The Changespell Saga

by Doranna Durgin

  Jess ran a hand down his arm, feeling its intact solidness and, moderately reassured, withdrew to entwine her arms in a self-hug. “Magic,” she said, and shivered. “For Arlen, Carey.”

  “I couldn’t not try, Lady,” he said, agonized, staring at the blackened paper. Then his features cleared a little. “I’ll bet Arlen set some kind of protection on that thing—it could have been the magic itself that triggered that reaction. It doesn’t mean I had the spell wrong.”

  Jaime appeared at the gate, surveying the arena anxiously—but only until she saw Carey was apparently unharmed. Then the anger blossomed. “We’ve got a hell of a mess,” she said, her voice so tightly controlled that Jess shuddered inside. “If I could kick you all the way back to your damned Camolen, I’d—” she stopped, jaw clenched. “We’ve got to take care of these horses. I’ve checked them all—no one’s doing any heavy bleeding. Carey, look in all the stalls for glass—every damn window in this building is broken. Jess, get Sabre out of his stall, bring him in here, and talk him down—and check him over, every inch, you hear? I want to know about every ruffled hair on that horse’s body. I’m going to call the vet—we’ve got at least one horse that looks shocky—and then I’m going to take a closer look at the others.” She stared at Carey, hard, and shook her head before turning on her heel and stalking away.

  “What did she say?” Carey asked, his voice low, his eyes on the spot where Jaime had been. “I can’t hear a thing.”

