The Escape

by Kathryn Lasky

  Then a great roar rose up behind her as a figure went flying from the very top of the palace. Two smears of gold streaked through the night. It’s the shoes! Estrella thought. The shoes with the golden soles that Centello had told them about. The Chitzen emperor was falling from the top of the pyramid.

  Just beside Estrella, a soldier screamed as one of the new men stabbed him in the stomach. An explosion flared out behind the horses. One of the light cannons had fired straight down the causeway. Flames tore the night, and a thatched roof burst into fire. An Iber soldier flung himself on Angela, trying to hang on and ride. But Angela bucked and the soldier went flying.

  “Follow me, Angela! Follow me!” Estrella yelled.

  The horses raced on toward the edge of the causeway, the lake glistening below. It would be a long jump into the water; Estrella paused. Angela quivered uncontrollably at the edge, her ears flat.

  She’ll never make the jump! Estrella backed up behind Angela and then charged, slamming into Angela’s rump. The mare flew over the side of the causeway, screaming. With a massive leap, Corazón followed her. Hold On jumped next, and then Sky and Estrella flung themselves into the lake together.

  When she surfaced, Estrella heard another splash behind her, and then another.

  “This way!” she shouted. She swam as hard as she could. The lake was freshwater, so perhaps there were no sharks. She hoped there were no crocodiles. But she would have preferred both to what they were leaving. Estrella turned her head. Hold On was just behind her and Sky next to him, then came Angela and Corazón. But there were others from the stables as well. Behind them, up on the causeway, the new men were charging and the Seeker was in retreat!

  “Swim!” she yelled to the other horses. “Swim!” There was a hissing sound as a rain of flaming arrows fell into the lake. “Duck! Swim toward the middle — they won’t reach us there. Come on!” She circled back and began nipping Corazón and Angela on their hindquarters. “You can do it. Swim on.” Her voice was soon ragged from urging, calling, beckoning, and screaming at the others. She would do anything to push the horses to swim on.

  “Where are we going?” an unfamiliar voice called out.

  “To the other shore and then north! Just follow me,” Estrella answered. She tipped her head up and saw the dipper, and a deep thrill coursed through her. Home. We are going home! And once again, even through the smoke and blood, she caught the haunting scent of the sweet grass.

  When the horses completed their swim across the lake of the City of the Gods, they clambered out on shore and began to gallop. They wanted to put as much distance between themselves and the city as possible. Finally, they drew up during the last shadows of the night under the spreading branches of a piñon tree and took stock. Five new horses had joined them.

  A young filly, a blue roan, turned and asked, “Where are we going?”

  Estrella cast a quick glance at Hold On.

  “Away from men. We’re seeking a new place,” Hold On replied.

  The filly looked at Estrella as if to say, Why does he answer but you lead? Estrella was grateful the roan didn’t put her question into words. It would be hard to explain. Estrella, Angela, Corazón, Hold On, and Sky had become a herd. They’d been cast into the sea together, they’d traveled for many moons together. How could she explain what it meant to be a herd to these five new horses?

  Hold On was thinking about more practical matters. The old stallion relished the sensation of his bare back, free from the burden of the saddle. It was doubtful the Seeker would track down the horses and recapture them, but there were still difficulties to face. With ten horses, there were bound to be. It was clear that the filly Azul, named for the blue tinge of her roan coat, was headstrong and young, but not as young as Estrella. How would she react to Estrella taking the lead? Hold On knew how the order of a group usually sorted itself out. Stallions protected the herd, but mares led. They had good heads for such things. They knew where the good grass grew; they knew which water holes in the meadows or pastures were the best. The blue roan might want to be boss mare.

  Stallions were sensitive to danger. In the Old Land, this meant they kept a lookout for thieves who wanted to steal them. It was the stallion’s job to warn the herd and to fight when necessary. Hold On felt he had been a complete failure when Centello had lured the herd to drink at the trough of the recinto. He should have known there was something sly going on. And though he was sorry that Centello had suffered such a gruesome death, he was furious at the stallion’s deceit. But it was too late for anger now.

