To Serve and Reign

Her truck took the sharp turns of the mountain road with ease. She had driven these switchbacks barefoot for most of her life, back when her father could still lift a fence post and her mother still came back from the store.

Now she was coming back alone. She carried her tools, a saddle, a vet’s bag, a folded letter she hadn’t mentioned to anyone, and a bag of her father’s medications with names she had never learned to pronounce.

The air began to shift at the county line, growing heavier with moisture and something green that didn’t smell like spring. It came in through the vents and settled on her skin. The valley opened below her, with low fields and bent barns. Signs stood along the fences and gates.

“Briar for Council.” “Ride with Us.”

Some were printed on corrugated plastic. Others were brushed onto plywood in careful strokes. The message stayed the same, without a date, a slogan, or a second name. Just Briar, nailed to porch rails and staked into the ground like the place had already made up its mind.

Three horses grazed by the roadside, all facing the same direction. One lifted its head and watched her pass, eyes fixed through the glass like it recognized her. She kept driving, but the shape of it lingered.

The gravel had worn down to a shallow rut, just deep enough to catch a tire if she stopped paying attention. Fence slats leaned inward like they'd gotten tired of standing. The place hadn’t been touched, but it didn’t feel abandoned.

Her father sat on the porch with one boot laced and the other leg stiff in its iron brace. Both hands rested on his thighs. The truck idled in the drive while he watched, shoulders dropped the way a man braces for a hit that doesn’t come.

“You made it,” he said as she climbed out.

“I kept her lean,” she said. “You look like shit.”

He smirked. “Better gait than the mayor.”

Inside, the house smelled like smoke and sweat and something chemical, a kind of clean meant to cover what couldn’t be scrubbed out. The kitchen looked the same, but the table held fewer chairs than it should. Two now, not four. The light from the window reached halfway across the floor and stopped there.

He poured coffee from a dented thermos and added a drop of something pale from a glass jar. His hand shook as he passed her the mug. She took it without speaking, used to the way it burned.

“Election’s next week,” he said.

“I figured. Saw the signs.”

“You see any with more than one name?”

She didn’t answer.

He nodded. “They’ll come sooner this time.”

“Who’s they?”

“You’ll see.”

She sipped the coffee. It was bitter and dark, laced with something that numbed her lips.

“Is it happening again?” she asked.

“It never stopped.”

Nell set the cup down. A dark ring clung to the rim.

She moved into the hallway like she always had, even when there was no one left to follow.

Her mother’s room was still closed. She reached for the handle but didn’t turn it.

“Leave it be,” her father called.

She rested her forehead against the door until the pull inside her went quiet.

In the morning, they drove into town. The same signs lined the road and the square, too many and too clean. She parked outside the feed store. Her father stayed in the truck.

Inside, the fluorescents buzzed, but the light still felt dull. People stood in place, like they’d forgotten what they came for. A man near the seed rack looked at her, then away, then back. The woman behind the counter gave a slow smile that didn’t reach her eyes.

“Thought you weren’t coming back,” she said.

“I didn’t,” Nell said.

The woman reached under the counter and brought out a folded receipt. The paper was worn, creased from too many hands.

“He’ll pay after the vote.”

Nell didn’t take it. “I can cover it.”

The woman’s smile stayed fixed as her fingers kept hold of the paper.

Behind her, a child’s drawing hung crooked on the bulletin board depicting a horse in crayon, its face suspended near the ribs.

Nell left quickly, the feed slip still in her hand, the receipt untouched.

Across the street, a gray horse stood untethered in the dust, its hooves black with dried creek mud.

It turned and looked at her.

As she crossed, the animal shifted its weight toward her and lowered its head. Its ears tilted once, then locked forward.

“Don’t get near that one,” her father said when she climbed back into the truck.

“Is it feral?”

“No. It’s his.”

They drove home to unload the feed but stopped at the fence line.

The horses stood back from the rail, bodies angled away, as if the ground had drawn a boundary.

Nell leaned on the top rail. The wood pressed through her sleeves, rough and familiar.

“You said they asked you,” she said.

Her father stayed by the truck. He hadn’t closed the door and rested a hand on the frame, like he hadn’t decided whether to come closer.

“I didn’t say I answered well.”

She nodded once. “What did you offer?”

His mouth tightened. “Work. Land access. Time.”

“And that wasn’t enough?”

He shook his head. “It never is.”

She looked back at the field. The horses’ ears turned toward her voice, though none stepped forward.

“What if I don’t take it all,” she said. “What if I carry it partway. Seasonal. Temporary.”

He laughed, short and humorless. “It doesn’t work like that.”

“Everything works like that,” she said. “You just have to insist.”

She turned to face him fully.

“I’ll serve,” she said. “I’ll show up when they call. I’ll do what they ask. But I don’t let it in. Not like that.”

