SOMETHING WICKED THIS WAY COMES
She is lighter without the burden of the child.
And the child is no burden at all now. She has made no attempt to nurture it, not in the way she had made an effort with the twins. The first of her children. As if seeing to it that they were warm and fed would make any difference at all.
This child, Spectra, is more ghost than equine, it seems. With her soft edges and her gaping mouth. She is fanged, as her mother is fanged, but this does not soften Gospel to her. She had looked at the girl and felt no stirring of any measure of maternal instinct. She had felt no impulse to care for her and had instead left her where she lay.
If the child was worth anything at all, she would know how to survive on her own.
And Gospel has not returned to check on the child and the child has made no effort to seek Gospel out either.
So the bay mare stands now where she always stands, raking the tongue across the surface of a fanged tooth so that the venom seeps into her bloodstream and soothes whatever nerves might be troubled. She exhales and turns her gaze this way and that, as if searching for anything that might seem out of place.
Ghaul had made a mistake in naming her the caretaker of the Cove. She knows this now and she had known it then. But she had made a vow, promised him that she would take care of it to the best of her ability. She wonders, in some distant way, if he would be proud of what she has done or if he would be just as disappointed in her as she is in herself.