text: Kratos C. J. R. Isely Sitting above that slim track of earth in the crowds, my fingers clench and unclench in my lap. Around me, there’s that hum of voices, all buzzing with excitement. None if it really seems real, though. They are voices that don’t exist. Not for me. No. For me, the only real thing is that slam in my chest, each beat an ache for something I’ll never have again. This has to be the nearest thing to torture that has ever existed. This is some glimpse of hell. For the first time since I agreed to this, I realize that I’m not strong enough for what’s to come. I’m not strong enough to face this. But, glancing at the woman settling herself into the seat beside me, her long brown hair pulled back, her eyes fixed ahead, I grit my teeth. She’s sat by me through so much, she’s shown so much strength. The idea of telling her I’m too weak to be here, that I want to leave, burns in embers of shame in my stomach. I push it down. Taking deep breaths, I try to calm. I rock forward and turn from her to look down again, shifting to get as close as I can to the rail. My knees press against it but, just like the sounds around me, that pressure isn’t real. It’s just a restraint, a barrier that insists on reminding me that I don’t belong down there. My eyes travel along the fences below, white and pristine. They travel to the starting gate, where track workers are hurrying to prepare for this moment. Without my bidding, they finally move to the shifting movement to my left. Half-ton athletes are led to the track from the parade ring, strutting and arching their necks, fighting to break loose of the riders who restrain them from stouter horses. The sight makes the air thick around me, like inhaling cold water. Watching their movements, the colors of the silks, I again question why I came here. I thought I was ready. I really did. But I’m not. I’m too weak. My hands begin to shake in my lap. “Did you want to go, Eric?” Amber reads my mind from my left. I turn to her and I see her eyes are shining too bright. Those beautiful green eyes that have been by my side for so long. She reads it all in my silence. She sees the struggle. There’s a piece of my heart that wants to beg her to save me, to take me away. I feel it choke in my throat and burn in my eyes. That weakness again. Instead, though, I force myself to shake my head and I feel her hand close over mine in my lap. There’s no point trusting my voice and she knows that. My breath is too tight and it only constricts more when another horse is led onto the track. That animal pulls away the last of my strength and I don’t have the power to beg to go. I can only stare at him with my mouth open to catch the suffocating oxygen. Bright blue and yellow silks shine under the sun on the blanket and the jockey. The big bay tosses his head and prances sideways, already anticipating the break from the gate. His white blaze shines like a beacon, his eyes fixed on the horses who’ve already been led ahead of him. The white number eleven on his saddle blanket makes my mind track backwards. Eleven on a track of thirteen. Again . I remember the last time, too. The last eleven. Memories of rain falling, of fog rolling in, the cold and the grey, and that voice above it all: “In the eleventh gate we have the favorite of this race--Kratos ridden by jockey Eric Sherman.” In there here and now, though, they aren’t saying my name when they say Kratos’s. Instead, I hear Levi Castillo’s name and I give Amber a quick and unsteady smile before turning my eyes back to the track. He’s a good jockey, a good choice. They asked me and I said he was the rider who could take Kratos out again. But it doesn’t make it any easier to sit here and watch. It’s not any easier to see the horses load in the gate. When I see them close the gate behind Kratos’s black tail, my breath catches again. Once more, I blink and my eyes to open to that other day, the grey and raining one. Beneath me, I feel the horse tighten and shift. His energy is my energy, tied together through that bond too strong for words to forge. A bond of souls, heartbeat, breath. We are one creatures, not of legs and hooves and saddle but of speed, power, and unseen wings. He rocks his weight back and forth, ears pricked forward and he lets loose a loud snort. When the bell rings in my ears, it breaks me of the loose of the bell ringing in my mind. My body jerks, expecting the rush for that split second, that feel of air in my ears, thunder beneath me. Instead, my knees are met with that metal bar and the crowds scream and I am back at the side of the track. Back where I am watching the horses surge from the gates from the sidelines. My knees press harder into the rail that blocks me and the taste of freedom. At my