Changespell 01 Dunn Lady's Jess (3 page)

"All right," she interrupted him, looking at the trusting woman before her. There was something about the quality of that trust, especially in contrast with her earlier extreme fear, that made her feel just as Eric did—made her want to take the poor creature home and give her tea and a soft blanket to curl up with. Her mind replaced the tea and blanket with harsh sterile sheets and hospital food, and she knew she'd lost completely. "We'll take her to my place, not yours."

Lady was reluctant to move again. That her fall had ended in a gentle thump on fairly soft ground was not so hard to accept; it was almost insignificant beside the other things that flooded her senses. Merely opening her eyes had invited an assault of things outside her experience: colors that hadn't existed, a field of view that was all wrong, and an ability to focus without moving her head to sight in on an object.

Then she'd tried to move. Nothing worked right, her balance was gone, her sense of self was skewed. The sight of the two strangers had driven away the last remnants of sanity, merely because they, too, were unknowns. She was sinking deep into shock when a quiet voice had used one of her Words. One of Carey's Words.
Easy
, the voice had said, and then gentle hands had petted her, had let her lean and seek the safety of touch. Once she'd trusted the strangers, had believed the Word that meant they would take care of things for her, the unusual blanket was almost of no consequence. She was used to people who handled her hooves and body, and she was used to complying with their wishes.

But she didn't want to move again. Her body wasn't right yet. She listened to the man and woman quietly argue and became aware it wasn't only her body that was different. Words, words that she'd heard over and over but never assigned any significance to, suddenly fell into patterns. They still had no meaning for her, but she was suddenly aware that they
could
. She flared her nostrils in irritation and tried to understand what had changed, and what had been different before. She became suddenly confused about what she had—or hadn't—been able to comprehend before, and she whimpered, a noise that startled her just as much as her strange new vision.

"Easy," the woman said, and even that was enough to make her wonder how she could still discern this person as a woman, when her sense of smell had diminished so. But the deeply ingrained habit of response to her Words was so strong that, even so, she felt herself relax. Relax, and go along with it, and these people would make everything right again.

"Come with us," the man suggested, and almost against her will, she moved forward, for
come
triggered another response. She moved awkwardly, not sure what to do about the extra length in her hind legs until the man suddenly took her by the front legs and pulled her up to a rear.

Rearing was forbidden. But . . .

It felt completely natural. They encouraged her, they told her it was good. Haltingly, she walked the few steps to the meadow, then the yards to the hard dirt path. The man walked behind them, the saddle braced against his hip, Carey's saddlebags slung over the worn leather seat. The woman had the blanket, and before they'd gone far, she gingerly shook it out and offered to drape the cleanest side around Lady's shoulders. The man's strange blanket came only just below her hips, and Lady was glad to have something else against the chill. Almost by accident, she discovered she could hold the blanket in place with what should have been her front hooves.

Getting into the small metal stall proved to be a little awkward, and when it began to move she froze with fear. But by now the woman was more assured in handling her, and quickly soothed her, even as Lady herself realized she wasn't being hurt and perhaps there was nothing to fear after all.

Once she reached that point, she was able to recognize that the man was controlling the movements of the stall, and that there were many more similar stalls moving all around them. She heaved a big sigh for the perplexity of it all and retreated to her inner world, leaving large unblinking eyes behind. From there she listened to the conversation between the man and woman and let her body sway with the movement of their travel.

When they stopped, she focused her eyes and found them sitting before a barn, one of many in a long line of barns. A barn meant food and rest and she willingly followed them into it. Inside, it looked like no barn she'd ever been in, and she spent a long time checking it, approaching its clutter carefully and sniffing with a nose that no longer provided her the information that she needed. She let the blanket drop and discovered that her odd new hooves were sensitive to texture and shape—almost as sensitive as her muzzle should have been. With a variety of snorts and investigative huffing, Lady satisfied her natural curiosity.