  “Check all the stalls for glass,” Jess said. “She wants you to do that.” She scrambled to her feet, fear for the horses overcoming her concern for Carey. She had never seen Jaime so wrathful, and she suddenly dreaded what she might find.

  ~~~~~

  It was hours before the vet left, leaving behind several horses with stitches and two treated for shock. It was longer still before the barn regained any semblance of order. While there was no interior glass to pick up—the windows had blown out—there were many minor wounds to inspect and treat; almost every horse had leg injuries, self-inflicted during the panic. Jaime sent Carey inside when she saw his white, strained face, but she had extra help when Cindy arrived for her lesson, saw the chaos, and immediately pitched in to help. They pulled stray shards of glass from the window glazing, cancelled the day’s lessons, doctored the horses, and closed the barn up so there would be little or no intrusion from the outside world. Quiet dulcimer music played over the barn’s sound system while the distressed horses retreated to their favorite corners and watched, worry-eyed, for anything that looked like another threat. Jess spent the whole time with Sabre, for the big horse was deeply shaken and sent anxious, pealing neighs after her each time she tried to leave.

  Finally, late in the afternoon, Cindy left. Jaime walked slowly into the middle of the arena, where Jess sat with Sabre. She kicked the small pile of ash nearby and regarded her anxious champion, quietly offering him a sugar cube. As he nuzzled it, knocked it out of her palm, and ignored it, tears for the whole afternoon finally found their way down her cheek. “God, I wish I could make him understand.”

  “He understands that you are here to take care of him,” Jess said, quietly but firmly.

  Jaime searched her eyes for a long moment, then wiped her cheek. “You know, don’t you? You really know. But you can’t tell me what this will do to him. The ego, the edge—the special spark that makes a top level horse like Sabre—it’s so fragile.”

  “He is still himself,” Jess said, more of a guess than her last assurance, though she didn’t let it through to her face.

  “No show this weekend,” Jaime said with a little laugh. “No way. You ready to be pampered, big fellow?” she asked, gently slapping his neck. “For the next few days you’re going to think you’re in heaven. Longeing tomorrow, maybe a light workout day after that.”

  “Yes,” Jess said. “Do the things he likes, that he does best. The passage. He is so proud to do that with you.” And, seeing the pain in Jaime’s face, she stood, and they quietly held one another.

  Carey’s voice intruded on their silence. “I’m sorry.” His words were hushed, the voice faltering.

  Jaime pulled back from Jess and looked at him, nothing more than that, while Carey stood and took the unspoken judgment without protest.

  “Do you have any idea of what you might have done to me this afternoon?” she said at last. “Do you know how often a horse like this comes along?”

  Carey’s eyes flickered to Jess, then he looked down. “I think so.”

  “Did you see the look on Dr. Miller’s face when I told him the barn was hit by lightening? He didn’t buy it, and neither will my boarders—all of whom love their horses as much as I love Sabre.”

  “I know.” Just as quiet.

  “What do you mean, you know? You don’t know, or you never would have done this.”

  “I didn’t have any idea this would happen,” Carey said, an edge creeping into his voice.

  “You did,” Jaime contradicted flatly. “You did, or you wouldn’t have come out here to do...whatever you did. Well, we’re going to get a few things straight. Frankly, I was—am—one word away from booting you out.” Her gaze softened, momentarily, as she glanced at Sabre, stroking his neck while he crowded her, seeking solace—and turned into flint when she looked back to Carey. “Jess is the reason you’re still here. The only reason. And it’s not that I don’t want to help you. I just think your judgment sucks, which means I can’t trust you.”

  For a long moment, Carey said nothing. He watched Jaime, gave her the chance to add to what she’d said. And he looked at Jess, his expression becoming a mixture of remorse and wistfulness. “I don’t blame you,” he said, his gaze still on Jess. “You’re right. I let my need to get home become more important than the safety of the horses. I just—” and he stopped, and clenched his fists, his jaw working. Jess’s heart went out to him, for she knew he wanted to go home as badly as she’d wanted to find him, and she remembered how much it hurt. It was a bittersweet feeling, this thing that tugged at her, and she didn’t completely understand it.

  “No more magic,” Jaime said firmly. “Not here. Go out to the woods, go stand on top of the Waldo Levy, go out to the middle of Delaware Lake, I don’t care. Not near this barn.” Then she added, “Not that you have any magic left to do.”

  Carey snorted. “I’ve had that thing memorized for a week. I’ll keep working at it.”

  “You can do some work around here, while you’re at it. I’m thinking about selling JayDee—she’s too temperamental for a lesson horse. But she needs tuning, and she needs to be reminded she doesn’t choose when she listens to her rider. You can do that for me, I think.”

  Carey nodded, almost absently. “All right.”

  “For now, you can treat us to dinner. Pizza sound good to you, Jess?”

  Jess nodded, enthusiastic in her relief. Carey and Jaime...the two people she cared for most in both her worlds. The two people she needed most. Pizza together, after this...it was as normal as two people from different worlds, one of whom had been and still was a horse, could possibly be.

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Chapter Nine

  “Good, Jess!” Jaime said, watching Sunny come up into the bit, moving nice and round beneath his perfectly relaxed rider. “Let’s do some walk-trot transitions, every ten strides, and keep him in this frame.”

  On the other end of the arena, Carey sat on JayDee, working on his own. Jaime had given him a week of lessons, and discovered there were, perhaps not unexpectedly, some similarity in the riding theories of their two worlds—although Carey’s interest was naturally in rendering his mounts more agile and responsive in rough territory, not in the highly controlled exercises of the ring. But he had good, giving hands and a remarkable seat, as well as a firm gentleness she would not have credited him with to judge by his sometimes too-confident behavior on the ground. For the first time, she really understood Jess’s devotion to him, and she wondered if only the stress of his mission drov
e him to the edge of intractability. He reminded her of a racehorse with blinkers on, striving madly for his goal with no awareness of the world around him.

  She knew it puzzled Jess. She would catch her friend—for Jess had grown into a friend, no longer just a lost soul dependent on Jaime’s good will—staring at Carey, looking a bit bewildered—and a bit hurt, for Carey seldom did anything to indicate that he thought of Jess as other than his former courier mount. Stupid man.

  Jess rode deep in concentration, using an intuition no one in this world could hope to match. Jaime sighed as she glanced at her watch and discovered she’d run out of time if she wanted to get more grain before the feed store closed. She watched her pupil for another few minutes, enjoying the sight of horse and rider working in simple but complete accord, and she was about to call a halt to it when she noticed Carey walked JayDee on a long rein, his attention on Jess. She had the feeling his slight frown had nothing to do with Jess’s riding, and she would have given anything to have read his mind as the frown faded to something...sad, something she couldn’t quite identify, before his face closed up again. Now what was that about? “Jess,” she called, “you had a really nice ride today. Cool him out on a long rein and then turn him out in the west paddock. I’ve got to get to the feed store, so you’re on your own.”

  Jess nodded, obviously reluctant to accept the lesson’s end. As Jaime stood up from the lawn chair at the arena gate, she glanced back at Carey. He was riding JayDee through some simple lead changes across the ring diagonal, with no sign he had ever been distracted.

