at her. “How are you doing? Shall we make getting a new cane a first priority?”
“Nah. I only use it for steep stairs or hills. If we don’t do any more hiking I’ll be fine,” she said. “Go on. Rich guy, you won a land deed.”
“He got a couple of the players to witness, and signed it over to me. I then proceeded to lose the rest of the pot as I drank myself numb, as usual. I stumbled to my room, put the deed in the bottom of my travel bag, and pretty much forgot about it.”
“Wow,” Godiva said, sighing with relief when the top of the trail appeared at last.
Rigo slowed his pace a little. She was able to catch her breath as they reached flat ground. Once again he let her hand go in that easy, natural manner. With that heightened awareness, she noted a pulse of regret. That, too, would need some thinking out.
Later.
He pointed to a picnic table a few yards away. “We can sit under the trees here for a few minutes if you like.”
How could he be so watchful without being a nag about it? She said, “Only long enough to drink the rest of my thermos off. Funny, half an hour ago the last thing I wanted was water. Uh,” she added as she took the thermos from her purse. “Want some?”
“Thanks, I’ll be fine,” he said. “You go ahead. Dehydration is bad for humans.”
“You’re human now,” she pointed out.
“I know my limits. I’m not anywhere near them.”
She swallowed down the water gratefully, even if it was warm and stale tasting. Then she said, “And so, you had a deed, and horses . . .”
“So I had to find me a map to Kentucky, and make my way there. Took a while. I had to work my way. Horses are expensive to feed, and we couldn’t always forage. But we found the place. I saw why that guy parted with the deed so easy. The land was neglected, with an old farmstead on it, falling down. No electricity, no plumbing. But the grass was good, and the horses loved it. So I hired myself onto a construction company to learn carpentry, and began rebuilding the house . . .”
As they returned along the path to the car, skirting the pools that were already evaporating in the summer heat, Rigo went on to describe how he’d learned carpentry by day so he could work on his house by night, in between taking basic care of his animals. When the house was weatherproofed, he began volunteering with animal rescue teams on weekends so he could learn something about care beyond the basics of food, water, and exercise.
“ . . . the last project was the electricity. That is, to install it. Since I’d grown up without it, I was used to living with oil lamps, candles, and in winter the fireplace, but electricity wasn’t going away. I wanted a refrigerator, which would be a vast improvement over the cold cellar. So I started taking classes in electrical engineering, while working with a farrier on weekends. I told you I can hear animals’ thoughts.”
“What’s that like?” she asked.
“Difficult to explain. Feelings, images, memory of smells, mostly. The thing is, I could figure out what was wrong but not fix it, so I had to learn how.”
He looked over, then said slowly, “It was just after I’d finished wiring the downstairs, where all the necessary appliances live, and I was about to commence the upstairs, when a new guy showed up at work. I sensed a mythic shifter. He was focused on me.”
They reached the car. She climbed in, and in seconds they had blessed air conditioning going. “Was he connected to the Midwest Guardian you keep mentioning?”
“Right. We worked together on a couple building projects before he spoke up. He brought up shifters, and when I revealed I knew a little, but not much, he told me about the Guardians, and their goal to protect shifters as well as other creatures, four-legged and two. He asked if I’d be willing to take on rescues if the Guardians needed help, and I said rescue was rescue, whoever found out about it. In fact, one came up. The day before I was to leave on one, the shifter turned up on my doorstep with this skinny kid who looked a lot like me, except he has your eyes.”
Alejo did have her eyes. Godiva’s heart turned over. She