After offering her a soft baggy covering for her lower half, the man and woman followed her at a distance, and let her explore. When her curiosity was slaked, the man flopped down on a soft low structure and heaved a big sigh of fatigue. That was a language she could understand and sympathize with. "Dayna," he said, and added something she couldn't understand.

Dayna. That had to be the woman's name; she certainly responded to it. And the man, she was almost sure, was called Eric. Knowing their names, she felt safer, but the knowledge wasn't enough to make her feel as secure as Carey could. She wanted Carey here, wanted him badly, and her throat began an unaccustomed ache.

Dayna said the only thing that could have distracted her. "Are you hungry?"

Lady's whole body straightened in attention. She knew all the variations of words that had to do with food, and she went right up to Dayna and watched her with expectant eyes.

Both Dayna and Eric laughed, and then, when they were seated around a round platform and Lady tried to suck up the liquid offered her in a stupidly long cylinder and it went up her nose, they laughed again; after clearing her nose, she felt a strange bubbling in her chest and it turned irrepressible and came out in a funny little laugh of her own.

And then she stopped short, and dropped the liquid, and froze in fear, hardly noticing as the drink dribbled over the edge of the platform and onto the soft material that now covered her strong dusky legs. It was that laugh, coming from her own changed body, that suddenly allowed her to understand.

She had turned into one of Carey's kind.
With trembling fingers, she felt for her long, refined muzzle and discovered only a flat face with a ridiculously small nose. There were none of the sensitive whiskers she relied on so much. Unable to believe or accept, she reached for Dayna, but the smaller woman stiffened, for the first time showing signs of her own fear.

Eric's gentle word relaxed her and Dayna allowed Lady to touch her face, while one hand almost frantically compared the feel of her own. And then the ache came back to her throat, and she whimpered and, suddenly, she was crying, not knowing what it was, but only that she couldn't help herself.

When Lady woke, it was dark and she was on a soft bed, and even as she realized it, she knew the ability to recognize this structure as a bed, as much a bed as her own straw-strewn stall, was not a concept her equine self could have handled. But she was through crying for now, and her current concentration was on something much more urgent, for her bladder was as full as it ever got. She stood and moved quietly out of the room.

In the midst of her tears of the evening before, they had tried to lure her up the stepped hill to further depths of the barn, but she'd have none of it. As far as she knew, they were up there now, asleep. She walked through the food area to the back door, which posed no problems to a clever horse who'd been able to outwit many a latch with only her lips, and who now had hands, even if she didn't know that's what they were called. Following the instinct to avoid soiling her own space, she went outside and fumbled with the soft material around her lean hips, heaving a sigh of relief when she could finally crouch and relieve herself. Then she crept back to the warmth inside, suddenly aware of the soreness from the efforts of her run, and crawled back into the bed.

After that she slept lightly, in the manner of her kind. Her mind raced with unaccustomed notions, and the throat ache crept up on her almost unawares. This time her response to it was anger, an emotion she was well acquainted with. She was angry to be here, and angry at whatever had caused it to happen. She wanted to find Carey and go home. By morning she knew she
must
learn to communicate with Dayna and Eric; she'd even practiced quiet words with her newly flexible mouth and lips. For a horse that was a large chunk of thinking and when Dayna ventured down from the upper level, Lady was as tired as she'd been the day before.

She got out of her bed with an involuntary groan, finding that the last quiet hours of the night had tied her abused muscles into knots. The scrapes on her lower legs were stuck to the soft material and every motion tugged at them. Reacting to the prickle as to fly bites, she stomped one leg several quick times, then repeated it with the other, freeing the scabs. Dayna frowned at her but Lady was through, having accomplished her goal. Soon, she was sure, Dayna or Eric would treat the wounds, as Carey would have in their place.

She followed Dayna into the food area, attuned to her growling stomach. As puny as it was, her nose picked up the scent of apple, and she found a bowl of fruit she hadn't noticed the evening before. As Dayna went about the arcane business of preparing food Lady didn't recognize, she helped herself to an apple and, mindful of her changed chewing apparatus, carefully nibbled at it.

