Funny, what things are revealed, once one has put their hooves down on the other side of the fence.
by Deadcanons
He wasn't always called Bucephalus, although his old name doesn't matter. He no longer remembers it, anyway.
His life began with slow walks around the pasture alongside his mother, a solid black mare who would push his unsteady legs with gentle ministrations from her soft muzzle. His father, who was Paint-splattered like him, was a working horse. Bucephalus only ever saw him at a distance, far out in the fields, with a rider on his back.
Neither of them were called "Paint," back then; they were called pinto. The Paint breed would not be made official for another three years. By that point the people who named things would concluded that "pinto" was really a name for a pattern, those splotchy tessellations of monochrome that decorated Bucephalus's chest and back, while "Paint" was a name for a breed. In 1962, Rebecca Tyler Lockhart would get together with a bunch of cowboys in Texas and found the American Paint Horse Association, at which point the matter remained settled. Interestingly, the first Paint in their registry, a black tobiano erroneously named Bandit's Pinto, was born the same year as Bucephalus. Of course, Bucephalus knew none of this, and probably would not have cared much if he did.
One day, when Bucephalus was old enough that he could walk the pasture without his mother, an unfamiliar cowboy came up to the gate. At least, Bucephalus assumed he was a cowboy, for at that point in his life he had only ever known humans who also knew horses.
The man took one long look at Bucephalus, sniffed some under his hat, and then walked away.
Later that day, the ranch hands put a bridle around Bucephalus's neck and led him into a dark metal trailer. He was in that trailer for a long time, the metal ground rattling loudly and uncertainly beneath him, while out of the barred window he watched the world race by. Finally, when he was led out of the trailer, he was standing in a new field, with new pastures and unfamiliar grass. The wind, too, was unfamiliar to him: it smelt of salt and driftwood, what he would later learn was the smell of the sea.
The man who had bought him, or maybe it was a cowboy after all, was named Mikhail. He was the one who named him Bucephalus.
Although uncertain at first, Bucephalus quickly grew to enjoy living at Mikhail's ranch. He missed his mother, but there were so many other horses here, and unlike at the other ranch, Bucephalus got to pasture with them. He always had company, and very rarely, Mikhail or a ranch hand would ride him around the property. He was well-fed and could nibble on as much grass as he liked.
Occasionally, one of the other horses would be put on a lead by Mikhail and taken to a large barn at one end of the property. The horse would not come out of the barn for a long time, and sometimes not at all. When they did come out, they were never quite the same, and always stood a little apart from the rest of the herd.
One day, Bucephalus was the one taken into the barn. He was put on cross ties in the center of a big space, dimly lit. He felt a poke in his hindquarters, and then a sleepy dark descended on him, like velvet-gloved hands were making blinders on either side of his eyes. In this state he remained, drifting in and out of waking, for an unknowable time. Occasionally he was aware of vague pains or suspensions, as if his body had been moved without his knowing, or as if some part of him was being taken away without his consent. But then the sleepy dark would take over again, and he would drift out, dreaming of his mother and her soft nose.
All-too suddenly, the blinders were removed, and the sleepy dark lifted. The next thing Bucephalus knew, he was being led out of the strange barn and back to the pasture with the other horses. He didn't feel any different, other than some stiffness, and a lingering hunger that grew as he ventured out into all that fresh grass.
But there was one difference: the other horses, the ones that had not been to the strange barn, were standing a little apart from him. He realized that it had never been the barn-goers separating themselves from the herd — it was the herd separating themselves from the barn-goers. Funny, what things are revealed, once one has put their hooves down on the other side of the fence.
Not long after this, a new ranch hand came to the field with Mikhail. At least, Bucephalus assumed it was another ranch hand, for the only humans he had ever known were cowboys, ranch hands, and whatever Mikhail was.
Mikhail and the ranch hand stopped at the fence, nearly an acre away from where Bucephalus and the herd were grazing. Of course, the herd knew they were there immediately. In the silent way of horses, the herd began to slowly meander closer to the fence, observing their observers.
"That one, there, I made a complete copy of," Mikhail said, pointing out a tawny chestnut Arabian. "But it had none of her personality. Just stood there motionless. Like a puppet."
The ranch hand, or maybe he was just a stranger, creased his brow. "Poor thing."
Mikhail pointed at another horse, a quarterhorse. "He was the first time I tried manipulating the life expectancy. I tried to alter the genome to prevent cell death. All I did was give him cancer. He's got a few weeks left before it really shows."
The stranger pushed his lip out, frowning. His eyes wandered away from the quarterhorse, as if searching for one with a better story.
