Page 13 of Zorro

Bear never forgot it.

Now, every time he stroked a hand over the Paint’s warm shoulder or watched Flint curl up near the barn without command, he felt it again. That old truth. Silence held wisdom, and strength wasn’t about pressure. It was in rhythm. In the way a warrior moved when no one was watching.

Bear lifted the brush and began the slow, practiced movements down Cha?té Skúya’s back. His arms knew the pattern without thinking. Elbow, wrist, pressure. Soothing, repetitive. The kind of labor that kept his mind just quiet enough to start getting loud again. Dust rose in faint clouds from the Paint’s flanks, the gelding flicking his ear once, then settling into stillness beneath Bear’s hand.

He remembered the first time he’d done this, not as a chore, but as an inheritance.

He’d been thirteen. Gangly. Angry at everything. His father had taken off again, and his mother was working doubles at the diner, too tired to ask why he hadn’t eaten dinner. But his grandfather had noticed. He always did.

“You want to know a horse?” the old man had said that night, gesturing with the brush in one hand and a smoldering cedar bundle in the other. “Start with his back. He carries weight before he ever says a word.”

Bear had squinted up at him. “Horses talk?”

“Every damn day,” his grandfather had replied with a gravel-rough chuckle. “But only if you stop thinking like a human long enough to listen.”

The barn smelled like pine and old leather, hay and sweat and the scent of horse that got into your bones. Cha?té Skúya had stood quiet as the wind in a dream, flaring his nostrils once when Bear got too fast with the brush.

“Easy, hokšíla.” His grandfather’s loving term for him, just simply boy, not to the horse, but to Bear. “This isn’t about dirt. This is about trust. You groom with your whole body, with rhythm. Breath, hand, breath. The horse don’t care about how clean he gets. He cares about how he feels when you touch him.”

Bear had slowed then, his strokes falling into cadence. Brush, breathe, shift. Brush, breathe. He remembered the way Skúya had turned his head just slightly, watching him with one dark eye like he saw something worth staying for.

That was the first night Bear learned what it meant to be steady.

Back in the present, the brush moved again in that same rhythm. Cha?té Skúya let out a slow exhale, shoulder slackening beneath Bear’s palm. The two handprints, one black, one white, stood out stark against the Paint’s black and white flank. Bear paused for a moment, pressing his palm near them.

Cha?té Skúya nudged his arm, breaking the thought.

“Yeah, yeah,” Bear murmured, setting the brush aside and lifting the hoof pick. “I’m getting to it.”

The work steadied him, like always.

His grandfather had called the horse a wak?á?, a sacred being, not to be owned but to be walked beside. Sometimes, Bear swore that Cha?té Skúya didn’t just listen. He remembered.

Bear’s thoughts drifted.

His hair was beaded now, his temples full color, cerulean, blood red, bone white, charcoal. One side was for his brother, and the other for Em.

But he had stood in front of the mirror earlier, wet hair brushed smoothly and parted with care and remembered the weight of the beads in his palm. Remembered the way they’d clicked softly as he worked them through his temple braids in silence that night weeks ago, the night he finally stopped running from his brother’s ghost.

He’d made peace with that.

But not with Ayla’s.

Bear’s hand slowed as he worked Cha?té Skúya’s withers, the brush pausing just above the shoulder blade. The gelding shifted under the touch, patient but perceptive, as if sensing the drift in his handler’s mind. The barn grew quieter. Only the soft rustle of hay. The low creak of wood that remembered everything.

His throat tightened.

There’d been another set of hands brushing this same flank once. Smaller. Clumsy but determined.

“Not like that, littlest bird.” He’d said it with a laugh, back when he still laughed easily. “You’re digging, not brushing.”

Emily had stuck out her tongue, adjusting her grip on the curry comb with exaggerated care. “I am not digging. I’m exfoliating. He likes it.”

Cha?té Skúya had flicked an ear, the barest nod of amusement. She’d grinned. “See? Agreement.”

Bear had crouched beside her, his knees in the straw. “Look,” he’d said, taking her hand in his and guiding the motion. “It’s not about scrubbing him raw. It’s about how you connect. You move with him. With his breath. Feel that?”

She had gone still, quiet in a way only horses and starlight ever made her. She’d closed her eyes, pressed her palm flat to the roan’s side. “It’s like music,” she whispered. “Only slower.”