The air had turned cooler and the nights crisp. The sky seemed to burn with stars. The North Star blazed brighter than ever and the sweet grass scent that so often seemed elusive became stronger.
Azul had not been as surly lately. But somehow this had not set Estrella’s mind at ease. She felt as if the air was heavy with Azul’s pent-up wrath, the way it was before a summer storm.
Despite the tension, there were undeniable pleasures to be found as they traveled. The seasons were one of Estrella’s delights. In the ship, there had been only two seasons — storm or calm, always in heat and darkness. The farther north the herd traveled, the more they were aware of the weather changing. The huge blizzard that now seemed so long ago had been a late spring storm. It was followed by days of scorching heat sometimes broken by terrifying electrical storms where the skin of the sky would peel back to reveal its cracking bones.
Estrella knew now that she had not been fated to pass her entire life suspended in a sling in the hold of a ship. At some point, she would have become part of the world — the human’s world. She would have been trained to ride into combat, or to pull a cart, or perhaps just to be ridden by her owner in the countryside. The good days would have been when she was set out to pasture to graze. If she had foaled, and if the foal had been born with straight legs and good hips and an elegantly curved neck, it would be sold, perhaps taken far away.
It was a strange world. Estrella found it difficult to comprehend that Angela sometimes went on about her previous owners. Angela took pride in the men who had owned her and often talked how she could adjust her gait and her ways — muy elegante — for her rider. She said she was known to be good with children, but did she never think of the colts and the fillies she had foaled? When Estrella asked her once about her foals, she only commented on how much money her master had received for them. Corazón was a little more sensible. She remembered the family that had owned her but did not hold them in quite the same reverence that Angela did.
One night, when they had settled under the spreading branches of a grove of piñon trees, Estrella asked Hold On if he had memories of his owners.
“Oh, there have been so many, I can’t possibly remember them all.”
“Do you ever try?”
“No, why should I?”
“Were they cruel?”
“No, no. Not at all. I just don’t care to remember that time. We were owned. It is an unnatural state to be owned. I never knew how strange it was until I was free.”
Estrella shivered. “What was it like?” she asked in a low voice.
“It means that you have the bit in your mouth even when you don’t. It’s as if the bit is in your brain. You’re never required to think because your master’s hand controls that bit that moves your head. It erases any possibility of original thought. His spurs, his reins, the bit — those became your only brain.”
“But what about the meadow? Meadow wisdom?”
“You don’t wear a bit when you’re in the meadow, but you know it’s coming. It’s as dependable as the moon and the stars. For many, grazing begins to feel like a poor substitute for the grain in our feed bags. You get glimmerings of freedom in the meadow, but it’s confusing, even frightening. It’s like a sad promise of what could be but never will.”
Estrella closed her eyes and thought back to the time she’d spent in the sling. She thought about the dim light in the narrow stall and began to understand what being owned truly meant. The chain they’d put across her gums in the City of the Gods was the closest she’d ever come to having a bit in her mouth. And that was awful enough. But the sling that left chafe marks on her sides and kept her from touching her dam was, in a sense, its own kind of bit. It had been imposed by men to remind her that they owned her, even though she had been foaled by her dam. That was ownership!
Estrella slept badly that night. She had dreams of being lashed with reins, dreams of the bit pulling her neck, pulling her down. Even when the little horse galloped across her mind, it didn’t calm Estrella.
Little horse! Estrella called. Where are you going?
I’m a horse of the very dawn. I can bring you only partway, if at all. I cannot do everything. You are late to this new world.
As she spoke, Estrella felt the shadow of a coyote slinking closer, coming to chase the little horse away.
Tell me what to do! Estrella begged.
You know, said the little horse. You see the way.
Suddenly, the horse quivered, nostrils flaring and ears pitched forward. The fire winds! Beware! The fire winds begin to blow!
