The next morning I awoke to Baylor rubbing me down with a cool cloth.
“Look who’s finally up- sleeping beauty!” he greeted me. I nickered in response. “I see you broke out of your leadrope last night,” he unbuckled my halter and replaced it with my harness-bridle. “I’m glad I can trust you to stay right where you were!” I snorted to him. He had no idea.
He led me to the center of the clearing when I was harnessed. The bearded man barked out more orders in an accent I still couldn’t understand, save for a few words. As he divided the men into groups, I wondered how long he had been watching me. Did he see the mare?
I shooed the thoughts from my mind. Yesterday was a hard day of work. I was probably just having an exhaustion-induced hallucination.
Before Baylor led me to James and Delta to work as a team, I caught a glimpse of the bearded man’s horse. His expression was still angry, but when I looked again, his eyes had a deep, sad look on them. It was a familiar look for some reason, as if I’d seen a horse with such eyes in the early days of my colthood.
Baylor and James found a cluster of medium sized oaks and began the steady whack, whack of axes working their way through a trunk. As they fell, the men straightened them on our low cart.
Delta was alert and talkative. He was eager to discuss our lives at home, human behavior, tack, blacksmiths, any topic that came to mind as we hauled trees and logs to the piles. I, however, was still distracted. Couldn’t he have chosen a different day to be a chatterbox?
“Have you seen any animals in the forest?” I finally interrupted Delta’s story of a time a mouse caused his stablemate to spook and nearly burn down the barn.
He paused and stared at me for a moment. “No, I guess not. I’ve heard birds, though, and I’ve glimpsed a squirrel or two. Why do you ask?”
I shook my head. “Nothing, really, I just thought I saw something last night.”
We stopped walking as a tree fell in front of us, causing James to yell a string of angry words I’d never heard to the man who cut the tree. Baylor stopped him from striking the man and told him that they’d just move our cart around the fallen tree. I thought I smelled the sweet sap on the branches as we maneuvered our cargo around the bright red foliage.
Delta nudged me to tell more. “Well,” I answered, slightly embarrassed, “Last night, I smelled something in the woods, and when I followed it, I saw a sparkling white mare with a spiraling horn coming from the center of her forehead.” I looked at the ground, awaiting a sarcastic remark or an insult.
Delta simply shrugged. “It could have been a dream. But I saw your broken leadrope this morning. Who knows? Maybe you did see something. I’m telling you, though, the woods can play tricks on the mind, especially at night.”
We both stopped speaking for the next few minutes as we were hauling a particularly heavy tree.
I thought of the mare again. She couldn’t have been real. There’s no such thing as a white horse. And what was with the horn? Something in my head argued against that logic, though. She had to be real. I saw her. I smelled her. Besides, even if she was real, what made me think she’d even remember me? She probably had a very nice herd with a very nice stallion and a very nice family. And a very nice twisty spike thing on her head.
I wondered if there were more like her. Was she the only only of these creatures, or was she part of a group? Maybe that’s why she was alone. Maybe she was considered a freak of her herd and exiled to wander the woods. A very beautiful, sparkly freak.
I must have looked far off, because Delta butted me in the shoulder with his head. “What’s on your mind?”
I shook my head. “Just that mare.”
One last thought crossed my mind before I allowed myself to take up conversation with my companion again. Why did the mare have the same essence about her as some of the maple trees we harvested? I felt a pang of guilt at our considerable pile of logs at the side of the clearing and tried to decide: were we making progress, or destruction?
