Changespell 01 Dunn Lady's Jess

by Doranna Durgin

  His smile faded, and he stood, saying, "I want to see the rest of this lesson." And then he left, but he could feel her puzzled gaze following him out of the stall and, even though it was impossible, all the way down the aisle to the indoor ring.

  * * *

  It seemed like the learning never stopped. If it wasn't reading and writing, it was new words, or learning how to go to a nice restaurant and not embarrass herself, or even riding—although the riding was more like a reward, after both dinner and Jaime's early evening lessons. While Carey sat on the stool and stared with growing frustration at the spell he'd been meant to deliver and now counted on to take them both back to Camolen, Jess spent time on Sunny, making large circles around Jaime while she did stretching and relaxation exercises at the walk, trot, and finally the canter. As Jess' vocabulary and the evenings grew longer, she was given the freedom of the entire ring, while Jaime stood in the middle and called out instructions. Derrick faded into an unpleasant memory, one kept alive mostly by the sound of Carey's target practice.

  Although Jess was more than satisfied with the flow of her life, Carey was harder to please. Mark's lunchtime comment that Derrick must have given up and gone home earned him a glare of the highest order, after which Carey stalked out of the kitchen and into the basement to retrieve the spell, which he still secured each and every time he was through studying it.

  "If only the job had been done," Jess said somewhat mournfully, looking after him as he passed back through the kitchen on his way outside, into the steady rain of the grey day. "If he could know for sure what has happened at home . . ."

  "Or if he was a wizard instead of a courier," Jaime added with some asperity. "But he's not, Jess. Sooner or later he's going to have to accept that."

  "Did you think the same about me, when I wanted to find him?" Jess asked, adding, in case they hadn't gotten it, "I did find him."

  "True," Mark said. "But that was a little more within reach, Jess." He stood and grabbed the light jacket that hung on his chair. "Well, ladies, I gotta get to work early today—gotta overlap Dayna's shift so we can deal with some paperwork."

  Jess watched his breezy exit, but her thoughts were on Carey. "He seems so different," she said wistfully.

  "What?" Jaime asked blankly. "Have you startled me in the middle of a thought, Jess?"

  "Carey," Jess said. "I know I saw things . . . differently before I came here. But not so different as this."

  "He's got a lot on his mind," Jaime offered.

  Jess shook her head. "I know. He wants to do his job, for Arlen. He wants to get us back home. But I miss him."

  Mystified, Jaime asked, "What do you mean, different? How?"

  A shrug. "More . . . open," Jess said, searching for the words that would go along with the man who had cared for her. "Easier. Now he closes his eyes and walks along his trails very fast." She clenched her fists, closing her eyes and put her most determined expression on her face. Then she looked at Jaime and said, "You would like that other Carey better, I think."

  "He's got an awful lot on his mind," Jaime repeated, then sighed. "And I've got an afternoon of lessons to get ready for. Had to get them out of the way early this week, so I can leave early for the show."

  "You still want me to stay home?" Jess asked wistfully.

  "I'm only taking Sabre," Jaime replied, patiently considering the number of times she'd answered this particular question. "I don't really need a groom, but I do need someone here I can trust to exercise the horses. None of the other students can do it this time, and Mark's working this weekend."

  Neither of them mentioned Carey. Jaime had seen him ride, had been openly impressed, but had unspoken reservations that Jess could clearly read in her significant silences. It was no wonder, she thought, for Jaime had only seen this one side of her master-now-friend, the headstrong, determined side—not the side that knew how to speak in the diplomatic language a horse could understand and accept. Jess sighed, loudly.

  "Did I mention," Jaime said casually, "that I want you to exercise Sunny and Sarah under saddle?"

  Jess responded with the ear-perked head tilt that was well part of her now, and Jaime laughed. "You can free-longe the others—Mark'll have time for JayDee, and Leta's owner will be riding this weekend herself, so don't worry about them."

  Tossing her thick dun hair, Jess said airily, "I wasn't," but they both knew it was bluff. It didn't matter. She was to ride Sarah, on her own!

