Sacred Promise

Here is the first chapter of my book. Enjoy!



Prologue

Under the full moon, the sea raged. Black waves beat against the rocks. As far as the eye could see there were towering waves. To the left of Moonstar Bay was a beach. To the right was The Ciel. The cliff towered above the sea.
And then there was a scream.
It split the night in half, rising above the pounding waves. The air seemed to shudder with the force of it.
On the top of The Ciel there was movement.
A horse, as white as the moon brokenly reflected in the sea, stood on the cliff. Rising in a rear, he seemed suspended in midair. The rain increased. A frothy white mane clung to the horse’s neck and his ice white tail touched the ground.
He screamed again.
Somewhere far away, perhaps even the other side of the world, a young girl screamed.
They didn’t know each other – yet. But their fears were inexplicably woven together. And while the girl’s friends comforted her, the white horse stood there. Alone.


Chapter One or Triste


I was running through the woods, trying to breathe, trying to see. But all I could do was hear; hear something tearing through the brush after me. It was panting hard. Every now and then I heard a deep, animal growl that seemed to reverberate through the darkness.
Should I yell to try to frighten it away? Or hide?
Panic threatened to choke me and I stopped running, wiping at my tears. Where could I go? Nothing seemed familiar.
“Hush little baby, don’t you cry…”
“Mom!” I jerked around at the sound of my mother’s voice. “Mom, please help me!” I tried to run to the sound of her voice but I couldn’t pinpoint the direction it was coming from. “Where are you?”
Her haunted voice kept singing.
She’ll never help you, a little voice whispered. She left you, didn’t she? She never said goodbye. She just left.
“She died! She couldn’t help that!”
I broke into a run again, as the Thing grew closer.
“Dad,” I sobbed. There was no reassuring answer from my father. He wasn’t there. He never had been. I ran faster. Tree branches slapped at my face and exposed roots seemed to leap up to trip me.
A gentle neigh suddenly sounded.
I ran towards the sound. The faster I ran, the louder it became. And then I saw two green eyes appear in the darkness, at the top of a hill, looking down at me. Slowly, the ghostly-white body of a horse began to appear around them. I knew if I could just reach him, I would be okay.
My foot caught on a root and I hit the ground.
And then the Thing caught me. I screamed.