Estrella felt a soft breeze against her cheek, oddly warm. The wind began to blow harder and hotter, darkening, billowing with smoke and ash. Embers flew at her and nipped at her coat, stinging and burning. Estrella could hear a great roar of flame approaching, the taunting yip of a coyote ringing out above it. The last thing she remembered before she awoke was the little horse engulfed in fire.
In a distant valley, a dark, handsome stallion followed by a filly and two mares stopped for the night in a grove of piñon trees. He wanted to go on but knew that the younger of the two mares, Bella, was in foal with his colt or filly. He wouldn’t risk her.
The three horses weren’t far from the City of the Gods when a scent came to him. A blood scent that stirred him deeply. The mare, Bella, carried his foal, but he began to perceive another scent out there as well. The distant scent of a half-grown filly with a blood like his own — the blood of the great desert horses, the Barbs, and the Arabians. He was a Pura Raza, a pure-blooded horse, bred for stamina and speed. He was the very best that the two ancient lines could produce, and thus he had been named for the winged star horse in the sky, Pegasus. His owner had whispered the name in his ears as he progressed through his training in the four-beat gaits when he was just a colt. His master, Don Arturo, was a smallish man with crooked legs, but an excellent rider.
The stallion had nursed in his earliest days in a meadow, drinking the milk of the Pura Raza of Andalusia. With that milk came the scent, the blood scent, of his desert ancestors. Now the scent seemed to press in upon him with an almost unbearable intensity. It was in the belly of the mare next to him and yet out there in this alien landscape as well. The elusive blood scent of another he had sired.
The stallion had been right to break away from the Chitzen. Nothing had gone well in his life from the day when Don Arturo sold him and he had gone off across an ocean with Don Esteban, who knew nothing of horses.
They had landed on First Island, then followed the path of the Seeker. Pego’s owner had one thought: to get the gold before the Seeker.
But there had been delays, and when they arrived, they found themselves with bloody tracks to follow. The Chitzen had stopped worshipping horses as gods, had discovered that horses were more useful than gods. And Don Esteban had traded Pego, the two mares, and the filly, for gold.
The Chitzen knew nothing about horses. They cared nothing about learning to ride them. They were blind to the four-beat gaits, or the paso fino, the fine smooth gait for which the purebloods were known. All they cared about was dragging the horses into their fields to haul a plow like oxen. They were using Pego, the mares, and the filly as common farm animals. They would break his back. When he was able to sire another offspring, it seemed like a miracle to him. And the moment he was sure that Bella carried a foal, he decided they must leave.
The other horses were reluctant, scared, but he had thought it through. He had sensed that the fibrous braided tethers were not as strong as the Ibers’ ropes. One moonless night, when the clouds gathered thickly and drained the sky of any light, he began chewing on the braid that tethered him. Within a short time, he had nearly broken through. He whinnied softly.
“Look! Look, what I’ve done!” The three other horses began to chew. When they had almost cut through, Bella turned to him.
“But, Pego, where will we go?”
“Where our foal will not be treated like an ox! Where our foal will
know its true blood, the blood of the great horses of the desert. Now hurry, before the moon comes back.”
He needn’t have worried, for it was a festival and the Chitzen were deep in their gourds, filled with a liquor that made them stumble. Pego and the others jumped the corral fence without anyone noticing. They disappeared into a pelting rain that had just begun to fall. With each pounding beat of Pego’s hooves and with the roar of his heart pumping the blood of his ancestors, he repeated to himself, I am Pegasus, the God of Horses. It felt as if he were flying through the slanting rain.
The horses had emerged out of the swampy coastland onto the parched plains and continued north, many days before. He had found the star that never moves, but better, he found the horse constellation for which he was named. It rose each night in the east, its wings thrashing the dark. He learned each of its stars and navigated his way north. Between the blood scent he had picked up and the stars, he would meet his destiny. Of this he was certain.
