July 1946

White sand folds beneath me. My hooves dig half-moons where I walk, leaving a drunken trail in my wake. You can follow them; lace imprints fringing the island's squiggled coastline. Since dawn I've scouted—trotting where the tide recedes, splashing through pools and skirting the marshes. Since dawn, I've worked it out: where they'll come from today, the men. I know where the scow will float in. Where the riders will depart. Where the herds they hunt are hidden—

The air pulls warm around me. A storm is coming. I taste the damp on my tongue and my bones ache at the thought of rain. Grey sky winks in and out beneath the stand of trees I keep to. Scraggly pines paw at my hips, brambles tickle my barrel and claw my knees.

I keep walking.

Trotting.

Walking.

The world sizzles in suspense. The ocean thrums inside my cupped ears, a hush, hush that crackles along my nerves like St. Elmo's fire—blue sparks jolt my heart. My muscles tremble and the skin on my haunches wrinkles as I tense. Around my knees, seagrass whips in the breeze, edges harsh and bared like lions fangs. Even the birds can't keep still. Flocks rise in bursts and settle again, uneasy.

I am myself this time. I've been myself for ages now. Except for once, when a mangy lad paddled the straight to shuck choice clams on my beach. He smelt musky and curious; anxiety and desire. Young people smell funny all bravado and fear. When he slipped on the rake and cut his hand, the wound called to me. I was Jane Russell that time. Tall and soft, fierce and wanting. Voluminous bay curls, eyes like a deer, and a neckline that sank coyly on my breasts. I was barely decent.

He was barely dessert. Too skinny.

I prefer myself natural. I have a good form. Solid. Lofty. The ponies. The hunted ones. They're short and round as wine casks on spindle legs. Their coats are thick in winter—shaggy hair salt-spun into whorls and kinks—and mud caked in summer to stop the flies. I am angled shoulders and supple flanks. My cannons were lauded by Caesar as iron. My blue-black coat is satin. My muzzle cinnamon on velvet. I am beautiful.

My path crests a dune. I pause at the top and heave a snort. My thin-skinned nostrils puff and tremble as the wind plays with my forelock, teasing my vision. I lift my chin to sniff, to learn. Confidence. Excitement. Blood. The sweaty air brings me news: waves slapping a rusty hull, saddle soap, chaw. I drink it again, the stirred heat, and pick out the sweet hues of cocoa. Chocolate.

I met a man once who called it choclit. An old local. His accent bit into his words and devoured half his vowels before he could say anything at all. I had to listen hard to 'catch his drift,' and I know Latin.

St. Elmo's fire snaps my heart again and I stand up on my back legs, a live wire. My knees clutch my chest and my hocks strain under the weight. The stretch in my ribs thrills me. I dance for a moment on the dune, a wicked shadow against the white. A phantom beneath an angry sky.

Charcoal clouds circle, muting the sun. I rush for the tree line again, galloping back into the stunted forest.

The sea hushes after me, "he is coming."

October 1606

They think I am a woman.

They always do.

This time, I wish they saw me as my natural self. Then they'd put me with the other horses.

The ship lolls and I press my ear to the spongy wood. I can smell the brine—close. I touch the sea as it tries to touch me. Dribbles of cold water squeeze between the knitted planks, trying to get in. My fingertips go numb with pleasure. I almost snort, but it won't sound the same with my human voice so I don't do it.

The girl at my side, she cries. A hiccup in the dark.

I don't go for females, but I'm nearly tempted to gorge on this one, just to shut her up. I can't hear! The toss of the seabed, the swelling waves—there's a storm coming. I sense it brewing like tar bubbles in a cauldron, and I want to listen to it rise! But violence would draw attention. Violence makes me a threat. I want to escape, not die by the silver whisper of Spanish steel. I'll talk to her instead:

"Un poco de silencio, senorita, por favor." The girl shares my chains and I reach for her. My damp fingers wrap her wrists whole, folding together under my thumbs. She is bones. Pretty bones. But bones all the same, packaged inside brown skin that is smudged and bruised from our voyage. I wrestle her palms from her face and force her to see me through the red edges of her eyelids.

