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and ever, never to fly or live again. Bartolomeo started wondering what would
happen if, when his day came, he would disobey Helios. Probably not a good
idea, going up against a god. But if the alternative is a fiery death, well, how
would that be any worse?

Bartolomeo had been a smart child, and now he was a smart horse, so
he knew better than to say a word to any of the other horses. All day long,
every day, he played along, pretending he was just as enthusiastic as all the
rest of the enslaved horses, listening to their songs and rapturous poetry in
praise of their great fiery demise, feigning to be transported with delight in
anticipation of the Great Immolation which awaited all of Helios’s winged
children, from air to elementary light and from this one to the fire principle where
all finishes by dissolution and from where all emanates anew. Let me rise in
the ashes and smoke of my own flames, rise to the glory of the eternal golden
morning. That kind of over-wrought claptrap; I’m sure you’ve heard plenty of it
in your lifetime already.

But Bartolomeo never said a word. He smiled, he listened, he joined in
with his fellow horses’ games and play and hard training, growing stronger and
stronger with each passing day. But he remained silent as a cloud. He
wouldn’t let on to anyone that he didn’t share their allegiance to Helios.
Instead, he lay awake at nights, dreaming of being free, of flying the night sky,
inventing little scenes and tableaux for the characters who lived in the
constellations above his head.

“I see you thinking,” said a fellow horse one night after all the others had
gone to sleep, kneeling down beside him. “I see your discontentment.” This
was Colpevole, a restless wanderer of a horse who was always trying to take on
everyone else’s problems. “Tell me what’s on your mind.”

Bartolomeo shook his head. Make no friends here, he thought, trust no
one. What you whisper in the evening gets sold for favors in the morning.

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