It is all over suddenly.
In one breath, his mother explodes into a hundred million pieces that rain down around him before disappearing into the permeable sands. In the next, Grumbles is there at his side, rubbing and praising him. Healing him. “Nicely done, the man says, his crooked hands at Vidar’s face. Nice, Vidar echoes, the word too short and not enough. He wants more. And though he’d been indignant before (about killing his in-life absent father and his fearless mother) he now understands why he’d had to do it. He realizes that it was for his own good, for Grumbles own good. All of the trials have made him stronger, and deep in the folds of his guts, he knows he will have to be stronger to face what is to come. To protect the one who’s given him so much already.
He’d been a child, and Grumbles had made him a man.
He sees that now. He sees that the way to his future (their future) is paved with hardships that will serve to better him, shape him – forge him into his mother’s iron. The blue stallion feels reborn when the majority of his wounds vanish. His leg knits itself back together. The gash on his face folds back into itself until he has only a thin trail of pink skin accompanying his jagged stripe. Some of the other wounds close, but only barely. Grumbles leaves a few as a lesson – a continuing education, Vidar muses – and he wears them proudly like badges.
It is not the only gift he is given.
The little man leads him away, and a part of him regrets leaving the coliseum. He is not ready; he’s better, but not there yet. Grumbles seems to sense the tension rising in his charge with each footstep away. He pauses, soothes his mane so that it all lies flat on the same side. “The bloodlust builds within you, eh? You’ll have more opportunities, don’t you worry about that.” He gives the horse a conspiratorial wink and moves on. It is easier for Vidar to follow then. He replays that wink in his head over and over, knowing that he’s in the right hands, that they are bonded. Friends, even. The fairy won’t let him down.
They walk to a rising structure that is far more impressive than the fighting arena had been. Vidar doesn’t fail to notice the progression of power at each place he is taken. First the small stall, then the chamber with its starry sky and underwater tank, and finally the wide, bowled dome of the coliseum. Each had been home to him, for a time (and he realizes now that he’d had to grow into them; each last one couldn’t accommodate his personal growth), but this one puts them all to shame. He appreciates that Grumbles trusts him enough to see his greatest show of power, his final masterpiece. And what work must have gone into it!
The outside of the structure is cased in a garish orange and green rubber sort-of-material. “Non-conductive,” Grumbles says, nodding at the wall just ahead of them. Vidar nods, wishing he’d borrowed some for his time in the chamber. The fort’s walls are as crooked as the man, with some of them jutting to great, questionable heights and others leveling off at only a few feet high. The entire structure is dotted with metal disks spaced evenly. It is a strange, impossible building that seems entirely Grumbles creation. And somehow, it all seems to work. It has style, Vidar thinks to himself ironically. But the man turns to him and grins anyway before leading him in.
He is taken on the grand tour of the place and finds that the inside is as strange as the outside, if not more. Grumbles had obviously grown up in a monochrome world (or a world with too many colors) as each wall is painted some new shade of the rainbow the stallion is unfamiliar with. There are alien instruments and things that look like weapons meant to inflict pain stacked neatly in many of the rooms. In one room, an irregular shaped pool stretches away to some distant point the pair can’t see. The water is bright blue and tempting (reminds him of the Amazon river), but Grumbles leads him on. The only commonality between the various rooms is the cleanliness. Grumbles seems, if anything, a stickler for tidiness. His private room is no different. Horse and man enter a bedroom similar to the torture chamber, with rising velvet fabric walls that twist at the ceiling, leaving a decent hole with which to see the sky above. “Not the best defensive move on my part, having a great big hole in my bedroom. But, style,” he says, sparing him a glance before looking back up at the stars. “And I like to look at them. They remind me of home.” Vidar says nothing, though he agrees.
The next few days pass quickly. The stallion learns what his job as a guardian entails, learns where to get food and water (everywhere), and learns where he can stretch his legs. The fort is massive and provides him with plentiful opportunities for exercise. But even with the calming halter, there is some deep instinctual need printed on his DNA to feel the real sun on his back rather than artificial lighting. He makes as many trips as he can to the courtyard while still being an effective guardian. If only Grumbles could live outside as they do. Vidar also learns that he is not the only one charged with protecting the man from his unseen enemies. Grumbles spends time with them, too, and it casts a pall over the horse’s mood each time he does. He wants all the attention for himself, wants to learn from his captor-savior in every spare moment he is allowed.
In those moments alone, Vidar practices with his power. He plays with fire. He melts into the ground as a puddle of poisonous water. He grows his horns and fangs often, butting a crooked tree in the courtyard and sinking his teeth into the always-abundant meat of the carnivorous guardians. As his time without Grumbles grows, he pictures that it is their faces he bites down into. The blood dripping down his throat is like a validation (strange, but it feels right) of change. Whereas this situation had been odd and uncomfortable before, now he knows he is meant to be here. To suffer and learn and grow. To become less prey and more predator, he thinks as the meat slides along his tongue. The opposite side of the coin feels peculiar but it also feels so right.
