made it must have gotten much better because it started getting real fast. Pretty soon, it only took a night. It was on Wednesday, before that night, that Papa and I found out it was going to happen again, from the radio, in a station that was partly static and partly an Ella Fitzgerald song. Neither was loud as the crickets, and I had to turn it up to properly here. There’s also the wind to contend with in the pickup. The pickup truck is a monster, like no one had told the manufacturer that people and not elephants were going to drive it. The steering wheel, which is people-sized, looks a little like a mistake when you first glance at it. The wheels are frightful things to get close to, like an angry cow or a frightened horse, when your face gets right up close to theirs. I like being on the inside of it.

Which is where I was. I was carrying one of Mama’s baking dishes, filled with lemon squares meant for the church bake sale. They looked prettier than the sort of things one could find at bake sales, with pretty lace patterns of icing sugar dusted on top. There were two chocolate honey cakes in the back as well, but they required less looking after than the gooey lemon squares. It was getting close to suppertime and it was becoming harder and harder to hold the squares in my lap without looking at them. It was that bit of sunset where pale green light rises over the horizon, so thin it could be a trick of the eye. The sun had just gone down, and the radio had just started behaving. Papa asked for the evening news, so I changed to the one channel that played the news in this area. Most of the time, unless you were too close to the mountain range, it was reliable. One of the news anchors was speaking with a voice that sounded like it had retired, even if its owner hadn’t. He passed the discussion to someone else, someone in a windier place that started talking about a drought, before it was passed back to him and he told us, “It’s an ongoing investigation, but a consensus has been reached, and tomorrow will be a re-start. Tomorrow the world will be re-started, just so you know. You may experience longer than usual delay as it catches up to speed again.”

I could only remember two re-start days before this one, and one of them seemed half a memory and half a dream. I wanted to see what Papa had to say, but he’d gone quiet for a moment, listening to the knews. This was how Papa learned: silence. Mama learned from noise, from moving, and sometimes it drove her up the walls when Papa just let things be. Papa turned on the windshielf wipers of the pickup for a moment to get rid of the fly. The pickup slowed down a little, and as it did, the crickets got louder, more wanting for attention, and the wind gave it to them. Eventually, Papa seemed to have learned all he could from the quiet, because he told me, “Find out if your mother’s at home, Chickadee.”

I haven’t been able to make the proper chickadee sound that real chickadee birds make in a long while, but people around here take to a nickname so well it’s like it’s been sitting on their tongues their entire lives, waiting for you. I’ve never wanted to shake it loose, but it’s hard often to remember my real name, not that I want to. No one but the doctor has used it in all of the years I can remember. You could as well shout flycatcher or wren across the grass and I would respond to it more quickly. It isn’t anyone else’s fault that I was named wrong in the first place, and my parents and I have put that transgression behind us. I start to look for the phone.

Papa talks and drives at the same time. He can’t multitask, but he says that he wouldn’t need to anyway. Parts of him are doing different tasks at once. He holds the ear up near his head, and clamps it between his ear and his shoulder when he needs to shift gears. Eventually, I put my hand on the gearshift, so all he has to do is hold down the clutch and give a signal. “Things are never exactly the way they were before,” he said. “Every time it’s a little different, no matter how caught up the world is. You planted tomatoes today. Will they be there tomorrow? I think all this re-starting is causing the problems that make us re-start.”

“It’s a circle, then?” Mama said. Her voice was filled with more static than the radio, but Papa had turned up the volume to make it clearer. I don’t think that is how to make it clear, but it helped. “It would be useless to do the washing, then. Sometimes the clothes go missing. I’m going to count how much we have in the biscuit tin. Last time we lost a few dollars in the re-start. I could start that book Lily leant me.”

“There’s not much else to do,” Papa said. “Is dinner still being cooked or are we counting potatoes, too?”

