The Pegasus Dilemma

By Andrew Birden

Jayme never asked to be here, but here she was. Graduation, end of school, become an adult, start the beginning of the rest of your life. Nowhere in that list did it say she had to kidnap an intelligent flying horse, but here she was.

Twenty years ago, no one in Conover had ever seen a flying horse. 

It was during one of those terrible storms that come through the area every so often, nor’easters they call them. They say these terrible winter storms happen because Maine is so close to the coast, and that makes sense. Like a winter hurricane, the remains of churning Atlantic storms would crash through the region, dropping snow at rates that local weather alerts more rightly measure in feet per hour rather than inches, and the winds can rage like a tornado, and thunder will force its way through the muffled wall of swirling snow. 

The winter snowstorms two decades ago had been especially terrible, and the one that February night was the worst that anyone alive could remember. During the cleanup that followed, some town kids discovered a herd of wild pegasi, which was the term the town settled on after debating pegasuses, pegasides as possibilities for months. Where they came from, no one knew. The volunteer librarian, Mrs. Levesque, said it was almost as if they’d stumbled out of the wardrobe, but few of the locals understood her reference.

They were like five great injured birds that an angry sky had flung to the ground, one female and four males. Heck, no one in the world had seen a horse with wings except in tales the people would tell their children or through the gimcrackery of plastic fantasy beasts with Made in China embossed in the surface. But it was no longer a fantasy. There they were, collapsed on the ground in a gravel pit a few miles outside of town, breath coming in and out like a bellows. 

The Festival of the Winged Horse now takes place every year in the town of Conover, which had been a mill town in the far northern woods of Maine clinging to the two-lane artery of Route 11, joining a string of towns like Eagle Lake, Oxbow, and Ashland.

Before the Festival of the Winged Horse, the townsfolk’s income emerged from a little potato farming and a lot of forestry, for northern Maine has one of the largest working forests in the country. The woods had been the source of income for the company towns along the main road for three hundred years. Back in the day, they were all company towns in that part of Maine. Rough men and their women brought mills and eventually railroads to the region, and they worked the forests, operated the great machines in the mills and transported the logs along the river and rails to market. They built the houses that became the company towns out there. And like all company towns, the townsfolk in Conover bought their food from the company store, and they raised their kids to be company town kids.

In Jayme’s mind, young people in Conover came in two varieties. One type became tired and resigned at a young age and labored in the woods, the fields, or the mill or ended up hauling wood along road, rail, and river. Jayme believed the other variety would find a way out of the trap their parents had built disguised as a town, and they would leave.

She counted herself in that last variety. Sitting here, she knew this was the last time she would have to be in this town. Part of the money from the pegasi went to a scholarship for all the children of the town. Once this day was done, once she watched the damn festival for one last time, the scholarship would allow her to attend college in Fort Kent or Bangor, and she could go anywhere at that point. The important thing was that she would never have to be a part of the festival again.

Conover escaped the mundane fate of company towns. They broke the bondage of the big forest companies on their land. While the mill towns around them kept up with the drudgery of planting, harvesting, delimbing, and selling the pulp, the windfall that emerged from those pegasi in Conover changed the history of the town.

Nandy Carmichael provided the dry hay and his barn as temporary shelter for the pegasi that crashed, beginning his claim to responsibility and ownership of the strange beasts. He bedded them down in his nearby barn for the night. In the morning they found a large egg in his barn, the mare resting beside the ash-colored ovoid. A few months later, it hatched and a foal emerge, clumsy wings of down and stumbling around the nest the mare had formed in the hay. 

Twenty years ago, it was Nandy who came up with the idea of selling the foal. While everyone was in wonder at the pegasi, Nandy Carmichael was trying to figure out a way to make his mark on the world. It was he who suggested they keep the pegasi, and then they would sell the foal at a big auction as soon as it was old enough.

And that’s what they did. Word soon spread across the region that Conover had a herd, or was it a flock, of flying horses. Nandy started charging a fee for the sightseers to view the horses, and he set up a pegasi camera that was one of the top draws on YouTube that year. The looky loos would wait in a line that meandered down Main Street before entering the barn to view the mare and the egg she guarded. 

While the first auction was organizing, the townsfolk quickly learned to keep an eye on these flying horses. They were sneaky, and they had to be forced to do everything. When the lines of sightseers formed, the town told them the reason for the guards was to protect the pegasi from horse thieves and animal rights advocates. That wasn’t the reason. Sure, there were the occasional protesters from PETA. However, the local folks had learned that those sorts of activists would quickly find reason to leave. For thieves, a good security system and neighbors keeping an eye out for each other would discourage petty criminals.

The guards weren’t to protect the pegasi, but to protect the people. 

Once the pegasi recovered from the disorientation and exhaustion from surviving the storm, they turned out to be an ornery species. They were completely uncooperative and all attempts at taming them failed. Two volunteers died trying to train the wild animals. Nandy just stopped trying after that. He and the town council figured, if they could take the foal from the herd, it would be young enough that they could train it themselves to be friendly to humans.

They were right, as it turned out.

Through Nandy’s efforts and planning, the town sold that first foal for an enormous sum, some would call an astronomical sum, at the public auction. After that, the town used most of the funds to build a giant geodesic dome over the nearby gravel pit where the herd first appeared. The dome was like a gigantic lid over a pressure cooker the pit formed. They installed razor wire to the underside of the dome along the lengths of the titanium struts. They filled the spaces between the struts with more razor wire. The dome blocked the prisoners with sharp blades that could slice deep into the flesh of anyone or any animal who tried to fly away. The town eventually started calling the gravel pit the Thorny Paddock, or just the Paddock.

The townsfolk forced the pegasi into the crude habitat, and the large wooden doors closed with a crash. After that, the townsfolk, led by Nandy, kept the pegasi alive by dropping food between the metal bars of the dome. The feed, hay and and other necessities would drop to the floor of the gravel pit where the herd could reach it. 

