//------------------------------// // Chapter 1: Good Samaritan // Story: Child of Mine // by Starscribe //------------------------------// Kyle slid down the banister of the old house, feeling the wood creak and give as he rounded the corner and landed on an ancient carpet. Quiet enough that he hoped he could make it to the backdoor unmolested.  He gripped the straps of his backpack a little tighter about his shoulders, then dodged under the outstretched arm of Douglas Reaume, honored progenitor. But he was a little too close this time, and his shoulder brushed against it, spraying dust through the air behind him to catch the light through stained-glass windows. He slowed a little as he rounded the corner, catching it with one hand on the old wood and turning into the parlor. There was a little door behind the desk here, where servants had once brought tea and refreshments. The family was too poor for servants anymore, but the door still worked. He fumbled with a rusty iron key, twisting the lock as slow as he could. Even so, there was still a resounding click as it opened, and the door began to swing outward. “Heading to the game early?” asked a voice from behind him.  Kyle jumped, then froze, pocketing the key and turning slowly around. His twin sister Kara was everything he wasn’t—attractive, popular, and smart. She was already wearing her cheer uniform, though the game wouldn’t be for a few hours yet. But she was almost always doing something. Probably she’d be off volunteering at the shelter before the game, or just spending time with her boyfriend.  “I, uh…” He looked away, brushing his hair back with one hand. “I planned on going hiking. I’m not sure if I’ll be back in time.” She sighed, resting one peremptory hand on her waist. “Going off on your own doesn’t make friends, Kyle. You know that, right?” He nodded. “I know. But if I don’t cool off on weekends, I won’t make it through school. I have to get out there.” She hurried forward, wrapping one arm briefly around him in an awkward sibling hug. So maybe one thing had survived their childhood. She was probably going off to be CEO of some major corporation, with time to supermodel on the side. At least he’d have rich family while he was flipping burgers into his forties. “I’ll leave tickets on your desk if you change your mind, Kyle. And you should.” Then she turned, darting back into the house. Before Kyle could end up the recipient of anyone else’s pity, he pushed the door open, having to strain against thick ivy until it was open wide enough for him. Finally he could get through, and he made his way out onto the grass. Once there had been half a dozen landscapers to care for this part of the property—now it was overgrown, with thorns that tore at his shorts and tried to grab his laces as he made his way towards the back of the property. He passed the dusty old servant’s building on his way to the fence. The power wasn’t even on in there anymore, though that didn’t stop him from using it for privacy. Until Kara had figured out about it, and he had to go hiking instead. It wasn’t Kyle’s fault, he just wanted to be alone sometimes. He was passing, wasn’t that good enough? The back fence was a little more formidable an obstacle than the gate so far. Beyond rusty iron topped with spikes twice as high as a man was untamed forest primeval, never harvested since the first settlers had come here two hundred years ago. The list of dangers his parents used to try and scare him away from coming back here changed every time they told him about it. Sometimes it was poison ivy, sometimes it was killer bees. Sometimes it was black bears, or brown recluse spiders. Sometimes it was fairies. He’d only ever seen one of those. Even Kara hadn’t figured out that there was a loose bar in the fence on the other side of the empty stables. He bent it out of the way, then clambered through to the other side. “I’d let you come with me if you weren’t so busy,” he whispered to no one. Back far enough in time, and Kara always would’ve gone with him on adventures like this. But the older they got, the further apart they became. He wasn’t really a fan. There were no roads back here, not with a national park only a half hour away. With natural hot springs and waterfalls to explore within driving distance, few in town bothered to walk out here. Maybe it was illegal or something? Kyle neither knew nor cared. But there were trails, if you were alright using something animals had made. Deer he guessed, which he encountered so regularly now that they didn’t seem terribly bothered by his presence. He didn’t bring a phone, not even for music. Leaving it at home with the volume all the way up on the ringer was a way to make sure his parents would know when they called him that he hadn’t brought it. No matter how upset they sometimes got. A light breeze ruffled the trees around him, carrying away the first yellow and orange leaves of autumn. Soon would come a month of beauty, before the snow and cold made hikes like this impossible. Where would he run to next? He walked