Burning Dreams

by Margaret Wander Bonanno

  “How many times have you done this?” Chris asked, choosing his words carefully.

  “Several dozen,” Heston muttered. “You’re wasting time. There are still two more containers.”

  “I don’t mean by remote, or from space,” Chris continued doggedly, not moving. “I mean by hand, like we’re doing now.”

  Heston wasn’t looking at him, but at the contraption he was working on. “This technique has been employed for over three hundred years,” he said between clenched teeth. “I’m not about to let some kid tell me—”

  “But you’ve never done it this way yourself,” Chris persisted.

  There was an ominous silence. The heat was getting to him. He wiped his brow uselessly, trying not to look down at the seething cauldron that seemed to be beckoning to him. When he looked at Heston again, the big man had his high beams on him.

  “If Starfleet and those damn Neworlders hadn’t balked me, I wouldn’t need to—dammit, why am I wasting my time trying to explain this? If you were smarter, if you paid attention, you wouldn’t need to ask all these questions,” Heston said narrowly, twisting something into place and wiping his brow again. His face and hair and clothes were completely covered in black ash now; only his eyes and teeth gleamed through, giving him a maniacal look. “Stop stalling and bring down the next load!”

  Chris absorbed the insults, his mind as numb to them by now as his arms and shoulders were to the climber’s harness. Up on the rim again, he scanned his surroundings. From this elevation there was nothing but rolling hills, covered with virgin forest, as far as the eye could see. He’d been careful to watch what direction they’d come from this morning and, watching the sun slide down the sky, thought he could find his way home.

  But what if that was the wrong thing to do? Maybe if he stayed, he could talk some sense into Heston or, barring that, drop something or break something so Heston couldn’t finish his infernal device. His stepfather had already called him incompetent; he could absorb whatever other abuse he might aim at him, if it prevented something dangerous from happening.

  But as if reading his mind, Heston was watching him very closely this time.

  “Explain it to me,” Chris suggested, suddenly reaching a decision. “Tell me what you’re doing and why, and maybe I can understand it.”

  “Or try to sabotage it,” Heston said knowingly. “Just do as you’re told!”

  Was he letting his hurt feelings cloud his vision? Chris wondered. He reminded himself that Heston had terraformed entire planets before they came here. If he didn’t know what he was doing, who would? Besides, his mother believed in him. But his mother was blinded by love, Chris reminded himself. Or was she? After that conversation he’d overheard between her and Charlie—

  Thinking of Charlie reminded him of another conversation he’d overheard, this one between Charlie and Heston, about “breaking” the yearlings.

  “No need to break ’em,” Charlie was arguing. “If you gentle ’em, you end up with a much better horse.”

  “Yeah, after five years!” Heston grumped. “You can break a horse to saddle in an afternoon. Don’t tell me my business!”

  It was the difference, Chris realized, between what Heston was doing right now, trying to force Nature to his will too quickly and haphazardly, and waiting for the Starfleet engineers to do it right. Setting down the second to last container where Heston could reach it, Chris hauled himself back to the rim, as if to get the last one, turned on his heel and quietly started to walk away. It would be dark soon, and Heston hadn’t eaten or rested all day. He’d have to quit and come home, and then Willa could talk some sense into him.

  If she would even bother. Remembering the scene in the kitchen, Chris wondered if Willa would leave Heston for Charlie. As much as he loathed Heston right now, it somehow didn’t seem right. Weary and confused, he wondered if any of the adults in his world could be trusted.

  His thoughts were shattered by Heston’s voice. With a madman’s instinct, he had guessed what Chris was planning, pulled himself back up to the rim, and was bearing down on the boy, his look murderous. “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “I was just catching my breath,” Chris said, trying to sound offended, but he didn’t know how to lie; he’d never had to before. It was half in his mind to tell Heston what he knew about his mother and Charlie, but what did he know, really? And how could he betray his mother to a crazy man?

  “You don’t fool me!” Heston growled, looming over him. “You were going to walk away!”

