The Reckless Kind by Carly Heath

Author:Carly Heath
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: Soho Press
Published: 2021-09-30T20:11:18+00:00

17

The Horseman

ASTA HEDSTROM

I ran to him, fell to my knees, and rolled him over. Blood marked where the filly’s front hoof had struck his forehead. Fred’s eyes opened—flittering, unfocused.

The dreadful threes are real.

Heart thumping, I gathered him up in my arms and carried him, running as fast as I could, to the house.

“HERR FUGLESTAD!” I screamed. “HERR FUGLESTAD, WAKE UP!”

As I staggered through the door cradling Fred, my senses were met by a warm burst of delicious fragrances—cinnamon, cardamom, and ginger. Papa Fuglestad had made supper for us as he promised he would.

“It’s my fault!” I blubbered and sobbed. “He kept warning me. He kept talking about the second. It’s a-all m-my f-fault. Fuh-first Gunnar, nuh-now Fred.”

I was destroying them all.

Fred’s papa seized the boy into his tattooed arms. “Take a horse and go fetch the doctor.”

Hearth flames crackled as the physician stepped away from Fred’s mattress. “I ought to write a volume on concussions of the brain as no other country doctor has had the fortune of doctoring the Fuglestad family. Perhaps I should coin a name for this disorder. Fuglestad syndrome, the condition which occurs when one sustains a second or third head injury before the first one has been fully resolved.”

“Fred,” I said, “how do you feel?”

His freckled face contorted. “Delay in my eyes.” He brought his hand in front of his face, drawing it from side to side. “Hand moves too slow.”

I turned to the doctor. “Will he be all right?”

“Of course not,” the doctor said. “He’s a Fuglestad. Even if we get him through this, he’ll find some other way to get himself killed. So many Fuglestad corpses have lain upon the furniture in my house. Never old or wrinkled. Young and dead from horses, fighting, or drinking.”

Engen’s scorn ignited my fury, but I suppressed the urge to remark on his terrible bedside manner.

Oblivious to my glowering, the doctor shook his head in dismay. “If it was any other family, I’d say God wanted them back. But we all know Fuglestads go to a much warmer realm when they pass from this Earth. Nonetheless, I took my oath. I will uphold my duty—attempting to save their bodies although their souls remain condemned.”

“I don’t care about his soul.” Now I was fuming. “I care about his brain.”

“He could have a bleed, and then perish like his mama, or he could go a few months without being able to talk, like his grandfather, or suffer from miserable headaches for the rest of his life, like your departed brother.” His gaze landed on Papa Fuglestad.

My fingernails bit into my clenched hands. “Is there anything we can do?”

Engen shook his head. “Some say you should wake them every two hours. But why bother? If I had bleeding on the brain, I’d rather die sleeping than be awoken to die.”

My chest felt like a full-sized horse now stood upon it.

The doctor went to the door, then turned. “How’s the other one? The brother?”

I choked back the lump in my throat. “In one leg, Gunnar can’t feel anything, but he can balance on it.

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