“A wedding guest’s?” I asked, assuming he remembered our love of animals as little girls or some such thing. He was in a good mood today. Perhaps this was a paltry peace offering on his part, showing me this expensive creature.
“Yes,” he said, a small smile on his lips. “And no. But you are a wedding guest, so, yes.”
I could only stare.
“She is yours,” he went on, warming to the subject. “Bought her on auction in Carver last week from a filthy Tintarian. He just delivered her an hour ago. She is young. And she has a spiteful nature. She had to be broken in twice over. Hence, why I could afford her.”
“Is she—Is she Sibbereen?” I finally was ableto speak.
My father huffed. “Only Tintar can buy stock from Sibbereen. They say Vyggia and Ruskar can too, I don’t know. No, girl, she is half Sibbereen. That is why she is nice and big, why her coat has such sheen. Don’t know what her dam was, but the sire was an island horse. But hear me. She was affordable because of her mixed lineage. And because she had to be so broken. She can be skittish and stubborn. You’ll have your work cut out.”
She was perhaps the most lovely animal I had ever seen. Her coat was white but speckled closely with small brown spots. At a distance her coat would have looked all one color, with a mane and tail the shade of bleached bones. The white went all the way down to her hooves, none of her stockings a different color. She had a gray nose and some gray around her eyes. Her mane was so thick it grew from both sides of her neck. She was perfect, save for a tuft of hair between her ears that grew straight up.
“Unfortunately, she was broken in Tintar,” my father was saying. “So she only responds to some Tintarian name. You cannot rename her something more appropriate.”
“What is it?” I asked, extending a hand to her nose.
“Zara,” he said as if it was a curse.
I was at a loss. We had not been together as parent and child for some time. We had not spoken without distrust or dislike between us in winters. And yet here—on my sister’s wedding day—was this luxurious present, and a useful one too. I had hoped to save for an old horse no one wanted someday, as my father’s old mare was on her last legs, but this one was perhaps worth the entirety of Magda’s property.
“I cannot thank you enough,” I said past the lump in my throat.
“Well, it’s your dowry that paid for her,” he answered.
I turned to him.
“I don’t mean to be cruel,” he continued. “But I doubt any man is going to seek your hand, Roberta. Not with what you have chosen. You replaced the old hag. That is all a boy of Sheridan will see.”
When I searched his face, I saw that truly, he did not meancruelty in this moment. He was likely right. Rowena had managed to escape the shadow cast by Magda. I now lived in it and shamelessly so.
“Maybe one day,” my father offered. “But it’ll be a widower who cannot be choosy, or a foreigner. Your reputation is too sullied. Again, I do not mean any unkindness.”
“I understand,” I assented. “I do.”
“Leave Dusty here. She can die in peace. And she is soon to it, believe me. I cannot have you traipsing to and from your little farm. It’s just too far to not cause me and your mother concern.”
I put my forehead to the horse’s cheek so as to disguise my emotion. His casual mention of concern for me was more affection than he had shown in winters. I was ashamed at how greedily I wanted to lap it up, like a starving man eating a meal.
“Be safe, girl. Go about your business looking over your shoulder. You’re a woman on your own, and that is a perilous thing to be.”
I made ahmmnoise, my head still bent to the animal.
He went on to explain that her fine tack and the long flat saddle that could accommodate two riders, a Tintarian make, had been included in her price. He further warned against her fiery nature, but I was barely listening. I was overwhelmed both by her beauty and expense and by this sudden kindness from him. It was the final time we spoke without any enmity before his death.
54
THEN: OUTLAW
Itook Zara home the following morning and found her to be the most docile steed I had ever ridden. I was so pleased with her obedience, soon I let her run wild on the Nyossa border and along the footpaths that were broad enough for her. She liked its sweet grasses and cool creeks. We spent days like that, me foraging and her grazing nearby. For all my father’s warnings of her being difficult, she was not. She came when she was called and had no desire to stray.
“They were mistaken. You did not need to be broken twice,” I would say to her. “How could they have ever called you a wayward thing?”
I called her my wild girl. And Magda’s old farmstead was not a lonely place because of her. As she was fast and could carry me far, I found myself with more freedom than I had ever enjoyed, and not just the liberty of being unmarried and out from under my father’s roof. I was able to ride her to and from Carver in a day. And when the tinker caravans returned the following summer, setting up their campgrounds for a moon or so in fields just outside of Carver, I spent long days in their company, eager for people who did not letRodwin dictate their lives. They were quick to be kind to me, knowing me to be Magda’s replacement and having nothing to do with her death.
“We were all aggrieved, I tell you,” claimed the tattooed man, hands on hips, watching a circle of young folk—tinkers and residents of Carver alike—dance to a fiddler’s song. “It’s a mean saint you Sheridan people serve.”
“I don’t serve him,” I said bitterly. Then I said, my eye on the mermaid that wrapped around his upper right arm, “How much for your work? If I wanted a tattoo.” I did not realize I wanted one until that moment.
