Page 41 - The Grotesque Children's Book

Song of the Dawn. Think and compare: What are you doing tomorrow
morning? Do you get be a flying horse? No. Who’s sorrowful now? As I say,
almost every child longed, even begged, to be taken to Helios by Puermutanto.

Almost. Young Bartolomeo didn’t want to be taken. He didn’t want to be
a horse, winged or otherwise. He’d decided he was content being a hobbling
beggar child whose right leg was longer than his left by several inches, and who
had some unpleasant lump growing from the side of his right cheekbone,
squeezing shut his right eye into a permanent deep socket hole that looked
more like a navel than an eye. For Bartolomeo wrote poetry, and his poetry
made up for everything else which was rotten in the world.

His parents didn’t disagree with Bartolomeo. They didn’t mind his
misshapenness; that was not the issue. The issue was that Bartolomeo’s
affliction meant that he was just another mouth to feed without any ability to
help pay for it, let alone contribute to the rest of the family’s nutritional needs.
And poetry? No, that wouldn’t feed any of them. So, sorrowfully, with the
heaviest of hearts, Bartolomeo’s parents sold him to Puermutanto to become
one of the great horses of Helios.

The transformation was virtually an immediate thing; you went from
human child one day to being a winged horse the next morning. But you
weren’t immediately strapped up to the chariot and let loose on the sky to die
at day’s end. There was getting used to the heat, if nothing else. The sun
behind you in a basket was not the chilliest thing to be carting around all day.
In addition, there was also gallop apace training (which was hard enough to do
on your own, let alone in pairs) and navigation (who can see the stars with all
that bright light always right behind you?), and the physical training! While,
true, most of the horses had been poor physical specimens as human children,
upon transformation they each became magnificent, whole, athletic champions.
But there was endurance to consider. You try galloping all day long from
sunrise to sunset, without stopping. Until, at sunset exactly, you stop forever

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