A Mare of the Night
When Euphemia opens her eyes, it’s to a hazy, violet sky.
A lush meadow surrounds her, though the hollow sound of ice cracking echoes in the distance.
Her breath fogs before her face, but her bare feet are warm where they press against the damp, wine-red grass.
She starts walking, unaware of where she’s going and careful not to scrape her toes on any of the tree roots that jut from the earth like coiling snakes.
The trees themselves are ancient, withered things, their gnarled branches groaning and twisting overhead before disappearing into the violet haze above.
No birds sing among them. No insects hum in the grass. Not even the distant signs of human life—voices, church bells, carts. Nothing.
Yet the meadow seems alive.
The grass shifts gently around her, though there is no breeze.
Up ahead, she finds a river of liquid amethyst winding through the trees, glowing faintly beneath the strange sky. Its surface is perfectly still, not so much as a ripple disturbing it.
And standing over it, lapping at the cool waters, is the creature that haunts Euphemia’s every waking moment.
A black horse shielded by simmering flames.
A scream gathers in her throat, but by God’s saving grace, she manages to hold it back.
The nightmare, it would appear, has not yet noticed her. It continues drinking from the brook.
Despite its display of peacefulness, Euphemia knows the beast for what it really is.
A creature of death and damnation.
And yet…
She inches closer.
A single step.
Just close enough to gaze more intently at the nightmare’s velvety hide.
With it so thoroughly distracted, this might be the only chance she ever has to search it for answers she’s never been able to find before.
Something that will tell her why the creature stalks her.
Why it came for her that dreadful night.
And most importantly, how she might rid herself of its obsession.
She hasn’t the slightest inkling of what she’s searching for though. A royal decree with her name on it? A brand scorched into the nightmare’s haunches?
She finds neither.
Although, as she draws nearer, there are a few peculiar details she’s never noticed before.
The creature stands upon three legs—not four. It’s the sort of detail Euphemia thinks she would’ve remembered. But she counts them again. And again. And she’s certain the nightmare is missing one of its legs from the knee down, only the skeletal joints remaining.
Starker than that are the patches of rotting flesh carved into its back and hindquarters. Euphemia’s stomach flips at the stench of sulfur and something pungent, a mixture of rotting mulch and flesh.
She shields her nose.
From over the crook of her elbow, her gaze snags on the nightmare’s face.
Its flesh is so thoroughly rotted in places that she can see clear down to the bone.
How had she missed such grotesque features before?
The first time she encountered the nightmare, she had been within an arm’s reach of it.
She should’ve noticed this. Unless something grim happened to the beast since she last saw it?
A brief flicker of empathy comes over Euphemia.
She crushes its down before it has time to breathe.
This creature—this monster—does not deserve her sympathy.
Besides, if it felt any pain from the injuries it’s sustained, it makes no show of it. It simply drinks from the babbling waters, blissfully unaware of the decay eating away at it, let alone Euphemia’s presence.
Most infuriatingly of all, she finds nothing that explains the creature’s presence, nor why it keeps buzzing around her life like an incessant botfly that won’t die.
Euphemia knows she should not venture closer.
Knows how its flames can burn.
She’s about to start her slow and steady retreat when—
The horse’s ear twitches.
Every muscle in Euphemia’s body tenses, a wave of icy cold washing over her.
She doesn’t breathe.
Doesn’t blink.
The beast resumes guzzling the strange waters, and Euphemia is consumed by rage.
How intolerably vexing—how unbearably infuriating—for this creature who has burned her father to ashes, stripped their family of their patriarch, and created such immense hardship for all of them, to now be as docile as a field mouse.
She wants to slam her fists against its side. To scream and scream until it becomes its true self again and attacks her, claims her in its flames and condemns her to an early death.
Tears sting her eyes.
Euphemia can’t bring herself to do it.
To provoke the creature would feel too much like giving up. Like throwing away her father’s final sacrifice.
Instead, she glances at the peculiar place around them, noting again the deep shades of purple and vibrant pink she’s only ever seen in the foxglove and helleborine that bloom at the edge of town. Never has she seen such colors permeate her entire surroundings. It’s unnatural. It’s—
Realization hits her like a brick.
This is a dream.
Of course it is. The last thing Euphemia remembers is laying her head down and tumbling swiftly into peace after the dreadful day she’d had.
