The air around the chickens blasted outward, flinging dust into Shea's eyes. When he could open them enough to see his results, he groaned. His reputation as a conjurer of singular monsters was not going to be hurt one bit by this pair. He looked the two of them over from front to back, trying to figure out what they were and where his spell had gone wrong. He decided he had probably gone awry with his insistence that they "form to his plan." He was going to have to learn how to draw.
His prospective steeds still had feathers—and little, lumpish wings. He supposed he could see how the spot in the dirt where his stick had joggled would suggest wings. Their faces were long and rather anteater-ish. Their legs were horselike enough, although covered with little slick feathers clear down to the hooves. The tails were very horselike, too. They didn't have manes, though—instead their head feathers draped in crests that, on closer inspection, proved to mimic his drawings very closely.
He had sketched bridles onto the beasts in his pictures. The chicken-steeds wore bridles. He had forgotten to draw saddles, and there were no saddles anywhere to be seen.
"This isn't what I had in mind," he muttered.
"IF YOU WANTED HORSES, WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY HORSES?" God asked.
If Harold Shea could have jumped out of his skin, he would have. "Don't do that!" he yelped. The—well, the whatever-they-were—stared placidly, as unaffected by the booming voice of God as they were by their sudden creation in the middle of the hot Spanish hills.
Harold took a long, slow breath and said, "Okay, God, can I have horses?"
"NOT NOW, YOU CAN'T." Harold noted that God sounded peeved. "THAT'S NOT WHAT YOU ASKED FOR I GAVE YOU WHAT YOU ASKED FOR."
"Right," he said. He saw no sense in annoying God. The chicken-steeds were better than nothing. Instead, he grabbed both beasts' reins and led them back around the side of the hill.
Chalmers had Harold's gear packed as well as his own by the time Harold got back with the beasts. Sancho Panza hurriedly crossed himself when he saw the monstrosities, while Quixote pretended not to notice them at all.
Chalmers' eyebrows merely rose.
"What in the world, Harold?" the older psychologist asked.
"The end result of concision without precision," Shea growled and pressed the reins from one of the creatures into Chalmers' hand. "Take one—it will he better than walking, I suppose."
Chalmers harrumphed. "Yes, I suppose it will. What is this thing, anyway?"
"It's a shurdono."
"A shurdono?"
"Right. Because I sure don't know," Shea snapped. He picked up his pack, slipped it over his shoulders, and vaulted onto the middle of his steed's back, just behind the wings. The creature's spine jabbed him in the groin. Harold gasped and inched forward until he rested on the relative padding of the wing muscles. These creatures were not going to be comfortable for long bareback rides. He crouched on his animal in silence and discomfort, sulking. Why hadn't he mentioned the word "horse" somewhere in his spell? He should have been able to fit a one-syllable word like that into the poem. He was a far better poet than Chalmers—for all that his results were about as erratic.
Chalmers struggled onto his beast—the expression on his lace told Shea his shurdono was not the only one with too many bones in bad places. "These will serve as long as we don't run into any monks of the Dominican Order," Chalmers remarked. "I'll remind you that the Spanish Inquisition is in full swing right now. I don't doubt they'd be fascinated by the heresy involved in riding—shurdonos."
Shea ran his fingers through the soft feathers at the nape of his beast's neck and sighed. How could anyone forget the Spanish Inquisition? He tapped his heels lightly into the beast's flank. It lurched into a tooth rattling trot. Pain shot through parts of his body that, at that moment. Shea would just as soon have forgotten existed. The Spanish Inquisition couldn't be much worse, he concluded.
Quixote and Panza rode in front, Quixote carrying a fresh lance as if he wished he could run Chalmers through with it, and Panza equipped with the final spare. Chalmers and Shea kept well back. Neither party spoke to the other. They were well out of the high hills, and wending their way over rolling countryside dotted with small farms and the occasional village.
Chalmers was in a foul mood. He had stared at the spot between Quixote's shoulderblades so long Shea was surprised the back of the knight's armor did not melt and puddle. "That old lunatic doesn't need to hold such a grudge," Chalmers growled. "I'm not holding it against him that he tried to spit me on his lance."
"You turned him into a decrepit old man, Doc," Shea answered. "You stopped him from defeating Malambroso and humiliated him—and in spite of that, God won't let him out of the oath he swore to find Florimel for you." Shea wriggled into a new position for the umpteenth time, trying to find one place on his anatomy that was not terminally bruised by the shurdono's sharp spine. "You can't expect him to be happy with you."
Chalmers snorted. "I'm still not convinced that Quixote's change was my doing. I think in the heat of battle, he could have suddenly snapped out of his delusional state. Still, I suppose I can't expect him to look at it that way." Chalmers pulled some of the bread from the morning meal out of his pack and calmly chewed away at it. "On the other hand, I should be furious with you."
"With me?"
Chalmers took a long swig from the wineskin he had appropriated from Panza. He did not offer any to Shea. "Certainly. Quixote was cured. If my theory is correct, this universe reverted to its normal state when that happened. Given enough time, I'm sure I could have developed a workable spell for defeating Malambroso and rescuing Florimel. At least we could have made a syllogismobile to get us to more familiar territory. However, you returned Quixote to his delusional state before I had time to ascertain the precise rules of mathematics and magic in effect—and now we are back to your madman's chaotic magic of confusion."
Harold Shea frowned. "That would be true if your theory were correct—but I'm not convinced that it is, Reed." When the senior psychologist gave him a frosty glare, Shea swallowed and said, "I think we may be dealing with the complete separation of Quixote's universe from the universe Cervantes described—perhaps we are in the world to which Cervantes' Quixote, the madman Quixiana, was actually attuned."
Chalmers snort was derisive. "The universe is not a Chinese puzzlebox, Harold. Universes of fictions within fictions are improbable to the point of ludicrousness and—"
"Monstrous and diabolical crew!" Don Quixote bellowed. "Release immediately the noble princesses whom you are forcibly carrying off in that coach or prepare to receive instant death as the just punishment for your misdeeds."
Chalmers stopped lecturing, and Shea looked down the load to see what Quixote was making such a racket about. Two men in dark robes carrying sunshades, their faces covered by masks, rode ahead of a black carriage of immense proportions. "I remember this incident," Chalmers whispered. "They're the Benedictines. Harmless monks—in the book, they were just riding in front of the carriage—had nothing to do with it—"
One of the two masked men called out, "Sir Knight, we are but poor, harmless monks of St. Benedict, travelling about our business. We don't know a thing about princesses."
"See? Now he's going to charge and they're going to run," Chalmers predicted.
Sure enough, Quixote cried, "No fair speeches for me, for I know you, perfidious scoundrels!" Then he dropped his lance into position and charged.