Changespell 01 Dunn Lady's Jess Read online

  "Anyone here?"

  "Come on in," Jaime answered, her reply barely audible above the indignant protests of the horses, who'd suddenly realized the wheelbarrow was no longer progressing down the aisle. "One flake each, remember?" Jaime said, which was all the prompting Jess needed to pick up the job. Jaime brushed ineffectively at the persistent bits of hay clinging to her breeches and met the man in the doorway between the tack room and the aisle.

  "Can I help you?" she asked, even as she noticed this wasn't a typical visitor—not a mother with a horse-crazy daughter in tow, or a young professional who had the money but not quite the time to spend on his or her horse. This man was full of visual conflicts, with spiffy new jeans that were topped by what looked very much like a handwoven shirt, well-worn, and not very clean. The man's dark hair was carefully cut but not much cleaner than the shirt, and his teeth, when he smiled meaninglessly at her, were barely in better shape than the aged farm dog's. She kept a polite distance between them, having no desire to see if his breath was on par with the dog's as well.

  "I'm looking for a horse," he said, eyeing the aisle and the few curious horses that bothered to peer at him in between snatches of hay.

  "We have several for sale right now," she said. "What kind of horse were you looking for?"

  He shook his head. "Not to buy. I lost one a couple weeks back. Looking for her and her gear."

  "You lost her tacked up?" Jaime said curiously, wondering about the man's unplaceable accent. "Take a fall?"

  "Someone did," he said shortly. "I wondered if I could take a look around."

  She had a sudden urge to show him the door, but squelched it, trying to imagine herself in his shoes. "I'd be glad to show you around, but we haven't taken in any strays. There're several private barns in the area, though—have you checked with them?"

  "Not yet," he grunted, bringing his attention back inside the tack room, eyeing the gear draped over saddle racks and festooned from wall hooks.

  Inexplicably, Jaime felt her own eye drawn to the rack which held the wool coolers, checking to see if any of Jess' saddle was visible from beneath. "I wish I could help you," she said politely, glancing down the aisle to see that Jess had finished distributing the snack, that she was coming back with the empty wheelbarrow. Three stalls away, Jess looked up, got her first good look at the visitor, and froze. She stood very tall, the wheelbarrow forgotten, one leg trembling with the indecision of run or stay.

  The clatter of metal drew Jaime's attention, and she found that the man had invited himself to paw through the tack room; he let her show bridle fall back to the wall with a thunk of the double bit and reached to lift a boarder's saddle off of the older saddle that sat beneath.

  "Excuse me," she said loudly, striding in to push the saddle back where it belonged. "Your gear isn't here. I'd like you to leave now."

  He stood back from her, obviously reluctant, a stubborn look on his face; for a moment she thought he might push the issue, and rebuked herself for not teaching Jess about the 911 emergency number. Reluctantly, she said, "Tell me what the horse looks like and let me know where to get in touch with you, and I'll let you know if I hear anything."

  The offer seemed to be enough. "Ask for Derrick at the LK Hotel," he said. "The gear is a little unusual, looks like a cross between one of your saddles and a western saddle. The horse is a six-year-old dun mare, dark points all around."

  Jaime pointedly opened the door for him. "I'll let you know if I hear anything," she said, and ushered him out, leaning on the door after she'd closed it. Dun mare.

  Jess peeked hesitantly around the edge of the doorway, her expression scared but determined.

  She's been out there since I saw her. She was going to fight for me, Jaime thought in astonishment. And the sudden realization: She's seen him before.

  The sound of a car engine and the crunch of tires on gravel told of Derrick's passage as he pulled out of the U-shaped driveway. Jess relaxed a little and came into the room, looking questioningly at Jaime, giving her head an odd little toss. Dun mare. Her dark sand hair fell back around her face, and the blended black swath of her bangs had never seemed so obvious as it fell over her forehead. Black points.

