Free Eden by Keith; Korman

once, “Samson! Samson! Samson!”
    When the chorus died down, Eden looked at their large companion. The old gray donkey thought seriously. Then nodded his ruff:
    â€œBetter than Dammit ,” the donkey said. “Samson is good.”
    He cleared his throat. “And the children have a point. Where are we going?”

    As it turned out, back to that wide lake where the companions had joined the wedding feast, where Eden had shared her bone with the dog too old to fight for it and where Eden’s master had seen that no one went hungry. The place where clay furnaces smelted ore into iron and smithies pounded iron into swords, a great wide sea of fishermen, boats and nets, and fishtails on the shore.
    But for Eden that single destination didn’t answer the question.
    Where were they going? Nowhere and everywhere. Across the lengths of the land they wandered, always on the move, never tarrying for long, their master speaking to any who would listen. Samson the donkey plodded along on stoic hooves, the little lambs trotted behind without complaint. Stranger still, the lambs seemed to stay little lambs and not grow any older, and the donkey’s hide grew lustrous, his face no longer gray. Eden ran all day to catch the wayward little ones, but never seemed to tire.
    While the dog’s sharp eyes made sure no lamb strayed.
    And none of them ever did.
    While the mice in the fields gossiped among themselves. Look at her run! She’s so fast, she’s so strong, she’s so smart!
    Night devoured day and day banished night. Their road seemed an endless march, and Eden watched the crowds gather at her master’s feet with every league. When the companions paused to rest or talk, she never wandered far from his side. Did he love her the same as before? As when the two of them struggled with that Hollow Man on the ledge, or lay broken down below, waiting for the end?
    Eden did not know.
    Like the two worn stones, the black and the white that had rubbed till their insides showed, Eden and her master were there for all to see. When she came near him, his hand reached for her, and when he spoke he drew her close so she might sit beside him and listen with the others. And well-being seemed to flow from him, filling Eden with a kind of light, for which she knew no name …
    As for the companions, they treated Eden as one of their own, and she knew each man by his scent. Mostly they were clean scents, not the stench of labor and worry. For walking purified you, as if each step you took shed a bit of your troubles by the wayside, cleansing each man the farther he traveled.
    But the one named Judas was different from the others, and the companions treated him so. At first he stood out because he gave his money to the beggars at the temple walls. Despite the gift of a few copper coins, or perhaps because of it, the others let him carry their common purse, trusting him to hold what little they possessed. A few meager coins: mostly coppers, one silver, but no gold.
    Later, he stood out because he acted differently, withdrawing from the others when they rested for the night. But what could Eden tell? He smelled of little more than human sweat and a dusty road. Yet the scent of sadness and doubt clung to his robes and Eden often went to him, letting the man stroke her ears as they kept watch at night. Not a bad man, but he shrank from every nighttime shadow, dreaded every turn in the road on the next day’s march. And Judas often walked alone.
    Samson noticed it too, coming to the man’s side when Judas retreated into periods of heavy thought. Then he mumbled to himself as though struggling with an invisible foe, as if a foreign spirit possessed his mind. Muttering phrases and broken sentences even as Eden walked on one side, Samson the donkey on the other. The animals never truly understood what Judas said, but they let him ramble on, every now and then croaking:
    â€œStop it!”
    â€œGet