The pegasi could not escape. Each season when the mare laid an egg that later hatched, a small group of young people would force their way into the Thorny Paddock to subdue the herd and retrieve the foal.

The community started holding a town party during that time, much like a harvest celebration. It took only a few years before the celebration became a festival, and the capture of the foal from the pegasi became a rite of passage for high school graduates in the town.

Nandy shared the money from selling the foals by hiring the entire town to join this new industry. The townsfolk quickly quit their jobs at the mill and started working for Nandy. The town created a scholarship that guaranteed all the town’s children would join in the festival, for it promised a future to all who helped with the capture of the foal, whether it was college or trade school.

That was twenty years ago, and everyone knows that sterilized story.

This story begins twenty years later, on the day of the Festival of the Winged Horse. Jayme sat with the other high school seniors, preparing for the main event of the day, which was to enter the Thorny Paddock, fend off the pegasi herd and force their way into the cave the pegasi used as a stable, and then take the foal. They’d been training for it for the past few months as part of their PE credit for graduation.

It was an odd rite of passage. In other rural towns, children became adults when they went off to hunt a wild animal, climb a local mountain, participate in a traditional ceremony, or jumped off a train trestle to plunge into a local river. But in Conover, it was all about helping the town. Everyone dedicated themselves to raising the pegasi, maintaining the great dome that covered Nandy’s gravel pit, and guarding the entrance to prevent any winged horses escaping. The five young people eating and imbibing at the table, each drank the ritual beverage that commemorated the big illicit party that happened the night the pegasi appeared two decades ago. 

Jayme, however, wasn’t sure why she was here. The other four teens were friends of hers, which she’d known all her life, and they accepted her reluctance without understanding her position. They weren’t going to make her do anything directly against the pegasi, but she couldn’t help feeling dirty being even a small part of the bizarre class requirement. The sugary drink tasted a little bitter, it seemed.

She was unhappy. She sat with her classmates, dressed in their colorful jumpsuits, enjoying a festival drink before heading to the Thorny Paddock to pick up the foal. She stared with sullen eyes at the mug of this year’s feature drink, Horse Piss, which was just a combination of a fruit juice and a variety of grain alcohol. Last year the town called it Stallion Sweat, and the year before they called the alcoholic beverage Palomino Reign Drops. There was talk of calling it Liquid Feathers next year, because if there was one thing that was true about the Festival of the Winged Horse, it was the best party in northern Maine. The teenagers were supposed to be drinking the alcohol-free version, but it was an open secret that someone always switched out the kiddie versions with the hard stuff. 

Jayme sat at a wooden bench in a roped off section at the center of the town square. A crowd of festival goers surrounded the high school seniors to watch the event unfold. Many in the crowd were her neighbors. Many were people from away who would return to the town each year to participate in the fun, while others would come and not return for whatever reasons. 

Her father stood at the corner of the enclosed area and watched her silently. He knew she did not want to be a part of this, but it was the way it had to be.

Cliff Donar nudged her with his elbow. “Have a drink Jayme! Our town loves us. Let’s party!” His shouting was mostly lost, because everyone was shouting, jostling and drinking.  

He frowned when Jayme didn’t respond, and leaned in close to speak into her ear. “Come on, Jayme. You’re as bad as that Jacob kid that went nuts last year. You don’t want to end up like him.” 

She shook her head and took another drink of the intoxicating beverage. She really wasn’t looking forward to being drunk, but she supposed it would numb the senses of the people who participated. Soon the 18-wheeler flatbed would roll up and the young people would take a ride out to the Thorny Paddock.

There was movement on the stage. A man trotted up the steps onto the raised platform. The crowd cheered. On his head he wore a giant hat, an ornamental headdress, that formed the head of a white horse. Strapped to his back and arms was a harness that supported the huge wings that completed his costume. Except for the harness supporting the fake wings, he was shirtless, and his muscles shown in the morning sun. It was Jackson Peterson, who’d graduated a few years back and had taken over the job of emcee after his father had died five years ago. Everyone agreed he was just as good at it as his father. 

“Welcome Ladies and Gentlemen. Welcome to the Twentieth Annual Festival of the Winged Horse. I can see that our champions are finishing up their traditional drink. I might remind folks that the reason the players are drinking is because twenty years ago, in fact twenty years ago today, a group of young people toasted themselves after saving the pegasi that had crashed that night.”

As Jayme’s father told the story, it was much different than the tale of selfless civic duty that the cosplayer on the stage was detailing. Her father said a bunch of kids had sneaked off to have a pit party at the back of Carmichael's gravel pit. It was something that young people did in all parts of the country. In some places the resident teens called them beach parties, or tailgate parties, or camp parties. In Conover and the towns around there, they called them pit parties. Kids would go to a lowland area in the woods, out of view of adults, and everyone would party, often with a fire. It was standard fare for any rural teenager in Maine. 

Meteorologists predicted the big storm would be coming the next morning. Work in the forests had come to a halt and the woodsmen had retreated from the forest. Even the schools announced they would be closed the next day. Everyone was at home, bored to tears as they waited for the violent weather and the inevitable chore of dealing with the new fallen snow. And with a nor’easter, there would be downed utility lines and dangerous drifts that needed clearing.

Knowing the next day would be a snow day, Jayme’s dad and his friends stole some of their parents’ liquor and convened for a hastily planned party before the storm. Freddy Carmichael stole one of his dad’s rigs and took his friends to the back of Carmichael’s gravel pit for a bonfire and a party. A slab of granite jutted  through the wall of the pit, forming the ceiling of a cave that Mr. Carmichael used as a big open barn for his business. This was where they gathered. Dad said it was a great party, but it ended in a way that changed everything.

