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After having walked about seventeen miles from their base, they settled down to sleep through the burning glare of the day. Next evening, September 25, 2123, Griffin awoke early. He squinted towards the east being careful not to hurt his eyes in the fading light. He closed his eyes again as he lay on his side quietly and listened for a while to the gentle gusts of the breezes as they wafted around his bivouac. He became transfixed by the surreal moment. He guessed that the girls were still asleep beneath the shelter of their own tiny half-tents. He retrieved his shades from his pack and put them on. Looking through them, he admired the way the air shimmered just above the ground. The desert was cooling, but it was still hot.
His thoughts drifted. The base passed through his mind. He still felt a strange presence of it, like someone feels the presence of an amputated arm. At the same time, he felt a new life welling up out of an unfamiliar infinitude. The base was already beginning to seem illusory, a memory from an old life, and he sensed that this memory was going to fade into myth with each passing night.
He sat up, cross-legged, cleared his mind and settled his gaze across the darkening surface into the vastness beyond. He tried to project his focus farther and farther into the third dimension as he absorbed every ounce of information that his senses could perceive.
And there were plants and rocks and things
and the heat was hot
and the ground was dry
and the air was full of sound
As his universe painted her oranges, reds and purples across the western sky, his amazement continued to grow as he witnessed, once again, the crescent moon hanging in the nothingness, and the first stars pop into existence seemingly out of nowhere. He wanted to wake the girls so they could see this, but he let them sleep. He knew they were tired and that they needed the rest. ‘Anyway,’ he thought, ‘pretty soon they’ll be calling out for their mommy in their sleep, and I don’t want to miss that.’ He chuckled at the thought.
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Tip and Fin were Griffin’s best friends since they were born. They were his kindred spirit. In himself, he felt that he loved them more than even his parents, if that were possible. The twins and he grew up as kids together in the base and their bond was complete. And there were new kinds of feelings. He knew that he loved them both equally.
He could not, even for one second, conceive of himself loving one more than the other. As well, as they were growing up and becoming beautiful young girls, he found himself becoming increasingly protective towards them, like they were his. He also knew that Tip and Fin could never be separated. It was as though they were one spirit sharing two bodies, and to his good fortune, this beautiful spirit was his best friend in all his life.
The girls never competed with one another for his attention. They always, since childhood, shared him equally. And despite the fact that they were still in their mid-teens, they had already, secretly, made a pact to be happy with just one male shared between them. And as things turned out, they got the last living one on Earth, or so it seemed.
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Fury suddenly came to a skidding stop kicking up dust and stones around his hooves. He cocked up his ears and looked towards the south. Suddenly he sensed humans.
‘Not kindred,’ he could tell. They were a long gallop away as best he could surmise. He sensed two of them. He focused directly south in the direction of the humans, then southwest in the direction he was heading before he stopped. He looked south again and, after pounding a hoof and whinnying at the sky, took off in the direction of the human vibration.
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‘Mommy, read me a story,’ came a sleepy moan from one bivouac.
‘No … no … not yet mommy … it’s too early,’ came a drowsy whine from the other.
Griffin chuckled to himself and thought, ‘Ahhh … the princesses awaken from their slumber.’
The twilight had now faded into a glowing ember, leaving them immersed in a welcome darkness. He slipped the hood off his head and removed his shades, which he put back in his pack. He gazed in wonder, for a while, at the crescent moon, with its accompanying bright star, floating above the western horizon, and he marveled at the infinity of the star-encrusted firmament before he retrieved his black, NASA cap from his pack and placed it backwards on his head.
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At first, he squinted across the plain. Then, after allowing them to adjust to the light, he slowly fully opened his eyes. The glare was gone and it didn’t hurt to look anymore.
The light of the moon made it look like a silvery daylight for him. Every feature on the ground, everything, was visible, and he noticed how everything, including himself, cast its own moon-shadow.
After the girls awoke and they all had breakfast and a sip of water, Griffin stood up and looked at the compass.
‘We go in that general direction, towards the afterglow. What way would that be then, Fin?’
‘That would be west, Griff.’
‘And what is that opposite to west, Tip?’
‘East, Griff.’
‘Correctomundo girlywhirls,’ he said in that quirky, self-satisfied, affectionate way he liked to say it. ‘I think that we’ll have to go around that mountain line there. We’ll have to head southwest down this wide valley,’ he panned across the valley with his hand,
‘until we come to a gap where we can turn west.’ The girls agreed. Griffin suggested,
‘Maybe we should find a mound to get a better look around from the top.’