No wonder the nightmare is behaving abnormally—no wonder everything about this place is eerily wrong. None of it is real. But that also means…
If this is only a dream, then she’ll find no real answers about the nightmare here either. That thought makes her stomach plummet. But she recovers quickly. At least it means the creature poses no real threat either.
The nightmare gives a low sniff of contentedness, as if in reassurance.
Dream or not, she’d rather not chance it.
Euphemia takes one slow step back when the air turns colder.
Arctic, even. Her breath not only clouds before her, but it becomes fractals of ice, the small snowflakes drifting up into the sky like snow falling backward.
As she watches them float, she also watches the hue bleed from the sky.
Gone are the rich shades of purple. In their place, blackness descends.
The flaming horse rears, demanding her attention, and she turns just as its hooves strike the rocky earth.
Panic clutches her chest. “Not again…”
But something new happens this time.
Instead of the nightmare running after her, a gravelly voice calls from behind. “Back away, you wretched creature.”
Euphemia’s heart leaps with gratitude. For some na?ve reason, her first thought is that this person has come to protect her. Defend her. To frighten away the beast once and for all.
Euphemia twists around to thank her mysterious savior—
Only to find a cloud of fog that had not been there before, and a figure emerging from within it.
Not a man.
A creature shaped like one though.
He descends upon her like the darkening sky.
His cloven hooves strike the rocky soil. Lichen-dipped horns protrude from his skull—and it is just a skull. Not a human face at all. But something bone-white, the jaw elongated like it belongs to something equestrian. Something monstruous.
And then Euphemia realizes…
This is the figure she’s been seeing.
The one stalking her from the shadows, the nightmare horse always close at hand.
He hasn’t come to threaten the creature away from her.
He’s come for her.
And as he approaches, Euphemia realizes with horror that those are not eyes inside his skull but flickering ethereal flames. She loses the battle with the scream that had gathered in the back of her throat earlier, and it finally erupts.
Stumbling away, Euphemia trips over the hem of her skirts, careening into the brook with a splash.
The deathly mare rears again, its purple flames brightening like a protective halo of fire around it.
But Euphemia almost isn’t even scared of it.
Her terror is reserved only for the man of nightmares, a beast unlike any she’s ever seen and one who will surely haunt her for the rest of her days.
That is, if she lives to see them.
Only a dream, she reminds herself.
But the voice in her head is shaking, and new words scream into her skull.
If he is only a dream, how come she’s seen him in the daylight?
Euphemia scrambles to her feet, slipping on rocks and algae. Her bare toes scrape on something jagged. She hardly notices the sting, let alone the trickle of blood merging with the dark stream. How the water churns black on contact.
Euphemia stumbles through the frigid waters. She claws at the bank on the opposite side. Grasps at the cold soil that turns into bones beneath her fingers.
And then—
The dream blinks away.
Euphemia bolts upright, her dusty bedchamber reappearing around her.
But not even the briefest glimpse of familiarity can ease the frantic beating in her chest.
Euphemia tears at the bedsheets as if they are vipers strangling her.
For a frightening moment, she cannot tell what is real and what is imagination.
The bed. The candles. Her own hands. Euphemia is no stranger to vivid dreaming.
Ever since her father’s death, dreams have been a constant plague upon her, invading her sleep most nights, and haunting her waking hours well into the day.
But this is different.
This dream was not a memory, nor some mangled amalgamation of one.
This was something new.
And he was there.
Euphemia rips the bedsheets off—
She needs to feel air upon her flesh.
Light upon her skin.
Something real.
Something warm.
Something alive.
Free from the salt-damp cotton, Euphemia kicks her legs over the edge of her bed. Her toes graze the rug beneath the bed. The tension twisting her chest eases for a moment.
Just a dream.
Just a—
As Euphemia stares down at her bare feet, she finds them muddied and sodden, and alarm tangles inside her again.
She looks back at the bed, hoping it’s all in her imagination.
A trick of the mind. A remnant of the dream that has lingered beyond sleep and will diminish the more she regains consciousness.
But the place where her legs had been is dirty, too.
Not dust or discoloration from old, unused linens.
Real mud. The bed sheets are now stained a deep, dark wine color that reminds her of blood.