__The Bird Bone Flute__part 10
By Blackmare



Early the next morning Giles woke as gently as if he had stepped from shade into sunlight. He felt perfectly still, almost weightless in this new calm. Instead of rising immediately into words he rolled inward and dove deep, flowing into that dark chamber to drape himself around the sweetness of her presence. When the light shifted from aquamarine to lapis lazuli to welcome him, Giles fizzed with joy and his tender, shy delight that she was with him there.

They had spent the previous evening quietly, he burrowing happily through the earliest records of the abbey and she sleeping soundly on the rug. At one point she twitched and whined in some lupine dream, though the moment only lasted long enough for him to see her strong paws flex as she pursued some unfortunate invader. Studying her, he wondered how long she'd been awake by the time he'd joined her at the Thorne place, particularly since the first thing she did after he'd eased her irritated mouth was nap.

Abruptly Giles realized that she had taken the opportunity to rest that time because he was there to take the next watch; she knew he'd wake her if anything happened and he had done so. The ease with which they had slipped into partnership pleased him so much that several moments passed before he drew the next logical conclusion, which was that she trusted him. For the briefest moment he grasped that gleaming, simple fact like an unexpected gift. Then the savage, vigilant currents of doubt tore it away and dashed it down into the heavily-mined rubble field of his self esteem.

He gasped at the pain of it, trying to damp down the rationalizations that ignited spontaneously, burning away every trace of comfort and wonder he'd found in that gift. Hell, she'd done just fine for millennia working completely alone. It was the worst sort of >arrogance on his part to imagine for a moment that he mattered or made any kind of difference at all to her work. After all, she was half divine with extraordinary powers and he was just some lanky -- blue light flared suddenly behind his eyes, stunning him into stillness.

It dissolved the jagged recriminations effortlessly, rinsing him momentarily clean of all words. He was left holding the bright kernel of the epiphany: she chose him; she trusted him; she wanted him with her, she knew he could help her do what must be done. This was not subject to his emotional turbulence because it was her decision. All she required of him was that he accept it.

It was almost too much for him. He looked over at the rug to find her watching him through slitted golden eyes. Although the wolf hadn't moved a muscle, she pinned him where he sat. In the dark chamber of his heart he suddenly knew that if he yielded, accepting the epiphany, she offered him the truest fealty: a shared bond of mutual respect, the promise of aid and protection, and a loyalty so profound that would change them both forever. If he did not accept it, he also knew that it would vanish completely and it would never be offered to him again. All the rich potential of the partnership would wither away, and they would fall back into mere courtesy, working in parallel but never actually together.

She watched him and waited. The room softened with twilight and outside birds concluded their evening recital. In that stillness, in the palm of the young night, under the glowing gaze of this ancient, loving warrior, Rupert Giles took his first and hardest leap of faith: he believed she had chosen him as her companion because he was worthy.

She closed her eyes, rolled onto her side, and went back to sleep with a long sigh. Giles realized that the wildest creature on earth had just tamed him utterly. They were one another's responsibility now. He sat with his hands quiet on the pages of the old book until long after the stone room was entirely dark. When he finally stirred, lit one of the lamps and thought about supper in rather vague terms, the wolf, too, stretched and rose. She came over to him and he crouched beside her, resting his forehead on her velvet brows. She bumped him under the chin with her nose. They stayed this way for a long time, then the wolf slipped softly from his grasp, kissed his mouth, and glided out the open door to start her night's work.

Giles made a simple meal, read for several more hours, and went to bed exhausted. The entire time he was extremely aware that an essential aspect of himself had changed shape, and as he cautiously explored this new geometry, he discovered that several dangerous edges had been smoothed and rounded. He was, if only slightly, safer with himself than he'd been since early childhood. Sleep claimed him quickly and he did not remember his dreams.

After a breakfast of fruit and tea, Giles jogged over to Saxford's farm. The morning breeze was fresh but not chilly, and the sun sent most of the clouds off to pasture elsewhere by the time he reached the barn.

"Good morning, Mr. Giles, your timing is excellent," Sam Saxford said as he buckled a head collar onto a tall, steel gray filly. "I want to show you something lovely." He stepped out of the stall and the filly followed him, taking sidelong glances at Giles as they walked down the aisle and out into the sunlight together.

"That's quite a nice girl you've got there," Giles remarked, taking in the quality of her confirmation and the obvious sweetness of her nature as she tagged happily along behind Saxford with calm, warm eyes.

