It wasn’t long until I began to hear the whispers.
They were very soft at first, soft enough to mistake for something else—a rustle of wind, the scrape of my boots. Gradually they grew louder, not loud enough to be counted as anything other than a whisper, but loud enough to distract, loud enough that I felt like something was buzzing against my ear, like a mosquito that kept flying too close. I waved my hand from side to side, trying to make it stop, but it didn’t stop.
“Go away,” I said, because the noise was making me angry, making me forget about everything except the whispers. The worst part was that I couldn’t make out any individual words—only the mass of sound, continuously pulsing.
I remembered the moment, so many years ago, when Sander and I went to the end of the path through the woods, and I stepped off into the place that was forbidden. I’d heard the whispers then, too, and just a few moments of it had made me sick and scared. Dread rose in me, and no matter how hard I tried to push it down, to convince myself I wasn’t frightened, it didn’t work.
I was scared, and I didn’t know how to make it stop, or how to find the Horseman, or if I could save him when I did. I didn’t know anything. I was only Ben Van Brunt, the last of my family name, and I didn’t have any special powers.
Yet there I was, trudging through the woods despite all my fear and doubt, because the Horseman had called me and I had to go to him. It had always been so, I realized—from the time I was very small, even before I knew he was calling.
He was the north of the compass, and the needle inside me pointed to him. That was why I’d always gone to the woods, why I’d always felt something pulling me there. When I was young I hadn’t thought about it. I’d only followed it.
For a while I’d feared that call, feared what it meant for me. Then I’d longed for it, longed for it in a way I still didn’t fully understand. I’d thought I loved him, but it was more than love. It was a desire for something only he could give, but I still didn’t entirely comprehend what that “something” was. It wasn’t love, though. It was something in the way we were tied together, the way the Horseman had only been a whisper of a thought when I first saw him as a tiny child, the vague coalescence of the villagers’ nightmares. But he’d reached for me and I’d believed in him, and my belief made him more than shade, more than shadow.
The Horseman had sprung from me, from my longing for something greater than the world I know, for my need for something beautiful long before I could define that feeling. He’d been a nightmare to the people of the Hollow, but to me he was a dream, a dream of flying and of freedom.
I noticed that the whispers had subsided. They weren’t gone entirely, but they had receded to a distance that allowed me to think. As soon as I thought this, the volume rose again.
The Horseman. Think of the Horseman, and nothing else.
The whispers receded again.
I just had to think of him, keep him as my true north and let him pull me in his direction.
Ben. Ben.
Keep his voice in your mind and go to him. There’s nothing else here. There are no whispering goblins, no ghosts of your past. There isn’t even a cloak of darkness. These are all obstacles that Schuler de Jaager put in your path. He’s trying to block you. He’s trying to stop you from getting to the Horseman. Why is he trying to stop you from getting to the Horseman?
And the truth burst through me like the moon emerging from behind the clouds. Because he’s afraid.
Schuler de Jaeger was afraid of the Horseman, and afraid of what might happen if I went to the Horseman.
That meant the Horseman and I could hurt Schuler.
We could hurt him if we were together. Perhaps we could even defeat him.
Hurry, hurry, and this time it was my own voice in my head urging me to him. I had to reach the Horseman, because he was weak and hurt, and he needed me. I had to reach him in time. I had to. Schuler was trying to prevent me from doing that very thing, and whatever Schuler wanted couldn’t be good for me or for the Hollow.
The path before me opened up suddenly into a large clearing. The night sky was visible above, the stars brighter than I’d ever seen them. They shone down on the dark form folded in the center of the clearing—a man, or something like a man, though I’d never imagined him alone and horseless. He was on his knees, his head bent, his back curved, like the weight of everything was on him.
“Horseman,” I said, and ran to him.
He looked up at me, and he appeared more earthly than the last time I’d seen him—less powerful, more human.
“Ben,” he said. He sounded exhausted and relieved, and reached his hand out to me.
Darkness pooled around him. I thought at first that it was his cloak, but as I got closer I realized the darkness was a cloud around him, and that it was dissipating. It was dripping away from him. That’s when I realized he was injured. Whatever had happened, however it happened, he was hurt badly enough to bleed—or whatever passed for blood when you were a creature of magic.