 They were drinking another toast to themselves for their cleverness in having a midweek hoopla when there was a great crashing sound. A small rock slide came tumbling down outside the garage with multiple audible thuds and animal cries.  The partygoers rushed outside the cave.

Jayme took another sip of the sweet drink. The announcer recounted the much cleaner tale to the audience as she recalled her father’s story, which he’d told like revealing an uncomfortable secret. 

That night, the wind had risen, and the anticipated snowstorm started early. 

Pa said no one had ever seen a pegasus, much less five of them. The beasts were a mess, but everyone could see the great wings that were tangled and tattered and just seemed to be everywhere. Once the intoxicated teens recovered from the shock of seeing such strange creatures, they managed to capture the winged horses in the drunken chaos that followed. The pegasi, according to her father, were so exhausted they didn’t put up much of a fight. 

Afterwards, Carmichael’s son called his father to help them figure it all out. As the storm built in strength, word soon spread across the small town that some high school seniors were in trouble at the gravel pit. Four-wheel drive trucks equipped with plows went out in the snowstorm. In that part of Maine, plows were a standard truck accessory. Over the course of the next few hours, everyone forgot about any blame for having an unsanctioned party as the townsfolk stared flabbergasted at the sight of the tired winged horses.

Jayme emerged from her rumination, staring at the condensation beading the red plastic cup she held in front of her. On the stage, the announcer in the Pegasus costume continued. “The rules are simple, you will all ride the ceremonial tractor rig to the Thorny Paddock and enter the stable. You will overcome the resistance of the wild untamed beasts within, and return with a winged foal. When you return, you will all be Champions of the Wings, a designation that every adult strives for in Conover. You will take your place in raising and caring for the pegasi, as well. And, as everyone knows, your efforts will serve the town, just as it did twenty years ago.”

Cliff sat beside her. He said in a worried tone, “It’s certainly going to save the town this time, unless we don’t bring a live one back.”

Jayme snorted in disgust and took a long drink. The last festival had been a disaster. At the nineteenth festival, the champions had done something wrong. The foal had ended up dead, and one of the teenagers had nearly died. This year, the aging mare had not left an egg in her nest, so there was no reason for a festival, or so they thought. The townsfolk had recently learned the pegasi had hidden the foal from the observers peering through the sharp wire of the dome that covered the gravel pit. It wasn’t that the mare had not laid an egg, it was that the pegasi had hidden the egg in some way, hatched the foal, and kept it hidden until the filly was able to roam around the paddock as a weanling. The town quickly assembled the festival committee. The past year had been a tough one, because the town had to refund much of the money they’d gained in the sale of the doomed colt at the last festival. Around town, everyone knew it was essential they retrieve a young foal.

The cosplayer on the stage continued. “I'd like to personally welcome the young men and women who have stepped up to the challenge of this festival.” The chicken feathers in the man’s wings rustled as he gestured with his right hand to the roped off area where the teens were drinking. “As you know, Conover has become a jewel on the Crown of Maine, and the successful conclusion to the festival means that jewel will continue to shine up here.

“The rules of the challenge are simple. You will enter into the Thorny Paddock, overcome the resistance of the wild untamed beasts within, and return with a winged foal."

An 18-wheeler hauling a flatbed pulled up, pausing to idle in front of Conover’s only bank. 

"In a few moments, our champions will take the ceremonial ride on the flatbed to the Thorny Paddock. Once there, the Festival gatekeepers, Mark and Beatrice Bouchard – let’s give the brother and sister a thank you for their contribution to this festival – they will allow you to enter the paddock, and then you will retrieve the town’s foal. We are confident that this year will renew the Festival of the Winged Horse after last year’s disappointing results."

Jayme felt like spitting. Jackson talked as if the disaster were just a canceled ski meet.  

The year before, the traditional group had returned from capturing the foal, and all they had was the carcass, sad and lifeless. The pegasi had also injured one of the boys, Jacob Carmichael, grandson of Nandy. The festival officials had to rush him to the hospital. The announcer that year, dressed in the same damn costume he was wearing now, had tried to keep the town party going, but everyone knew the festival was over.  

She’d run to the Thorny Paddock, climbed the metal scaffolding to gain a view between the vertices of the geodesic dome, and she saw the flying horses during the bloody aftermath. 

They mourned. The mare, much older now after 18 years, stood in the center of the paddock on the hard and rocky ground. Her head hung low, and she was motionless. The other pegasi swirled around her, flying and galloping and screeching loud neighs. They’d fly to the wall of the gravel pit and crash into it, battering themselves on the rocks. Their bodies would tumble down the stony wall, scraping their feathers loose and leaving streaks of blood. The mare had raised her head. Shook herself before taking a few steps forward and leaping upwards, flapping her wings as hard as she could. She flung herself upwards and into the razor wire, entangling herself and cutting her flesh in vicious rents. 

Her body dangled from the ceiling for two days before a work crew from the town could lower her back to the ground. 

She recovered after months of worry by the townsfolk, and several debates on whether to send a veterinarian into the paddock. They couldn’t find a veterinarian willing to risk their life, so they just waited. She lived, however, climbing up from where she rested, healing like she hadn’t done since the first night the pegasi arrived. Eventually the herd again began eating the feed the townsfolk dropped from above. 

Jayme returned several times to her vantage point to see between the vertices of the dome with her class. New meaning filled the looks Jayme saw from the pegasi. They watched the entrance constantly, circled the air in a steady regular patrol beneath the thorny umbrella of the dome. 

She’d asked her father about the behavior, and that was when she learned The Thing That Nobody Says. The pegasi were as smart as the townsfolk, maybe smarter, and they resented being slaves.

She wondered what the pegasi were like in their homeland, wherever the ones they had trapped had come from. She imagined great herds of the pegasi moving through the skies of a mountainous landscape, swooping down through mesas and cliffs. In her vision, the pegasi were so thick in the sky that a passing herd would coat the ground below with the feathered shadows of their wings.