"One of Regalo's fine children by an excellent Irish hunter," he replied. They walked down the hill to a large grass paddock where a dark bay and a bright chestnut waited with their heads over the gate. "We're coming, my darlings, then you can all play," Saxford said to them as he shooed them gently away so he could let himself and his charge into the paddock. "Go on, girls, blow off that steam and show Mr. Giles who you are." He slipped back out and joined Giles by the fence.

There was a moment of electric stillness. Then the gray snorted sharply, her tail came up, and she turned and lifted herself, all four feet leaving the ground simultaneously as she arched upward. When she landed she launched herself across the grass, pulling the other two along like a wake. The three of them were obviously a girl gang under the command of the confident gray. She swept them around the perimeter of the paddock at a fast gallop for three laps. Sam put his hand out over the fence as they rounded the near corner for the fourth time and all three of them pulled back sharply, gathered themselves and spun on their hindquarters to take off in the opposite direction.

"Wow," Giles said, grinning with delight. "Pity you have to work so hard to get them to do anything."

"Lazy, stupid brutes, y'know," Saxford said, his voice full of love. They watched the fillies make several more laps, then Saxford asked them to turn again. This time the gray trotted out of the turn, shaking her long neck until her mane rippled like a prayer flag.

"Tell me about the chestnut," the older man asked Giles.

He studied her. Her coat was the color of clean copper; her mane and tail looked like raw linen shot through with threads of gold and rust. The filly was leggier and more angular than the others without being any taller. The long, well-proportioned planes of her face set off her large, dark eyes.

"She isn't one of Regalo's daughters. Thoroughbred, but something else too, to give her that nice bone in her legs. Excellent angles."

"Good. And?"

"She's a follower; she seems younger than the other two."

"Right on both counts. Ah, now you might see something -," he said as the gray filly pulled herself down to a jog, then a walk, and wandered away from the other two to graze. The bay and the chestnut looked at her a moment, then looked at each other and took off like children abandoning their nanny in the park. The bay took the lead and the two of them bucked, farted, and bounced across the paddock, all pretense of dignity or elegance displaced by complete silliness.

"Watch her now, you may only get a glimpse, but it's worth seeing," Saxford said quietly. The two fillies had separated on the far side of the field, the bay cutting her own little capers but clearly winding down. Then the chestnut turned away from her, glanced over at the grazing gray, and took off along the fence in the most remarkable trot that Giles had ever seen. She drew herself together, coiled her body, raised her neck and shoulders, found her own perfect balance and then lifted herself entirely free from the earth on huge, springing strides.

"Oh, dear lord," he breathed. "Where did that come from?"

"I think she's gravity's favorite granddaughter, myself," the horseman said softly. At the end of the fence line she unraveled, stepped abruptly down to a walk, and turned back toward the other two, her head and tail falling and once again she was the timid, awkward adolescent. As she approached the other fillies, the bay swung her head sideways with pinned ears, telling the chestnut where to stop and she did. Giles let out a sad sigh.

"Um, does gravity beat her children?" he asked.

"No, but some bastard clearly did beat this one."

"She's so afraid that she even hides from her own kind," Giles said softly.

"Oh, yes. Now she's your responsibility. What do you think you need to do for her?"

"How far along is she?"

"She was backed well, so the superficial things like tack and mounting and so forth are fine. But after that someone shattered her. They drained all the forward right out of her. She's so tense in the ring that conventional schooling is out of the question.

"How about outside a ring?

"That's what I'm hoping will help. Tell me what you plan to do with her there," Saxford said.

"Walk. Lots of walking. Up and down slopes, all kinds of terrain. Never hurry. Is she spooky?"

"Extremely. You will have to be careful and alert. And what else?"

"Be calm, all the time. Make up for her uncertainty by being certain of myself."

"Yes. And?"

"Patient. Kind."

"Yes. When she shows signs of being afraid of something - either an object or a request from you - always offer her something else to think about, an alternative to the fear. Fear is such hard work. It is much easier to be interested and curious and willing, but she doesn't know that yet. Once she gets it, she'll start to choose the easier things."

"How is her mouth?"

"Afraid, like the rest of her. Stay out of it as much as you can. I'd like to have her in a bosal, a Spanish hackamore, but you'll need more control outside the ring. Ride her from your seat, from your center, with your legs, and especially with your voice."

"The way you rode Regalo. I never imagined that was possible."

"Most people don't understand that the bridle is just one place where your will can touch the horse's will. They think of it as brakes, steering, and handlebars; it's none of those things." There was real anger in his voice.

"I'm not certain why you think I can be what she needs," Giles said.

