Wings by E. D. Baker Page A

Stumbling from fatigue, he followed a path to the wall and crawled over the top. The floor on the other side was warmer as if heated from beneath. The little boy was yawning when he lay down, and soon he was sound asleep.
    Jak woke to something soft and moist snuffling his cheek. Before he could open his eyes, his face was wet from chin to ear. Startled, he sat up, lurching away from whatever was touching him, and bumped into somethinghard. When it nudged him, Jak scrambled to his feet. He was surrounded by animals taller than he was, with hindquarters that came up to his shoulder. The light was so dim that Jak could barely see them, but as they jostled each other trying to sniff him, one of them growled at another and Jak decided that they must be very big dogs.
    He was frightened, but not terribly so, and when one of the animals nipped him, he reacted without thinking and swatted it across the nose. The big animal squealed and jumped back. Pleased by his success, Jak turned to the dogs pushing him from behind and pushed them in turn. They backed away and he was able to climb over the low wall, away from the milling animals.
    He was thirsty now, so he cupped his hands and drank from the pool at the base of the wall. The water was cool and fresh; after he drank he washed his face just as Gammi always made him do when he got out of bed. He soon realized that the light wasn’t as dim inside the chamber, and when he looked up, he saw that a hole in the ceiling directly above the pool let in a shaft of light. Although he leaned out over the water, he couldn’t see up the shaft, but a leaf drifting down through the light told him that it was open high above. There was bird-song, too, faint and far away.
    He could see the animals better now, and suddenly he wasn’t quite so sure that they were dogs. Although they had sharp, pointy teeth and blunt faces, they had long necks and longer legs and almost looked like young horses.
    When Jak stood, he noticed that the animals werewatching him and decided that they were thirsty, too. At first he tried to carry water to them in his cupped hands, but he needed his hands to climb the wall. Some of the animals were panting, so he climbed back down to the pool and used his shoe to carry water to them, pouring it into a depression that ran, trough-like, in front of the wall. Back and forth he climbed, over and over again, until the animals were no longer thirsty.
    Then he walked among them, scratching their necks under their manes and giving them names. A black one was Night, a spotted one was Spot, a more delicate-looking one was Primrose, named after Gammi’s favorite flower. One of the horse creatures, stocky and bigger than the rest, liked to have his rump scratched. Jak named him Putterby for the sound he made when he was happy.
    The animals crowded close to Jak, liking the attention. They were rough at first, but after he’d swatted the more aggressive ones, they quickly learned that they had to be gentle around him if they wanted to be scratched. Jak was using one hand to scratch Spot’s neck and the other Putterby’s rump when he heard voices coming from the corridor that led into the chamber. The animals heard them as well, and became agitated. With their ears laid flat and ridges of fur rising along their backs, Jak thought that they looked quite ferocious. They were pawing the ground and growling when the little boy slipped away to hide in the deepest shadow of the uneven wall.
    Jak watched as his uncle, Targin, and two of his assistant goblins came into the chamber. The horse creaturesrushed at the other side of the wall, snarling and snapping.
    “Look at how stupid they are—running into each other like that,” said a goblin. “No wonder the fairy queen outlawed breeding them.”
    “These are weanlings,” Targin said. “You’ll see why Titania’s so afraid of them when they grow up. Hipporines are as fierce as the wolverines and as fast as the horses that spawned