She heard about towns that would have celebrations of harvest and such, whether it was a bear hunt, a potato blossom festival, fishing tournaments or pitting teams of sled dogs against each other in a race. The horrid thing was that in every town’s festival, there was someone or some group who would ruin the good time. Hunters who would torture a bear with traps, church groups that would invite hucksters to run the midway, people who would release invasive fish into the waterways, or a musher who behaved like a sociopath on the trail. 

The intelligence of the pegasi made it different for Jayme. Every teenager had to agree to the scholarship conditions, or they got no scholarship. She read the rules of the scholarship carefully, and she thought she’d found a way where she would not actually be a participant in such a horrid civic nightmare, yet still receive the benefit of the scholarship. All she had to do was go with the other young people and go through the gates of the Thorny Paddock. The language of the contract did not actually say she had to participate in the capture of the foal. 

The 18-wheeler roared to life and pulled around the courtyard of the festival grounds with Beatrice and Mark bouncing on the steel springs of the driver’s seat. The flatbed pulled up beside the five young people standing in the roped off area. As the crowd cheered, the soon-to-be adults staggered to the wagon, some of them swaying, much to the delight of the audience.

Cliff hammed it up a bit, waving before he climbed into the wagon with the others. Jayme climbed in last, shaking her head.

The truck lurched forward, and the young people held on to the ties on the flatbed. They’d done it any number of times working at the paddock this year and delivering the feed for the captured animals. It had been over the course of this past year, as Jayme cared for the animals that she learned their habits, confirming what she had learned of their intelligence. When she confronted Beatrice and Mark about it, they just told her she was seeing things. The animals were no smarter than dogs, probably barely aware that they were in a pen because it had been so long since they’d flown in the sky as wild animals. She’d argued with anyone and everyone. She tried to have conversations with her father after he told her the truth, but he refused to talk about it. He just said it was what the town did, and he couldn’t stop it. End of argument. She even tried to start a petition to free the pegasi, but no one would sign it.

The income was just too valuable to the community. It gave everyone good paying jobs that didn’t require that much work. Plus, the festival was such a great event. Sure, what the horses did looked like they might be smart, but no one ever heard them talk, they never wrote anything, they couldn’t build things. They were just like fish in an aquarium, it seemed.

The semi came to a branch in the main road. The tote road to the paddock went to the southwest. It was a smaller road, but well worn from years of hauling supplies to the Thorny Paddock.  The young people listened to music in their headphones or shouted about what they would do now that they were adults.

Cliff claimed he was going to start his own fertilizer business, selling the manure from the pegasi horses. “I’ll make a million, because everyone will want to buy flying horse shit. You watch.” 

Natalie was going to join her mother at the town office, filing property tax reports. “Then I’ll be set for life.” She said this smiling.

Corey Davos was going to join the crew that repaired the paddock, welding and replacing worn beams in the dome. Hailey just wanted to marry Davos and raise her children. “It’s not always about the job. Besides, Corey will be just fine making enough money for us to live comfortably.”

“And what about you, Jayme?” Cliff asked.

“I’m getting out of here. As soon as we are done with this, I am packing my stuff and I’m heading south to Portland, maybe New York. Hopefully, I can find a place where I can live and don’t feel like I’m helping to ruin the planet or the souls of the people around me. God, I can’t stand it here.”

One of the girls laughed and it sounded forced. Cliff slapped Jayme on the shoulder as he said, “Well don’t hold back, Jayme. Tell us how you really feel.” He laughed too, but it seemed more natural coming from him.

Beside her, Natalie whispered, “I don’t see you turning the scholarship down, Miss High and Mighty, even if you are doing the least you can do. You may think you’re not participating, but even that choice has consequences.”

Jayme didn’t object. She was accepting the funds from the scholarship. How else would she have enough to leave this place? 

The ground was sloping down along the side of the tote road as they entered the approach to the gravel pit. The walls rose quickly on either side until they were driving through a passage with walls high enough that they blocked the afternoon sun. They rounded one last turn and came to the great doors to the Thorny Paddock. 

The truck came to a stop.

The opening to the gravel pit was like a set of giant teeth, connecting the right side of the passage to the left. Made from reinforced laminate lumber and cement footings, the wall forming the gateway rose straight up until it connected with the curve of the perimeter of the geodesic dome. Jayme could see the shiny polished surface of the rigid struts peeking over the top of the wall and the gleam of the razor wire.

Mark had climbed down from the truck and was pulling spears off the flatbed. The spears were long ones that were more like pikes. He counted out five spears, pausing on the last one and peering at Jayme.

“I don’t need a spear.” Jayme spoke with defiance in her voice.

Mark responded, “I’m disappointed in you, Jayme. You know this is the debt you owe growing up in this community. The Festival is paying your college tuition. All this is still on you.”

Beatrice shook her head, dismissing Jayme’s disapproval. “Leave it alone, Mark. We don’t need another meltdown like that Carmichael kid. They just don’t understand that people will endure the worst of guilt to have a good life.”

The older woman gestured at the others, “Come get your spears.”

Jayme just shook her head, crossed her arms over her chest. “I don’t even want to watch, but the Contract states I have to enter the paddock. It does not state I have to do anything else. My reasons are my own, and if the people I grew up with can’t understand that, then it just shows I’m right about this town.”

“It’s cool. It’s cool.” Cliff said, reassuring no one. “There’s no time for another debate.”

Hailey hopped down from the trailer and walked towards the door. “Yes. We got this.”

Davos came around the side of the flatbed and kissed Hailey before they joined Cliff and Natalie. Each took a spear from Mark. 