"Well, you remind me of someone, but that's just a hunch. Regalo showed me something more certain, and I'll go with that. Are you willing to try? I'm asking for three or four mornings a week if that doesn't present a problem for you. It would be a tremendous help for me, and, I think, her only real hope of healing. She needs a friend with no agenda beyond getting acquainted, with no demands but that she learn to enjoy herself. Can you give her that?"

"Yes, I think I can. The two men regarded one another for a long moment.

"Then lets get you started," Saxford said, picking up a lead and slipping through the fence, greeting the fillies affectionately. The other two horses looked up briefly, then returned to their grazing. The chestnut watched him warily, ready to spring away. Saxford did not walk up to her. He stopped, spoke to the gray, fussed with her forelock a bit, then stepped over to stroke the bay and scratch her withers. He walked right past the chestnut without even looking at her, and started to inspect a section of the fence nearby. The leggy filly never stopped watching him. The horseman fiddled with the fence for some time. Her head gradually dropped lower and she angled her body toward him. He moseyed away from her. She took a step to follow him, then another. Saxford began to drift along the fence toward her, staying busy with nothing in particular.

The filly drew closer to him, one shy step at a time, until he could reach up and stroke her shoulder, never taking his attention from the fence. Finally, she stretched her neck out and laid her muzzle against his cheek. He turned to her, speaking softly, stroking her long neck up under her mane, inviting her closer. He ambled along the fence toward the gate, and she followed him. Now and then he would stop and stroke her for a time. He clipped the lead onto her head collar and she didn't seem to mind. They continued this way until they arrived in front of Giles.

"It took us four days to catch her the first time we let her out," Sam said quietly as he opened the gate.

"So now you let her catch you," Giles grinned, "a classic technique of seduction." Saxford grinned back.

"You're getting this, Mr. Giles."

They settled the filly in the crossties and Saxford showed Giles where to find her grooming kit and tack.

"I'll be back when you're ready for a pre-flight check," he said, picking up a set of head collars. "By the way, her papers list her as 'My Catastrophe'."

"That doesn't bode well."

"For now we call her Cat, but it doesn't really fit her. When she's ready, she'll let us know what her real name is." He headed out, whistling quietly.

Giles started with a rubber currycomb and quickly found that the filly was just too sensitive for such an assertive tool. She twitched and shifted, lifting her hind feet off the ground one at a time and snapping her tail. He switched to two soft brushes and started sweeping them over her one after the other, overlapping the strokes in steady rhythm. By the time he had gone down her neck and started on her barrel, she was standing quietly. He started to sing to her very softly, running through every nursery rhyme he could remember. Her head came down. Giles stroked her long legs, flicked the dirt from her belly, then fetched the mane comb. Very carefully he sorted the snarls out of the silky hair, stroking her shoulder the entire time. She sighed. When she crooked one hind foot up and let her hips slump, he moved back and worked through her tail. He tended her feet.

Then, following his intuition, he started stroking her face with his fingertips, short, soft sweeps along the contours of the bone, over the swell of her forehead, around her long ears which softened in his hand. He worked down her neck and chest, adding more of his palm and a bit more pressure, singing the while in time with the movements. He wanted her to feel cherished, to feel the promise of his kindness. Giles traced the intricate steel cables of her leg tendons, stroked her belly, then flowed along her spine and down her ribs. He worked entirely around her in this way, and by the time he was finished her head was leaning on the lowest reach of the cross ties and her eyes were nearly closed. He stopped and stepped away from her. She stretched out her neck and presented him with a tremendous yawn, her jaws angling apart and her huge tongue flopping over her square teeth. Giles grinned at this little victory and began to believe he might actually be able to do what Saxford thought he could. Moving slowly, he turned to pick up the saddle and saw Saxford perched on a bale of hay down the aisle, watching him with a very peculiar expression. Giles would almost have called it sad, but then the man smiled at him and nodded that he should continue.

The filly stirred from her reverie at the first touch of the saddle pad and Giles felt the tension rising back into her. He took particular care, tightening things in small increments, stroking her constantly, telling her how much she would enjoy their walk that day. In spite of his efforts, by the time they turned to go outside, she was taut as a fiddle string and had withdrawn deep into the shadows of her eyes. It made his heart hurt to watch this happen, and he vowed to do everything he could to coax her back out into the light.

Saxford fell into step beside them as they walked over to the mounting block. Giles picked up his helmet from where he had set it earlier and buckled it securely under his chin. He aligned her with the block, spoke to her, and stepped aboard. Her anxiety shot through him and he had to make a conscious effort to keep himself relaxed, to keep his breathing slow and even. As he settled into the saddle, he felt her spine brace with anxiety, the long muscles parallel to it were rigid with anticipation.

