Water, Circle, Moon

by Sally McBride

  Laine’s eyes got big, and Arren could feel a jolt of tension stiffen her. “What should I do?”

  “Do? Fight for your man like a tigress. Though tigresses have nothing on us.” Arabella began to loosen the ribbon at the neck of her nightgown. “Your best weapons are your hooves. Don’t try to get close enough to him to bite—he outweighs you and will best you every time.” She unwrapped her headscarf and set her wild ginger hair free. It immediately began to move and coil upwards, the curls lengthening and reaching for the sky. Laine brushed her own wandering strands out of her face. “Wheel, kick, run, and kick some more. He has been doing this so long that he thinks he’s seen everything. He hasn’t.” Her pale blue eyes gleamed.

  The nightgown fell to the flagstones in a puddle of flowery cotton. Her small body, remarkably firm for a woman her age, began to shiver and flow. “Think like humans. Try to stay alive.”

  Chapter Thirty

  After several false starts and a lot of ungainly floundering, Laine and Arren succeeded in regaining their cabyll shapes. Arabella’s coaching helped, plus Laine was getting the hang of it. All she had to do was picture herself as a bigger, stronger, faster version of herself . . . and stretch.

  Plus, all those childhood games of playing horse were finally paying off. This time it was real. She flicked her tail. Grinning with a horse’s mouth was a very odd sensation, and she suspected it looked more sinister than happy. She was fine with that. Anything that might add to her intimidation factor was good.

  The flood of information coming at her was the most amazing part of it. Her senses were much sharper, though different—her eyes and ears able to discern the slightest alteration in what she saw or heard. Static patterns were harder to decipher, but any change or motion was immediately clear. This must be a facet of being a horse; a herd animal that predators considered a tasty meal would need to monitor her environment constantly. The predators simply did not know that this meal would fight back.

  She lifted her head. It was her sense of smell that was the hardest to ignore. Impossible, in fact. Like an alcoholic sucking at a bottle, she couldn’t deny herself the intoxicating brew in the air around her. So many smells! From ordinary to delightful to nauseating. She inhaled more deeply, trying to sort the layers of odor into recognizable categories. Grass, of course—which smelled much better than it ever had before. The scent of apples hanging from the trees or already fallen to the ground was now overwhelmingly enticing. She hoped her soft, flexible lips were not allowing drool to reveal just how damned good those apples smelled.

  Earth and stone and flowers and cars and people—humans—dogs and smoke and pine needles. Another few sniffs and she started to recognize individual markers. The mulch and worms and long-lost coins in the earth under her feet, the oil and plastic and steel of the cars in the parking lot, the soap and sweat and perfume clinging to the clothes they’d shed.

  And winding through all this bounty, like a thread in a tapestry, was a scent she was learning to identify. The most amazing, intoxicating scent of all. Arren.

  Each of them had their own individual signature of scent, but his was the one that compelled her, inevitably, closer to him. Her nostrils flared wide. He stood still and watched as she slid closer, his head drawn in and his neck arched. He whickered softly, lowering his head to hers as she neared him. She could see him shiver.

  They touched noses, breathing one another’s exhalations like rare perfume.

  The scent of him went straight to her brain. Male. Strong, virile, potent. A cabyll ushtey stallion in the prime of life. Alive as nothing else in the world was. All the other wonderful smells faded, and that one magical strand entwined itself with her soul, drew tight, and bound her with knowledge: this stallion was hers. And she was his. Forever.

  She moved closer and ran her cheek down along his neck where the hot blood pounded. They began to twine their necks together, nuzzling and sniffing . . .

  “All right, you two, that’s enough of that.”

  Laine sprang back, as did Arren. How did a horse transmit the emotion of embarrassment? Never mind. Her human brain was kicking in again, thank goodness.

  “We’re wasting time,” snapped Arabella, who looked like every girl’s idea of the perfect toy: a miniature russet pony, her long, platinum mane and tail curling and swishing. How had such a gorgeous creature managed to remain incognito all these years?

