139
THE BLUE FEATHER
Tital rolled over, and pushed the light button on his solar
powered Casio Pathfinder Watch. It read five o’clock in the
morning. Pushing himself up, he looked over at Bardala sleeping
in the next bed. She looked...he caught himself thinking; well she
was a beautiful woman. As he got out of bed, stretched, and put
on his solid blue Patagonia shirt, he looked out the open window
towards the building and corral where the four horses and
Lentito were kept. There were several burning torches moving
around in that area, but he could only make out that something
was happening at this distance.
Queen Kiya had three royal servants that had volunteered to
help care for the animals while they were in the Tongan city.
Tital felt sure that the men were feeding and cleaning the
animals daily, because the men had told him it was an honor to
help with such fine horses. While one of the grooms ran toward
the palace room where Tital was standing, Tital looked up at the
three yellow moons in the sky, wondering to himself if he would
ever see Pilar again, the young girl that was caught in his heart.
One of the grooms burst into the room, bubbling with
excitement and blurted out, “Healer! Healer! I’m glad you are
awake. This morning when Sote went to check on the horses and
little Lentito, we found Centella lying down. We thought
something was wrong, so we tried to get her up. But then she
had this baby...horse! We waited for a while and watched, and
the little horse soon got up, and tried to walk around. Did we do
anything wrong?”
Tital stood there for a moment in stunned silence, and then
said, “No, I am quite sure that you did everything right, but...I
didn’t even know Centella was pregnant!”