‘Good idea, Griff,’ replied the twins enthusiastically.
They strode over the arid, rock-strewn, sandy ground, which was interspersed with bare patches of solid glass that cracked under their boots as they walked. They immediately took a liking to the cracking sound. It made their steps audible and their six boots tended to naturally settle into a rhythmic beat, almost like making music. They hiked in a line with Griffin leading the way and the girls taking turns at being second. The three of them were tall and lithe, with an abundance of endurance thanks to the Food Bars. They moved gracefully over the desert like they were born in it. Griffin paced the traverse. He guided them through a plethora of obstacles, which he could easily see in the moonlight. He interspersed one hour of walking with ten minutes of resting. After five hours, they stood on a rise about fifty feet above the plain. And even though the moon and its accompanying star had set beyond the western horizon a couple of hours before, up ahead a few miles they could see a large flat area that stood out against the background a much brighter whitish shade.
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‘I’d say we’ll have to cross that, whatever it is,’ said Griffin. He took out the binoculars and looked out into the distance. ‘There appears to be a gap in the mountains out on the other side of the bright area. I think we should head for that. You girls OK?’
‘Fine.’
‘No problems, Griff.’
They were now about 30 miles away from the base and they were heading a tad west of south down the middle of a wide, flat valley with about six-hundred-foot-high hills rising up in the distance on both sides.
As they stood on top of the fifty-foot mound, they paused and silenced for a moment and just soaked in the expansive size of the chamber they were now within. To them it felt like the confines of the base had disintegrated around them, and beyond was this infinity. It was each of their universes that sprouted the idea of infinity in them, just as ours have done in us. It was almost too much for their minds to comprehend, and it might have been were it not for Griffin’s inspiring leadership and his one-step-at-a-time approach to forging ahead, which kept the girls tightly focused on the mission.
They chose to break out their green LED headbands to help them light the way ahead.
‘There used to be nothing but walls and machines,’ said Tip.
‘And ceiling. Nothing but ceiling,’ added Fin.
‘But we are going … out there!’ said Griffin in a voice full of wonder, pointing out across the ‘lake of light’, which was fluorescing up ahead in the darkness.
‘Not a wall in sight,’ said Tip.
‘Not a ceiling,’ added Fin.
‘Let’s take time out,’ said Griffin, ‘take a break and recharge. One hour should do us.’
They sat in a line next to each other, with the girls either side of him, and gazed out down the valley. They had a Bar each, and a sip of water. The girls took turns at giving him little hugs to express their affection for him.
After the break they hiked off the mound and traversed the three miles to the lake of light, which mysteriously fluoresced in a bluish-green pastel. They stopped at its edge.
‘What is it?’ Fin asked.
Griffin stepped out onto the crumbly, glowing surface and squatted down. He picked up a fluorescing grain with his fingers, put it in his mouth and tasted it.
‘It’s salt,’ he said.
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They looked out across the billiard-flat lake.
‘It’s so big,’ said Tip.
‘We’ll take ten and then head out,’ said Griffin. He tried looking through his binoculars but put them back down. ‘Too dark for these,’ he said. ‘The moon sure helps to see things.’
‘It’ll be back tomorrow night, won’t it?’
‘We can live in hope, Tippy, we can live in hope.’
‘How wide is the lake, do you reckon, Griff?’
‘Ohh … I think one hour to an hour and a half to hike over the salt, I reckon. I can give the compass a go.’
‘Do it in one hit, I reckon,’ said Fin.
‘Let that be the plan, then,’ responded Griffin.
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They covered ground easily across the crumbly, flat surface, which induced a pleasant crunch under their boots as they walked. They marveled at the way the salt of the dry lake brightened under the pressure of their boots, which were becoming fluorescing works of art as the salt stuck to them. Griffin used his headlamp to keep an eye on the compass. They left a ruler-straight course of footsteps following Griffin’s compass. As they walked, he noticed how the whole celestial dome turned westward relative to the compass. ‘Everything is turning,’ he thought to himself.
When they arrived at roughly the middle of the lake of light, Griffin stopped.
‘This’d be about half way,’ he said.
‘Oh God I love breathing this air,’ said Fin. ‘I just can’t get enough of it.’