along one of the familiar game-trails until it took him to the river, then followed the bank up the mountain a little way. Google told him he could follow it back for miles if he wanted, and climb most of the way up the mountain. But he’d never been quite brave enough to go backpacking alone. Kyle might not know what he was doing at school, but he knew the sounds of the wilderness. Squirrels in the trees overhead, bees bringing in what they could for their last desperate days of collection before the winter freeze, the gurgling of water against the rocks. A little further there was a familiar beaver-dam, with a pond that hadn’t even existed five years ago. He stopped as he reached it to eat his poorly-made sandwich and watch the beavers repairing their dam for a few minutes. As usual, they pretended he wasn’t there, chewing rhythmically at the young trees and dragging them off to add to their construction. He heard it through the trees, a sound so strange that he nearly dropped his lunch. It sounded so… human. He’d never met another soul out here, let alone one so young. More like an infant than anything else, bawling into the wilderness. It wasn’t constant—more an occasional burst of noise, then it would get swept away in the water or the beaver’s incredibly loud chewing. Kyle rose, turning in the direction of the sound. If he had to guess, he would’ve said it came from far away, but shrill enough that it carried well. He had to be imagining things, right? He stood in place for nearly a minute straight, listening closely. Finally he heard it distinctly. It was crying, at least a mile from civilization.  There was no reason for any sounds to have followed him out here, certainly not desperate infants. In spite of all reasoning to the contrary, they had. He started jogging, tossing the rest of his sandwich onto the ground for the beavers. Hopefully they liked subs. He couldn’t keep running ahead forever, since the sound of his own footsteps would cover the distant, infantile desperation. He had to stop for a few moments at a time, listening carefully, then reorienting himself. This is really stupid. I don’t know where I’m running. How am I going to find my way back? No phone meant no GPS, no TrailSmart app. But if there was really a small child lost out here, then he wasn’t going to take any chances about it being discovered. Unlike him, a baby really did have reason to fear the wilderness. There were coyotes, poisonous plants, thorns. He had to find it before it wandered too far. He ran for a few minutes, scrambling over rough slopes and up the side of the mountain. Up paths he never would’ve dreamed to take, past cliffs that clearly did not want him there. Finally it was loud enough that he could hear the sound clearly over his own heavy breathing, resolving into something that certainly was an infant, with desperation in its voice so sincere that it urged him onward. He rounded a bend into a clearing, so quickly that he nearly impaled himself on an incongruous formation of glass or rock crystal—a wall of sharp glass spikes that looked to have torn its way through grass and rocks, emerging on all sides like a hedgehog’s quills. The crying echoed out from the center, where the ground was still flat. He reached out, confirming with one finger just how sharp the rocks really were. Or… glass? The mystery of how the formation had gotten here faded into the background in the interest of reaching the baby. “Hey, uh… baby?” he called, still panting from the jog. “I’m going to try to get to you. Just hold on.” Talking to it was probably a waste of time—it wouldn’t understand him. That crying was so desperate, he had to try and help even if he couldn’t reach the child. The crying stopped. There were a few confused sounds he interpreted for relief. Even babies can be relieved, right?  “That’s good,” he said, pacing slowly around the formation. The kid must have gotten in somehow, right? Maybe it would be big enough for him. His worst fears—that the kid had been cut to bloody ribbons crawling through the rock formation, seemed mercifully erroneous. He could see no bloody handprints, only ordinary dirt and an abrupt transition to barbed glass. He circled all the way around, and still there were no obvious passages. “I’m going to have to, uh… you don’t understand me, but I’m going to try and shatter it.” He hefted a large stone in one hand, the heaviest he could manage. Please don’t let any of the pieces fly inside. The barbs of bluish crystal were so tall that he couldn’t even see the baby, other than a faintly pinkish blur. Nothing to know if it was too close to avoid harm or not.  