It looks as though it has been winter forever,” Marjorie Westriding Yrarier remarked, careful to keep her voice level and without complaint. Complaint would not have been diplomatic, but her host and escort, Obermun Jerril bon Haunser, would not allow himself to take offense at a mere expression of opinion. Taking offense would be even more undiplomatic than giving it — certainly by someone who did not know her but whose business it undoubtedly was to get to know her as soon as possible. Looking at the angular planes of his long, powerful face, she wondered if he ever would. He had not the look of a man who cared much who others were or what they thought.
However, he set himself to attempt charm with an unaccustomed smile. “When summer comes,” he said in the heavily accented Terran he used as diplomatic speech, “you will believe it has lasted forever also. All the seasons on Grass are eternal. Summer never ends, nor fall. And though you do not see it at this moment, spring is upon us.”
“How would I know?” she asked, genuinely curious. From the window of the main house, which was set upon a slight rise, the landscape below her seemed an unending ocean of grayed pastels and palest gold, dried grasses moving like the waves of a shoreless sea, a surface broken only by scattered islands of broad and contorted trees, their tops so thickly twigged they appeared as solid masses inked blackly against the turbid sky. It was not like spring at home. It was not like any season at home, where she now desperately longed to be, despite the enthusiasm she had at first whipped up for this mission.
“How do you know it is spring?” she demanded, turning away from the window toward him.
They stood amid high, echoing walls in an arctic and empty chamber of what was to be the embassy. The distant ceiling curved in ivory traceries of plaster groins; tall glass doors opened through gelid arches onto a balustraded terrace; pale glowing floors reflected their movements as though from polished ice through a thin, cold film of dust. Though it was one of the main reception rooms of the estancia, it did not seem to require furnishings or curtains across the frigid glass. It seemed content with its numbing vacancy, as did the dozen other rooms they had visited, each as tall, wintery, and self-contained as this one.
The estancia, though conscientiously maintained, had been untenanted for some time, and Marjorie, Lady Westriding, had the feeling that the house preferred it that way. Furniture would be an intrusion in these rooms. They had accommodated themselves to doing without. Rejecting carpets and curtains in favor of this chill simplicity, they were content.
Unaware of her brief fantasy the Obermun suggested, “Look at the grasses along the stairs to the terrace. What do you see?”
She stared, convincing herself at last that the amethyst shadow she saw there was not merely an effect of the often very tricky light. “Purple?” she asked. “Purple grass?”
“We call that particular variety Cloak of Kings,” he said. “There are hundreds of grasses on this world, of many shapes and sizes and of an unbelievable array of colors. We have no flowers in the sense someone from Sanctity would understand, but we do not lack for bloom.” He used the word “Sanctity,” as did most of those they had encountered upon Grass, as a virtual synonym for Terra. As before, she longed to correct him but did not. The time when Sanctity had been contained on Terra was many generations past, but there was no denying its ubiquity and virtual omnipotence on man’s birthplace.
“I have read Snipopean’s account of the Grass Gardens of Klive,” she murmured, not mentioning it was almost the only thing she had been able to read about Grass. Sanctity knew nothing. Terra knew nothing. There was no diplomatic contact and no information could be transmitted and returned much more quickly than the Yrariers themselves could arrive — months after Sanctity had begged permission, months after permission for an ambassador had been given, months after Roderigo’s old uncle — now long since dead — had begged them to come. All had happened as swiftly as possible, and yet almost two Terran years had passed since these aristocrats had said they would allow an embassy. Now the Yrariers must make up for lost time. She went on calmly, “The Grass Gardens of Klive are at the estancia of the Damfels, I believe?”
He acknowledged her slight interrogative tone with a nod. “Btw Damfels,” he said, emphasizing the honorific “Stavenger and Rowena bon Damfels would have been pleased to welcome you, but they are in mourning just now.”
“Ah?” she said in a questioning tone.
“They recently lost a daughter,” he said, an expression of distaste and embarrassment upon his face. “At the first spring Hunt. A hunting accident.”
“I sympathize with their sorrow.” She paused for a moment, allowing her own face to reflect an appropriately assessed measure of compassion. What could she say? Would too much sympathy be effusive? Would curiosity be misplaced? A hunting accident? The expression on the man’s face indicated it would be safer to let more information be given rather than ask for it. She waited long enough for the Obermun to continue, and when he did not she returned to the safety of the former subject. “What does it mean when the Cloak of Kings shows purple along its bottom?”
“The color will be halfway up the stems in a matter of days, and you will begin to see the flush of the gardens — rose and amber, turquoise, and emerald. This estancia was named Opal Hill because of the play of color each spring evokes. These gardens are young, but well laid out. The flat place there at the bottom of the stairs is what we call a first surface. All grass gardens have such an enclosed, flat area of low turf It is the place from which all garden walks begin. From that place, trails lead from prospect to prospect. In a week, the winds will soften. We have entered upon the spring collect. By the end of the period—”
“A period being?”
“Sixty days. An arbitrary choice made by the earliest settlers. When a year extends over two thousand days, it is hard to make shorter lengths of time mean much. A period is sixty days, ten periods make a collect, four collects — one corresponding to each season — make a year. We reflect our Terran ancestry by dividing each period into four fifteen-day weeks, but there is no religious significance attached.”
She nodded her understanding, risked saying, “No Sabbath.”
“No planetary religious holidays of any kind. Which is not to say there is no religion, simply that matters of faith have been irrevocably removed from any civil support or recognition. Our ancestors, while all benefiting from noble blood, came from a variety of cultures. They wished to avoid conflict in such matters.”
“We have much to learn,” she said, fingering the limp leather of the little testament in her pocket. Before they left Terra, Father Sandoval had sent it to the Church in Exile to be blessed by the Pope. Father Sandoval, claiming to know her better than she knew herself, had said it would help reconcile her to the experience after her first enthusiasm wore off. So far she had noticed little reconciliation. “The authorities at Sanctity told us almost nothing about Grass.”
“If you will forgive my saying so, Terrans know almost nothing about Grass. They have not, in the past, been particularly interested.”
Again that confusion between Terra, the planet, and Sanctity, the religious empire. She nodded, accepting his not ungentle chiding. Either way, it was probably true enough. Terrans had not cared about Grass. Not about Semling, or The Pearly Gates, or Shame, or Repentance, or any of the hundred human-settled planets far and adrift in the sea of space. What was left of human society on Terra had been too busy forcing its own population down and restoring an ecology virtually destroyed by the demands of an insatiable humanity to concern itself with those emigrations that had made its own salvation possible. Sanctity squatted on the doorstep of the north, regulating the behavior of its adherents wherever it could, while everyone else on Terra got on with trying to survive. Once each Terran year Sanctity celebrated with flags and speeches and off-planet visitors. The rest of the time Sanctity might as well have been somewhere else.