Shaking his head, Mark tossed a spear to Beatrice. The truck driver and his sister met at the middle of the heavy gate. Mark reached to a large keyring at his belt and removed a thick key. Beatrice had an identical key on her belt. They inserted their keys  into the gate and turned them, unlocking the gates with a large mechanical click. The two opened the wide doors like cowboys opening the gate of some huge western ranch. Each pulling one of the doors back, separating from each other. A darkened passage twenty feet wide revealed itself. The shadowed interior appeared dark in contrast to the bright sunshine before the door. Mark and Beatrice held their spears ready, watching the other end of the passage. The five teens stepped inside with the 

“Here’s the way it works,” began Mark as he kept his attention on the far opening.  “The pegasi are horses, and you stop a horse with a pointy stick. The only difference in this case is that you need to also point the stick up to the sky, because these horses fly. The pegasi are naturally aggressive, even if they don’t have hands. I need you four to take up positions like we trained in PE. As soon as your are ready, we’ll close the gates and go on to the next step. This is going to be a piece of cake.” 

Beatrice watched him for a second before sighing. Four teens took up their spears and hesitantly spread across the width of the passage. Jayme stepped to the side and leaned against the inner side of the gate. Her eyes adjusted, and she saw there was something on the ground, underneath the dirt floor. 

She started to poke it with her toe as the siblings closed the gateway and pocketed their keys. The only light came from in front of them. 

Jayme stopped investigating the thing at her feet as she heard movement towards the other end of the tunnel. There was enough light that she caught Hailey looking back at her, questioning. Then Hailey shrugged her shoulders and went down the darkened tunnel, leaving Jayme behind.

From Jayme’s point of view, she could see the light of the inner part of the dome. It made the access tunnel all the more dingy. She saw Mark, about thirty feet away, emerge into the dimmer light beneath the dome. The ground was just more of the gravel pit, dirt and stone. He turned and said, “Okay. By the numbers. First – ” Mark’s voice cut off with a yell. A clumping sound came next, as if hoofed feet had struck the ground and then leaped into the sky. Something hauled Mark upwards and out of sight. A huge blast of air came whooshing down the passage, and out of the gates, blowing past Jayme’s hair.

The teens cried out in surprise as Beatrice stepped forward.

“Mark, that wasn’t no peggy, was it? Don’t let them trick you, bro…Mark?” 

She emerged into the light outside the shadow of the tunnel. Turning in a circle with her spear ready. Something slithered down her shoulder, and she leaped away in instinctive revulsion. The sound of rope slipping through a knot, again the clumping sound happened, and then Beatrice was gone, an invisible something snatching upwards like the sinker of a broken fishing line. 

Two pegasi came into view from the sides, pivoting more sharply than a horse ever should. With a wave of their wings to complete the tight pivot, the two creatures started running across the flat ground, away from the four champions and Jayme. Ropes from the equine shoulders trailed behind them, coils rustling as they unraveled the connections to a net that was hidden beneath the teens. Rope was uncoiling at her feet, Jayme realized. It was the mound she had sensed. The last coil unwound and the ropes pulled a large net  hidden beneath the dirt at her feet. The net tripped the young people to the ground as the ropes became taut. The rope hauled the edge of the net forward from her feet, leaving Jayme standing, stunned at what was happening. The two pegasi dragged the net and Jayme’s childhood friends out of the passage inside the dome. They quickly trotted out of view somewhere inside the Thorny Paddock, the bundle of champions disappearing with screams and cries of pain.

Jayme stared. What the hell just happened? Pegasi don’t have hands. They can’t tie knots. Then she gritted her teeth, considered the spear leaning against the wagon, and strode through the gate without it. Her friends needed help.

The other side of the gateway was a short passage the designers had fashioned from metal ribs of galvanized steel overhead, creating the ceiling and walls. Beyond that, the structure of interlaced titanium and razor sharp steel rose above the gateway, rising up to the top of the gravel pit walls before spreading out into the geodesic structure that Nandy had built. The razor wire filled the interstices between the long titanium girders that 20 years of maintenance had held together. The pentagons, triangles and squares forming the structure framed pinpoints of light, and reminded her of staring through her mama’s old colander.

She stepped beyond the gateway, and was able to see more. The light was dim, but her eyes quickly adjusted to the pinpoint sources gleaming from the overhead dome. Her friends were not in sight, but she could hear them yelling. Two pegasi stallions harried Mark and Beatrice to Jayme’s left. To her right, she could see two other pegasi circling a spot in the flat surface of the bottom of the pit.

Directly across from her, she could see an opening in the opposite wall. It was the barn like cave she’d heard about all her life where the older adults had partied as kids and where the pegasi now stabled themselves.

There was movement, and she could see a man across the way, dressed in a long coat of some sort. He stepped forward silently, raised a crossbow to his shoulder and fired it. The bolt shot across the paddock and took Mark in the shoulder. He fell with a cry, dropping his spear. Beatrice screamed in rage at and let fly with her spear, which soared into the air, embedding itself into the shoulder of a flying pegasus. The winged horse fell from the overhead ceiling of thorns. Crashing to the ground and rolling over and over before coming to a rest in a tangled awkward heap. 

The second pegasus reared back as the man placed another bolt in his crossbow and fired with grim efficiency. The second bolt streaked towards Beatrice, but she ducked, snatching her brother’s spear as the bolt splintered against the rock wall.

Jayme could hear the voices of her friends. She realized they were in a hole or pit of some sort, and the other two horses were circling and menacing them. 

Jayme could see Beatrice was angry, but the older woman visibly suppressed it, as if realizing she needed more help than she could see right now. She grabbed her brother by the shoulders and started hauling him along the ground towards the entrance where Jayme stood.

She called out to Jayme. “Come on. Give me a hand here. We need to stop these stupid animals.”

Jayme stood still, not moving. 

“Come on, kid. We need to get Mark out of here and lock the gate. We can come back with reinforcements as soon as we get back to town.”

