“Good work,” Jake Byrns praised his daughter Amanda as she rounded another barrel on the chestnut filly. “She’ll be ready for this year’s Cactus stump race if you keep it up. Think we got a winner here.”
Amanda grinned at his compliments but didn’t let her father distract her from her riding.
The sun beat down hard on both horse and rider, making their matching red hair gleam. The ground was rough and dusty. Only the hardiest of creatures lived out here on the border between civilisation and desert, at the edge of nowhere.
A few more laps and then Amanda brought the filly to a walk. “I think she’s had enough for today.”
“Well good, you warm her down. I have to run into town. Watch the farm. I’ll be back later.”
Amanda nodded. She walked the young quarter horse along the fence line, stroking the filly’s soft neck as she went. A couple of minutes later and she dismounted.
As she was brushing the mare down she heard laughter and chatter drifting up the path. Amongst it she recognised one voice. Her younger sister, Lizzie, had returned home from school, and followed by friends it seemed.
The new year had just started. Amanda had finished with school at the end of last year but her sister still had two years remaining. Friends had asked what Amanda was planning to do and she’d sort of shrugged them off. She didn’t see why she needed a plan, she was quite happy helping out with the horses as she had been for most of her life, only now she could spend all her time doing that. She didn’t have to waste her days away in school. She would have dropped out years earlier if her mother hadn’t had such strong opinions on it. She’d giving Amanda a choice, free rent so long as she completed high school, otherwise she could branch out on her own.
Maybe eventually she would move out and get her own place but why rush? It was cheaper living at home, plus horses took money to buy. Once she’d saved up enough then she’d make a decision on what she was doing. Until then she was content where she was. She turned the horse out and put the tack away and then she headed inside.
As Amanda entered the old farmhouse she heard voices from the kitchen at the end of the hall. She had to go through the kitchen to get upstairs and so she followed the sounds. Her mother, Liana, was cooking dinner in the kitchen to the right. To the left her sister and a few friends were seated around the dining room playing cards.
One of them, a boy about her own age, with brown hair and light blue eyes, turned around. “You want to join us Amanda?”
Amanda saw Lizzie’s eyes narrow. She disliked playing with Amanda when her friends were around, partly on account of Amanda’s superior skill. The two could be a little more than competitive at times, almost like opposing forces. They looked just as different too. Lizzie was fair haired with tightly curled ringlets and her mother’s tall slender figure. Amanda took more after her father in height and was more curvy than slender. Her red hair was unique in the immediate family and apparently came from a witch in her mother’s line who had also been a firestarter just like Amanda. Red hair had always been common among firestarters. Her sister, meanwhile was a chlorokinetic, just like her mother. Amanda was tempted to join their game just to annoy Lizzie but decided to let her sister have her own fun for once. “Can’t, gotta shower before dinner.”
“Damn right you do,” her mother quipped from the kitchen. “Don’t need the smell of horse and sweat sticking up the dinner table.”
Amanda rolled her eyes. As she rounded the bottom of the stairs her mother asked, “Have you seen your father?”
“He went into town.” Amanda glanced back just long enough to catch the roll of her mother’s eyes and the shake of her golden hair.
They’d both known Jake Byrns long enough to know that when he said he was going ‘into town’ that probably meant the bar. And if he was at the bar then he would likely follow it up with a few games of cards and a bit of gambling, which meant there was a good chance he was going to be late to dinner. If Amanda had to put odds on it she’d have bet on a 30% chance that her father showed up while they were still eating, and 70% he didn’t turn up until much later. Maybe she’d even offer Lizzie a bet on it before dinner.
Dinner was served by the time Amanda got back downstairs and there was no sign of her father. Lizzie’s friends had all headed home and Lizzie was in the midst of complaining about one of her teachers to her mother as Amanda took her seat.
“Are you going on the muster tomorrow?” Amanda’s mother asked her part way into dinner.
“Uh huh.” Amanda nodded with a mouthful of chicken.
“You’ll make sure to get your father up in the morning, and make sure he eats something before he heads out.”
“Uh huh.”
