Ride On

He could never go with her, no matter how he wanted to.

                “Sure, you ride the finest horse I’ve ever seen,” I said, staring up at the beast. Standing 16’ one or two, with eyes wild and green, it looked at me with an unearthly gaze. Mist shot into the air as it exhaled, into the dark night.

 

                She looked at me, with the same unearthly green eyes, shining from below her cloak. It blew around in the dark night, a black void around her body, with wisps of red hair escaping the hood. Her hands gripped the reins, and I remembered the first time I saw them, how I whispered, “you ride the horse so well,” how her hands were so light to the touch. How they were like air against my bare skin.

 

                “I could never go with you, no matter how I wanted to,” I whispered, and she looked away. In the dark I heard the air, how it froze around her, as if she could freeze time. Metal gleamed behind her in the night, her weapon of finality.

 

                Ride on, I wanted to whisper, see you, galloping away into the mist. It was a sight I’d been seeing since I was a young lad, since the first night she came to me, after my older brother’s death. I heard hooves first, heavy as if metal against the firm Earth. I crept, slowly from my bed, past the empty bed that belonged to my older brother, and towards the room, just off the small kitchen, where he was currently laid up, ill for weeks. And there she was, standing in the center of the room, a mass of black waves and fire hair. Magnificent, horrifying, she was everything with her hand gripped around the base of a scythe. I was a boy of only ten, but I felt things inside me at the sight of her only men ever felt. Longing, lust, the need to just tie myself to her side.

 

                When her eyes lifted and found mine, I grew almost sick at the strength within them. Her face was serene, and she extended a hand out. I wanted to move, but my feet were frozen. And I watched as my brother suddenly sat up from where he lay. He looked at her, then stood up and took her hand. She pulled him to her body and held him close with that one arm, eyes still looking at me.

 

                I knew then she was taking him, though I knew not who she was or where she was heading. I just tried to call out to her, to stay, to take me. Her lips quirked up into the slightest of smiles, then turned and simply faded away, my brother beneath her cloak. I heard the hooves again, the loud cries of a horse as he galloped away, and finally the thick silence of the night.

 

                I saw my brother still lay there, and finally I was able to move. I walked to his side, noticed the paleness of his skin. When I reached down, I felt nothing, not the breath of life rushing from his lips.

 

                But yet I still did not fear her.

 

                Her eyes were watching me as I remembered. She always looked at me, as if I was an interesting creature, something so unfamiliar. She’d been with me for nearly thirteen years now, always behind my eyes, always somewhere.

 

                She beckoned me again, raising her hand as her fingers curled in the air.

 

                “I could never go with you,” I whispered again, “no matter how I wanted to.” Her hand froze, then fell slowly to her lap. “No matter how hard I tried, when you ride into the night, without a trace, I can never go.”

 

                And I had tried. She was absent so long, for two more years in my life, until my grandfather took ill and died. That night, I saw her again, outside our meager house, walking to her stallion. I threw open the windows into the cold night and tore after her, crying after her to wait. I had seen her face in my dreams so many times; I had been plagued with envy of my brother, who had gone away with her that night. I did not want her to leave again.

 

                She had stopped, and looked at me. All I saw was shadow beneath her hood. I slowed to a walk, and then a stop, and simply stared. She reached up and opened her arms to me, and I took off again, rushing into the folds of her cloak. I wrapped my arms around her curved hips, felt her hands rest just below my neck.

 

                “Take me,” I whispered, “this time, don’t leave!” I felt her nails, sharp, run just along my skin.

 

                “Go back to sleep child.” I wasn’t sure if what I heard was a voice or the wind, but the words were clear. “Your time is distant yet.”

 

                She released me, and I stepped back. I saw her eyes for a moment, and then she was walking away, leaving me once again.

 

                “Take my hand.” She brought me back, once again to the present. I still was not sure if it was her or the wind I heard, every night I faced the same confusion. Maybe she had no voice of her own.

 

                “No,” I said, looking at the long, elegant fingers, the sharpened nails. Run your claw along my gut, one last time, I wanted to beg. How I longed for the marks she had given me in my older years, how much I had discovered with her as I grew into the man I was. The scars along my belly began to burn.

 

                “I turn to face an empty space, where you used to lie,” I whispered, looking over towards a very large tree, no longer casting its shadow in the dark. I remembered her lying there once, a pale star fallen from the sky, with her cloak ripped open. The night when she first drew blood, when she first drew carnal passion.

 

                “But here I stand.” I looked back at her, up on her horse, and looked away. I look for the spark that lights the night, the moment when the stars froze and I always knew she was leaving.

 

                When I looked back, I saw it, “Through a tear drop in your eye.”

 

                She was quick to reach up, to wipe away the single drop into the night.

 

                “Ride on,” I said, “see you. I could never go with you no matter how I wanted to.” She reached out one last time, but I still did not move. It was not my time, I knew that very well. She simply wanted it to be my time. But I was not ready, even after thirteen years of longing, of chasing, of dreaming. I was not ready.

 

                Ride on, I willed as she gripped her reins. “See you,” I whispered, “soon.”

 

                She looked at me again, and I watched her lips move as the wind escaped. “It is not enough.”

 

                “It has been,” I said, and her head shook gently.

 

                “It never was, nor will it be.” She pulled her reins and her stallions reared up, crying out. I watched her race off into the distance, into the dark, and felt the cold wind follow her, like an army sent forth by my crying heart. No, it never would be enough, having to chase her during those dark nights when someone is lost. But I knew there was too much for me here to leave now. And leaving was no promise of riding on with her into the night.

 

                It was just a promise of chasing her as the wind, as the stars, as the very essence that seeped from her absinthe eyes.

 

                Turning away, I knew fate would forever keep us severed, that my hope for us was torn asunder. “I could never go with you, no matter how I wanted to.”

 

Author's Note

Based on Celtic Thunder's cover of "Ride On," with the lyrics strewn in through out the story. I've wanted to turn this into a series or novel for some time now.