The Changespell Saga

by Doranna Durgin

  ~~~~~

  Lady didn’t want 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 warped field of view, 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 skewed. The two strangers had driven away the last remnants of sanity, merely because they, too, were unknowns. She’d been sinking deep into shock when that quiet voice 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 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 she still felt herself relax. Relax and go along with it, and they’ll make everything right again.

  “Come with us,” the man suggested. Almost against her will, she moved forward at that word come—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 moved she froze with fear. But by now the woman had become more assured in handling her and quickly soothed her, even as Lady herself realized the movement didn’t hurt and perhaps there was nothing to fear after all.

  Once she reached that point, she could recognize that the man controlled 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 found them sitting before a barn, one of many in a long line. A barn meant food and rest and she willingly followed them into it. Inside, she spent a long time checking it out, 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 let her explore. When she’d slaked her curiosity, 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 made them safer for her, but it wasn’t enough to make her as secure as Carey did. 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 on which she relied 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.

  ~~~~~~~~~~

  Chapter Two

  When Lady woke, she found herself in darkness, curled up on a soft bed. Even as she knew it, she realized 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 focused 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. 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 all-too-aware of the soreness from her wild 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 she responded to it with anger, a familiar emotion. She was angry to be here, and angry at whatever had caused her strange journey. 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 already 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 m
otion 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 had 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; 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 used 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 wore new blankets, a fuzzy shapeless thing with a girth, Eric wore what he’d 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 perplexity. I can’t believe I really brought this woman to my home. “That’s not a name.”

  “She seems to think it is.” Eric grinned 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 got a terrible accent—though that explains why she hasn’t said anything until now.”

  “She sounds more like someone who’s never spoken, 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 any given 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 sounded 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. “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 fork full 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 nodded. 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 was a close thing.

  “Maybe she’d prefer cereal,” Eric suggested mildly. “Or cantaloupe, if you’ve got some.”

  Without answering, Dayna retrieved a plastic container of sliced melon 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. Not unless we can teach her English in one day,” Dayna said skeptically, returning to her eggs.

  Eric watched Dun Lady’s Jess, unaffected by the comment. “Jess?” he asked.

  The woman was slow to respond, but when she realized they addressed her, 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.”

  Eric mumbled assent, said, “Bye, Jess. See you later,” and dumped his plate in the sink on the way out.

  Dayna looked across the table at Jess and heaved a sigh. “C’mon, Jess. Let’s head for the shower.”

  She had planned to get things done while Jess cleaned herself up—dishes, stripping the sheets of the guest bed, maybe even get the laundry sorted and ready to go. She hadn’t counted on a Jess who still eyed the stairs warily, who acted like she’d never seen the inside of a shower before. Who ran into the door frame in her haste to escape a flushed toilet. Dayna caught up with her at the head of the stairs and calmed her, then carefully explained the fixtures of the bathroom. As with everything, once Jess got the hang of it, she proceeded with confidence, but a stumble into the unknown would stop her short. When Dayna finally left her, splashing happily in the tub in lieu of the obviously scary shower, she plumped down on her bed and put her head in her hands. Good Lord, never mind whether English is her first language—I’d swear this is her first house.

  Still numbly shaking her head, Dayna went to gather her laundry, including the stretched old sweats that had served Jess; they were all Dayna had that might fit the significantly taller, rangy woman, and she’d hardly want to put them back on after she was clean. She stared at the pants for a moment, trying to figure out what she and Eric had stumbled into. For once, it wasn’t a matter of convincing her lanky friend that he had—again—left reality behind. This time, she wasn’t sure what reality was. She thumped down both sets of stairs to the basement and dumped the laundry in the machine, setting the controls with unaccustomed vigor in her frustration.

  With the laundry churning away, she ducked into the downstairs shower stall for her own clean-up. When she came out, still toweling her hair dry, Jess waited for her, sporting Dayna’s own robe. On Dayna it swirled comfortably around her ankles; it now fell just below Jess’s knees. For the first time Dayna realized the extent of the scrapes adorning those legs, and she could have kicked herself for forgetting about them.

  Jess didn’t bat an eye at the ensuing first aid products. She sat patiently and, it seemed, handed herself unequivocally into Dayna’s care. Dayna thought of her cautious reaction to just about everything else she’d seen and added another senseless puzzle piece to her quickly growing collection.

  ~~~~~

  Jess—because for now Lady reluctantly conceded her name to them—spent the day following Dayna around the house, watching the woman at her chores, listening to her identify the objects around her. Words swirled around in her head, mixing with the countless conversations she’d heard in her uncomprehending equine form. After lunch she retreated to her bed—the sofa, it was called—for a short nap, unable to process any more. When she woke, the patterns of the words, past and present, had begun to grow clearer in her mind. Isolated words in smatterings of conversation combined to make sense, in a way that seemed
not at all strange to her; she had no similar learning processes to compare it with.

  Regardless, she woke with the determination to communicate her wants to Dayna. And what she wanted was Carey.

  While she slept, the barn seemed to have undergone some kind of transformation. The random piles of clutter and papers were gone, formerly dusty surfaces shone, and a neat collection of blankets sat in a basket by the stairs. Jess took a careful look around to make sure there were no other, less innocuous changes, then followed the sound of voices to the food room. There she found Dayna amidst an accumulation of neatly sorted papers, waving a small stick at Eric to emphasize her words.

  In front of Eric lay Carey’s saddlebags. Jess’s saddle and bridle, the crupper and breast band, and the freshly cleaned blanket, lay on the floor beside his chair. Eric tipped his cap back to look up at her and said cheerily, “Hi, Jess. Sit, have something to eat.”

  Dayna took one look at her and sprang from her chair, interposing herself between Jess and Eric to grab the open edges of Jess’s borrowed blanket and overlap them, snugging them securely with the girth.

  Eric shook his head in quiet amusement. “She’s safe from me, Dayna.”

  “Fine. But she’s got to learn.”

  “Why wouldn’t she know already?” he asked thoughtfully.

  Jess only followed the merest outline of the conversation and didn’t have the slightest idea what they were talking about learning. At the moment, she didn’t care. “Dayna,” she pointed. “Eric...” and herself, “Lady.” Then she touched the saddlebags, a caress that expressed all her devotion to the man who owned them. “Carey.”