Changer's Daughter Page 4

  “Hello, folks. Have a good drive?”

  “Easy,” the Wanderer answers as if she has not been driving for the better part of two days.

  The Changer nods agreement. “Had to lock the pup up, though. She hasn’t enjoyed the trip at all.”

  “Why not let her out?” Frank suggests, locking the gate. “She can’t get off of my land from here. Once she runs herself tired, I’ll have a couple of the jackalopes chase her up to the house.”

  “Good idea,” the Changer says, “but she’s grown quite a bit. Sure the jackalopes can keep up with her?”

  “They can.”

  The Changer asks no further questions. What Frank MacDonald doesn’t know about the capacities of animals—natural and otherwise—he has the wisdom to ask.

  Once the young coyote is nothing more than a ruddy golden streak disappearing into the near distance, they drive up to the ranch house. It is set well back from the public roads, back even from those private roads a trespasser might venture upon. Built of local fieldstone and shingled with cedar, it blends into the landscape, as do the surprising number of outbuildings: the barns, sheds, coops, and stables that house a portion of the reason this isolated ranch exists.

  The Other Three Quarters Ranch may be listed on the Colorado tax rolls as a horse farm raising fine blood quarter horses, but in reality the OTQ Ranch is a haven for what might be the least fortunate of all the athanor: the athanor animals. These, gifted with long life but with no greater intelligence than is the wont for their species (though many survivors learn cunning), are the least fit to adapt to an increasingly human-dominated world.

  The OTQ Ranch is also a haven for some of the athanor who, though not strictly animals, closely resemble them. Among them are unicorns, jackalopes, griffins, hydra, and cockatrice: creatures who survive in a world where their kind has become myth.

  These athanor for whom Frank has made himself guardian are the “other three quarters” for which the ranch is named.

  When they arrive at the house, Frank dismounts, pulls off the blanket which had been the mare’s only trappings, and sends her off with a grateful slap on her shoulder.

  “I’ll groom you later,” he promises, then turns to his guests. “What did you think of her?”

  “Pretty,” the Wanderer says, sliding open the side door of the van to haul out the luggage. “Looks like good stock.”

  “Yeah,” Frank says, a satisfied smile on his face. “You’d never recognize her for a unicorn, would you? She’s wearing one of Lovern’s new illusion disguises.”

  The Wanderer makes astonished noises; the Changer grins slightly.

  “I knew what she was by her scent,” he admits, “but no human would.”

  “But her scent isn’t right?” Frank asks, concerned. “I wonder if I should complain to Lovern?”

  “I wouldn’t,” the Changer says. “Humans don’t use their sense of smell, and smelling like a unicorn may protect her from those predators who have learned to respect a unicorn’s horn.”

  “True,” Frank admits.

  He leads them into a stone-flagged great room, offers them seats, and comes back bearing a tray laden with a variety of drinks and snacks.

  “This is just to hold you until dinner,” he says. “Changer, will you eat vegetarian?”

  “Yes. Shahrazad shouldn’t though. She’s still growing.”

  “Don’t worry. Either she can hunt, or I can feed her from the freezer.”

  “Let her hunt, then.”

  “You let hunting go on here?” the Wanderer asks, accepting a cup of hot cinnamon-laced apple juice and gathering up a handful of butter cookies. “You’ve never served me nothing but cheese and stuff like that. I thought it was policy.”

  “I did ask if you minded eating vegetarian the first time you came,” Frank reminds her.

  “Yeah.”

  “I must allow hunting,” Frank continues. “Many of my charges must eat meat. However, I prefer not to do so, though I keep a store for the carnivores against lean times.”

  “Frozen?” the Wanderer asks.

  “And some live,” Frank admits. “Mostly rodents for those birds and reptiles who will only eat live food. I try not to talk with them, and, fortunately, your average white mouse doesn’t have much to say.”

  “Speaking of rodents”—the Changer’s body language is now subtly alert—“there were two rodents given into your custody last September. Are they still here?”

