That had been three nights ago. She could not believe how much terrain she had covered. She was amazed at how fast she could gallop without a pack of rocks, for that was what they had been carrying for the most part.
And now Yazz stood on the crest of this butte and looked at the sky crackling with lightning and thought, This is my palace and it is lined with silver. I am free. Free!
Tijo raced to the back of the cave where Hold On was rearing. He had to dodge his hooves. The air was thick with gusts from the mad flapping of the bats’ wings. He screamed at the bats and flailed his arms. Hold On’s face was a mask of blood. Three bats hung from his chest, another two from his neck. Tijo swatted them until most flew away, although Tijo shuddered as one brushed against his skin.
A sharp whinny tore the night, anguished and accusatory, for indeed Tijo had let Hold On sleep.
Tijo approached him carefully. He knew he had to get onto Hold On’s back to get them out of the cave, but Tijo was nowhere near the mounting rock.
Somehow, though, he managed to scramble onto Hold On just as the bats returned. He scraped a bat from Hold On’s withers, then tapped lightly with his heels. Hold On galloped out of the cave with bats clinging to his chest and neck. It was still raining hard, but the rain had never felt so good. Tijo beat most of the bats off in less than a minute. The horrid creatures staggered into the night; their furry wings were quickly soaked, which made flying difficult for them. Tijo leaned down and scraped the last one from Hold On’s flank.
No more caves! Hold On snorted.
“No more,” Tijo agreed.
Hold On kept flinching his ears and shaking his head as if to vanquish the sound of the flapping wings.
Tijo removed the strip of buckskin he wore around his head and used it to mop the blood from Hold On’s face. There were salves in his pack that would stop the bleeding, but to his dismay, he realized he had left the pack in the cave. He would have to return, for the pack had Haru’s pipe as well as the piñon salve.
Tijo stroked Hold On with the buckskin and hummed a soft tune that Haru had sung to him. The stallion understood that Tijo had to go back into the cave, and began to tremble. Tijo pressed his cheek to Hold On’s face, then snapped the band of the slingshot that hung from his waist, to indicate that the bats were no match for him.
The rain had stopped completely by the time Tijo walked back out of the cave with his pack and headed to where he had left Hold On. He inhaled sharply and stopped in his tracks. Ahead in a shaft of moonlight a figure made its way toward them. The long-eared creature he had spied on the crest was moving down the slope. It was like a horse but not quite. Tijo was frightened and came up beside Hold On. There was a sudden wind shift and the stallion caught the odor. He neighed tentatively. The new creature trotted forward, making odd noises that were not quite whinnies, but flat honks almost like those of geese. Their conversation left Tijo lost.
The longer he looked at the creature, the more peculiar it appeared. Its back had a deep sway to it. The hooves were ridiculously tiny and its ears ridiculously long. The creature was an odd assemblage of parts that did not seem to match.
Her name is Yazz. Hold On gave a nod of sorts toward the creature but seemed slightly wary. Tijo pressed his face close to Hold On.
“But what is she?”
A mule. She escaped from a cruel Iber called El Miedo with many horses and many mules. She was tired of hauling rocks in a jerkline. It’s a brutal life being a mule, even with a good master.
Yazz turned to Tijo and, blinking her eyes, gave her odd whinny. “The boy speaks horse?”
“Not exactly,” Hold On replied. “But not Iber.” He paused and lay back his ears slightly. “Are there Iber near?”
“I can see he is not Iber. And the Iber are not near. You need not worry.” Yazz took a step closer and blinked again. Tijo blinked back. They had never quite seen each other’s kind. They both had the same thought. So close to something I know but not exactly.
Yazz then said something that Tijo didn’t understand. He was captivated by her huge shining eyes, so dark and glossy that they reflected his own face as clearly as the black water in a still pond. Hold On’s eyes were mostly cloudy, filled with a perpetual mist. Sometimes, Tijo could glimpse a reflection, but nothing like the face he was now seeing.
