“All Creatures Know Love …”

by Angella Meanix


 

To pique your interest we have an excerpt from a recent best seller. 
 


Once There Were Wolves

Gently, he says. Small hands are gripping so tightly to the reins. She’s too tiny up there, so tiny she must surely be flung. 

   
Gently

He slows her, palm to her spine to press her flat.

Feel him. Feel his heartbeat inside yours.

The stallion was free not long ago and a part of him remains that way, but when she drops herself upon him like this, gently, gently, as Dad says, he calms.

I am perched with one leg either side of the training yard fence, watching. There is coarse timber under my hands, a splinter beneath my finger nail. And I am on that horse, too, I am my sister, pressed to the warmth of the trembling, powerful beast, with my fathers large, steady hand holding me still, and I am for my father’s hand, too, and I am the stallion, the light load he carries and the cold metal in his mouth.
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All creatures know love, dad says. I watch Aggie’s embrace turn tender and fierce. She won’t be flung free.
  
But the stallion’s head lifts in the pink evening light; a scent has been carried to him on the wind and he paws at the Earth. I twist on the fence, turning to scan the tree line.

Easy, dad is saying, calming the horse and his daughter both. But I think it’s too late for that. Because I’ve seen it now. Watching from the forest.  Two unblinking eyes.

Our gazes meet and for a moment I am the wolf.  While behind me my sister tumbles from the rearing horse— I wake disoriented from the dream, dreamt often, also a memory. For a few moments I lie warm in bed, remembering, but the day won’t be denied, there is light streaming through the window and I have to get my sister up.