Page 8 of Jace

“Not tired enough to ride on that thing,” she said quickly, though in truth her feet were singing with pain, and she was so exhausted that she had started to wonder if a person could actually fall asleep while walking.

The golden afternoon light had given way to a velvet blue sky. The final flare of fiery pink was disappearing over the horizon. Night was coming, it would be dark within minutes.

Just a little further, she told herself.

She didn’t actually know where her new home was, or how long it would take to get there. But asking the big green alien would only end with him trying to convince her to ride her float-ray instead of wandering around with it on the tether, like a child with a big balloon.

And she had no intention of climbing aboard.

Zeke smacked his lips in his sleep, and she smiled down at him, the pain in her feet forgotten for a moment. It was strange how such a tiny, sleepy creature had stolen her heart so quickly and completely.

“Oh,” Jace said suddenly as their path curved into a clearing.

She looked up and her breath caught in her throat.

The moonlit meadow was filled with dozens of beautiful, shaggy ponies. Real horses, like the kind she’d read about, that ones that had lived on Old Earth.

The stars cast a pale blue light that made the grass look richer and played on the coats of the horses, giving them a monochromatic, dreamlike quality. The sweet scent of the wildflowers was stirred up by their hooves and carried to Susannah on the cool, evening breeze.

It was like something out of a storybook

“Wild horses,” she breathed.

“They are the descendants of the ones that were brought here on the Night Parade,” he told her. “That was a massive generation ship that crashed on Han-2. The ponies were the only living survivors.”

She’d seen the hulk of the massive wreck on the horizon. It was all her friend Charlotte could talk about on the trip.

“They’re beautiful,” Susannah said, stepping out onto the grass.

“Careful,” he said sternly.

But there was nothing to be careful of. The ponies were gentle creatures, nosing among the flowers for tender shoots of grass, resting their heads on each other’s backs.

She walked as slowly as she could to the edge of the herd, so as not to frighten them.

A gray pony, tinted lavender by the moonlight, nosed the air around her, then slowly approached.

“Susannah,” Jace said, his voice a little more urgent. “Come back. Now.”

But there was nothing to be afraid of. She could feel it to her bones that the pony was merely curious.

“Hello, angel,” she murmured to it, holding perfectly still.

The pony shook his tangled mane and stepped closer.

She lifted her hand slowly and he allowed her to stroke his neck.

The fur was thick and warm between her fingers. She slid her hand up to scratch behind his ear.

He huffed at her, his breath pluming in the cool air.

“Incredible,” she whispered.

Without warning, the peace was broken as high-pitched whinny rent the air and the horse pulled back from her, snorting and wheeling to face the herd again.

Suddenly, the ponies were moving, hooves pounding the grass, snorting and crashing toward the trees in a single, roiling mass, like a tide coming in.

Susannah was frozen in place. There was no way she would be able to move fast enough to avoid the oncoming stampede.

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