"What good is this? Qué es esto?" Her pulse invigorates me, vibrating in my teeth, and I let her near. She sags against my breast. Her cheeks are sticky from tears and weeks of sea-sick. My tunic scratches my human skin under her weight, wounding a scab on my chest, but I am enjoying the raw scent of her too much to care that it might scar. Young. Fearful. Sweat and blood.

Exhaustion. Easy prey...

My joints creak; my jaw bends, unhinging.

NO.

Instead, I rest my chin on her crown. Knots of mangled black hair tickle my nose, reminding me of seaweed. In my embrace, her sobs quiet, and I can hear the volume of the wind in the sails on deck. Above, men thump about, snapping ropes and calling to each other like chattering birds. Below, horses stir in their stalls, scraping shod hooves across the floorboards. The galleon is fat with life. And here I lurk, chained in darkness.

A slave.

July 1946

The scow arrives where I knew it would and drops a gangway. It splashes on the sopping beach, ricocheting eager horses onto land. Blacks. Bays. Chestnuts. One paint still aboard. They are a common bunch, seashells battered on the shore. I know one or two—captives from last year's hunt. It's sad to see them tame now. Men straddle their backs, propped up on heavy, horned saddles. I watch the reins turn, tugging the bits. Compliance.

I wait at a distance, hidden.

He's on the boat. The Bleeding Boy. The one the wind divulged to me. His painted mare rocks her rump, pushing against the scow's lumber sides. Her head reaches up, up, up—longing after the other horses circling, nervous, on the beach. The Bleeding Boy yanks her reins; pissed by her constant shifting. He struggles with a piece of torn shirt, wrapping it around his right palm.

I don't know what's injured him—another horse, a protruding nail?—but I like the smell.

The Bleeding Boy takes the sand boots first. The water sloshes his ankles, darkening the rolled cuff on his blue jeans as he leads the fidgeting mare higher on shore. I see him glance at the ashy sky before jamming a foot into his stirrup. Clever. Mounted, he curls the brim on his billed cap with his good hand, split reins relaxed in the fingers of his bandaged one.

The men spit tobacco and move their horses to let him join their ranks. I hear the chatter. An elderly one—I deem him the leader—hunches over his saddle horn, leaning on a bent elbow, and shouts at the rest:

"Cook take Hanson and Burns north."

"Right."

"Yup."

"K, boss."

"I'll go south with Benny and Lars."

Two nods this time, including my boy.

Benny of Lars...He won't be going south.

"Jerry," the leader says, "take the rest north. We'll round to Tom's Point."

High whistles and whoops slap the air. The horses grind their teeth on the metal bars lodged in the vacant spots in their gums. The group breaks three ways.

My boy—the bleeding one—heads into the forest for the hunt.

I follow. Hungry.

October 1606

A strong stench of dead fish warns me about the lantern. I close my eyes and listen. The door overhead squeaks open, falling backward with a weighted thwack. The other women, a dozen or so, shy from the sudden light. I hear them cower—shuffles in the straw, clinking chain—but my eyes are safe.

The lantern descends with the footsteps. A sailor, by the crusted salt I smell. He could bathe a hundred times, but the sea is already inside him. Leached in every pore. He stops before me and yanks Inéz aside.

She told me her name.

The dull flicker paints my eyelids pink, mapped in red veins. Slowly, I open my eyes. I am adjusted, I can see the sailor. His overgrown beard wedges in the top of his vest and he wears a knitted cap; brown, well-worn and saggy, like a stack of soggy hoecakes on his head.

"You're wanted by the Captain."