I stretched out my hand to take his in mine, but a moment before our fingertips touched I bumped up against something else in the way. There was a crackling noise, a smell like lightning, and then I was thrown backward, away from the Horseman.
Someone laughed, low and long and vicious. I pushed up and saw Schuler de Jaager, or rather the thing that passed as Schuler de Jaager, emerging from the trees.
“You didn’t think you’d be able to free him so easily, did you, little Bente?”
He appeared old and hunched and frail, but his voice was powerful and his eyes burned, just like they had when he was part of Henrik Janssen.
“My name is Ben,” I said.
He smirked at me. “Ah yes, the little caterpillar who wishes to be a butterfly. But you’ll never transform, no matter how long or hard you wish it so. You’ll always be a girl instead of the boy you wanted, the granddaughter instead of the grandson Brom wanted.”
“Don’t you dare speak of Brom,” I said, hate surging inside me. “You’re the one who made Crane a monster. You’re the reason Brom is dead.”
Schuler shrugged. “Don’t think I’d weep for the great oaf.”
“Why?” I asked, rage bubbling under the surface of my skin. I didn’t know what to do with it, where to put it. “Why hurt Brom? Or Bendix? Why let your own daughter die? Why change Crane? Why hurt him?”
I pointed at the Horseman, who was unnaturally still as he watched us. The stuff pulling away from his body had continued unabated, and he appeared less substantial by the moment. I had to do something, free him from his prison, but I didn’t know how.
Schuler de Jaager followed my gaze, and his smug expression made me want to leap on him, beat him senseless the way I’d done to Diederick Smit. Smit hadn’t deserved my rage, but Schuler did. Schuler was the reason Smit had taken me in the first place.
“Why?” Schuler said. “ ‘Why?’ you ask? Because, sweet girl, it’s in my nature.”
I knew he was trying to bait me, make me snap and argue, use up my energy trying to convince him to call me by the name I’d chosen for myself. I couldn’t allow myself to rise. I had to think about the Horseman, think about freeing him and getting away from Schuler de Jaager.
He’d waited for a moment, to see if I would respond, and when I didn’t, I thought I saw a hint of disappointment in his eyes.
“Remember the day you came to visit me, so long ago?”
He made it sound as though I’d chosen to see him, that I’d tripped into the village to have tea by some prearranged plan.
“Of course,” I said. Let him talk. Let him talk while you determine how to help the Horseman.
“I told you a story then, about a creature that came from the old country.”
“The Kludde,” I said, remembering.
“I said that it had attached itself to the people of the Hollow, and that it took a sacrifice in exchange for the well-being of the village.”
I nodded, but I wasn’t really listening. My brain was scrambling through possible solutions, each one more absurd than the last.
“You believed me,” Schuler de Jaager said, and the laughter in his voice brought me back from inside my head. “You actually believed it. I could see it in your eyes. You went away with such a serious look, like you were going to solve all the problems of Sleepy Hollow. I could hardly believe how easy it was to convince you.”
“You didn’t convince me,” I said, feeling foolish. “Nothing you said made sense. It didn’t fit the facts. You only wanted me to stay away from the woods, to keep me from the Horseman.”
Schuler glanced back at the Horseman, who’d managed to stand and was pressed up against the invisible barrier. I felt the Horseman’s anguish and his fury at Schuler.
“The Horseman shouldn’t exist at all, you know,” Schuler said. “He was only a story that Brom made up, and then the people of the Hollow started to believe it. The people of the Hollow will believe anything, and their belief willed him into being.”
“But he’s not like Brom’s story. He’s not a headless Hessian.”
“He was, for a time. But then you came along and changed him, changed everything. You didn’t think he was a headless Horseman and therefore he wasn’t. You thought he was your protector, and therefore he was. And you did it without even knowing what you were doing, without realizing you had the power to do it. That was my own fault. I should have realized what could happen with my blood in you. I was so certain Bendix would have a son, you see. All the Van Brunts had sons, always. Sometimes they had daughters as the third or fourth child, but never the first. I’d wanted a boy, needed a boy to mold. It seemed such a fine idea to root my blood in some tree, to see how it would manifest. But then my weak human wife made a daughter, a talentless little nothing like herself. Then there was you. I was sure you’d be like Fenna, so I didn’t bother with you. That was my mistake. I should have known that blood will out, always.”