“I think dinner can still be made. Did you drop off the lemon squares yet?” Mama asked. Papa made a noise. Mama, through long exposure, is not as annoyed with these noises as most other folk are. She isn’t charmed, either. It’s as though he actually has spoken. “You were supposed to. I hope you do it before coming home. I hope the pastor is still at the church at this hour to take it.”

“I’ll leave it on the altar,” Papa said. I could not tell if he was joking or not. I’d asked Mama at one time or other and she said Papa was being disagreeable, because he believed in God but sometimes got testy with his ways. Then she’d told Papa that if he blasphemed around me she would clean his mouth out with soap. I’ve seen her do it to Sonny, and when you see soapsuds on another person’s teeth and getting snorted out of their nose it is really enough to put you off cussing or blasphemy. At least in front of Mama.

“It won’t hold overnight unless it’s in a fridge. You’ll have to give it to his wife. Their house is on the other side of the bridge,” Mama said. “But check the church first.”

“Or they can pick it up in the church tomorrow morning,” Papa said. It wasn’t that late after all, but I suppose the pastor and his wife had dinner at the same time as everyone else. I thought it might be worse to interrupt the Daniels’ at dinner than to leave the lemon squares to get more larval in the church overnight, but not according to Mama. Papa was looking unhappy to have the phone in one hand when it could be on the steering wheel. He and phones didn’t get along, even less than he and words. “We’ll be home either soon or later.”

Papa gave me the phone, and I tucked it into the seat between us. It was silent again, but there was nothing to learn. Just the crickets screaming madly outside. Papa was grinding himself up, fingers getting antsy and knee jittering like the engine. I could feel the shaking bowls of the pickup truck under my feet. The green line was almost gone from the sunset, and now pink and purple light was tripping over the clouds. There was something like reverse god fingers in the mountains, the last of the light. The light turned rosier, and Papa’s knuckles with it. When they were easy on the steering, Papa steered the pickup toward the fence. It wasn’t much of a fence, designed to keep local children from wandering off onto other people’s property. The people didn’t think much of the local children if they thought chain link was enough. Papa cruised right next to it and stopped. The headlights were too bright for the duskiness. Midges and wheat dust bobbed in their light.

“What are you doing?” I asked. The lemon squares in my lap still looked delicious but the saran wrap had treated the icing sugar patterns unkindly. Everything was just smudged sugar and lemon now.

Papa nudged the door open and dropped. I waited for the drop to finish. He walked around the front of the truck, toward my door. I struggled to open the finicky latch with only one hand, because the other was busy making sure the dish didn’t fall off my hot, jittery legs.

I went to put the squares down but Papa shook his head. He didn’t look to be in a question-answering mood, so I didn’t ask any. I just took his hand to jump down and shook the pins and needles out of my feet. We walked along beside the fence for a few minutes before Papa found a spot that was mostly green. Everywhere around the wheat looked purple and blue. The fence had gone up only a year ago and people planted thing right along its edge. Easily grown wildflowers and brambles. I grabbed a couple overripe raspberries and shared them with Papa. Our hands were purple and sticky. Papa and I looked ahead, toward the church and the pastor’s house. He was right about the re-start. A while ago, there was lattice trim on the windows of the house beside the church, and now it was gone, like it had never been there. I did not mind so much. There was a lot going into the world now. Nothing and no one could keep track of every little thing that needed to come back and grow in the time it took to get the world up and working again.

“Open ‘em up,” Papa said.

“What?”

Papa pointed at the lemon squares.

I gaped. “What?”

“Are you looking to catch midges, Chickadee?”

I shut my mouth quickly. I’d had enough of midges this summer. “Mama said it was for church.”

“Well, tomorrow, if the world has restarted, there isn’t much for her to do except make it a second time,” Papa said. We pried the saran wrap from the squares and took one for himself. The air smelled like summer and sugar instantly. Papa gave me a lemony smile and then I was a thief as well. We ate the lemon squares as best we could, though mama had only half cut them. There was nowhere to wipe our sticky hands but the grass. There was nowhere to put the squares but our stomach.

