Let the shadows fall behind us [open]

[Cordis]

The mare whispers a name, and it sounds like the mare Cordis met, briefly – most of her meetings are brief – but she cannot be sure, so she does not answer. Not to that name. There’s a child, too – Cordis hadn’t noticed, at first – who stands on spindly legs, and she feels a distant, long-ago hurt. Her own children are things grown and gone, who have not returned to her (not that she can blame them – being a mother never came easily to her). She tries to smile at the filly, but the attempt is weak, and it comes off more as a grimace. You can stay, offers the mare, a kindness. And Cordis shouldn’t stay – because she is dangerous, because she is lonely and hurting, because two branded women have too much in common for any good to come of it – but she wants to. She is so sick of moving. Her attempt at a smile is better, this time, though the effort is still weak. She is not used to smiling, and indeed, has not had much to smile about in recent times. She doesn’t tell the stranger her thoughts on this place – that rivers make her heart (her hearts) ache in such terrible ways, because it was in a river where she first followed Spyndle, where something pivotal and inescapable was set in motion. Love in the water, love underwater, love, love, and so on, as a poet once said, but now it’s only sadness that she feels when she looks at the river. “Thank you,” she says, and what should follow is I really can’t but instead what she says is “my name is Cordis.” c o r d i s I’ll touch you all and make damn sure that no one touches me