  “Laine, pay attention! We have to track your mother, and you must be the one to do it. Your blood is half hers, and you have been living with her.” She hesitated, narrowing her eyes at Laine. “I can almost locate her scent myself. I met her before, years ago, here at the inn when she traveled through . . . ” and met your father was left unsaid. “She has changed so much I only just figured it out. She was saucy as any of the barmaids, healthy, vibrant . . . now it’s as if most of the life has been drained from her. We must get it back.”

  Laine said, “Arabella, do you know anything about a small ivory carving of a horse?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “Perhaps.”

  “I think it might be very important that we watch out for it. I had it for a while, Arren saw it, and now we think Mother has it. Innis said it held her soul.”

  Arabella’s head bowed. If she’d been in human form, she’d have crossed herself; Laine was sure of it. “I haven’t seen it, but I have heard of the magic that makes such tokens. It has been forbidden for centuries. If Bethea’s soul is captured there, then she is vulnerable to being enslaved permanently to whoever holds it, cabyll or not.”

  “That’s what I was afraid of.”

  “Laine’s mother is the least of our worries,” stated Arren. “All I ask is that she stay out of the way. We can worry about the carving later. It’s time to move.”

  Reluctantly Laine, then Arabella, nodded.

  Arren and Arabella looked at Laine expectantly.

  She looked back. “What am I supposed to do?” Her voice sounded plaintive in her ears. She shook her head. This was not the time to give in to self-doubt. “Scent, right? Learn to be a bloodhound.”

  “That’s it, dearie.”

  It was hard enough learning to be a horse. She raised her head and sniffed, seeking some kind of familiarity in the air. A floating tendril of Bethea . . .

  “There’s too much. Everything . . . overlaps.” She shut her eyes and stood motionless in an effort to pin down the scent-trail they needed.

  “It’s like shifting,” offered Arabella. “You’re thinking too much, trying too hard.” She trotted close, her pony body warm and small next to Laine’s withers. Arabella butted her gently and gave a soft whicker. “Just think of your mother. Think of touching her, hugging her perhaps, like you did today at tea.”

  Arabella did not, of course, know the kind of relationship she and Bethea had. Hugging was not a frequent occurrence.

  Arren said, “The first place she’d go is his cottage. But I’m certain he won’t be there; it’s the first place we’d look for him too.”

  “I thought of that,” Laine said. Bethea would run to her lover, as crazy as that might be. Obsession was an unfathomable kink to one who had never experienced it. Bethea would seek the man who had scarred her so badly she’d run to the other side of an ocean. But she was clever. She wouldn’t look in the most obvious place any more than they would.

  As Laine tried to get inside her mother’s mind, the memory of that night long ago when Bethea had tucked her in floated into Laine’s thoughts as if it had been waiting behind the curtain of her eyelids. “Somehow I don’t imagine her heading inside anywhere. She’d feel trapped, stifled.”

  Arren said, “I agree. If she’s been in her human form for years and has finally broken free, she’ll want to run. I know it.”

  “She might be miles away. Let me concentrate . . . ” Mother had bent over, arms tentatively reaching . . . Laine had smelled her floral perfume, her sweet shampoo, and something more subtle: a musky, earthy scent that left an aftertaste of copper in the b
ack of her throat. Now Laine recognized that metallic tang. It was blood. Her mother’s warm, flowing blood in the delicate veins of her neck, so close to Laine’s cheek there in her suburban bed. What if I’d reached for her then? Would she have hugged me back, held me tight, told me how much she loved me? Would everything have been different between us?

  Reluctantly Laine let the fantasy go. It only interfered with what she had to do. She drew in air again, sifting and searching through all the odors of the night.

  A hint of something familiar traveled up her nose and into her brain. A flicker of light followed. The scent and the light melded, coiling together, starting to swirl and glow. Dots and dashes of copper-colored spots, like punctuation marks, skipped around in her head and made her muzzle wrinkle up.

  She honestly didn’t know if she was smelling or seeing them. The dots began to form a pattern. She turned her head to follow them, but all she could see was the gray, crisscrossed patterns of trees and grass and shadows. She drew in another deep sniff. Don’t think. Don’t try too hard.

