Kuma
| Classification | Florahorse |
|---|---|
| Size | Horse-shaped, and able to gallop under three riders |
| Notable traits | Grass body, leaf ears, mane and tail of flowering vine, bark hooves |
| First appearance | Sacred: Eslura's Calling |
Kuma is the florahorse of Alistair Archibald, Sacred Ruler of the Book of Land, and the mount that carries him, Beatrice Tidal and Reagan Hideaway out of the woods ahead of a pursuing Shadow Reaper on the night the two girls arrive in Eslura.[1]
Appearance
By moonlight Kuma is barely a horse at all. The shape is a horse's, and Bea measured it against the horses of a farm outside Mountbridge, but the body is made entirely out of dark-green grass and the ears are leaves. The mane and tail "were vines woven with pink and purple flowers", and the hooves are rough-barked like the trunk of a tree.[1]
The back is bony and carries no saddle. Bea, riding bareback and expecting to slide off, gripped the animal's sides beside her knees and found that its hair felt exactly like the artificial turf on a school playing field.[1] Patted afterwards, Kuma whinnied with pleasure.[1]
The ride out of the woods
Bea and Reagan were feeling their way through a forest gone black with a Shadow Reaper's smoke when they heard hooves on packed dirt. Kuma swung around them and stopped at their side, carrying a cloaked and hooded rider who reached down a gloved hand.[1]
Alistair pulled Bea up first and then Reagan, clicked his tongue, squeezed with his legs, and put the florahorse into a full gallop through the trees with all three of them aboard. He twisted round to throw green light down the path behind, weaving branches and roots across it to block the smoke, then nudged Kuma with a boot and sent the animal on faster than Bea thought a car could manage on a highway.[1]
The forest opened into a field, and Kuma carried the three of them across it to a deserted village of tiny houses with mossy roofs and stopped beside the one house still whole, the home of Alpin Loomin of Farenworth.[1][2]
Sinking
Thanked and patted, Kuma knelt on the ground, and the grass of the animal's back merged with the grass of the field and grew out to match its length until there was no trace left of a horse. Then the florahorse sank into the earth entirely and was gone. Alistair, hurrying for the door, said only that his florahorse would be all right.[1] The bestiary appendix presents the same behaviour as ordinary for the species, which sinks back into the ground for protection or for sleep.[3]
Behind the scenes
The pronunciation guide at the back of both novels gives the name as Koo-mah. It sits in the guide's opening run of named cast rather than under the SPECIES heading where florahorse is listed, in among Alpin Loomin's mount Galabear and the other animals the books have named.[4][5] The interior illustration to Book 1, Ch. 6 draws the ride: the hooded rider with one arm thrown up and both girls clinging on behind him, the florahorse at full stride with a curling, tendril-like mane and tail and small flowers picked out along its flank, and a tall horned figure looming out of the dark behind them against one of the moons.[1]
Kuma is named once, in that chapter, and never appears again. Where the florahorse is kept, and whether Alistair rode Kuma again, are not recorded.[1]