Blood. Schuler’s blood. Schuler’s blood in my body. Of course. Of course. That’s the answer. Blood is always the answer. I just need to get closer to the Horseman’s prison.
I inched sideways, trying to make it look as though my movement was just natural repellence, that I was only moving away because I didn’t want to be near him. I needed to keep him talking, keep him thinking about his wonderful plot so he wouldn’t notice.
Once I free the Horseman we can rid the world of Schuler de Jaager, and then we can ride away together. That is where I belong, where I’ve always belonged. I should have left with him years ago. Brom might be alive if I had.
“I don’t understand. Why did you do any of this? Why change Crane into a monster? Why torment Brom? Why kill my father, let your own daughter die? What is it that you want from us?” I made the last line a plaintive wail, certain Schuler would interpret it as weakness.
I am not weak. I’m a Van Brunt, and I can win. Van Brunts always win. I won’t let him win.
Schuler laughed again, and his eyes flared flame-red. “Want from you? You overestimate your own importance. Yes, the Van Brunts have been a special project of mine, but the whole village has been my plaything from the start. It’s in my nature, as I said.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. I was nearly there. In a few moments I would be able to reach out and touch the barrier.
“There are many things you don’t understand, and couldn’t begin to. The world doesn’t always have reasons. Sometimes terrible things happen without justification, or simply because someone wants them to happen.”
His form shifted as I watched, grew larger with each passing moment. The skin of the old man fell away, and something unfolded from inside it, something huge and horned, something made of flame and darkness. Something I could only call a demon. It was the only word that I had, the only way my brain could make sense of what it was seeing.
Katrina had always tried to instill in me a sense of respect for the greater power of the universe, dragging me (and Brom, who no more wanted to be there than I did) to church services every Sunday, reminding me to say my prayers before bed. But I’d never really believed in God. In the Hollow it was easy to believe in ghosts and goblins, in haunted woods, in the Headless Horseman, but somehow a benevolent deity seemed impossible.
As I watched Schuler de Jaager reveal his true self at last, I had to face the possibility that Katrina and the earnest reverend might have been right. Surely such terrible things couldn’t exist in the world without some counterpoint. Surely there had to be someone good watching over us. There had to be hope.
Hope, and a little bit of luck, I thought as I watched his wings unfurl. They seemed to cover the sky, to blot out the night with a darkness more complete than I’d ever imagined.
Don’t think about what he is, or what he can do. Think of the Horseman. You’re nearly there.
“You ask why all these things happened, looking for some motivation, some rhyme or reason to help you understand,” Schuler said. His voice was deeper, louder, and the sound of it was painful, made my very bones tremble. “There is no reason, no rhyme. There is no explanation, no greater plan. There is only me, and what I am, and what I have done to amuse myself while I am here.”
His words arrested me, though the Horseman was in reach now, though my plan was only moments away from being fulfilled.
“You did all that, caused so much pain, just because? So you could laugh at our human frailty, so you could entertain yourself?”
“Don’t sound so outraged, little Bente. I told you, I only did what was in my nature. The life of this world is long, much longer than you think, and I have been a part of it for eons.”
“That doesn’t give you the right to meddle, to ruin, to destroy,” I said, fresh anger bubbling inside me. “That doesn’t give you the right to toy with our lives, to crush our striving beneath your boot.”
He laughed. I hated that laugh so much, wanted to stop up his mouth so I wouldn’t have to hear it. “I can do whatever I please, little Bente, and you cannot stop me.”
I drew Brom’s knife from its sheath with my left hand, the one that was always gloved because of the mutilated fingers. Schuler snorted.
“Do you think you can harm me with that pathetic human blade?”
“Who said I was going to use it to harm you?” I said, and drew the blade over my right palm, slamming my bloodied hand on the barrier that imprisoned the Horseman. “And my name is Ben.”