As the herd got closer, Bucephalus could see that the stranger looked very different from Mikhail. The stranger had deep color in his skin, and a little white in his dark hair and beard. Like Bucephalus, he was black and white. He was not dressed like a ranch hand. He had on a white silk shirt, over which was a furred bomber jacket to hold off the weather. The jacket hung loose around him, like it was something that didn't belong to him, and indeed it seemed (and smelled) as if it was really Mikhail's jacket, which the stranger was borrowing.
Mikhail pointed at Bucephalus.
"You see the pinto, there? I'd say that's been my most successful experiment to date."
"What's his name?"
Mikhail looked critically at his companion. "What's his name, you ask? You want to know his name, and not the experiment?" But he answered anyway, and in a grand tone, as if it really was the more important matter: "I named him Bucephalus. After Alexander the Great."
The stranger bobbed his head in a big nod, as if this explanation meant anything at all to him.
"I attempted a similar case of genome alteration with Bucephalus, but with significant changes to the formula," Mikhail went on. "The result is imperfect, but it's a step in the right direction. His cells last longer and divide slower than normal. And, during cell divide, more energy is preserved in the exchange. I expect he will live a long time, possibly as long as a human. Possibly longer."
During this explanation, the stranger's eyes never left Bucephalus. He had a faint smile on his face now. He had wide, friendly eyes, curious eyes, innocent eyes; which made Bucephalus think he was a little like a horse himself. Bucephalus met his gaze, but once, and then tossed his head, snorting.
There was a pause. "You want to ride him?" Mikhail asked.
"Oh!— shucks, well…" The stranger rubbed his neck, a nervous gesture, making quite clear how much he wanted to say yes. "Wouldn't that be against some kinda policy or another?"
Mikhail scoffed. "It's my ranch. The O5s don't tell me how to run my ranch."
They left, only to come back with saddles and pads. Mikhail went out into the field without any leads, almost showing off as he simply threw the reins over the horse's necks and led them back, simple as that. He passed Bucephalus off to the stranger, while Mikhail remained with a blue-gray mare named Star Chaser who, only one week later, would go into the barn and never come out again.
The stranger was hesitant at first, and Bucephalus felt his fear, which in turn made Bucephalus nervous. He stamped his front hoof and tried to step away, nickering. But then the stranger put a hand on his neck and murmured to him, speaking softly, speaking but not spoken, sounds that were not words. Bucephalus calmed, then, as he got a sense of who this newcomer was, and that his name was Amias.
Amias moved with more confidence, then. He slipped the bit into Bucephalus's mouth as cool as water, securing the bridle over his ears, and then brushing off his back with a gloved hand before putting on the saddle pad. When he pulled the saddle off the fence, he seemed, for a moment, hopelessly awkward, as if this hulking thing of straps and leather was far more than he. But then he got his weight under it and swung it over Bucephalus's back in one easy motion.
After securing the cinch, he beamed at Mikhail. "I reckon it's been years since I last done this."
"You up for a trail?" Mikhail asked, assessing his own cinch.
"Oh, sure."
They both mounted off the fence, even Mikhail smiling as he got Star Chaser's reins under him and pulled her towards the gate. Amias kept the reins loose, his hands low, such that Bucephalus could barely feel their touch at his lips. Amias didn't even kick, he just made an experimental click with his teeth. And Bucephalus thought that was simple enough, so he began to walk forward.
For Bucephalus, what made this first ride special had nothing to do with Amias. It was where they went. Mikhail took the lead, Bucephalus falling in behind Star Chaser as they found an easy pace on a dirt trail away from the ranch. Gradually, the dirt became softer, until Bucephalus had to focus on each step, chuffing his breath in an even rhythm, heart working. Then the dirt gave way to sand, which, strangely enough, was a little easier to walk on. Bucephalus noticed that the salt-and-wood smell was getting stronger. And then they walked through some sparse switchgrass, and Bucephalus saw the sea for the first time.
The great, enormous extent of it was all he could see in either direction, doubled back, reflected in both eyes. The sky seemed to give way to it, silvery-gray on the horizon, as if the water dissolved into air, or maybe the other way around. But what he was most fascinated by was the beach itself. This water was unlike any he had ever seen before. He could smell it was not for drinking. It had a mind of its own, pulling up on the wet sand and then pulling back, in a rhythm but an inconsistent one, following a pattern, or perhaps no pattern, a set of rules known only to the water itself.
