Estrella nibbled at the bluff grass and thought of Hold On. Even though eight other horses grazed nearby, the haunting loneliness had not lessened since they had emerged from the fiery canyon almost four days before. If anything, it had grown worse. It was as if there were a hole in her world, in her body. And now that hole was filled only with longing. Her dreams were tortured by images of Hold On that would not dissipate. He had been by her side the whole time in the canyon. In fact, for a few brief minutes, he had been ahead of her. The stallion’s tail had ignited and flared out like a torch and then it had just burned off.
“Your tail! Your tail!” she had whinnied.
“Never mind my tail. Just keep running!” He had begun to cough. They all had been coughing. However, nothing could stop the powerful old stallion. He kept galloping at full speed. Next she remembered hearing a loud thud. He had stumbled. Shortly after that, she had felt the wetness on her hooves and knew that a creek was trickling from what had appeared to be a solid rock wall. She’d realized there might be a way out, an escape. That’s when she spotted the tiny horselike figure glowing in the gauzy light. It had turned and beckoned with its head, as if to say, This way! This way! She had followed and had not even noticed that Hold On was not with them until they were out of the canyon. How could he have disappeared so quickly? Had he hurt a leg? Or had the rampaging flames of the fire simply caught up and swallowed him?
Estrella and the herd had moved only a few leagues since leaving the fiery canyon. The winds had been gusty, and every once in a while, there came a familiar scent she thought might belong to Hold On. But none of the others believed her. Was it even real? It seemed that her sense of smell had been shredded by the smoke and ash. She could not trust it. She felt as if she were being pulled in so many different and often conflicting directions. Sometimes she thought she picked up the fragrance of the sweet grass that the first horse seemed to be leading her toward, but now it was all tangled up.
She missed Hold On more desperately each day. He was the largest horse of the herd, and she loved the sound of the pounding heart in his huge chest when they galloped side by side. She loved the smell of the sweat flying off his withers. She missed standing next to him beneath a starry sky and hearing him speak of what he called meadow wisdom — all the pungent secrets that men could never teach them or know that they knew.
She knew the herd expected her to lead them, lead them to the sweet grass that would allow them to survive the harsh winter. She felt their eyes looking at her now, especially Corazón and Angela, who watched her with the most vigilance. The two old mares were the last to give up their old ways, who had been most attached to their masters. Estrella found it hard to understand how any horse could feel affection for those Iber men who had forced their heads into bridles, put bits in their mouths, and used whips to urge them on.
She recognized the sound of Corazón’s hooves as the mare approached. She was a cream-colored horse with a scattering of dark gray spots. Now the spots did not stand out so much, as her entire coat was smudged with ash from the fire.
“Dear,” she began. “We know you are mourning.”
Estrella snapped her head about. “Don’t say mourn. He might not be dead. Hold On might still be alive, just lost.” She walked away before she could see the mares’ stunned reactions.
Angela watched Estrella go, then whispered to Corazón, “She turned on you just like that? How rude.”
“Let her be, Angela. We have to give her time.”
“But time is what we might be short on, Corazón. You felt that chill in the air last night. Winter’s coming. We need to get to good grazing land.”
“Good grazing land will all be under snow by winter. It won’t matter. If we grow weak from hunger, if we go slow, it will be either the winter or the men who will catch us.”
Bobtail, a bright bay stallion, trotted up to the two mares. “Well, what shall we do? Turn south? Go back to where we’ve been? To the Iber, to the Chitzen?” Corazón shuddered. They once had longed for their old masters, but not now, not when they saw what these humans were capable of in this new world with their thirst for gold and power.
They all swung their heads toward Estrella. They wanted her back the way she had been. The filly who was clever beyond her years and held the map of the stars in her head. The one who’d broken into a joyous gallop the first time her hooves had touched land and reminded them what it meant to be free.
Later that day, it began to rain. The horses gathered in a grove of cottonwoods near a pond for shelter, but even as they huddled side by side, they barely uttered a word. They hardly exchanged glances. The tension within the herd had grown so thick, it felt heavier than a saddle.