“You too. And don’t forget to pack some lunch. There’s leftovers in the fridge and bread in the cupboard.”
“Yes mam,” Amanda replied deadpan, knowing her mother wouldn’t tolerate a sarcastic reply tonight although she longed to give one.
She shared a brief mischievous look with her sister and Lizzie gave her a warning look in return, also capable of reading their mother’s moods. Amanda smiled but kept her mouth shut.
“And make sure he doesn’t go off into town when you get back,” Liana added.
“Mm hmm,” Amanda agreed and then shook her head. “He hardly ever does after a muster, he’ll be too tired.” It wasn’t technically true. If the muster went well her father would almost always see it as a reason to celebrate no matter how tired he was. But on the first day it was less of a risk and the comment would appease her mother anyway.
“Hmmph,” her mother replied but Amanda noticed the slight twitch of the edge of her mouth, the start of an almost satisfied smile.
“Are you going for a few days?’ Lizzie asked.
Amanda wasn’t sure if Lizzie just wanted to know how long she’d have the place for herself or if she was asking out of actual concern, or maybe even both.
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Amanda shook her head. “Just the day, it’s still early in the season, it’s mostly for scoping, getting an idea of what’s out there and how the land’s changed.”
Lizzie nodded and her shoulders seemed to drop slightly in relaxation. So she had been asking out of concern then.
Mustering was dangerous. A few people died every year or just didn’t return. The desert itself was tough. It always amazed Amanda that the horses managed to not just survive but thrive. But it wasn’t just horses out there. There were other creatures, some like pegasi were a real prize to capture, while others, like sandworm you would hope to never see in your lifetime, although some people hunted them too. A live sandworm was worth it’s weight in gold. And then there were the people. There were few enough police in Little Rock itself, but the desert, that was a lawless land. If you were lucky enough to catch a decent sized heard or even one pegasi, it wasn’t really considered yours until you could get it back out of the desert. While some musterers got lost in the desert and a few were killed by creatures or a fall from a horse, most causes of death during the mustering season were the result of a gunshot wound.
Lizzie had been out a few times with her father and sister but she’d never really liked being out in the desert and unlike Amanda she actually seemed to enjoy some of her school subjects, especially biology, no surprises there. It had made Liana very happy the day Lizzie had said she didn’t want to go mustering. Liana had always hated her husband and daughters being out there while she fretted at home. At least now she had Lizzie to fret with. Amanda knew that her mother only let her go because it was safer for two of them to be out there than one and while Liana would have loved that no one went, the muster just brought in too much money to stop doing. While the ranch did make some money from training horses and competing, the bulk of its income was from the yearly muster.
Jake Byrns was a healer, not an overly powerful one but he was good enough that it gave him an edge out where injury was a real risk. He wouldn’t have survived a shot to the head but he’d been shot in other parts of the body during previous year’s musters, and while a bullet would take him off his feet for a few days, his powers would keep him alive long enough to heal, although the bullet still needed to be pulled out manually if it wasn’t a through and through.
Having healing powers didn’t keep people from shooting at you though. That was what Amanda was useful for. Being able to set things on fire with your mind generally meant people liked to keep their distance. For those that didn’t know the Byrns, the red hair alone was enough to make most poachers focus on easier prizes.
Amanda and her father also played it relatively safe. They focused on the horses and stayed away from the rarer but more high profile targets like unicorns and pegasi. It was Jake’s idea more than Amanda’s. Every year she would argue that they should go after more unicorns, that the money it would bring in would last the ranch for years. But every year her father shook his head. There had been the one year when they had caught three unicorns and they almost hadn’t survived getting them back to the ranch. Occasionally Jake Byrns had gone after the unicorns but that had always been in years when money had been tighter or the unicorns had been closer to home. It just wasn’t worth the risk to try every year, and as Amanda had gotten older he seemed to go after the unicorns less and less often, almost as if he were getting older too.
Amanda didn’t even argue about going after pegasi. They were worth less than the unicorns and harder to safely catch. She had only ever seen her father catch one once.