  The skipping and bouncing dots began to coalesce like butterflies in her brain. She blinked. The dots were there whether her eyes were open or shut. They fell slowly to earth and lay in a phosphorescent trail spaced like hoof-steps.

  “I’ve got her.”

  Arabella squealed and danced, her tiny hooves clacking on the flagstones. “Well done!”

  Arren stared at her. Laine knew what he was thinking. The next words out of his mouth would be ordering her to stay behind. Stay safe.

  But he surprised her. He turned away and addressed Arabella. “The last time I was near Fallon, I found myself going into a submissive state.” If a horse could exhibit shame and embarrassment, Arren was doing it now. Brusquely he carried on. “I don’t want it to happen again. Ever.” He let out an angry growl and backed in a circle, not looking at Laine. She kept her mouth shut.

  “Ah,” said Arabella, cocking her delicate head up at Arren’s. “That’s worrisome. But,” she stated firmly, “you needn’t fret. If you and the young lady have truly committed to one another, physically and mentally, you now constitute a herd.”

  Arren glanced at Laine. Laine wished she had the kind of shoulders that could shrug.

  “It may sound silly, but you must remember it,” Arabella persisted. “You must know it. It’s not just a physical, chemical sort of thing—it’s in your head, in your knowledge of yourself. You are a stallion, and whether you have one mare or many, you are in possession of a thralldom of your own. You have power equal to his in the hierarchy of cabyll ushtey life.”

  “It’s a head game,” put in Laine.

  “It is indeed,” agreed Arabella. “And it’s one Jaird Fallon has played for many years. He’s good at it, but let me tell you this, Laine: your mate is younger, taller, perhaps stronger and faster than Jaird. Arren possesses better weapons than you might think.”

  “If you say so,” said Arren, sounding extremely doubtful.

  The trail of softly glowing hoof-steps was starting to fade. Laine began to follow them, still not sure she was capable of doing this. She heard the others coming quietly along behind her, perhaps afraid they’d break her concentration. The trail headed through the garden, down the path to the stables and past the looming building toward the river. She felt a shiver at the memory of the iron lock in her hand, the frantic woman behind it. How long ago that night seemed.

  When they got to the riverbank, Laine halted. The glowing spots ended at the water’s edge. “Damn.”

  Arren stopped beside her and rubbed shoulders—withers—with her. The gesture was encouraging rather than sensual. They were at work now. Laine cocked her head from side to side, sniffing the air at the same time. She scented nothing but water, however, and though that was full of its own varied textures and shades of meaning, none of them held the signal “Mother came this way.” Yet Mother had. Laine knew it in the very molecules that moiled in her nostrils and sent their signals to her brain. She had no idea how.

  She peered across the flowing looking for a continuation of the glowing trail, but there was nothing. Bethea was wily enough to hide her tracks in the river, but had she headed upstream or down? Had she crossed to the other side, or merely used the water to distract hunters and re-entered on this side?

  Laine snorted to clear her nasal cavity and shook her head. Her heavy mane flopped and swirled around her ears, drawn into sky-seeking peaks by the moon’s magic. She looked up. The moon was there, but defined only by a misty patch floating above them. A thin haze veiled the night so no stars were visible. Though Laine’s eyesight was better in some ways as cabyll than as human, still it was difficult to make things out.

  Arabella joined them to scowl at the water. She said, “This is going to take too long. If you two will consent to stand out of my way, only watch and listen, I will do a quick Induction.”

  Laine turned to look at her. “You can do that? I was there when Innis did it, on the island in the river, but I was too scared to see anything. Things just got . . . odd.” An understatement.

  “That’s another piece of information you didn’t share with me,” Arren said, but he didn’t sound angry. He sounded jealous. Could he be?

  She leaned her shoulder into his, enjoying the feeling of her weight and mass having an impact on him, no matter how soft. “The bastard sprang it on me out of nowhere. Scared the living daylights out of me. Believe me, I will pay him back big time.”