  Frank’s expression is guarded. “If they were, they would be as much my guests as you two are.”

  The Changer glances at the Wanderer, who nods. “We respect that,” he says.

  “They are here,” Frank admits, “still a mouse and a ground squirrel. I keep them caged, in a locked room.”

  “Prisoners?” the Wanderer asks, almost sympathetic. Like many athanor, she has an antipathy to being kept enclosed.

  “Not really,” Frank explains. “These two are... incompetent, for lack of a better word. Now, after about six weeks in their current shapes, they are doing better.”

  “Incompetent?” the Wanderer asks.

  “That’s right.” Frank sighs, poking the fire into a blaze as he continues to speak. “At first, they didn’t know how to act as their shapes demanded—didn’t know how to groom themselves or how to use their whiskers properly. Yet they didn’t act like humans either.”

  “I have seen those shapeshifted by sorcery behave in a similar fashion,” the Changer says, “but something of the human usually came through in the body language.”

  “This time the human didn’t come through,” Frank says. “The main thing motivating them seemed to be fear. They have adapted somewhat and, currently, there is little to separate them from the rest of the rodent kingdom.”

  “But you keep them locked up,” the Wanderer prompts.

  “Their passivity could be a trick,” Frank answers. “Remember, not long ago, Louhi and the Head were among the two most potent sorcerers the athanor possessed.”

  The Wanderer raises a hand, remembering too well the pain of the Disharmony Dance.

  “Hey, I’m not saying you should take any chances!”

  “I don’t plan to,” Frank assures her.

  “Have you spoken with them?” the Changer asks.

  “I have tried, but even in the best of times a mouse or ground squirrel doesn’t have much to say.” Frank grins. “Talking to the animals is often highly overrated.”

  His grin fades. “Neither of them discusses anything but what one would expect from a somewhat retarded rodent. Food. Water. Shelter. They express fear or hunger, can identify a cat or a hawk. The female—Louhi the Mouse—does not appear to have come into heat. I haven’t offered the Head a mate.”

  “Don’t,” the Wanderer advises. “He gave me the creeps.”

  “Yes,” Frank admits as if it is a failing, “me too.”

  A silence falls as they remember a human head grown by sorcery to be a wizard’s tool, a tool that had turned against its maker and had nearly destroyed them all.

  “And has anyone heard from Sven?” the Changer asks into the silence. “He may have escaped that night.”

  Frank shrugs. “I haven’t heard anything, and I’m certain he hasn’t come here. My tenants would know. I trust them to miss nothing smaller than a mouse.”

  “Sven’s a rat,” the Wanderer says with a coughing laugh. “Literally, as well as figuratively.”

  “If he’s even alive at all,” Frank agrees. “The Cats of Egypt hunted on the night he escaped, not to mention several hawks, eagles, and owls, and a few human-form as well. There was great slaughter that night, but whether Sven was one of the rats slain down in the bosque is open to question.”

  “Has anyone tried scrying for him?” the Wanderer asks.

  “I know that Lovern did,” Frank replies. “Lil as well. No one has found him, but that doesn’t mean he is dead. Sven has had wards in place for a long time. They would have been crafted to survive shapes
hifts.”

  The Changer frowns. “Once, upon Ragnarokk’s battlefield, I thought that I had slain Loki. I was wrong. He is one I will not believe dead until I see the body—and maybe not even then.”

  3

  What though youth gave us love and roses,

  Age still leaves us friends and wine.

  —Thomas Moore

  “Shahrazad,” says Frank MacDonald, standing on the patio outside of his house, “I want you to introduce you to the two athanor who are going to be your chaperons during your stay here at the Other Three Quarters Ranch.”

  He speaks calmly, in English, and the young coyote seems to understand him perfectly. The Changer and the Wanderer, watching from the shelter of the kitchen, trade glances.

  “If you’re going to ask me if she understands him,” the Changer says sotto voce, “I can’t say. She is only my daughter. I do not know her limitations. That is one of the reasons why I have brought her here.”

