I got to my feet as well, realizing that he was shorter than I, now that we were side by side, which was not unusual considering my beanpole frame. Even if his head had been attached to his shoulders, I figured he would still have been below my own height by an inch or two, which was a strange way to contemplate someone. He was much broader than I, with wide shoulders, a trim waist, and strong legs. He was dressed head to toe in black, from his collar to his boots. In the brighter light from the open windows, I could also see now that the place on his shoulders where his neck would have connected him was covered in a piece of black cloth, tucked in all the way around his upstanding collar. I wondered if that had been something he had done for himself, but that seemed like a rather rude and presumptuous question to ask.
“What do you mean, nearly?” I asked, turning my eyes upward to the gold candelabra that hung overhead.
“A few of the cursed individuals stayed with me, in the beginning,” he said, and I detected something in his voice that sounded very much like discomfort.
“So I am not the first person you have saved from the witch on Halloween night.”
“No,” the Horseman said, his voice as morose as a eulogy.
“May I ask what happened?” I ventured, not entirely sure I wanted to hear, but I needed to know what fate would befall me now that my life had been spared for a year.
“The first year, the… forgive me, I cannot even remember now if it was man, woman, or child. But the sacrifice left the sacred grounds of the churchyard, and the witch slaughtered them by sundown. That was how I learned she could not pass the bridge; she waited, hidden, just beyond it until the sacrifice ran toward the village before she struck.” The Horseman straightened a little, his mahogany eyes meeting mine. “The next year, I also saved the sacrifice. And the next year, and the next. But it never did any good. If I kept them here, they would die at midnight the following Halloween after long bouts of suffering, no matter how I wished to hold on to them. One year, the sacrifice was an orphaned girl of no more than ten who washed up after a boating accident. She stayed through the winter with me and then returned to the village in the spring. When the villagers saw her, they tied her to a stake and burned her alive in the square. I could hear her screams all the way here.”
I inhaled sharply, reaching behind me to grasp the prayer railing of the dais, my stomach churning.
The Horseman’s fingers twisted uneasily in a few of the strands of his long, dark hair. “I stopped trying to save them,” he said softly. “I thought a quick death at the hands of the witch was more merciful than letting them suffer. And, as selfish as it is, I could not bear to watch any more of them die.”
“What made you decide to save me then, instead of letting the witch have me?”
The Horseman was silent for a long time until his eyes broke apart from mine to look uneasily at the ground. “I do not know,” he said. “I was drawn to you. I… wanted you. Wanted to protect you. Despite knowing what fate awaits you.”
The words made no sense, and my eyes narrowed. “You wanted to protect me? From a curse that you tell me is draining my soul from my body every moment that I stand here?”
“Ichabod, please,” the Horseman said, reaching out a pleading hand to me. “I know it is all hard to believe, but I-”
“How do you know my name?” I cut in with surprise. Names held power, and I was sure I had never once uttered my name in the presence of this ghoul.
The Horseman blinked. “What?”
“I have never given you my name,” I said firmly. “So how do you know it?”
“I… I have known it from the day you arrived. Outsiders are not common in Sleepy Hollow. I heard whispers on the wind that a new schoolmaster arrived.”
The words reminded me of the warning from the Tarry Town folk, that people who ventured into the northern area were not heard from again. “Was Halloween the first time you saw me?”
“No,” the Horseman admitted after a pause. “I saw you many times, in the village. When I would ride through the forest, I would sometimes see you helping the farmers, or through the windows.”
Realization rushed through me, followed by anger, hot and fetid, like venom spreading through my veins. “You watched me all of these months, and you never thought to warn me?”
“Warn you?” The Horseman sounded genuinely perplexed by the idea.
“To tell me that Katrina was planning to curse me? To let me know my life was in danger?”
The Horseman gestured with one hand to his form. “Do you think I could have approached you like this, and you would have listened to anything I had to say?”
I knew that his words were truth, but fury was beating behind my eyes, making my thoughts turn black and my heart churn with rage. “You could have done something! Warned the villagers, or sent me a note.”
“The villagers would not help you,” the Horseman said, his voice rising suddenly. “They are all under her spell, every last one of them.”
I scoffed angrily at that. “Then I could have left on my own before the harvest party.”
“Do you not think I didn’t want to?” the Horseman asked, his eyes darkening slightly, his voice lowering. “If it would have done any good, I would have. But once you cross the line of magic into this glen, you become part of Sleepy Hollow, and you cannot leave. If you were to try, the magic would prevent you.”
“What are you talking about?” I snapped.
“The same magic that keeps Sleepy Hollow suspended in time protects it from the outside world. If anyone crosses into its border, they are trapped here. She would have chosen you, regardless of what I might have said or done. Any outsiders to Sleepy Hollow are chosen as the sacrifice, that is the way it has always been.”
“So you knew from the day I arrived that I was going to be the sacrifice to you, and you were lonely, so you decided that you would just let her curse me? To torture me and siphon my very soul from my body, so you would have someone to talk to for a year?” I was yelling now, my voice echoing off the beams of the church.