  * * *

  Adding up coincidences, Dayna decided, could drive you mad. It was enough to make you realize that the course of your life was as strange and random as any Ripley's Believe It Or Not. There was Eric, whom she'd met through his position as Highbanks Park Volunteer. Though they'd become good friends, they'd certainly never spent this much time together before. And then there was Jaime, whom she'd met through Mark, whom she'd met at work. And of course, Jess—whom she'd met at the park because of Eric, and who was living here with Jaime because she'd met Mark—she finally stopped herself. The point was, they were all sitting here eating a cookout dinner. It didn't matter how it'd all come about.

  Dayna poured herself another tumbler of iced tea and offered the pitcher to Eric, who shook his head. He, like Jaime, was watching Jess, who was in turn watching a boarder's gelding graze. Mark seemed oblivious to them all as he ate neat soldierly rows of butter-dripping corn. Dayna contemplated taking the last foil-wrapped cob off the grill but then considered the fat in the butter. Maybe not. Besides, she didn't want to be distracted from Jaime who, although she obviously had some purpose behind this impromptu little dinner, had so far confined herself to inane remarks about the food preparation and the weather.

  She sighed and looked back to Mark. Like his older sister, he was an attractive person, with hair and eyes both a lighter shade of brown than hers. Where she was solid, he was angular, almost too thin. But when he smiled his whole face got in on the act, and Dayna gave one more sigh in a long line of regrets that he couldn't act the age that went along with his birthdate. At thirty he was two years older than she, but despite his appealing presence, she was no more than occasionally tempted to introduce the idea of a more serious relationship.

  As if to put the seal of approval on her ruminations, Mark dropped the denuded cob on his paper plate and held his hands out for the old border collie to lick clean. What remained of the butter after that, he left smudged on the seat of his shorts as he got up and headed for Jess.

  "He'd better not go for soccer after all he just ate," Dayna warned to his oblivious back.

  "He's a big boy," Jaime said absently, reaching for the iced tea and pouring herself a refill while only barely glancing down at her task. Jess was completely absorbed in her own thoughts and showed no sign of noticing Mark's barefoot approach. As the fact became apparent to Mark, he made his advance even cattier, snuck up behind her and tweaked her ribs with a "Gotcha!"

  Jess' reaction, immediate and intense, was to lash out with a mulish kick that caught Mark squarely in the shin and knocked his leg out from under him. Eric laughed out loud at the astonished look on Mark's face, but Jaime, Dayna noticed, only became more thoughtful.

  "That's the kind of thing that makes me wonder," Jaime said.

  "No wondering about it," Dayna responded, "he's never going to grow up."

  Jaime gave her a startled look, glanced at Mark, and then dismissed him. "That's not what I meant. I was talking about Jess."

  Dayna said flatly, "Horses have four legs and weigh about a thousand pounds more than Jess."

  This time it was Jaime who shook her head, while Eric realized what they were talking about and tuned in to their conversation, bending his long frame around in the lawn chair he was draped over. "Dayna, just pretend, just for a moment, that it might be possible to change animals to people."

  "There's no point," Dayna said flatly.

  "Sure there is," Eric said. "It'll amuse me." Dayna rolled her eyes at him and Jaime took it as permission to continue.

  "I've been watching Jess for two weeks now. I'm certain she understands almost everything we say, although she's still not talking much."

  Fifty yards in front of them, the object of the conversation was standing before Mark in obvious consternatio
n, her eyes wide in anticipation of retribution for her reflexive kick. Jaime nodded at her. "Look at her now. A well-trained horse will, if badly startled, kick out like that. And afterward they know they've done wrong, and they have the same expression she does."

  "Horses don't have expressions," Dayna said out of pure contrariness.

  Impatience flashed across Jaime's face. "Body language, Dayna. You know what I mean. I see dozens of things that just keep adding up—the way she stands when she's alarmed, the way she pays as much attention to what she hears as most people do to what they see, the way she interacts with my horses . . . do you know she won't handle JayDee or Leta?"

  She stated the question in a way that left no doubt as to its significance in her mind, but when Dayna exchanged a glance with Eric she saw he didn't get it, either.