The man in the white cloak was walking towards them, crossbow aimed. He fired a bolt into the ground in front of Beatrice. She yelped, startled, and stopped moving. He hurried to reload another bolt as he walked rapidly across the paddock towards the injured pegasus. 

Jayme recognized him. It was the Carmichael kid. Jacob. The one who was hurt and freaked out last year. She could see the scar that ran down the left side of the front of his skull. Nobody talked about what happened that year, just like they didn’t talk about the intelligence of the pegasi. The party of champions had returned, but the foal was dead, and Jacob was bleeding from a cracked skull. Something had nearly torn his face off. No one would say what happened, how the foal had died. They only said a pegasi had kicked Jacob in the head. 

Afterwards he’d barely clung to life, and his family had nursed him for weeks. Eventually the wound healed awkwardly, leaving the scar. The crack in his skull caused his head to be all wonky, as if the halves of a coconut had been pressed together slightly misaligned. It was an odd wound, but within six months it had healed over. 

But his mind never recovered. 

He was unable to speak. When he tried to talk, the words just wouldn’t come. What did work, he discovered, was writing with his right hand. He was a left-handed person, but he found if he wrote with his right hand, as awkward as it seemed, he was able to write messages in text. Even with that small blessing, Jacob spent his days staring through the window of his room and little else. He would not speak, through text or any other way, about what had happened in the paddock.

Four months months after the accident, Jacob left town. Nine months later, watchers had seen that the mare, despite her injuries, had hatched another foal.

Apparently, he’d been living with the pegasi, helping them. Now he was threatening her and Beatrice. Jacob paused a moment. He kept the crossbow ready, but knelt on the bloody ground next to the dead Pegasus. He was sobbing silently before he threw himself back to his feet, staggering upwards and wheeling around. He dropped the crossbow to grab the spear that impaled the horse. Hands bloodied, he hauled the spear from the corpse and whirled to confront the two women. He rushed towards them, face in a rictus grimace but silent, raising the spear as if to strike.

“Hey, I didn’t do it! You can’t kill us, Jacob!” He kept coming, preparing to thrust it into Jayme’s guts.

The mare stepped in front of him, blocking his path.

He came to a sudden stop. He looked startled at the sudden appearance of the mare.

Jayme noticed movement to her left, and saw the young foal, watching from the wall of the gravel pit, the light was like early evening, and she could see that the foal was chestnut brown, and had a white star on his face.

“Yeah-yeah. You can’t kill us,” Beatrice agreed, a note of desperation in her voice.

Jacob moved to the right to go around the mare, but she shifted her stance, keeping her body between him and the women. He stood breathing hard, his gaze going from the dead pegasus to Beatrice and Jayme to the mare and finally to the foal.

A look of disgust crossed his face, as if someone were forcing him to deal with something unpleasant. He threw the spear to the ground.  

Another Pegasus glided in, backpedaling as the hooves touched ground and rearing back with a sweep of its great wings. The whoosh of the wind blew across Jayme’s face and goaded her to look around, trying to figure out a way to escape the situation.

Jacob was wearing the odd cloak, which she now realized he had formed from the feathers of the pegasi, but he had the remains of pants and a belt. There was a pouch hanging from the belt, and he reached for it. He pulled out a notepad and a pencil, and Jayme recalled the disability he suffered after the accident. She knew him of course. Like any small town, including Conover, everyone knew everyone. But she didn’t know him that well. She skipped a grade a few years earlier and he was with an older group. His grandfather being Nandy Carmichael also meant they moved in different social circles.

Jacob wrote on the notepad, and then he ripped the paper from the pad and threw it towards the two women.

Beatrice was looking Mark over, putting pressure on the wound in his shoulder, so Jayme reached for the wadded piece of paper, smoothing it out on her leg. It had a four-word sentence.

Give me the keys.

Jayme read it aloud. Saying to Beatrice, “He wants the keys. He must mean the keys to the paddock.”

“No way. We have to get Mark away from these animals. That crazy mare is going to keep Jacob from killing us for some reason. I don’t care why. Let’s just get out of here.” She clambered to her knees and tried to lift Mark by his shoulders. He groaned in pain. 

“Come on, Jayme. What else can we do?”

“I don’t think we should do anything.” Jayme kept her eyes on the mare, which watched her in silence.   

The second pegasus cantered forward and flapped his wings, lifting and then alighting beside Beatrice. He raised up on his rear legs, wings poised with his hooves a mere 18 inches above Beatrice’s head. She screamed and shuffled back in the dirt, leaving her brother between herself and the threatening stallion.

Beatrice stammered for a moment, seemed to realize there was no way to run away. “Okay-okay. We’re staying right here. You want the keys, Jacob? I can give you the keys.” The man in the cloak did not respond to her words. He just waited.

Jayme looked around, realization dawning. “They are trying to escape. Jacob is helping them to escape.”

She spoke to the man. “Jacob, I can help.” He didn’t respond, and she said it again. He still didn’t respond. It was like he couldn’t hear her words and he didn’t even look at her face. He finished reloading the crossbow and he pointed it at Beatrice.

Jayme whispered, “Give him the keys!”

Beatrice reach to her belt and removed her ornate key. The pegasus quieted suddenly, and even the two that were guarding the pit with her friends in it seemed to turn and watch the key when it came into view. She fiddled at Mark’s belt and found the other key. 

The foal, stepped forward from the wall of the canyon hesitantly, curious about the action. The mare snorted loudly and turned her great head to take in the foal.  

The young horse stopped at the sound.

Jayme wondered what they were going to do once they made it out of the paddock. The wings of the foal seemed much too small compared to the size of its body.  There were not proper feathers on those wings yet. It would not be able to fly on its own once through the gate.