When we could eat no more, Papa stood up. He peered through one of the diamonds of the chain link fence as if it were a keyhole, and out into the field. It was almost twilight. All the shades of blue were conspiring to turn the rest of the world into black shadows. Papa stood up and took the lemon square dish. “I think if the world is re-started,” Papa said, “Something will just have to make sure that one of those changes it makes is a lemon tree. Right in our backyard, hm?”

I reckoned it was the best sort of thing that could come out of a re-start. We went back to the pick up and Papa helped hoist me up into my seat. The crickets had been chirping so high and long that it was like the roar of water. Who could tell one cricket apart from another? I spat on my hands and rubbed them into my trousers to clean them. Papa rubbed his fingers into the hem of his shirt. When he wasn’t leaving sticky fingerprints anywhere, he started to drive. He pulled up on to the road and headed for the church. There was still chocolate cake to deliver, I supposed.

From the other side of the church, where the pastor lived, headlights came into view, small and bright as the glowing eyes of a night animal.

“Is that the pastor?” Papa said. The car was driving past the church, in our direction. “I suppose we really are leaving these cakes on the altar.”

It was the pastor, in his old Chevrolet car. It rattled over the dusty road, like it was driving over beads or rocks. The engine was making a noise that said its time was nearly coming to an end. The headlights blinded us, then swerved away, then swerved back. The whole car was swerving. There was turmoil behind the wheel, driving us to pull to the side and nearly hit the fence. The Chevrolet didn’t care. It turned away from us, then followed us. There wasn’t any direction to go that didn’t end with hitting the pastor’s car or hitting the fence.

The Chevrolet hit the pickup truck. There was more damage to the truck, because Papa swerved. The lemon square dish went into the windshield first. Glass broke and lemon filling smeared the dash. The collision was louder than sound. I couldn’t make out all the noises of glass shattering and fragile things breaking. The pickup wore the fence for a moment like a veil before it tore through and tumbled. The sky jumped under my feet. Pink clouds rattled in my head.

As soon as the truck stopped moving, I started. The truck was turned upside down and the cab was crushed partly into the sand. There wasn’t much in the way of the cab left. Or Papa. I kicked at pieces of the cab until it released me into the grass and debris. There was blood somewhere on my back, hot like I stood partly in the sunlight, but I couldn’t find it right away. My hands were sticky with lemon and blood. I walked away from the truck before it could do something like explode. I wondered where Papa’s phone was. There was a lot of wreckage to search for it. The crickets hummed noisily as I walked back to the road.

It was twilight, and all of the clouds were black or purple. Cicadas sang too, in the trees. One dropped out of a tree and hit my shoulder, hard as an acorn, as I walked down the road. It was like there were no more cars, as I walked.

My lip was in danger of letting me down, so I bit it to keep it steady. I turned away from the church and the pickup and started walking home.

In the new world, I hoped there wouldn’t be any cars.

Art by Frederico Infante

Text by Lucie MacAulay

This Kind Winter

Tonight is the longest night of the year. Before sunset, there will be blood in the water.

It’s the kindest winter I’ve ever seen. The sun is a cruel beacon, bright and heatless, turning the sea into a piece of black and silver foil. It shifts over the brown sand, curls into white caps farther out. The cliff face that curls close to the water on my left keeps the wind from tossing everyone on the beach into the sand. The patterns in the sand on the shore are made from people only, walking the Ley line.

Horses run up and down the beach as well, but they run in the water, churning up sediment and pebbles instead of just sand. They race over part of the line, filled with the energy of its activity. The road for the race this year has been mapped out, from the black water to the cliffs to the tussock grass beyond. That is the trickiest part of the road. It begins in the water. And you should never turn your back on the sea.

For the last month, there is not a part of this land where I have not tasted the air. I have breathed in this beach, and the wet smell of the rock, and the dusty grass. My face is chapped and raw from the wind, from my hair snapping against my cheeks. My thighs have been aching for weeks, from sitting in a saddle, from running. When the pain recedes, that is a sign to push harder. My back is twisted up from climbing onto my horse and dropping again, from swimming and sprinting. I have not known a full night of sleep in ages. I have not eaten enough to fill myself in weeks. I have not heard my name spoken in a month, only shouted across sea and sand.