  “Yes, I am!” Chris clenched his fists. His anger flared, and he couldn’t stop himself. “This is crazy, and I’m not helping you anymore!”

  “Who are you calling crazy?” Heston grabbed his shirt, spittle flying. “Don’t you dare disobey me, you little bastard! I can make your life a living hell!”

  “You already have!”

  Where he got the strength from, Chris would never know. He shoved Heston as hard as he could. The big man’s heels slipped on the cinders and he fell backward, tearing Chris’s shirt and losing his grip, landing on his butt, his boot heels scrabbling. Without looking back, Chris half-ran, half-slid down the treacherous slope, then set off in what he hoped was the direction of home, running until he couldn’t run anymore.

  About an hour later, staggering from exhaustion, barely able to see his hand in front of him—he’d tried raising the homestead on his personal comm, but metals in the volcanic core seemed to be interfering with it, and he’d used its ambient light for guidance until the battery ran down—he thought he heard the careful plod of hooves. Was he only imagining that light up ahead?

  “Christopher?” Charlie emerged through the woods, riding Jenna, with Petula on a lead.

  “Heston…” the boy managed hoarsely, leaning against Petula’s welcoming side for a moment before pulling himself up, putting aside the fact, in his desperation, that he couldn’t trust Charlie either. He thought of all the times he’d gone to the barn looking for him to confide in whenever Heston was being particularly oppressive. He hadn’t done that since the morning in the kitchen; if Charlie noticed, he hadn’t mentioned it. Chris shook the thoughts out of his head. No time for that now. “…the volcano…”

  “We’ll worry about Heston later,” Charlie said and, young as he was, Chris couldn’t help wondering if there wasn’t more than one meaning to those words. “Maia’s in labor. She’s fine,” he said seeing the boy’s head come up in spite of his exhaustion. “But we need to get back. Just hold on to the pommel; I’ll lead her.

  “Don’t fall asleep on me now…” Charlie’s voice was steady, reassuring. “I don’t need to be picking you up off the trail if you can’t hold on. There’s coffee and sandwiches in the saddlebag. Your mom says you’re too young to drink coffee, but we’ll worry about that later, too…”

  Somehow Chris found his second wind by the time they reached the homestead. He would worry about the adults and their complicated world some other time. Here, at least, there was a problem he could do something about.

  After so long in the dark woods, the light in the barn seemed unnaturally bright. Chris rubbed his eyes, leaning against the wall of the big box stall Charlie used for birthing, talking soothingly to Maia, who was still on her feet, but breathing with a deep rasping sound, listening to the life process transpiring inside her.

  “Charlie?” The moment seemed sacred; Chris was afraid to raise his voice. “Let me stay, please? I promise I won’t get in the way.”

  And I’ll try to forget, at least for now, what I heard you and my mother talking about…

  “Get in the way?” Charlie echoed him. He was washing his hands up to the elbows in the utility sink. “I expect you to give me a hand.”

  Even years later, the details of that night and part of the next morning would never arrange themselves in chronological order in Chris’s mind. He remembered at one point that Willa brought him and Charlie food and blankets in case either of them had time to eat or sleep,
but he didn’t remember doing either.

  All he remembered really was holding Maia’s head in his lap after she’d gone ponderously to her knees and then rolled to one side, laboring in earnest—he’d learned from Charlie how vulnerable a horse was on the rare occasion it was off its feet—and Charlie moving about like a shadow, unspeaking except to murmur occasionally to Maia, animated and seemingly tireless, doing whatever it was he needed to do.

  Finally, after nearly twelve hours, Maia presented the world with a spindly little bay colt with a black mane and tail and a white blaze from his forehead down over his nose, who immediately wobbled upright on his matchstick legs and staggered a few steps before toppling over beside his weary mother, who pulled herself to her feet, inspected him thoroughly, and began to clean him vigorously. And Chris, beside himself with amazement, was still whispering.

  “Charlie? He’s okay, isn’t he?”

  “Better than okay,” Charlie said, as the little guy began to nurse. “I’d say perfect.”

