Eclipsed by Shadow – 1st Chapter

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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! 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, Mom, please hurry!”
    “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.  » continue…

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Copyright © 2008 John Allen Royce, Jr.