There is fire in my chest.

My brother leads me toward the start of the race, across the beach. A couple of neighbours say hello to my brother on the way down. A race official eyes me and must think that I am too young to be here, because his mouth twists down and goes still. One of our elderly neighbours, Thomas Beecham, takes a moment of our time. My brother stops in the sand. Thomas says, “This one is very young to be in the race, isn’t he? Just lost all of his baby teeth, hasn’t he?” When this gets no response from my brother, he turns to me. “Connor Hanegan, don’t you think you’re young to be in the races?”

“I think I’m young enough to be in the races.” Let him parse that out. Several of the usual racers this year have dropped out from old age. He dropped out not long ago. His face cannot decide whether it is amused or unhappy. He speaks to my brother for a moment, lowly, about the game and age, but there are no rules about age restrictions. I know; I’ve checked.

My brother has too. It is a brief exchange. “These are violent races,” Thomas says to me. “Be careful. I can think of better ways to end your life if that’s what you’re looking to do.”

I look at him until he realizes he isn’t going to get another answer. I wait for him to walk away on the sand first, then I have to jog to keep up with my brother.

Everywhere along the beech are racers getting ready to start. There are a few new horses on the beach, a few more nightmares tossed up from the sea. They rear against their equipment, even the ones that have been trained well. They are not meant for bits like normal horses. One of them rears and paws at the sand. It is the colour of the water behind it. All of the horses are the colours of an autumn night: black, grey, red, brown, orange, gold, silver. Some of them are decorated for the race. Some people believe it is a blessing, or that their talismans bring the rider closer to the Ley line. I would not trust an herb or a bell or a metal charm to keep my horse focused. They would sooner turn back to the sea than follow someone’s directions all the way down the racetrack. That is part of why the track doubles back to the sea. But they are most dangerous on the shore. Water horses with flowered garlands have torn riders to bits in the surf. And two years ago one of them dragged its rider out too far and down. The body washed up, or part of it, almost two weeks later.

When mam told my brother and I not to turn our backs on the sea, she was not talking about the waves. The horses are swift as nightmares, and as hard to detect coming. You would not know until its jaws were around your collar. And, stuck on the Ley line, separating yourself from the beast is not always possible.

My brother’s horse is fast, but without great endurance. She is panting not far away on the shore, being held almost still by our neighbour, Killough. She foams at the mouth and turns on the spot.

She loves the race. She hates the track. Any track that leads her from the ocean is her enemy.

My brother’s mare only needs to make it as far as the grass. Then there is only a short distance along the line that he will be riding her. At some point, all of the riders will dismount and run. It is up to them to have trained their horse to stay in one spot. My brother has trained a month for this, running when he is not riding, riding when he is not sleeping.

“Help me here, Connor,” my brother says. He is holding his sash. It drapes over both shoulders and ties around the bottom of the rib cage. It is the same blue-black colour as his horse. The race officials, and the crowd, will know who he is by his sash. Some riders adorn theirs with talismans or embroidered sigils so they will be remembered. My brother is remembered without.

A man from the village passes. He hails my brother as he leads his horse. His arms are made of rock, his legs meant for moving villages. They look almost as muscular as the beast that he’ll keep between them. “Fine morning, Connor Hanegan,” he calls. Something in my stomach stirs at that, being called to across the beach like I am another racer, another contestant. Like I am a part of this, as much as he or my brother. In a year, I will be. But Thomas Beecham was right- I am too young this year. I nod to the man from the village. My brother and I get his saddle situated on the mare. His hair is stiff with salt. He has not been away from the beach for days. I think there is as much salt in his blood as is in the sea.

He is not frightened of the water, but as I pass him his bottle of water, I can tell he is unsettled by the mare. She does not like the people, or being separated from the beach. I think she will follow direction, but her hesitation makes my brother unsure.

