White and Black Horse

There is a tale told in Ib, of a white and black horse, that can only ride out in the rain and the dark.  If you meet that horse, and you do not run far and fast, it will take you away, never to be seen or heard from again.

Avalana was playing in the rain when the white and black horse took her away.  Pai stood under her umbrella, watching, frozen in time as it came.  The White Angel rode astride the horse, holding its reigns in spidery hands; the Red Demon balanced on the haunches, holding onto the Angel.  They glowed brighter than any light; the angel tall, majestic, slender, shimmering in the falling drops, the small demon sibling a smudge of burning red in the fog.

They rode slowly through the gray evening world, gliding over the grass without a sound.  They passed by Pai; the angel looked her over, the demon turned and grinned.  She was as stone; all the warmth of the summer rain had gone, turned chill.

They had been inside for hours, hours of rain without end.  Finally they had gone outside, though Pai knew Avalana could not play in the rain, it was dangerous.  The white and black horse could come and take her away.  But somewhere in the cold center of her heart, hadn’t that been the plan?  And when it came, didn’t she stand there, watching?

She could still remember Avalana’s hair, the white-blonde wisps curling around her pale face.  Her eyes were the blue of a cold winter sky, her eyelashes delicate and long like etchings of frost on glass.  The rain beat her hair down wet against her head but she didn’t care.

Who couldn’t love Avalana?  Who didn’t find her charming and sweet?  She was the daughter every mother and father wanted, the sister who could inspire no rivalry, only loyalty and affection.  And how Pai loved her little sister, then.

Pai watched — she stood and watched the white and black horse walk away, Avalana on its back behind the red demon.  Her eyes were on Pai, without fear, for when had Pai ever let things go amiss before?  She disappeared into the fog that way, as silent as the horse and its riders, no tears, no screams, no questions.  Pai would never forget how docile she went, how sweetly she let it carry her away.

Avalana grew to womanhood in a silver cage.

The angels and demons hung her from their rafters of gold and made her sing, their human canary, their little flower wilting away.  Sometimes they let her down, and let her out, and made her dance.  They laughed and smiled and clapped.  They loved her.  Adored her.  The human girl.  So pretty, so young.

“We bought you, we own you, we love you, our pet,” they sang to her when she cried for home.  For Mother, for Father, for Pai.

“Pai sold you for beauty,” they told her.  “Pai didn’t love you, didn’t want you, not like we do.”

She cried and reached through the bars of her cage.  The angels petted her with willowy hands and the demons nipped at her with their little black teeth in their little red mouths.  “There, there,” they said.  But they never let her go free.  “Sing, cry, dance, laugh, smile for us, human girl.”

She grew and she learned things, locked away as she was.  She learned tricks that angels and demons played, illusions they cast.  Illusions like beauty, to sell to a girl, for a terrible cost.

Beauty was everything, in Ib.  If you were plain you were nothing.  If you were ugly you might as well be dead.

Pai had been ugly once, and no one loved her.  No one but Avalana, who was too young to know better.

She was beautiful now.

She heard the whispers.  The things people said.  “There is Pai.  They say she used to be ugly, then suddenly she was like us, beautiful to look at, worth having around.  It happened overnight, the weed bloomed into a flower.  It was after her sister died.  Some people say . . . .”

She didn’t care what they said.  Avalana was not dead.  Avalana could not be dead.

“Was it worth the price?” she whispered to herself, on nights when it rained, on days when it rained, and she was alone.  “Now you’re beautiful, and no one loves you, not even Avalana.”

They let her go when she was old.  When she was too tall for her cage and too big for her dancing shoes.  “We don’t want you, you’re too old,” they said, and put her on the white and black horse, all by herself.

“Where will I go?” asked the woman who had grown up in a cage.

“Home, away, it no longer matters to us.”

“But which way is home?  Where is Ib?”  She remembered the name.  She remembered the name Ib, and Pai, from her life long ago.  That, and nothing more.

They pointed the horse in the right direction, and with a slap she was off.  She rode through the dark out into the light of Ib, and then the horse laid down and died.

She came to a city in Ib, and wandered the streets on foot, asking passersby, “Do you know Pai?  Where is Pai?”

Finally someone told her, and she went to Pai’s house, where Pai lived all alone.

She didn’t recognize the woman who came to the door, not at first, but she had learned all the tricks of the angels and demons and could see past their illusions.  Beneath the pretty face that answered the door was something like the girl a young child remembered.  It wasn’t an ugly face, not to her, not as ugly as the beautiful mask above it.

“Avalana,” said the sister behind the mask.  “Avalana, is that you?”

“Why did you sell me, Pai?  I loved you.  I trusted you.  I thought you would keep me safe.”

“I’m sorry, Avalana, I’m so sorry.”  Pai broke down and cried.  “I wanted to be like everyone else, everyone who mattered, I needed to be pretty or I thought I would die.”

Avalana saw her sister’s tears but felt nothing.  She remembered crying and never being let free.  “Where is my mother?  Where is my father?  I can’t even remember them.”

“Dead,” said Pai.  “It’s been so long, and they got so old.  Please forgive me, Ava; you don’t know what it was like, it’s so important to be beautiful, I thought nothing else mattered.”

“You’re right, sister.”  Avalana shook her head.  “I don’t know what it’s like to be ugly.  Do you know what it’s like to be put in a cage, on display?  To be stolen away from your life?  To be made to sing and dance and cry for the amusement of angels and demons?  To only see other humans when they are put on show, as well, and to watch them die, and wonder, is that what will happen to me?”

The words poured from Avalana like rain, like the rain that day so long ago when she was taken away.  Pai fell to the floor and clutched at her feet.  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she said.  She said it over and over.

Avalana stepped over her and went inside.  “Is this the house where I used to live?” she asked.

“No,” said Pai, wiping away tears.  She stood up and closed the door.  “I didn’t want to stay there, so I sold it.  It was out in the country, by the river.  It was a beautiful place.”

“You sold our family home?” asked Avalana. “I suppose I should not be surprised.  If you sold me, why not my home?”

Pai’s only answer was to look at the floor.

She was so different now than the child Pai remembered.  Her white-blonde hair had darkened to a dusky gold and her eyes had turned from sky to ice.  She was still beautiful, but it was the beauty of a woman, fair and cold, rather than the pretty innocence of a child.  She was still more beautiful than the illusion of Pai.

Avalana moved throughout the house, looking at things, touching them, as if seeing everyday objects for the first time.  Pai trailed after her, a shadow unheeded, until they stood before a mirror.

“I’ll do anything for you, Ava, if you’ll forgive me,” she said, her heart torn by the empty look her sister gave her in the mirror, as if the one standing behind her meant nothing to Avalana.

She got no answer, but the gaze remained fixed on her, unwavering.

Then Pai saw herself change, in the mirror.  The beautiful face she had bought with her sister’s life, fell away.  Her shining hair dull and frayed, her nose grew large, her chin crooked, her skin went from porcelain gleam to mottled and flawed.  Her old face, the ugly face, stared back at her, even uglier with age.

Avalana said to the mirror, “Now you are yourself.”

Pai hung her head, ashamed.  All her false beauty was stripped away by the person she had sold to buy it.  She covered her face, so hideous, with her hands, and whispered, “Thank you, Avalana.”

She felt a touch, and heard a voice; “Now you are Pai, now I can love you again.”

Her sister kissed her down-turned head, and pulled her hands away from her face.  “Be glad, Pai, you are forgiven.”

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