  ~~~~~

  “Thanks for coming along, you guys,” Eric said cheerfully as he handed Carey a seine net and Lady two buckets. “It’ll be a lot easier this way—and more fun, too.”

  Fun. Carey had never called fishing fun, but he supposed it might be if, barring success, you could then pick up a full meal at the grocery store. Only Camolen’s larger cities had comparable establishments. In this world—or at least in this part of this world—people were so far removed from the basics of how their natural world worked that he and Lady were about to help Eric catch river creatures for a display in the nature center at Highbanks Metropark, where Eric volunteered. At the very park, in fact, where he and Lady had entered this world.

  He caught Lady staring doubtfully ahead as they walked across the very green spring grass of the park lawn, looking at the river, the Olentangy, that awaited them. He could see only a glint of bright sunlight off water, for a generous band of trees and brush bordered the river—but Lady had fixed her gaze on it, and he could tell by the stiffening nature of her walk that she was remembering how much she hated putting her feet in a river she didn’t know. He couldn’t figure out, how, barefooted, clad in a pair of Mark’s worn, torn cut-off shorts and a too-short T-shirt, she could still remind him so much of the mare he’d raised and trained. For today’s adventure her hair was pulled back and tied off, and from behind it looked like nothing so much as the tail that belonged on Dun Lady’s Jess.

  They walked the short path through the trees and paused at the edge of the river, where Lady toed the water briefly and stepped back. Eric unrolled his own net. “You guys done this before?”

  “I have,” Carey said, amused.

  “Oh, yeah—right.” Eric laughed at himself and held the net stretched out between his open arms. “See, Jess, the two of us stand downstream from you, and all you have to do is stir up the river bottom. All the little river goodies get carried right down into our nets. Got it?”

  “Stir up the river bottom?” she repeated, clearly uncertain about her role.

  “You can hold one of the nets if you want to,” Eric offered.

  Carey knew that wasn’t the problem. He tightened the laces of his sneakers and walked, splashing boldly, out to the middle of the river. The water came up just past his knees, well below the shorts he’d been advised to buy along with the sturdy jeans he appreciated so much, and he stood in the moderate current as casually as possible. “It feels good,” he said indifferently, dipping a hand into water that was in fact a little chilly. “Good footing, too.”

  Eric seemed to sense what he was up to, for he followed Carey into the water and deployed his net. “Half the time all you have to do is stand here, and you get some sort of catch.” But he gave Carey a questioning glance, and then looked back at Lady, who had still not committed herself to the water.

  “Most horses are afraid of putting their feet somewhere they can’t see,” Carey told him in a low voice. “Lady’s no exception. I was surprised when she agreed to come along.”

  “She came to be with you,” Eric said, as though it were obvious, giving Lady a thoughtful look.

  Carey tucked his dripping net under his arm and moved upstream. “We can do it with just the one net,” he suggested. “Any time you decide to come in, Lady, we can use the help.” And he proceeded, with great fanfare, to kick and shuffle his way through the sand and rock of the river bottom, stirring up great clouds of silt that sluiced through the current channels downstream. Eventually Eric held up a net full of crayfish and hellgrammites and a few flopping minnows.