He’d brought a basket of fish and had sat for hours in one spot while Amanda watched from behind a bush. The sun had been about to set and 8-year old Amanda had almost gone bored out of her mind when a large white pegasi had landed on a nearby outcrop. Another few hours Jake Byrns and his daughter had waited as the pegasus had come slowly closer.
As the beautiful creature had feasted upon the tuna fish, Jake had slowly risen and very carefully inched his way closer until he had felt its mane brushing against his cheek.
The next day had been much the same. And on the third Amanda had complained, “When are you going to catch it Dad?”
He had simply replied, “Patience little one, patience.”
On the forth day Jake Byrns was able to stroke the pegasus and Amanda complained that the ice had melted and the rest of the fish were starting to stink.
Jake Byrns had handed his daughter a beer and told her to wait just a little longer.
Having grown tired of sipping on her warm beer and not travelling or catching anything, Amanda had wandered off in a huff. She’d been sitting watching a common rock snake from a distance when she’d felt a breath on her neck. She’d frozen at first and it was just long enough for her to recognise the feel of a horse’s muzzle.
She had raised her hand without looking back and gently placed it on its neck, knowing that less movement would mean the horse was less likely to be startled. Then she’d stood, very carefully, and finally she had turned.
It was the first time in her life that she could remember ever freezing. In front of her, had stood the white pegasus. The same one her father had been luring all week, only this time it had its wings folded. She had been afraid to move, lest she startled it and undid all her father’s hard work. So there she stood, she wasn’t sure for how long.
Eventually she had looked up and there had been her father, watching her from further up the gully.
She had widened her eyes in a silent plea asking what she should do.
He had held up one hand, the message obvious. Wait.
And so she had waited, hand raised, fingers carefully stroking the pegasus’ soft fur. It wasn’t coarse fur like on the horses she was used to. This was a soft downy texture, almost like a baby duck.
Slowly her father had made his way down the gully with a special kind of harness. He’d taken a wide berth around the beauty and approached from where it could see him. When he’d gotten close enough to reach it he’d held out a hand and run his fingers down the spine. The horse had shivered then, almost startling Amanda but she was too in awe to jump.
Jake Byrns had carefully lain the harness down in the places his hands went, at one point giving Amanda a piece of harness to hold as he wound and then tightened it around the beast’s wings so they were held in place.
“It won’t hurt her,” he told Amanda as if reading her mind. “It will stop her from hurting herself or us though.”
“Will she be alright?” Amanda had asked when she finally spoke.
Jake Byrns had nodded. “We’ll find a good buyer.”
It hadn’t been the usual way they mustered and Amanda suspected he’d done it partly because he had the chance but mostly to teach her how it should be done. The nice way. Horses could be herded and roped. Unicorns either had to be bound with a spell so they couldn’t use magic or persuaded. But binding was expensive, only worth using on unicorns. Sometimes people took the risk and just roped them normally. Depending on the powers the unicorn had they might get lucky. Pegasi however, had to be lured. To try to just rope a pegasi was to risk injury to both the beast and the person capturing it. Pegasi wings were extremely powerful but also extremely fragile. Jake Byrns would never harm a pegasi in order to capture it. Many musterers did not care however. Pegasi injuries to anything that wasn’t a wing were easy to heal once you had them captured, even though they caused pain at the time, and injuries to the wing only dropped the sale price a little as some pegasi would have their wings clipped when they were sold if their intended purpose was to be only for show. It was a practice that made Amanda’s blood boil.
Still, to capture one the way her and her father had that day, it meant gaining the creature’s trust. Sometimes Amanda dreamed of finding her own one and not selling it, but taming it, and riding it, maybe even taking it on a muster. She knew that would be suicide, but still. She imagined using it to capture more pegasi and unicorns than anyone, training them, and then selling them only to those who would ride them through the sky, like the aerial rescue teams or who would really appreciate them for what they were. Who would make friends with them. It was a lofty goal though and Amanda was a practical person. It was nice to dream but if she couldn’t achieve it that was okay too. She was quite content where she was. After all what more did she really need than what she already had?