Without waiting for Amias's direction, Bucephalus strode forward and forged into the waves. When the first one crashed onto his legs, a defiance of his entry, he whinnied and doubled back, prancing along the shoreline as if it were the front lines of a battlefield.
Amias told him to "woah" at first, but without any heart, so Bucephalus ignored it. And when he begun his war with the water, pacing the shore, charging it, only to retreat again, Amias began laughing. He took control again and urged Bucephalus forward, and with Amias's confidence behind him, he was able to push through the first wave and into the second one, journeying out until the water reached his chest and he became buoyant, free of the sand.
Mikhail did not join them. He stood at the shoreline, holding Star Chaser in place. His only reaction was to chuckle a little.
Their swim did not last for long. The surging water was too unpredictable for Bucephalus's comfort, and although he enjoyed the feeling of weightlessness, the matter was made more difficult by the addition of a rider. Later in life, he would forget what it was like to not have a rider; but for now, on this first ride, just the taste was enough. He forged a path back to Star Chaser's side, shaking himself bodily to wick the salt out of his fur. Amias was still laughing.
They returned to the ranch in more subdued spirits, all four tired from the exertion. The humans untacked the horses, washed off their sweat, and returned them to the pasture.
In their absence, Bucephalus experienced a new feeling, a feeling of loss, which shocked him. It was as if something of crucial importance had left with them. He was reminded of his mother again. This feeling was similar to the feeling of missing her, but not the same.
Some time later, both men returned to the ranch. Bucephalus saw them at a distance and ran to the gate, whinnying. He expected they would come to the gate as they had done before, but they didn't. They were headed in the direction of that strange barn.
At the sound of Bucephalus's voice, Amias paused, and waved towards the pasture. But he did not change his course.
When they later emerged from the barn, both of their bodies were tense. Bucephalus could tell that something had put them on alert, like when the herd knows a predator is nearby. But at least they were coming to the gate now.
Bucephalus bobbed his head as they got closer. Amias put his hand through the bars, and Bucephalus lowered his head and let him pet his nose. Mikhail stayed a few steps off, his hands in his pockets, as if maybe he were the predator that would spook the herd.
"So now you know," Mikhail said.
Amias's hand tensed on Bucephalus's forehead. But his voice remained level when he spoke.
"That I do."
"At first, I thought the experiment had failed," Mikhail began to explain, his voice low. "The little foal you saw in there is named Infanta. I had installed a device on her that was supposed to provide excess stem cells; to automatically regenerate wounds, even replace missing limbs. Instead, it killed her. Or so I thought."
"You said she just… came back, now?"
"Or so I thought," Mikhail repeated, his voice darkening. "It was weeks later. I'd already done a number of other experiments with different horses. Then, a few weeks ago, I enter the barn to see Infanta again, back in the same stall she'd died in. The device was nowhere to be seen. She looked perfectly healthy, perfectly ordinary. Fresh as newly lain snow."
"But you didn't have her in the stall just now," Amias said. He turned around, putting his back to Bucephalus, and although this would have otherwise been a gesture of trust, the horse felt put-off. "She was free to wander. And in that stall you showed me, Mikhail… whatever that was, it weren't no damn horse."
Mikhail's expression stayed level. "I believe the growths you observed on the walls and floor are related to Infanta in some way. When I give her attention, feeding her a treat or brushing her mane, the growths seem to flourish. They spread faster across the walls. But if I leave her alone for an extended period, if she is sickly at all… the growths shrivel and retract."
Amias didn't say anything. He just shook his head.
"Amias, I know how this might seem, but the O5-Council approves of these developments," Mikhail murmured. "They want me to continue the experiment. I imagine you made note of the central growth, the bud in the center of the stall floor? Amias, it is giving off regular pulses. I believe it is going to grow into a heart."
Amias looked up. "Infanta's heart?"
Mikhail smiled. "I don't know. It could be. Or perhaps this organism is something else entirely. The O5s want me to cultivate its growth, so that we might find out." He paused, meaningfully. "I would like you to be my assistant on this project, moving forward. Are you interested?"
"Me?"
"I admire your passion and the work you do for the Foundation," Mikhail said with a shrug. "And you have a love for horses. I do, too, but I find increasingly that I become too engrossed in my projects. It's a weakness of mine. I sense that whatever we're trying to accomplish here is going to require more… sentimentality… than I am able to provide."
There was a moment of silence. Bucephalus took the opportunity to get the back of Amias's shirt in his teeth and pull on it.
"Hey, now!"
Amias turned around again to face Bucephalus. And, really, that was all that Bucephalus had wanted.
