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The Black Horse

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I should have known better.

Tears stream where they shouldn't, my hooves flying over the turf. I know this route but I don't know it - everything looks different in the dark! I snort and toss my head, eyes surely wild, but there's nothing I can do but plough on through the brambles and bracken, bitter fingers lashing and grabbing at my coat as if they want to take me, a mere mare, into their pit and the abyss for their very own.

How did everything go so wrong? It's obscene to think - I'm just a mare! One mare! What did I do so wrong? Explosions resound in my wake, a life and a terror gone so very wrong, but it never felt like I had any control over any of it to begin with. The night howls, winds picking up and trying to tear my chestnut mane up and away from my neck. But they will not take me! I will make sure they will not take me!

Yet what can one mare do with the black horse on her tail? We may be one and the same but it is that sameness, the likeness of seeing myself reflected back in his blazing stare, that truly terrifies me, sending further flight to my hooves.

The ground shifts beneath me, dropping away. I can only leap and bound, trusting my instincts to carry me down as I skid and squeal, seeking good footing and purchase where there is none. But I am as I am and, some say, that is enough. If only more said that, perhaps I would not be in this position, right here and right now, fleeing from the black horse with no face and a gaping pit for a soul.

He's coming. My heart tightens and, although I am exhausted, sweat lathering my sides in a thick, white foam, I force myself onward. There's nothing like terror, true terror, for driving you on when you think that, otherwise, you may just collapse. That's the one thing that keeps us going: the fear of stopping.

And that black horse so very badly wants me to stop. He wants me to miss my step, to fall and stumble and break a leg. It would be so easy too and no one would know any different either, that he'd been the one chasing me and caused me to fall. It would be a slow, painful death there too, one of starvation, but probably no more than I deserve. I'm just a horse but that's what they told me. They don't want me here and it's too much trouble to send me to the knackers yard, too much money to put a bullet in my head. The world wants me gone and yet I'm not even worth that, one desperate to die yet fighting to live.

Isn't it a controversy, that? A travesty, more like? Oh, who knows what it even is anymore. Maybe I should stop fighting. Wouldn't that just make it all easier for everyone? No one else would ever have to deal with me ever again.

I'd just go.

Someone should put me out of my misery. But not the black horse. Not today. Not now. I've just got to keep running a little while longer and I'll get through. As long as I keep going, driving my hooves into the loam as I groan and power my aching body on and on and on.

For the black horse is coming. And he's slavering for my blood.

On and on and on: the land opens up into a field and, suddenly, I am out of the claws and jaws of the woods, leaving behind what is more discernible as trees, just trees. And, now that I am out in the open, my sides heaving, it seems altogether rather so silly that I should have fled, although I know that the black horse is back there, lurking, watching and waiting for that momentary lapse when he can sink his jaws into me. And he's patient, so very, very patient. He will wait. But I'll be ready for him.

I have to be ready for him.

Out here, it is peaceful and I walk on slowly, my head hanging and hooves barely lifting high enough to clear the ground of the meadow. No... No, I have to get away from the woods, for I may be out but I'm not yet free.

A nicker? My head whips up, a snort flaring my nostrils. She's here! And, just like that, I draw energy back to sore and tired limbs, my tail even managing to flag just a little as I power forward in a trot that floats, withers lifting and my whole body rising as if I am suddenly no longer held down by such futile constraints as gravity.

But I can't reach her. Moonlight glints off the grass and the stars twinkle and I get to see all of them in excruciating detail as my breath catches, windpipe working to drag in breath that simply doesn't seem destined to be mine. But I can try even as I stumble and crumple, forelegs bowing beneath the weight of my body.

I can't go on. Yet she is the one to come to me as I splay out flat on my side, legs kicking as if to run but I'm not going anywhere. My eyes half-close but it's okay. It's finally all going to be okay as long as she is there, the grey mare standing over me with her kind, liquid eyes and nostrils puckered with breath.

"What's wrong? Why are you here?"

I have to ask but she doesn't say anything, only lowering her head to mine, her eyes wary for what may be there and yet still, somehow, reassuring me that everything is okay. Why, indeed, is it okay? I close my eyes, willing my breathing to return to something resembling normal. I can't know this but she does. It is all okay because she is there, her warm bulk and grey mass reminding me, as surely as the sun will rise again over this darkness, that everything will come right once more.

One more night will not kill me, as much as the black horse tries.

The little herd of two crowds around me, a smaller one, still young with time to learn, stands on the other side, her black and white coat blending into the broken landscape as if she could disappear at a moment's notice. The truth is that we all could disappear, snuffed out like the last star in a morning sky, a candle burned all the way down to the wick. And it could happen at any time, just that we have to keep on trying, trotting on and working however we can to make this strange life of ours work.

The black horse may come again for chestnut and grey and piebald, but we will be ready for him, banding together however we can to lift one another up through physical ills amongst the rest. For he is undiscerning and does not care for anything besides the souls he can claim and is yet to claim, crimson eyes staring out from the darkness as his fangs glint and drool. The black stallion is ever hungry, an untameable soul, yet one that can never succeed in his ultimate ambition.

Standing together, we brace for the bitter wind of winter, backs to the cold. One warm body presses in against the other and no further words are needed as we hold fast, steadying and supporting wherever needed.

It's the least we can do for one another against the darkness of the black horse.