  "I'm going to get JayDee from turnout," Jaime said, amused affection still in her voice. "Would you make sure her grooming tote is out where Cindy can find it?"

  Jess nodded and picked up both of their lunch plates, but never made it to the sink with them. A blast of thunder reverberated through the barn and house, chasing itself around the spacious confines of the arena until it rumbled into silence. The shatter of the plates on linoleum was lost in the angry sound, and an instant of silence followed it; then the clamor of frightened horses rang out from the barn, as hooves smashed against solid plank walls to punctuate the shrill screams of terror.

  "My lord!" Jaime gasped. "The horses!" They ran from the house and Jess passed Jaime in the rain, sprinting through the long aisle and into the arena, where she knew—she knew—Carey had tried to work magic. Behind her, Jaime ran from stall to stall, peering anxiously at each of her charges and murmuring ineffective reassurances.

  Carey was in the center of the ring, sprawled in a twisted, broken-doll pose, facedown in the dirt. Jess didn't slow until she reached him, and then fell over herself to stop in time, her throat filled with the terrible fear that he was dead. She wanted to grab him and shake him, but somehow restrained her touch, and instead gently laid first her hands and then her head against him, lost in the not-knowing of what to do. So still. So limp.

  But then he stirred, and groaned, and said, barely audible, "Oh, shit," a curse with a precise counterpart in his native tongue.

  "Carey," Jess said breathlessly, straightening to look at him. There were no marks on him, no blood anywhere; as he got himself sitting upright, his legs sprawled before him and his arms propping him from behind, he looked no more than stunned. "Carey, what did you do?"

  He squinted at her, shook his head with a tiny, puzzled gesture. "What?" Then his eyes widened, and for the first time Jess saw the thin sheaf of smoldering papers centered in the ring; a quiet line of smoke spiraled up and lost itself in the rafters as they both stared, agog, at what they had fought so hard not to lose. "I didn't—" he started, and frowned, shaking his head again, continuing anyway. "I only wanted to do the very first part," he whispered. "I wasn't really going to try anything . . . not here, with the horses. I just wanted to feel the magic."

  Jess ran a hand down his arm, feeling its intact solidness and, moderately reassured, withdrew to entwine her arms in a self-hug. "Magic," she said, and shivered. "For Arlen, Carey."

  "I couldn't not try, Lady," he said, agonized, staring at the blackened paper. Then his features cleared a little. "I'll bet Arlen set some kind of protection on that thing—it could have been the magic itself that triggered that reaction. It doesn't mean I had the spell wrong."

  Jaime appeared at the gate, surveying the arena anxiously—but only until she saw Carey was apparently unharmed. Then the anger blossomed. "We've got a hell of a mess," she said, her voice so tightly controlled that Jess shuddered inside. "If I could kick you all the way back to your damned Camolen, I'd—" she stopped, jaw clenched. "We've got to take care of these horses. I've checked them all—no one's doing any heavy bleeding. Carey, look in all the stalls for glass—every damn window in this building is broken. Jess, get Sabre out of his stall, bring him in here, and talk him down—and check him over, every inch, you hear? I want to know about every ruffled hair on that horse's body. I'm going to call the vet—we've got at least one horse that looks shocky—and then I'm going to take a closer look at the others." She stared at Carey, hard, and shook her head before turning on her heel and stalking away.
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br />   "What did she say?" Carey asked, his voice low, his eyes on the spot where Jaime had been. "My ears are ringing so hard I can't hear a thing."

  "Check all the stalls for glass," Jess said. "She wants you to do that." She scrambled to her feet, fear for the horses overcoming her concern for Carey. She had never seen Jaime so wrathful, and she suddenly dreaded what she might find in the stalls.

