35. Sam Unbound #3
The trip to Saddle Street seemed shorter than usual.
I kept my eyes closed as the coach bounced along, ignoring the other passengers and still concentrating on my calculations.
When I arrived at the edge of Saddle Street, I felt a surge of unmerited relief.
I’d come this far. Perhaps I would yet have time to explain to my mother and Cris, to urge them to escape with me.
Perhaps we could go back to Havana. Or perhaps another destination nearer by—Philadelphia, where my brother had apprenticed, or Portsmouth, which my mother liked.
I extinguished these thoughts and returned to my formulas.
Walking along Saddle Street, I felt absurdly grateful for this place.
The neighbors who called and waved from their front steps, the children who dashed about, chasing one another and disappearing into the narrow passages between the buildings, the familiar smells of laundry and tobacco and sawdust. I approached my own house, and I saw my brother by the side of the road, speaking with Mr. Benjamin, an old man who lived three houses down.
Cris waved to me, surprise lighting his face.
I was glad to see some genuine happiness there, for sometimes I wondered if my visits were mostly a cause of displeasure.
Then, to my confusion, I saw someone else standing right there on our porch, leaning against the railing with a proprietary air.
It was the young man I’d just seen at the meeting: Simeon Trench.
He was smiling, but it wasn’t a friendly smile.
He was smiling like the man who’s just beaten you at cards and is about to seize his winnings.
Fear stabbed at my belly. Where was my mother?
As I looked back to Cris in alarm, something strange happened.
It seemed to me that his own expression mirrored mine: confusion and fear, mingled together.
But he wasn’t looking at Simeon; he was looking at me.
Or was he looking behind me? I turned to look over my shoulder and saw something inexplicable.
Only a short distance away was a horse. It was pulling a driverless coach.
The horse seemed deranged, its gray head tossing madly, its eyes wild.
Horse and coach careened toward me at full speed. But they made no sound.
I was frozen. Some part of me, the part of me ruled by instinct, couldn’t believe that a soundless horse and coach were real.
This was surely an illusion, a trick of the eye, like the wolf that guarded the portal.
Wasn’t it? But no, it had to be real. I could see the dirt and stones flying under the wheels; the swerving carriage had just collided with a barrel, and the horse—the poor horse, I realized—was on fire, its tail aflame, the sparks not quite catching yet on the coach but clearly driving the desperate animal onward.
It was a silence spell. Simple, deadly—the coach was real, the animal was real, the flames were real. Only the silence was false.
Abruptly Cris was beside me, and the coach was only a few feet away, and I felt a surge of terror.
Over Cris’s shoulder, I saw Simeon’s grin—a grin of satisfaction, of eager anticipation.
I understood—too late, far too late—that I was witnessing Simeon’s punishment for the Cisneros Society, the penalty for my premeditated disobedience, the price for my wish to escape.
“Sam!” Cris shouted, reaching for me. In that moment, I felt that I saw my brother clearly as I had never seen him before.
He was my older brother, after all. And all he had ever done was try to protect me, even by keeping me away from enchantment.
And how had I thanked him? I saw with terrible clarity his delicate hands, his carefully ironed shirt, his anguished face—every precious part of him.
“Get back!” I cried.
I pushed Cris aside with all my strength.
The rope and the rucksack impeded me. I was propelled backward.
The coiled rope flung off my arms, its full weight landing on Cris’s chest and pushing him farther backward so that he lost his balance, tumbling in the dirt road.
I tried to dive after him, but the momentum had pushed me in the opposite direction, and now the approaching horse—frantic, terrified, burning—was upon me.
The hooves struck my legs first. A terrible pain bloomed, and I saw the furious hooves over my face, and a glimpse of its burning tail, and the cracked, swollen underbelly of the coach, and lastly the wide blue sky.
I turned my head sideways to look for Cris.
Heavens! The bundle of rope covered his chest. He was motionless.
He did not lift his head. I pleaded then to any power that could hear me.
Let him live; please let Cris live. I couldn’t believe the incredible excess of blood, the protrusion of white bone against the rent fabric of his trousers. He was broken, utterly broken.
I was filled with despair. I had done this; I had done this to my brother.
It was my last glimpse of the world as a living man.