I held my breath.
He clopped his way past me to the river and began to drink, presenting me with a front and center view of his butt. More horses came: perlino, white, golden buckskin, bay . . . They all headed to the river, drank, flicked their ears, and pretended not to see me.
I was out of luck. I sat there and watched them drink, holding the stupid apple in my hand. Should I go up to them making cooing noises? Teddy Jo said not to move and to let them come to me. Well, they weren’t coming.
What else could I get? What could I do to get there fast enough? A car wouldn’t do it. I had saved an ifrit hound from ghoulism a few weeks ago. Maybe he could carry me away from Mishmar long enough for me to escape my father. No, that was a dumb idea. He wouldn’t be fast enough. My dad would catch us and then we’d both be killed.
A single horse peeled away from the herd. Dark brown and so glossy she didn’t look real, she stood about fifteen hands high. Her crest and croup darkened to near black, while her stomach was a rich chestnut. On the flanks, barely visible under the dark wings, the chestnut broke the dark brown in dapples. She looked at me. I looked at her. She walked three steps forward and swiped the apple from my palm.
“Hi,” I said.
The horse crunched the apple. That was probably as good a response as I was going to get.
I reached out and petted her neck. The mare nudged me with her nose.
“I don’t have more magic apples. But I do have some carrots and sugar cubes.” I reached into my backpack and held out a sugar cube. “Let me put a saddle on you and I’ll give you one.”
And I was talking to the magic winged horse as if she were a human being. That’s it. I had officially gone crazy.
I reached for the blanket. Her wings snapped open. The left wing took me right below the neck. It was like being hit with a two-by-four. I fell and scrambled to my feet in case she decided to stomp me.
The horse neighed and showed me her teeth.
“Are you laughing?”
She neighed again. Behind me the herd neighed back. Great. Now the horses were making fun of me.
I held out a sugar cube. She reached over and grabbed it off my hand. Crunching ensued.
I extracted the second sugar cube and held up the blanket. “Alright, Twinkle Pie or whatever your name is. I put the blanket on, you get more sugar. Your choice.”
? ? ?
SWOOPING DOWN TO the Keep’s main tower sounded like an awesome idea when I originally decided to do it. For one, it would let me avoid being seen, and Jim could meet me up there with my aunt’s bones, avoiding most of the Keep’s population. At least that’s how I explained it to Teddy Jo when I asked him to go ahead of me and tell Jim to meet me there.
In theory it all sounded good. In practice, the top of the Keep’s tower made for a very small and very difficult target. Especially from up here.
After the first fifteen minutes of flight I decided that I could stop clutching at Sugar every time she beat her wings, which signaled to her that it was time for aerial acrobatics. She threw herself into it with gusto, neighing with delight every time I screamed. I managed not to throw up, she managed not to kill me, and by the end of the thirty-minute test flight we had reached an understanding. I realized that she didn’t plan to murder me and she realized that I meant every word when I promised to drop the bag with sugar to the ground if she didn’t stop doing barrel rolls. Christopher watched it all from a safe distance. I heard him laughing a few times. I’d never live it down.
However, landing on the Keep’s tower presented a whole new challenge. We passed over the mile-wide stretch of clear ground around the Keep and circled the tower. Below me, Jim, Dali, Doolittle, and Teddy Jo were talking. I couldn’t see Jim’s face from all the way up here, but I recognized his pose well enough. It was his “what the hell is this bullshit?” pose.
Dali looked up, saw me, and waved, jumping up and down.
“Take it easy,” I said. “Let’s land right here . . . oh God!”
Sugar spread her wings and dropped into a swan dive. Wind whistled past my face.
“Sugar.” I put some steel into my voice. We were going to crash. We’d smash against the stone and there would be nothing left of us but a wet spot. “Sugar!”
Teddy Jo threw himself flat. Jim leapt at Dali, knocking her down to the floor. I caught a flash of Doolittle’s face as we whizzed by, Sugar’s wings clearing his head by about four inches. He was laughing.
“You’re a mean horse!”
Sugar neighed, beat her wings, and turned around.
“Control your horse!” Jim snarled.
“You control your horse.” Oh wow, now that was a clever comeback. He’d surely drop to his knees and bow before my intellectual brilliance.
Sugar touched down on the stone.
“A pegasi!” Dali pushed her glasses back on her face and reached out to Sugar.
Jim grabbed her and yanked her back. “What’s wrong with you?”
She pushed out of his arms and gently patted Sugar. The pegasi lowered her head.
“See? She can sense my magic.” Dali rubbed the mare’s neck. “You are so beautiful.”
“I don’t want to dismount,” I told them. “I don’t know if she’ll let me back on.”
Teddy Jo picked up two big sacks sitting next to Doolittle, slowly approached us, and handed them to me. I hooked them up to my saddle.
“Blood is in the left, bones are in the right,” Doolittle said. “The bones are vacuum packed. The blood has been chilled and is split into three different thermoses.”
“Thank you,” I told him.
Dali raised her arms. I bent down and hugged her.
“You can do it,” the white weretiger said. “You will kick ass.”
If only I had her confidence.
“Do you have your food and water?” Teddy Jo asked.
“Yes.” He’d already asked me that this morning.
“And your compass?”
“Yes.”
“And you brought the ski mask?”
“Yes. It’s not cold, though, even up above.”
“It’s not for the cold. The pegasi like to chase birds. Birds don’t like to be chased.”
“Okay.” Whatever that meant.
Jim picked up Doolittle, wheelchair and all, and raised him up. I hugged the Pack’s medmage.
“Good luck,” he told me.
“Thank you.” I would need every drop.
“Remember, try to bond with the pegasi.” Teddy Jo said. “Treat her as a friend, not a horse.”
“I would try to be friends with her but she’s too busy being a smartass.”
“Now you know how the rest of us feel,” Jim said. “Who the hell is that?”
I glanced in the direction he was pointing, where a man rode the air currents on blood-red wings. “That’s Christopher.”
“Who?” Jim looked like he was about to have a heart attack.
“Christopher. He remembered how to fly.”
Dali laughed.
Jim stared at me. I had to go before he suffered an apoplexy and the rest of the Pack, with Dali at the head, came after me. “Bye!”
Sugar galloped off the edge of the tower and then we were flying again, the remains of my aunt secure in my saddlebags.
CHAPTER
10