‘Who wants to jog the rest of it, I love this surface,’ said Tip defiantly.
Even though they were twins, technically Fin was still the older sister, by one minute. Because she was the youngest, Tip liked to challenge her older sister in tests of endurance and skill, like climbing vertical walls, for example, of which there were plenty down in the base.
‘We might stick to walking,’ responded Griff remembering Rip’s lessons. ‘There is no knowing the length and difficulty of this journey. We might be better off avoiding unnecessary exertions and it can’t hurt to take rests. Rip was full-on about that.’
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They stood there for a moment, there in the centre of the lake of light, and marveled.
Suddenly Tip whispered with a note of urgency, ‘What is that?’ she pointed. ‘There, like a line, a dark line on the salt, see it?’
‘God you have good eyes, Tippy,’ whispered Griffin. ‘I see it. It’s a line of individual things. I count five.’
‘Are they moving?’ asked Fin.
Griffin aimed his binoculars, ‘It’s five four-legged creatures. I can see the salt lighting up beneath their feet as they walk.’
‘How big are they?’ said Tip.
‘Hard to tell,’ he replied, ‘not too big. They’re just like a shadow.’
Griffin, Fin and Tip did not understand aggression. That type of behaviour breached the directives in the base and nobody practiced it. RG3 omitted mentioning the fact that survival on the surface meant hunting, killing and eating your prey. Nature ate itself in order to stay alive. He ended up thinking it unwise to pollute the journal with such a
‘barbaric concept’, so he left it out. Everyone was pleasant in the base, if not by nature, then by a carefully balanced cocktail of ‘meds’. There was no aggression in the base.
Tip borrowed the binoculars. ‘I think they’re moving with us … and they’re drifting towards us as best I can tell.’
‘They’re definitely turning towards us,’ Griffin said calmly. ‘Let’s get our packs on our backs.’
Griffin helped the girls with their packs. They all turned and faced the five creatures approaching them.
They stood in the centre of the billiard-flat, three-mile-wide lake of light, which was the only light visible in an otherwise pitch-black, starlit night. The air was crisp and clear as crystal. The light breeze blew at their backs carrying their scent downwind to a family of coyotes with time chips implanted under their skins. They were a breeding pair with three, one-year-old pups, two males and a female. The leader male was large for his breed and of a cunning nature. He was chosen for the time-shift program due to his superb hunting ability. He kept his family well fed. The coyotes had no concept of the fact that two days before, they had been time-shifted 100 years into the future. They were attracted to the salt lake because they could see it, and right in the middle of it there was prey, the scent of which they had been following for the last ten miles.
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These coyotes knew man and were very wary of him, but they were also exceedingly hungry. They slinked in an arc towards the three humans. The father led the pack with his two male progeny following behind him. The female pup followed them with mum keeping rear guard.
The salt beneath their paws lit up in a brighter bluish glow. The glow of the lake caused the coyotes to instinctively adopt the daytime, open-ground stalking technique.
They could see the prey and the prey could see them. The leader’s plan was for the three males to encircle the prey while the females stayed back, out of the skirmish. The leader would take the frontal attack. He wanted to get closer and have a proper look at his quarry. As they approached the humans, the coyote males fanned out from one another.
‘What are they doing, Griff?’
‘They are being very careful with their approach,’ he replied. As the coyotes began to encircle them, he suggested, ‘Why don’t we stand with our backs to each other and face out.’ They formed a tight, three-sided unit.
Although they weren’t thinking about an assault, they were nonetheless well prepared for one with their overalls being impregnable to any type of dog onslaught, and the coyotes could chew on their boots all day if they wanted to and barely leave a mark.
The mother and daughter coyotes stopped about fifty feet out from the humans and watched the three males begin to dart side to side in ever decreasing arcs surrounding the humans. They made very little sound. The leader of the pack zeroed in on Griffin who was clearly the largest of the three humans. The salt fluoresced a brighter turquoise beneath the dancing paws of the hungry coyotes. They began an instinctive open-ground stalking routine that had been programmed into their DNA over many millennia through the evolutionary process of natural selection.
‘Do you think they want to play?’ asked Tip.
‘Could be, Tippy,’ replied Griffin. ‘They certainly are going through an elaborate routine there. I can’t work out their game. Stay tight, eh.’
