‘Pegasus, what is it?’ Emily ran over and stroked the stallion’s quivering muzzle. ‘Do you know Paelen?’
Pegasus snorted angrily, rose on his hind legs and came down brutally on the floorboards. His sharp hooves cut into the wood, tearing up huge splinters.
‘Please, stop,’ Emily cried. ‘You’ve got to calm down. My father’s asleep in the apartment below us. If he hears you, he’ll come up and find you!’
Pegasus stopped tearing at the boards, but shook his head, still snorting and whinnying. Emily looked desperately over to Joel.
‘What do you think is wrong with him?’
‘Easy boy, calm down,’ Joel soothed. He turned to Emily. ‘Seems that Pegasus doesn’t like Paelen, whoever he is.’
‘Is that it?’ she asked the stallion. ‘Don’t you like Paelen?’
Pegasus became still and strangely silent. He looked Emily straight in the eye. In that moment, Emily felt that tight connection to him. Somehow she knew that Paelen was someone who had hurt Pegasus and caused a lot of trouble for him. As she stared into his large dark eyes, strange images suddenly flooded her mind. She saw Pegasus in the dark storm-filled sky with lightning flashing all around him. She felt his determination, his fear – and his urgent need to get somewhere, knowing it was a matter of life and death. Then she saw a boy in the sky beside the stallion. The boy was older than Joel, but not nearly as big. He was flying beside Pegasus and reaching across to the stallion. Then she saw him snatching Pegasus’s golden bridle away. Suddenly there was a bright, blinding flash of lightning and terrible, searing pain—
‘Emily,’ Joel repeated. ‘Emily, what’s wrong?’
Breaking the connection, Emily blinked and staggered on her feet. ‘Joel?’ she said in a soft and distant voice.
‘Are you all right?’
‘I’m, I’m fine, I think,’ Emily’s head started to clear. She concentrated on Joel, now looking anxiously at her. ‘I just saw the strangest thing,’ she said.
‘What?’
Emily looked back to the stallion. ‘Pegasus, what I just saw? It was true, wasn’t it? Paelen took the bridle from you. It was because of him you were hit by lightning.’
Pegasus snorted and butted Emily gently. Yes.
‘Please tell me,’ Joel pressed. ‘What did you see?’
‘I don’t know how to explain it,’ she said. ‘But it was kind of like watching television, only much more intense. When Paelen got the golden bridle off Pegasus, it attracted lightning and they were both hit.’
‘So now we’ve got to find this Paelen and get it back,’ Joel suggested.
‘That’s going to be impossible,’ Emily said. Stroking Pegasus, she explained about the conversation with her father and how Paelen had been taken by the secret government agency, the CRU.
‘I’ve never heard of the crew,’ Joel said, bewildered. ‘And my dad worked for the United Nations.’
‘Not crew,’ Emily corrected. ‘C-R-U. Central Research Unit. They just pronounce it like the word “crew”. Not a lot of people know about them. These guys deal with weird science stuff and anything to do with aliens. My dad says, when the CRU come to get you, you’re never seen or heard from again. He’s had to deal with them a couple of times in his career, and each time, he was threatened and ordered to stay quiet or there’d be trouble. If the CRU ever learned about Pegasus, they would take him away and we’d never see him again.’
‘If they’re as bad as you say,’ Joel said, ‘we’d probably disappear too, just because we’ve seen him.’
‘Exactly,’ Emily said, ‘which is why we have to be extra careful until Pegasus’s wing heals. He’s got to get safely away to finish whatever it is he came here for.’
‘Did he show you what that was?’
‘No,’ Emily said. ‘All I saw was Paelen stealing the bridle and then both of them getting hit by lightning. But it felt like life and death kind of stuff.’ She turned back to the stallion, ‘Isn’t it Pegasus?’
The stallion nodded and pounded the floorboards.
‘So if we can’t go after Paelen to get the bridle, what do we do?’ Joel asked.
Emily shrugged. ‘I guess we just keep Pegasus safe and warm until he heals.’
Joel nodded. ‘And to do that, he needs plenty of good food and care. Did you find any honey?’
Emily started to go through the bags she’d carried up from her kitchen. ‘I’ve got some honey, corn syrup, brown sugar and white sugar and more sweet cereal. But I still can’t believe a horse should be eating all this stuff.’
Pegasus protested loudly.
‘Sorry Pegs,’ she said. She looked at Joel with a half-smile. ‘He really hates being called a horse, doesn’t he?’
‘Wouldn’t you, if you were him?’ said Joel.
As Emily poured half the box of sweet cereal into a huge plastic bowl, Joel opened the can of corn syrup and poured it on top. He added several spoonfuls of brown sugar.