Although Tijo was unsure what a mule was, exactly, he found the creature to be a comforting presence. He had not felt lonely since he met Hold On, but now he felt they were somehow more complete. The moon rose higher and Tijo felt as if they were wrapped in a cocoon of silver light.
The three of them walked on a few paces. The fury of the storm had subsided and an unearthly peace had descended upon them. The stars spilled with light and as they moved on with Tijo atop Hold On, they spoke occasionally but more often fell into the long elliptical silences that had no need to be filled with words. It was clear that Yazz would be joining them.
Hold On had explained to Yazz that they were heading north in hopes of reuniting with Estrella and the herd and to find the sweet grass.
They crossed a high plain, a cold relentless wind cutting across it like a blade. Hold On and Yazz huddled close together as they walked. Tijo stretched himself as flat as possible on the stallion’s back to lessen the resistance against the wind. The way often became rough and uneven with rock and rubble. Yet the small-footed Yazz was as steady as any creature. It was a lonely, shelterless place, but they continued.
Over the course of the next several days, the silence was broken more frequently and Tijo began to understand the strange voice of the mule. Hold On was very curious about El Miedo and especially the vast herd that this terrible man had brought with him. He wondered if any of his friends from the old country were among them. Yet Tijo didn’t understand all of it, and was surprised when Hold On suddenly stopped in his tracks, nearly sending Tijo flying over his head.
“Pego! You say this El Miedo has a stallion called Pego?”
“El Miedo does not call him that, but the stallion claims he was named for the star horse Pegasus.”
“I know Pego. Believe me, if his master is as cruel as you say, he has found himself the perfect horse. Together, they will be deadly.”
From then on, Tijo could feel Hold On’s apprehension grow. Countless times a day, Hold On would turn around and try to catch a scent on the wind — the scent of humans, and the dark, treacherous stallion called Pego.
“Do not worry, my friend,” Yazz said when Hold On stopped to sniff the air the next morning. “That is not the scent of Iber. What we must look out for is the bobcat.”
“Bobcat?” Hold On’s ears shoved forward as he shuddered.
“Yes,” Yazz said. “Smaller than mountain lions but smarter and very sly. Like coyotes.”
Tijo understood fragments of this exchange. “Bobcats!” He curled his hand into a half-open fist. His fingers clawed the air like fangs. Yes, he knew about bobcats. They were ferocious, much more intelligent than mountain lions and more savage than any coyote. In the village, they called them baby killers, for they were known to sneak into lodges and snatch babies from their cradleboards. Haru herself had lost a child to a bobcat. It had dropped from a tree and ripped the cradleboard right off the mother’s back.
“But now I have you,” she had said, trying to comfort Tijo after the story made him cry.
“But maybe you could have had both of us, and I would have had a friend, a brother.”
“True,” Haru said in a wistful voice. At that moment, Tijo vowed that someday he would grow big enough and strong enough and clever enough to trap and kill a bobcat.
Hold On was listening carefully as Yazz described how bobcats had attacked the Iber encampment and killed a foal.
“So we have two common enemies — the bobcats and the Ibers,” Hold On said grimly.
“Though it is not our enemies that count, but our friends,” Yazz said. “I think I have two friends here.” She looked steadily at Hold On, then swung her head towa
rd Tijo. Hold On sighed. His ears relaxed and he swished his tail.
“Yes, friends. You have two friends here. For this boy is like no human you have ever met.”
“I believe you,” Yazz said quietly.
Hold On knew a bit about mules, but he had never really understood about life on a jerkline, which sounded worse than any life he could imagine for a horse. The bridles, the whips, and the spurs he had known were nothing compared to the horrible instruments of the jerkline with its yokes across their withers. There could be anywhere from eight to twenty animals in one line and they were not all mules.
“Yes, some were horses. Of course not fine stallions like you, Hold On.”
“No need to flatter me.”
