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MEAGAN
AWOKE with a start and sat upright in bed. The dream had come again. The
dream of the flying horse.
 Early light was outlining
the window blinds. Meagan threw back her sheets and dressed quietly, as
it was summer vacation and her parents preferred to sleep through dawn.
She tiptoed out of her room and down the hardwood stairs to the kitchen.
Closing the back door gently, she slipped though the pasture fence and
raced into the backyard.
Auburn-haired and with
a streak of tomboy, Meagan Roberts was not an unusual girl of twelve-except
for the lucky fact that her family kept horses. (Actually, they only kept
one horse, an aged mare, but very soon it would be two.) Hay and
pine shavings greeted her at the backyard stable's entrance, in her opinion
the best smells in the world.
"Moose?" Meagan turned
on the barn's dim lights. The cool morning air was silent. Of course,
she did not really believe the foal had come in the night. The veterinarian
said it was still too soon. As with all the other mornings, she expected
to find Moose munching her hay contentedly, enormous and alone in her
stall.
The pregnant mare's
formal name was Bright Lights, but she was called Moose for her
bay coat and rambling gait. Meagan had loved the huge mare since her second
birthday, when she had been held up on Moose's wide back, terrified and
grabbing fistfuls of mane, crying to be taken off immediately and put
back on forever.
Peering over the stall
door in the quiet pre-dawn, Meagan tensed. The evening hay lay untouched.
She opened the door to see the floor dug into mounds. Her beloved Moose
lay in the wrecked bedding, dark with sweat, her sides rising and falling
in fast breaths. A violent kick sent a spray of bedding against the wall.
Meagan bolted for the house, crying, "Mom, Dad! Please hurry! Moose is
sick!"
Her mother was down
first, tying her robe as she came. "Stop shouting, Meagan. We can hear
you."
"Moose is sick.
She's lying down and she's kicking!"
Jennifer Roberts frowned
and called upstairs. "Tom, I'm going to check on the mare." She addressed
her daughter calmly. "Meagan, some broodmares lie down before they foal.
It is only natural."
"I know, but Moose
didn't eat her hay and she's sweating. Please hurry, Mom!"
"We'll go see, Meagan.
Just don't let Moose know you're upset. She is probably resting." But
Jennifer paled at the sight of the dark mare groaning in the straw. Meagan
hung back in the doorway, watching her mother enter the stall and kneel
beside Moose. Meagan could see the whites of the mare's eyes, something
only a frightened horse would show.
"Tell your father to
call Dr. Parker," Jennifer said quietly, "and bring back some towels."
She stroked the mare's head. "Good girl, Moose, easy now. Everything is
going to be fine." One large ear flicked as the mare listened.
Meagan was not the
only one who held Moose as a constant in her life. As a teenager, Jennifer
had watched the birth of the bay filly that was to be her companion through
school, boys, marriage and children. She had watched Moose grow from a
gawky foal into sleek prime, and now into the matronly shape of a broodmare.
Jennifer forced herself
to keep talking. This was Moose's first foal and complications could happen.
"Rest now, that's a good girl." Moose must have been in labor for hours,
an alarming sign-mares usually foal quickly, within thirty minutes of
labor's onset. The horse's coat was covered in dried sweat and caked with
bedding. "You'll be all right, girl, you have to be. No one else knows
all my secrets." Jennifer smoothed a sudden wet spot on the mare's muzzle.
Her husband, Tom, came
to stand outside the stall door. "They're paging Dr. Parker. Don't worry,
Jen. She'll be okay." Meagan stood silently behind, holding the towels.
Moose groaned and lifted
her head. The horse's normally full flanks were drawn and soaked in sweat.
Heaving herself up, the mare began circling the stall.
"Meagan, would you
bring the halter?" Jennifer made herself keep the words calm. "I don't
understand. Last night everything was fine."
The distended mare
stopped and lowered herself onto the spoiled bedding, diving into the
throes of a contraction. Jennifer took a towel and the halter from her
daughter and knelt beside the mare again. Gently holding the mare's head
down to prevent her from rising, she stroked a towel over the sweat-soaked
coat, murmuring, until a surge of pain drove the mare to paw violently
and wrench herself from Jennifer's grip. After a few circuits around the
stall the mare lowered herself again to begin futile straining.
"Where is he?" Jennifer
asked, her voice tight. Moose half-rose and buckled back to the floor,
thrashing in the bedding. Jennifer retreated to the doorway to watch helplessly.
Mother and daughter listened to the sounds of car engines, closing their
eyes when each passed. The eastern edges of the sky were showing blue
when a vehicle finally slowed and turned into the driveway.
Dr. Parker was a short,
grizzled man with a face too weathered and creased to reveal his age.
With a glance at the mare, the veterinarian set his black bag down. "I
need one of you to help," he said matter-of-factly, and was surprised
as Jennifer stepped forward. He had expected the husband but no matter.
With horses, experience mattered more than a strong arm.
Waiting for the right
moment to avoid being kicked, the veterinarian quickly knelt and haltered
the mare. He pushed her lips back to see the gums: they were a pale, deadly
white. He pinched a bit of skin on her neck and it stood stiffly instead
of springing back. Dehydration. Handing the lead rope to Jennifer, he
moved to palpate the mare, reaching inside to feel the unborn foal. The
canal was dry; the water had broken hours before. When finished, his face
was grim. He went to his bag.
