Riding Wildfire
©2025 Ashleigh Renée
The wind clawed at the sod walls of Thomas McCrae’s cabin, whispering through every crack like a voice trying to get in. For six nights now, the hoot-owl had called his name. Not just cried—but called. Each time, it came closer, more certain. In the old stories, that meant death was near. The owl, hunter of the night, silent and sudden, was the messenger.
But Thomas wasn’t afraid. He was waiting.
Clara had come down from Yellow Mountain like a storm wrapped in sunlight. Her pony, Wildfire, was a streak of black lightning across the plains. She rode like she was born to the wind, and Thomas had loved her from the moment he saw her silhouetted against the dusk.
She was meant to be his bride. But the killing frost came early that year, and Wildfire—spooked by something unseen—broke free and vanished into the blizzard. Clara chased after him, calling his name into the white silence. Neither were found.
Some say she died that night. Others say she became part of the storm, riding Wildfire still, her spirit bound to the prairie winds. There was an empty grave beneath the cottonwood tree that bore her name, but he never believed she was truly gone.
Now, the moon was dark. The planting moon. But the earth was frozen, and Thomas had nothing left to sow. His crops had died again this season—just like the year Clara went missing. The frost had come early, uninvited and merciless, burying his hopes beneath a crust of ice. The land had betrayed him twice.
Hunger gnawed at him, but it was the owl’s call that chilled him deeper than the cold. In some traditions, the owl’s voice is a warning—a harbinger of death. In others, it’s a call to awaken, to rise beyond the veil of suffering and embrace a higher path. Thomas didn’t know which it was. Maybe both.
On the seventh night, the wind changed. It came fast, like a whirlwind. The owl was silent.
The door creaked open, though no hand touched it. And there she stood.
Clara.
Her hair danced like flame, her eyes glowing with something ancient. Behind her, Wildfire pawed the ground, snorting steam into the cold air. The pony was real—or maybe not. Thomas didn’t care.
She reached out her hand.
“Time to ride,” she whispered.
He rose, bones aching, heart light. He stepped outside, climbed onto Wildfire behind her, and wrapped his arms around her waist. The wind lifted them, carried them across the plains, away from sodbustin’, away from hunger, away from sorrow.
They rode Wildfire.
Across the frozen plains, through the blizzard that had once taken her, they rode. The wind didn’t bite anymore—it lifted them. The hoot-owl had gone silent, its warning fulfilled or perhaps transformed. The frost that had stolen Clara and buried Thomas’s crops now melted beneath Wildfire’s hooves, as if the land itself remembered them and wept.
They rode past the cottonwood tree where one empty grave stood. Past the fields that had failed him again, just as they had the year she vanished. Past the broken fences and the empty barn, where Wildfire had once busted down his stall and disappeared into legend.
And they kept riding.
Not toward death, but through it. Not away from sorrow, but beyond it. The prairie opened before them like a memory finally healed. The sky, once heavy with snow, shimmered with stars.
They rode Wildfire.
