The Escape

by Kathryn Lasky

  Not all spots were considered bad. It depended on where they were on a horse’s body. Angela herself was a pintado with large splashes of white that floated across her dark bay coat. This was the highly prized spotting pattern known as tobiano. Her friend Corazón had another kind of pattern, with much smaller spots that were more like swirls of cinders against her white coat. It almost appeared as if some of the cinders from Corazón’s coat had landed on Angela’s nose.

  “Angela, don’t worry about getting those pretty white socks of yours muddied in this jungle. It’s the least of your problems,” Hold On said.

  How right he is, Angela thought, but wondered what her mistress in the Old Land would have said. She wondered if Semana Santa was approaching. Holy Week. Wasn’t it getting to that time of the year? The ship had left after Navidad. She had been ridden down the street by the Seeker’s very large mistress. Of course it had been nothing like the parades in Seville, and the Seeker’s mistress was a poor rider. Her balance was terrible and Angela had to compensate for her bouncing about in the saddle, but she had finally found a gait to accommodate the woman. Thankfully! Angela’s mouth was sore for days after. The lady’s hand was as heavy as her bottom and she had constantly yanked the bit about. Angela should be thankful now, of course. This was the land of no bits, no saddles, no bridles.

  But were she and Corazón too old for this land? It was one thing for young horses like Estrella and Sky to take on a new land, a new world. Youngsters would try anything. Then again, there was Hold On, no youngster and not a horse known to be impetuous. So why was he so eager for this masterless world? He spoke of freedom often. But did he not see that there were terrible risks in freedom — a horse might starve, for one thing. And she wondered if a horse could die from an unclean coat. Could one actually die for lack of currying?

  So far, they’d been lucky. They’d found plenty to eat. And despite what Hold On said, Angela wasn’t worried about her white socks getting muddy. But she did itch. She could feel armies of little fleas and critters crawling through the hairs of her coat. Nothing a good curry wouldn’t solve. Oh, was there really anything better than the delicious teeth of a currycomb? The young groom was a natural when it came to currying. He had just the right touch.

  “Bless my withers, he was good. That he was,” she whispered distractedly to herself.

  “Who was good at what?” Corazón flicked her ears. “Who are you talking about?”

  “The little groom. Knew his way around a currycomb.”

  “Dream on,” Corazón replied.

  “I know it’s impractical to wonder about these things, but, Corazón, do you ever think we’ll feel the teeth of a currycomb again? You know the princess who owned me in the Old Land? Her father had curries specially made in the north. They were the best. They stimulated the oil in the skin and made my hair so soft.”

  “It is impractical,” Corazón replied. “With freedom, many thoughts are impractical now.”

  “What a shame,” Angela said with soft resignation. After a long pause, she spoke again. “You know, it’s not that I don’t like the idea of freedom. But I’ll always miss some of my masters. And I like having impractical thoughts.”

  Corazón chuffed. “Well, you can still have them, dear. No rules against that.”

  The jungle was an alien landscape for all of them. On First Island, there had been jungle, but it had been macheted back to create fields and meadows. In the Old Land, the horses had seen forests, even been ridden by their masters through them, but forests were nothing like these jungles with the constant dripping from the thickets of palm fronds, and with dense, tangled vegetation that sometimes made the way almost impenetrable.

  Walking was not easy, but they were learning slowly how to negotiate the mud, the entwining roots, the tight spaces. It scared them, for if they had to run, there was no clear path ahead. It was not like the beach, where Estrella had run until her heart was thumping and a melody seemed to sing down her bones and let her know there was nothing better than to be a horse — a horse born for speed.

  They were adjusting to the noise — the harsh squawks of the parrots that swooped through the treetops and the chittering of the monkeys. It was a shadowy world, but now and then it erupted with small colorful spectacles — the flight of a luminous blue butterfly with wings as broad as a small bird, or a cascade of blossoms growing from the highest part of a tree. And always there was the constant drip drip drip of moisture falling from the broad fronds. The horses didn’t see any grass to eat, but the leaves, although much less tender, were not bitter and satisfied their hunger. Water was no problem at all. There were small pools and they could always find water in a particular type of plant, which they began to call the bucket plant, for its leaves swirled up to form a small narrow tank they could lap from. Corazón especially loved the tender innermost leaves of the bucket plant and, after drinking the water, would munch on them.

  As they traveled, two large birds began to fly over them with increasing curiosity. They seemed to have an uncanny ability to mimic the horses’ nickers and snorts and neighs.

  “Are they making fun of us?” Sky asked with an annoyed glance above.

  “Why would they do that?” Estrella asked.

  The birds were colorful creatures, splashed with red, blue, and yellow feathers.

  “I’m not sure, but I think they might be royal!” Angela said.

  “Royal?” Hold On asked in a bewildered tone. “Why would you ever say that?”

  “Look at them!” Angela replied, tossing her head. “They’re wearing the color red, the scarlet of the Royal House of Aragon. The same as the royal infanta wore on the occasion of her marriage to Don Jose de Castile, who was the second cousin once removed —”

  “Angela, really now!” Hold On shook his head.

  An echo seemed to buzz through the air. “Angela, really now!”