Sanctity was not Terra. Terra was home, and this was not. Though Marjorie wanted to say this loudly, with emotion, she restrained herself.
“Will you show me the stables?” she inquired. “I assume our horses have been revived and delivered?”
Until this moment she had seen nothing approaching real discomfort on the aristocrat’s face. He had met them in the reception area of the revivatory at the port, seen to the collection of their belongings, provided them with two aircars to bring them to the estancia which they were to occupy — aircars they were to retain during their “visit,” he had said. He had remained to guide her through the summer domestic quarters while her husband, Roderigo Yrarier, toured the winter quarters and the offices of the new embassy with Eric bon Haunser, a younger but no less dutiful member of the Grassian aristocracy. Throughout this not inconsiderable itinerary, Obermun bon Haunser had been smooth and proper to a fault, but the question of the horses made him uncomfortable. If he did not precisely lose countenance, something at the corners of his mouth let composure slip, though subtly and only momentarily.
Marjorie, whose Olympic gold medals had been in dressage, puissance jumping, and endurance events, was accustomed to reading such twitches of the skin. Horses communicated in this way. “Is something wrong?” she inquired gently, keeping herself strictly under control.
“We had not been…” He paused, searching for a way to say it. “We had not been advised in advance about the animals.”
Animals? Since when were horses “animals"?
“Does it create a problem? Someone from Semling said the estancia has stables.”
“No, not stables,” he said. “There are some shelters nearby which were used by Hippae. Before this place was built, needless to say.”
Why needless to say? And Hippae? That would be the horselike animal native to this planet. “Are they so different that our mounts can’t occupy their stalls?”
“Hippae would not occupy stalls,” he replied, seeming less than candid as he did so. He lost composure sufficiently to gnaw a thumbnail before continuing. “The shelter near Opal Hill is not being used by Hippae now. and it might serve to house your horses well enough, I suppose. However, at the time of your arrival we did not have available to us any suitable conveyance for large animals.” Again, he attempted a smile. “Please excuse us, Lady Marjorie. We were set at a small contretemps that confused us for the moment. I am sure we will have solved the problem within a day or two.”
“The horses have not been revived, then.” Her voice was sharper than she had intended, edgy with outrage. Poor things! Left lying about in that cold, nightmarish nothingness.
“Not yet. Within the next few days.”
She took control of herself once more. It would not do to lose her temper and appear at a disadvantage. “Would you like me to come to the port? Or to send one of the children? If you have no one accustomed to handling horses, Stella would be glad to go, or Anthony.” Or I, she thought. Or Rigo. Any of us, man. For the love of heaven…
“Your son?”
He sounded so immediately relieved that she knew this had been part of the problem. Some diplomatic nicety, no doubt. It was possibly thought inappropriate for the ambassador or his wife to have to attend to such matters, and yet who else could? Well, let it pass. Show no anxiety. Don’t risk eventual acceptance of the embassy over the matter of a day or two — this embassy that might almost have been an answer to her prayers, this opportunity to do something of significance. Don Quixote and El Dia Octavo could sleep that much longer, along with Her Majesty. Irish Lass, Millefiori, and Blue Star. “We are looking forward to riding to our first Hunt,” she said; then, seeing his dismay, “Only as followers, of course.”
Seemingly, even this was not appropriate. An expression of outright panic showed on the man’s face. Good Lord, what had she said now?
“We have made arrangements,” he said. “A balloon-car. Perhaps this first time, until you are more familiar.”
“Whatever you think best,” she said firmly, disabusing him of any notion he might have that she would make difficulties. “We are completely in your hands.”
His face cleared. “Your cooperation is much appreciated, Lady Marjorie.”
She forced herself to smile over the screaming impatience inside her. She had been testy ever since they had arrived. Testy and hungry. No matter how much she ate, it did not seem to quell the sick emptiness inside her. “Let us take up the matter of titles, Obermun bon Haunser.”
He frowned. “I don’t understand.”
She decided to make the point she had been wanting to make about the difference between Sanctity and Terra. “At home, on planet Terra, among those who once called themselves Saints and now identify themselves as the Sanctified, I would be addressed simply as Matron Yrarier. Men are either Boy or Husband. Women are either Girl, or (briefly) Bride, or Matron. Both sexes are at some pains to marry early and lose the titles of childhood. We — that is, our family — are not among the Sanctified. I do not regard any of Sanctity’s female titles as pertaining to myself.
“I am, however, Terran. In my childhood home, the area called Lesser Britain, I am Marjorie, Lady Westriding, my widower father’s eldest child. ‘Lady Marjorie’ would only be correct if I were a younger daughter. Also, I have the honor of being the Master of the Westriding Hunt. The position was offered me, I believe, because of my good fortune at the Olympics”
He looked interested but without comprehension. “Olympics?”
“A Terran contest of various athletic skills, including horsemanship,” she said gently. If there was much the Yrariers did not know about Grass, there were many things the Grassians did not know about the Yrariers, as well. “I rode in what is called puissance jumping, in which the horse cannot see what is beyond the barrier, and that barrier is well over his head.” He showed no comprehension. “You do not have that here, I see. Well, I did that, and dressage riding, which is a very gentle sport, and endurance riding, which is not. I was what is called a gold medalist. Roderigo was a medalist also. It is how we met.” She smiled, making a deprecatory gesture. Obviously the poor man knew nothing about all this. “So, I might be called Lady Westriding or Madam Yrarier or Master, though the latter is appropriate only on the hunting field. Perhaps there is some title given to ambassadors or their wives here on Grass? It would be convenient for me to know what title would be considered acceptable.”
Despite his initial ignorance, he had followed all of this closely. “Not, I think, Madam Yrarier,” he mused. “Marital titles are not customary except between family leaders, that is in ‘bon’ families. Each family has one Obermun and one Obermum, almost always husband and wife, though it might be mother and son. There are seven aristocratic families currently, quite large families by now: Haunser, Damfels, Maukerden, Laupmon, Smaerlok, Bindersen, and Tanlig; and these families use the prefatory ‘bon,’ before their names. When a child results from a liaison between members of these families, it is given a surname by either the father or the mother, depending upon what family the child will be part of, and thereafter continues in that name whether later married or not.”