  “Need the bucket,” he said, and Carey watched with a smile as Lady, her curiosity overcoming trepidation, moved into the water up to her ankles, dipped the bucket in the river, and held it out to Eric. He splashed over and jiggled the contents of the net into the bucket, sloshing away without a backward glance. Lady set the bucket on one of the plentiful flat rocks and stayed in her safe part of the river.

  The second time they came up with an empty net, and Eric suggested, “We need to move upstream a little bit, though...we could try it here with two nets.”

  Carey looked at his undecided companion, and his mind’s eye translated her into a horse hovering at the edge of the deeper water, one hoof pawing the air over the surface. Then he blinked and saw only Lady with her dun/black hair pulled back, her toes curled protectively around the rocks at her feet and a thin line of dusky skin peeking through where the t-shirt fell short of her cut-offs. Carey held out his hand. “C’mon, braveheart,” he said, in the same voice that had wooed her into countless rivers.

  She took the plunge. Scooting through the water, slipping on the rocks she traversed too quickly, she ended up right at his side, trembling a little at her own boldness.

  “Hey, all right, Jess!” Eric hailed her, and she smiled uncertainly at him.

  “Good job.” Carey slipped an arm around her waist, offering but not forcing the support, and together they kicked up another cloud of silt. Outwardly he was matter-of-fact but inwardly he smiled, and thought there was, perhaps, a little more satisfaction to convincing this free-willed creature than to bluffing one of his horses.

  He wasn’t surprised when Lady eventually soaked all of them with her enthusiasm. Once she trusted the footing she entered into the game with abandon, and Carey knew that they’d been out there long after Eric had his quota for the nature center aquarium. If Lady noticed that he was discreetly releasing as many creatures as he kept, she pretended not to.

  But it was Lady, as engrossed as she was with kicking around the Olentangy River bottom—or Old-and-dingy, as Eric called it—who noticed they had company. Although she’d ignored the occasional hiker who’d stopped to exchange a few words with Eric and his volunteer’s armband, this time she flung her head up; her nostrils flared and Carey knew she was laying her ears back. It was a warning...to Derrick.

  Nine Hells. “You must waste a lot of time keeping track of me,” he said, so that Eric, who had not been tuned into Lady’s signals, jerked his head up from where he bent over one of the buckets, nearly turning it over in his surprise.

  “It’s not that hard,” Derrick said, watching them from the riverbank. “And don’t forget, right now you’re the only thing I’ve got on my mind. You and that spell, I mean.”

  “I figured you’d given up on us,” Carey said—though he hadn’t, really, despite Derrick’s long absence. His gaze skipped over the tre
es along the river. “Where’s your friend Ernie?”

  Instead of answering, Derrick said, “Give up? No. Ernie and I have just been busy with one of his projects.” Derrick casually nodded back toward the nature center parking lot. “He’s back in the car—he prefers pavement under his feet, I think. Besides, I’m not here to make trouble.”

  Carey did not deign to respond to that one. Of course Derrick was here to make trouble—a point Derrick himself proved by leering at Lady, who looked less gamine—and more defensively threatening—by the moment. Carey stepped slightly in front of her, a message to both her and Derrick.

  “She’s done better than my chestnut,” Derrick said, idly snapping a twig from one of the sycamore saplings on the river’s edge. “That fool didn’t take well to a new body. Ran off and left me—and you—in those woods; didn’t take him long to run out in front of a car. But your mare, now—she came looking for you.” He fingered the fresh pinkness of the healed bite on his cheek. “Why was that, Carey?”

  “Go burn,” Carey said, a particularly coarse remark almost hidden in his pleasant tone of voice.

  Derrick shrugged. “Doesn’t matter, I suppose. Just...interesting. But not what I wanted to talk about.”

  Carey put both end poles of the seine net in one hand and put the other on hip, a bored looking stance. “Yeah, right. You want the spell. Well, I’ve learned a saying here that seems to fit just right: get real, Derrick.”

  “I’m not here just to take,” Derrick protested. “I’ve got something I know you want—and I want to trade.”

  Carey snorted. “For my spellstones, right? I don’t believe it.”