And so, many days later, Pego and his companions found themselves sheltering for the night under a piñon tree. The night air was crisp, a welcome relief after the heat of the day. The mares rested comfortably, but a slight noise roused Pego. In the distance, he could just make out a line of figures picking its way across the hills. The figures were four-legged, not unlike the deer they’d seen a few days earlier.
The blood scent became stronger, and Pego’s ears twitched. But he would wait to approach. Bella needed to rest. Pego would do nothing to risk his unborn foal.
Hold On was the first to spot the other horses. He neighed and Azul looked over. The filly seemed to freeze. Her legs locked, and her ears sprang forward. It was just morning, the sun barely edging over the horizon, but the herd could clearly see a figure like a scrap of midnight in the distance. Soon the whole herd was alert to the approach of three horses led by a handsome black stallion. They were transfixed by the newcomers — the first horses they had seen in months.
They are horses — but why do they move in this odd manner? wondered Estrella. They pranced in a way that looked like one of the old gaits yet was slightly different.
Trouble! Hold On laid back his ears.
Corazón stretched out her neck and lifted her head to better see the newcomers. There was something comforting about the way they approached. What is it … ? Ah, a paso fino tiempo doble! And what a lovely double time it is!
Angela sighed softly and wondered if she still remembered the steps.
Arriero and Grullo twitched their ears, lifted their muzzles, and peeled back their top lips to test the air. They knew that scent — it was a stallion with whom they had shared a pasture briefly on First Island.
Him! They could even smell the scent of Don Esteban, his old master. The god stallion, they had called him scornfully. And like Hold On, they both had a single thought: Trouble!
Azul darted out from beneath the cottonwoods, and two squeals pierced the air.
“My filly!” Pego reared and the two raced toward each other. Soon the sire and his filly were nuzzling and inhaling the blood scent that bonded them, the blood scent that had stirred in the shadows of their minds for days.
The first herd remained quiet and observed the reunion. It was rare even in the Old Land that a sire and his foal ever met. Corazón and Angela both had tears trembling in their dark eyes.
Pego looked up and snorted abruptly. “Where do you come from? Where do you go?”
Hold On stepped forward. “We’re here.”
Pego blinked and cocked his head. Impudent! “I know you’re here! No games with me.”
Arriero tossed his head toward Grullo. “You know us,” he said. “We were all on First Island together — all except the young ones. We came on the Seeker’s ships to find the Golden One.”
“And we’re here now, as Hold On said,” Grullo answered. “That’s all that matters.”
“Hold On.” Pego turned his head sharply toward the stallion. “Is that a name? I don’t call that a name.”
“Then don’t call me,” Hold On answered patiently.
“Who named you that?”
“I named myself.”
Estrella stepped forward. “And I am Estrella, but that was not the name the Ibers gave me.”
“I’m Sky,” called the colt.
“Verdad,” said the other colt.
“And I am Angela.” Angela looked at Pego nervously, because she, too, remembered him from First Island.
“No, no!” said Pego. “Not with those spots on your nose. You were called the Ugly One, Fea.”
“No more,” Angela replied meekly.
“We have new names in this new world,” Hold On said, ears flattening. “You can name yourself.”
The dark stallion’s withers flinched. “I was named Pego by my first master. I was named for the sky god. I am Pegasus. I need no other name!”
A single cold star remained in the early morning sky.
The old scent of the sweet grass stirred in Estrella’s mind. “We need to go. We rested here nearly all night.”
“But you have no shoes!” said Pego. “What happened to your shoes?”
“I might ask you,” Grullo said, “why you still have yours.”
“We have lost some,” admitted Bella. “But we try to be careful.”
“Careful?” Hold On replied. He was stunned. “Careful? That’s not being careful. This is no country for metal shoes. You’ll never feel the earth, the terrain. It changes all the time.”
Pego’s three companions looked at the dark stallion. They seemed bewildered and slightly doubtful, as if perhaps this old gray stallion with the odd name was right, sensible in ways they had never before considered. Tension loomed in the air.
