Rider at the Gate

But if she willfully talked to the beasts, they told her in church, if she did begin to seek them out, she’d surely go to hell.

But the smell of hell was in papa’s forge, and the substance of her heart’s desires were out there, with the snow, the beautiful clean snow.

Mama certainly wasn’t going to be happy if she ran away to become a rider. Mama had much rather she marry a rich lowland merchant. Mama would be worried about her ruining her skin and her hands.

Papa would call her his pretty angel and ask the traveling preachers to pray for her soul and hope for the horse to run away— but she grew so willful she knew she’d pray against papa, because she wanted to be a rider, and papa couldn’t stop her from anything she wanted, he never had. She’d do as she pleased, and mama would be mad and papa would be worried, but in the end she’d have her way, and they’d accept her—or if they stayed mad, she’d run away for good and not come back except occasionally, remote and grand in her fringed leathers, with the look of distant places about her.

And she’d talk to mama and papa if they were nice, but her brothers and their friends would stare daggers at her and she’d look right back and scare them with the images she could send. The neighbors would all be envious about the money she would make. And the Tarmin riders who said stay away from the horses, they’d respect her, they’d be sorry they’d ever scolded her, and herhorse would be finer than theirs, the convoy bosses would pick herbecause she’d look better than all the rest, and she’d have a reputation far and wide over the mountains—go with Brio

She couldn’t get up yet. It was still dark between the shutters and mama would wake up instantly if she heard her moving about. So she lay abed savoring the feeling and the pla

Mama and papa wouldn’t just let her go. But mama and papa wouldn’t of course hear the horse that was calling so loudly out there, and if they heard it they would never suspect it came for their daughter. Her brothers were a little cleverer, mostly because they spied on her all the time, and they’d surely tell, so she couldn’t let on she was going anywhere special—most of all she couldn’t let on she was excited, even if she could hardly contain it. She’d say she was going to the shop, that was all, and if she was clever and fast, they wouldn’t know when she slipped away from them.

It was forever until that first faint light came.

Then, impatient, her breath hissing in the cold of her room, she slipped out from the covers, dressed quickly in warm ordinary clothes, struggled into two of everything, one too small and one a little too large, watching in the mirror so she didn’t look as bundled up as she knew she needed to be to face the outside cold.

And, secretly dressed for blizzards, she sweltered through breakfast in the crowded, overheated kitchen, where mama had been baking biscuits: it was bacon and of course the biscuits, and she saved both pieces of bacon and stole a couple of whole biscuits for the horses—some of it, she thought then, hugging the thought to her… for herhorse. She took two more, when nobody was looking, because she might be out all night.

“Brio

She stopped in the clutter of boys and noisy footsteps. She was momentarily at a loss. Mama insisted shelearn accounts and excused her brothers to be rowdy. And mama couldn’tkeep her in. Not today.

“I’ll have it all this afternoon,” she said, very quickly, and was fast enough to shut the door so that she didn’t hear mama’s scolding; and, not hearing, of course wasn’t obliged to do what mama wanted.

But it was not to papa’s forge she was bound, putting on her hat and her coat while she hurried in her brothers’ wake through the new-fallen snow. She veered out of their track at the corner of the house, and, still buttoning buttons, went ru

She couldn’t hear the horse calling now, but the wild ones came mostly at night. They gave a village bad dreams; but the people they favored to hear them clearly would begin to waste away with longing to go after them, that was what all the stories said. Even people who were afraid of them had to go out to them when the Calling came, and if they didn’t find their horse soon, they might perish in the snow and the cold.

But she wasn’t afraid. She’d waited for her Calling. She welcomed it with all her heart.

She turned the corner at the baker’s, where the water tanks were, and ran from there to the Little Gate, which let riders come from the camp into the town, though on purpose it was too small to let the horses pass it.

The Little Gate had no lock, only a pull-latch, and she came and went there as she pleased, always a little careful that the watchman down at the big main gate didn’t look this way and see her, because he’d surely take her straight to her parents.

But Tuck at the main gate would be having his breakfast, she was confident of that, besides that the Little Gate wasn’t really Tuck’s business at all, least of all one to make him come out in the morning cold. She slid the latch aside, slipped over to the rider camp, and pulled the gate silently to behind her.

Once when she was seven the other kids had dared her to slip through the Little Gate. She’d told them she was scared, and of course never let on to them the secret that she’d done it already a hundred times. She’d never once let on that she could talk to the horses, either, because if she did, then her brothers would have told their parents everything she did forever. Then they’d have had the preacher to pray over her, and they’d have watched her everso much closer.

Now that she was older, her parents knew that she occasionally went to the camp and that occasionally she talked to the riders, especially when her father had some work to do and she delivered some message to or from, as she loved to do.

But her mother lectured her severely about rider men and immoral thoughts, which embarrassed her, and would have mortified her if the riders had ever, ever heard her mother talk like that. Riders weren’t at all the way mama said. They never hurt her nor even said an indelicate word nor thought an indelicate thought in her presence. They treated her like their sister. They talked far nicer than her brothers, and the men especially would talk to her and tell her stories.

Which made the women, like Tara and Mina, mad. They were probably jealous, or at least they protected what they had, namely the men, from her influence. She didn’t mind. She took it for a kind of compliment that they were so worried. And Vadim and Chad were the handsomest men she knew, just ever so nice to watch, and now—

Right now she most wanted to find Vadim. He was usually up and about early, and she knew Barry and Llew and Tara were away working on the road: she always knew what went on in the camp.

But she was equally sure that Vadim and Chad and Mina and Luisa were in camp, and with any reasonable luck, Vadim or Chad might be outside working, so she wouldn’t have to deal with Mina.