Walking, it turned out, was one of the easier things to do when your legs were brand new. Sabba mastered tottering from his mother’s side to the nearby bush and back. From that bush to the next, and then the next, until his dam’s nicker told him he’d strayed too far for her tastes.

Too far for safety.

The trot proved more difficult, jostling his newborn bones and sending him bounding forward at a jarring, two-beat rhythm. As his confidence grew, he learned to stretch, to press onward into the rolling canter, to kick out with his heels while on the fly, though that sent him tumbling to the earth more than once.

While his dam grazed and watched the horizon, Sabba steadied. He learned to rear onto his hind legs, if only for a few breaths, and to paw at the air.

“You look like a proper warrior,” his dam beamed.

The colt let her words wash through him, igniting a desire to prove himself in battle. He trotted a strutting circle around the mare, holding his head high and pinning his ears fiercely. His dam chuckled, which only fanned the flames. Annoyed that his show of strength might be seen as humorous, the colt humped his back and pushed with his rear legs, bucking for the first time and enjoying the wildness of it.

He forgot his indignation and bucked again, hopping sideways across the grass with his head down and his rump bouncing skyward.

“There, now,” his dam soothed. “Not too far, little love.”

They’d been traveling while she grazed, while Sabba learned to use his body as a proper Wind Singer. Slowly, the mare led them north and east, toward the spot where the sun awoke each morning and the place where her band spent the colder months. When she looked at the horizon, her ears splayed with worry. Her nostrils widened and drank of the chill air, desperate for any hint of the others.

She should have stayed closer, perhaps, but the instincts of a mare in foal are impossible to argue with. Only now that her colt was safely at her flank could she spare the time to worry about what came next.

The band would not have waited.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted without the author's consent. Report any appearances on Amazon.

Even if Gallen lingered, hoping for her return, too many days had passed now. His task was to lead the entire band, to look after each member of the Morada. They would have moved, drifting closer to the Cleft and the Fahr-itza.

It would make her journey longer. It would leave Sabba in the open world, in danger, when she’d only ever meant to keep him safe.

“Slow down!” Sabba’s huffy cry drew her attention back to the world. She’d been loping, had broken into a canter at the thought of all the ground between them and their band.

The colt galloped past her, streaking by as if he could not quite work out how to stop. Three strides beyond her, he threw up his head, stiffened his front legs, and slid to a stop so abrupt that he sat on his tail.

“I’m sorry,” she said. “But we have a long way to go, and I have wasted too much time on my dining. From now on, I will graze in the evenings, while we rest.”

As if the word has spawned itself upon the world, Sabba yawned at her, stretching his tiny muzzle wide and groaning, ears loose and flat. “I’m tired now,” he said.

“From all that playing.” His dam swallowed her fear and sighed, her great, wide barrel trembling as she blew through her nose. “Fine. Rest now, then. But be ready to move more quickly when we’re off again.”

“Where are we going?” Already, the colt’s voice was deepened with sleep. His head bumped her flank as he sidled up beside her, fuzzy, still smelling of sweet newborn foal.

“Home,” she answered. “Back to our band where we belong, little love.”

“Why didn’t they come with us?” His bristle tail whisked back and forth, then sagged against his rump.

“Some things, one must do alone,” she said.

Those words echoed in the colt’s small mind, almost unheard yet strong enough to sink in, to ferret away in a private corner of Sabba’s thoughts and dig in.

“Eat now,” his dam said. “Before you sleep.”

Sabba lengthened his neck, reached for the warm milk, but paused short of nursing. “Why do you watch the sky?” he asked in a ragged, sleep-weak voice.

“For our safety,” his dam answered without hesitation. “I watch for shadows.”

“Shadows?” For a moment, he forgot his need, forgot hunger and fatigue both. “What can a shadow do?”

He’d learned already about his own, how it danced along beside him everywhere he went. How it grew thin at dusk and went to bed long after he did. How it woke before him and waited patiently at his heels to be about and moving. If his mother watched for shadows only, perhaps he’d misjudged her mood. Perhaps there was nothing to fear after all.

He yawned again and went back to his meal, nursing with the blissful focus of one whose mind does not yet latch onto subtext. Who has only just begun to understand the world around them.

And so, as Sabba drifted into a milk trance, he missed his mother’s final words, missed the way she lifted her nose to the wind, her eyes to the sky above.

He missed her warning, for he was already deep in his dreaming.

“The shadows,” she told the silent plain. “Shadows that circle overhead.”