When he does meet with Grumbles, they discuss his (their) upcoming troubles. Vidar had noticed the stakes encircling the camp, huge metal poles that flashed green lights every few seconds. A force field, he had learned. We’ll know if anyone approaches, he had been assured. But it didn’t seem nearly enough. If the threat that knocked on the door of their futures was as great as it seemed, he knew they needed more. And he needs more praise. So the blue roan follows Grumbles to make adjustments. They venture outside the invisible fence (safely turned off) and put a thick band of sand around the entire fort. He tells Grumbles to water it, and the water seeps down, down below the surface. It weakens the top layer until anyone who walks over it will be pulled under into the weak pockets - quicksand. They fill this layer with all manner of nasty Desert dwellers: the venomous snakes and scorpions with their stinging tails. A monitor lizard scurries over the firmer sand, ready to bite and track its victims. They make another layer even further from the fort. Grumbles grows a jungle in the middle of nowhere, but not without purpose. Banana fronds sway in the breeze, but jaguars prowl beneath them. The fairy paints the trees with poison dart frog secretions that will not fade away. Several man-eating plants burrow and hide in the loamy dirt, waiting for a meal to pass by. Vidar suggests a hybrid creation and Grumbles obliges. A thinner, more athletic hippo patrols along with its family. It yawns and its deadly teeth glint in the sun. An enormous pair of macaw wings lay flush on its back.
Defenses somewhat covered, man and beast return to the fort that night feeling more prepared than ever. Vidar won’t rest easy, but it pleases him to have been so useful. Grumbles invites him into his room that night long before he usually did. They talk (well, Grumbles does the vast majority of the talking) as comrades, allies. Friends. The man starts a fire at the foot of his bed. As the flames crack and spit, the stallion feels himself warming even further. Here, he feels useful. He’s not the prince of a great warrior queen, not a gift to uphold a valuable alliance. Here, he’s not judged for preferring the pursuits of his body over his mind, not being the smartest or wisest. But I’m getting better, he thinks, looking at Grumbles as if for confirmation. But the man isn’t looking back. A small twinkle is in his eye (still laughing from the last joke) as he takes a sip from his chalice. Look at all I thought of today. Look how I helped. But Ursa minor glares at him again, calls him a stupid animal. You’ve thought of home, it seems to say, you’ve nothing original about you.
Vidar tries to drown out the doubts haunting him. He shakes and his anaconda-pattern reappears to the delight of Grumbles. He shakes again and this time it’s an elephant’s leathery skin. Again, and he wears the black and white fur of a lemur. An Amazon parrot, wings and all. A wolf, flashing green eyes and sharp fangs. He doesn’t stop until he’s run out of ideas. Grumbles doesn’t stop laughing, either, and it warms the horse as much as the fire has.
The next day, they wake late. Smoke from the extinguished fire still curls up into the opening above. The sun is nearly filling it, and the stallion opens his eyes at the brightness. Grumbles is curled on his bed in the fetal position, his covers twisted around him. Vidar watches him for a moment, thinking how vulnerable he looks, thinking how easily he could kill him without the man even knowing it. He might have, too, in the beginning. But now, he only walks over and whuffs in his face, waking him. The desire to pound him into a pulp has left, gone with his childish self. He is a man now, and men make plans. Men cope with their struggles and make the best of what they are given.
The pair makes more plans in the early hours of the afternoon.
They fortify the spaces just inside the gates, digging metal spikes into the ground and planting triggers in the ground. Vidar watches as one detonates, feels his heart constrict with the explosion that seems to push at it from all sides. He donates his lightning, pulling it down from the skies and electrifying the spikes so that the energy arcs across them. It feels good in his veins, that power. Grumbles tells him to make the most of it because he will need it. Think, he reminds himself. So he does. The stallion internalizes the lightning, gathers it in his mind until it is a storm cloud fat with its load. He sees a rabbit zig-zagging through the jungle just beyond and focuses on it. With one exhausting thought, the lightning strikes the rabbit, frying its brain. It falls over as if physically struck, immediately dead. Vidar smiles at his captor-savior.
The smile doesn’t last.
A darkness gathers on the horizon just beyond the sweeping banana fronds. At first, Vidar wonders if he’s called a storm to him, somehow, with his lightning. But as it nears, it is like no storm he’s ever seen before. When the green flashing lights change to red on the force field for the first time, he and Grumbles head for the inside of the fort. They pass the spikes and triggers and skirt around a deceivingly crystal clear pool (which if ingested or submerged will pull all the water from the user instead; reverse hydration, Grumbles had joked). They carefully step around big balloons filled with concentrated mercury gas (Vidar had watched the big vats of fish being vaporized; the smell will stay with him forever). He can’t wait to see how they’ll like breathing that in. Once they are through the doorway, he slams it shut with one kick of a hindleg. Grumbles bars it. They share a look that seems to admit, we are the prey but we will have to become predators.
Vidar