Yesterday Dayna had seldom spoken directly to her, other than her efforts to comfort. Now she kept up a running patter, and often looked at Lady, looking for a response. Lady gave her the only one she had. "Dayna," she said proudly, if awkwardly.

Dayna dropped the implement she was using to mix eggs and looked at her with widened eyes. "
Dayna
?"

Lady thought it had been quite clear, so she repeated herself with some impatience. "Dayna."

Eric chose that moment to wander in and, unlike Dayna, he was clearly slow to wake up. While Dayna was in a new blanket, a fuzzy shapeless thing with a girth, Eric still wore what he had had on the day before. His hair was a mess and even as he wandered to the big box with the cold air, he gave a huge yawn. Dayna tugged at his arm and spoke quickly, almost sharply; Eric turned to give Lady an interested appraisal.

She could tell he wanted to hear her new word as well. With some dignity she said, "Dayna. Eric."

His eyebrows rose into the unkempt mess of his bangs. "Dayna," he said, touching Dayna. "Eric," he added, touching his own chest. And then he put his hand on her own arm.

Her own name was one she'd known all along. Delighted, she said carefully, "Dun Lady's Jess."

"Dun Lady's Jess?" Dayna repeated in perplexion, once again second-guessing her decision to bring the woman home. "That's not a
name
."

"She seems to think it is," Eric said, grinning at the pride in their new friend's face. "She seems to think it's quite a good one, in fact."

Dayna regarded the woman thoughtfully. "I wonder what language she speaks. She's certainly got a terrible accent—although it does explain why she hasn't said anything until now."

"She sounds more like someone who's never spoken at all, not someone who speaks French or German or something," Eric said almost absently, taking the spatula from Dayna's unresisting hand to give the eggs a stir. "These are almost done. Is she having any?"

"Who knows?" Dayna shrugged, irritated by Eric's characteristic refusal to deal with the important aspects of an issue. She left the egg serving to him and touched the table, naming it for . . . Dun Lady's Jess.

"Table," the woman obediently repeated. Still nibbling the apple, she followed Dayna around the room with her eyes, repeating the items Dayna named. Her voice was low and throaty, and the words came out thickly, somewhat slurred. Until Dayna pulled at her robe.

"Blanket," the woman said with assurance before Dayna had a chance to give it her own name.

Eric set three plates on the table and said, "You'd think she'd tell us what some of these things are in her own language, if she had one."

"
Blanket
?" Dayna repeated, sitting and taking a forkful of egg without ever taking her eyes from their guest. She plucked at Eric's shirt as he sat, and waited for a response.

"Blanket," the woman said, nodding. She sniffed carefully at the steam rising from the scrambled eggs and gave them a skeptical look, checking to see that both Dayna and Eric had eaten of theirs. Ignoring the fork, she took a tentative sample with her fingers. She didn't quite spit it out, but Dayna had the impression it had been a close thing.

"Maybe she'd prefer cereal," Eric suggested mildly. "Or cantaloupe, if you've got some."

Without answering, Dayna retrieved the plastic container of sliced melon and cantaloupe mixed with grapes and strawberries, and offered it in place of the eggs. The woman's eyes widened in unmistakable delight and she helped herself, chewing each morsel thoroughly before taking another.

"I don't think we're going to get much out of her before this evening, unless we can teach her English in one day," Dayna said skeptically, returning to her eggs.

Eric was watching Dun Lady's Jess, unaffected by the comment. "Jess?" he asked.

The woman was slow to respond, but when she realized she was being addressed, she carefully swallowed and said, "Lady."

"That's not much of a name, not here," Eric said thoughtfully. "Maybe we'll just call you Jess. You learn enough English, you can set us straight." He scraped the last of the egg from his plate with a piece of toast and sat back in his chair. "How about I leave you two alone long enough to go home and take a shower, change my clothes. Seems to me she could use some cleaning up, too."

"You got that right," Dayna agreed. "Just keep in mind that I'm working the hotel's evening shift tonight. We need to come to some kind of decision about her."