Beatrice stretched out her arm with the keys in it, and Jacob stepped forward and took them, holding the crossbow awkwardly. The stallion pegasus whinnied in triumph. Then Jacob pointed the crossbow at Beatrice again and gestured with his head towards the granite overhang, a leftover from digging the gravel pit, that formed the large shallow cave the pegasi used as a stable. 

Jacob smiled and backed away, gesturing with the crossbow for them to go first. 

Beatrice hissed. “Help me, you fool. If we go along with them, maybe we can escape. You take his feet.” 

Jayme looked at her in disgust, but she complied. Grabbing Mark under his ankles and heaving him up.  He was a heavy man, and it was obvious that Beatrice was carrying the heaviest part. Mark’s head lolled against Beatrice’s chest as they staggered towards the cave. The mare stepped carefully behind them, Jacob following with the crossbow barely lowered. The foal stepped forward and ran up to the mare, who lowered her head to reassure the pegasi infant. The behavior reminded Jayme of her Aunt Sissy’s toddler, clinging to her skirts and staring in wonder at the world around him. The foal was clearly excited, but the no-nonsense attitude of the adults around her was restraining an exuberance that Jayme sensed just waiting to burst forth with curiosity and questions.

“Can’t you see it, Beatrice?” They stumbled along with Mark between them, a clumsy load.

“See what? Lift higher, kid. He’s friggin’ heavy.”

“The pegasi are organized. They set up these traps. They aren’t stupid beasts.”

“Yes, they are. They are horses with wings. You are just seeing things. Jacob has trained them somehow.”

“Really? Trained them to set a trap? Dig pits? Ambush us? You ever hear of a bunch of horses ambushing someone? Quit fooling yourself. You and our friggin’ town. You know these animals are smarter than horses.”

“So what?” Beatrice said emphatically, “They sure as heck ain’t human.”

“We shouldn’t be keeping them. We should never have kept them” Jayme said it as a statement.

“They keep the town fed and we all get to have nice things.”

“It’s immoral. It’s like keeping slaves.”

“So you say.”

They were struggling towards the cave entrance and passing close to the pit that contained her friends.

“You guys okay?” Jayme called out.

“Jayme, is that you?” It was Cliff’s voice.

“Yes, it’s me. Is anyone hurt?”

“We’re okay, but these horses won’t let us out of this pit.  How did they dig this hole? What’s going on up there?”

“I think Jacob is trying help the pegasi escape.”

“Jacob? He’s up there?” One of the winged horses circling the pit stomped his front hoof on the ground. Knocking some stones into the pit. “Hey!” came a cry that was Natalie’s voice.” 

“I don’t think they want us talking,” Jayme said. “Just stay put. I’ll figure something out.” The second horse at the pit seemed to confer with his partner, and then he leaped into the air to then glide in front of the two women and their wordless captor. Three pegasi entered the cave while Jayme and Beatrice continued to navigate across the Thorny Paddock, hauling the unconscious Mark.

Inside was an oblong near-rectangular room with rough stone walls. There was 20-year old graffiti on the walls. Several proclamations of love, insults and crude images. On the left of the entrance was an area with the remaining lengths of rope that Jacob used for the ambush. 

“How did you survive in here?” Her voice tinged in wonder as she stared at Jacob. He must have taken all this rope with him when he’d entered the paddock months ago, she thought.

Further along the left side of the cave was a low bookshelf. It sat beside a bedroll that was obviously Jacob’s place to sleep.  There was camping gear and other equipment set out neatly on a tarp beside the sleeping bag. Food packets and other camping necessities were laid out in rows and columns on the tarp.

 “Where’d all this stuff come from?”

She heard a tearing sound, and turned as Jacob handed her another note. 

I came here when the Mare had the new egg. I ordered the gear online before I left.

On the right was an area with straw bedding on the ground for the other pegasi.  In the corner at the back of the chamber was the nest.

Jayme had never seen a pegasus nest, unlike every adult in town who had taken their turn retrieving a foal at the festival. The nest matched the descriptions she’d heard. It was large, a round bowl-like structure in the corner, the straw more carefully stacked than piled. The foal trotted over to the nest, hopping lightly over the edge like it were a miniature vertical in a competition for baby horses.

The mare went to stand beside the nest, but she didn’t follow the offspring into its protective environ. Instead, she turned and gestured at her companions with her ears and a flick of her feathers. The other pegasi moved with wings held tightly to their sides, lining up beside bundles of rope or straps that were set at four regular intervals.

The two stallions accompanying the mare took positions at the bundles closest to the entrance. 

Beatrice and Jayme finished hauling Mark across the floor and dropped him on Jacob’s bedroll. Jacob, in the meantime, scribbled on the notepad and handed it to Jayme.

Do not interfere. Follow me when I point.

Jacob began lifting the first bundle of rope over the back of the front-most pegasi.  The winged equine held still as Jacob began draping lengths of rope carefully across the long back. Jayme realized the tangles of rope were actually harnesses, crude yet functional, that attached to the shoulders and underbelly of the animals. The first horse left the cave while Jacob tied another harness to the second pegasus. The horse that left must have taken the place of the one that was guarding Jayme’s friends, for the final pegasus entered the cave as the second one went outside, and the third one stood patiently while Jacob attached a final harness.

Jacob stare silently at the fourth bundle, and Jamie realized it had been meant for the slain pegasus whose body was a collapsed heap in the paddock.

The pegasi ready, they stood stamping and huffing at the entrance to the cave.  Jacob put another note in her hand.

You two will follow me to your friends. Leave the murderer.

She eyed him suspiciously, but what could she do? Jayme told Beatrice what the note said, and her companion hissed that they couldn’t leave Mark. Then the mare stepped forward with a serious aura of menace. What could they do?

The horses herded the humans out of the cave, leaving the unconscious Mark in the bedroll. The strange troupe trudged across the paddock to the pit containing her friends.

Again, Jacob handed her a note.