“Ah,” she mused “So, in meeting a woman or child, I will not know—”
“You will not know the relationship. Not by the name, Lady Westriding. We are a country people, sparsely scattered upon a small part of our world. Long ago we fled the oppression of Sanctity and the crowding of Terra” — his raised brows told her he had taken her point — “and have had no wish to allow either upon Grass. Though some estancias have been lost, we have never added another estancia to the initial number — except for Opal Hill, of course, but we did not build that. We know one another and one another’s grandfathers and grandmothers back to the time of settlement. We know who liaised with whom, and what child is the child of whom. It seems to me appropriate you should be called Marjorie Westriding or Lady Westriding. This places you upon the proper level in your own right. As for learning who everyone else is… you will need someone who knows. Perhaps I could recommend someone to you as secretary, some lateral family member, perhaps.,…”
“Lateral?” She raised a quizzical eyebrow, shivering a little at the chill in the room.
He was instantly solicitous. “You are cold. Shall we return to the winter quarters? Though spring is imminent, it will still be more comfortable below for the next few weeks.”
They left the high, cold room and the long, chill corridors to go down a long flight of stairs into the winter house, the cold weather house, into other rooms where the walls were warm with grass-cloth, cozy with firelight and lamps and soft, bright couches. Marjorie sank into one of these with a sigh of relief. “You were speaking of my hiring as secretary a ‘lateral family member’?”
“Someone parented by a bon, but on one side only. Perhaps with the name, but without the bon.”
“Ah. Does this represent a great handicap? This lack of a bon?” She smiled to show she meant it teasingly. Still, when he answered, it was with such a stiffness as to tell her it was no laughing matter.
“It means one has a commoner parent. Such a person would not live on an estancia except in a service capacity and would not attend the summer balls. One without the bon would not Hunt.”
“Aha,” she said to herself, wondering whether the Honorable Lord Roderigo Yrarier and his wife would be considered sufficiently bon to hunt or attend the summer balls. Perhaps this had been the reason for that business about the Hunt and the delay with the horses. Perhaps the status of the whole mission was somewhat in question.
Poor horses, lying there all cold and dead, no warm stable, no oats, dreaming, if horses dreamed, of a fence too high to jump and green grass always out of reach, unable even to twitch.
Aloud she said, “Obermun bon Haunser, I am extremely grateful for all your kindness. I shall send Anthony down to the port tomorrow in one of the fliers you have so thoughtfully provided. Perhaps you will have someone meet him there to assist him with the horses. Perhaps some kind of trailer or provisions truck can be obtained?”
“This was our dilemma, Lady Westriding. Our culture does not allow vehicle tracks across the grasses. Your animals must be airlifted here. One does not drive here and there on Grass. One flies. As quietly as possible. Except in the port area and Commoner Town, of course. Surrounded as it is by forest, roads are quite appropriate there.”
“How interesting,” she murmured. “However it is done, I am sure you will attend to it impeccably. Then, if you will be so gracious as to recommend one or two people who know the way things are done on Grass, perhaps I can begin furnishing the residence and making the acquaintance of some of our neighbors.”
He bowed. “Certainly, Lady Westriding, certainly. We will requisition a cargo vehicle from the commoners. And in one week’s time we have arranged for you to observe the Hunt at the bon Damfels estancia. It will give you the opportunity to meet many of your hosts.” He bowed again, taking himself away, out the door and up the stairs to exit through that empty house. She heard his voice echoing there as he greeted the other bon and departed with him. “Hosts,” he had said. Not neighbors. She, wondering if he had meant what the distinction implied, was very much aware of the difference.
“What was all that?” His voice came from behind her, from the corridor leading to the offices. Rigo.
“That was Obermun bon Haunser explaining that the horses have not yet been revived,” she said, turning to confront her husband. He, lean and no less aristocratic than the man who had just left, was clad all in black except for the high red-and-purple-striped collar which identified him as an ambassador, sacrosanct, a person whose body and belongings were immune to seizure or prosecution, on penalty of retaliation from Sanctity — an organization both too far away and too distracted by recent internal events and current horror to do any retaliating at all. His face was set in what she called — though only to herself — his ugly mode, sullen at the mouth, the wide lips unenlivened by amusement, the black eyes overshadowed by heavy brows and wearied by too little sleep. When he was like this, darkness seemed to follow him, half hiding him from her. He, too, had confessed to feeling testy, and he looked irritated now. She sought something to interest him, something to blow the shadows away. “Do you know, Rigo, I’d be interested in finding out whether the children and I have diplomatic immunity on this planet.”
“Why would you not?” His eyes blazed with anger at the idea. Roderigo had a great capacity for anger.
“Women do not take their husband’s names here, and from something the Obermun said, I question whether they take status, either.” Not that Roderigo’s status was higher than her own. If it came to bloodlines, perhaps-her own pedigree was a little better, not that she would ever mention it. “I’m not sure a diplomat’s wife is anybody.” Not that she had ever planned or wanted to be a diplomat’s wife. Not that Rigo had ever been a diplomat before! So many things were not, she reflected-Not the way she would have had them, if she’d had the choice, though there was still the chance this whole business might turn out to be significant and worthwhile.
He smiled humorlessly. “Mark down one more thing we weren’t informed of.”
“I’m not sure I’m right.”
“Your impressions are often the equal of others’ certainties, Marjorie,” he said in his gallant voice, the one he most often used with women, her no less than any other. “I’ll put Asmir Tanlig to checking it.”
“Asmir?”
“One of my Grassian men. I hired two this morning after I managed to shake off the Haunser.” He scraped an extended finger down his palm, flicking it, ridding himself of something sticky, in mime.
“Is the Tanlig man you hired a bon?”
“Lord no. I shouldn’t think so. A bastard son of a bon two generations back, perhaps.”
“Lateral,” she exclaimed, pleased with herself for knowing. “The Tanlig must be what they call a lateral.”
“I hired a Mechanic, also.”
This puzzled her. “You hired a mechanic?”
“His name is Mechanic-Philological successor to the ancient Smiths or Wrights. His name is Sebastian Mechanic, and he holds no blood with the aristos, as he was at some pains to tell me.” He sank into a chair and rubbed the back of his neck. “Coldsleep makes me feel as though I’d been ill for weeks.”
“It makes me feel dreamy and remote.”
“My dear—” he began in the gallant voice, with only an undertone of hostility.