  They all jumped.

  “Who said that?” Corazón neighed.

  “Who said that?” The two birds settled in a tree above them and flung the words back at them.

  “It’s them!” Angela reared.

  Estrella and Sky were captivated. They’d only caught glimpses of the birds before, and now they could see them clearly. Estrella had never even seen a bird until she had been hoisted onto the deck of the brigantine where there were seagulls flapping in the sky. But these birds were entirely different.

  “They’re parrots,” Hold On said. “They do that. I’ve been on many ships, and once a sailor had a parrot. He would carry it up into the rigging when he had to splice lines and halyards. They hardly ever stopped talking, not just mimicking like these two.”

  “You, big boy! Who says we just mimic? Big boy! Big boy! Big boy!” called the birds.

  The chatty creatures swooped down from the canopy in dazzling splashes of color.

  “If I didn’t know better, I would think it was raining paint!” Corazón said.

  “Or a rainbow come to life!” Angela said with wondrous delight as the two birds clattered about in the lattice of palm fronds.

  “So those are parrots?” Sky said, staring in wonder.

  “We’re not parrots!” the two birds shrieked.

  “What are you, then?” Hold On asked.

  The two birds puffed up their plumage. The larger one, the female, squared her colorful shoulders.

  “We are scarlet macaws,” she replied with distinct pride.

  “Scarlet!” sighed Angela. “I knew you were royal. Only royalty can wear scarlet.”

  The macaws exchanged glances. “Should you tell her or should I?” the male asked.

  “Maybe you,” the female replied with an odd look at Angela.

  The macaw stepped forward. “We do not ‘wear’ scarlet. We are not robed. We are feathered! This is the way we are, the way we hatched.”

  “Well, not really,” the female corrected. “When we hatched, we had hardly any feathers at all, Alfo.”

  “True.” He paused. “Wh
en our plumage came in, these were the colors.”

  “But how did you learn to speak with us?” Angela asked.

  “Oh, we can speak with anyone. My name is Lala, by the way, and this is Alfo,” said the female. “We were bought by a sailor and then crossed the ocean with him.”

  “But it was not our first voyage,” Alfo said. “Oh, no. We’ve had many, many voyages. Many languages. Time in the hold with the horses, time in the mess with the sailors. Talk talk talk. Couldn’t help but pick up a word here, a word there.”

  “We love to talk almost as much as to fly,” Lala added. “But I suppose Alfo just proved that.”

  “Do you know how much farther until open country?” Estrella asked.

  “Not sure, really,” Alfo said. “We prefer jungle. But we have to go now.”

  “Must you?” Estrella asked. She had been rather enjoying the conversation.

  “Yes. It’s nut time,” Lala said. “Big wonderful nuts back near the beach. We love nuts, and if we don’t get there quickly, other macaws and parrots will.” There was a sneer in her voice when she said “parrots.” “They’ll wipe them all out until next season.”

  As soon as the macaws left, Estrella missed them. She had never met a scarlet macaw. That evening, Sky was lapping up water from a bucket plant when he jumped straight into the air and whinnied.

  “By my hoof!” Sky had taken to some of the favorite curses of the older horses.

  “What is it?”

  “I think, I think … I drank — I swallowed one of those tiny crocodiles!”

  “They are not crocodiles,” Corazón said. “They are little lizards. They scampered all over the master’s villa on First Island. Nothing to fear.”

  “It’s tickling the inside of my stomach!”

  “That’s your imagination, dear,” Angela said. “It would be dead by now.”

  “And that’s supposed to make me feel better?”

  “You’ll get rid of it sooner or later,” Hold On said.

  “Can we not discuss such things?” Angela snipped.

  But suddenly the mare started bellowing.

  “What is it?” Estrella asked.

  “I’ve lost a shoe! A shoe! This wretched mud has sucked it right off! How will I go on without my shoe?”

  Hold On snorted. “You will go on very well indeed. Especially when you lose the other three!”

  “We don’t have shoes, Estrella and I,” Sky offered more kindly. “We don’t miss them a bit.”

  “How can you miss what you’ve never had?” Angela said grumpily. The two young horses looked at each other, uncertain how to answer.

  Hold On stepped forward, whisking his tail. He looked into the mare’s eyes and began to run his teeth softly through her withers to groom her. “You should be congratulated, Angela,” he said between strokes. “You are the first to lose a shoe in the New World. It is an achievement! You watch — when you lose the other three, you will be able to feel the earth better, travel more easily. You will become so fleet.”

  “But, Hold On,” Angela whispered, her voice tremulous, “I’m scared. Really scared.”

  “I know, dear, but things will be better.”

  “I hope.” She paused, almost as if she were confessing. “You know, I loved my mistress, the infanta.”

  “But look. She let the Seeker buy you from her father,” Hold On reminded her gently.

  “She didn’t have much choice. The family had wanted the Seeker to go, to find gold.”

  “Gold — that’s all they care about! And what will he tell the infanta when he returns with chests of gold but not her favorite horse?”

  Angela looked up pleadingly. “She never called me Fea, Hold On. She didn’t think I was ugly at all. She thought I was beautiful.”