“That’s getting annoying,” she said to herself as she read the piece of paper. 

Your friend goes in the pit with the others. You stay with me.

“Why? Why not both of us?”

Jacob scribbled another note. 

Need you for the door. It takes two people.

She nodded. “Beatrice, he wants you to get in the pit with the others. He’s going to make me help him with the gate.”

Grumbling and cursing, Beatrice sat down on the edge of the pit and then slid into the waiting hands of Jayme’s friends.

The strange procession moved forward again, crossing the shadowy expanse of the Thorny Paddock. Soon they were at the passage, and it was a quick walk in the darkened tunnel before they reached the gate. Jacob handed her one of the keys. Jayme inserted it into the gate while Jacob used the other key. They turned the mechanism, which clicked. The sound caused the pegasi crowding in behind her to nicker. 

Jacob grabbed one side of the gate, and Jayme the other, and they pushed forward, the doors opening and widening, allowing the bright sunshine to come into the tunnel, dazzling their eyes.  

The foal made a fluttering sound with her nose and emitted a soft squeal. The mare responded by putting her head next to the foal’s ears and draping one of her wings over her son protectively.

The gate swung open, and the herd emerged into the sunshine for the first time in 20 years. The area outside the paddock was empty but for the tractor trailer the champions had ridden barely an hour before. 

Jacob climbed onto the back of one of the stallions. He took his notepad and scribbled onto it.

Ride Brown to flat area.

Brown?  What does that mean, she wondered? Then a chestnut stallion stood before her, long soft feathers rustling, harness snug to his form. Using the leading bone of the wing as a grip, she hauled herself up and sat behind the massive wings, using the harness as an uncomfortable saddle. She scooted forward until she could tuck her knees beneath the wings. The group started down the trail and the intersection to the main road. 

Jacob jumped down, and Jayme slid from the back of the stallion she rode. She helped Jacob as he took another bundle of rope, this time to the foal.  It was a circular net. He spread the net on the ground and the foal stepped gingerly forward.  He cinched the fibrous rope around the foal so that the legs went through the openings in the net and he wrapped the rope assembly around the small equine body. The other stallions assembled around the pegasus youth, each taking a position, two on either side and one standing behind. Jacob attached the ropes from their harnesses to the netting that swaddled the foal. 

The mare watched intently, checking the ropes, pulling on the bindings with her lips, and softly nickering to Jacob when she found something that needed adjusting.

Jayme watched in fascination, silent at the wonder of seeing the human and the animals cooperate, seeing that Jacob was obviously taking directions from the alpha mare.

Then all was in readiness. Three stallions surrounding the foal, and the mare standing in front of the group. Jacob climbed on the back of the mare.

“Take me with you.”

The words popped out before she could stop them. Jacob continued preparing, acting as if he hadn’t heard her. Jayme ran up to the mare and Jacob. 

“Take me with you,” she repeated. He smiled in regret. Then he put his lips in a firm line and he wrote with intensity on the pad. He wrote for longer than he had on any other message. He tore off the piece of paper, wadded it up and threw it to the side of the trail. It disappeared into some burdock plants.

She yelped in annoyance, “What the hell, man.” He just ignored her irritation and smiled regretfully, waiting. She muttered to herself, and walked to the edge of the road to find the paper. She was looking for it in the burdocks when she heard the clopping of hooves on the hard surface of the road. 

He’d thrown the note to trick her into moving out of the way. She looked up. “Wait!”

But the three stallions were already cantering forward, wings raised and ropes unraveling.  They took just a few steps to the spot where she’d been standing and then leaped into the air, the lines trailing slowly and steadily after them until the fibers became taut and the flapping of the wings increased several times over as the animals took on the weight of the foal.  The wind whipping about was throwing dust and grit everywhere, and Jayme squinted her eyes to see what happened. The grass rippled as if a helicopter were hovering and churning above.  The foal neighed with excitement, flapping her own down-covered wings as the ropes became taut and she rose beneath the three stallions, the three ropes stretched from the harnesses to the net supporting the foal.

The mare walked over to Jayme, and she angled her head to the left to look at her directly, softly, almost regretfully. The man on her back did not look at her, just staring intently at the foal lifting away to freedom.

Then the mare took three steps forward before leaping into the air. She rose skyward, circling the area. Then all four of the horses, one with a human on its back and three with the foal suspended beneath them, rose into the sky and headed west, deep into the north woods.

Jayme stood there watching before finally gathering a discarded piece of rope and returning to the paddock gate to help her friends climb out of the pit which trapped them.

After the last festival and across the winter, which was just as harsh as everyone feared, Jayme said little about what had happened. As food ran short, the townsfolk had to sell many of the fine things they had purchased over the years.  The other towns were none to kind either, finally able to express their collective derision for the town of Conover, the town that thought it was better than the other towns because it thought it was so wonderful.

Of course, the town returned to harvesting the trees of the northern Maine forest that everyone else in the region had to harvest, and soon Conover had sunk back into the nameless mass of all company towns. Across the long winter, Jayme would take the final sheet of paper Jacob had left behind for her and read it.

Before I lost my words, I should have said what needed saying. I should have said what nobody was willing to say, and then acted. Only our actions can pay the price of our silence. They are the price for what Conover has done. You know what you should have said, what you should have done. You know what everyone in town should have said. But no one said it.”

It all could have been different, but it wasn’t. It all could have been a magical tale of wonder, but it wasn’t. And as the winter passed and the winged horses remained hidden behind the clouds or far away in some other land where winged horse come from, Jayme thought of Jacob riding in the sky, able to go places she couldn’t imagine. She would bury her head in the cold blankets, shivering for lack of money to buy fuel oil for the furnace, and she would reflect on the horrible lesson that sometimes responsibility and consequence will keep a person trapped on the ground, keep a family trapped in poverty, keep an entire village trapped in their unspoken guilt.