  “Well, everyone does say that Frank can talk to the animals.” The Wanderer giggles. “I guess the real question is do they listen?”

  Frank motions forth two jackalope from the shelter of the brush, where they have been waiting. They resemble jackrabbits except for the antlers, similar to those of an antelope, that sprout from between their long ears. Larger than the cute “bunny rabbits” with which most humans are familiar, long-limbed and lean, they are colored (as Shahrazad herself is) to blend into the brownish golds that dominate the landscape, even in the height of summer.

  “This,” Frank continues, indicating the buck, “is Great Trimmer of the Tall Greens. This is his mate, Singer to the Moon of the Sweetest, Most Ancient of Songs.”

  The doe, whose antlers are slightly shorter than her mate’s, rises on her hind legs to inspect Shahrazad. From the rapid wiggling of her nose, she seems to find the young coyote wanting. Looking up at Frank, she lets her ears drop limp.

  Frank, swallowing a chuckle at a joke only he among the human form understand, continues his introductions. “Since their names are rather long, they permit me to call them ‘Hip’ and ‘Hop.’ You may do likewise.”

  “I think,” the Wanderer says softly to the Changer, “that she intends to call them ‘Lunch’ and ‘dinner.’”

  Certainly Shahrazad’s expression, her red tongue lapping out to lick her muzzle, is in keeping with the Wanderer’s assessment.

  “She has met jackalopes before,” the Changer says, “during the Lustrum Review and again at the later September meeting. However, she has grown a great deal, even in the six weeks or so that have passed since the latter meeting, and she has become quite cocky. She may have forgotten what she learned of them before, or she may simply believe that she now exceeds her puppy limitations.”

  “And you’re going to leave her to find out on her own.”

  “That is correct. Frank knows that I want her both tested and taught. If he chooses as his intermediaries two athanor herbivores, I shall trust his judgment.”

  The Wanderer turns to study him. “Are you leaving her here, then, like sending her off to summer camp?”

  “Autumn into winter camp,” the Changer corrects. “Not immediately, no, but once she adjusts somewhat I will take a few jaunts. She has always been able to depend on me. I want her to learn to rely on herself as well.”

  “Necessary,” the Wanderer says, “although not always pleasant for the child.”

  “Nor for the parent,” the Changer says. “I am closer to this little one than I have been to any of my get for a long, long time, but I do her no favors if I am overprotective.”

  “She is athanor,” the Wanderer says. “The Harmony Dance proved that. Is she anything more? Did she inherit any of your other gifts?”

  “I don’t know,” the Changer says, “and I don’t really know how to find out. She may simply be an immortal coyote.”

  “That’s not bad,” the Wanderer says, thinking of the various athanor animals she has known over the years.

  “No,” the Changer agrees. “Sometimes, being a coyote is a very fine thing indeed.”

  Introductions completed, Shahrazad tears away from the house, daring her “chaperons” to keep up with her. She knows that, whatever she thinks of them, it would be bad manners to eat Frank’s friends in front of him. In any case, there is so much that she wants to see and smell.

  The evening before, when she had arrived, she had gotten the impression that all of this land was hers to roam. Today, with youthful enthusiasm, she plans not only to roam it, but to claim it as her domain. Here the air is cleaner than even in the forested reaches of the Sandia Mountains where she had lived with her father. There are no great roads, no low buzz of tires against asphalt, just space and grass and low trees and wonderful, heady smells.

  Skipping the area immediately around the ranch house—it is far too lived in for her wild tastes—she lopes outward, away from the dirt road they had driven in on, away from the pastures where odd-smelling horses graze (raising their heads to study her as she runs by), out to grassy reaches that hint of rabbits and mice and other tasty things.

  Shahrazad is so absorbed in her explorations that she doesn’t notice the raven who soars above, joyriding on the winds. She forgets the jackalopes who trail her, stopping to graze when she slows. She forgets everything except the caution her father has schooled into her and her delight.