  “What did she call you?” Hold On said, still grooming her. Angela closed her eyes and sighed as if she were recalling the sound of her mistress’s voice.

  “Come on, tell me,” Hold On encouraged.

  “Promise not to laugh?”

  “I promise.”

  Angela lowered her eyes shyly. “She called me Gatita.”

  “Gatita?” Hold On was confused. “But that means —”

  “I know what it means. ‘Kitten.’ She said the spots on my muzzle reminded her of a soft little kitty she had once.”

  Hold On was not tempted to laugh in the least. He thought it was sad, terribly sad, to name a beautiful horse for a cat. A mare who, despite the spots on her nose, had the blood of the noble desert horses running through her.

  “You will be fine without that shoe, Angela,” Hold On said. “I envy you. I can’t wait to lose one myself.”

  “I hope you’re not just saying that, Hold On.”

  “I mean what I say.” And then he thought to himself, Although I might not always say what I mean! What he felt about the infanta’s name for this noble horse was best not said.

  The very next day, Hold On lost a shoe and then, by evening, another. The mud sucked off their shoes faster than they could imagine.

  They continued on through the dense jungle for what seemed an endless time, and as they traveled, they passed several lagoons where they saw more of the strange and horrible creatures who had attacked them on the beach. The horses were very careful when they stopped to drink at the freshwater pools where the creatures lay just beneath the surface, only the bumps of their enormous eyes poking through. The horses learned that the crocodiles were as afraid of them as they were of the crocs. Hold On, as the largest, took to stomping and squealing and even screaming as they approached each lagoon. This storm of horse noises seemed to keep crocodiles at bay while the horses drank.

  There was plenty to eat in the jungle. Aside from the broad leaves, there were strange fruits they had never seen before. But search as they might, there were no grains to be found. The best part of the new food was that none of it had weevils, as Corazón pointed out while munching on a long yellow fruit.

  “I ate my last weevil on that ship! Though this tastes odd, it’s far superior to a weevil.”

  On perhaps the fourth or fifth night as they threaded their way through the jungle, they began to sense eyes watching them, tracking them almost constantly as they picked their way around the enormous trees. They listened carefully but never heard so much as a footstep.

  “We’re being stalked,” Hold On said.

  “By what?” Angela asked, her wide eyes rolling behind her. “I sense it, but I never hear it.”

  “Or smell it,” Corazón added. “It’s as if a shadow is tracking us.”

  Somehow, the less they knew about the creature, the more frightening it became in their minds. It was as if they lived in the constant shadow of a never-ending dread. Estrella could not help but think of that other shadow — the white one that had appeared in the sea and circled closer and closer. Whatever this creature was, it had to be more familiar with the jungle than they were. And if it decided to attack, where would they run? The vines closed in on the horses, blocking any escape. These thoughts were very much in all their minds when Hold On stopped walking. “We need our rest. We have to sleep, but not all at the same time.”

  “What are you saying?” Corazón asked.

  “We must set a watch, just as the sailors do on the ship, so that some can sleep while the others tend to the sails.”

  “But we’re horses,” Angela said. “We’ve never had need for a watch.”

  “Because we’ve always been in a recinto, or a meadow that was fenced.”

  “Our masters protected us,” Angela muttered.

  “And now we’re in a jungle where there are no masters,” answered Hold On. “So we must become our own masters and watch out for one another.”

  Angela blinked and nodded. Hold On realized that she was beginning to understand.

  “Might Corazón and I take the first watch?” Angela asked.

  Hold On was elated. “Most definitely. Thank you, thank you so much!”

  And so t
hey set up a watch while they slept, and they traveled during the day in a tight pack.

  As each day passed, they became more jittery.

  “Why won’t it come out?” Corazón said tensely. “If it would just show itself.”

  The horses were jumping at every shadow. No one was sleeping well and those on watch were tense and skittish.

  It would be another two days before they glimpsed the tracker.

  “There!” Estrella neighed softly and tossed her head toward a mass of gigantic roots that poked up from the ground like solid walls to support an enormous tree. A creature that looked like a cat but was many times larger stood frozen in front of one of the root walls.

  Why? Why now is he showing himself? Estrella wondered. Was it like the shark who had circled and bumped her as if to test before striking?

  Estrella understood why they had never seen the cat until he chose to reveal himself. The huge cat’s pelt of golden fur was covered with dark spots that blended in with the shadows of the jungle. The pattern broke up the creature’s form so that he could slip through the trees undetected.

  “Stay together!” Estrella warned. She was not sure how she knew this — perhaps it was an instinct from the old herd, the last herd. The creature’s tawny eyes followed them, as if daring one to lag behind.

  “He’ll eat nothing more than our shadows,” Hold On said. And thus the creature was named Shadow Eater.

  Over the course of the following day and night, the horses did stay together. They maintained their watches as the Shadow Eater continued to stalk them. The creature walked very softly, and yet they had learned to discern the sound of his huge paws on the jungle floor. His menace surrounded them with a terrible constancy.

  “He never eats. He never sleeps,” Sky whispered. “How can he do it?”

  Estrella shook her head. “I don’t know. I can’t imagine.”