Friendship

Friendship is the foundation on which many of the relationships in this novel are based. Shasta is a lonely young man, when the novel begins. Shasta has lived alone with the fisherman all his life without benefit of children his own age or even the right to go into the village to make the acquaintance of the other people in the area. When Shasta overhears the fisherman telling the Tarkaan that he found Shasta in a boat by the river, Shasta wants so desperately to have someone to talk to that he begins to talk to a horse. When the horse talks back, Shasta is too relieved to be surprised. A friendship begins in that moment between the horse and the boy, especially when the horse convinces Shasta that they must run away together.

Shasta trusts the horse, Bree, so much that he allows the horse not only...