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Obligingly, I draw my wallet out of my rear pocket in my jeans. Clearing my throat, I admit something that almost stings my mouth with shame. “I’m afraid I need to ask you for a favor.”
The man leading the donkey halts. Expression instantly darkening, he sends me a hard look. “Don’t think you can ask for an IOU. Boss Alvert will skin—”
He freezes, his eyes having dropped to my wallet, which I’ve opened to better show him its contents.
“I will pay now, I simply need your assistance in determining which bills are appropriate.”
His eyes are very round. “I’ve never seen so much money in my life.”
Even the donkeylooks shocked.
Something is rapidly changing in the man’s brain. His subcortical region is being stimulated. The area darkens the way Yonderin brain regions do when we see territory we want to acquire by force.
Feeling uneasy, I shrug, a movement common among humans, sometimes used as a conversational cue of a sort. I hope I’m utilizing it correctly to relay my discomfort and my preference to complete this task with expedience. “Can you lend me a hand and confirm that I pay you whatever the rental of this donkey is worth?”
The man is nodding, his eyes gleaming oddly. “Oh, I sure can.”
CHAPTER 3
I leave the livery stable with a strange feeling of disquiet. I rightly attribute it to the fact that rather than merely renting the saddled donkey I’m currently riding, I allowed myself to be pressured into buying it.
After all, the livery man assured me, donkeys are useful animals, and well prized. I will be able to sell this creature to any future livery stable or trade up for a proper horse.
Which I believe I’ll do just as soon as I arrive at the next town.
“No offense,” I tell the animal conversationally, “but you don’t have the elegance of a horse. You’re simply far too shaggy to compare with a horse’s beauty. And strangely, you’re dusty,” I muse, peering at his dry, brushy coat that, whenever I touch it, feels as if it’s coated in sand.
Perhaps it’s my words. Perhaps Paco takes them as an insult.
Perhaps it’s that we’re out of sight of the livery stable and Paco no longer feels as if he must mind his rider.
But very suddenly, without any warning whatsoever, the strange little animal begins bucking, his rotund but powerful body hopping and jarring me badly every time his hooves slam back to the ground, bringing my head snapping back, making me taste copper as my skull and spine experience cervical hyperextension—followed immediately by blinding hyperflexion.
I lose my hat.
Then I lose my seat.
I crash to the ground, my long prosthetic legs not smarting as they make crunching sounds at impact—but the rest of me feels the shock of the earth meeting me with force.
Dust swirls up in a cloud around me, racing into my nose, my throat, my eyes, my ears.
Owwwwwwwwwwwww…
I lie there for several microts, staring up at the expansive sky, stunned.
Until, wheezing, I push myself upright.
With a worried-sounding snort, the donkey scrambles out of what he seems to think is my maximum attack radius.
Blinking in shock, experiencing pains in areas that have never hurt before, I pick myself up off the ground and stare in disbelief at the animal that stands some measures from me, ears cocked forward, neck extended, all four furry legs braced to run. His reins are dragging on the ground, reminding me of the whiskery-like sensory organs, called barbels, on some wily fishes.
I stagger toward him.
With a panicked squeal, he tears away, not stopping until he’s galloped in a wide enough circle so as to allow him to face me again—from an even greater distance.
Steadier on my cybernetic limbs, I stride for him.
His sides heaving with his panted breaths, his long shaggy ears slowly rising and rotating as I make progress toward him, he stares at me—and then he gapes his mouth and splits the air with the most horrible, harsh, deafening screech.