When the rain finally stopped and the reflections of the evening stars trembled on the surface of the pond, Estrella walked to the edge of the water and studied them, wondering where that tiny starry horse could have gone.
In the most stressful moments, the tiny horse had always emerged. When they had been captured in the City of the Gods and the Ibers tried to break her, hobbling her legs and forcing a bit into her mouth, she had fought them, and all the while that tiny horse had flickered in her mind. Then it had appeared to her as a carved figure, sprinting across the rock face of a cliff.
It was this tiny horse that had led them out of the flames. She yearned for him and yearned for Hold On as well. Together they were the polestars of her mind.
But the memory of the little horse was melting away, fading. I shall be left with nothing! How could she be expected to lead the herd on her own?
Winter would be coming. They needed good grass to graze on. They had to fatten themselves up. The grass here was thin and dry, and no matter how much they grazed they still felt empty. Witch grass, she heard Corazón and Angela call it. For it tricked you so that at first you felt full but shortly there came a gnawing hunger. The more one ate, the hungrier one felt.
There were moments when a sudden shift of wind brought a hint of Hold On’s familiar scent, but then it vanished within a second, as if the wind were taunting her with her memories of the old stallion. The scent was like the odd tricks of light that happened in this open barren country, creating eerie images that sometimes loomed up on the horizon and looked quite real, but then as one came closer, the pictures disintegrated into nothing. Most often the illusion was an image of water — a lake suddenly appearing in the distance, or the sharp towering shapes that looked as solid as rock yet trembled slightly. The land swept ahead endlessly. She could see mountains etched on the distant horizon. She looked at the rest of the herd. They seemed tiny in this vastness, as tiny as the specks of stars in the enormousness of the night.
Corazón neighed softly. “She won’t go on until, well, until …”
“Hold On.” Angela said the name of the stallion. “Just say it, Corazón. You know that’s why the filly can’t let go.”
Corazón sighed. “She can’t grieve forever. It’s time to move on.”
Their bellies and their minds, their imaginations, were on the brink of starvation, and soon it would be winter. “Perhaps we should let the men find us. They might’ve built warm stables,” Corazón said, a wistful note in her voice.
Then Angela truly surprised Corazón. She whipped her head around and looked at her old friend steadily. “I don’t want to go back, Corazón. I don’t ever want to go back to the world of men. I know it might sound silly. I never would have believed I would be saying such a thing. But we are not just free, Corazón.”
“What do you mean?”
“Free just means free of humans, free of shoes, free of saddles, free of bridles and bits and gaits that cling to our hooves like cobwebs. No, we are much more.”
“Bless my withers, what are we, then?”
“We are wild!” Angela whispered the word as if it were a dangerous secret.
“Does that mean we can never ever go back to our master?” Corazón asked.
“I don’t think they would take us
,” Angela said. She pinned back her ears and began to tremble. “We are on our own.”
And soon, thought Estrella, they will be starving. And it will be my fault. Estrella had in fact been half listening to the old horses. She looked over at the two elderly mares. They had been the last ones to give up their gaits, to relinquish all the artifices that the Ibers had inflicted upon them. They had come a long way, and yet now they seemed on the brink of going back. Estrella shut her eyes. It was unbearable to watch. It was she who had failed, not the mares. She had led them to this point. Angela was right. There was a difference between being free and being wild. She remembered Hold On talking about being owned, that it was an unnatural condition, that even when the bit wasn’t in your mouth, it always seemed to be there. How had he said it? “The shape hovers in your mouth. The taste of metal is never really gone. It’s as if the bit is in your brain, and you know that sooner or later it will be coming.”
Estrella wanted more than anything to find Hold On, but what was the cost? Did it mean betraying the other horses? Was she actually leading the first herd back to their shoes? To the shape that Hold On had told her hovers in your mouth?
