Owlsight

Choosing me! I have responsibilities here, you dolt! People here need me for what I can do, and I can ‘tjust ride out of here and leave them! Listen to me, you fool! Don’t -

Maybe staring into his eyes had been a mistake.

She felt the rest of the world vanishing around her as she fell into those twin pools of sapphire. But before she could drown in them, she bit her lip to bring her back to herself and hurled her denial at him.

I. Am. Not. Expendable! she thought, working up real heat at the thought that anyone, even a Companion, could march into her life and proceed to reorder it for her. I. Am. Not. Going!

She sensed surprise. Pick somebody else!

Now she sensed - amusement? Why amusement?

Her anger evaporated.

The eyes turned away from her, let her go. Had they ever really held her, or had that only been her imagination?

She didn’t get a chance to think about it, because movement beside her caught her attention. The Companion stood quietly, and now it was Shandi who walked with slow, entranced steps toward him.

She looked like a sleepwalker, and Keisha stifled the impulse to grab her arm and keep her where she was. Still. . . I’m not her keeper. If this is what she wants, she should try to make it work. She’s old enough to make up her own mind, just as I am, and live with whatever comes of it.

Although, it looked as if consequences were the last thing on Shandi’s mind right now.

Shandi stopped, just a step away from the Companion’s nose, and slowly reached her hand forward, as if she feared to touch him. Keisha waited, heart pounding, biting her lower lip. The Companion made short work of Shandi’s hesitation, craning his neck forward as his bridle bells chimed, and putting his nose in her hand. Then they just stood there for a long, long time, and Keisha’s breathing seemed very loud in the silence.

Then, as Keisha’s nerves wound tighter and tighter, like an overtuned harpstring, the spell - or whatever it was - finally broke. They both moved, the Companion tossing his head and sidling around so that his stirrup and saddle were in easy reach. Shandi reached for the cantle, then turned to her sister with eyes brimming with wonder.

That snapped everyone else out of their tense silence, and before Shandi could speak, she was surrounded by friends and neighbors, all of them contributing to a conglomerate of babble that sounded like a shouting match between a flock of hens and a gaggle of geese. As far as Keisha could make out, none of them had anything very intelligent to say, but they were all very intent on saying it.

Through a gap in the crowd, Shandi peered entreat-ingly back at her sister; Keisha sighed and pushed her way past everyone else to reach her.

Shandi paid attention to no one else, holding out her free hand entreatingly. “Keisha, I didn’t mean - I mean, I want to go, but I didn’t ask - I mean, I didn’t intend - ” Shandi was doing a good job of babbling herself, and Keisha reached out and gave her shoulders a friendly shake.

“Of course you didn’t mean for this to happen, you ninny,” she half-scolded, half-cajoled. “Choosings aren’t planned, everyone knows that - and it’s not as if you’d gone and made an appointment for this hairy beast to show up! I mean, if you could simply decide to be a Herald, what would be the point? Herald would be like any other job. You get Chosen because you’re the right person to be a Herald, you know that.”

And I, most certainly, am not!

Was it her imagination, or did the Companion swing his head around and wink at her, just as she thought that?

Oh, there’s probably a fly buzzing around his ears.

“But Keisha, I have to go, I mean I have to go now, and - ” Shandi looked at her, pleading with her to understand, tears brimming in her eyes and rolling slowly down one cheek.

“And if you didn’t have to go now, you know that Mum would find a thousand reasons why you couldn’t go, ever. I know that; Havens, probably everybody in town knows that.” Keisha tried to smile, but it was a great deal more difficult than she had thought it would be. “Shandi, that’s why it happens this way - I’ll bet that, otherwise, every single mother in Valdemar would have a thousand reasons why her child couldn’t go haring off into the sunset just on the say-so of a big white horse!”

“But - but - ” Shandi’s expression was painfully easy to read. Fix things for me, her