  Hold On looked the new horses over. What would they be like? There were always troublemakers, but who would they be? Grullo, the dun stallion, was known to be reliable and steady. He never spooked. Hold On felt he could trust Grullo. But with the blue roan he was not so sure. Standing next to her was Bobtail, a bright bay stallion who was known for having a good mouth, so responsive to the bit that he turned quickly and smoothly. Now he was without a bit. Would he feel lost? Confused? There was a colt, Verdad, creamy white with black stockings. Would he be, like his name, truthful? And finally, there was the muleteer, Arriero.

  The Seeker, some said, had favored Bobtail above Centello and lavished praise upon the stallion. Would he languish now without this praise? Hold On thought not. He was not as vain as Centello.

  They had all lost their gaits quickly. When they had jumped into that muddy lake, it was as if all the paces and steps they learned had been washed away.

  The horses traveled hard and fast over the next few days. The terrain smoothed out. The ground was firm and had few rocks on it, which allowed for speed. The horses took full advantage.

  As they traveled, the territory changed around them, then changed again. They saw mountains in the distance, rising on a blue mist. They often passed through thinly forested regions with pine, pungent cedars, and broad-leafed trees — but none of the palmettos they had found near the coast. Unlike the jungle, where the mud sucked at their hooves, the way was solid here, their steps muffled by a carpet of fallen pine needles. The sunlight winked down through the boughs of the trees, casting spots of golden light on the ground. And then, like sparks igniting in the quiet forest, the horses began to see flutters of orange spiraling and twisting over them.

  “Butterflies!” Corazón exclaimed.

  They had seen butterflies in the jungle but never ones such as these. The wings of these creatures were bright orange with lovely black markings. As evening came, the butterflies began to gather in pendulous clusters that draped from the trees, folding their wings tightly shut. The orange vanished, and the butterflies looked as drab as dead leaves. No one would ever suspect the beauty they contained. Then, as the first drops of sunlight hit the trees, the butterflies erupted into a sudden conflagration. The entire forest flashed golden as the creatures opened their wings to collect the sun’s rays. It was magical to the horses.

  The best thing about the forests was that their canopies were not so thick as to obscure the sky. It was easy for Estrella to find the dipping stars. Soon she realized that, like the horses, the butterflies were also heading north. One morning, however, the butterfly magic ceased. The sky had clouded up and an insistent rain began to fall. The butterflies kept their wings clamped shut. The rain continued all day and into the night, and the air became colder. The butterflies started to quiver and those on the outside of clusters began dropping to the ground. Without the heat of the sun, they could not muster enough energy to fly. The horses had to leave the fragile creatures and hope that some would live and they might see them again.

  After several days, the rain ceased and the horizon cleared. It had been too long since Estrella had seen the North Star. She hoped they were still heading in the right direction. Stepping out from under the shaggy shadows of the piñon tree, she lifted her head and scanned the sky for the North Star. It had just slipped over the edge of the horizon in the fading night and the rest of the dipper was following behind it, like a loyal herd.

/>   Estrella swung her head in short arcs while flaring her nostrils and blowing. She could not help but wonder about the butterflies. Come morning with the first rays of the sun, she would look again for them — but the trees had thinned and there were few places for them to cluster.

  There had been no scent of blood since the night of the horses’ escape, but Estrella was always wary. For a moment she wondered if humans would go wild like horses if they left their huts, their villages, their way of life. Would they, too, forget what they were taught?

  Just as she was wondering, Estrella caught, for the first time in days, the clear scent of the sweet grass. She shoved her ears forward, as if she might possibly hear the lush whisper of the wind through the sea of grass. The horses behind her went quiet and alert as they watched her. They knew she sensed something. The stallions, except for Hold On, tensed as if sensing a possible danger.

  Hold On nickered softly. “There’s nothing wrong. You’ll soon enough understand. She … she knows.”