‘I don’t trust them,’ said Fin. ‘They are acting sneaky.’
The coyotes converged to within twenty feet of the trio. Another ten feet and they would be in the strike zone. They darted side to side and made small thrusts towards the humans, displaying their long, sharp teeth as they did so.
‘Are they smiling at us?’ Tip asked.
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‘I am having trouble understanding these creatures,’ said Griffin. ‘There seems to be something suspicious about them.’
Just as he said that, the big coyote darted in towards Griffin from about ten feet out, nipped his overall just above the ankle, then retreated back about six feet and, while staying kinetic darting from side to side, observed the reaction of his prey. He was looking for fear, but he wasn’t seeing any. All he got was a laugh from Griffin.
‘Hey, biting not allowed, critter. Mine just had a nip of my suit down near my boot.
Stick your boots out if they come for you. They can bite on those all they like.’
The coyote knew that he couldn’t kill a large creature with one sudden deadly lunge, especially one that showed no fear. The instinctive technique was to tire the prey, over time, with a sustained thrusting and stalking attack causing the prey to defend itself until it exhausted itself and became more vulnerable. The coyote’s kill bite of choice was to the neck where he attempted to choke the creature to death or even puncture the jugular vein.
The coyotes settled into a long-term harassment of the three humans by constantly circling them from only a few feet away and repeatedly darting in and biting, usually at a boot stuck out for defense.
‘This is very rough play,’ said Griffin. He began to kick at the coyotes and call out to them to ‘back off!’ The girls did the same. Seeing the apprehension rise in their prey, the coyotes only intensified their attack with fiercer thrusts and bites, accompanied now by snarling and growling.
‘Nasty bits of work, these hairy, toothed monstrosities,’ commented Fin trying to shake one of the pups off her boot. ‘Git away from here!’ she hissed.
After fifteen minutes of relentless attack and defense, Griffin came to a conclusion.
‘I have a sneaking suspicion that these toothed terrors are trying to wear us down, tire us, in order to have their nasty way with us.’
‘They look hungry, Griff,’ observed Tip.
‘Should we throw them a food bar?’ said Fin.
‘No way,’ responded Griffin. ‘The best chance we’ve got here is if they run out of steam before we do.’
‘How long will that take?’ asked Tip.
‘God knows,’ said Griff. God knows was a favorite saying of RG3’s and it stuck through the generations.
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On the next lunge, Griffin connected solidly with his boot on the coyote’s snout, eliciting the first yelp since the encounter began.
‘Sorry, you nasty thing, but you asked for it,’ he said.
The coyote was not the slightest bit put off, though. He was set for an hours-long harassment until his prey submitted out of exhaustion. It was his plan that that night he and his family would feast on the dead carcasses of these weak humans.
Although the tough, GTT overalls were impervious to the coyote’s sharp teeth, a well-targeted bite to a shin or knee could still cause bruising through the material. The boots were the best defense the trio had and they now used them continuously as the three coyotes intensified their assault. Griffin also pulled the pick-mattock from the side of his pack. He began to use it to fend off the creature as it unwaveringly persisted to dart towards him and snap at either his boots or lower legs. If the coyote failed to get a hold of something, he backed away and stalked from side to side again, snarling and displaying his impressive dentition, with his eyes firmly locked on Griffin’s.
Suddenly, Griffin heard a squeal from Tip. ‘Yeoww!’ He turned around and saw that one of the other creatures had got a solid hold of her ankle and brought her down. He also saw that Fin was busy with her own coyote fending it off. He swung his pick-mattock and brought it down on Tip’s creature’s back with the flat of the metal head. He didn’t want to injure it. As he did so he turned his back on the pack leader who promptly attacked him from behind. This was the coyotes’ ploy. Tip was still down with the creature gnawing at her ankle just above the protection of the boot. He swung again, harder this time, still with the flat of the pick-mattock head, this second blow causing the creature to yelp, let go of its hold, and scamper off to about twenty feet away.
Tip was still down on the salt holding her sore ankle as Griffin realized that he had the crazy, growling, snarling creature hanging off his pack with his long, sharp canines firmly clamped to it. As he turned to face the creature it swung in the air behind him hanging off the backpack.
Almost as if they read each other’s minds, Griff’s and Fin’s eyes locked for a nanosecond. He threw her the pick-mattock, which she caught by the handle, then turned his back to her with the crazy coyote still swinging free off his backpack.
