Read Online House Under Snow by Jill Bialosky - Free Book Online Page B

he was talking about himself, as if he and the horses were interchangeable. He promised we would take it slow. We left the paddock and walked the horses down the driveway behind the barns. We entered the field. I relaxed as the sun shone on my back, and gradually I fell into the up and down of the horse’s rhythm.
    But Austin wasn’t satisfied.
    “Not through the trees,” I said. I saw where he was headed. We were halfway across the field before we entered the narrow trail through the forest. The sky that day was as blue as I’d seen it.
    “Trust me. Anna. Jane and I found this trail the other day.”
    “I’m not ready for this.” My voice was quivering.
    “Do you think I would let you get hurt? That I’d let anything happen to you?”
    He kicked his horse with the heel of his boot, turned his horse around, and motioned for me to do the same. But it was too late. I was losing control of the horse. Austin pulled back on his own horse, slowed down, and waited for Night to pass.
Then he swatted Night’s rear end with his crop to get her moving.
    The trail, parallel to a running creek, was muddy and thick with forest on each side. My hair caught the bottom branches of a tree. Burrs attached to my jeans. My heart throbbed in my chest and threatened to outsound the rhythm of the horse’s hooves knocking against the ground, spitting up dirt and dust. The trail took us farther into the thick of the woods, over a small ravine, until it seemed we had vanished far into the forest. My legs and buttocks were sore. My fingers, from clutching so tight on the reins, hurt if I opened them, but slowly I began to relax, until a splinter of sun burst through the trees. Light bloomed in front of us, and suddenly we moved into an open field like a beautiful dream, but when Night saw the treeless expanse of grass, she broke into a run. I heard the soft chunks of mud breaking underneath her hooves and felt deep roots below us loosening from the ground.
    “Pull her back!” Austin shouted. “Anna, hold tight on the reins and get her under control. You take the lead, goddamn it,” he ordered. “Can’t you for once be in charge?”
    The comment cut into me, but my mind and body were at odds. I wobbled to the side. I clutched my calves harder against the sides of the horse, pressed my buttocks firmer into the saddle, trying to regain my balance, as Night raced through the field.
    When she threw me to the ground, the wind was knocked out of me, but I wasn’t in pain. I simply couldn’t move. It was like the time Lilly crashed into a car in front of us at a stoplight and I went flying back against the seat. For days I had heard the inside of my head rattle.
    Austin hopped off his horse and whistled between his fingers for my horse.
    Night ran back through the field and circled around us. I was flat on my back. When I tried to move, I couldn’t get up. The fall had happened so fast, it was hard to put the events together. I tried to raise my head and realized Night’s hoof was standing on a long lock of my hair. I was facing into the back side of her, my face between her two back legs.
    “I can’t get up,” I said. If she moved an inch, that would be the end of it. My face was that close to her leg.
    Austin coaxed the horse by stroking her mane and slowly moved her forward. I felt my hair come loose. Austin reached for my hand, and helped me up.
    Against his chest, I felt his pulse race in his neck.
    “Anna, you fucking scared me,” Austin said.
    “I’m okay.”
    “But what if . . .”
    “I’m fine,” I said, quieting his lips with my own.
    As day solidified into night, it grew quiet, except for the sound of the cicadas and the crickets. No one was there to hurry home to, no one but us, and in our shadow the heavy breathing of the horses, under the thick white summer clouds, where nocturnal animals were awakening. There were no compromises to be made, no one to please or take care of. The two horses put their necks down