  “It’s a colt. Heston said if it was a colt…”

  It was the first time he’d thought of Heston since he’d left him. He realized he had no idea where his stepfather was, whether he’d succeeded in his lunatic mission or given up and come home, or whether the volcano had opened its maw like a comic book character and swallowed him whole. He also realized he didn’t care.

  “I know,” Charlie said. “Come here now and give me a hand.”

  Maia was still cleaning the little colt, who occasionally squeaked in protest when her tongue got too rough. Charlie showed Chris how to check the afterbirth for tears before disposing of it. He’d also wanted the boy out of the stall until the colt had finished nursing, then he motioned him back inside the enclosure.

  Moving very slowly, Chris followed the instructions Charlie had given him weeks ago in preparation for this moment. He talked softly to Maia, just as he always did, praising her for the wonderful job she’d done. Warily, she seemed to be keeping one eye on the colt even as she nudged Chris with her nose in the old familiar way, then began nibbling at his jeans pockets looking for sugar.

  Still soothing her, Chris gave her the sugar and a couple of carrots, then, hardly daring to breathe, he moved toward the colt, running his hands over the little guy, touching him everywhere. Still watchful, Maia seemed to approve. When Chris looked up at Charlie, his eyes were twinkling, and he too nodded his approval.

  “Okay, now,” he said. “Come on out and let mother and son have some quiet time. You can come back in an hour and repeat what you’ve just done. You’ll do that every day. Maia already considers you family. Soon the colt will, too.”

  Reluctant to let the moment end, Chris did as he was told. In a rare moment of affection, Charlie put his arm around his shoulder as they walked back to the house.

  “I don’t know about you, but I’m thinking of hotcakes and sausage and fresh orange juice and maybe a side of home fries…” he said.

  Chris ate as if he hadn’t eaten in days. He felt as if he were floating. For the first time in a long time, something had gone right.

  7

  Elysium

  For the next few days, Chris’s world devolved down to Maia and the colt. Every hour he visited them, repeating the ritual Charlie had shown him immediately after the colt was born.

  Sometimes he would run a soft brush over the colt’s back. Other times he would pick up his feet, all the time talking reassuringly to the colt and to Maia. The next time he would repeat these motions, then set a towel or a small blanket on the colt’s back so that when the time came he would accept a saddle. Charlie had made a special baby halter, and he would put the colt’s head in that for a few minutes, waiting a little longer each time before removing it, until the colt accepted it.

  “What you’re doing is known as imprinting,” Charlie explained. “You’re allowing mother and son to bond, but you’re making sure you and the colt bond, too. You’re family now. Any idea what you’ll name him?”

  Focused on the colt, Chris shook his head.

  “Didn’t think so,” Charlie said, moving off to leave the two of them alone. He had one more foal to deliver in the coming weeks; Chris was on his own now. “When he’s ready, he’ll tell you.”

  A less perceptive kid might have wondered what that meant. Chris accepted it. He’d also decided to accept, or at least not think about, whatever dynamic was taking place among the adults. He’d been trying to find a way to talk to his mother, but didn’t have the words for it. Maybe, as she’d told Charlie, she’d take some action once the starship returned.

  Or maybe, Chris thought, it wouldn’t even be necessary. Maybe Heston would starve to death poking at that volcano. Or maybe the volcano would finally have enough and poke back. He almost wished it would.

  At this point in his young life, however, he’d decided he preferred horses to humans. Horses didn’t keep secrets, or boss you around. They were what they appeared to be.

  The next day he led Maia out to the paddock for the first time since the birth, the colt following her. The little guy’s reaction to the sunlight and all that wide open space was something wondrous to behold.

  At first he balked in the doorway, his long legs stiff, head thrown back, as if there were some actual physical barrier preventing him from moving. But seeing his mother make the transition into this alien environment, he started forward. A splash of sunlight fell across the white blaze on his forehead, and he startled, bunching his hooves together suddenly and leaping like a goat. Turning back to look at him, Chris laughed out loud.