Estrella had been born on that ship, yet no one had broken her. They had tried when they captured her at the City of the Gods, but she had escaped. Her freedom had been a bit of luck combined with a fierce will. Angela was right. Being free was just getting loose from something that had bound you, while being wild … that was very different. Wild meant being true to your nature, honoring what you were meant to be and not what you had been forced into being by men. Being wild meant being whole and not broken. Being wild — that was her heritage. It was her nature and it was her destiny. I am wild. And she squeezed her eyes shut trying to conjure the image of that first tiny wild horse. Still it would not come. There was only darkness.
For Tijo, there had been no dream snatcher. The creature was real and had been easy for him to track. His immense hooves, four times the size of a dog’s paws and twice or three times the size of the big-horned sheep’s, left distinct prints in the ground after the rainstorm. And then there were its droppings. Huge round lumps left in piles like no scat the boy had ever seen. For three days now, he had been tracking the animal as soundlessly as he could. Tijo always attempted to stay downwind so the creature would not catch his scent. But sometimes it was impossible and he would hear the creature pant nervously or emit a high-pitched sound like no bark he had ever heard. For indeed Tijo had begun to think of him as an enormous dog — Big Dog.
Tijo had eaten almost all the jerky in his pack, and his stomach growled softly. Big Dog heard it and shot off, nearly crashing into a tree. So although he could hear and smell, there was something wrong with his sight. Tijo had suspected this early on, for Big Dog often ambled in circles endlessly over a rather small area.
Was he frightened because he had never seen a creature like Tijo? Or perhaps he had seen one and was fearful that the boy was hunting him. How could Tijo tell him that he was not a predator and that he would never in a million moons think of Big Dog as prey? Never! Patient. You must be patient! He could hear Haru’s voice counseling him.
If Tijo had learned anything from his years of lameness, it was patience. He remembered Haru saying to him, “You are as good as any other boy your age and a lot smarter. You just have to go slower. You must learn to be patient. Patience can be like a muscle and make you stronger. Help you see things more clearly.”
Bobtail stomped his hoof and snorted. “Winter is coming. We cannot delay. We have to move. Move, Estrella. Now!” The chestnut stallion’s ears were pinned back, his dark eyes flashing.
Estrella felt a flicker of unease but refused to look away. “Am I the only one who caught Hold On’s scent? I swear I smelled him.” She turned to Grullo, the dun-colored stallion. He was a steady fellow. Intelligent, with keen sensibilities. Never spooked and slow to judge. “Grullo, you must have caught the scent. Didn’t you?”
He shook his head wearily. “I did not, Estrella.”
“And if he did,” Bobtail continued, “what would that mean?”
Grullo looked sharply at Bobtail. “It would mean a great deal, Bobtail.”
Estrella was stunned. “What does it mean? It means Hold On is near and we must search for him. Are you doubting that I picked up his scent?”
“No,” Grullo answered gently. “But sometimes we can be misled. Estrella, I hear you in your dreams calling out for him. Your head is full of Hold On. We understand that. You were so close. He was like a sire to you. But even so …”
“What Grullo is trying to say,” Corazón continued for him, “is that you are being obstinate.”
“I agree,” Bobtail snorted.
The words were harsh ones, and Estrella flinched.
“Estrella,” Sky the colt said in a tentative voice, “you can’t look for Hold On forever. The grass will grow thinner. We’re already going to sleep hungry. We’re running out of time.”
No! Estrella wanted to scream. “Are you saying I am fooling myself? Did not one of you catch his scent?”
“I thought perhaps I did, though only for such a flicker of a moment,” Angela said. “But still.”
“But still what?” Estrella demanded.
Now Arriero, a dark bay stallion, stepped forward. “But still we do not have time for wild chases. The grass here is no good. It is worse than no good. We feel hungrier every time we eat it.”
“Witch grass,” muttered Corazón.
“Perhaps,” Grullo said, “we can give it one or two more days. But that is it, Estrella. Then we must head north, for that is where you said we shall find the sweet grass.”