‘Don’t injure it,’ he said.
Fin swung the pick-mattock across the big coyote’s back with enough force to make it yelp loudly and release its hold of the pack. She then attended to the pup harassing her
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and gave him a solid whack on the head for his troubles. He slinked away with his tail between his legs and joined his father and brother about twenty feet away.
There was a momentary pause in the skirmish during which Griffin attended to Tip while Fin kept an eye on the creatures. He pulled the leg of the suit up to see her injury.
‘It’s sore eh?’ he asked.
‘Yeah.’
‘It’s bruised, and it’s going to swell up a bit, but the skin isn’t punctured.’ He moved her foot to test her ankle.
‘Owww.’
‘Sorry. Your ankle might swell a bit as well. It’s hard to say how much it will affect your walking.’
‘I’ll be OK,’ she said bravely. He assisted her to her feet while Fin made threatening sounds at the coyotes and swung the pick-mattock in their direction. All the coyotes’ eyes were firmly fixed on the pick-mattock now. They saw it as the main threat to a successful kill. The leader of the pack instinctively wanted to take it from the humans.
The three male coyotes stood as a group about twenty feet away and felt the throbbing on their backs and head from the blows inflicted by the pick-mattock. Humans were the hardest to bring down because they always came up with some object to defend themselves with. Other animals never posed that problem.
‘We best revert to our tight formation when they start to surround us again,’
instructed Griff. ‘These beasts don’t look like they’re about to go away anytime soon.’
‘I think they are trying to wear us down, Griff,’ said Fin.
‘I think they want to eat us,’ said Tip.
‘I think you could both be right,’ responded Griff slightly animated. He retrieved the pick-mattock from Fin and prepared himself for the next assault. ‘How’s the ankle, Tippy?’
he asked.
‘Bit sore,’ she replied.
‘Here they come again,’ said Fin as the three coyote males again began to encircle the trio of humans.
‘OK, tighten up, backs to each other,’ instructed Griff as they all readied themselves to fend off the threatening creatures.
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The leader of the pack immediately noticed how one of the humans was favouring one leg. Instinct, honed through uncountable generations, had him searching out the weakest prey. He swapped with one of his sons and focused his attack on Tip.
‘Looks like the big basket is going for you this time, Tippy. Watch out!’
‘Basket’ was a polite way of saying bastard. Swearing was frowned upon in the base and was virtually never practiced, especially in front of children. It was Rip who swapped
‘bastard’ with ‘basket’, and everyone knew what he meant, but thought it to be quite hilarious, especially with the way he phrased it. He mainly used the word against cantankerous, broken-down machinery. Rip was, in general, a very funny guy who was loved by everyone in the base.
Suddenly, totally unexpectedly, the leader of the pack sprinted at Tip from twenty feet away and lunged at her sore ankle with which she attempted to fend him off. The coyote managed to get a firm hold of her boot and began to drag her down. She fell to the ground. The coyote was about to go for her neck when he, and everyone else, was distracted by the sound of drumming in the distance. The coyotes, as well as hear it, could feel the subtle drumming vibration beneath their paws. It was coming from the north.
The leader of the pack recognized the sound immediately. Everyone stopped for a moment and looked across the featureless lake of light, which was outspread under the black, star-encrusted firmament.
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Fury galloped at full speed towards the center of the lake of light. It felt to him as if his hooves had wings as they were carried on a surging wave of wrath. He recognized the scene from a great distance having experienced it once before.
Many ‘moons’ ago, he saved his precious from an attacking pack of coyotes. They had her down and were going for the kill. He fought the leader of the pack and won by stomping him to death. By the time Fury’s rage had abated, the coyote’s scull was crushed into unrecognizable pulp. The rest of the pack scampered away after seeing the brutal demise of their leader. The memory of the battle with the coyote vermin made Fury’s flesh crawl and his hooves pound the crusty, iridescent salt like beating war drums.
His black mane and long tail flew high and his enormous hooves, which were shod with glistening, stainless-steel horseshoes, caused the salt to light up beneath their weight.
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The big coyote had a good hold of Tip and had her down on the ground, but his single-minded focus was temporarily misdirected by the approaching gallop of the huge stallion. The other coyotes were completely distracted as well, and became disordered and confused.
‘What is that?’ said Fin.
‘I don’t know,’ said Griffin. ‘It looks like an enormous black shadow.’
