November Horses

Chapter 3 - Jae

•••21 days•••

Jae

Elm Morton barrels into my barn, wheezing. His mother is small but brash, and his father is large and ruddy. Elm got his father's physique with his mother's pretty looks. 

"Aglionby! You need to come down to the beach! Get away from that bloody horse and down to the bloody beach!" 

I cringe at him. Feis jerks and flags his ears towards Elm. I get up-slowly-and stand in front of the black uisce's face. He is agitated, but so am I. However, I don't show it. 

Elm says again that a horse is on the beach. That dun from last year, the one that Arthur McDowell rode in the races and carried him away into the new November sea.  

"Get out."  

"What?" He says. I am surprised he heard me, it was all so mumbled.  

I don't repeat myself. I just stand silently, next to my black capaill uisce. He is quivering all over. Violently. I pass my hands behind his neck and over his withers and down his shoulders, all the while mumbling in his ear. A low wail comes from his parted lips; one that was meant to travel great distances under the water. I sigh, and Feis stops.  

When I leave his stall, I notice Elm turn, red faced, and leave. Without his gruff breathing, things in the barn quiet. The dust settles back down. Horses make comfortable horse sounds of chewing on hay and the crunching of straw with their hooves or bodies.  

I don't grab anything but my terribly tired riding jacket when I go down to the beach. The crowd that had been gathered around the Aglionby yard is now perched on the edge of the fence that barricades the beach. I weave between them and they part out of my way with ease. Concern and shock paints their faces, so different from earlier's interest and placidity.  

I can hear it all before I even see the water lapping up the sand. The unnerving scream of a sea-crazed capaill uisce sounds; perfectly echoing the October sea's song. People shout things over the beach. It is chaos. Seeing it all doesn't help. Harold King is standing with his back to me, a rope around the neck of a horse. The horse is barely out of the water; its forelegs are bent and hardly grabbing the sand while its hindquarters are still covered in the sea.  

I break into a run as someone too close to the uisce tugs on his rope, pulling it farther away from the cursed waters. The farther it gets from the water the more dangerous it gets.  

The November sea is all the colors of the blackened capall uisce now leaving it-dark and smoky and grey and black and blue. Even though the sun shines above, the water is still frigid when it splashes me. The uisce stallion rears high, crying out mightily, baring his teeth. The song of the capaill echoes in the cove, mystifying a man I don't know near me and placing him in the possession of the water horse. The capall slams his hooves down, inches away from the man, and breathes down his neck. A crack, then a snap and the man is crumpled on the sand in a heap. Spots of red stain the pristine white beach and the horse's long face.  

So deadly, yet so beautiful. How could a creature be so harshly beautiful, with the wind in its mane and the sea dripping down its legs, but so dangerous? 

Harold King turns and looks at me, fear in his eyes. When I came down, it was King and two other men. The one that seemed to be leading it was now looking unappetizing to the sea-drenched uisce, and I'd thought I'd seen the other one fleeing to the shadows. 

I resist the urge to spit on the sand in disgust. Stonrach has a son that does this. He's trouble. I try to stay away from him, but he is determined to unseat me.