Deep within a sleeping forest there was a faint light, licking at the summer air like it was searching for something, ever-searching or perhaps trying to leap free, to spread across that green, unfolding forest, to burn and reign powerfully but briefly, like most empires that had come and gone across the land like sighs of ancient gods.
The torchlight danced in Ezra’s eyes and he kept it confined to its stick prison as he stalked the trails, the light slipping over the silhouetted tree trunks as fleeting ghosts.
Behind him was his horse, his head low and his eyes held softly on the darkness ahead, watching with the same intent of his master. Searching, it seemed, in that everlasting night, for something that had been wearing on the boy’s mind for days that had gone undocumented, out in these wild lands where time did not rule and God spoke clearly, casually.
Her image came to him like a wave upon a shore, cascading down, then gone again.
Ezra glanced back at his buckskin, tilting his head with a smile. The horse shook his head and kept his pace.
“You can smell it out ‘ere,” the boy spoke in a low tone, “the lawlessness.”
He tilted his head appreciatively, thinking of the stories his brother had told, recounted over bonfires on the plains and under stars at the tops of mountains.
The horse made no response but he imagined their souls were one and that he understood what he spoke about, what he was searching for. Many days and nights, merged into one, had given him the opportunity to think clearly about what it was that tried on his mind; was it a woman, he mused, or a true call of the void?
He thought his brother would have made poetry out of a thought like that.
I’m no poet, Ezra thought, but I am a creature of these uncharted lands. Reckon she is, too. Reckon we all are, deep down.
The horse’s ears pricked and the animal stopped, raising his head to the dark. He braced his front feet on the trail and leaned back, his neck arched and his eyes fixed forward in his skull like windows to another land, reflecting fast-running rivers and thunderous clouds where lightning flashed when and where it pleased. Ezra watched as the buckskin blew out of his nostrils, trying to ignore a growing fear.
The boy turned, fixing his gaze upon the shadows. He extinguished the torch and let the light of the stars and full moon cast upon the forest, tossing the burnt branch aside.
He began to stalk forward, quietly, his bare feet sinking into soft ground.
She was there first.
The buckskin snorted rather decisively and Ezra turned casually, letting a smile split across his face.
There was a girl with the horse, her hands running over his face, the big jaw and the pricked ears, her slim fingers gliding over the details of his skull, through the ragged mane, and over the scars that pockmarked his neck and muzzle.
The moonlight cast down on her dark hair and reflected a waterfall of silver, falling upon tanned skin and bare shoulders which were turned away from him.
Ezra nodded his head as if he were trying to force his words up. He couldn’t recall a single time he’d been hesitant to speak, not even at funerals, but now some strange force acted upon him in these unseen mountains and unrecorded nights.
He managed to say her name, and she turned with a smile.
The horse’s tension had eased.
“You were looking for me?” She asked.
“Reckon I cain’t say what I was lookin’ for,” said he, “but I sure do like the sound of your name on my tongue.” He stepped closer to her, his hand outstretched to the nose of his horse. The buckskin pressed his face to his palm, exhaling.
She scrunched her face up in a smile, putting her hands behind her back and leaning forward with a false confidence. “You do not have to look for me, viajero perdido. You do not have to look for anyone. Anyone can find you—” —she nodded to his horse— “with the tracks this brute leaves.”
“In other words, you was followin’ me.” He smiled, his own confidence bleeding back into his body, his eyes trailing over hers, the slim figure and the small waist, the long legs which had carried her for many miles and could carry her for many more, the soft mouth that spoke with quiet words that slipped from her lips with a thoughtful ease, the silver eyes that watched him from under hooded eyelids.
“If you are ‘this brute’, then yes. Perhaps I was.” She teased, then let her expression turn to something more serious, maybe even nervous. She averted her eyes. “Where do you come from?”
“I ain’t as lost as you think.” Ezra’s smile came back. “These woods are in my family’s blood. I got a brother, y’know. I got lots of ‘em. I got one who came through here long ago, when people were still thinkin’ ‘bout the war. Some say ‘e fought in it. You wanna hear ‘bout that? I’ll take you home. I know you’re a long way out.”
She glanced up at him. “Or,” she cocked her head, “you take me to the waterfall.”
Ezra nodded and side-stepped over to his horse’s flank, where there was nothing but bare back and no saddle mark. He had been wandering in a bosal, the reins resting down about his withers.
“I’ll take you anywhere you want.”
“You should have started out with that.” She smiled, stepping over to him, one hand on his shoulder and another on the horse’s neck. “Maybe we’ll wander a little further.”
Ezra swung himself onto the back of his horse, then reached out to her, hoisting her over with ease. The horse shifted a little as she settled down, her homemade dress spilling comfortably over the horse’s sides. He gave the horse an appreciative pat on the neck and it lowered its head to eye the two.
“Anywhere you want to go. It don’t make a difference to me.”
“All right, viajero perdido.” She wrapped her arms around his torso and rested her head on his shoulder. “To the coast, then a little beyond. Take me around the world twice, then when we are tired of that, to the stars. That gives you time to tell me everything you ever wanted. Every thought you ever had.”
“Aw, hell.” Ezra looked at her. “Hell, woman.”
He tilted his head as if weighing the facts, his lips pursed thoughtfully.
“I reckon it does.”