When Yuna was little she saw a horse shot dead.
She and her father had gone to the racetracks for the day, a bright warm April weekend, the fresh-dust and growing-stuff smells tickling along through the breeze. She ran ahead of her father and laughed, ducking this way and that through the crowd; Braska knew his daughter well enough to expect this, and to not worry; she always came scampering back, eyes bright with mischief. Like her mother, that way.
They stood in the bleachers to watch a few races, but Yuna liked standing by the paddock best, where she could see the horses up-close before the races, prancing by unhurried, with spectators murmuring appreciation for those who seemed especially lively or hot-blooded. For the last race of the day, Braska asked her which of them she'd care to bet on. Yuna pointed to a stout silver stallion and he and carried her to the betting window and let her slide a five-dollar bill under the glass. Tally Ho was his name.
The race began with the whistle-shrill and the announcer talking fast fast fast as the racehorses clambed around each other and started running, and it's Monty Hall on the inside rail and Western Dynasty takes the lead and Preacher's Son close behind as they take the first turn… The announcer only barely mentioned Tally Ho, which didn't seem quite fair to Yuna; he was lagging in the middle of the pack the whole time and maybe his legs were just too short, but unlike the other horses who seemed to lag near the end, or else just suddenly start sprinting, Tally kept the same steady stubborn gallop the whole long while.
Then Monty Hall thundered first across the finish line (and it really felt like thunder, that close to the track, all the hoofbeats so near), and scattered cheers accompanied him—but Yuna frowned, her eyes fixed firmly somewhere else, and tugged at her father's sleeve: "Daddy, what's wrong with Tally?"
Braska couldn't hear her for how loud the men around him were cheering over Monty Hall, but she pointed to where her little silver horse was pulled up and faltering. The jockey had leaped off the horse and was trying to soothe him; the horse held one of its legs up in front of it, suspended at a strange angle that made Yuna wince to look at it.
Then a black curtain went up around the horse; some track-men in uniform were holding up the sides with poles, blocking the horse from view. Yuna thought it got a little quieter around her, or maybe she just imagined it, from those who'd seen Tally, too. And then she saw her father mouth the words, Oh no, and wrap his arm around her head and tuck her face into his chest. She shut her eyes and clung to him—but at the last second she tore away and ran toward the track, because she didn't know for sure but she felt what was going to happen and she couldn't stand it. When she ran to the far edge of the stadium she could just see it—the wind kicked up and one of the track-men shouted as he stumbled, and one of the poles holding up the curtain slipped from his hands—and then the shot rang out and Tally collapsed, just like that, and they pulled the curtain up again to hide him from sight.
There are black curtains today, too. Two park rangers are hauling them from their truck; Yuna stands waiting, a sad smile tugging at her lips, letting her toes touch the water.
She does not often do sendings like this—outside, with the raw corpse lying before her (stinking of rot and river-muck), with water beneath her feet. But it's nicer this way, she thinks—even with the curtains around her, rude and garish. Because nowadays most sendings are so hushed and sterile and grey, performed in some shady antechamber in the back of a funeral home with no windows or sunlight, and though that doesn't make a difference in how she sends them to the farplane, Yuna thinks she'd like to be sent out here—outside—closer to things.
The body had washed up on the riverbank just an hour before, bloated, half the skin already tattered away. Washed up from the New River Gorge Bridge, they all thought, another jumper. Strange since most jumpers left an abandoned car, a note, a witness—this one had left nothing, and no one had come looking. And since no one knew when he'd jumped or how long he'd been in the river for, no one knew how much time his soul had left before it went fiend—so they'd called Yuna here first, before they'd called the coroner or the police or anyone else, to make sure he would be sent.
The rangers have the curtain-screen fixed in place, now—shielding the corpse's sending from view of the cars driving on the highway behind the trees lining the riverbed. One of the rangers nod; it is time to begin.
Yuna sighs lightly and lifts the staff that she's been holding beside her. Small and steel and smooth and featureless, but serviceable. She has her father's staff, the one with the bright golden platelike sigil at the head and a bell at the other end, and she would like to use it. She knows her father would've liked her to use it. But nowadays some folks wrinkle their eyes at the decorated summoner-staves of old, think them garish and disrespectful, like wearing bright colors to a funeral.
She closes her eyes and performs the steps she knows so well; she steps forward onto the water, steps truly now, and the surface does not break; it bends to hold her. She stretches her arms before her, swings the staff to the side—stretches and she feels the aether, feels something stir faintly at the core of the corpse. She leans back, then pulls forward, head low, the tips of her hair touching the water.
She goes on; the footwork here is subtler and quicker than most watchers realize. She spins, facing back, and for a moment she catches the look in one of the ranger's eyes. He is so young—well, she is young too, but they say summoning ages one on the inside—he is so young and he is watching as though this were some haunting, rather than a sending, his mouth is pursed in mute horror and his eyes straining; he would like to turn away but cannot.
Has he never seen a sending before? she wonders.
It is possible, she thinks. She only barely remembers the great war that claimed so many, when mass-sendings were not just common but necessary, when her father's summoning-staff guided the dead each evening—sometimes she barely remembers her father at all, before he left her to bring about the present calm. And the calm lasted longer than anyone expected, years, a decade, years and a decade—and the unpleasant work of death became hushed, hidden, heinous.
She wonders what her father would've thought of that. It makes her uneasy, she knows—because she knows the calm will end (soon, she can feel it) she knows war will come again and she worries that people have forgotten the worth of death, of mourning with grace—and she wishes that weren't so, wishes the calm were eternal—but no peace ever is.
There's a stirring in the water; the dead man's pyrefly floats into the air, clean and bright. She feels it, ushers it; it glides up beside her and follows to the edge of the summoning-staff and drifts at last skyward, fading into aether as she wishes it one final farewell.