side, Amber is screaming herself hoarse and waving her hands. I don’t turn to her, though. I can’t look away from the streak of blue and yellow that is rushing to join the knot of horses at the rail. He broke a heartbeat too slow, hesitated that first crucial second. Thousand pound animals stretch into their strides, rushing, flying over the dirt. They surge along the first straightaway. I can only hold my breath and watch Kratos’s lunging steps devour the ground and throw dust at his wake. Part of me wants to scream encouragement, part of me wants to scream in the agony of sitting so still, but I lack the breath to scream at all. They are at the first turn and Kratos is stuck in the knot of horses in back of the pack. I see Levi trying to steer the horse to the outside, into an opening between a chestnut and a grey and.... Mud sprays over my goggles. I lean further into the black mane. Despite the wet dirt of the track that rains down on me, the blue and yellow silks of my sleeves are vivid. Just as vivid as the red and purple silk of the rider on the grey ahead of me who is drifting from the rail. And there. I see the opening. I see the smallest gap created by riders trying to break loose of the pack. Kratos doesn’t need me to tell him. He only needs me to show him the path. Power rushes in his every move beneath me, rushes us through that smallest break in the tight cluster ahead of us. Amber’s hand tightens on mine and it draws me back beneath the sun. She’s leaning forward, her eyes fixed on Kratos and the rest of the horses. I try to shake loose of the past. I try to regain the moment I’m in, this moment, where everyone around me is being carried in that hope and excitement. The horses turn onto the back straight away. A field of thirteen blaze the track with their pace, jockeys flattened against their necks, begging their mounts to give that last bit of effort, that final attempt to take the wire. Kratos has moved between two more horses, through the pocket, and is flying toward the tight group that leads the track. It doesn’t matter how hard I try to focus, though. It takes just one blink, one breath, and I’m again back. His hooves hammer a heartbeat that rattles in a different time against the slamming of my own pulse. There, the opening. That small hole on the rail taunts me. It’d be too much to ask of any other horse, but not Kratos. I know he can take it. He doesn’t hesitate at my slight thought, the twitch of my fingers in the reins. Instead, he throws himself forward with another burst of speed. We are flying into the gap and between the body of a black horse and the blur of white fence. We move from the back of the field to the middle of the track. I don’t need wings to soar above it all. The power of this horse gives me strength that no one will ever understand. “Coming into that final turn!” It’s a jolt to hear that same announcer’s voice in the here and now, saying the same words he had at that moment on that day in my past. “Come on, Kratos! Go!” Amber is screaming, her hand clenching my arm so tight that I am losing feeling in my fingertips. My mouth opens but I can’t yell. All I can do is feel the energy of the crowd engulf me like a fever. People around us are standing, shouting. Amber stays in her seat beside me but we push as close to that white rail as we can in these bleachers. The sideline is alive with mere ounces of that adrenaline that those riders feel turning that second corner. They are burning the track beneath them, coming into the home stretch and Kratos is moving out of the rail, opening wide. He’s covering ground with bounds, his ears flat to his neck, and I can almost imagine I hear Levi shouting encouragement to the horse. But I can’t be sure. It might be my own voice, yelling those words all that time ago. “Time to give it all, Kratos!” The words are whipped in the rain and the mud and the howl of wind that rushes in my ears. Hooves thunder in their own storm that has nothing to do with the darkening sky. Horses around are the only true tether to reality, the only thing my eyes can focus on. All else is a blur of grey and rain and distant troubles that belong to other people, other worlds. The hope stretch opens before us. Water glistens in the track moments before the horses tear through it, churning it. Kratos and I are coming up on the three horse pack that leads this track and I know he isn’t going to weaken. That fire that blazes in his blood is raging in my own. We are both throwing our hearts forward, rushing for the end. My fingers close on the rail before me now and I gasp for each bit of air that my lungs scream for. Those memories. They crash over me, they suffocate me. They flash between glimpses of the track under the sun. No. I don’t