‘It’s, like, thundering this way,’ Fin observed.
The coyote re-focused on the task at hand and began pulling and gnawing at Tip’s boot.
‘This overgrown rodent’s got my boot,’ squealed Tip.
Before Griff and Fin could properly react to Tip’s predicament, they, and all the coyotes, were scattered like tenpins by the sliding arrival of black Fury. Iridescent salt flew high in the air around the skidding hooves of the mighty horse and landed all over everyone, lighting them up like Christmas trees.
In the kerfuffle, the leader of the pack released his hold of Tip’s boot. She slid herself backwards out of the way as she, and everyone else, watched in amazement as the big coyote and the giant black stallion faced each other down. They all observed, with disbelief, the coyote lash out at the stallion and the stallion rear up on his hind legs and come down on the coyote’s head with his right hoof, killing him instantly. Although Fury still harboured some anger at coyotes in general, for attacking his precious, the anger was now more tempered. Although he felt the urge to pound the dead coyote’s head into mush, he resisted the temptation and instead placed himself between the humans and the rest of the pack, reared up on his hind legs and gave them the loudest, angriest whinny that he could muster.
Seeing her mate, and their father, lying lifeless on the salt, and the huge stallion threatening their own lives, the rest of the coyote pack slinked away from the skirmish towards the distant darkness. And even though their father, the master hunter, was dead, the family continued to struggle to survive, albeit for only a short while, because their destiny was sealed a century before by the shortsighted, senseless stupidity of the now-defunct human race.
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6
Fury stood over the lifeless, coyote carcass, breathing heavily, and faced the three humans. His steaming breath could plainly be visible in the cool of the night. He lowered his head in a gesture of friendship. Griffin and Fin helped Tip to her feet.
‘Oww, thank you guys,’ she whined.
The three of them then stood as one and faced the huge animal.
‘I think I know this creature,’ said Fin. ‘I’ve seen a drawing in RG3s journal that looked a bit like this. I cannot remember the name of it though.’
Griff wasn’t sure what to do next, so he bowed to the horse from his waist and said with genuine sincerity,
‘Thank you, thank you so much from all of us, kind creature, for rescuing us from our predicament.’
They were hugely surprised when Fury bowed in return as if he understood, which he did.
‘Look at that, it’s bowing back. I think this creature understands us,’ said Fin with amazement. They were all amazed. But then, Fury was an amazing horse. In fact, he was the most amazing horse on Earth, and that was even before the comet hit. He stepped shyly up to Griff, and as Griff lifted his hand to touch the great creature, Fury muzzled it and sampled the human’s scent.
‘It’s very friendly,’ said Fin.
‘I doubt whether the overgrown, dead rat would agree with you,’ replied Griffin.
‘It deserved what it got,’ said Tip favouring her right leg.
They all began patting the horse and the horse muzzled everyone, and a great friendship began there, in the center of the lake of light, a friendship that was destined to last for centuries.
‘Take a look at the journal, Griff, and find the drawing,’ suggested Fin. ‘I know it’s there, and there is a name that goes with it.’
Griff was as curious as the twins to find out the name of the black creature that had joined them. He retrieved RG3s journal from his pack, shone his LED headlamp on it and flipped through the pages. He quickly found some drawings.
‘This is it, I think,’ he said. ‘It says underneath here, horse.’
RG3 didn’t used to be much of a drawer, but he could draw a pretty good horse because he had been practicing it since he was a small child. It was just one of those
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coincidental things. And even when he was waiting for a big game with the Redskins, he used to sometimes bury himself in the corner of the locker room and doodle horses to relax. He never drew a dog.
Griff turned to Fury, gently stroked the side of his head and softly said to him,
‘Your name is Horse. That is what we will call you.’
Fury tried to roll his eyes, but couldn’t. His understanding of the English language was quite comprehensive, for a horse. He never wished more that he could speak. He thought,
‘I am a horse, two legs.’ Two legs was a kind of derogatory term that he used when he was under-impressed with some humans. ‘My name is Fury.’
‘The girl with the sore ankle, here,’ continued Griff, ‘well, her name is Tip. And this girl, who looks just like her, her name is Fin, and me, my name is Griff, and we come from beneath the surface. And you … are Horse.’
It would be a while before anyone uttered Fury’s name again.
The twins lovingly patted the huge beast and crooned,
‘Hello, Horse.’