I wish I could join him. I am a sure rider.

When the horses begin to assemble on the beach, on the line, the air changes. It is the Ley line, not just awake, but paying attention. There are very rarely this many people on it, with this kind of intention, all in one spot. The mare gets more difficult to hold. My brother wrestles with her a little, trying to sooth her until her she stops snorting. She will ride very fast today.

My brother hands me the reins once she has calmed a little. He adjusts his sash and double checks her saddle- you can never be too sure. There is salt on both our lips, and they are chapped. I lick at mine, though it does not make it better. My brother bites his lips. I have seen him race for years, and this is the first year I see his fingers slip on the knot of his sash. He is not keeping himself as close to the mare as he can. She frightens him.

I have been on this mare without a saddle. Bareback, I have felt the heat of her body beneath me. The wind buffeting me, the drop of her hooves like thunder in the sand and on the rocks. I have been sprayed by the sea and by the dirt thrown up by her hooves. I know that on this beast, someone could win the race.

I put a hand on her nose. Most of the horses do not like this, but I do it slowly, so she can see and smell my hand. I stroke the velvety part of her face, following the grain of her hair.

“Move! What are you doing?” my brother says. His voice is sharp enough that the mare snaps her head away from my hand. They are an agitated pair. “Keep your hand away from her face, unless you’d like to lose it. This is no friendly creature you’re standing next to, you know? Come away, or do you think you’d look handsome without a nose?”

I do not come away, just drop my hand away from the mare. Her head is dipped forward. I speak to her, lowly, so my brother cannot hear it, and so it might sound like the wind.  Her ears prick forward again.

My brother sees my lips move. He steps forward and draws me away by the wrist. “Help me up, now. Then get on up to the cliffs. It’s about time. Here-” I steady him as he swings over the horse’s back, into the saddle, settling his feet.

The horse moves under him immediately. His wrists and hands get to work trying to hold her in one place. She is restless as a stallion. The mare moves the bit in her mouth. Her head tilts, like she is trying to watch two different directions at once. I would tell him that is not the way to do it, but it is not me up on her, and I do not have the reins.

I look at her to make sure she remembers what I’ve just told her. Bring him back alive, in one piece. My brother is not careless in the race, but you do not need to be careless to suffer a loss. I look up at my brother and say, “Luck. I’ll see you after.” My brother steadies the mare to be able to reach down and pat my shoulder. Neither of find goodbyes particularly agreeable.

I go up to the cliffs to watch with the spectators. We are in the safest part of the cliffs, where, when the horses pass us, they should already be taken with the enchantment of the Ley line. A couple this year have not forgotten the sea, and they turn back the moment their hooves touch chalk. My brother makes it all the way to the grass, dismounts, draws a circle in the grass with the dirt, and begins to run. He mounts the mare again once he’s returned and heads down the Ley line, toward the sand.

He has just about won the race when the horse beside his clamps enormous teeth around his shoulder and drags him into the water.

I breathe in a breath of sand that I do not release again. The water has gone still, the riders frozen. I cannot hear horse’s hooves. I see nothing but those teeth in my brother

Then sound returns. My brother falls sideways off his horse. He falls into the water and stands, lurching toward the shore. It is not his black mare that goes for him, but the other rider’s horse, a gold one, that gets a grip of him. Red froth bubbles up on top of the water where he thrashes. Several horses come in behind him and if he is not already dead by the horse’s teeth, he is dead from the trampling. His elbow bobs on top of the water. The black mare dives into the sea, missing it more than she wants a meal. The Ley line tingles with energy, as it always does when someone dies on it. Blood is still surfacing, but not because my brother is alive. The sea is churned to peaks that day.

When they drag my brother away from the reddened surf, they tell me not to look at him. I do, but I see instead my brother as he climbed on the mare, a heart full of fear.

Now, I know better.

Art by Anonymous

Text by Lucie MacAulay