Starday, Sarenith 10, 4699 midnight
Sandpoint
“They’re gone,” Qatana whispered to Kali, ducking her head back below the top of the fence, “we need to move quickly.”
The two girls moved around to the stall door and pulled back the bolt and swung the door outward. They were greeted by the very large back side of a very large horse, its head hanging low in the far corner, its back bowed downward.
“Those bastards forgot to feed her again!” Qatana fumed, more loudly than was prudent.
“Hush,” Kali chided, “we’ll soon have her out.”
Qatana moved around to the front of the horse, which had still not reacted. Dispirited and ill from years of neglect and abuse, Qatana had first noticed the old nag some days earlier when the local junk dealers, the Flinch brothers, led their wagon loaded with some rusty hulk they had picked up away south, whipping and cursing at the obviously over taxed and tired horse to their yard.
Qatana’s first thought was to confront the men about their misuse of the animal, but experience had taught her that people could seldom be shamed into doing the right thing. And so instead she did the very next thing that came into her head: she told Kali.
“We can’t just take her,” Kali said a few days later as they went through options for rescuing the horse. “Legally the mare belongs to them, and if she were to go missing they would alert the guard and go looking for her. We need some way to make them be glad to be rid of her.”
It had taken the better part of that day and the next for Kali and Qatana to make a plan they thought might work. A few details seemed sketchy, but they were anxious to get started.
Qatana held out her hand, palm up, with a carrot sitting upon it. The horse’s ears moved forward as the beast sniffed first at Qatana and then at the carrot. They had both made the same trip to the junk yard each night for the past several days, offering the poor animal a treat. The first night was the worst. The horse just sat there and stared at their offering as if it weren’t real. Eventually she nibbled away at it. Now she was used to it, and eagerly crunched and munched the treat.
It was well past sunset and the back alley was dark, but the girls placed an old blanket over the horse before leading her out and toward the cemetery.
“Wait here with her while I fix up the stable,” Qatana whispered. Kali held the horse in the shadows beneath the old Cathedral for what seemed like forever, but only half an hour had actually passed before Qatana appeared. “The way is clear, let’s go.”
They passed through the northern gate and up the Lost Coast Road for about a mile before taking a path to the right. Another two miles and they came to the edge of a field. A pile of hay and bucket of water were waiting, and the horse eagerly tucked in while the girls waited.
Mists were forming about them, and the waning moon was just beginning to rise when a boy came out from the undergrowth. He scowled briefly at Qatana before taking Kali by the hand and talking quietly to her some distance off.
They came back and the boy took the lead rope and led the horse away without a word.
“And you trust him?” Qatana asked skeptically. “Oh, yes! Kali replied.
The next morning Uriah Flinch was rudely awakened by his brother. “Uriah, she done changed her skin. I don’t rightly now what she really was, but she’s gone and slithered on out!”
“Ezekial, pa was right, you are one stupid cuss.” But a few minutes later and Uriah was singing a different tune. “Holy shiite, what on earth was it? You dumb son o’bitch bought us somethin’ that weren’t no horse!”
In the middle of the stall was what looked like an enormous cocoon, still sticky and with one end burst open. Tracks that appeared to have been made by a half goat, half giant snake slithered through the dirt, past the broken stall door and out down the alley, toward the sea.