“I’m not flattering you. They saved pure breeds like yourself for battle and parades. You were bred for speed and agility.” Yazz sighed. “The peculiar creature that was created when a donkey and a Jennet were mated was bred for strength rather than speed. For stability, steadiness of foot. That’s why our hooves are shaped the way they are. And we have a certain mild temperament.”
“But why finally did you decide to leave? What gave you the courage?” Tijo asked.
“Why do we all leave?” Yazz replied, looking at Hold On. There was a long pause.
“To be owned,” Hold On said, “is unnatural.”
“Yes, even now, I can still feel the yoke like a shade across my shoulders. I feel the bang of the bar against my hock and the chafe of the rings on my back. I can even feel the ghosts of my yoke mates.”
“Those things will fade,” Hold On said. “You must try to forget.”
“Yes, I know,” Yazz said. “But the real challenge is to try and discover new things to remember.” There was a sparkle in the mule’s eyes.
Yazz was right, Hold On thought to himself. There were so many things he wanted to remember from his travels with the first herd since coming to the New World, things he missed — not just Estrella, but the cozy natterings of Corazón and Angela, the solid common sense of Grullo, the dreamy looks that sometimes passed across the colt Sky’s face with his one eye that was as blue as the sky and the other that was as dark as night. Those things he did not want to forget.
Tijo was silent for a long time as the two creatures talked. He did not want to forget everything. He did not want to forget Haru. He didn’t want to forget all the stories she had told him, the songs she had sung him to sleep. Haru had taught him how to bring down swifts with a slingshot and how to slow-roast them in their feathers over a cedar fire. There were so many things she had taught him that he was not willing to let slip away.
It was now the heat of the day, and they had settled under the spreading branches of a cottonwood. When the sun slipped farther down, Tijo would go to the creek with a fishing jig he had fashioned to try for some trout. Fish did not interest Hold On or Yazz. They ate only grasses. We are so different, Tijo thought.
Tijo became more anxious as Hold On grew more intent on finding Estrella and the first herd. What would they think of him? After all the stories Tijo had heard of cruel masters who put bits in horses’ mouths or yoked mules’ shoulders and tethered them to a jerkline, he worried what these horses would do when they saw him. I am the enemy, he thought.
Yet each day, he understood more and more of the talk between Hold On and Yazz. They called it horse language, although Yazz had a slightly different accent or perhaps a word or two might vary.
His own language began to fade away to the point where, on occasion, he even dreamed in the horse tongue, and he could not help but wonder if he was becoming more horse than human. But what would happen if the herd abandoned him? What would he do if he was spurned and cast out? To return to the clan that had all but rejected him when he was under Haru’s protection was unthinkable. However, there was nothing he could do. The choice would be theirs — the choice of the first herd.
It was the first dawn after the search for Hold On ended. They had not traveled far, stopping just before first light since the ground was broken and not made for galloping. Estrella had been grazing a bit away from the herd. She did not regret her decision to end the search for Hold On, but nothing could fill a void beside her, the ghost of a companionship that once had been.
There was a piece of Estrella’s mind that would always seek the sound of the stallion’s hooves, the pounding of his huge heart when he galloped beside her, the keenness of the whinny with which he greeted each new day in this world of freedom.
The wind shifted slightly and began to build. Clouds were churning in a low seeping arc. She turned around and saw that the colt Sky had moved a bit closer. Sky paid her no heed but shoved his ears forward. A confusing scene blew in on the edges of a gust.
“What is it?” Estrella asked as she caught the complicated scent. It was like a horse but not quite. Then a third scent assaulted their nostrils — sweat! Human sweat. The colt and the filly laid back their ears and stood trembling.
“It can’t be!” Sky said.
“Don’t panic,” Estrella said. She peeled back her lips and rotated her ears in opposite circular patterns, twitching from her withers to her shoulders, as if invisible flies were biting her. The odor was coming closer. Soon she heard the hoofbeats of Grullo, Arriero, and the rest of the herd.