  * * *

  It was hours before the vet left, leaving behind several horses with stitches and two treated for shock. It was longer still before the barn regained any semblance of order. While there was no interior glass to pick up—the windows had blown out—there were many minor wounds to inspect and treat; almost every horse had leg injuries, self-inflicted during the panic. Jaime sent Carey inside when she saw his white, strained face, but she had extra help from Cindy who'd arrived for her lesson, seen the chaos, and immediately pitched in to help. They'd pulled stray shards of glass from the window glazing, cancelled the day's lessons, doctored the horses, and closed the barn up so there would be little or no intrusion from the outside world. Quiet dulcimer music played over the barn's sound system while the distressed horses retreated to their favorite corners and watched, worry-eyed, for anything that looked like another threat. Jess spent the whole time with Sabre, for the big horse was deeply shaken, and he sent anxious, pealing neighs after her each time she tried to leave the arena.

  Finally, late in the afternoon, Cindy left. Jaime walked slowly into the middle of the arena, where Jess sat with Sabre. She kicked the small pile of ash nearby and regarded her anxious champion, quietly offering him a sugar cube. As he nuzzled it, knocked it out of her palm, and ignored it, tears for the whole afternoon finally found their way down her cheek. "God, I wish I could make him understand."

  "He understands that you are here to take care of him," Jess said, quietly but firmly.

  Jaime searched her eyes for a long moment, then wiped her cheek. "You know, don't you? You really know. But you can't tell me what this will do to him. The ego, the edge—the special spark that makes a top-level horse like Sabre—it's so fragile."

  "He is still himself," Jess said, more of a guess than her last assurance, though she didn't let it through to her face.

  "No show this weekend," Jaime said with a little laugh. "No way. You ready to be pampered, big fellow?" she asked, gently slapping his neck. "For the next few days you're going to think you're in heaven. Longeing tomorrow, maybe a light workout day after that."

  "Yes," Jess said. "Do the things he likes, that he does best. The passage. He is so proud to do that with you." And, seeing the pain in Jaime's face, she stood, and they quietly held one another.

  "I'm sorry." Carey's words were hushed, the voice faltering.

  Jaime pulled back from Jess and looked at him, nothing more than that, while Carey stood and took the unspoken judgement without protest.

  "Do you have any idea of what you might have done to me this afternoon?" she said at last. "Do you know how often a horse like this comes along?"

  Carey's eyes flickered to Jess, then he looked down. "I think so."

  "Did you see the look on Dr. Miller's face when I told him the barn was hit by lightning? He didn't buy it, and neither will my boarders—all of whom love their horses as much as I love Sabre."

  "I know." Just as quiet.

  "What do you mean, you know? You don't know, or you never would have done this."

  "I didn't have any idea this would happen," Carey said, an edge creeping into his voice.

  "You did," Jaime contradicted flatly. "You did, or you wouldn't have come out here to do . . . whatever you did, instead of staying in the basement. Well, we're going to get a few things straight. Frankly, I was—am—one word away from booting you out." Her gaze softened, momentarily, as she glanced at Sabre, stroking his neck while he crowded her, seeking solace—and turned into flint when she looked back to Carey. "Jess is the reason you're still here. The only reason. And it's not that I don't want to help you. I just think your judgement sucks, which means I can't trust you."

  For a long moment, Carey said nothing. He watched Jaime, gave her the chance to add to what she'd said. And he looked at Jess, his expression becoming a mixture of remorse and wistfulness. "I don't blame you," he said, his gaze still on Jess. "You're right. I let my need to get home become more important than the safety of the horses. I just—" And he stopped and clenched his fists, his jaw working. Jess' heart went out to him, for she knew he wanted to go home as badly as she'd wanted to find him, and she remembered how much it hurt. It was a bittersweet feeling, this thing that tugged at her, and she didn't completely understand it.

  "No more magic," Jaime said firmly. "Not here. Go out to the woods, go stand on top of the Waldo Levy, go out to the middle of Delaware Lake, I don't care. Not near this barn." Then she added, "Not that you have any magic left to do."

  Carey snorted. "I've had that thing memorized for a week. I'll keep working at it."

  "You can do some work around here, while you're at it. I'm thinking about selling JayDee—she's too temperamental for a lesson horse. But she needs tuning, and she needs to be reminded she doesn't choose when she listens to her rider. You can do that for me, I think."

  Carey nodded, almost absently. "All right."

  "For now, you can treat us to dinner. Pizza sound good to you, Jess?"

