YAAN-5
When the owners of the farm north and east of the Corner had departed, they had left behind Lohu, a white-gray horse who now lived alone in the southernmost field of that vacant property, a barren pasture overtaken with scrub and weed.
They had, it seemed to me, abandoned him. I thought he must get lonely, all by himself, and that he must miss his former owners and the other horses who had lived there with him, so I’d go out to his field to talk to him on occasion.
At first, he drew away from me when I approached, but after a couple of visits, the strands of his being began reaching out to me when I came. Sometimes, a few of them would even touch the strands of my being with delicate carefulness, reminiscent of how Jake stroked the hens when he took their eggs. I talked to him or patted him or just stood there with him, most often down in the southwest corner of the field in the shadow of a clump of jagged-leafed Fierce trees which was on the other side of the fence; and his pattern would become still, and he would be content. In time, he began coming to me of his own accord, walking or sometimes even dragging his old body into a trot whenever I climbed over the fence into his field.
We were friends, he enjoyed my presence; yet always when I left him, while he remained a part of me, as with every other soul I knew, I didn’t remain a part of him; whenever I said good-bye, his clasp on my pattern relaxed, the trailing tendrils of my being slipping like butter from the unknowing hold of his entity. He was a solitary being. In the misty mornings of late autumn and early winter, or during summer storms, he would stand in the middle of his pasture, facing the wind, unmoving, as if trying to absorb the pierce of silence that this land, in its isolation, held, into his being, in a quest for an unbreakable solitude.
I often imagined he, Estobbias, Ordvod, and Oontopa, a turkey who I had been fond of but who had been eaten, going on adventures together. They’d travel Lenima and beyond, aiding those in need, rescuing those in trouble, and combating hatred and oppression in all the nooks and crannies and reaches of the world, bantering all the while as I imagined Rook and Jake did on the adventures they’d had that Rook had related to me. Estobbias was the mischievous one, of course, a Jake-like character who was always getting them into scrapes; Ordvod was strong and sensible, the quiet leader of the group; Oontopa was the spokesman, the diplomat; and Lohu the quiet one who claimed not to care about the fate of the world, or the weak, or the oppressed, but the one who most often did the heroic thing to win the day.
Rook and I entered Lohu’s field in the same manner we entered the big cowyard, and the same way we entered the untended cornfield between them, Rook setting me on the fence, vaulting the fence, and then lifting me back onto his shoulders.
Lohu was downslope from us, in the southeast corner of the field (south and east from where Rook and I hopped the fence), in silent communion with the Fierce trees beyond the south fence, but was in, for him, a sociable mood; and when I reached out to him, brushing his pattern, he responded, reaching out to me even as he began trotting towards us upslope, navigating puddles and clumps of brown weeds with heavy grace.
When he saw Rook, he hesitated, and then came to a stamping stop, eyeballing him with his head turned to one side, a look of suspicion if ever there was one, as Rook would point out later.
Rook jogged on, smooth, long-legged, and steady.
“Rook, put me down,” I said, perceiving that the pattern of Lohu’s and my interaction was incomplete, and would remain so until Rook was out of the picture.
He jogged on.
“Put me down,” I repeated, “This is taking too long; you need to get there so you can help. Lohu’ll take care of me, don’t worry.”
Glancing to his left, where Lohu stood watching us, his breath billowing around his head, Rook slowed, lifting me from his shoulders as he did, and then setting me feet-first on the soggy ground as he came to a stop. He glanced at Lohu again, raised an eyebrow at me as if to say, “Be sure that he does take care of you,” and then turned and ran, with long and easy and yet, now, fast strides that carried him away from me and towards the distant wooden fence—beyond which was my home, though from where I stood, because the land sloped gently upwards to the fence, I could see only gray sky.
Rook gone, Lohu trotted over to me, a few strands of his pattern reaching out to the offered strands of mine, and intertwining with them as he came. He nuzzled me, which was rare—he was much more often content to do nothing more than stand near me as I talked to him—and then he knelt down, as if encouraging me to ride him. I had been on his back before, though I thought of it much more as him carrying me than me riding him: I had no clear idea how to ride him. I sat atop him as he walked around, clutching his neck and mane, my pattern wrapped in his in hopes that this would lend him a sense of how he needed to move to keep me aboard.
“Oh, Lohu,” I cried, and climbed atop him. After cantering about in a circle, he followed the diminishing figure of Rook at a fast trot. I held on fast, and he balanced his gait to my presence, keeping me, with perhaps a tiny bit of help from myself, upon his back. He didn’t know I wanted to get to the Corner as swiftly as possible, but my pattern was reaching out to it, and with a natural sense of pattern, like a dog that lies beside you when you’re sad, he followed my pattern. He, an old decrepit horse, gained on Rook, the strongest of humans in the prime of his life, with consummate ease, drawing even with him right as we got to the fence. I saw Mom’s and my hut of polished logs as we approached across the scrubby untended land of Lohu’s field; and upon the weedy cobblestone patio in front of it, Jake stood, alone. Mom was nowhere to be seen. Facing Jake were four farmhands, two of them holding rakes, another a shovel, another a pick-ax, while other workers approached from the west, coming with long eager steps across another cornfield, as yet unplanted this year, and a couple, including Hector Dallidoe, came along from the south. A couple of the four that were already there struck me as Gerbils, and I knew the other two worked for Farmer Green, but I wasn’t personally acquainted with any of them.
As Lohu and I drew alongside of Rook, he glanced at us, half-smiling, and then, as we came to the fence, snatched me from Lohu’s back, and as I squeezed Lohu pattern to pattern and gave him my thanks within the whisper of release, set me on the fence, vaulted it, and set me on my feet beside him. Then, together, we trotted towards the house, where Jake and the farmhands faced each other.