Horse Dance

The cumulonimbus hovered over our farm. Thunderstorms and winds at excessive speeds uprooted trees, catapulted six-prong rakes with broken handles, unscary scarecrows and rotten tractor tires, propelled ducks across the vast farmland, and made piglets slam into any fences still standing. Screen doors detached from their hinges and joined corrugated roofs in the air. They landed over my friends. The ones with tails, feathers, and snouts. 

When the cyclone ended, I joined my mother, aunt, and neighbors. I sat in the middle of the street watching a house without its four walls. Conversation deviated from tractors, haystacks and Lamington drives, and took a grave turn:

“Where’s the house?”

“Dunno, luv, dunno.”

Cyclones have a way of transforming. Horses revolve to nature’s music, hooves hide between tall wildflowers. 

~

I first heard about the merry-go-round horses a few years after Cyclone Tracy when I wondered why Grandma didn’t have a husband. After the War, he feared nothing, not even cyclones. Tracy had other ideas. A metal car door flew into his frail body. Before, during and after the cyclone, Grandpa’s horses alternated between a walk and a run. Amid warnings, screaming, crying, and the utter disbelief of how a life’s work can be wiped out in a few minutes, Grandpa’s horses trotted in a circle. 

Horses kept that dance number each time a cyclone chose our land to devastate. In the absence of human-directed equine choreography, their deep-seated dynamic, diagonal dance, healed.

~

I wondered if Grandpa was watching from above, sitting on a cloud, gumboots dangling when his horses’ relatives trotted in unison, oblivious to flying objects above. Sixteen horses. Eight trotting clockwise and eight, anti-clockwise. Maybe this was their coping mechanism, their response to tragedy.  Calmly, patiently, elegantly, examining what mattered most at that moment, eliminating the futile or uncritical like six-prong rakes with broken handles, unscary scarecrows and rotten tractor tires.

Isabelle B.L has published a novel inspired by the life of a New Caledonian feminist and politician. Her work can be found in the Birth Lifespan Vol. 1 and Growing Up Lifespan Vol. 2 anthologies for Pure Slush Books, Flash Fiction Magazine, Drunk Monkeys, A Story in 100 Words, Visual Verse, FlashBack Fiction, The Cabinet of Heed, Free Flash Fiction, Ample Remains, Found Polaroids, Five Minutes, Kitchen Sink Magazine, Splintered Disorder Press, The Antihumanist, Appointment at 10.30 Vol. 22 anthology for Pure Slush Books and Visitant. Her work is forthcoming in someshortstories.com, Best Microfiction 2022 anthology and Metaphysical Times.