Vixen by Rosie Garland

Author:Rosie Garland [Garland, Rosie]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780007492817
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-05-10T04:00:00+00:00

VIXEN

I am more naked with her than I have ever been. I am alive. I have not felt alive before. I hate her for making me desire her. I love her for making me melt. But this cannot be love. This is the grinding of flint, two bodies striking sparks.

Anne sees through my disguises and asks who I am: the question I cannot answer, will not answer. Asks to see me, as if that girl exists. I’d like to see her face if I let her in on the wreckage that is my life. See the smile fall away and be traded for fear, her so-called love turned to loathing in the blink of an eye.

I hide in the stable. The mare tosses her head in greeting. I rub my palms along her neck and she blows air through soft-bristled lips.

‘You ask me no questions,’ I murmur, and she snorts once more.

I find a tick under her mane, bloated with blood. I tiptoe to the house, which stands mercifully quiet, take a half-burned stick from the hearth and carry it back to the stable, blowing on the ember to keep it aglow. I touch the red tip to the creature and it sizzles, falling away. The mare stamps her hoof, but I tell her all is well and she quietens, making no more to-do. I inspect every inch of her, tracking down and killing every tick that I find.

I’d be a horse any day. Four legs to carry me away, nothing to do but eat, fart, sleep and serve a stallion when the time is right. I jump on to her back and wrap my arms and legs about her. Her heat sends a shiver through my thighs. I cannot put my arms all the way round her belly, however far I stretch my fingers. My stomach tickles with her rough hair, nostrils prickle with the scent of her hide.

As I drowse in the dip of her spine it occurs to me how dimwitted I am, for the means of my escape is stirring beneath me. I grasp her mane in my fists, press my knees into her flanks and we trot from the stable, out of the yard, through the ford and in a moment are on the road to the sea. It is that easy.

I spur her into an unwilling canter and will not let up, kicking pitilessly until she begins to gallop, faster and faster till the fields are a blur of yellow, brown and green; till we barely touch the earth and she is flying me from this cramped rat-hole, wings on her fetlocks.

We thump along, my backside bouncing on her broad back. I feel the flex of bone and muscle, taste the snort of her breath, rejoice at the thunder of her hooves. The scent of tilled earth is seasoned with the salt of the marshes, stronger and stronger as we draw closer to the coast. I’ll sell her and pay my passage to Ireland as fast as that.

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