“You caught King Edward’s scent?” G said.
Pet barked twice and ran back to the door.
“We can’t go now,” G argued. “It’s too dangerous.”
With another flash, she was the naked girl. “We have to go now! It’s already faint, and the rain will make it worse.” She flashed to the dog again. This time, Jane hadn’t had a chance to cover his eyes. How did Pet switch forms so easily, when G, and now Jane apparently, were governed by the sun?
He’d have to focus on that later.
“Pet, we have no supplies.”
The dog growled.
“All right, all right. We go now.”
G grabbed his cloak and saddlebag, removed his lady from his head to set her on his shoulder, and they followed Pet out into the night.
Pet was a fast tracker. With her nose to the ground, she slipped along, somehow maintaining a swift pace without breaking contact between her nostrils and the dirt. G tried to keep up. At least the moon was especially bright tonight, making it easier for G to keep from stumbling.
They had to stop often so that G could catch his breath. During one of these rests, with ferret-Jane asleep around his neck, Pet flashed into a girl and stood before him. “Why can’t you just change?”
G averted his eyes from her southern hemisphere, and then from her northern hemisphere, and then decided the only safe place to look was the stars.
“I can’t control it. It’s a curse. When the sun’s down, I’m human. When it’s up, I’m a steed.” Okay, steed was probably pushing it.
Pet groaned. “Get yer house in order.”
“My house? I have no house.”
“Not the one over there,” she said, pointing in the direction of London. (He could see her pointing out of the corner of his eye, even though his gaze was still averted.) “Your house in here.” She poked his forehead and then his chest.
“Ow,” G said. Her fingers were incredibly strong. “Ow. How am I supposed to—”
But she flashed back to her dog form and began running again before he could finish his question.
They ran and rested and ran again. Breathless and panting, G longed for the sunrise, partly because it would give his human feet a break, and partly because Pet seemed thoroughly unimpressed by his long-distance running, and she refused to hide it.
Then Pet stopped and looked around, confused. She sniffed in one direction, then the other, then the other . . . and didn’t pick one. She sniffed out every possible path, and even up the trunks of a few trees, and then she lay down and whimpered, her brown eyes drooping at the corners.
“What’s the matter, girl?” G crouched down and stroked Pet’s head.
A flash of light, and Pet was a girl, and G was still crouched over her, stroking her hair. It was a move that definitely breached the boundaries of propriety. He leapt back so quickly he almost threw Jane-the-ferret into the trees.
Pet-the-girl looked like she might cry. “His Majesty was traveling with one other person. I was tracking both of their scents.” Her nose wrinkled as if she found the smell of this mystery person unpleasant. “But His Majesty’s scent, it . . . it stops. Something bad happened here.”
Before G could ask her to explain, she flashed back into a dog. She seemed more comfortable that way, as if she could better manage her despair in that form.
G felt his little ferret shaking on his shoulder, and knew that Jane must be fearing the worst for Edward.
“He’s okay,” G whispered, then faced the dog. “Pet, we’ll follow the second scent. If it doesn’t lead us to Edward, it will certainly lead us to answers.” His wife trembled again. “But I’m sure it will lead us to Edward.”
Jane gave a ferrety nod and flattened herself, ready for him to start running once more.
G wasn’t nearly as excited to be reunited with Poor, Dear Edward as Jane was, though.
He wondered if that made him a bad person.
Several hours later, and after a too-brief nap, G became a horse, and Jane became a girl.
He wondered what they were going to do with no saddle (which they’d left in their rush from the barn), but Jane didn’t hesitate to climb up on his back.
(At this particular era in time, it was scandalous for a woman to ride with no saddle. It would be considered reprehensible—and possibly justification for a prison sentence—for a woman to ride with no saddle on a horse who is really a man. Even if that man were her husband.)
No one had ever ridden G before. It was a strange, but not entirely unpleasant sensation to feel Jane’s weight on his back, her legs gripping him around the middle.
“Do you mind if I hold on to your mane?” she asked, in as proper a voice as she would’ve used at a dinner party when asking, “Would you mind passing the butter?”
G held his head back toward her in response.
She took a handful, but she didn’t hold too tightly.
“Let’s go find Edward, Pet,” she said to the waiting dog. “This scent must lead us to Helmsley.”