  Jaime leaned forward over her elbows, skewing the plastic gingham cover of the picnic table. "Those mares are in their teens. If you were to equate Jess' age into 'horse years,' she'd probably be four or five. And that puts her way down on the pecking order, as far as she or the horses are concerned. It's a rare filly that'll challenge an older mare."

  "And you think Jess is the filly," Dayna said in dry amusement.

  "A couple days ago, Sandy was working her horse," Jaime said instead of answering. "He was going crooked, evading her outside leg no matter which direction she took, and they were both getting pretty mad at each other. Then Jess walked right out into the ring, took Sandy's whip, and showed her where the end tassel was tickling the horse. Every time Sandy changed directions, she'd move the whip to her inside hand, and he'd go crooked that way to avoid the tickle."

  "So you think Jess can read horses' minds."

  "Dayna," Eric said, "you're being an ass. She means that Jess has an extraordinary understanding of horse body language."

  In the short silence that followed, they watched Mark get to his feet and reassure Jess. In a moment, she nodded happily and ran for the yard's small outbuilding—no doubt after the soccer ball.

  "Okay, so I was being an ass," Dayna said. "What I should have said is, what's the point? You're not really trying to convince us she used to be a horse, are you? Or do you think she was raised by them in the wild?"

  Jaime gnawed briefly on a cuticle, ignoring the last facetious question. "I don't know," she said. "Except that it all seems pretty odd to me. Jess is so simple—yet so complex. If she's feeling sad, or angry, or happy, she lets you know about it right then—she's amazingly straightforward. At the same time, sometimes I feel like I haven't the slightest idea what's going on in her head."

  "I know what you mean," Eric said. "I'd give anything to know who Carey is, and how they got separated."

  "That reminds me," Jaime said, sitting up straight. "Today a man came looking for a mare he'd lost—a mare and her tack. He was pretty pushy—I thought for a minute I was going to have trouble with him. And he was looking for a dun."

  Dayna scowled even as Eric said, "Dun Lady's Jess!"

  "He's staying at the LK," Jaime said, looking directly at that scowl. "It'd be interesting to see what else we could find out about him."

  "If you think I'm going to use my passkey, think again," Dayna said. "I like my job. I don't want to lose it."

  Jaime held her tongue while Mark trotted back and retrieved his sneakers from beside the table. Then she said, "I haven't told Mark yet."

  "Meaning . . . ?" Dayna asked suspiciously.

  "He has a passkey, too. Who would you rather have poking around, him or you?"

  Startled, Dayna had immediate images of Mark in the man's room, carelessly looking through drawers, leaving a dozen and one signs of his presence. When she looked at Jaime, it was with anger and a little bit of respect. "Don't tell him," she said. "I'll do it."

  * * *

  Jess offered the old border collie another scrap of hoof just to see his reaction again. Keg gingerly accepted the treat, looked swiftly around to see if anyone was poised to intercept him, and slunk furtively toward the big double sliding doors. As he looked out his head snapped to the side and he quickened his step, so Jess wasn't surprised when Eric showed up in the doorway. She swept the last of the hoof parings and sharp, used horseshoe nails into the dustpan and dumped it into the garbage while he greeted her. She thought he had an unusual glint in his uptilted eyes. He was up to something.

  "Computers?" she asked, with no notion of what a computer really was—aside from the fact that one sat in Jaime's office, looking sort of like a television—except that Eric usually spent the day dealing with them.

  "Took off work today," he said. "And I just talked to Jaime—she had the whole day scheduled for the farrier, so she—and you—have the afternoon free. She muttered something about catching up on her record keeping, but you—well, you can come with me, if you want."

  Her curiosity was immediately piqued; her scalp shifted in the slight way that would have swiveled her ears forward, had they still been proper ears. "Where?"

  His face registered satisfaction. "Shopping. For books. I think, and Jaime agrees, that it's important that you learn to read. I'll be the first to admit I don't really understand what's happened to you, or how it'll turn out in the long run, but as long as you're here, you'll be better off if you can read."