I don't fuss. Not like the other girls who are chosen. Inéz does the blubbering for me, wrapping herself around my legs when I stand, shouting no, no no! in her thick accent. I admit, it's a brave gesture, but a stupid one. The crunch of his boot to her face brings blood welling along her temple.

My stomach flips from hunger. I can last a long while between meals. Sometimes, I'll drown them when I'm full, just for sport. But my ache for the sea and the suffocating hull has made me ravenous.

Only the consequence of discovery stops me from feasting.

The sailor unchains my feet and drags me to the ladder, putting fingerprints on my arm that will turn purple by tomorrow.

On deck, I am revived, a little. The sky is an overturned inkwell—starless. The wind unfurls my dirty mane and I breathe in the promise of rain. The night is pregnant, the storm forming in its womb. Men tie down sails and secure barrels. A parcel of skulls dangles from the yardarm above me. They clatter together on their individual strings, jiggling and grinning. Hollow windchimes. Souvenirs.

I am brought to the captain's cabin.

He rests on the edge of his desk. Ankles crossed, arms folded. His white blouse glows in the smoky light. Lamps swing from the exposed beams, and behind him there are windows. Black swells the glass panes. The outside night presses close, snarling and snapping at us like dogs at table scraps.

His hair is cut from the same darkness, oily ringlets falling to his shoulders. On the table, I see things. Instruments. Knives and pincers and screws for my thumbs. There's even an iron poker, going cherry-red in the after coals of a small stove.

I take a step back, wary. This isn't normal. The other girls are called for different reasons and there's never a mark when they return—unless they fight. Every sinew inside my human body sings danger.

The captain stands straighter. Dropping his hands to the leather waistband of his breeches, he lets them linger on his hips. I am greeted with a full view of his chest, now. A large, ornate cross pigments his skin between the folds of his shirt. A tattoo black as the pitch sealing the window muntins.

My nose curls and I feel my lips part in a sneer.

He taps his long fingers against his belt. "Let her go."

The sailor's grip disappears and I want to charge the man by the table. But the Holy Cross—it stops me. I can't kill him while he wears it. Just like I couldn't escape the man who caught me—he wore a rosary and dragged his thumb up and down and across my brow. The dirty pig traded me to these Buccaneers for beans.

"Did you do this?" the captain asks.

"Do what?"

"The storm that rises."

I snort. I was wrong. It almost sounds better human. "Storms come and go, El Capitán. It is the way of the sea."

"Not like this one."

Was it me? Maybe. Magick is a mercurial thing. It gives me life, but I don't control it. "No."

He smiles, but his eyes warn me not to lie, again. "Tell me, puta, what ails your wrists?"

My shackles clunk together as I hide my hands in the waves of my drab skirt. I've grown accustomed to the pain. Rank sores bloom on my skin; a curse even my current shape can't disguise. The pitted iron rubs me raw, yes, but it also invokes boils and maroon puss that the other girls don't have. I don't ever eat our allotted breads either, which, now that I contemplate the last months, might be misconstrued.

I know what he's thinking. Bruja. Witch. Tiny thoughts, maybe, but deadly ones to me.

"I'm not responsible," I say. I'm not. But like seagulls follow fisherman, waiting for the viscera, the sea follows me.

The captain's long fingers trail the knives and pincers to reach for the heated poker. He'll shove it down my throat he will, and burn my insides up to stop my spell. It's not my spell. But he doesn't care and the iron will kill me all the same. The lantern light flutters as the ship rocks. The sea grows around us, a scream about to explode. He flicks a nod at his compañero.

The sailor grabs me from behind and the sky breaks open.

July 1946

Pine needles carpet the hard-packed ground. I cause no notice, I know where to place my hooves to stay quiet. This island is my home. I've walked every inch a thousand times since the shipwreck that dumped me on its pearly shores.

Me—and a handful of destitute horses.

The men I stalk know the tale by heart. How centuries by, the ol' galleon cracked open on the coast like a clam shell, spitting Spanish stock out into the New World.

