The Horses of the West Wind

My wife and I, we tend the horses of the west wind. When the breeze is warm and gentle and makes the grass on the clifftop ripple, we stand out in our yard and wait for them to come home. I raise my whistle to my lips and blow the ‘come home.’ Then put my arm around my wife and feel her warmth against my side as we scan the purple depths of the sky.

“There!” She says, stretching out an arm to point at a wisp of blue in the distance. “It’s Balius."

“Xanthus, for sure.” I murmur, smiling into her hair. I know it’s Balius, but I like the little snort of half amused disgust she gives me. “You know as well as I do it’s Balius! He does that little corkscrew when he’s coming home. He’s looking forward to seeing us.”

My stomach clenches as she says those words. “I hope they always do, Mara. We’re only mortals, after all, and they’re the children of the west wind...” I regret speaking immediately. I know how she feels about this. She turns around to face me, her eyes stern, her lovely mouth pressed into a firm line. “That’s exactly why we don’t have to worry about that. We will die long before they tire of us. And if they do leave us someday…well, it was a privilege to care for them. You can’t keep fretting about this Nicco. Let it go.”

But I can’t.

Balius lands suddenly in front of us like a breeze blown through a sunlit window, like leaves in the springtime, like the ripples of water on a lake. He is somehow both insubstantial and immense. He lowers his muzzle to my wife’s hand, blowing curiously, excited for the very normal apple she has cupped there. He crunches it, bobbing his head happily.

And then Xanthus is there, swirling around us quietly and then solidifying to land. He is leaner, taller, of a more solemn disposition than Balius. His warm breath caresses my cheek as I lay a hand on his flank and I am reminded of a steady, strong wind, loaded with spices and smells of distant lands.

We lead them to their stables, oddly magnificent next to our small shepherding hut, and put them up for the night. They eat grain, like normal horses, and like to be curried. Xanthus likes to have the whorl of hair on his forehead scratched.

That night we lie in bed and I listen to the soft sounds of my wife’s breathing. Before they came I was a shepherd like my father and my grandfather. I never thought of being anything more. Now I am more than just a shepherd. I am part of protecting the most beautiful things in the world. Mara says I should stop worrying; that even a few days with them would be enough of a blessing from the gods to last us our entire lifetime. But I can’t stop worrying. That’s why I’ve been building the trap.

I tell myself during the daytime that I am only looking out for their best interests, making a place to keep them safe just in case something dangerous happens. But at night, in the dark, I know why I’m making it. Without them, the rest of my life wouldn’t be worth living at all.

I work on it in the mornings, while Mara is home doing the weaving and I am out with the sheep. I found the cave on one of the highland pastures. It is almost totally invisible if you aren’t looking at it from the right direction, and too small for any flesh and blood horse to get into. But inside is stale and quiet, not a breath, not a fresh breeze, not a single hole to the outside. I put hay inside, plenty of grain. I don’t want to hurt them. I don’t even plan on leaving them there long. Just long enough to convince them to stay. Just in case.

The day the storm comes I know they’ll spend the night out. The sky is grey and except for the hiss of wind through the grasses, there is no birdsong or insect noises. The sheep huddle together. Mara stands on the cliff, letting her hair whip back off of her face in dark tangles. There are more than just two beautiful creatures in my life. She turns to me. “It’s a large one. We’ll not expect them tonight.”

I nod, pretending this doesn’t upset me, pretending I am not consumed with the fear that they will follow the storm, dance so far in the wild tossed clouds that they leave our shores forever and find a new place to stay. Mara doesn’t believe my lies, even unspoken. She puts a hand on my arm, gives me a knowing smile, and goes to begin closing the shutters.

The storm hits just after noon. The rain slams onto the ground, sweeping past our windows and smacking against the side of our house with a roar. At first we enjoy it. I whittle away at a block of wood that I will probably turn into something useful. Mara knits. But the wind rages more fiercely and the rainfall is so loud that it begins to press in on us. I find my hands stilled at my task, and then look up to see Mara, gaze distant, staring blankly at the wall. She meets my eyes and we chuckle, halfheartedly. It’s just a storm.

Then we hear the horses, out in the rain.

They are singing. It is a wild, terrifying sound. It is the sound that no creature of earth would ever make, and suddenly I know that this time they will not be coming back at all. They will follow this storm and make a new resting place on some far shore. I am up out of my chair in a second. Mara starts up after me, terrified. “Nicco! Where are you going?”

But I am out in the rain before I have time to answer her, my whistle snatched up from the mantlepiece and clenched in my hand, barely able to see. The horses are like the northern lights, dancing and weaving in the sky against the backdrop of black, boiling clouds. Their song is sad, unearthly, and even as the rain soaks my face I feel my eyes burn with tears. They are leaving us, they are leaving me…

I reach the cave and blow the ‘come home’ melody desperately, frantically. I don’t know if it will work.

And then there they are, directly above me, whinnying, whirling, dancing, barely recognizable as horses. I pull aside the stones and duck into the cave, whistling with all my power. The rain gets caught in the whistle and it warbles, guttering.

