A Fine Cast of Characters - J. Dane Tyler [36]
Through the sharp ascent of the hills the road strolled, around larger rocky protrusions and through lazy valleys. White tree trunks shot arrow straight into the forest canopy spread over the road in an arch, leaves of brown, gold, red, orange and silver spilling from its recesses to tumble and skitter over the deepening bed of them across the road, rutted and overgrown from lack of traverse. In the distance the sun faded and blurred beneath the gray haze of flat, featureless clouds oppressing the forest, devouring the tops of the trees, and swirling into a heavy mist. The minuscule droplets spattered along the clattering carriage window glass and coated the world in a glaze of light moisture, never raining and never ending, as if we rolled through a heavy-laden cloud fallen from the heavens.
The grayness descended with the sun, and soon obscured all but the nearest of trees, now dark silhouettes against the flat silvery backdrop, wafting like wraiths in and out of the haze. I leaned from the cabin window, and smelled the salty tint of the fog, felt it fresh and cold and wet on my face, removed my hat to allow the cool caress upon forehead and face and neck, and breathed the deepest breaths possible, to soak the ocean into me.
I sat back into the plush luxury of my seat again, leaving the coach windows open to allow the briny scent of the mist to fill the cabin, when the horses cried, trepidation and nervousness flicking their heads up and down, feet stamping in place, both animals dancing upon the hassocks, refusing to move. Their sudden halt jolted the carriage, and which forced me to steady myself against being hurled forth into the opposing seat and thence into the cabin wall beyond. When at last I found my equilibrium, my ire tempered with shock.
I leaned out the window and shouted over the horses to the driver.
“What’s the problem there?”
He looked back around the coach, hands wrapped with reins, his voice wavered. “I don’t know, sir! The horses—they won’t go on!”
“Well, whip them, man! We’re nearly there! I must arrive before dark if possible!”
The driver cursed loud, the profanities falling flat against the dense misty air. “I have whipped ‘em, sir! ‘S no good! They won’t go! I danno what’s wrong with ‘em! Never seen ‘em act this way before!”
I sighed in irritation, and racked my brain for an alternative to the beating. “What can be done, then? I must get through!”
The driver turned to me with a half-hearted shake of his head, his facial expression clear: nothing could be done. The horses would not pass.
“Danno what’s got ‘em so spooked,” he muttered, but his voice carried over the agitated whinnying of the skittish beasts. I heard the crop flail, the whip snap, and the driver curse the ancestry of the horses. The coach edged backward, and no amount of beating made them move ahead.
A sudden whoosh ripped through the still mist, and the cloud swished and swirled as if stirred by a mighty wind, though the trees neither moaned, whistled, or even fluttered their flame-colored foliage. A final cry and rearing from the horses, and they composed, calm in the middle of the road, huffed snorts of air through moist nostrils and blew wet flapping lips together around their bits. They pranced at the ready. The driver muttered again.
“What happened? What’s the matter now?” I called.
He leaned around the carriage side again, his face a stubbled, lined mask of confusion beneath his salt-and-pepper bristle-brush of hair. His arched bushy brows perched just below the brim of his hat, tipped aside by his fingers to dig in wonder at his scalp.