Amias put both hands through the bars and cupped Bucephalus's face. Again, he spoke to the horse without words, speaking but not spoken. In the course of a few silent moments, while they looked into each other's eyes, there developed a language between them. They were sharing in these secrets, then. There was no going back after that.
"I have one request," Amias said to Mikhail. "No more experiments on Bucephalus. I'll buy him from you, if'n you like. Once that's sorted, I'm happy to join the project."
Mikhail laughed. "Is that all? You don't have to pay me for him, Amias. Consider him yours."
"Well, alright then," Amias replied. And, despite everything, he was smiling.
Bucephalus watched the ranch change a lot over the next few years. For starters, after only a few short weeks, the strange barn was torn down. As the walls fell, it revealed something on the inside: another, smaller building, as if the barn had been containing it, like an egg. This smaller building had a pale exterior, that even a horse could tell was fleshy in texture. There was something wrong about it. But something right, also.
After that, seemingly overnight, the building would grow. One morning it had expanded an outer wing. The next morning, another. A few weeks later, it had a second floor. It started to look less and less fleshy from the outside. Strangers, who were definitely not cowboys or ranch hands, came to the property and began to build other buildings: more barns, and a big structure secondary to the main one. Mikhail and Amias went into that main building, the Heart building, more and more. Then, other people started going in with them. Then, a lot of people. Then, horses.
The first time Bucephalus went into the building, it was with Amias. At first, he did not like the enclosed walls and confining corners. He expected a monster or a predator around every turn. But, with Amias leading him — and then eventually riding him, as he could tell the horse was nervous — Bucephalus calmed. Further, as they went deeper into the building, Bucephalus could feel a pulse coming from the walls, like a heartbeat. It felt to him like the presence of another horse. A huge horse, a horse that would protect the herd from danger. By the time they had made it to the secure chamber called Power Grid-1, Bucephalus was no longer afraid of the building.
Inside the chamber, resting on its fleshy floor, was a small foal. She had milk-white fur and lively eyes. As Bucephalus approached, she got up and stood next to him, shoulder to hip. She nuzzled his belly with her head, and, finding no milk there, swished her tail.
In the center of the room was a giant heart, nearly a building in its own right. It was fixed to the walls and floor with metal plating. Strangely, the heart did not spook Bucephalus. In fact, he hardly noticed it next to the foal. But then he felt its heartbeat pulse deeper, in rhythm with the little horse's heart. Feeling this, it made perfect sense to Bucephalus that this building really was a giant horse. Perhaps this foal, even, was a giant horse, her youth just an illusion to protect her from the rest of this strange and ancient world. Bucephalus wished he could show her to the sea.
After that, Bucephalus often went into the building and visited Infanta. Amias usually came with him, usually on his back… and soon Bucephalus forgot any time when Amias wasn't on his back. The ritual of the saddle, tacking and untacking, brushing and washing, seemed to take less and less time with each pass, until Bucephalus stopped noticing that time at all. Sometimes he was tacked, sometimes he wasn't; always he was kept clean and fed. And always Amias was with him.
Time passed. Other horses died. Sometimes they disappeared into rooms in the building and never came out again. Other times they left the ranch and never returned. But Bucephalus did not change. Maybe some mornings he woke with a little stiffness in his limbs, but that always passed after a good run. And Amias was always with him.
Whenever he visited Infanta in Power Grid-1, he would try to tell her about the sea by showing it to her in his eyes. But she never seemed to understand. Her eyes remained perpetually wide and empty, as if she had just stepped into the world.
But Bucephalus got to see the sea again. When time and responsibilities allowed, Amias would take him on that trail to the water. Sometimes they would swim; sometimes they would just walk along the sand. Bucephalus liked the building, because it felt safe, and it had the little foal in it. And he liked the ranch, because it was full of so many humans and horses. But the beach was his favorite place. It held the most mystery to him, more than anywhere else in the world.
Eventually, Mikhail stopped coming to the ranch. There must have been a specific moment when this happened, their last meeting; but by that point, Bucephalus was so attached to Amias that he did not care enough to notice. Mikhail simply dissolved, like the line where the ocean meets the horizon. Once or twice, on a late night, Bucephalus would look out from his stall and see a human marching up to the Heart building, a human with a hat and cane. It might have been Mikhail. But this vision was never close enough to smell or identify, never close enough to whinny at. Always it was just short of dissolving. Of course, that was part of what made it seem so much like Mikhail.
To this day, other people come and go. Humans and horses alike, back and forth through the hands of the Heart. They come and go, but Bucephalus never changes. And Amias is always with him.