“No!” Bobtail whinnied shrilly. “If Estrella wants to stay, that’s her choice. But the rest of us are leaving.”
The two colts, Verdad and Sky, exchanged nervous glances. Sky stepped hesitantly forward. He had one dark eye and one blue eye, and both were full of fear. “Are … are you saying, Bobtail, we should split the herd?”
“That is exactly what he is saying,” Arriero snorted.
A silence enveloped the herd.
Estrella looked at each of the horses. There were bonds among them that simply could not be broken. That’s what being a herd meant. They needed one another. But Hold On needed them, too. How could she convince them not to give up hope?
“I will not risk splitting the herd. If you insist upon going, I shall go. Each of us is valuable. Each of us is needed. But we also need Hold On. And he’s out there, counting on us to help him. So can we compromise? Let us stay just one day and then we can move on, I promise.”
She felt a thaw in their resistance. Corazón and Angela shifted uneasily, suddenly unwilling to meet Estrella’s eyes. Sky stared into the distance, as if he was imagining what it would feel like to be out there on his own, herdless.
After a long moment, Bobtail spoke. “Hold On never gave up on us when we were scared, when we didn’t believe we had the strength to live apart from men.” Bobtail’s eyes had a faraway look, as if he was recalling that night. He sighed. “And so I believe that we should wait one more day and hope to pick up the stallion’s track.”
Estrella nodded her head. “Thank you, Bobtail. Thank you.” She could not help but notice that the hoof that had been stomping so furiously a short time before was now resting quietly on the ground.
Tijo had been patient and kept creeping a little closer to Big Dog. Now they were in a thin stand of trees with little between them but the shivers of the leaves on the branches. Tijo couldn’t have been more than five strides from the mysterious creature.
He crouched behind a boulder, when something startled Big Dog. He reared and shied, bumping into a tree before falling to his knees. Cursing his lame leg, Tijo ran as fast as he could to where Big Dog was trying to scramble to his feet. He appeared ready to bolt at any second, but there was another tree dead ahead. Taking care to avoid flying hooves, Tijo reached out. Hold On flinched at the boy’s first touch, but did
not bolt when Tijo began rubbing the creature in circles just beneath the withers. Though he did not have withers himself, he recalled Haru rubbing the base of his neck after some boys jumped on him, trying to beat him, when he was very young.
“You’re like me! Alone. So alone,” Tijo whispered.
The boy’s touch was light. He was speaking softly in a language the stallion did not understand.
As he leaned over Hold On, the boy realized that the creature’s wide staring eyes saw nothing.
“You are blind. Fire has blinded you.” The creature had the smell of a grass eater and his blunt teeth were harmless. “And you are thirsty. I can take you to water.
“Come! Come.” But what should Tijo call him? There was no name for such a creature in his language. “Come, Big Dog,” he said finally, unable to think of anything else.
Hold On’s fear settled into confusion. The boy’s touch was welcoming. He could feel the warm blood beneath the skin of his fingertips. He felt the boy’s hand slide down to stroke his shoulders. A calmness began to steal through him. The boy was saying something very softly but with a gentle urgency. He wants me to stand. He fears that I have injured my legs when, instead, I had just given up. And so the old stallion shoved his front legs forward, and with Tijo murmuring encouragement, Hold On wiggled his hindquarters and stood up again. He sensed that this person was small, just a boy.
“Ah! You stand tall like the fine Big Dog you are. Now follow me, Big Dog, and I shall take you to grass.”
Hold On was amazed. The boy did not try to put a bridle on him or a rope around his neck. He merely began to walk a few paces ahead. And Hold On followed. Followed the scent that was the boy. It was a complicated scent. There was the fragrance of cedar, a slightly salty odor, and another more elusive scent, as if he had been close to something that had died recently. With this scent came the smell of sorrow, of sorrow mixed with loneliness. Or perhaps aloneness. The boy had not been around other humans very often. We are alike, Hold On thought as he followed the boy. Both separated from our herd.