Free Beneath an Oil-Dark Sea by Caitlin R. Kiernan Page B

standing there in the wide field, the tall, tall girl and the moon washing white across her wide shoulders and full breasts and Palomino hips, and then she sees us and turns quickly away. There are no clouds, and the moon’s so bright that there’s no mistaking the way her black hair continues straight down the center of her back like a horse’s mane or the long tail that swats nervously from one side of her ass to the other as she begins to run. Sometimes I take your arm and hold you tight and stop you from going over the stone wall after her. Sometimes you stand very still and only watch. Sometimes you call out for her to please come back to you, that there’s nothing to be afraid of because we’d never hurt her. Sometimes there are tears in your eyes, and you call me names and beg me to please, please let you run with her.
    The cold iron flash from her hooves,
    And that’s my heart lost in the night.
    I know all the lies. I know all the lies.
    I know the ugly faces the moon makes when it thinks
    No one is watching.
    And we stand there a very long time, until there’s nothing more to see or say that we haven’t seen. You’re the first to head back down the hill towards the car, and sometimes we get lost and seem to wander for hours and hours through the orchard, through tangles of creeper vines and wild grapes that weren’t there before. And other times, it seems to take no time at all.
     
    3. The Pantomime (January – February)
    This is almost five months later, five months after that night at the edge of the field halfway between Exeter and Nooseneck. We never really talked about it. Helen would bring it up, and I would always, always immediately change the subject. I didn’t tell her about the dreams I’d started having, living it over and over again in my sleep. And then one night we were fucking – not having sex, not making love – fucking, hammering our bodies one against the other, fucking so hard we’d both be bruised and sore the next day, as if this were actually some argument we lacked the courage to ever have aloud, so fucking instead of screaming at one another. And she began to whisper, details of what we’d seen or only thought we’d seen, what we’d seen re-imagined and embellished and become some sick fantasy of Helen’s. I pushed her away from me, disgusted, angry, and so I pushed too hard, harder than I’d meant to push her. She slipped off the side of the bed and struck her chin against the floor. She bit her tongue, and there was blood on her lips and her chin, and then she was screaming at me, telling me I was a coward, telling me I was a bitch and a coward and a liar, and I lay still and stared at the ceiling and didn’t say a single word in my defense. Most of what she said was true or very nearly true, but hearing it like that couldn’t change anything. A few minutes later she was crying and went off to the bathroom to wipe the blood off her face, and I took my pillow and a blanket from the closet and spent the night downstairs on the sofa.
    And this is another month after that, so late in February that it’s almost March. I’d done nothing worth the price of the canvas it was painted on in months. Helen’s been away in the city, a writer’s workshop, and I take long walks late in the day, trying to clear my head with the cold air and the smell of woodsmoke. Sometimes I only walk as far as the garden, and sometimes I walk all the way down to the marshy place where our property ends and the woods begin. And I come back from an especially long walk one night, and Helen’s car is in the garage. I have an owl skull I found lying among the roots of a hemlock, and I’m thinking it’s the missing piece of the painting I haven’t been able to finish. In through the kitchen, and I call her name, call her name three times, but no one answers me. I hear voices, Helen’s voice and another woman’s, and I climb the stairs and stop outside the bedroom door, which has been left