"Dear lord, it's like throwing a leg over an armed warhead," he whispered to Saxford, who stroked the filly's face.

"Yes, but it's a defensive weapon, not an offensive one," the horseman answered in an equally soft voice. "She won't actively try to unseat you, but her fear can cause serious collateral damage. Sit as deeply as you can, use a following leg, and invite her, don't push her. Let your own calm make a place where she feels safe."

"Right."

Saxford looked up at Giles, appraising him for a moment.

"You okay?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Give her about an hour if you can. I really think you can do this: just keep a leg on each side and your mind in the middle."

Giles took several deep, slow breaths, stretched his long legs down, opened his body, and asked Cat to move out. The filly clenched, hesitated, then took a halting step forward. He lightly suggested that she turn to the right, away from the mounting block. Having such a specific thing to do seemed to reassure her, and she tried again, a bit more confident this time. Very hesitantly, she walked down the long driveway. Her uncertainty shortened her stride and stiffened her back until she was almost mincing along. Giles wondered how much ground she could cover if she'd just let her long legs swing freely.

As they neared the stone pillars flanking the main gate Cat drew herself up and gave the left one her full attention, clearly expecting it to explode and murder them both. Giles spoke softly to her, asked her to bend left and follow his body into a circle. She reluctantly agreed to look away from the threat but her twitching ears revealed the depth of her conflict as she tried simultaneously to monitor him, the threatening pillar, and review distance they had come from the safety of the barn.

The circle did ease her slightly, so he asked her for another one. Then a third one going the opposite direction. Cat's head came down, her ears grew quieter. They came out of the third circle near the gate and Giles asked her to move forward, which she did, her earlier concerns quite forgotten. He smiled and spoke to her, suggesting they turn off the drive and onto the narrow track that led up the hill. About a hundred yards later she tensed again when the wind gusted, backcombing the long grass and rattling the gorse nearby. Giles circled her directly up the hill, letting her find her own best balance for the slope, and then back down it again to the track. The concentration she needed for that kept her mind off the suspicious bushes and they continued on.

In the end they probably rode only a mile as the crow flies, but they covered at least five times that distance in easy, repetitive loops. When she wanted to spin and bolt from a fallen limb Giles let her turn from it but only if she consented to making very small circles which were quite challenging for her tense body. Not only did Cat have to relax in order to accomplish them, she realized that it was easier to just step over the offending limb than to have to repeat the exercise. When he felt her stretch her nose down and outward he let her take the reins to ease her neck for a little while. Then he gently gathered her back, established a light, casual contact, and turned her for home.

She thought about scooting for the barn as soon as they came through the gate, but he'd anticipated this and asked her to turn down the aisle between the paddocks. Immediately she settled back into her sadly constricted walk. He steered her through the labyrinth of fences, riding her up past the ring to the back of the barn. Giles dropped the reins and sat with her there for several minutes, telling her all the while in his deep, purring voice what a wonder she was, how very brave she had been, and how much he'd enjoyed her company.

As soon as her head dropped and her ears stayed quiet, he stepped down and stroked her neck. Cat swung her head around and buried her face in his chest, releasing her tension in a huge, huffing sigh. He hugged her, stroked her ears, released the bridle buckles, teased the suede skin around her mouth. When she moved to pull away he let her go, stroked down her shoulders and ran up the stirrups, then led her into the barn.

Saxford was watching them from the doorway, his arms full of tack, and Giles again caught that fleeting sadness just before the man's grin lit his face.

"That went better than I dared hope, Mr. Giles," he said.

"Everything you suggested worked. I think she might have actually had a good time out there," he slid the bridle off and replaced it with her head collar. "And I had a fantastic time, Mr. Saxford, thank you so much."

"Please, call me Sam."

Giles quirked an eyebrow at him.

"You have already proven worthy of a more profound trust than my own," he said.

"Thank you. Call me Giles. Or Rupert, whichever you prefer." Sam lifted an eyebrow, his eyes twinkling.

"Parents can be so clueless," he chuckled as he turned to set the saddle on a rack in the aisle. "I need to carry on with chores. Could you please put her back out with her girlfriends?"

"Certainly."

"Can you come again soon?"

"Tomorrow?"

"Capital." The phone rang in the barn office. "I'll see you then," he said, striding off to take the call.

Giles brushed the bright filly again, checked her feet, and released her to enjoy the good grass. He stowed the gear and changed into his trainers for the walk home. He needed to shower and change before heading over to the abbey to visit Joseph.

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