Pirates of the Caribbean: The Price of Freedom

was in the saddle, her skirts tucked in around her legs. Jack caught a
glimpse of bare calves in the starlight, but that was all.
He blinked, and Caesar was standing quietly beside the log. Jack
went over to it, climbed up, and then grabbed the back of the saddle
and jumped up. The horse’s backside felt slick and precarious. He
clutched the back of the saddle. “You may hold on to me, Captain
Sparrow,” Ayisha said. “I will not fall.”
Jack barely had time to place his hands on either side of her
waist, before Caesar wheeled smartly around, and began trotting
down the road…a slow, gentle trot. “Relax, Captain Sparrow,” she
called back. “When your back is stiff, you bounce. Relax, then you can
sit.”
He tried to comply, and discovered that, as she had said, relaxing
his back made the gait much easier to sit. It became springy, rather
than jarring. The miles flowed smoothly past.
When they reached the Dalton farm, Ayisha and Jack slid off the
horse, and she handed him the reins. “You stay here, Captain
Sparrow. I will go and bring Tarek.”
“Can’t we just tie him up?” Jack asked.
“No. Horses who must stand and wait become bored, like
humans.
When they become bored, they paw, they break their reins, and
they call out to other horses. We don’t want that, do we?”
“No, we don’t,” Jack conceded.
“Just hold him and talk to him…softly. Pat him. If starts to make
any noise, put your hand atop his nostrils, like this—” Jack’s hand was
seized and pressed onto the horse’s nose. “Not too hard. Pressing
and rubbing his nostrils will keep him from calling out to his kin.”
Jack opened his mouth to ask how long she’d be, but, with a rustle
of underbrush, she was gone.
Feeling ridiculous, he patted Caesar, and began talking to the
horse…softly. After a while, he ran out of “good boys” and began
telling him sea stories. He’d reached the tale of the time the Breton
Bay went through the typhoon, and four crewmen were swept right off
her stern, when he heard a soft rustle of brush.
Moments later, Ayisha emerged from the underbrush. There was