For a quarter hour Varia sat gnawing, and soaking up sun, her thoughts slow, her eyes on the mare. You need a name, she decided. You’re my best friend now; I can’t just call you Horse. She gave it a minute’s thought, then nodded, her chuckle sounding a bit like the Varia of Washington County. “Maude,” she said aloud. “I name you Maude.” And chuckled again. Maude had been the name of her father-in-law’s favorite mare, named in turn for the queen of some place in Europe.
She gnawed and sunned till the mare got restless, then wincing with pain, pulled herself into the saddle and rode slowly on. The ridge dwindled, and they slanted down its north flank to a soggy glade, the grassy headwaters of a brook. There Varia took the bit from Maude’s mouth, to let the creature graze more easily. Then hobbled to a sun-heated boulder, large as a roadster, crawled onto it and quickly fell asleep.
It was near noon before she awoke and looked around. Something had wakened her, apparently not a predator, for Maude still grazed placidly. Sitting up, Varia realized what it was: Miles away, someone had found her trail, some tracker, and she’d sensed it. Tomm, it seemed to her. Such psychic incidents were well known to Sisters. She could only wish they were regular, something she could rely on to keep her informed.
Then it struck her that in the cold and rain, the night before, and later in her torpor, she’d forgotten all about casting a net of confusion. She’d remembered at the stable where she’d stolen Maude, but afterward had gone into a stupor from rain, cold, and finally fatigue.
She didn’t panic though, or slip into despair. She simply got painfully from the boulder, and painfully approached Maude, who paused in her grazing to look at her. After putting the bit back in the mare’s mouth, Varia pulled herself, painfully again, into the saddle, and turned westward out of the gap, working her way up the next slope.
But not before casting a net of confusion over the site.
And now, from eating and napping, she’d recovered energy enough to begin healing her painful muscles.
* * *
They traveled slowly but more or less steadily the rest of the day, Varia dozing in the saddle from time to time. Steadily, but not without short breaks, when they came to glades with good grass. There she rested Maude and let her graze. The mare seemed not to have stiffened at all. Varia grazed too, on occasional patches of wild strawberries. Speed was important, but survival also depended on endurance.
Meanwhile she took her boots off, tying them to the saddle, riding barefoot to help her blisters heal. And at intervals casting a net of confusion.
The country was more broken now, and she changed direction from time to time, sometimes taking the most favorable way and sometimes not. The idea was to throw off pursuit, for even if she succeeded in confusing Tomm, he could look at the terrain and judge which way seemed best for travel. She had to outguess him, make him wrong.
Once, in the mud at the edge of a creek, she saw tracks that were clearly of jaguar or catamount. But Maude seemed unworried, though the tracks had to have been made since the rain stopped.
Eventually evening came, and again they stopped at a headwaters in a small marshy meadow. Varia left Maude to graze, depending on a bonding spell to keep her from straying, and sheltered beneath another large thick hemlock, plucking away stones and sticks enough to make a place to lie down. To sleep, and hopefully dream of Curtis.
Curtis. She cast an earnest thought: I’m coming to you, darling! I am! It won’t be long! And wondered if thoughts ever traveled between the worlds.
A second day, and a third, they traveled mostly westward. Only when the terrain required a change in direction did she turn north, from time to time casting her spell. Once she heard wolves, but at a distance, trailing other prey. And once as they traveled a game trail, the mare shied at fresh bear dung, but they passed it by and saw no further sign.