They know about me, too. I am a legend. A ghost story to scare the new volunteers with on penning day. A good laugh over beer and cooked crabs:

"Watch out for the water horse, Bob. She'll tempt you to ride her in one shape or another." Wink, wink. "Best to keep that horn on your saddle, or she'll drag you deep into the water and rip your lungs out."

The natives called me Mishibizhiw. The Spanish, Bruja. The Celts preferred kelpie.

But I am not a story. And I stalk the men, silent. Their ponies plod, cracking twigs and chipping stones without care.

A light rain sifts through the tree branches and patters on the leather tack. A group of wild mares hides in the brush ahead. The Bleeding Boy brings up the rear—I can cut him out easy when the chaos begins. He'll chase me. This is why I can be myself and not a woman. All that matters today is bringing the best ponies in, swimming them across the channel like caught fish, auctioning the babies at bottom prices to four-sized families on vacation.

I am the finest horse. He'll chase me.

A shriek splits my ears. The mares startle out of hiding, whinnies popping my eardrums. I sweep my ears back, tight, against my skull. The part of me that is their kin feels the same terror, the same anger. Their blood pulses through me and my knees quiver.

Run.

As one, the nest of mares and gangly foals wheel and dash for the open grass.

The Bleeding Boy, the men, they follow.

Hooves gash the mainland, shedding thunder to make the sky jealous. I loop around, plunging parallel to the bolting herd. Leaping bushes and black stumps I watch the slashing manes, the whipping tails. Distress ripples from their throats as they call to each other. I join in when we reach the bog, giving a bugle fit for a stallion.

Water sprays my chest as I slide to a halt among the reeds and wisp-grass. Blackbirds swirl into the slanting needle-thin rain, flashing red shoulders. I look to see if I've caught his attention, my boy, my bleeding boy.

His mare doubles on her haunches, eyes rolling white. He sees me. Injured hand hanging relaxed at his side—a regular vaquero, buachaill bó, vir. I toss my mane and stand up, baiting. He leans forward in his saddle, eyes alert beneath the brim of his billed cap. His heartbeat fills me, drowning the world in rapid thrums that flinch my lips and fix my jaw on edge.

I snort.

His heels descend in slowed seconds, crushing the mare's mud spotted ribs. She rockets off her back legs, a heave of taut muscle as the soft, soft turf tears under her shoes.

I laugh to myself and twist away. Leaving the frantic herd and the shrill "whoops" and "gee-ups" of the other men behind, I gallop for the sandbars and the scrub.

The Bleeding Boy chases me to the sea.

We're alone when I stop short again, hooves sunk to the coronets in the icy tide that puddles, neither coming in nor going out. On this side of the island, the ocean spreads like a dingy blanket to the horizon. The wind shunts along the sand, rippling the pooled water and whisking my mane with it.

"Easy, girl," he says to calm me.

Yes. Easy.

He nudges his horse a step forward. I take one back. My tail skims the water's surface. Rain dampens us both, and I stare him down.

By yourself.

I paw the ground with a forehoof in deep strokes. Wet sand and salt water spatter my heated girth. I bob my head, grunting in my throat. Closer, closer—

Hunting is fun.

The Bleeding Boy dismounts. He is curious. I am beautiful. He rests an elbow on his mare's lathered loins and unties the knot on his saddlebag. I smell the cocoa before the choclit bar emerges wrapped in crinkled silver skin.

"Easy, girl," he murmurs. The edges of his face are molded like the Dover cliffs, sharp and long. His hair fans his ears in short curly cues, peeping from the edges of his hat. I've been in this world for ages. He is so young.

The Bleeding Boy assesses me, peeling the foil on the choclit. His gaze roves my conformation, lingering on the white hashes, scarring my front fetlocks—the only error in my past that ruins my midnight-black. He extends the choclit toward me, a gift, and lifts his wounded hand.

He wants to touch me.

They always do.