“I know. You think I’m always remote.” She tried to laugh, tried not to show how that hurt. If Roderigo hadn’t thought his wife remote, he wouldn’t have needed Eugenie Le Fevre. If he hadn’t had Eugenie, Marjorie might not be remote. Circle, and around once more, like a horse quadrille, change reins, pirouette, and on to the next figure.
Rigo, point made, changed the subject. “Make note, my dear. Asmir Tanlig. Sebastian Mechanic.”
“What are they to be to you?” She inquired. “Representatives of the middle classes?”
“Little enough of that, except perhaps at Commoner Town. No, representatives of the peasantry, I’d say, who will circulate among the villagers and find out if anything is known. I may need others to find out about Commoner Town, though Tanlig would fit in well enough there, if he cared to. Mechanic, now, he’s peasant through and through, and resentfully prideful about it.”
“Hardly the type of servant to improve our reputation among the bon.”
“The bons aren’t to know anything about it. If we are to complete our mission here, we’ll need access to all levels of society. Sebastian is my link to the people of the soil. He knows enough not to call himself to the aristocrats’ attention. And if you want to know how I got on to the men without bon Haunser knowing, the Sanctity charge from Semling told me about them. I’ve already asked them the question.”
“Ah.” She waited, holding her breath.
“They say no.”
“Ah,” she said again, breathing. So there was hope. “No plague here.”
“There is no unexplained illness that they know of. As we agreed. I told them we’re making a survey.”
“They might not have heard…”
“Both of them have kin in Commoner Town. I think they would have heard of any strange sickness. But, it’s early days. The aristocrats have putative control of ninety-nine percent of the planet’s surface-There could be things going on here the commoners simply don’t know of.”
“It pounds as though you have things well in hand.” She sighed, her weariness and hunger suddenly heavier than she could gracefully bear. “Would you have any idea where Anthony might be?”
“If he’s where I told him to be, he’s with Stella up in the summer quarters, making a rough floor plan of the place for me. We’ll have to furnish it rather quickly, I’m afraid. Asmir tells me there’s a craftsmen’s area in Commoner Town. A place called, unimaginatively enough, Newroad. Lord knows where the old road was.”
“Terra, maybe.”
“Or any of half a hundred other places. Well, it doesn’t matter where it was, so long as we know where this one is. According to Asmir, we can get very acceptable stuff built there within two or three weeks — long Grassian weeks — and he’s already sent word on what he calls the tell-me for some kind of craftsmen’s delegation to come call on us.”
“By acceptable, does he mean to the bons, Rigo? I have a feeling everything we do will be measured and weighed by the bons. I think our poor horses were not revived because the bons did not know whether they would accept them or not, here on Grass. They have creatures of their own.”
“Hippae.”
“Exactly. Who are never kept in stalls, so the Obermun told me.”
“Where in the devil are they kept, then?”
“I have serious question as to whether they are ‘kept’ at all. Rigo, though they live in something not called stables. Why don’t we collect Anthony and Stella and go explore them together?”
The places not called stables were cavernous halls dug into the side of a hill, lined and pillared with stone. A rock-lined, spring-filled tank at the back cast a wavery luminescence across the low-arched ceiling. Half a dozen tall slits in the hillside were the only entrances.
“We could put the stallions and the mares in here and all their foals for the next hundred years,” Stella observed with brooding annoyance, taking a large bite from the apple she had brought with her. “And it would still be blasted inconvenient.” Stella, with her black hair and eyes and passionate disposition, resembled her father. Like him, she moved as a whip cracks, always seeming to arrive wherever she was going with considerable noise but without having bothered to travel the intervening distance. She shouted now, listening to the echo of her own voice as it rattled back into blackness among stout pillars. “Hallooooo,” a hunting halloo, as one sighting a fox might cry “Grass stinks!” she cried, with the echo coming back, “ing, ing, ing, ing”
Anthony made no comment but merely looked around himself with dismay, trying not to let it show through the calm demeanor he had determined upon as appropriate for the son of an ambassador. He had carefully thought out what his role should be, and prayed hourly for the fortitude to continue in it. He was the one who resembled Marjorie. He had her wheat-colored hair and hazel eyes, her cool, white skin, her sapling-slender body, her placid appearance and equable temperament. Like her, he was prey to a thousand inner doubts and horrors he never let show on the surface. Like her, he was thought beautiful, was passionately admired even by unlikely people. At nineteen he was almost of his father’s height, though not yet of a man’s bulk.
A stripling, his mother thought, admiring him. A mere boy, his father thought to himself, wishing Tony were older so that he could be told why they had come, older so he could be of more help.
“A social problem of some dimension,” Obermun bon Haunser was at that moment remarking to some of his fellow bons. “And so is the daughter, Stella. We’ll have to warn off our own young ones,” he said. Sooner or later the Yrariers would learn of this opinion, and he wondered what he would say then. He did not like the idea of being looked at angrily by Lady Westriding. Her look had a quality of knives about it. Knives which cut deeply.
Currently, however, Marjorie was cutting only into the structure of the stables, carving one part mentally from the whole. “We can partition this part of the cavern off,” she offered. “Make half a dozen nice box stalls along this side with an opening from outside into each one and build a little paddock out there. Later, when winter comes…” She stopped in dismay, remembering what winters here were said to be like, wondering what they would do with the horses when winter came.
“We won’t still be here, surely?” Anthony said, his own apprehension coming through. He heard it and amended himself more calmly. “Will the mission last that long?”
His father shook his head. “We don’t know, Tony.”
“What kind of horses can these Hippae be?” Marjorie mused, turning to look into the shadowy corners of the vast, low space. “This looks like some great burrow Like the meeting hall of a badger’s set.”
“The meeting hall of a badger’s set?” her daughter mocked. “Mother, you amaze me.” She shook her hair over her shoulders, the depthless black silk of it flowing down over her back like lightless water. Her seventeen-year-old body was still slight, and the beauty which would be ravishing was only beginning to emerge. Now she smiled a siren’s smile and sulked at her parents out of deeply fringed eyes. “When were you last in a badger’s set?” It was not said lovingly. Stella had not wanted to come to Grass. They had insisted that she come, but they had been unable to tell her why. To Stella, the journey had been a violation of her person. With maximum drama, she likened it to rape and let them know it as often as possible. “In some other life?” she mocked now. “In some other time?”
“When I was a changeling,” her mother answered firmly. “Long and long ago, when I was unconscious of my dignity. As I am about to be again. I am going to change into some nice old robe and become sedentary. I need food, a lot of food, and then some familiar book and sleep. There is too much that is strange here. Even the colors of things aren’t right.”
