Bluegrass Symphony by Lisa L. Hannett

Author:Lisa L. Hannett [Hannett, Lisa L.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy
ISBN: 9781921857010
Google: mqiJxAEACAAJ
Amazon: 1771485272
Goodreads: 11777633
Publisher: Chizine Publications
Published: 2011-08-30T23:00:00+00:00

Plantain county ends and Chippewa begins somewhere between the honky-tonk and the summer carnival fields. Folks sit outside on warm nights like tonight, sharing a toke or nursing a pint after a hard week’s work. The drunkest ones holler for us to join them, but most ignore me and Springwell as we bolt across the roadhouse’s gravel lot, sprinting for grass and that first intangible line.

Cord’s heart is still beating—I can feel it pulsing a sparrow-rhythm against my hip—though my skirt has grown heavy with a galaxy of sand. Looping the reins around the saddle horn, I take my eyes off the track for no more than half a second. Just long enough to flip the satchel flap; to see we’ve already pumped through a third of our time; and to miss the family of raccoons scooting out of a copse of ticket-seller’s booths at the edge of the field, their bandit eyes glinting as they cut across our path.

Springwell spooks. Muscles contracting, wings flopping as he fails to fly, he runs across the fairground. Weaves between skeletons of sideshow tents and scaffolds and ballyhoo platforms. Banks hard to the left; circles right. Hooves slip on grass littered with the faded relics of cotton-candy days; scraps of manufactured happiness that dissolve with the summer, leaving folk with sugar-spun memories and a hankering for something more substantial.

I yank the reins hard as I can, try to impose some direction on his insane dash—but porcupined with arrows, “hard” is a relative term. Springwell plunges ahead. We chew through a mile of parade grounds until he spits us out on the far side. Silver shoes ringing against pavement, the windcharger finally slows as we reach the highway, where we find ourselves facing, then passing, a familiar plywood cowboy.

The sign’s lit up so bright you’d have to be blind not to see its peeling Welcome to Chippewa! blazed across the falling dark. I’m numb with pain from gut to gullet, but I would’ve known we’d crossed the first county line even without the cowboy’s painted greeting. There’s a change in tone coming from my back—a bit less clackety-clackety, now more of a subdued click-click—that lets me know one arrow has vanished.

Thank Christ, I think, risking another glance in my bag. Cord’s heart flutters. Crumbs of his lifetime escape, trickle down my leg, and slide into my boot. They settle in a soft pile beneath the arch of my foot.

Three for three, Maldoon had said. Three arrows for three county lines.

“C’mon, darlin.” Chest heaving, Springwell canters to catch his breath. His wings shudder, instinctively reacting to my command. He whinnies and stamps, picks up speed. The road is a dark gash across fields shading from dusk to nightfall. Every so often streetlights flare, then drown in my windcharger’s liquid eyes—eyes that should be spangled with stars, not crusted with dirt. Free of black flies and reflecting the topsides of clouds, soaring high out of the Mayor’s reach.

“C’mon now, Spring—”

We can’t let Cord die.

“C’mon—”

I’d sooner kill Maldoon than marry that horse-maiming son-of-a-bitch.

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