Xanthus lands, his ears pricked, his eyes luminous, his body barely visible. I slink backwards into the cave. Come, I think to him, come and stay with me. He takes a step, another step, trusting me. He brushes past me and I smell ozone and lightning on him. He balks at the darkness. I can’t wait for Balius. I dart out and shove the pile of rocks at the entrance, blocking the cave up. Xanthus, a wind, howls inside, a sound of betrayal, shock—it sends a shiver down my back and I whisper, “I’m sorry!” But I keep piling rocks up anyway, closing up gaps.

“It won’t be for long,” I gasp to him, though he certainly can’t hear me over the rain and his own raging. “Just till the storm leaves and then you’ll decide to stay. And Balius wouldn’t leave without you, I’m sure he wouldn’t….”

Then Balius is there, and I do not recognize the good-natured horse of yesterday evening in this lightning-charged force of rage. He swoops out of the air and plunges at the mountain, slamming into it. Rocks cascade downward. Inside the cave, Xanthus is wailing, a terrifying banshee scream.

Behind me, I hear my wife shouting over the noise, but I can’t hear her and I wave her away furiously. She doesn’t understand. I need to keep these horses. I must keep them.

Balius whips around and comes back and slams into the mountain side again. Loosened by the wind and the rain and Xanthus’ pounding from inside, a slurry of rocks, boulders and mud roars down in a landslide. Half the mountain seems to rip past me. By chance, I am hidden from the onslaught by an outcropping, but I am covered instantly in mud.

The landslide reopened the gap I had closed and Xanthus bursts forth from the cave. He joins his brother in the air. They are both crackling with rage. Xanthus passes by me mane streaming back, eyes rolling, nostrils distended—and I see with a lurch of my stomach the truth of immortality and the gods in him. And how foolish it was for me to think I could contain him. But they do not stay to wreak revenge on me. I am not important enough to bother with. They are gone. At once. They take the worst of the storm with them in a powerful blast of wind that echoes around and around the mountains. And I know that they will never, never, never be back.

They leave behind a grey drizzle, a wreck of rocks, and me, sodden and gritty. I turn around to go down the mountain and I spy a scrap of pink, homespun wool that my wife dyed herself. It is pinned beneath a rock, and as I bloody my hands and knees in my haste to get to it I see that her hand is pinned there too. She is there, limp, lifeless—gone.

I jerk to my feet as if I could escape the pain by movement. But then I see her again, just in front of me—translucent, blurred, drifting away into the gloom. With the shriek of a madman, I rush after her spirit. “Mara! Mara come back to me! Wait!”

She is just ahead of me, the most familiar, beloved form. I would recognize her anywhere, even on her way to Hades, I recognized her. I would get her back. I had to. I must. I careen over the rocks, jagged edges tearing gashes into my hands. I fall onto my knees, gravel in my mouth, and then scramble up again. If I catch her before she leaves, if I could just touch her, surely the gods will give her back to me.

Up the mountain she goes, up, and up into the dark sky. My legs are aching, my lungs burn, but I must touch her. She slows as she reaches the top, and I am mere feet from her when she turns. She looks at me. Even as I reach out, even as I try to grab her, to fold her close to me so she cannot leave, I know she is already gone. She vanishes even as my fingers grasp at her.

I curse the gods all the way down the mountain. I shake my fist at the glowering, dark clouds above me as I gather my wife’s body into my arms and carry her down the mountain. I curse the gods as I smash the windows in our small house. I curse them as I crush the walls with a mallet. And then I climb up the shattered walls and pile straw in the wreckage. I settle Mara’s body in the straw, and I get my flint and my tinder and I lie down beside her.

“If they take you away from me,” I tell her, and my voice is hoarse in my ears, “I will follow you. I won’t live without you. I refuse.”

The wind has picked up. It will spread the fire quickly. This pain will be over soon, and I will show the gods that they cannot take things from me.

But the wind does not spread the fire. The sparks from my tinder are whipped away before they touch the straw. Again and again I scrape the flint and again and again I fail. My hands are shaking, I am weeping again that even this small thing is taken from me. Then somehow, in the hysteria that has nearly overcome me, I sense another presence on the roof with me. It is Xanthus, looming above me, his mane tossed in the wind of his own being, his ears pricked. And then Balius is there also, his head dipped so that he can look straight into my eyes with his own large one. The air spirals around us, filling my ears with a quiet murmur.

“This—” I cry, gesturing wildly at my wife, “This is your—” And I can get no further, because I cannot look them in the eye and say that they are the reason she has died. It was my fault. For my selfish ambition, she died. A worthless death. I put my head in my hands and I weep, and the horses of the west wind encircle me and tend me.

Xanthus and Balius came back to me. For years now, they have galloped in the clouds and the skies and come flying home in the evenings. But they are not here because I deserve them, or because they need me. They are here because they are a gift I do not deserve, as I did not deserve my wife. Someday I will die and see my Mara again. Until then, I watch my sheep, and I play my whistle, and I listen to the sound of the wind, rushing by like hoofbeats in the mountains.