  The noise startled the colt a second time, and he bolted, and was soon tearing around the paddock like a wild thing. The two yearlings looked down their noses at the new arrival, forgetting they had once been as amazed at everything as he was.

  “I showed them!” The sound of Heston’s voice was little more than background noise to Chris now. He had no idea when his stepfather had returned, and didn’t care. “Wait until those Starfleet engineers see the new readings. Evacuate us, give us another parcel of land as far away from the city as the Neworlders would have us? I don’t think so!”

  A few days later, when the starship returned and scanned the homestead from orbit, the engineers did indeed find that the water table had risen and the fault lines they had discovered on their last visit had apparently disappeared. The captain sent a landing party with tricorders to survey the entire sector, including the volcano, which showed some recent activity, but no sign of human intervention. Heston had done what he had said he would do, then dismantled his work so that no one could prove it. There was nothing Starfleet or the Elysium Council could do but let him be.

  Chris avoided his stepfather for as long as he could, knowing a confrontation was inevitable. It wasn’t easy. Possessed of a strange manic energy, Heston seemed to be everywhere except the barn, which was where Chris took refuge, working with the colt, grooming him, helping Charlie with the others. He would sneak into the kitchen when no one else was around, grab something from the food dispenser, and hurry out again. His schoolwork was forgotten. He went back to sleeping beside Maia’s stall. Preoccupied with work, worry about Heston, and her growing pregnancy, his mother seemed not to notice. But Heston did, and went looking for him.

  “You should have had more faith in me,” the big man began, not bothering with pleasantries. Chris was grooming the colt, and didn’t even look up. “Maybe I was a little harsh with you, but I knew what I was doing. It took me twice as long to dismantle what I’d done without you around.”

  “What you did was dangerous,” Chris said evenly, currying the colt in long, steady strokes. “And against the law. The Council said—”

  “To hell with the Council!” Heston growled, forcibly controlling his voice in case Charlie was around; he was still loud enough to make several of the horses lay their ears back. “Sometimes regulations are wrong. Did I solve the problem or didn’t I?”

  “You did,” Chris answered reluctantly. />
  “Then I’ll tell you this much, Goody Two-Shoes…” Heston abandoned any attempt at civility; his voice took on that all-too-familiar threatening tone again. “You show me up one more time, it’s going to cost you. You’re only raising that colt; I haven’t said you can keep him. You keep up this defiant attitude, that’s the least it’s going to cost you!”

  If Heston felt any embarrassment at bullying a twelve-year-old, it wasn’t apparent. He strode away without giving Chris a chance to respond. It was the last meaningful conversation they would ever have.

  The little colt with the white blaze grew and flourished. The challenge was finding a name for him.

  “We could call him Blaze,” Chris suggested to Charlie one late afternoon as they watched him try out his long legs in the paddock, the rays of the setting sun giving him a shadow several times his size. Whatever the dynamic among the adults, he decided, they could solve it for themselves. He needed Charlie’s wisdom to raise the colt right; he would concentrate on that.

  “Maybe,” Charlie said quietly. Unlike most adults, Charlie could spend long periods of time just being quiet, not needing to fill the time with talk. “There’s no hurry, though. Take your time.”

  As they watched, the colt startled at something—a shadow, a sound only he could hear—leapt into the air and raced around like a mad thing, then skidded to a stop and cocked his head to one side, ears and tail flicking, as if he was trying to remember something. He shook his head, and then did something Chris had never seen a horse do before.

  “Well, I’ll be…” Charlie said. “This little guy is a natural dancer!”

  “How about Dancer?” Chris suggested, but Charlie put a hand on his arm to silence him.

  “Just watch,” he said.

  They did. The little horse made moves, however inexpertly, that most horses had to be trained to for years. He waltzed, he sidestepped, he glided, then changed direction and began to strut, picking up his hooves and placing them down again delicately, all with a look of utter concentration on his face, as if it was the only way he could get those four long legs to work in coordination.