“What is it?” Arriero asked.
“It’s boy sweat,” Corazón replied. “Just one human, one boy.”
“But the other scent?” Estrella asked.
“Mule,” Angela said.
“Or donkey.” Grullo peeled back his lips.
“No, I think mule,” Angela said firmly.
Estrella had no idea what they were talking about. “Mule? Donkey?” she said, confused.
Corazón stepped forward and turned to the others. “Estrella was foaled on the ship. There were no mules on the Seeker’s ship, remember.”
Suddenly, an intensely familiar scent threaded through the air. “Hold On! It’s Hold On!” Estrella dashed out at a mad gallop toward her old friend.
“It’s Hold On,” she whinnied shrilly, then stumbled in shock. A human was on his back, and the stallion’s proud head seemed to droop as if sniffing the ground beneath his feet. Was it with shame? The magnificent silvery tail that had flashed behind him like a comet when he galloped was a charred stump. He was painfully thin and his broad chest appeared to have shrunk. And this human was perched on his back!
Hold On himself felt as if he had been struck by a thunderbolt. One minute the filly he had known so well was whinnying a joyous greeting and rushing toward him, and then there was a terrible skidding sound. She was stopping. She could not come near. The stallion knew what she had seen. What stopped her.
He began to buck, not hard, but the message was clear to Tijo. Off! Off, Tijo! Off my back.
That message was the last one Tijo could understand. Something had happened to their language. It felt as if it was dissolving. The sounds and gestures were becoming separated from the meaning.
The young filly stared in disbelief at Hold On. Is this a dream? Estrella thought. Could it possibly be real? She took a hesitant step forward and stretched out her neck. Then, peeling back her lips, she inhaled deeply the pungent tang of Hold On.
And the stallion, too, savored the grassy redolence of Estrella. Hold On’s sense of smell was so keen now, it was as if the short but complex history of Estrella’s life was revealing itself through her scent. There was the fragrance from her dam Perlina’s milk. There was the salt of the sea. There was the damp thick smell of the jungle far to the south through which they had trekked, and the dust of the plains as well as the ash of the canyon fire. It was all there. But there was also the scent of fear. Hold On could hear her rapid breathing and the nervous snorts of confusion as Estrella cautiously approached him. Then, within seconds, they were nuzzling each other, wallowing in this ocean of scent.
Tijo stood apart, wobbling slightly. He felt incomplete, and for the first time in days, he was aware of his lameness. He l
ooked longingly at those four strong legs of his friend that had carried him so far. He felt the gaze of the other horses settling upon him.
Yazz regarded the stallion and the filly and felt their joy, then turned her attention to the other horses. They were all so beautiful. Even though their coats were rough with burrs and some of their manes were singed from the canyon fires, they were sleek and magnificent. She felt ugly and ungainly. But she knew she had to step forward and do something. The tension crackled in the air like the heat lightning that sizzled low on the horizon and signaled distant thunderstorms. The two other stallions were stiff with near rage at the sight of a human. Their flashing eyes radiated danger. The two old mares were trembling with fear. The colts appeared ready to bolt.
Yazz knew that the horses were shocked to see a human, let alone one riding without bit or saddle. She felt for the boy. Tijo scuttled off a short way, his lame leg dragging like the wing of a wounded bird.
Yazz began to speak in her odd voice, which began like a whinny, then slid into a swooping hee-haw. “You are correct. No bit. No saddle. And yet the stallion is nearly blind.” She turned and peered directly at Tijo with a questioning look and made a neighing sound closer in tone to that of a horse. “How do you and the stallion move along so well together with no bit, no reins?”
Tijo opened his hands, palms to the sky. “What is a bit?”
“He speaks horse?” Grullo asked. He was not sure precisely what the boy had said. But the rest of the herd were mumbling to each other in dismay and began to toss their heads nervously.