“No!” Schuler shouted, and for the first time I saw something like panic in his eyes.
I couldn’t see the barrier but I felt it drop, felt the surge of anger from the Horseman. I felt a moment of triumph, was certain victory was in our grasp. I assumed he would charge at Schuler de Jaager, would fight the demon-form, but instead he swayed on the spot and fell forward. Without the barrier to hold him up the Horseman had no strength.
“No,” I said, and ran to his side. I tried to put my arm around him, to help him, but there was nothing for me to hold on to. He was insubstantial as a ghost, fading away before my eyes.
“No,” I said again. How could this be? How could the Horseman die? He was eternal, always riding beneath the stars. That was where I was supposed to be—with him, riding forever.
Schuler laughed again, laughed with the self-satisfied attitude of a man—a demon—who’s not worried about getting what he wants. The Horseman was dying, and he knew it. Schuler had worried enough about the Horseman joining forces with me that the demon had hurt the Horseman, imprisoned him, hoped he would die before I arrived.
Now it seemed it didn’t matter, that even my destruction of the barrier wouldn’t free the Horseman. I was too late. I’d turned away from the Horseman for too long, pretended I couldn’t hear him calling me. How long had he been inside the cage, hoping for my arrival? How long had he called my name in vain?
Ben, the Horseman said. He’s weakened me too much.
I was crying, and I was tired of crying, tired of watching everyone I loved die in front of me. The Horseman couldn’t die. If the Horseman died then I was really and truly alone, alone in the woods with a demon whose blood ran in my veins.
“I’m sorry,” I said. I was grieving for myself as much as him, grieving for Brom and Katrina and Bendix and Fenna, grieving for the farm that I’d sold, the house that burned down and the friend I’d left behind. There was nothing left for me, only a life of painful memories, memories of the ways I might have changed things, might have saved Brom, protected Katrina, reached the Horseman in time. “I’m sorry.”
Ben. This was always meant to be.
His hand went around mine, more substantial than the rest of him.
Let me in.
I stared at the Horseman, not understanding. Schuler was talking again, but I wasn’t listening, his words a mass of noise and triumph. He was celebrating the death of the Horseman, his rival, but the Horseman wasn’t dead yet.
I looked into the Horseman’s eyes.
Let me in.
And then I understood. The Horseman couldn’t die. The Horseman couldn’t die because the Horseman was immortal, the Horseman was life itself. Inside the Horseman was the part of me that I’d used to make him real, and that magic had become something greater and stronger than before. The Horseman had watched over me until I was grown. And now that I was grown we would always ride fierce and free and together under the stars, but not the way I’d imagined we would.
We would be so much more than I ever imagined.
“Yes,” I said.
I thought it would be a rush of power, a sweeping hurricane force that surged through me. Instead it was quiet, like the first soft wind of autumn rustling the curtains—cold enough to chill but not to freeze, pulling a few fallen leaves in its wake.
It was as if I stood alone in a quiet forest, the scent of the earth and the trees and the sky filling up my lungs, coursing through my blood.
He was the forest and the wind and the sky, he was the stars and the earth and everything. He was coursing through my blood. He was part of me, the life inside my heart. I’d always wanted this, even when I didn’t know what I wanted.
The Horseman became me and I became the Horseman. I was a butterfly unfurling its wings for the first time, a creature of earth tasting the air. Everything inside me that felt half-formed was renewed, was complete.
I was Ben Van Brunt, the last son of the line of Brom Bones and Katrina Van Tassel, and I was the Horseman of Sleepy Hollow, as I was always meant to be.
I stood before Schuler de Jaager, that nameless demon who’d wrought misery on Sleepy Hollow for so long. He screamed, howled fury that was meant to break me, summoned fire to frighten me.
His fury was only sound and air, had no power to injure me.
He could hurt the Horseman when the Horseman was only a single being. He could hurt me when I was only Ben. But any storm he sent now that we were one broke over us, broke and washed away without harm.
“You’re nothing, nothing, nothing!” the demon shouted. “You’re only a shadow of Brom, you have no power!”
It seemed he was only choosing things at random, trying to convince me that I had no value. If he could only convince me then I would submit, and he would win.