And they weren’t. Her words brought it to all their attention as they left the caverns to walk through a bleached alley of imported trees toward the residence. The colors weren’t right. The sky should be blue and was not. The prairie should be the color of dried grass, but their eyes insisted upon making it pale mauve and paler sapphire, as though under a stage-light moon.
“It’s only that it’s foreign to us,” Tony said, trying to comfort her, wanting to be comforted himself. He had left things behind, too. A girl who mattered to him. Friends he cared about. Plans for education and life. He wanted the sacrifice to have been for something, for some reason, not merely to exist for a time in this chill discomfort amid strange colors. Tony had not been told why, either, but he trusted Marjorie when she told him it was important. It was Tony’s nature to trust, as it had been Marjorie’s at his age, when she married.
“We will ride to the Hunt,” Rigo said firmly. “The horses will be recovered by then.”
“No,” Marjorie said, shaking her head. “Apparently we mustn’t.”
“Don’t be ridiculous.” He said it, as he often did, without thinking, and was immediately annoyed as he saw the pain in her face.
“Rigo, my dear, surely you don’t think it’s my idea not to ride.” She laughed, a light little laugh which said in the only way she could that he was being obtuse and unpleasant. “Obermun bon Haunser almost came apart at his impeccable seams when I suggested we would merely join the field on horseback. Apparently arrangements have been made otherwise.”
“Damn it, Marjorie. Why was I sent here? Why were you? Except for the horses?”
She didn’t try to answer him. It was not a question which could be answered. He glared at her. Stella stared, giggling a little, enjoying this discord. Tony made uncomfortable little hrnching sounds in his throat as he did when caught in some seeming conflict between them. “Surely,” he said softly, “surely…”
“I thought it was something important we were here for?” sneered Stella, unwittingly derailing her father’s hostility toward Marjorie and bringing it upon herself.
“We would scarcely have come otherwise,” he snapped angrily. “Our lives have been disrupted, too, and we are no fonder of Grass than you are. We, like you, would prefer to be at home, getting on with our lives.” He lashed at an offending seed head with his whip. “What’s this about not riding?”
Marjorie answered softly, trying to keep them all calm. “I don’t know why we mustn’t ride to the Hunt, but it is clear that we must not. My counsel, Ambassador, for what it is worth, is that we do what that stiff, awkward Haunser man has arranged for us until we find out what is going on here. We are not bons, after all, and Obermun bon Haunser took some pains to point out to me that neither Sanctity nor Terra know anything at all about Grass.”
Rigo might have said something more, except that a sound interrupted him. Such a sound as a tormented soul might make, if such a one had the voice of the thunder and the cataract. It was a wholly natural sound, as a small world might make, being rent apart, and yet they did not doubt that it issued from a throat and lungs and a body of some indescribable sort. Something that a name could be put to if one only knew what it was. A cry of desperate loneliness.
“What?” breathed Rigo, unmoving, alert. “What was that?” They waited, poised, perhaps to run. Nothing. In the time ahead they were to hear the cry several times. Though they asked about it, no one knew what made it.
El Dia Octavo woke from evil dream to uncomfortable reality. His feet were not on the ground and he thrashed, though weakly. A voice came incomprehensibly through a veil of pained dryness. “Lower that sling, you fool, and put him down.”
Hooves touched solid surface and the stallion stood trembling, head lowered. He could smell the others. They were somewhere near, but it was impossible to lift his head and look. He flared his nostrils instead, trying the odor for that complexity which would include them all. A hand ran along his side, his neck. Not her hand. A good hand, but not her hand. Not his hand, either. This was the male-one most like her, not the female-one most like him.
“Shhh, shhh,” said Tony. “That’s a good boy. Just stand there a little while. It’ll come back to you. Shhh, shhh.”
What came was the dream. Galloping with something after him. Something huge. Huge and fast. A threat from behind. A fleeing. He whickered, begging for reassurance, and the hand was there.
“Shhh, shhh.”
He slept standing, the dream fading.
He woke enough to walk up a ramp into something that moved, then he slept again. When the thing stopped moving, he woke enough to walk down the ramp again and she was there.
“She,” neighed Millefiori. “All right. She.”
He nodded, making a sound in his throat, dragging his feet as he tried to follow her. Nothing smelled quite right. There were familiar sounds, but the smells were wrong. When he was inside the stall, lying on the grass there, it didn’t smell right either.
There was noise outside The other stallion screaming, making a fuss.
El Dia Octavo nickered at him, and so did the mares. In a moment Don Quixote quieted, making a sound of misery.
Then she came, patting, stroking, talking to them, saying, as Tony had, “Shhh, shhh,” giving him water.
He drank, letting the water flow into that place of dry fear. After a time he slept again, dreamlessly, the dream gradually losing itself in the smell of the strange hay.
“Odd,” murmured Marjorie, staring down at him.
“They seemed frightened,” said Tony. “The whole time, they seemed scared to death but so lethargic they couldn’t do anything about it.”
“I had bad dreams when I first got here. And I woke up frightened all the time.”
“So did I.” Tony shuddered. “I wasn’t going to say anything, but I had real nightmares ”
“An effect of coldsleep?” Marjorie wondered.
“I asked around at the port. Nobody seems to think that’s a usual thing after coldsleep.”
“Odd,” said Marjorie again. “Well, at least the stalls were finished on time.”
“They did a good job. People from the village?”
“People from the village. It seems to be a reciprocal kind of arrangement. We give them employment and buy their produce, and they provide whatever help we need. They’ve been here for years, maintaining the place. I’ve picked a few of them to work with the horses. Perhaps we can find two or three grooms among them.”
They left the stables and went back to the house, turning once or twice to look back as though to assure themselves the horses were all right, both of them thinking it strange that the animals gave every sign of sharing their own bad dreams. Marjorie swore to herself she would spend time with them over the next few days, until the trauma had passed.
Other matters intervened, however. Among them was the arrival of the craftsmen’s committee for Newroad. who went through the summer rooms of Opal Hill making lists.
“You want it done in the local manner, don’t you?” the spokesman of this delegation asked in trade lingua. He was a stocky, bald-headed man with froggy bags around his eyes and an engaging grin. His name was Roald Few. “You don’t want anything that will make the bons’ tongues clack, right?”
“Right,” she had agreed, amazed, and amused at herself for being so. What had she expected? Poor ignorant fools like those in Breedertown? “You’re very quick, Mr. Few. I thought we were the first embassy Grass has had.”