Noir Cheval, Écouter Valley, I thought sleepily, finally. The place I’d been born, where I’d spent the first five years of my life, where my mother died; the place where I would be spending the next three months.
“We’ll bring the stuff in the house tomorrow, Angel,” Dad said. “Let’s just get some sleep.”
He fumbled through his bag to find the key for the front door and we both got out of the Jeep. It had been a long drive from New Lake, Washington Florida, and then from there, a long plane ride to the tiny town of Chevalier in Écouter Valley, a little place situated on the sea; the only noticeable feature about it.
Dad got the front door open and we both went inside.
The caretaker had made up beds for both of us a note pinned on the inside of the door said. Dad’s bedroom was down the hall. Mine was upstairs.
I climbed into the soft sheets without even kicking off my shoes. I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.
When my eyes opened again, Dad was standing in the doorway. “C’mon Angel, we’ve got a lot of stuff to do today.”
Yawning, I sat up. “Are you going to tell me about your project?”
It seemed like years since Dad had first mentioned we were here on business, and that it had something to do with horses. I’d guessed at that, since the Noir Cheval had once been a Friesian breeding farm, back when my grandparents were alive. But that had been years ago, before I inherited it.
“If you get out of bed right now,” Dad countered. He left, and the door slammed shut behind him.
I looked around the room I’d slept in. I hadn’t really looked at it the night before. It was done in fawn and lavender; my favorite colors. All of the furniture was massive because it was practically a hundred years old. A portrait of a smoky-gray Friesian hung on the wall over the dresser.
“Angel!” Dad yelled.
“I’m coming!”
Sliding out of bed, I ran a hand through my hair. My bones were aching after endless hours on a plane and then another two driving from the capitol to Écouter. They cracked a little as I washed my face and rinsed out my mouth.
Dad had brought in all the bags when I got downstairs and he was rummaging through the fridge.
“Oh, it looks like Gram sent over some breakfast for us.” He produced a box of cereal and some milk. “What a thoughtful old lady. Hurry up and eat, Angel. We’re driving into town in twenty minutes.”
“Tell me about your project!” I yelled at his back, as he went out the front door again. He ignored me.
I gulped down my breakfast so fast it gave me hiccups, than ran out the door after him. I started to, anyway. I stopped on the front step. I felt a breeze in my mouth and had to snap shut my jaw, which had fallen open.
It’d been eleven years since I last saw the Noir Cheval and I’d forgotten how amazing it was. From the front step I could see all the way down to the road in front of the house. The front yard was an acre of the greenest grass I’d ever seen in my life. Separating the road from the yard was a huge black iron-gate set in a stone fence.
“What do you think?” Dad was rummaging through a bag on the hood of the car.
“Charmante,” I said, with my best French accent.
“How’s your French, Angel?”
“My – French?” I gave Dad a confused glance. “I can speak it, write it, and understand it, like I always have.”
Dad, the dramatist as always, held up a picture and said one word. “Triste.”
“Sad,” I returned.
“What do you think?” Dad held the picture out to me, almost reverently, and carefully I took it.
I recognized the horse as a Friesian immediately. There was heavy feathering on his legs. His mane was swept back, a few strands hooked over one ear. He had lower tail carriage than normal but judging from the length of his tail – it touched the ground – I wasn’t surprised.
There was a thick, dirty rope around his shoulders. The horse was rearing, and another loop of rope was visible around his fetlock. There was blood on his neck and his legs.
In the corner of the picture you could see the chestnut colored ear of a horse, as if the picture had been taken from horseback.
Even Dad, who knows pretty much nothing about horses, knew that all Friesians are supposed to be black. This one wasn’t. He was pure white.
“They call him Triste,” Dad said in a deep, mysterious voice, “the French word for sad, because all eye-witnesses swear the horse is crying.”
When Dad got into his story-telling mode, he was gone. I went down the steps and sat on the hood of the car.
“According to legend,” Dad began, “Triste was born on one of the breeding farms further upstate, between the mountains and Écouter Wildlife Park. Supposedly he is a purebred Friesian stallion imported from Holland. A lot of things seem to belie that, however. As a colt barely six months old, he stood at an incredible five feet, three inches at the shoulder. And,” Dad nodded to the photograph, “He was as white as a full moon.”
“How’d he end up in Écouter?” I demanded.
Dad went on as if he hadn’t heard. “As a colt, Triste was always a handful. He’d fight with his own mother and he bullied the other foals. His owner, although nobody knows for sure who he was, considered putting the angry, unhappy horse out of his misery. How they know this since they don’t know the owner, I don’t know.
“One particular day, after Triste had nearly killed his owner’s dog, bit his owner, and injured another foal, his owner decided it was time. He blindfolded Triste and led him to where he’d already dug his grave.”
I bit my tongue so I wouldn’t say anything.
“But when he raised his gun to fire,” Dad’s voice deepened, “Triste bolted. The bullet missed him by inches. The man was furious. Triste had injured other horses and tormented the man beyond what he could bear. The man took his whip –”
I closed my eyes.
“– and began to beat Triste. He beat him until blood stained the white coat red. At first, Triste cried out in pain and tried to get away. Then, he fought back.”
Dad went on to describe the horrible fight that ensued. I kept my eyes closed and imagined the big white colt lashing out with his hooves, neighing in pain and fear. The man lashed out with his whip and as in my mind’s eye the whip licked Triste’s flank, I flinched.
“And when Triste could no longer stand the pain,” Dad was saying, “He ran. He charged the fence and ran as fast as his legs could take him.”
For a long moment Dad was silent, as if turning the story over in his head. We knew we had to take the story with more than a grain of salt. After all, how did anyone know that’s what happened if nobody knew who Triste had belonged to? But still, it made me feel sad.
“The man’s daughter had been the only one who loved Triste. And when the colt showed up near the barn the next morning, she tried to look after him in secret. But it was storming, and Triste had always been afraid of storms. Her father heard them and he came out of the house to finish the job he’d started.
“The girl refused to let him. She mounted Triste and galloped off. Her father followed them. They galloped for miles, the girl’s deranged father trying desperately to catch them, and the girl trying desperately to handle Triste’s fear. And then they came to the Ciel, the biggest cliff on the north side of the bay. The man continued to close in, pushing Triste and the girl closer and closer to the edge.
“Terrified of the one who’d put him in so much pain, Triste reared, and threw the girl over the cliff. And then he ran past the man. And nobody ever saw him again.”
I sighed.
Death was awful in itself. Especially for a young person (I imagined the girl was fifteen, like me). But to be thrown over a cliff and drowned? I shuddered. The Ciel jutted straight out over the sea, with a bit of a sandy beach at its base. I remembered Grandma taking me to the beach below the Ciel, and being awed by its majesty.
“And then….” Dad captured my attention again with the second part of the story. “May 16th of last year, Kevin Lowell came home from military school.”
I glanced at Dad to make sure I’d heard him correctly.
“Kevin Lowell?”
Dad started to roll his eyes. “Come on Angel, let me finish the story.”
“What does he have to do with anything?” I demanded. Kevin Lowell had been – still was, as far as I knew – my mortal enemy. He was older than me by eleven months and a lot bigger. A normal toddler isn’t capable of doing what he did; tying my shoelaces to chairs, putting gum in my hair, yanking my hair until I cried.
“Intrigued by the stories of the mysterious Triste, Kevin probed deeper into the story and began to stalk the now seven and a half year old stallion.”
Typical of Kevin Lowell; he had to have everything. They should change that saying from curiosity killed the cat to curiosity killed the boy.
“After months of planning and watching, he finally roped him from horseback. Triste, now at least twenty hands tall dragged Kevin and his horse Jess for almost three hundred yards. The snubbed rope suffocated Jess and gave Kevin a severe concussion.”
“Serves Kevin right,” I said, now that the story was over.
Dad gave a longsuffering sigh. “Really, Angelica.” Calling me by my full name, instead of the usual Angel, told me he was getting tired of going over this.
“So you’re filming Triste?” I said, by way of conclusion.
“Yes.” Dad gave me a warning look. “And since Kevin Lowell knows more about the stallion than anybody else, he’s going to be my guide.” He went on quickly before I could speak. “Since Triste is on our property it’ll be easy for me to keep an eye on you, Angel, while I’m working.”
I didn’t offer my opinion on Dad’s “keeping an eye” on me. Instead, I closed my eyes and thought about a white Friesian stallion. And I imagined he had green eyes.