Fire: Tales of Elemental Spirits (12 page)

ʺYour hellhound's eyes are redder than usual,ʺ said Mal.

ʺIt's just the dome light,ʺ she said.

ʺIt wasn't a very good party,ʺ said Mal. ʺI'd rather have been home with Dorothy. You won't have to come here again.ʺ

ʺGood,ʺ she said.

The one thing that still worried Miri about Flame was that she didn't have time to walk him enough. He had the long legs and deep chest of a running dog but mostly all he ever had the chance to do was wander around the stable-yard, and when she was teaching she still tied him up.

Mostly the addition of a hellhound to the Greyhaven Stables went remarkably smoothly. The cats were adjusting; or all but Camilla, one of the house cats, who had decamped to live with a family about a mile down the road. Jane was a little testy for a day or two, but once she had been assured (several times) that the John-sons were happy to have Camilla, she got over it. The guinea pigs, let out of their cage, hid under the sofa, but the guinea pigs had always hidden under the sofa when they were let out of their cage. Dorothy, once she had ascertained that Mal was not very interested in Flame, put up with him, and deigned to learn his name.

One or two more boarders' dogs had been banned because they couldn't get along with Flame, but most were wary but polite. Flame tended to ignore other dogs, although he made an exception of Fay, who adored him, and would rather lie under his tree with him than go out on the trail with Nora and her Pinto horse, Carey (short for Caramel Cashew Swirl), much to Nora's disgust. ʺWell, she's spayed,ʺ Nora said. ʺThere's not a lot of trouble she can get into.ʺ Flame would occasionally rest his chin on Fay's back.

ʺShe's like one of the kindergarteners with Mal around,ʺ Miri said to Jane. Although the kindergarteners were having a bad summer; Mal had a steady girlfriend. Mal often had girlfriends, but they rarely survived meeting Dorothy, and after he'd lost his first sweetheart to his parrot he'd started bringing new girlfriends home quickly to get it over with. After Kim, he never seemed to mind when they disappeared, but then, for Mal, there were always more girls out there.

Leslie was different. In the first place after high school she wanted to train to work in a zoo, and had been working summers and week ends at the little local sheep-pigs-and-llamas kids' petting zoo for two years. She was fascinated and thrilled by Dorothy, and while as rivals for Mal's affection they had to be mortal enemies, Leslie got round this by ignoring Mal in Dorothy's presence, and Dorothy couldn't resist playing to an apparently worshipping audience. Leslie was even fascinated and thrilled by the tropical fish and the invisible tree frogs and chameleons, which was a first, and put Ned firmly on her side. And she'd been the only person ever to meet Flame without an initial cringe. ʺOh, wow,ʺ she'd said, and immediately stooped to make friends.

She was also extremely pretty.

Jane started calling her the Paragon. ʺCynic,ʺ said Miri.

ʺThere has to be
something
wrong with her,ʺ said Jane.

There was. She had two left feet. ʺI'm
all
left feet,ʺ she said. ʺI'm not just chosen
last
for volleyball or whatever, whichever team has to have me bursts into tears.ʺ And Mal was determined to teach her to ride.

Mal wasn't horse-obsessed like his mother and sister, but he (like Ned) helped out when they were shorthanded—which was, as with most stables, rather often—and was rarely cranky about it. He was also quite a good rider himself, to his sister's considerable annoyance, because he had a natural gift for it and she had to work hard for every tiny scrap she learned.

ʺDon't worry about it,ʺ said Jane. ʺIt was just like that with my brother and me.ʺ

ʺThe brother who made his first million when he was twenty-four and has a ranch in Wyoming?ʺ

ʺHe's never in Wyoming. He's too busy earning his next million. You wouldn't want to be like that, would you?ʺ

ʺI'd get out to Wyoming more often,ʺ said Miri.

But Mal, being a natural rider, didn't have a clue how to teach someone who wasn't. Jane and Miri assumed that teaching Leslie to ride would fizzle out: Mal couldn't teach and Leslie couldn't learn. But it didn't. Mal kept asking if any of the beginner horses were free and if so when, and Leslie kept showing up looking determined, and trying to give Jane or Miri money, which they kept refusing.

The afternoon that Leslie appeared in a new pair of riding breeches and riding helmet (she'd been using one of the stable's helmets), Miri said, ʺOkay, look. This is silly.
I'll
give you lessons. Mal couldn't teach a tadpole to swim.ʺ

ʺIt's not him,ʺ Leslie said. ʺTwo left feet, remember? It's me.ʺ

ʺThen why do you want to learn to ride?ʺ Miri said with genuine curiosity.

Leslie turned away and stroked the cheek of Rainbow, who had her head over her stall door, hoping for stroking. ʺBecause . . . oh, because I'm used to being good with animals. I'm resigned to being horrible at sports. I've always avoided riding lessons because I was afraid this would happen—because I knew this would happen—but I'd
love
to be able to ride, you know? I don't have to be good—like you or Mal—just—oh, I'd like to be able to go trail-riding with Mal. And canter where there's a good place to canter. And jump over the big log.ʺ

ʺOkay,ʺ said Miri. ʺIt's always good to know what you're aiming at. I'll teach you to ride till you can canter out on the trailʺ (to herself adding, on a carefully selected bombproof horse) ʺalthough I don't promise any jumping. We'll see how it goes. Okay?ʺ

Leslie, to her surprise, hesitated momentarily. ʺHow much does—do you charge?ʺ

ʺSave your money for a car,ʺ said Miri. ʺSo I don't have to pick Mal up after any more parties.ʺ

Leslie was hard work. Miri pulled every trick she knew about teaching riding out of her hat and Leslie still needed two bounces for every stride when she tried to post to the trot. She could drop her legs straight down the horse's sides when her feet were out of the stirrups but as soon as she put them back in the stirrups she stiffened up and began to crouch. ʺLet's play a game,ʺ said Miri. ʺLet's pretend that you
don't
know that you have two left feet. Let's pretend you're just an ordinary person who wants to learn how to ride.ʺ

ʺIt's hopeless, isn't it?ʺ said Leslie.