“The only one now,” he replied. “There’ve been a few. They can’t winter it, you know. Can’t stay. Too lonely. Semling had a man here for a while. Here, I mean. At Opal Hill. Semling built the estancia, you know.”
“Why weren’t the summer quarters furnished?”
“Because it was coming autumn by the time it was built, and by the time autumn was half gone, you know, so was the man from Semling. He never got to the good part of the year. So, what have you to tell me about colors and all that?”
“Can I depend upon you to make us look acceptable?” she asked. “If I can, there’s a bonus in it for you. My husband likes warm colors, reds and ambers. I prefer the cooler ones. Blue. Soft gray. Sea green. Hah,” she paused. “There is no sea on Grass, but you apprehend.” He nodded. “Perhaps, if it is in keeping with local usage, you could give us a little variation?”
“Variety and make you look good,” he said, pursing his lips as he noted it down “Do my best, madam, and may I say you show good sense in leaving it to us. Us on the Newroad work well together, and we’ll do you well who trusts us.” He gave her a sharp look, meeting her open gaze with a frank nod of his own “I’ll tell you something, just me to you. You and the family come over the forest into commoner territory every now and then. Commoner Town, the aristos say, but we say Commons, meaning it’s for all of us. We’ve got food there you’ll never get but here, things we ship in for ourselves. It gets damned lonely out here if you’re not all turned inside out like these bons. You might even decide you’d like to live in Commons during wintertime, if you’re here that long. You’ve got animals, too, and they’ll do better in Commons than they will out here. We’re set up to winter animals there. There are hay barns we fill every summer, and cow barns down along our own quarters. All the villages close up, wintertime, and move into town. Among the aristos nobody’d know, did you or not. Anybody calls you on the tell-me. splice you through to Commons and who’ll know you’re not out here, sufferin’ winter. Do you speak Grassan, by any chance.”
“I thought Grassians spoke Terran or trade lingua,” she replied, dismayed. “Obermun bon Haunser spoke diplomatic Terran to me.”
“Oh, they’ll do that if they like,” he said with a nasty grin. “They’ll speak diplo and some of them will even lower themselves to speak trade lingua, and then the next time they’ll turn their backs to you and pretend they don’t understand you at all. You’ll get further with ’em if you know Grassan. Way I understand it, it’s a mishmash of languages they all spoke when they came here, and then it’s changed since. Each family speaks its own variety of it, kind of a family dialect, a game they have, but mostly that’s a matter of family words and you can understand the sense if you know the language. You’ll get further yet if they don’t know you speak it until you speak it pretty good. I can send you a teacher.”
“Do,” she agreed, all at once trusting and liking him. “Send me a teacher and be very close-mouthed about it if you will, Mr. Few.”
“Oh, I will.” He snorted “I’ll send you a man in two days. And you call me Roald, like all the Commons do. Damn bons.” The animosity seemed habitual rather than acute, and Marjorie did not inquire into it, merely making a note that Rigo should hear of it if he had not already learned of it for himself.
In addition to the commodious guest and servants’ quarters in the main house, there were three small detached residences at Opal Hill available to members of the embassy staff. Given first choice, Rigo’s faithful assistant Andrea Chapelside had picked the small house closest by, to be most readily available in case of need. Her sister Charlotte would live there with her. Father Sandoval and his companion priest, Father James, took the largest of the detached residences, intending to use part of it as a library and school for Stella and Tony and the largest room as a chapel for themselves and the embassy. This left the smallest house for Eugenie Le Fevre. It had a summer kitchen, living room, and bedroom above the ground and several cozy winter rooms below. Each of the houses was connected by a tunnel which led to the big house. Each opened upon a separate vista of the gardens.
When Roald Few finished his business with Marjorie, he called on each of the other residents of Opal Hill, getting their instructions for the furnishing of summer bedrooms and sitting rooms. The middle-aged women in the first house had pictures of what they wanted, things that looked like home. The men in the larger house wanted everything as plain as it could be, and one room they wanted untouched except for the provision of some little seats with kneeling stools in front of them and an altar kind of arrangement. The delicate-looking younger man had drawn a picture which the older stocky man nodded approval over. Both of them religious, Roald thought. Not dressed like Sanctified, though. These had funny little collars. Something different from the usual run.
“I hope this will not cause you too much trouble,” the older of the two said in a steely voice which only seemed apologetic.
“No trouble at all, except one,” said Roald with an engaging smile. “And that’s knowing what the proper title is for you and the other gentleman. I know you’re some sort of religious folk, and I wouldn’t want to go astray with the lingo.”
The delicate gentleman nodded. “We are Old Catholics. I’m Father Sandoval, and my companion is Father James. Father James’ mother is sister to His Excellency, Roderigo Yrarier. We are usually called Father, if that wouldn’t offend you.” And if it would, his voice said, say it anyhow.
“I don’t stay in business being easily offended,” Roald assuredcthem. “If you wanted me to call you uncle. I’d do that, too. I might balk at aunt, but uncle I could manage ”
This brought a chuckle from the younger priest, and Roald nodded at him cheerfully as he left.
The smallest house was the most remote and the last on his list. It was there, in the empty summer quarter, that he met with Eugenie. He had not been with her for long before he knew everything about her. Everything, he thought to himself, that he needed to know.
“Pink,” she said. “Soft pink. And rose shades, all warm, like the inside of a flower. I miss flowers. Curtains to shut out the night and the sight of that awful grass. Soft curtains that drape and blow in the wind. Wide couches with pillows.” She moved her hands and her lips, sketching what she wanted on the compliant air, and he saw what she saw, a nest feathered in ivory and rose, sweet-scented as — so fable had it — a Terran morning. She was wearing a silky gown that flowed behind her on the air, fluttering with her movement as though she were accompanied by soft winds. Her hair was light brown, the great wealth of it piled high on her head with tiny curls escaping at her brow and the nape of her neck. Her eyes were an ageless blue, innocent of anything but pleasure and untroubled by thought.
Roald Few sighed, silently, knowing all about it. This lady looked like the little porcelain woman his wife kept on the table at home. Poor Lady Westriding. She had interested him enormously, and now he pitied her as well. What was it had gone wrong there? he wondered. So many things could happen. He would tell Kinny, his wife, all about it, how they looked, what they said, and Kinny would know. She would tell him the story over supper, how this Roderigo and this Lady Westriding had almost been true lovers, almost a natural pair, but this something else had happened, and now there was this pink lady for the Lord’s bed while the cool blond woman was left all alone. Though perhaps he didn’t leave her alone. There was that possibility, too.
“Rose pink,” he said to Eugenie as he noted it down. “And lots of soft cushions.”
