The Shadowy Horses

My hair was streaming water and I couldn't see before me and my hands made bloody marks upon my water-plastered clothes. The wind passed through me like a frozen blade. I shivered.

A deep voice called me, indistinct. I raised an anguished face. But it wasn't David. It wasn't David.

It wasn't anybody. A jagged spear of lightning showed the empty moor, the blowing thorn. But as the thunder rolled and died I heard the voice again, strangely hollow, as though straining to reach me across a great distance. "Claudia."

Struggling to resolve itself, the faint transparent outline of a man took form and faded in the slashing silver rain. And as I blinked against the stinging wetness, he made a supreme effort and his shadow reappeared. Dark eyes, not wholly human, met mine, softened.

He raised what might have been an arm, a hand, as if he meant to touch me, and I saw the effort this time, saw him fight to frame the words. "Non lacrimas, Claudia."

Don't cry.

I felt a gentle trail of ice across my cheek, as if he sought to brush the tears away, and then I half-believed the shadow smiled. “Non lacrimas," he said again, and melted in the rain.

Afraid to move, I went on staring at the place where he had been, unmindful of the screaming wind, the dark and rolling sky. The lightning split the clouds again, and flashed across the roughened ground, and all at once I felt the breath tear from me in a sob of pure relief. A man was coming across the moor.

He looked enormous to my eyes, a great dark giant moving over bracken and thorn with an effortless stride. It was as if the hourglass had tipped and the sands were spilling back and I was sitting on the bus again, and watching for the first time while he came to me across the wild moor.

He was carrying something, wrapped up in a bright yellow mac. Some animal, with legs that dangled.

I saw him stop, and standing square against the storm he stared at the Jaguar, its bright red bonnet buried at a crazy angle in the rail fence. Then his chin jerked upwards and I knew he'd seen me, crouched amid the wreckage of the Range Rover, and even as I raised my voice to call him he began to run.

I couldn't seem to let him go. We were safe inside the Jaguar, warm and safe and dripping on the leather, but my hands had fastened to his wet shirt and I couldn't let him go.

David, one-handed, had made use of Adrian's cellphone to check that his mother was safe, and now he rolled me sideways so he could replace the handset in its cradle. We were both of us wedged in the passenger seat, but he didn't seem to mind. Flipping a lever he slid the seat back to make room for his legs, and settled me against his chest, one arm wrapped warm around my shoulders.

The bundle he'd brought with him sat propped on the driver's seat, small head lolled sideways, and I reached my hand to smooth one darkly dripping curl away from Robbie's pallid face. He was unhurt, and breathing normally, and tucked within the folds of David's raincoat he slept soundly, deeply, unaware.

Which was just as well, I thought. The things I'd said to David as we'd clung to each other outside in the rain ... such things were not intended to be overheard by anyone. Least of all an eight-year-old.

I frowned. "You're sure he's all right?"

"Aye. Though how a wee laddie like that got himself all the way out here .. ." David put his own hand out to pull the folds of the raincoat tighter around Robbie's shoulders, then closed his fingers around my own and drew my hand back, away from the child's face. "You'll wake him if you keep that up."

I stopped fussing, and snuggled against David's heartbeat. "It's only that he's so pale."

"I'm the one that should be pale. I nearly ran him over. The lad bolted clear across the road in front of me—fair scared me to death. I barely had time to see that it was Robbie afore I rolled the Rover, and after I got myself clear of that mess, I had to go chasing after him. I couldn't leave him out on the moor in this storm," he explained. I felt his chin turn against my hair as his gaze drifted back to the sleeping boy. "I wanted to take my hand off his face, to begin with. I might have been killed."

His voice trailed away and his chin shifted a fraction further, so he could look to where the moor stretched out toward St. Abbs, beyond the fogging window.

"I might have been killed," he repeated.

I held him tighter. I had explained, as best I could, what had happened, but I knew my explanation had left much to be desired. My words had tumbled out in no specific order, incoherent, a confusing narrative that leapt from Fabia to the Fortuna pendant, with yawning gaps between. I'd have to do a better job, I told myself, and sort things out more clearly, so that he could understand them.

But not now. Not now. There would be time enough for talking, when we all got back to Rosehill.

"David?"

"Aye?"

"I think I've lost the car keys."

He laughed. "Not to worry. They'd not be much use, from what I can see. We're well stuck in this fence."

I moved my head, to look out in dismay at the crumpled bonnet of the Jaguar, but David's hand in my hair drew me back again, holding me close while the gusting wind set the car rocking. "It's all right," he assured me. "If I ken my mother, we'll not have to wait long for the cavalry."

He barely got the sentence out before the blue lights flashed behind us and the storm itself was drowned beneath the stronger wail of sirens.

REQUIESCAT

.. ..and trust

With faith that comes of self-control,