I don’t have to think about the fear, the fear that one day I’ll turn into my mother.
I don’t think. I just feel.
I just fly.
“Ruby!” Julie calls out, and I open my eyes in time to see another ridge rising ahead of me.
I sit back and pull Billie to a trot, letting out a little “Whoop!”
Julie canters up to me, her hair billowing behind her.
But what else is billowing behind her is the cloud.
It’s bigger somehow, darker, rolling with malice, like a living, breathing monster.
And it’s no longer going to the left.
It’s moving fast and coming toward us.
“We have to go back,” Julie says, looking worried.
I’m disappointed but I don’t want to put us in danger. At least I got that gallop.
“Okay,” I tell her. “Let’s hurry though.”
We both turn our horses around and gallop across the field again, though heading toward the storm feels worrisome and wrong.
We trot up the hill until we’re back on the narrow spine of the ridge, then alternate between a trot and a quick walk. The sides of the ridge are steep and I can see where parts have crumbled away from the snow and rain they’ve had, so we need to take it slow.
Meanwhile, thunder is roaring with flashes of lightning, and the horses are getting spooked. Minute by minute the wall of grey gets bigger, darker, louder, and then starts letting loose sheets of rain.
“We’re going to get soaked when that hits us,” Julie says.
“Luckily it’s hot out,” I tell her.
But as we keep riding, the thunder feels like it’s in our bones, and the breeze is whipping up, cold and in our faces and smelling electrical.
In seconds the rain hits.
The dark laden clouds just throw it in our faces, drenching us in seconds. It’s windy and dark and I’ve never been in rain like this, and I live in Houston, so that says a lot.
“How far away are we?” I ask Julie, but the wind is so strong that my words are whipped away.
Thunder crashes again, this time making Billie rear. I manage to hang on, my heart racing now as the dirt on the ridge starts to turn to mud, rivers of water cascading down the sides of the hills.
“Easy,” I say to her, but Billie isn’t listening.
She’s backing up along the ridge.
I start kicking at her sides harder, yelling at her. “Go, move!”
But another hit of thunder, one that rattles my fillings, makes her rear again.
“Come on!” I’m screaming, grabbing her mane, holding on.
Billie keeps up on her hindlegs, backing up.
I see Julie twist in her saddle to look at me, barely visible through the rain.
Then Billie lets out a sharp scream as she backs up to the left.
It happens in three seconds.
One second of seeing the horror on Julie’s face.
One second of me looking down and seeing that Billie has backed off the path and onto the steep, muddy slides of the hill.
One second where I yell because we’re going down.
And then we’re down.
Billie’s back hooves slip on the sides of the hill, and my stomach rises as we fall, the horse pitching toward the slope.
I have no time to jump off.
No time to do anything but scream.
Billie lands on her side and all two thousand pounds of her slams right on my leg, crushing it between the saddle and the slope.
The sound that’s ripped from my throat fills the sky, drowning in the rain, and my vision starts to go black as the horse and I start sliding down the side, until I’m able to reach up and grab sagebrush, holding me in place while Billie slides the rest of the way.
“Ruby! Ruby!” Julie is screaming.
The sky is screaming too.
I cling to that vegetation, vaguely aware that Billie is getting to her feet at the bottom of the hill, that the horse is okay, but that I am not.
I am so not okay.
And the pain that has been eerily absent is coming back with a vengeance.
My leg.
My life.
I scream and cry and then it goes black.
Part One
Lisbon, Portugal Nine Years Ago
“They say, Ruby you're like a song, you just don't know right from wrong. And in your eyes I see heartaches for me”
– “Ruby” Ray Charles
One
Ruby
Where the hell am I?
I was having a nightmare, being on a horse again, knowing where this was going, the way it always does. The horse falls, I’m crushed, and we both slip into this slippery, thick darkness, drowning in tar and ink until I wake up screaming.
But this time, something woke me before I had a chance to scream.
Thank god, because as my brain trudges on, feeling like it’s been poured with hot concrete, and I stare up at the slats from the bed above me, I realize I’m not alone.
I’m just not sure who is here with me.
I blink and roll my head to the side and stare at a girl who is rifling through a backpack on the bunk across from me. She’s shooting me a glance over her shoulder and then looking away, pretending to mind her own business even though she’s totally not.
“Was I snoring?” I ask, my voice even throatier than normal and thick with sleep.
“Snoring?” the girl repeats in a Nordic accent, turning to face me. She folds her thin arms across her chest and leans against the bed. “No. More like yelling.”
I swallow, feeling shame wash through me. I ignore it.
I slowly sit up and give her a wry grin, the room seeming off-kilter. “Sorry about that. Night terrors.”
“It’s four in the afternoon.”
“Day terrors, then.”
“You must be jet lagged,” she points out.
That explains why the minute I got into the hostel and claimed my bunk bed this morning, I crawled into that bed and passed out. Everyone had warned me about the jet lag, but because I actually slept for most of my flight from Houston to Lisbon, I thought I would be spared. Guess not.
“I feel like ass,” I mumble, sucking my tongue