When Roald returned home, his wife, Kinny, was waiting with supper ready to go on the table. Since Marthamay had married Alverd Bee and moved over to the other end of town, Roald and Kinny had been alone sporadically — that is, when none of the children had needed a baby-tender or a home-from-their-own following an argument with a spouse. Arguments with spouses, Roald had taken care to point out to each of his children, were as inevitable as winter but were not life-threatening provided one took a little care in advance. Such as making a habit of going on home to cool off for a day or so when needed, and no insult meant and none taken by either party, just as spring followed winter, so better understanding followed a little cooling off.
Currently none of the children were fighting with their wives or husbands and none of the grandkids were in residence, so he and Kinny had the place to themselves, which pleased him considerably when it happened.
“I made goose with cabbage.” Kinny told him. “Jandra Jellico slaughtered a few geese, and she got on the tell-me to let me know. I hurried right over to get a fat one.”
Roald licked his lips. Spring goose with cabbage was one of his favorite dishes, and Kinny could make it like no one else. It was goose with cabbage had made him look at her in the first place, her with her round little arms and round little face, and it was goose with cabbage had happily punctuated all their seasons together since. Goose with cabbage generally meant a celebration of some kind.
“So, what good thing is going on?” he asked her.
“Marthamay’s pregnant.”
“Well, isn’t that wonderful! There for a bit she was worried.”
“She wasn’t really. It was just her sisters teasing her when the time went by after she and Alverd married and nothing happened.”
“Alverd getting ready to do a little digging, is he?”
“She says yes.” Kinny smiled as she forked a mouthful of cabbage into her rosy mouth, thinking of tall, eager Alverd Bee slaving away down in the winter quarters, digging a new room as every new daddy did. Alverd was likely to be elected mayor of Commons in a week or two, and mayors had little time for such doings. Well and all, the brothers would help him, just as he’d helped them. “So, tell me all about the new people.”
He told her, about the ambassador and about Marjorie and the other lady in her soon-to-be-pink nest.
“Ah,” said Kinny, wrinkling her nose. “That’s sad.”
“So I thought,” he agreed. “His wife’s a lovely lady, but cool. Take a little wooing, that one.”
“And him, I suppose he’s too hot and impatient for that.”
Roald chewed as he thought. Yes. As usual, Kinny had hit it right on the head. Too hot and impatient by far, Roderigo Yrarier. Hot and impatient enough to get himself into a mess of trouble, before he was through.
Not liking that idea, Roald changed the subject. “What does Marthamay think they’ll name the baby?”
Marjorie’s language instructor arrived two days later. He introduced himself as Persun Pollut. He sat beside her in what would become Marjorie’s study, just inside a large window warmed by an orange sun, while craftsmen came and went with crates and cartons, tools and ladders in the hall just outside. Watching the workers, Marjorie spoke of the strangeness of needing both winter quarters and summer quarters separate from one another.
“Winter is long,” he admitted, drooping his eyebrows at her. “It is so long we grow tired of looking at one another,” Persun had exceptionally long and sinuous eyebrows. He was young, though not callow; supple, though not yielding; determined, though not rigid. Marjorie felt Roald Few had selected well, particularly as Persun had shown good sense in not advertising the purpose of his presence. He had taken a room in the nearby village and announced that he was there to carve some panels for “Her Ladyship’s private study.” Now, seated at his ease in that study, he continued his explanation.
“Winter is so long that one tires of thinking of it,” he said. “We grow tired of breathing the air which is not only cold but hostile to us. We go under the ground, like the Hippae, and wait for spring. Sometimes we wish we could sleep like them.”
“What on earth do you all do with yourselves?” Marjorie asked, thinking once more of what they would do with the horses during wintertime. If they were still on Grass. Anthony kept saying the Yrariers would be on their way home by then, but Anthony didn’t know why they had come.
“In Commons we visit and have games and do our work, and have winter festivals of drama and poetry writing and things of that sort. We go visit the animals in the barns. We have an orchestra. People sing and dance and train animals to do tricks. We have a winter university where most of us learn things we would never learn if it weren’t for winter. Sometimes we bring professors in from Semling for the cold season. We’re better educated than the bons, you’ll find, though we don’t let them know that. There are so many tunnels and storage rooms and meeting rooms under Commons it is like living over a sponge. We come and go, here to there, without ever looking at the outside where the wind cuts to the bone and the cold mist hangs over everything, hiding the ice ghosts.”
“But the bons stay on their estancias?”
“Out on the estancias they don’t have our resources, so they pass the time less profitably. In the town we have some thousands of people to draw upon, more in the winter than are living there now. When winter comes, the villages empty themselves into Commons. The port remains open year round so there’s visitors even during the cold time. The hotel has winter quarters, too, with tunnels to the port. On an estancia there may be only a hundred people, a hundred and a half maybe. On an estancia everyone grows very tired of everyone else.”
There was silence for a moment, then she said tentatively, “Have you any charities on Grass?”
“Charities, ma’am?”
“Good works. Helping people.” She shrugged, using the phrase Rigo often used. “Widows and orphans?”
He shook his head at her. “Well there’s widows, right enough, and occasional an orphan, I suppose, though why they should need charity is beyond me. We commoners take care of our own, but that’s not charity, it’s just good sense. Is it something you did a lot of, back where you came from?”
She nodded soberly. Oh, yes, she had done a lot of it. But no one had thought it important enough to take her place. “I think there’ll be a lot of empty time,” she said in explanation. “The winters sound very long.”
“Oh, they are long. The aristos have a saying in Grassan: Prin g’los dem aujnet haudermach. That is, ‘Winter closeness is separated in spring.’ Let’s see, maybe you’d say it, ‘Winter liaisons sunder in spring.’ ” He thought this over, wobbling his eyebrows. “No, perhaps a Terran would more likely say ‘marriages’: ‘Spring loosens winter marriages.’ ”
“Yes, we would probably say marriages,” she agreed somberly. “How did you learn to speak diplomatic?”
“We all speak it. Everyone in Commons does. The port’s very busy. Shipments in, shipments out. We’ve got more brokers in Commons than you’d suspect. We order things from off-planet. We sell things. We need to send messages. We speak diplomatic and trade lingua and Sembla and half a dozen other languages, too. Grassan is very ponderous and uncertain. It’s a language invented by the aristocrats. Like a private code, I will teach it to you, but don’t expect it to make sense”
“I promise I won’t. Do you make your living teaching Grassan?”