He swung, smacking into the crystal with a resounding thump. A single crack spread from the point of impact, shedding little bits as it traveled. So he was right—this stuff was closer to glass than rock. Probably this was some priceless geological artifact, some kind of natural formation never before observed. He smacked again, right on the crack, driving it wider through the strange rocks. Within, the baby made another frightened, inquisitive sound. “It’s alright…” he said, still panting. “I’m… almost… through…” One more swing, and the glass shattered. Bits of rock flew around him, as the section of crystal closest to him fell away in a few large chunks, opening up the rocklike interior. There was the baby, somehow completely unharmed. Even so, Kyle was stunned by what he saw. He dropped his rock weakly to one side, staring into the circle and trying to process what he was seeing. It was a baby, just not a human baby. It looked vaguely equine in nature, though calling it a horse would’ve been far from any he’d ever seen. Its coat was pastel pink, with a short purple mane and tail. The colors didn’t have the garish, artificial look of dyes, which worked even worse in animal fur than in human hair, but strangely natural. Did any animal have purple fur like that? Any comparison to existing horses broke down after that. Its eyes were bigger than any foal he’d ever seen, with a comprehension he’d never seen in the thoughtless face of an equine before. And there was a bony protrusion poking out from its mane, twisted slightly.  A unicorn? But no stories of unicorns he’d ever read included descriptions of oversized wings, with the distinct outline of feathers. Feathers on a mammal. Everything he knew about wildlife classification—admittedly not as much as Kara—was apparently wrong. It was also wearing a cloth diaper, wrapped securely enough around its bum that it had clearly not been made for a human baby. He dropped to his knees, as close to looking the creature in the eye as he could manage without getting shards of shattered glass in his hands. “What are you?” he asked, reaching a tentative hand towards it. “Some kind of… CRISPR-gone-wrong dumped out in the…”  It was the best he could think of, though it didn’t survive even modest scrutiny. If it was genetically engineered by some company that wanted it gone, why leave it alive? It wasn’t human, and they clearly wouldn’t have cared about the well-being of a creature they wanted dead. And that doesn’t explain the crystals either. The baby was apparently growing bored with his indecision, because it started crawling towards him, making cheerful noises as it dragged itself towards shards of barbed rock, apparently oblivious. There was nothing for it. Kyle reached down, scooping it up into his arms before it could hurt itself. In one way at least it was like a horse—it was much larger than most babies he’d seen. More like a toddler, with weight enough to strain his endurance at first. “You’re… bigger than you look.” The animal squealed in response, pawing against the exposed skin of his arms with its hooves. As though it had never even seen naked skin before. But of course, he was probably humanizing it too much. “Alright, uh… whatever you are. I’m going to get you down from here. I don’t suppose your owners are nearby, are they?” Now that the baby wasn’t crying, or held hostage by an extremely dangerous-looking rock formation, he could think a little more rationally about everything. This creature didn’t belong up here, and someone had obviously put it here. The question was, where were they now?  Holding her gave Kyle new appreciation for just how strange she was. The wings on her sides weren’t toys clipped into her coat, or even surgical grafts—they felt real, right down to the muscles that moved when she twitched them. All impossible, of course, despite evidence that it existed right in front of him. The baby didn’t seem to mind how not-a-horse he was, or the fact that he was carrying her. If anything, it seemed relieved to have some company. He lifted one of her stumpy hooves, looking for brands or barcodes or anything that might suggest who her creators were. Not that he’d be signing up to send it home right away. But there was nothing, not even the prints a helicopter’s landing treds might’ve made in the loose soil. He didn’t have a phone, so he couldn’t take a photo of the formation he’d shattered, but he could grab a piece of relatively dull glass, tucking it away into a pocket for future investigation. Maybe there were clues hidden inside to whatever this being was. “Nothing?” he asked, more for his own sanity than because he expected an answer. “You don’t have any wisdom for me?” The baby cooed happily, poking at his face with a hoof. Stubby and useless, but… “You’re trying to talk,” he said. He’d only ever seen a puppy before, but it hadn’t made sounds like this. He’d seen ponies at the state fair once, and they hadn’t made sounds like this either. Of course, no petting zoo pony had real wings on its back, or a bony horn poking out of its face. So the comparison was probably pointless either way. Almost as though it could understand him, the horse-thing stuck out its tongue, grinning at him. He returned the gesture by reflex, before realizing he was being incredibly stupid and turning back towards the way he’d come. “Alright, horse-baby. Time to get you back to civilization. Then we can call animal control, and they can… do something for you.”