Knox is holding my hand. Our steps crunch in the snow. At some point, we reach a cabin. I put my hand onto wood and hear iron sliding upward into a hinge. Knox opens the door, and as I follow him inside and the smell of hay and horses reaches my nose, I realize where we are.
“William’s barn,” I say.
I stay put in the pitch dark for a bit while Knox curses several times as he bumps into various things. But then I hear the click of a lighter and am able to make out the silhouettes of buckets, pitchforks, and saddle racks, and a few seconds later Knox gives me one of his widest grins in the glow of an old-fashioned lamp. The flames cast a shadow over his face, an interplay of dark, bright, black, red, shadows, light. The candle strips Knox down to the skin. Emotionally vulnerable. It says:Here he is, take a good look, I am showing you who he is, do you like it?
And how. And how.
“What are wedoinghere?” I ask.
Knox lights a second lantern and hands it to me. “We’re going to ride.”
“Ride?”
“You need me to explain? Well, okay. You sit on the back of a moving horse that carries you along in the process. Ooor you sit on a man’s lap—mine, for example—and start to move while…”
“Finish and I’m going to hold food in front of Sally’s nose without giving it to her so that she’ll back out of her stall while you’re standing there.”
Knox laughs. The lantern scratches the floor as he puts it down and kisses the crown of my head. “I’d love to be romantic and saddle a horse for you, but, sadly, I am terribly incompetent in such matters. William gave me a hand.” He points toward two of the horses that are already saddled and tacked up. “You get the Andalusian.”
“I don’t know how to ride.”
There’s a mischievous glint in his eyes. “Oh, how much I’dloveto say something just now.”
“Shut it.”
Knox rumples his nose a few times to keep from laughing until he’s got himself under control again. “It’s a cinch. You just sit on top, and they move. As long as you can hold the reins and keep in the saddle, all’s good. They’re constantly carrying squealing tourists around on their backs. They’re used to it.”
“Okay.” My eyes scurry through the stable and stop on the dappled Irish Cob. The mare has buried her face in the feeding trough and is snorting. She sounds angry. “But I’m taking Sally.”
Knox follows my glance while opening the box of a fox-red Andalusian. The horse rubs its head against Knox’s shoulder and then its nostrils across his face. No doubt it’s not his first time here.
Knox pats the horse’s neck, while looking at me with raised eyebrows. “No way. I can’t be responsible for that. I’ve got to ride her.”
“Why?”
“She’s on low-carb.”
I pout. “But, but…”
Knox holds my glance for a few seconds, then curses. “Those damn lips of yours. Fine, take Sally. But if William gets wind of it, it was your idea.”
I grin and get a carrot out of a bucket for her. Her large dark eyes glow with a look of annoyance as she turns her head to the side and ignores the vegetable. With a sigh I toss the carrot back into the bucket. “William wouldn’t say anything.”
“I’m begging you.” The Andalusian gives a lazy snort while Knox comes up to me to help with Sally. “You’re going to be the subject of the next town hall with the screening of a film calledWhy No One Is Allowed to Touch Sally When She Isn’t Getting Any Carbohydrates. A Film by William.”
We lead the animals outside, each of us with a horse in one hand, a lantern in the other.
“Do you need a hand getting into the saddle?”
I shake my head. “I land triple axels and spins out on the ice, my entire weight on a one-and-a-half-millimeter-wide blade. I think I can manage getting my foot into a stirrup.”
I don’t. Knox has to help me get a leg up to swing onto her wide back. Eventually, I manage. It’s high, and I want to come back down. My stomach is a bit weird. I wish I’d secretly fed her some feed.
Knox hands me a helmet that’s been outfitted with a headlamp. He’s wearing one, too, and that makes me feel better because, to be honest, I feel a bit like a miner.
He smoothly swings up onto his Andalusian, as if he didn’t do anything else, and shows me how I can direct my horse with my knees. Then we set off.
It’s wonderful. Aspen by night during a snowfall, between us only the sound of horses’ hooves in the snow, the occasional snort, and the metallic rubbing of the bit as the horses slide it between their teeth.
