Another day moved on, and Salka grew to understand the Commons. She was no longer a stranger, but a permanent fixture at the end of the lawn. She was the wraith of which parents warned their children, the serpent that would eat you if you strayed too far. It was easy to believe, too, if one looked at her. The frost and wind rendered the grass nearly empty, but it was never completely bereft, because she was there.
Sometimes at the edge of the field, sometimes at the centre, the black-and-white mare’s coat grew long. The feathers around her hocks bulked, her eyes were black jets of shrapnel embedded in the white of her face. Yet, she never lost the element of sleekness that would have been attractive in a creature of better nature. The snow slid off her body like a window pane, the rain seemed never to settle between the strands of hair. They did, of course, but a stranger would be forgiven for thinking her to be some sort of witch or crone or ghost; disappearing in and out of the fog with swathes of moving black. Her mane clumped with snow and icicles during the worst periods of blizzard, and yet the viciousness and acidity seemed always to survive.
The grass died beneath the ice and she ate it anyway. Brown-yellow stalks cracked between her teeth and scratched her throat on the way down. The Commons, nearly empty, lay as though haunted through the rain and aching snow. Salka, just as aching and wet, just as horrifically aquatic, was the ghost.