Changer's Daughter by Jane Lindskold Read Free Book Online Page B

and the irises of his golden eyes seem pupilless.
    Shahrazad simultaneously backs away and clings more closely to the shelter of her father’s legs, a course of action that bumps her into the horse in the stall behind her. Panicked, she crumples, rolling onto her back in a plea for mercy, even before her slitted eyes and flared nostrils bring her the information that this creature is just a horse. Then she collapses in embarrassment, certain that she can hear piping laughter from the jackalopes, who have followed her into the stable, and snickering from the cats lounging in the rafters.
    Frank MacDonald’s easy tones penetrate her shame: “The gelding at whose hooves you are reclining, my dear, is an old friend of the Wanderer’s. In fact, the Wanderer is responsible for Tugger not accidentally giving away the athanor secret to his owners.”
    Shahrazad rolls onto her feet, trying (and failing) to give the impression that her wilderness-honed reflexes rather than fear had dictated her surrender before the dapple gray plow horse who now studies her with his mild brown eyes.
    The Wanderer pours grain into a horse’s feed bin and takes up the story: “Back in the mid-eighteen hundreds, I had a tinker’s route up through New England. That was in a male incarnation, of course. In Massachusetts, I always stayed with a particular farming family, descendants of a French mercenary and a local Boston girl. They’d done well for themselves, mostly through hard work and perseverance, but as the years went on they started giving more and more credit for their luck to the fact that one of their plow horses never had an off day.
    “When some sickness wiped out a quarter of the horses in the area and ruined about half of the survivors, Tugger didn’t even sniffle. The worst that ever happened to him was a bout with colic and—funny thing—he seemed to understand what had made him sick. I think it was an overindulgence in clover.”
    “Apples,” Frank corrects in response to a “brr-hmm-pph” from Tugger.
    “Apples, then. He stayed away from them afterward.” The Wanderer leans back against a partition, her eyes half-closed as she remembers. “Tugger was smart, too. Learned how to draw a plow real steady, and would stop as soon as the blade hit something that had to be grubbed out by hand. Though he wasn’t pretty—sorry fellow, but you’re not a carriage horse—the Beaumonts got so fond of him they’d tie ribbons in his mane and have him pull the family to church on Sundays. Mistress Beaumont swore he liked the hymn singing.
    “All this was fine at first. Tugger had been bought at a public market, and the fellow selling him had been a shady type who hadn’t been too certain about his age. From his teeth, they’d figured him for a young horse, though. The thing was, Shahrazad, Tugger stayed a young horse—a horse in his prime. At first the family just regretted that he’d been cut so they couldn’t breed him. After a while, when the children who had ridden him were starting to have children of their own, some folks started to comment on this horse that didn’t age.
    “The Beaumonts weren’t stupid, and they were fond of Tugger. They stopped bringing him to church, saying that he was too old for that sort of work, but they couldn’t bear not to use him for the spring plowing. By then he was so savvy he could plow twice what any other horse could do. And people noticed.
    “Now, Massachusetts was past its days of witch burning—or so it claimed—but it was still pretty nervous about things that weren’t normal. The Beaumonts were torn. On the one hand, they didn’t like the way their neighbors were looking at them and shying from them when they met at the market or in church. They didn’t like the whispers that followed them either, or the fact that no one was coming to court their two younger daughters, even though they were as pretty as any girls in the land.
    “On the other hand, Tugger was their luck.