Keeper of Dreams by Orson Scott Card

such a speed. Has any man ever moved as fast over the ground as I am moving now? he wondered. No dragonboat has ever found a current so swift.
    It seemed that they ran for hours and hours, though when they finally came to a stop the sun was still only a palm’s height above the mountains far across the plain to the east. As the running slowed to a jolting jog, and then to a walk, Glogmeriss kept waiting for his mount to remember that he was on her back and to start trying to get him off. But if she remembered, she must have decided she didn’t mind, because when she finally came to a stop, still in the midst of the herd, she simply dropped her head and began to graze, making no effort to get Glogmeriss off her back.
    She was so calm—or perhaps like the others was simply so exhausted—that Glogmeriss decided that as long as he moved slowly and calmly he might be able to walk on out of the herd, or at least climb a tree and wait for them to move on. He knew from the roaring and screaming sounds he had heard near the beginning of the stampede that the cats—more than one—had found their meal, so the survivors were safe enough for now.
    Glogmeriss carefully let one leg slide down until he touched the ground. Then, smoothly as possible, he slipped off the cow’s back until he was crouched beside her. She turned her head slightly, chewing a mouthful of grass. Her great brown eye regarded him calmly.
    “Thank you for carrying me,” said Glogmeriss softly.
    She moved her head away, as if to deny that she had done anything special for him.
    “You carried me like a dragonboat through the flood,” he said, and he realized that this was exactly right, for hadn’t the stampede of oxen beenas dangerous and powerful as any flood of water? And she had borne him up, smooth and safe, carrying him safely to the far shore. “The best of dragonboats.”
    She lowed softly, and for a moment Glogmeriss began to think of her as being somehow the embodiment of the god—though it could not be the crocodile god that took this form, could it? But all thoughts of the animal’s godhood were shattered when it started to urinate. The thick stream of ropy piss splashed into the grass not a span away from Glogmeriss’s shoulder, and as the urine spattered him he could not help but jump away. Other nearby oxen mooed complainingly about his sudden movement, but his own cow seemed not to notice. The urine stank hotly, and Glogmeriss was annoyed that the stink would stay with him for days, probably.
    Then he realized that no
cow
could put a stream of urine between her forelegs. This animal was a bull after all. Yet it was scarcely larger than the normal cow, not bull-like at all. Squatting down, he looked closely, and realized that the animal had lost its testicles somehow. Was it a freak, born without them? No, there was a scar, a ragged sign of old injury. While still a calf, this animal had had its bullhood torn away. Then it grew to adulthood, neither cow nor bull. What purpose was there in life for such a creature as that? And yet if it had not lived, it could not have carried him through the stampede. A cow would have had a calf to slow it down; a bull would have flung him off easily. The god had prepared this creature to save him. It was not itself a god, of course, for such an imperfect animal could hardly be divine. But it was a god’s tool.
    “Thank you,” said Glogmeriss, to whatever god it was. “I hope to know you and serve you,” he said. Whoever the god was must have known him for a long time, must have planned this moment for years. There was a plan, a destiny for him. Glogmeriss felt himself thrill inside with the certainty of this.
    I could turn back now, he thought, and I would have had the greatest manhood journey of anyone in the tribe for generations. They would regard me as a holy man, when they learned that a god had prepared such a beast as this to be my dragonboat on dry land. No one would say I was unworthy to be