“A compulsion?”
He sighed, letting go. His head sagged.
“A compulsion to ride, but an inability to think about riding, an inability to talk about riding.” She said it to herself, not to him, knowing it was true, and he looked at her out of shining eyes. Tears?
“Which,” she continued, watching him closely, “must be more intense the more frequently you ride.” She knew she was right. “You managed to speak to us once right after a Hunt….”
“They had gone,” he gargled, panting. “After a long Hunt, they go away. Today they are here, all around Opal Hill, nearby!”
“During the winter, the compulsion almost leaves you?” she asked. “And during the summer? But in spring and fall, you are possessed by it? Those of you who ride?”
He only looked at her, knowing she needed no confirmation.
“What do they do when winter ends? To bring you into line? Do they gather around your estancias? In their dozens? Their hundreds?” He did not deny it. “They gather and press upon you, insisting upon the Hunt. There must also be some pressure to make the children ride. Some compulsion there, as well?”
“Dimity,” he said with a sigh.
“Your little sister.”
“My little sister.”
“Your father …”
“Has ridden for years, Master of the Hunt, for years, like Gustave….”
“So,” she said, thinking she must tell Rigo. Must somehow make him understand.
“I’ll take Mama home,” he whispered, his face clearing.
“How have you withstood them?” her voice was as low as his. “Why have they not bitten off your arm or leg? Isn’t that what they do when one of you tries to stand fast?”
He did not answer. He did not need to answer. She could puzzle it out for herself. It was not that he withstood them while he was riding. If he had done so, he would have vanished or been punished for it. Oh, no, when he rode he was one of them, like all the rest. The secret was that he recovered quickly when the ride was over. Quickly enough to say some things, to hint some things.
“You warned us that time,” she said, reaching out to him. “I know how hard for you it must have been.”
He took her hand and laid it along his cheek. Only that. But it was thus that Rigo saw them.
Sylvan excused himself, bowed, and went away to find Rowena.
“A pleasant tête-à-tête.” Rigo smiled fiercely.
She was too preoccupied to notice the quality of that smile.
“Rigo, you must not ride.”
“Oh, and why is that?”
“Sylvan says—”
“Oh, I think it matters very little what Sylvan says.”
She looked at him uncertainly. “It matters a great deal. Rigo, the Hippae are not merely animals. They … they do something to their riders. Something to their brains.”
“Clever Sylvan to have thought up such a tale.”
“Do you think he invented it? Don’t be silly. It’s obvious. It’s been obvious to me since we saw the first Hunt, Rigo.”
“Oh?”
“And since last night. For the love of God, Rigo. Didn’t it strike you as odd that no one blamed the Hippae? Here’s this girl who disappeared during a Hunt, and no one blames the Hippae she was riding on?”
“If you disappeared during a Hunt, my dear, and turned up later as a courtesan in some petty principality, should I blame your horse?” He gave her a wintry glance, then left her there, staring after him, trying desperately to figure out what had happened.
In the Friary of the Green Brothers, nights sat gently upon the sills. The great, night-freezing cry which haunted the southern latitudes was seldom heard here, though whole choruses of grublike peepers filled the dark hours with dulcet sound. Days were spent in labor, nights in sleep. Brothers, so it was said, had once spent their time in study, but little study was needed here. All the questions had been reduced to doctrine; all the doctrine had been simplified to catechism; all the catechism had been learned long ago. Besides, what would the penitents do with more knowledge? They had no use for it here.
The Friary sat upon shortgrass prairie, though there were tall grasses not far away. Every year in mid to late summer the Brothers went out to cut down quantities of strong, thick grass stems that grew to the height of seven or eight tall men. Other Brothers remained behind them at the Friary, digging deep and narrow trenches, in parallel pairs, outlining the new halls which would be needed during the Grassian year. Though penitents grew old and penitents died, the number of Brothers kept growing. Seemingly it was becoming a more frequent happening for acolytes of Sanctity to fly apart, like fragile wheels, spun too fast.
When the great grasses had been sawn through and tied in bundles, they were dragged back to the Friary and upended side by side in the waiting trenches. The top of each bundle was pulled over and tied partway down the bundle in the opposite ditch until the whole double line had been bowed into a vaulted hall which would be roofed with thatch, its openings walled with panels of woven grass. Within this lofty space the Brothers would build whatever kind of rooms were needed: a new chapel or kitchen or another set of cells.
So space was enclosed, said the historians of the order, long ago on another world by people who lived among tall grasses. The historians did not say what such people did in the winter. During winters on Grass, the Brothers retired below to a cramped underground monastery where they suffered through a lengthy season of sequestered and jam-packed irascibility. Winters drove more than a few of them past the pale of sanity. A sick wildness lurked among the brethren—skulking, endemic, more often erupting among the younger than among the aged. The old felt themselves past hope, but the young had hope continually frustrated and as continually strained against their frustration in strange and dangerous ways.
In the summer Friary, there was room enough for frustration to find an out. The narrow halls