‘What a lovely big creature you are, Horse.’
Fury, who shall for the time being be referred to as Horse, wasn’t minding the attention at all. One would have to be completely catatonic to not absolutely revel in the warm affection of the beautiful twins.
‘We should think about pushing on,’ said Griff. ‘How are you to travel, Tippy?’
‘My ankle is sore, but I’m OK, I think.’
As they attempted to move, though, it became clear that she was not OK. Horse knew all about sprained ankles because his precious sustained one once when she fell off him.
Griff bent down and gently palpated Tip’s ankle through her overall.
‘Your ankle is too bruised to walk,’ he assessed, ‘but we can’t stay here, we’ve got to get out of this light.’
‘I’ll lean on your shoulder and hop,’ said Tip. ‘It’s only a mile and a half to the other side.’
‘Or thereabouts,’ added Griff positively.
Suddenly the trio became fixated on Horse who came up to Tip, lowered his head to near the ground before her, bent one knee and lowered himself in an elegant bow. He stayed in that position until they got the message.
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‘What is he doing?’ said Fin.
‘Well, it looks to me like he’s bowing,’ said Griff.
‘You know what he reminds me of,’ said Tip.
‘No, what?’ replied both Griff and Fin in unison.
‘He reminds me of dad when we were little. Remember how he used to get down on his hands and knees and tell us to hop on his back to ride him.’
‘Oh yeah,’ said Fin. ‘Do you think that’s what Horse is trying to do?’
‘If it is, that would make Horse pretty smart,’ said Griff. ‘Why don’t you try to get on his back and see what happens.’
‘Ooooooh, he is pretty big, Griffy. Why don’t you get on his back?’
‘I’m not the one with the sore ankle, Tippy, otherwise I would.’
‘What if he takes off with me on his back?’
‘Well, girlywhirl,’ replied Griff with one of his dopey looks, ‘if he does that, then I suggest that you jump off.’
Fin broke into hysterics. ‘Boy you guys are funny sometimes. He won’t run away, Tippy. Where is he going to go?’ She looked out over the lake of light into the empty darkness beyond. ‘He’s not leaving us,’ she laughed, ‘because we are now his friends and he is our friend. I mean, he pretty much saved our lives.’
‘Fin is right, Tippy. Try getting on slowly … and don’t startle him.’
Tip knelt down next to Horse’s lowered head. She patted him gently and spoke to him in a soft, kind voice.
‘What are you trying to tell us, Horse? Are you asking me to sit on your back like daddy did? Can you tell that my ankle is sore? Will you be a nice Horse and not do anything crazy?’
‘I don’t think he’s going to answer you,’ said Griff. Tip continued to speak softly.
‘You know, you are a beautiful horse, Horse, and so big and strong …’
‘And brave,’ added Fin.
‘Yes, and brave, who rescued us from those nasty, hairy, big-tooth rat things. And now I am going to sit on your back … so don’t be frightened.’
Tip rose up from her crouch and gingerly lifted her sore ankle over Horse’s back and carefully sat on him. When Horse sensed that she was balanced, he stood up.
‘Whoah, I’m high!’ exclaimed Tip all excited.
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‘Wow,’ is all Griff and Fin could come out with. They had never seen a horse, much less seen someone ride one. It would not have been possible without Horse’s high intelligence and his prior experience at being ridden by his precious.
‘We ought to push on,’ suggested Griff. ‘We should try to get to the other side of this salt before the light comes.’
He took his compass from his pack and shined his headlamp on it. ‘This way,’ he said, pointing slightly south of west. ‘We’ll go for that gap in the mountains up ahead in the distance.’
They saw the silhouettes of the distant hills much better than Horse did. All he could see beyond the lake of light was darkness. They set off. Griff led the way with Horse and Tip behind him and Fin at the rear.
‘I’ll walk behind Horse, Tippy, just in case you fall off.’
‘I’m not going to fall off. I feel quite comfortable up here, except for the rocking.’
As they walked, they began to settle and calm and enjoy again the crunch of the iridescent salt beneath their boots, now with the added rhythmic clip-clops of Horse’s hooves. None of them looked back at the dead carcass of the coyote, which now marked the center of the lake of light.
Unbeknownst to the three humans, Horse’s thoughts became firmly fixated on finding water because of an ever-increasing thirst.
…….
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