  Jess nodded, enthusiastic in her relief. The two people she cared for most were no longer in direct opposition, and that was all that mattered for the moment.

  * * *

  "Good, Jess!" Jaime said, watching Sunny come up into the bit, moving nice and round beneath his perfectly relaxed rider. "Let's do some walk-trot transitions, every ten strides, and keep him in this frame."

  On the other end of the arena, Carey sat on JayDee, working on his own. Jaime had given him a week of lessons, and discovered there were, perhaps not unexpectedly, some similarity in the riding theories of their two worlds—although Carey's interest was naturally in rendering his mounts more agile and responsive in rough territory, not in the highly controlled exercises of the ring. But he had good, giving hands and a remarkable seat, as well as a firm gentleness she would not have credited him with, judging from his sometimes too-confident behavior on the ground. For the first time, she really understood Jess' devotion to him, and she wondered if only the stress of his mission drove him to the edge of the intractable hard-headedness she usually saw. He reminded her of a racehorse with blinkers on, striving madly for his goal with no awareness of the world around him.

  She knew it puzzled Jess. She would catch her friend—for Jess had grown into a friend, no longer just a lost soul dependent on Jaime's goodwill—staring at Carey, looking a bit bewildered—and a bit hurt, for Carey seldom did anything to indicate he thought of Jess as other than his former courier mount. Stupid man.

  Jess was deep in concentration, riding with an intuition no one in this world could hope to match. Jaime sighed as she glanced at her watch and discovered she'd run out of time if she wanted to get more grain before the feed store closed. She watched her pupil for another few minutes, enjoying the sight of horse and rider working in simple but complete accord, and she was about to call a halt to it when she noticed Carey was walking JayDee on a long rein, his attention on Jess. She had the feeling his slight frown had nothing to do with Jess' riding, and she would have given anything to have read his mind as the frown faded to something . . . sad, something she couldn't quite identify, before his face closed up again. Now what was that about?

  "Jess," she called, "you had a really nice ride today. Cool him out on a long rein and then turn him out in the west paddock. I've got to get to the feed store, so you're on your own."

  Jess nodded, obviously reluctant to accept the lesson's end. As Jaime stood up from the lawn chair at the arena gate, she glanced back at Carey. He was riding JayDee through some simple lead changes across the ring diagonal, with no sign he had ever been distracted.

  * * *

/>   "Thanks for coming along, you guys," Eric said cheerfully as he handed Carey a seining net and Lady two buckets. "It'll be a lot easier this way—and more fun, too."

  Fun. Carey had never called fishing fun, but he supposed it might be when you could pick up a full meal at the grocery store if you didn't catch any fish—only Camolen's larger cities had comparable establishments. In this world—or at least in this country—people were so far removed from the basics of finding food, of how their natural world worked, that he and Lady were about to help Eric catch enough river creatures to create a display in the nature center at Highbanks Metropark, where Eric volunteered. At the very park, in fact, where he and Lady had entered this world.

  He caught Lady staring doubtfully ahead as they walked across the very green spring grass of the park lawn, looking at the river, the Olentangy, that awaited them. He could see only a glint of bright sunlight off water, for the river was bordered by a generous band of trees and brush, but Lady had fixed her gaze on it, and he could tell by the stiffening nature of her walk that she was remembering how much she hated putting her feet in a river she didn't know. He couldn't figure out how, barefooted, clad in a pair of Mark's worn, torn cutoff shorts and a too-short t-shirt, she could still remind him so much of the mare he'd raised and trained. For today's adventure her hair was pulled back and tied off, and from behind it looked like nothing so much as the tail that belonged on Dun Lady's Jess.

  They walked the short path through the trees and paused at the edge of the river, where Lady toed the water briefly and stepped back. Eric was unrolling his own net. "You guys done this before?"

  "I have," Carey said, amused.

  "Oh, yeah—right." Eric laughed at his own mistake and held the net stretched out between his open arms. "See, Jess, the two of us stand downstream from you, and all you have to do is stir up the river bottom. All the little river goodies get carried right down into our nets. Got it?"