ʺIt is
not
hopeless, damn it,ʺ said Miri. ʺStop trying to
make
it hopeless, you know?ʺ

ʺSorry,ʺ said Leslie, and sighed.

Once Miri was (relatively) sure Leslie wouldn't fall off at the walk, she took her out on the trail, thinking that a change of scenery would be good for both of them. Leslie was on the (bombproof) Peggy, and Miri on Balthazar. Balthazar was disappointed by all the walking, but he was accustomed to such disappointment. And Flame came with them.

At first they did the baby loop which only took about fifteen minutes and you were never really out of sight of the barn. But Miri's sharp eye took in that, out on the trail, Leslie occasionally forgot that she was all left feet and couldn't possibly learn to ride, and relaxed. Once, when she'd forgotten for more than a minute, Peggy put her head down and blew.

ʺThere,ʺ said Miri.

ʺWhat?ʺ said Leslie. ʺDid I do something wrong? Isn't she supposed to do that?ʺ

ʺNo, you did something
right.
You stopped
perching
on her like a bird on a wire and she relaxed and started to enjoy herself.ʺ

ʺOh, am I
hurting
her?ʺ said Leslie in deep distress.

ʺOkay, I take it back,ʺ said Miri. ʺYou
are
hopeless.ʺ

There was a brief tortured pause, and then Leslie laughed. ʺOh. I get it.ʺ

ʺGood,ʺ said Miri.

But after that Leslie did begin—just a little—to learn to ride. Miri stopped trying to teach her anything in the arena, and they went straight out onto the trails, leaving the baby loop behind and diving deep into the preserve. And Flame always came with them. Once, when Leslie began one of her (regular) apologies for how much time she was taking away from all the other more important things Miri should be doing (which would then lead into another attempt to pay for lessons), Miri interrupted and said, ʺYou're doing me a favor. I've been worrying about giving poor Flame enough exercise.ʺ

Flame, hearing his name, came lolloping up to them, tongue flying, his eyes so crinkled up from grinning that he looked almost ordinary.

ʺI wonder what his background is,ʺ said Leslie, and Miri could see her immediately as the zookeeper to be: focussing on the strange animal she has been presented with. ʺThere's a lot of sighthound in there somewhere—deerhound maybe.ʺ

ʺVery likely,ʺ Miri said neutrally. He looked as much like a deerhound as he looked like any dog. Since she was the only one who brushed him, she was the only one who knew that he had not merely the common system of a longer coarser outer coat and finer softer undercoat, but a third coat beneath the second, dense and almost prickly, almost as if it might be suitable for repelling hellfire. He also had two extra pairs of ribs, disguised by the length of his back. If it had been only one extra pair she probably wouldn't have noticed; but she'd thought, stroking him, that his ribcage seemed to go on a surprisingly long time, and so she counted, and checked the result with a helpful website on dog anatomy. She might have asked the vet about this, except that she had recently observed, while checking for ticks, that his testicles had regrown. He had, of course, been castrated at the pound. She didn't want to get Ronnie in trouble for having released an unneutered dog, and if Flame stayed healthy, the vet might not notice the testicles. She wondered if the pound's vet had noticed the ribs and the third coat, or if he'd just been totally distracted by the eyes.

There were other anomalies. The last inch or so of his tongue had a narrow smooth white streak down the center, like scar tissue, as if his tongue had once been forked. He ate charcoal out of the fireplace. (He would have eaten charcoal briquettes too, only Miri felt sure that the chemical stuff that made them burn faster and hotter wouldn't be good for anything to eat, even a hellhound.) She'd known Labradors that ate
anything
including charcoal, but Flame did not also eat bricks, shoes, houseplants and small pieces of furniture—just charcoal. And while he liked to lie in front of the fire like a normal dog, he liked to lie facing it, staring into it like a philosopher—or a hellhound. The flicker of the flames on his wide-open red eyes looked like the reflection of a forest fire.

But he had perfect manners around the stable, the horses, and the clientele. There were one or two nervous parents who didn't like him, but Miri simply learned who they were and made sure he was tied up under his tree when they were due to arrive. And he was now proving to have perfect manners on trail rides.

It was still only Leslie, Miri and Flame. Miri had suggested they invite Mal some time—even that Leslie was ready to go out with Mal by herself—but Leslie said, ʺOh, not yet. Please. If you can stand it a little while longer. I can almost relax now, when it's just you, but I know I'll stiffen up again as soon as anyone comes with us—especially Mal. But I've been thinking, what I'd like to do is tell Mal I'm taking him on a picnic for his birthday—and then tell him at the last minute it's going to be on horseback. Is that a good idea, do you think?ʺ

ʺIt's an excellent idea,ʺ said Miri.

ʺOh, I
hope
so,ʺ Leslie said in her earnest way. ʺI mean I'm
trotting
now and everything. You are
so
patient. I guess you have to be, to be a riding teacher, but it's still pretty amazing. And I really don't understand why you've put so much time into me. It's not just Flame.ʺ