"You have to make a
decision. The mare or the foal." He said it gruffly, plunging a hypodermic
into a bottle and inverting it. "She won't deliver a live foal without
a cesarean, but the operation will kill her. If I don't the foal will
smother." In silence he finished preparing the injection, and then looked
squarely at Jennifer. It was not a cold look, or even without concern.
It was the look of a man who knew the pain of the answer but required
it.
"She was fine." Jennifer
turned frightened eyes to her daughter. "Can't…"
"I need a decision,
or it will be too late for either."
Jennifer stared at
the towel in her hand, hearing Moose's uneven breathing. "It's her first
foal ... she doesn't know what's happening."
The vet began to dab
alcohol into a sweat-soaked spot on the mare's throat. He spoke more softly,
"Mrs. Roberts, there is a chance we might save the momma. There is a small
chance. Send your daughter out and let me try to save your mare."
"Is the foal alive?"
Jennifer asked in a small voice.
"Right now, yes."
"Though we can have
another foal..."
The man hesitated.
"I know you want this for your little girl, Mrs. Roberts, but your mare
won't have another foal. Even if she makes it. You should know that. She
won't have another."
Jennifer looked up
at Meagan, a tiny shadow behind her father. Huddled, a new generation
waited. No. It was too soon for this horrific calculation. A long
moment passed as the two mothers communed silently. If Moose's time was
over, hers too was passing. It was too soon ... it would always be too
soon.
"Save the foal," she
whispered.
The vet almost protested but instead gritted his teeth and returned to
his bag. He quickly pulled a narcotic into a new syringe. A shame,
a damn shame, he thought. He handed Jennifer the slack lead as she
stroked Moose's once sleek neck.
The mare barely flinched at the needle. Jennifer felt something inside
herself drift away. "Please take Meagan outside, Tom." She watched them
leave, trying not to think, not to feel. There would be time enough to
grieve ... forever, in fact.
A cesarean on a horse is graphic, but Jennifer watched impassively. This
was no longer her mare but something slack and lifeless. It took all of
the veterinarian's experience to deliver the foal, and it was several
minutes before the limp, crooked creature, bathed in blood, began to respond
to the doctor's efforts. The vet covered Moose with a blanket and called
for Meagan and her father.
Meagan came in apprehensively, eyes large at the spindly newborn. Tom
started towards Jennifer, who was kneeling beside the blanket, staring.
He hesitated.
The vet was talking quickly. "It's a filly, a big one and with good reflexes
too. She's going to be fine." He spoke in relief. Delivering a dead foal
was bleak business and the Roberts need never know how close it had been.
He looked at Meagan standing by the door with shining eyes. "I need some
help rubbing down the baby. Any volunteers?"
Meagan's eyes jumped to her mother.
"Go ahead," Jennifer nodded. "Let Dr. Parker show you."
The vet held the foal and demonstrated how to rub the wet coat to mimic
a mare's tongue. Meagan touched the foal tentatively at first, but was
soon rubbing as the doctor showed her, stimulating the newborn's circulation.
Meagan's eyes fixed on the still form under the blanket.
"When will Moose…"
Dr.
Parker stood up stiffly, futilely brushing his pants. "I'll fix up a bottle
and leave a feeding schedule. The foal needs to be fed every two hours
the first few days. It will be easier if you can get her to drink from
a bucket, and safer-we don't want milk down her lungs. It's going to be
a lot of work, I'm afraid."
"I'll do it!" Meagan said quickly.
"We can manage, Doctor." Jennifer looked at the lead rope she still held
and dropped it. She watched the newborn struggle to keep her head above
Meagan's aggressive toweling and suddenly realized a strangeness about
the foal. She looked at the vet in shock.
He smiled wryly. "I was wondering when you'd notice."
Jennifer went to the corner and looked closely at the foal. "But, how?
She has Moose's head and her nose … maybe her ears." Stroking the filly's
nose, Jennifer traced the swirl of white in the center of the golden forehead.
"But a palomino? It can't be." She shook her head. The stud fee had been
large and hard to raise-she and Tom had justified it by telling themselves
a poorly bred horse cost the same to feed as a good one.
"What are you saying?" Tom asked. "Is there something wrong with the baby?
What is a 'pal-meeno?'"
"It means the golden color." Jennifer ran a hand down the filly's blond
coat. "It's not a defect, except you don't see many palomino thoroughbreds.
It's pretty doubtful we got the sire we chose."
Tom was puzzled. "Are you saying Moose didn't agree with our choice?"
"Looks like Moose needed a chaperon." Dr. Parker said it kindly. "I can
write something so you can get your stud fee back."
"No," Jennifer said immediately. "I want her registered as a thoroughbred.
We will talk to the stud farm."
The vet nodded. "I'll see what I can do, Mrs. Roberts."
"Please." Without spirit, drained, she went to Tom. He circled an arm
around her waist and pulled her to him, ignoring the dirt. Together they
watched the new arrival wriggle in Meagan's grasp. It is normal for a
foal to stand, splayed and wobbly, within an hour of birth. The newcomer
seemed determined to be timely.
Jennifer avoided her childhood companion lying under the blanket. She
would not let herself wonder if it had been the right decision.
Eclipsed by Shadow
Book
I of III | The Legend of the Great Horse
Copyright
© 2008 John Royce
MICRON PRESS
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