IT’S TWENTY minutes later and everything is the same.
The trees are the same, the violets are the same, the goddamn road is the same. He feels like he should be whistling while he walks, that it’s a beautiful summer morning and his headache is almost gone. He should be fucking whistling because he should be fucking jolly now. It’s not too hot. The breeze is nice and cool. The air smells sweet. He sees robins and hummingbirds and summer tanagers, and the thought that he knows the names of birds crosses his mind, but it falls away when it feels like he hasn’t actually taken any steps because everything looks the same.
The road doesn’t curve. There is no grade to it. It’s flat and straight and he’s just taking a summer stroll, so of course he should be whistling.
He tries to whistle.
He knows how his lips should form. He knows the puff of air that should follow, and he does it, because why not?
Except he blows and no sound comes out.
He tries again.
He can hear the air, feel the stretch of his lips as he purses them together, but no sound comes out.
He thinks, I’ve lived for however long I’ve lived and never learned how to whistle.
He thinks the first part again.
I’ve lived for however long I’ve lived.
He feels some disbelief. He may not know how the world is supposed to work, but he’s sure this isn’t it. There is supposed to be an order to it, a definition in the chaos.
He tries to whistle again. He’s just blowing air through his lips.
I could learn, he thinks. Teach an old dog new tricks, but then he laughs because he doesn’t know if he’s old or not. He doesn’t feel old. His bones don’t ache. He’s strong. He’s big. He needs a mirror. He needs to see what he looks like. Just to be sure.
He’s going to learn to whistle, he decides. He’s walking down the road in only god knows where, he doesn’t remember anything about himself, but he’s going to learn to fucking whistle.
He licks his lips, getting them wet.
He takes in a breath.
He puckers right up, not caring how ridiculous he looks.
He blows.
Two things happen at once:
He whistles, a short sharp blast,
and
a horse walks out of the tree line and onto the road.
He is surprised at whistling and so surprised at the sight of the horse that he stops walking without realizing it, still exhaling.
The horse’s hooves clop against the pavement. It’s a deep chestnut brown, with white on its forehead shaped almost like a star. It eyes him curiously, tail swishing, right eye blinking against a fly that buzzes around it.
He says, “Hello,” because he’s unsure of what else to say. The horse is large, its chest muscular. It doesn’t have a saddle on its back or a bit in its mouth, and he knows that there are still wild horses in the world, but he doesn’t know if they are skittish or violent. He catalogs it away as something else his mind can supply without being able to give him his name.
The horse nickers at him quietly.
“Easy,” he breathes, unsure of what to do next. Part of him wants to turn and walk back the way he came. Maybe even just lie down on the road right there and wait until he wakes up, because he’s halfway to convincing himself this is all a dream. The sky is the bluest he’s ever seen, there are no clouds, and every color around him pops harshly, like everything has been soaked in a Technicolor haze. Everything is perfect and wonderful, and he can’t remember his name, and here is a horse, a horse, just happening by right when he learned how to whistle.
“I’m dreaming,” he tells the horse.
The horse doesn’t agree one way or another, but then he didn’t expect it to because it’s a horse. Or maybe he did, because then that would prove this was a dream and that he could soon wake up.