Sixteen Horses by Greg Buchanan (readict TXT) 📕

like it is about a man and his animal, going through the dark, maybe a little lonely, eager to get home.

She asked people how it made them feel.

‘Sad for him,’ a boy said. His voice made Rebecca go cold. It had changed, these past months.

‘Why do you feel sad for him, Peter?’

‘It’s – it’s like you said. He seems lonely. His horse seems kind of, I don’t know, it seems worried about him.’

Something about Peter made Rebecca want to run, to cry.

‘Why would his horse seem worried about him?’ the teacher asked.

‘He’s thinking of going into the woods,’ said her former friend. ‘It’s dark and cold.’

‘The darkest night of the year,’ the teacher said. ‘What could happen to him?’

No one answered.

‘What’s the worst that could happen to him?’

‘He could die,’ another boy finally said, across the room.

‘Yes.’ The teacher nodded. ‘He could die. So what do you think this poem is about?’

No one answered.

The teacher looked around the room.

‘If he knows he could die, if his horse is concerned about him – or if he is acting as if his horse is that concerned, if his mindset is that distorted that he can apply compassion to other, non-human creatures, but not towards himself, then what could be going on here? What is he thinking about?’

Rebecca stared at the screen. Her eyes were dry for staring, pinned in place, unable to move.

She thought about her carriage ride, long ago along the shore.

She thought about birthdays.

The camcorder, watching her from the street.

She thought of all that had been done to her, all she had done in turn, and all that remained.

‘Suicide,’ she said. ‘The poem is about suicide.’

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR

[08.51] Alec: What else did your husband believe?

[08:52] Grace: That I’m a bad person.

[08:52] Grace: An unfit mother.

[08:53] Grace: Probably that the world is flat.

[08:54] Grace: I don’t know.

[08:55] Alec: Is that why you left?

[09:03] Grace: Did I leave because the world is flat?

[09:04] Alec: Because of what he felt about you.

[09:05] Alec: You left your daughter. You left your whole life.

[09:05] Alec: Why did you do it?

[09:06] Grace: What would you have done?

[09:07] Alec: I would have tried to do what was right.

[09:07] Grace: And what’s right?

[09:07] Grace: How do you know what’s right?

CHAPTER SEVENTY-FIVE

Once, nine hotels had been located around Ilmarsh.

Five had been repurposed for council housing and temporary accommodation over the last few decades, while two, beyond the point of repair and economic benefit, had been left untouched for the homeless and the lost.

The company responsible for the conversion of the unused hotels was part-owned, following the severance of the majority of its foreign contracts, by the government itself. The shares were to be sold off soon at a likely loss and would be bought up by the friends of those politicians who had made the decision to sell.

The buildings in this distant town leaked humanity. People left every day, not wanting to live here any more. So other distant cities sent people they did not want, by train and by coach. It sent them to the emptiness, to the towers.

Beds and tables were crammed into spaces far too small. The walls between rooms had been altered to form inner doors. The people who came here had arrived from across the country, from other countries, too. They were told to be excited. They were going to see the sea.

Vulnerable people were told housing would be given to them not where they lived, not where they knew people or loved people, but here, and only here. They would come, these strangers, and find themselves giddy, sometimes, happy at the whimsy of the buildings, at the small shops packed full of candy and inflatables and sand shovels no one ever really bought from muttering old men who never really said anything. It was as if the government had sent them on a form of holiday.

Few of these temporary residents could ever afford to leave that cold sea and its side. There were no jobs, though to qualify for their benefits, they completed the work of the council. They helped pave. They helped dredge. They cleaned the streets of moss and syringes and sand and blood for less than minimum wage. Sometimes they drowned. There was something in Ilmarsh that grew into agony. Old couples lived out the dream of their lonely retirement in surprising, awful silence, barely able to heat their homes.

There was a sign outside.

THE WHITE ROOMS.

Cooper and Alec stepped up to its doorway, its old name visible only by the torn lettering, the shadows those words had left behind in the paint.

CHAPTER SEVENTY-SIX

Rebecca’s foster parents had agreed to let them speak with her if they could wait to let her settle into her new life a bit.

‘Just give her a few days.’

Now they went inside the tower to find a lobby full of cracked tiles, a checkerboard pattern of black and white. There were awful rolled-up red curtains behind what had once been a front desk, and which now stored only boxes of God knew what.

‘Which room?’ Alec asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘It’s on your phone.’ Alec craned his neck around as she spoke, sniffing the air.

‘It’s on your phone, too,’ Cooper said. ‘Check your own phone.’

He grimaced and got his mobile phone out. It always annoyed her when people did things like this. When they wanted the time from you, forced you to act, when there would be just as little effort to find it themselves.

‘Third floor, number thirty-nine,’ he said.

They went over to the elevator. There were no signs warning it was out of order, but they hesitated.

‘What do you think?’ Cooper asked.

‘The stairs would be safer.’

‘Are you sure?’

Alec nodded.

If they used the elevator, they could be stuck for hours, or worse.

‘It’s only three floors,’ Alec said.

Only three floors.

Cooper kept pace, ready to help him if he stumbled.

He had to pause halfway through the second flight. ‘It’s OK,’ he said, seemingly as much to himself as to