“Ah, yes,” said Abasio. “Strictly speaking he is not my horse, though we do travel together. And though it’s true that he speaks, I’d prefer that you not mention it to anyone. Talking animals are more or less customary where I come from, but I don’t notice many of them around here.” He blinked. He saw a child. But he also saw something . . . as though the child stood within some larger, older embodiment, crystalline, barely visible . . . invisible. He blinked again. It was gone. One of those temporal twists that sometimes proved true? Or not?
The child murmured, “I wouldn’t talk about it. People would just laugh at me.”
“Do they do that a lot?” he asked, rubbing his eyes. He wasn’t in the habit of seeing things, but he had definitely seen something.
“No,” she replied after a moment’s consideration. “Mostly they don’t talk to me at all. My teacher, the Great Bear of Zol, says you have to be very careful of some horses, especially their back ends, but yours seems nice.”
“His name is Big Blue, or just Blue. My name is Abasio.”
“Abasio. I’m called Shoo-lye,” she said. “It’s spelled with an X in front, but in our language that’s pronounced like an SH. Xulai.”
“Your language. And what might that be?”
“Tingawan.”
“Ah. From over the Western Sea. And how do you happen to be here in the land of Wold, so far from the Ten Thousand Islands?”
She stared at him wonderingly. “Not many people know about Tingawa. I was sent from there. I am the Xakixa, soul carrier, for the Woman Upstairs. You probably don’t know what that is . , .”
Abasio smiled. “As it happens, I do. I have read of the custom. Yours is a very responsible duty. And the Woman Upstairs? That would be the wife of the Duke of Wold, am I right?”
The girl went suddenly rigid, as though overcome by a sudden awareness of guilt. “I shouldn’t have told you. Why did I do that! I’m not supposed to talk about . . . I never talk about . . .”
“It’s all right,” snorted the horse. “Don’t worry about it. Everyone tells him things, but he doesn’t tell people’s secrets. He just goes hither and thither helping out . . . orphans?”
“Blue!” said Abasio, somewhat discomfited. “Really!”
“Well, you do,” said the horse in a strangely puzzled voice. He stared at the person on the wall. “You do.”
“Oh,” cried the girl, her face lighting up in joyous wonderment. “Then you are the one I was waiting for! I prayed to Ushiloma, protector of the motherless, to send me someone!”
Abasio went from the wagon step to the wall top, where he sat down beside her. “Life has taught me that almost anything is possible. For example, it is possible I will trade this horse in for a donkey. Or perhaps a yak. Something less given to making spontaneous and gratuitous commitments.”
The girl laid her hand upon his arm pleadingly. “Oh, I don’t know what a yak is, but please don’t. He . . . he sounds very sensible. I get very tired of never talking about anything. I don’t have many people I can talk to. Oldwife Gancer, she was my nursemaid when I was really little, but she’s not exactly a friend, more like a, a granny, I guess. Bartelmy is probably the youngest one who’s actually friendly. He helped me pick out my horse and taught me to ride, but he’s not someone I’d talk to about her, the princess. Besides, Oldwife says he’s a little more fond of me than he should be, being as I’m a Xakixa for a princess and he’s just a bowman for my cousin, though I don’t know what that has to do with anything because he’s very nice and kind. And the children around the castle, well, for some reason, the little ones think I’m too old, but the older ones say I’m too babyish, and the grown-up ones all have their own problems, or they keep trying to educate me, and sometimes I feel words wanting to come out all on their own but there’s no one there to . . . do you understand me? I’d love to have a horse to talk to. Don’t you find him a lot of company? Besides, if you help out orphans, I am one, and you really are the one intended to help me. Probably.” The words had come in a spate, a gush, as from an overloaded heart.
“Possibly,” said Abasio. “Only possibly.” He put his arm around the child’s shoulders and hugged her lightly, suddenly removing the arm as though the embrace had been . . . what? Inappropriate? Certainly not. He liked children, and she was just a child. Of course, no one had said there would be a child. What had he expected?
“While you two converse, I think I’ll have a few mouthfuls of grass,” said Blue, dragging the wagon to the side of the road.
Abasio held Xulai away from him. Seeing the streaks of tears on her cheeks, he wiped her face with his kerchief. Her crow-black hair, full of blue lights in the even-glow, was pulled together in a thick braid that lay across her left shoulder and hung to her waist. Her neck and face were pale nut brown and her face seemed to be at least half eyes, dark and huge, either far too old or far too young for someone her size. Or she herself was far too small, perhaps, for someone sounding as mature as she did. “How old are you?”
“I think seven or eight maybe. I’m not sure.”
“And what kind of help did you pray for?”
She sighed deeply, the words coming slowly, hesitantly: “The Woman Upstairs is very sick and she hasn’t really talked to anyone for a long time, in words, out loud. But she talks to me—kind of in my head. Do you understand?”
Abasio nodded. Oh, yes. He understood very well. He, too, often carried on lengthy conversations with someone very dear to