want to think of that moment. I don’t want to be there again. The horse leading to my left is lagging now, slowing. We are pulling ahead in each step and-- On the track, Kratos is overtaking another horse and the announcer is absolutely screaming himself hoarse. “It’s Kratos! Kratos, the longshot! Kratos making his comeback on the outside! He’s past Inferno Feud, he’s coming up on Settled Score.” Rain slams against me, there is only one horse now to pass, that white finish post looming nearer. I push myself against Kratos mane. “Can he do it? Can he make this comeback?” Something shifts in the corner of my eye and it’s all wrong. But I’m too slow in turning my head, too slow in realizing what is happening. The hooves of the falling horse thrash out and I jerk at Kratos’s reins. He tries to turn, tries to move both of us to safety. His hooves wallow in the muck of the rain sodden track. The world is thrown away from me while my body is flung upward. I’ve lost my wings in soaring. There’s one moment of seeing the bay horse flail, seeing him thrash for footing that isn’t there in this rain. Then I’m falling. I am crashing down from the height of power. Mud sprays around me, the first realization, when I hit the trembling ground. My body rolls, chaos roars, my heart slams. I try to move, try to escape. A field of thirteen horses. Eleven at my back. There’s one moment of purest fear before I’m again slammed against the earth. The hooves of horses destroy the ground around me, animals trying to leap my prone form. My arms fly over my head, and I squeeze my eyes shut. My screams are useless, my ears are ringing, my body is broken. I know I am going to die, I am going to die in this moment. The sound of breaking bones echoes over the hooves and the racing and the storm. They shatter where the thousand-pound stride collided with my body but the pain never hits. My body is jerked sideways, thrown like a plaything, and I am staring at the sky from my back. The grey clouds let rain fall over my face and nothing else is real. Nothing of the pain. Nothing of reality. No sounds. No sensation. Only the sight of the rain. But then a dark form is moving above me. His white blaze shines despite the grey, the mud, fall of the heavens above. He blots the storm. He shelters me. Sides heaving, sprayed in mud, Kratos’s nose reaches down to rest on my chest. I close my eyes. There is a moment where I hear the screaming, I hear the fear of others. Then, with my guardian above me, I know nothing. Nothing but the unconsciousness that swallows me. “And it’s Kratos in the lead! Kratos is taking the homestretch by one length, two lengths!” It takes all my strength to snap to sunshine and the track. My body is shaking, sweat is running down my skin, my eyes ache, lungs on fire. I can only stare at the dark bay horse who is a flat streak of blue and yellow silks, rushing ahead of the pack. “Go, Kratos!” My voice breaks on the scream, the only shout I manage before the horse rushes past the finish post without another horse within five lengths. Amber springs to her feet and shrieks, jumping up and down. She turns to me and there are tears running down her cheeks, rolling from those bright eyes. “He did it, Eric! He came back!” She reaches for my hands, kneeling beside me and staring into my face with her shaking smile. “He came back, Eric.” When I open my mouth to answer, I realize that the air has returned and brought tears pouring from my eyes too. Grief, pain, relief, joy--they congeal, they twist inside me, they choke me. Wiping her eyes on her shoulder, Amber tries to compose herself and I see all my emotions reflected in her face when she finally looks at me again. “They said they want you to come to the circle, Eric,” she whispers. “Are you ready to see him?” How many times has she asked that and I have ignored her, told her no, that I can never do it again? How many times have I thought it might kill me to see what I can never possess once more? But now, I know I’ve been selfish. Selfish to be afraid of hurting, of seeing him and not knowing that one of us will ever be able to fly again. And perhaps I never will. Never will feel that power once more. But I know now that Kratos still can fly. He still has his wings. And I can’t hide forever from that. I look again over the track. Some of the pain seems to have lifted in my chest. I know that I will never fly but he will always be my wings. I close my eyes a final moment and let go of that final self-loathing that has lived in my heart since that day, that fall. I let it go because he can still fly for me. He can take those strides for us both. When I open them again, I look up at Amber above me, above my wheelchair, and I nod. “I am. I am ready to see Kratos again.”