“Well, suit yourself,” Hold On said, hoping to dissipate the strain that enveloped them like a sticky web.
Pego snorted as if to say, I always suit myself, you fool.
Estrella started off.
“The filly leads?” Pego said. “Why does the young one lead?”
Estrella kept going, but Hold On stopped and turned to Pego. There was no way to explain anything to the arrogant Pegasus, whose bloodline made him look only back and never forward. How could Hold On make clear that Estrella’s bloodline and her heart would guide them to a future in the New World? Hold On merely gave Pego a level look and said, “She leads. We follow. Go where you want.”
But of course Pego did not leave. He followed, with the two mares and the filly trotting behind him.
For several days they traveled. An uneasy silence settled upon them. Estrella felt the disapproving eyes of the new stallion like burrs sticking to her haunches. But she was learning to ignore it. Occasionally, she would hear the clink of a metal shoe dropping, followed by a reprimand from Pego to his mares to walk more carefully. She felt sorry for the mares. They seemed so docile, so submissive in a way she was unaccustomed to.
Except from her brief life on the ship and what Hold On and the elder horses had told her, Estrella did not know much about the ways of men. Yet in a strange way, she sensed that Pego felt himself to be a master, like the Ibers. Yes, that was it. He wasn’t a leader but a master. He was an extension of the Ibers’ bit — a kind of living, breathing bridle.
Estrella had not seen any carvings by the Once Upons since Pego and his horses had joined them. But on more than one occasion, the herd had spied the shadowy profiles of coyotes slinking out of gullies or through thick brush. It made them all quite anxious. All except Pego, who seemed almost captivated by the sly invaders.
“Are they fox dogs like the ones in the Old Land? Their pelt is a different — a different color.”
“Their teeth are the same,” Arriero said grimly.
“You’re scared of them,” Azul sneered. She was enthralled by her father, and always traveled close to him. She was becoming more critical of Estrella and the herd. Pego, too, seemed to grow prouder and more cantankerous with each passing day. He still pranced about in his dainty paso fino
and andadura. So far, he was the only horse who had not lost a single shoe. Of this he was inordinately proud, indeed vain. Occasionally, he would deliver short lectures on the importance of keeping the old ways of the Old Land.
Estrella wanted to burst out and say, “We don’t need shoes! We don’t need men. We don’t need bits or bridles — we’re free! We’re wild!” But she clamped her mouth shut and kept moving forward.
Although it was now approaching autumn, the weather became confused. Some mornings, it was chilly, and then later the same day, fiercely hot winds would blow. Estrella was not sure where they came from. They had been, she thought, moving into a colder season and there were even sometimes little snow flurries and patches of snow on the ground, but then she’d feel a gust of hot wind. The snow patches would melt quickly, and suddenly the weather would turn cool again. The sun was setting earlier and earlier and darkness falling more quickly.
“Wind wars,” Hold On said. “We’re squeezed between the mountains and the desert we passed through a moon cycle or more ago. The winds from each begin to fight on the edges of the season. Summer does not want to leave, and autumn and winter are eager to come. And so they fight. But summer will tire. There will be one last blast from summer. Recall the blizzard so many moon cycles ago?” Estrella nodded. “That was winter’s last stand before spring.”
One evening, they stopped along a shallow river bordered with cottonwood. The leaves had turned bright gold. Against the horizon on the other side of the river, blue mountains rose in the distance. Soon a moon would climb over those mountains and spill its silver onto the river. The horses were settling down. Bella, the mare in foal, lay down to sleep, Pego next to her. Azul stood close by with her legs locked. Hold On also had lain down, which was unusual for him. The ground was cooler, Estrella supposed. She peered at a rock at the base of a nearby cottonwood tree for any sign of the tiny horse, but there was nothing. Had he abandoned her? Was there no one left to guide this first herd?