I let him creep close, let him rest his bandaged palm on my cold, cold nose. I let him talk to me in whispers that shudder along my nerves and fit between the lollops of my heart. But when I open my mouth, it's not the candy bar I lunge for.

October 1606

The captain grips me by the neck, slamming my cheek down on the table—hard enough that the tools hop once and come back down, askew. I don't like him behind me. I try to kick him, but he smothers my space, too close.

"Stop the storm, Bruja."

Thunder booms overhead, loud as cannon fire. The rain punches the windows, trying to get at me, at him.

"I can't," I growl and buck, curling my spine, lifting my shoulders. He pushes back, wedging his hips against me, keeping me folded over the table top. "It's not me."

He snorts. An ugly sound in his nostrils. "We shall see."

I hear a mournful scrape—the iron leaves the stove and my ribs tense. Heat exhales on my skin as he passes the glowing poker over my head, poising it above my exposed cheek.

The ship lifts and drops on each new swell. I don't know how he stays rooted. The hilt of a knife slides into my chin. The lights swing, sputtering. The storm gains. I feel it churning, churning like butter.

I stamp my foot, angry. "Face me then, cerdo sucio!"

The floor shakes beneath my feet and the walls groan. The captain turns me over. My shoulders barely touch the table as he holds me up by the throat, the poker level with the corner of my mouth.

He is younger than I first thought. A boy. Then again, everyone is younger than me. I see the fear in his eyes where he tries to stow it away. He'd have the sense to be afraid outright if he could hear what I hear: the cush, cush of waves on rocks. The same sound I heard in the hold; my ear searching out the shoreline, finding the reef. The rising storm only brought us nearer.

I want to take him with me.

I regard the tattoo on his chest, above his heart. The Holy Cross. Thick on all points and wrapped in rose stems prickled in thorns. It protects him. I imagine my fingers parting the shell of his neck, my hand immersing to grasp his spine.

"I warned you, Bruja," he says and lowers the ember tip.

A clap of thunder resonates somewhere deeper than the ocean. A flash turns the room silver and grey. The mast splits like a giant's leg breaking, the falling timber slams the deck, buckling the cabin doors.

I steal my moment when he falters, bewildered. Outside, men scream. Inside, his compañero lies squashed under rigging. I snatch at the captain's hand, the one locked around the iron bar and push—

The hot iron sears his chest, blistering flesh and hair. He shrieks and stumbles back, hands flailing for the raw wound.

Blood and burnt skin—I inhale. His tattoo, his charm, his protection is gone.

The sea devours the ship, piece by piece, and I have my prey. There is no need to hide any longer. The lanterns twitch; flames erratic. In the space between the flickers, I let myself change, shifting, growing. I eat the shadows with my bulk, filling the cabin. The captain bleeds and falls to the floor, a whimpering boy—a bleeding boy. The chains snap and I crow hop, shaking my long head and grinding my big teeth.

He should have kept me with the horses.

The Bleeding Boy screams. My jaws open too wide to be natural on any other horse. I smile.

I'm taking him with me.

October 1606, July 1946

He fights at first, but under the waves I am king and queen. He softens quick in my mouth, my first bite breaks his neck. I twist around and around until we are both wrapped in bubbles and lazy seaweed.

The Bleeding Boy is dead. His blood floats like a caught cloud in the current, nearly imperceptible in the dark waters. When I am done and his lips are blue, I swim to shore, dragging the corpse through white sand.

I snuffle The Bleeding Boy's wet face, and his neck where the spine peeks out between pink edges. I nibble his shirt until I find the best place.

Then, I eat his warm heart.

 ♛ A/N: One part Misty of Chincoteague (my favorite book as a kid) and two parts Florence Welch. Thank you so much for the read! If you liked it, please don't forget to ★ vote ★

This short is dedicated to silverhandjuly. You have a beautiful imagination, m'dear, matched only by your stunning phraseology.