  “Knows?” the blue roan, Azul, asked. “How can she know anything? She’s young. She’s never been here before.”

  Hold On wheeled about and blinked at the blue roan. He almost thanked her for the insolent tone of her question, because suddenly Hold On knew exactly what it was about Estrella that made her their leader. He wanted to say, But you see, Azul, that’s precisely the point. She has been here before. Her bloodline goes back not just to the Iber Jennets or the Barbs or Arabians, but before.

  But how to explain this to the blue roan? To any of them? All their bloodlines went back, and yet Hold On imagined that Estrella’s blood was like a sparkling thread glimmering through the filly’s veins and illuminating their first origins, their first pastures, the first continent on which they had run and galloped.

  Estrella was the youngest, but in a sense also the oldest. Hold On had seen things in that keen eye of hers. He sensed that what Estrella had was more like an instinct than a destiny. He had become more and more sure that Estrella had seen some sort of ghost horse from an ancient time that guided her as surely as the dipper. Hold On gave the blue roan a quelling look, but said nothing.

  The black of the night thinned to gray, and the gray faded into the silvery dust of the just before. Estrella nickered to the others, “This way.”

  When the dawn finally broke, the clouds were so high that it was as if the bowl of the sky were filled with a luminous pink glow. The horses quickly fell into order. Estrella took the lead with Hold On just behind her on one side and Grullo on the other. The two stallions, Arriero and Bobtail, took the outer flanks. In the middle came Angela, Corazón, Azul, Sky, and the colt Verdad. Verdad and Sky nickered to each other.

  “You have one blue eye and one good eye,” Verdad said to Sky.

  “They’re both good. I can see from them both.”

  “You can really see from the blue one?”

  “Yes.”

  “You know what they call a horse with a blue eye?”

  “Caballo con un ojo azul, ‘a horse with a blue eye,’ I suppose,” Sky answered.

  “No,” nickered Verdad. “They call a horse like you a glass-eye horse.”

  Sky snorted. “That’s stupid. Do you think my eye will shatter?”

  “I don’t know. But that’s what the Seeker and his men call horses like you — glass eyes.”

  “They don’t know horses.” Sky paused. “Not the way she knows horses.” He nodded toward Estrella.

  “The filly?”

  Sky nodded.

  “But why does everyone follow her? She is the youngest of us all. She didn’t even touch land until she got to this country. She was born on the ship.”

  “She knows land now,” Sky replied.

  Verdad glanced nervously at Azul. “So does the blue roan. They say blue roans, you know …” His thought seemed to dwindle.

  “What do they say? Is it like what they say about horses with one blue eye — glass eyes?”

  “Well, our masters,” Verdad began again. “I heard them say that blue roans are uncommonly intelligent. That they have all the colors, like a rainbow has all the colors and —”

  Sky broke in. “Horses are not rainbows and the Seeker is not here! There are no masters here. Only horses that can lead, and others like Grullo and Hold On and the other stallions that protect us.”

  Verdad glanced at Azul as if expecting the filly to answer for him.

  “What is it, Verdad?” Azul asked.

  “Nothing,” Verdad replied.

  “It must be something. You looked troubled. I told you before, when you have troubles, you share them with me.”

  Why? Sky thought. It seemed odd. Why couldn’t Verdad decide who he shared his troubles with? Azul wasn’t his dam or his sister. Sky trotted up closer to Hold On.

  Now Estrella looked up. There had been no moon when they fled the City of the Gods. Then it had swelled as they headed north, only to fade again to nothing. But she could see behind the scudding clouds a sliver thin as an eyelash. It had been a full cycle. The land in this New World, she thought, is made for galloping. The horses had pounded north, covering huge distances. In the jungle, they had made a fraction of the distance they now covered in a single day. Since their escape, they had passed through high plains, scrublands with shrunken trees and nary a blade of grass, then the forests where they encountered the magical butterflies. They had seen rolling hills that tumbled with low dusty grasses, and traveled for days on end through lowlands that grew with what the horses called sharp grass. The edges of the grass were jagged, and when the wind blew through it, there was a great whining sound.