But I knew my own value. I’d gone into the woods to save the Horseman even when I didn’t know how I would save him, had gone forward even when I was afraid. I’d always forged my own path—had felt safe to do so because Brom and Katrina had watched over me, had given me the great gift of their love.
Schuler de Jaager had never known love—not as a human, not as a demon. Love drove him away, made him small. I realized then why Schuler de Jaager had left the village after Brom died. I’d thought it was because he’d achieved something he wanted to achieve—
Brom’s death. But it wasn’t. It was because Brom died for me, died to save me, and that kind of love and sacrifice is a shield that repels evil. It kept the demon away for ten years.
Brom’s knife had fallen to the ground. I picked it up, and as I did I noticed that my broken fingers were whole again. I hefted the knife in my hand, saw my own blood on the blade.
Blood is its own kind of magic. It sustains life. It carries our history, all the blood that came before us. Brom’s blood had spilled onto that knife when he died. It had mixed with Crane’s blood—Crane, who’d taken Bendix’s blood inside his own body, whose life and death had been so inexplicably intertwined with the Van Brunts. Crane, another victim of Schuler de Jaager’s mischief.
I ran toward the great demon who’d tormented us for so long, who’d tried so hard to make me his victim. As I ran, I said their names.
“Fenna. Bendix. Crane. Katrina. Brom.”
I thought Schuler would run, would fly away, would slash at me with his demon claws, would spit fire and venom. But each name I spoke was like a chain that bound him to earth, and he shrank as I said those names, until he was nothing but Schuler de Jaager again—a frail old man made of dust and spite.
The knife slid in between his ribs, pierced the withered muscle that used to be his heart.
He screamed, and grew and swelled again into the great demon. The knife in his chest looked comically small, the pathetic prick of a needle on a fingertip, but blood was its own kind of magic, and even Schuler de Jaager couldn’t deny it.
The demon’s body contorted. Light burst from the wound in his chest, followed by a torrent of darkness like buzzing insects pouring forth in a shifting cloud. His body folded in on itself, disappeared bit by bit as the insects gushed into the air. The insects spiraled up into the sky, and flew away into the night, off to a place that had nothing to do with Sleepy Hollow.
He might return one day. I knew that was possible. But he wouldn’t find any purchase there again. The Horseman protected me so I could become the Horseman. I would protect the woods and the Hollow now, keep everyone’s children safe from harm.
I didn’t have to summon my horse. He was simply there, and then we were riding, riding, riding as I’d always dreamed, part of the wind and air and sky and stars, free to be the self I’d always dreamed of being.
I rode all the rest of the night, and just before dawn, when I felt the pull to return to the woods, I stopped under Sander’s window.
“I’ll keep you safe,” I said. “I’ll keep you safe, and your children, and your children’s children. I’ll always watch over you.”
I’d turned away already when I heard the shutters opening.
“Ben?” Sander called.
I looked back, wondering if he could see me, but he squinted into the darkness, his gaze everywhere but on me. I smiled to myself, and sent a gust of wind to ruffle his hair.
“Ben,” he said again, and this time there was wonder in his voice.
I rode into the night, and wondered if he heard the hoofbeats fading into the distance.
* * *
Once upon a time I was Ben Van Brunt, the only grandchild of Abraham Van Brunt and Katrina Van Tassel, the last child of the bloodline of legends.
Now I am the Horseman, and I ride every night through Sleepy Hollow, and keep watch there.
You might feel the wind as I pass, or hear the sound of a galloping horse, but there’s no need to fear. I’m not coming for your head. That’s a story some people told once, and a story is only a story.
A story is only a story, unless it comes true, and that did happen once in the Hollow. I heard the story of the Horseman when I was small, even when Katrina tried to keep it from my ears, and because Sleepy Hollow believed in him, the Horseman became real. Because I believed in him, he became something else entirely.
Now he’s part of me, because this was the story ending I always wanted.
I ride through the night. I watch over your children, and keep them safe. I’ll wait for the one who can hear me when I call, the one who wants to ride fierce and free under the stars, the one who believes.
Listen for me.
I am the legend of Sleepy Hollow.