  "Read?" Jess' memory supplied her, unbidden, an image of Jaime staring at the morning sheaf of paper-that-smudged. And then, of Carey, looking at one of the black-scribbled things that always came with them on a run. Was that "read?" What did it do?

  "Read," Eric repeated, looking off to the side for an instant of thought. That meant an explanation, for Eric often looked at nothing right before he made something clear to her. Of course, just as often, he looked at nothing for no apparent reason at all. If Dayna caught him at it, she called it "daydreaming."

  "Reading," Eric said, "is a way of listening to someone talk with your eyes."

  "Ears," Jess scoffed.

  "No. Look." Eric drew her over to the board over the grain bin, the green slatelike rectangle that Jess had gotten quite used to without understanding its purpose. He took one of the white sticks that always sat in the tray at the bottom of the board, and brandished it with a flourish. He drew angular lines on the board and said, "That means Eric." More lines. "And that means Jess. J-E-S-S. Your mouth makes different sounds when you talk, and these symbols represent those sounds. So if I stopped by to see you, and you weren't here, I could write—that's what it's called, writing—a message to you on this board. And you could come along hours later, and read it. Like, 'Sorry I missed you. I'll call you tonight.' So you would wait for my call."

  "Those symbols talk to you?" Jess said, thinking she understood but so amazed by the concept she couldn't be sure. To talk to someone who wasn't even close! "What do those—" she leaned over the grain bin to sweep her long-fingered hand just above the white marks that had already been there, "—say?"

  Without hesitation, Eric said, "JayDee, one scoop. Windy, one and a half scoops. Silhouette, one scoop."

  "Their feed!" Jess pounced on the realization with delight. She'd had to memorize the feeding directions, and with a barnful of horses, never mind the general newness of her life here, the task hadn't come easily. "It tells me how to feed the horses!"

  "Right," Eric nodded. "You'll find lots of books that tell you how to do different things. And if someone tells you something and you aren't sure if it's true, sometimes you can find something to read that lets you know for sure."

  "I want to read," Jess said with conviction. "Show me, Eric."

  He looked at her, brow lifted in a mixture of surprise and approval. "I don't think I've ever heard you sound so assertive. I didn't know that was hiding inside you, you sly thing."

  He was back to words she didn't entirely understand, but she knew well enough how she felt. When she didn't feel strongly about a thing, she was readily willing to acquiesce to someone else's wishes. But when she wasn't concerned for her safety or confused, when she wanted—well,
she went after it. It wasn't for nothing that the other horses in her pasture conceded to her the best shade tree. She looked at Eric with a confident smile. "I want to buy books," she said.

  He laughed, and nodded, moving to wipe away the words he'd written.

  "No," she said quickly, a hand on his arm. She took the chalk from his unresisting fingers and laboriously copied the as-of-yet meaningless symbols below his examples. "Jess," she announced.

  "Look out, world," Eric said, and laughed again.

  * * *

  The book buying turned out to be an adventure. Jess could hardly believe it when they went into a store with volume after volume lining the walls, crammed into the aisles—even filling a table just outside the store's entrance. She was wildly curious—what could so many people find to write about? Maybe this world was as confusing for others as it was for her, and everybody needed directions. The explanation that most of the books were stories, just like the television, didn't particularly convince her that her theory was wrong.

  "These people know everything in the books already?" she asked Eric of the sales staff. Then she decided her own answer. "Yes. Or they wouldn't be in charge."

  Eric shook his head, unable to hide his amusement—both at Jess' notion and the reaction of the cashier. "We're looking for a good first reader," he told the woman.

  "I'm going to learn to read," Jess announced.

  "Good for you," the woman responded, regaining her composure. "Let me show you some of the books our other adult learners seem to enjoy."

  Within a very short time, Eric's arms were full. He had an adult text called Reading for Tomorrow, and a variety of young adult books. Jess particularly liked the looks of several books about an orphan named Anne, whom she fancied might have felt the same as she, arriving at Green Gables unexpected and not particularly wanted. Then she wandered into one of the aisles and found an entire row of books about horses.