  Arren huffed a short laugh. She could feel his tension through the gunmetal hide that lay next to hers, that amazing dense softness over steel-hard muscle.

  Obediently they both backed away from Arabella, who had her head down and seemed to be concentrating hard. Her ears were back, and her pale mane and tail whipped up like meringue in a phantom wind.

  Laine started to feel a low, thrilling rumble tremble up through her legs and into her body. It was like the bass notes at a rock concert, felt as a vibration in her chest.

  She took an involuntary stride backwards, the soft riverbank shifting under her hooves. Arren matched her movement, his hooves squelching mud. His ears were back too, just like Arabella’s, and his breath came in steaming huffs that stirred up the grass.

  Arabella was the source of the rumble; like a small but superb sports car, she had a powerful engine. Her lips pulled back to reveal her teeth, and they looked very, very sharp. She didn’t so much growl at the sky as call to it. Laine could see her chest expand and her muscles tense as she produced a pure, deep tone directed straight at the moon. Her eyes had gone pale as the hazy disk above them.

  The challenge was tempered by ritual. Laine had been to enough High Anglican services to understand when a God was being petitioned. There were traditional patterns to be respected. The Goddess Moon expected no less.

  Arabella bowed, her low growl shifting higher and then back again in almost-words, like the midnight whispers and grumblings of ghosts. This Goddess was strange and strong and dangerous; you did not dishonor Her by obsequious groveling, you showed the strength you were prepared to offer in Her service.

  Arabella bowed again, her nose touching the ground, then raised her head and bugled. A musical cascade of harsh beauty poured forth from her. She reared and called again, and Laine thought she could interpret it. Lend us power. Grant us endurance. Give us victory!

  The pale glow above them began to pulse. The haze around the moon thinned and began to dilute like blood in water.

  The orb burst through the last clinging threads of haze, in all her glory, pouring a molten stream down on them as if from a crucible. Laine gasped and bucked at the hot stroke of pleasure, as if the best drug in the world had shot into her bloodstream and begun to boil its way to her heart.

  The moon was a spotlight on them. Arren reared and screamed, his hide gleaming and his eyes wild. Arabella panted deep and hot, gathering her breath back, then began to dance and circle in place, laughing. It was the laughter Laine had heard that very first day, whe
n the horses had leapt across her car’s path, and she shivered. Arabella’s hooves flashed as they cut the earth. Laine watched, trembling, dizzy with power and the intolerable urge to run.

  She was conscious now of every hair on her body, every beat of her heart, every single one of the sharp white teeth in her mouth. The powerful suck of her lungs pulling oxygen from the night air, the weight of her long, taut body, the excruciating detail of what she saw and smelled and heard.

  Everything was magnified. Everything, including herself, was bigger than life.

  Out on the river she could see an iridescent sheen. Focusing, she saw that it was hovering over the water like a tattered rainbow mist, marking the path Bethea had taken across the river. She’d swum across not too long before, and though the traces of her scent had immediately been swept away in the river’s flow, the moist, static air above still told the tale.

  Laine looked along the ephemeral trail to the opposite bank, searching upstream and down. “There,” she said after only a moment. “She went upstream. I can see where she left the river. I can smell her footsteps from here.”

  Arren plunged in without hesitation, Arabella following, then Laine. The water didn’t trouble her this time; in fact, it felt like swimming in fizzy soda—cold and fresh and sweet. She took a mouthful without slowing. They entered deeper water, swimming across to bound out on the south bank. Laine saw the eerie phosphorescence blink its way into the forest.

  “Wait,” cried Arabella. “Something feels wrong.” She shook water from her mane and snorted to clear her nostrils.

  “What do you mean?” Arren bent his shaggy head to her. He was twice her size, yet she maintained that air of leadership.

  “My Induction—it worked only partially, I’m afraid. The moon is being drained by others. Most likely Jaird, possibly your mother too, Laine. All I can tell is that power is being shared, spread out, and therefore weakened for us.”

  “Feels pretty damn good to me,” put in Arren, but he was quelled by a look from Arabella.