He watched her the way he had when she was younger, when she came home with a split lip or a thrown shoe and waited to hear whether she had done wrong or just learned something.

“You think this is about obedience,” he said.

“It’s about terms.”

“It’s about capacity.”

She swallowed. The air caught in her throat, thick and bitter.

“I’m stronger than you think.”

“I know,” he said. “That’s the problem.”

She stepped closer and lowered her voice, as if the pasture might overhear.

“What if it’s not me,” she said. “What if it’s the animals. You said they respond to familiarity. I can train them to carry it. Distribute the weight.”

He stared at her.

“You want to split it.”

“I want to survive it.”

The wind moved through the fence, stirring dust at their feet. A horse shifted, stamped once, then went still again.

Her father looked away.

“They don’t ride animals,” he said. “They ride continuity.”

Something caught behind her eyes, sharp and bright, but she kept her voice steady.

“Then give me time,” she said. “A year. One season. Let me put things in order.”

He shook his head. “That’s not how it comes.”

“Then tell them no.”

Silence. The horses didn’t move.

Her father exhaled.

“I did,” he said.

Nell turned back to the field. The horses had moved. They stood just inside the fence line, watching. She pressed her hands to the rail and didn’t move.

Her father finally moved away from the truck.

“Do they know who we are?” she asked.

“No,” he said. “They know what’s owed.”

That night, someone knocked on the porch.

Her father turned down the flame as she opened the door.

The road stretched empty in both directions. Even the wind had gone still.

A satchel waited on the top step. Inside were three slips, oval-cut and ridged like old bark, the ink still damp where it had sunk into the grain. One held her name, pressed deeper than the rest.

She set the satchel on the table.

Her father stood at the sink, head down, hands braced.

“They knew we were awake,” she said.

He didn’t answer.

She touched the edge of her slip. “They made mine last.”

“Stop.”

“No.”

“They want someone who won’t be missed all at once.”

He didn’t argue.

She gathered the slips. “You don’t get to call this protection.”

“You think your mother didn’t choose?”

“She wasn’t done.”

At the window, she watched the horses shift in the dark.

“They’re lining up.”

Near midnight, hooves moved through the pasture. Horses passed in single file, bridles dragging, cloth and flesh hanging from their backs. One bore a satchel like the one on the porch. Another carried a saddle stitched with symbols she didn’t recognize.

Then came one carrying a human figure, bent backward, arms lashed to ankles, spine lifted like a hook. Its head was turned toward Nell.

Nell dropped to the porch boards as her stomach twisted hard. She tasted iron before she could open her mouth.

A man followed behind them, walking with his hands at his sides and no expression on his face.

As they passed the house, each horse turned its head toward the porch, eyes catching on her and moving on. None of them stopped.

She woke to quiet, the taste of blood sharp at the corners of her mouth, the memory still clear.

She’d seen it before.

Her mother had been standing at the sink when the knocking came. She opened the door to emptiness shaped by pressure, like reins drawn through water. Then her feet left the floor, heels lifted just off the tile.

Her eyes found Nell’s.

And then the wind took her.

The barn held cold in its walls. Her father sat on an overturned feed bucket, rolling the strap of his brace between his fingers.

“What are they made from?” Nell asked.

“Bone. Bark. Whatever’s left when someone gives too much.”

“You mean blood?”

“No. I mean names.”

“I don’t want it.”

“That doesn’t matter.”

“I voted once,” he said. “That’s all it took.”

“What if I say no?”

He looked at her, started to speak, then let it go.

Briar showed up that afternoon.

He waited at the gate, coat pressed flat, face clean-shaven like it mattered. The horse beside him had a long scar across its shoulder.

“You came back,” he said.

“You’re not being chosen,” he said, unfolding a slip with her name in red ink. “You’re being fitted.”

That night, Nell packed without light. She moved through the house by memory, gathered what fit in her hands, and left the rest where it lay. She reached the truck, started the engine, and backed down the drive as the gravel shifted under the tires.

Her hands failed her before she reached the road. Blood filled her mouth as her spine drove hard against the seat, breath forced out of her in a sharp rush.

A horse stepped from the fog and stood in her path.

She turned the truck around.

“You got farther than most,” her father said.

In the barn, she took down the bridle.

The metal pressed against her tongue. Leather slid along her cheeks. Her jaw locked and her shoulders dropped, drawn into a posture her body accepted without instruction.

The reins lifted into the air.

The horse stepped forward, its breath washing over her throat, warm and steady. Space opened inside her skull and held.

She dropped to her knees.

She stayed.

She carried them. Their names and histories settled into her, spreading through bone and muscle with patient force.

They held the reins, and she held them.

Outside, the others waited.

Inside, she remained.

And beneath the bit, past the silence, something in her answered.