  Mice, fat with grass seed, make a good lunch. Grasshoppers, slowing down as summer moves into winter, are easier to catch, and fun, too. Springing into the air from a standstill to come down on a single point, like a ballet dancer on her toe, wears her out after a while, and Shahrazad drowses on a sun-warmed rock. When she awakens, she doesn’t realize that her nearly invisible guides have steered her back toward the house until she crosses her own trail.

  By then, evening is falling and the lights of the ranch house and the memory of how warm a fire can be and how her father’s strong fingers feel when they rub her neck and shoulders lure her back to domesticated ground. Unlike a wild coyote, human houses hold no special terror for her, especially one where her father is dwelling. Shahrazad spent much of her young life within the walls of Arthur Pendragon’s hacienda. Houses can mean food and the pleasant drone of human conversation to lull her to sleep.

  Her pace increases as she draws closer, picking up her feet in something like a trot, her head held high, her bushy tail in a line straight behind her. Hearing conversation from the outbuildings, she turns that way as the one voice that means home draws her in.

  In a large horse barn, Frank MacDonald, assisted by the Changer and the Wanderer, is doling out grain and hay to the eager residents, mostly horses with a small intermingling of unicorns. This is Shahrazad’s first close encounter with one of the creatures she had mentally tabled as “odd” horses, and she halts as a unicorn turns to face her.

  As in most artistic depictions, the mare’s coat is a pale, bluish white. She is small, hardly larger than a pony, with a build delicate enough to make the daintiest Arabian look chunky. Her slim legs end in feathered hocks over cloven hooves. Although the unicorn’s mane is a fall of snowy silk, her tail is like a lion’s (or a donkey’s), tufted only on the end. China blue eyes beneath a spiraling nacreous horn study the young coyote with unblinking interest, and the unicorn’s beard waggles as she chews a stray bit of hay.

  Frank, apparently, hears more than chewing, for he says aloud: “Yes, that’s right, Pearl, this is the Changer’s daughter, Shahrazad. Shahrazad, this is Pearl, the senior unicorn of our community here.”

  Shahrazad backs off a step, her bushy tail low, not at all certain that she likes this horse with a sword on its brow. She knows what swords are: Eddie and Arthur have several and she had watched them fence before her father had taken her back into the mountains. It does not seems fair that an herbivore should be so well equipped to defend itself. Her experience with deer has been limited (and jackalopes still do not count in her assessment), so perhaps her shock is greater than it might o
therwise have been.

  “Pearl,” Frank says, returning to tearing flakes off the hay bales, “was born in France—or what is France today—about the time that the Romans were expanding that direction. It’s a wonder she survived, but... Well, that’s a story for another day.”

  Shahrazad sidles to where she can press herself against her father’s legs, very carefully avoiding Pearl and her sword.

  “I don’t think”—the Changer chuckles—“that you’ve convinced Shahrazad that the unicorn is friendly.”

  “Good,” Frank says. “She may just survive her visit here.”

  A muffled stamping on the sawdust-covered floor of an open box stall draws his attention.

  “I’m sorry,” Frank says, glancing over. “I have been remiss in my introductions. Shahrazad, the husky fellow glowering at me from the stall at the end of the row is Sun. He’s Pearl’s current favorite, originally from the Harz Mountains. Along with a dragon who was killed in the fourteenth century, he made life hell for the residents of the area. They called him the Golden Warrior, and kings offered enormous fortunes and lofty titles to the one who would capture him. Needless to say, no one ever managed the trick.”

  “Husky” seems an understatement when used to describe the unicorn who steps forth to acknowledge this introduction. Easily seventeen hands at the shoulder, deep-chested and muscular, the unicorn stallion seems wrought from molten gold. His coat is a glowing palomino, but where a palomino might have white points or a pale mane, Sun’s mane and tail are the same brilliant gold. Even the horn that spirals from his forehead is metallic gold, 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.