  Now the country seemed to lift itself out of the basin of these lowlands. There was a welcome quiet as the sharp grass receded and the wind buzz was swallowed into the vastness of the arching sky. The land became drier and drier, and as it did, the scent of the sweet grass seemed to recede.

  Estrella sensed that some of the herd were doubting her. She almost could smell the dissension. Not from Hold On or Sky, but from Azul and possibly Bobtail as well. The two old mares were always gentle, but there was something in Angela’s and Corazón’s manner that seemed more faltering and hesitant than usual. Verdad was close to Azul, so easily influenced. Grullo and Arriero were still unfamiliar with Estrella. They seemed stalwart sorts and they were deeply respectful of Hold On. But were they strong enough to hold the herd together despite the burgeoning tension?

  Sometimes the land was broken, as if old creeks or rivers had torn up the terrain. There were dust storms that would sweep across the broad plain, their outlier whirlwinds like twisting phantoms from another world. And on occasion, dramatic thunderheads stampeded across the sky. The air swelled suddenly with moisture, the clouds roared and split, and the rain lashed down, drenching the herd.

  “The bones of the sky are cracking,” Grullo would mutter. And indeed the lightning splintered like skeletons slamming against the night. At times like these, the horses would hunker down under the sandstone rimrock that was exactly the color of Estrella’s coat — “with fewer burrs,” they joked. The horses often stood face-to-face, grooming one another by running their teeth and lips down the withers and neck of whoever was closest. It was very soothing during the storms.

  Once, Hold On was grooming Estrella and Estrella sensed that she should turn to Verdad, whom Azul had been grooming. At first, Azul gave her a sharp look, but just then, Sky showed up with a coat and mane full of burrs. “It was that last patch we went through before the storm. Those stick burrs were too high for me.”

  “Or just perfect for your withers,” Azul snorted.

  Estrella wondered why they hadn’t done more grooming when they had first landed and were traveling through the jungle. It was so calming. She recalled her dam grooming her in the dim light of the hold. But that was in the slings; every time her mother tried to comb through Estrella’s withers, Estrella’s sling would swing away. It became quite frustrating for both of them.

  This wa
s entirely different. The earth never moved, not even when the air was quaking with thunder and the sky flashed against the night.

  After the thunderstorms, the world would appear rinsed and fresh, ready for them, this first herd.

  One morning, as the thin haze of the previous night’s moisture cleared, strange, steep rock formations with flat tops appeared in the distance.

  “Like my master’s table,” said Angela when they spied the first one.

  “Were you accustomed to eating at your master’s table?” Azul said with a snide look at the old mare.

  “As a matter of fact, he brought one of those tables into the stables. It was Saint Eligius Day, and it was raining hard, so the blessing was said inside the stables. We were led forward one by one and given an apple.”

  “Who’s Saint Eligius?” the blue roan asked.

  “The saint for horses,” Angela replied.

  “My goodness,” Corazón said, her voice rather dim. “I almost forgot him.”

  “He was an Iber saint,” Hold On snapped.

  “But he was the saint for horses, too,” Angela insisted.

  “What are saints supposed to do?” Estrella asked.

  “To protect us, look out for us,” Angela nickered almost dreamily.

  Estrella snorted. Where was the saint on the day her dam died? “I don’t think he did a very good job,” Estrella said, thinking of her dam and Centello’s severed head.

  “Will there be saints in the New Land?” Sky asked.

  “I hope not,” Hold On replied, and tossed his mane as if he were trying to rid himself not only of the fly that had landed on his forelock, but every pesky thing from the Old Land.

  The next day, there was a strange occurrence in the sky. On either side of the morning sun, there was a bright glow, as if two other, smaller suns had risen to make a halo surrounding the first sun.

  “Sun ponies!” Hold On said. “I only saw them once before, in a meadow.”

  “Is that meadow wisdom?” Estrella asked.