“Oh, by the marvelous migerers of the Hippae. no, Lady. Who would there be to teach it to? Everyone here knows it and who else cares? Hime Pollut the woodcarver is a friend to craftsmaster Roald Few, and I am Pollut the woodcarver’s son, and he is making use of me during a slack season, that’s all.”
She could not hold back her laugh. “You are a woodcarver, then?”
His eyes went soft and dreamy. “Well, more that than anything else, since I haven’t made my fortune yet.” He paused, then sat up, bringing himself to attention. “Though I will. There’s money to be made in Semling silks, take my word on it. But I will make some panels for your study, Lady, since we must have some reason for my being here if the Grassians are not to know that you are learning their language.” Besides, since he had seen her, he had wanted to do something for her. Something quite surpassing.
“What shall I do when Obermun bon Haunser recommends a secretary for me?”
Persun nodded in thought. “Tell him you will consider it. Outside of Commons no one moves very quickly on Grass. So I have heard from a few people coming from off-planet who have to deal with the aristos. They get very impatient. So, let the Obermun wait. He will not be annoyed.”
She reported all this to Rigo and sent the suggested reply in response to the Obermun’s recommendation of a certain Admit Maukerden when, eventually, that recommendation arrived.
With one thing and another, several days passed before Marjorie had time to ride. Anthony and Rigo had gone out several times, and even Stella had been unwillingly forced into exercise duty. The day after the craftsmen departed, Marjorie went out with the men of the family. The morning was bright, clear, and warm, and she found herself wishing Stella would join them, though the girl had refused their invitation with a certain hauteur. Stella rode brilliantly, but she had made it clear that she would not enjoy riding on Grass, that she would not enjoy anything on Grass. Stella had left friends behind, one friend in particular. Marjorie had not been sorry. Perhaps Stella’s ostentatious lack of enjoyment was to punish Marjorie for not caring, but Marjorie could not, knowing what she knew and Stella did not. The best she could do was wish that Stella were with them as they walked down the winding path to the newly built stables.
The stable hands had done what they had been told to do: They had cut grass of certain types and filled mangers with it, mucked out the newly built stalls, and provided locally grown grain of three or four types in small quantities in order to observe which were eaten. They watched as the Terrans saddled three of the horses, asking questions in trade lingua without embarrassment or shyness. “What is that for?” “Why are you doing that?”
“Don’t the bons ride?” asked Tony. “Haven’t you seen a saddle before?”
Silence fell while the two men and one woman looked at one another. It was evidently not a topic they felt comfortable discussing. Finally the woman said, almost in a whisper, “The Hippae would not… would not allow a saddle. The riders wear padding instead.”
Well, well, well, said Marjorie to herself. Isn’t that something. She caught Tony’s eye and shook her head slightly just as her son was about to say something like, since when did a horse decide what it would allow.
“Our horses find the saddle more comfortable than they would our bony bottoms,” she said evenly. “Perhaps the Hippae are constructed differently.”
This seemed to smooth things over, and the hands went back to their questions. Marjorie noted which questions were most intelligent and which questioners most understanding.
“It is hard to cut the bluegrass,” one of them said. “But the horses like it best.”
“What are you using to cut it?” she asked. They showed her a sickle of inferior steel. “I’ll give you better tools.” She unlocked a tack box and gave them laser knives. “Be careful.” she said, showing them how they were used. “You can lose an arm or a leg with these. Be sure no one is in the way of the blade.”
She watched them experimenting with the knives, cutting armfuls of grass with single strokes, exclaiming in surprise and pleasure and giving her grateful looks. She would need a stud groom, and of necessity he would have to be drawn from among the villagers. Already these people were patting and stroking the horses much more than was absolutely necessary.
Sanctity had allowed them to bring only six animals. Considering how long their stay might be, they had chosen to bring breeding stock. Marjorie had volunteered to leave her favorite mount, the bay gelding Reliant, behind. Instead, she rode El Dia Octavo, a Barb stallion trained by a former Lippizaner rider. Rigo was mounted on Don Quixote, an Arabian. Tony was riding Millefiori, one of the thoroughbred mares. Three of the mares were thoroughbreds and one, Irish Lass, was a draft animal, brought along for size If they were stuck on this planet for a full Grassian year or more, at least they would have the amusement of building their own stud.
Tony led them along a low fold of ground which took them some half a mile toward a natural arena he had been using to exercise the horses, a level place of low, amber grass, almost circular in shape. Once there, they fell into the ritual of exercise, walk, trot, collected canter, trot, walk again, first in one direction then in the other, extending the trot, the canter, then stopping to dismount and examine the horses.
“Not even breathing hard,” said Rigo. “They’ve been getting better every day.” He sounded enthusiastic, and Marjorie knew that he was scheming. Rigo was always happiest when he had some kind of covert activity going on. What would it be? Something to astonish the natives? He went on bubbling about the horses. “Remarkable how quickly they’ve recovered.”
“Like us,” Marjorie offered. “A day or two feeling miserable and then we felt like ourselves. They haven’t lost their muscle tone. Let’s do a few minutes more and then walk them back. We’ll do more tomorrow.”
She mounted, again falling into the familiar rhythm. Half pass, tight circle, half pass again.
Something at the ridge line caught her eye, a darker shadow in the glare of spring sun. She looked up, puzzled, seeing the forms there, silhouetted against the light, so dazzled by the sun that she could not make them out clearly. Horses? An impression of arched necks and rounded haunches, only that. She couldn’t tell how large they were or how far away.
El Dia Octavo stopped, staring where Marjorie stared, making a troubled noise in his throat, the skin over his shoulders quivering as at the assault of stinging flies. “Shhh,” she said, patting him on the neck, troubled for his trouble. Something up there bothered him. She stared up at the sun-dazzle again, trying to get a good look. A cloud moved toward the sun, but just before the light dimmed, the dark silhouettes vanished from the ridge.
The watchers seemed to prefer to remain unobserved. She urged Octavo forward, wanting to ride to the ridge and see where they had gone, whatever they were.
The stallion quivered as though he were in pain, as though something were terribly wrong. He made a noise in his throat, precursor to a scream. Only her legs tight around him and her hand on his neck held him fast. He seemed barely able to stand, unable to advance.
Interesting, she thought with the surface of her mind, noticing the way Octavo’s hide was trembling over his shoulders. She no longer urged him to move but concentrated only on calming him. “Shhh,” she said again. “It’s all right, it’s all right.”
Then, suddenly aware of the deep, causeless thrill of terror inside herself, she knew what the horse was feeling and that it was not all right.