Disclaimer: (Sorry I forgot to put this in last time.) I don't own the Black, Satan or Bonfire; Walter Farley does and I'm obviously not Walter Farley.
Chapter 1: The Birth
I opened my eyes for the first time in my life and blinked. I was lying on something tickly. Something warm and wet was moving over my face, licking me. The world, at least what part of it that I could see, looked like swirling mist. I blinked again and everything came into sharper focus. That something that was licking me was also soft and pink. It had now moved on to my body, still licking, cleaning the birth sac off me. It belonged to a black face dark as night, with a white star on its forehead. That was the first memory I had of my mother.
When she finished cleaning me, I struggled up and stood on shaky legs. When I tried to take a step, my knees wobbled and buckled, throwing me forward, onto the ground. My mother, getting impatient, walked off. I became frantic. I stood up and attempted to run. My feet slid in four different directions and I flew head over heels. I whinnied and whinnied but my mother never answered. I was desperate. I HAD to get to my mother. The next thing I knew, I was up and running. To my relief, she was there, just out of sight from where I had lain, waiting for me. When I finally reached her side, I saw that she was smiling. "You know, that always works." she chuckled. " What works?" I asked. "That. My getting up and leaving you there. It worked with your brothers, it worked with your sister, and now it worked with you. That always made them get to their feet much earlier than all the other foals after their births." With that, she turned and trotted off to get a drink of water, me bouncing along by her side.
It wasn't dawn yet when we returned to the meadow where I was born. My mother dropped into a low, swinging walk, ambled over a little ways to the huddle of horses standing together (which I hadn't noticed until now), and lowered her head to graze. I nursed, then dropped onto the grass next to her and immediately started to doze.
My mother woke me with a gentle nudge when the sun rose. "Come," she whickered, " It's time to meet the rest of the herd." 'The rest of the herd' turned out to be the mares and their foals, at least, the ones that had been born so far. Soft velvety noses; bay, gray, black, chestnut, and brown, reached down and brushed my coat, testing, sniffing, memorizing my scent. There were exclamations of " Looks just like you!", "My goodness! Bella's colt…", "He's built for speed…"… they trailed off. My mother beamed.
There was a snort and the mares turned as one and drifted aside, making way for somebody moving towards us. I raised my head and saw a powerfully built, gleaming copper stallion with a narrow stripe standing before me, watching me closely. "That's your father," my mother murmured. He too lowered his head and brushed my coat with his nose. The stallion straightened up, whuffed noses with my mother, and trotted away, his muscles rippling under his shiny coat, flaxen mane and tail flowing even though there was no wind. That was it, surprisingly brief. The herd had accepted me.
When it was full morning, my mother turned from her grazing and looked at me with a critical eye. She began muttering observations, talking more to herself than to me.
"Let's see…what color are you? You're not dun, because duns have a much lighter and creamier color. And not chestnut either, because chestnuts are reddish gold, and anyway, your coat doesn't have a red hue. Now you can't possibly be a bay, because bays have a red-brown color, and yours is deep gold. You might well have been a golden bay, but you have a black stripe down your back; bays don't have stripes on their backs, duns do, but you're obviously not a dun...well, we're just going to have to call you a dun… " She paused and frowned. "Black socks…a black star…black muzzle… black mane and tail, although where you got it, I don't know," she shook her head. "It might have come from your father side, as all my mother's line have always been black …"
"Colt…not big now… going to be big when grown… built for speed; that's from me, although you're father's pretty fast too …that might be where you'll get your stamina… Slightly tapered head, brown eyes… deep chest, well-sprung ribs; you'll have plenty of lung power…Nice, strong hindquarters, sloping shoulders…straight legs…"
She lifted her head and gazed at me with shining eyes." You don't look like a mustang at all…you could easily pass for a Thoroughbred. Although you have mustang feet, look…" She indicated her own feet, which, compared to mine, looked small and neat, almost like saucers, while mine, even though I was still a newborn, was already almost the same size as hers." And I haven't given you a name yet…" She trailed off, getting a dreamy look in her eyes.
" 'Sun' sounds too plain a name for you…even though your coat is gold …what about Big Foot?" She chuckled when she saw my look. " No, Big Foot won't do … Star's already taken…Fire ? No…Rain? Can't be, that's for fillies…what am I going to call you?' she asked, sounding exasperated.
"I didn't have this trouble with the other foals…"She thought some more.
"Ah…yes…a good enough name…not taken yet…yes, that'll do."
My mother had named me Spirit.
The rest of the day passed, and aside from another foal being born, nothing much else happened. Tired from last night, my mother grazed and rested, sometimes trotting over to the stream that ran in our meadow and getting a drink, but otherwise, she didn't mingle with the other mares, and kept a distance away from the main herd.
The mare who had also foaled came over with her foal to join us. She was a bright chestnut, and her foal a light dapple-gray colt, with a silver mane and tail. Our mothers spent the day talking, and we foals spent the day hiding from each other. That night, I curled up beside my mother and fell asleep, warm, well-fed and content.
As the days passed, my awkwardness vanished and my clumsiness dissolved. The wobbly legs and buckly knees were gone. I no longer had any trouble standing up, and I didn't fall after every single step. After a few days, I learned to keep my balance and became much more sure-footed. I also became bolder. When we were first born, the other colt, and I stuck to our mothers' sides like leeches. We went wherever they went, and whenever anyone approached, we would either run in the opposite direction and use our mothers as shields, or hide underneath their bellies and peer up at the stranger. Now, however, I found myself daring to venture a little further from my mother, going to sniff something interesting, or explore. Each time I did it, I strayed further and further, until I became confident enough not to run whenever a new face showed up. The chestnut mare who had foaled the same day as my mother and her dapple-gray colt were no longer new faces; the mare's name was Golden, and her colt was called Thunder.
One warm spring day, not long after our births, when we had been fed and there was nothing else to do, we began to wander off while our mothers were talking. We had already reached the edge of the meadow, where the trees started and were sniffing at the ground when we heard hooves. We looked up at the same time, and found ourselves face to face with a furious bay mare who had her teeth bared and was glaring at us. "Well, well, well," she snarled, " What are you doing here?" A copper filly appeared behind her, and peered at us. Before we could open our mouths to answer, the bay mare turned to Thunder, and began to baby-talk him. " Twying to sneak off aren't we? Two widdle baby colts, twying to get intwo twouble." She rounded on me, her teeth gleaming. "Well I could just-" "That's enough, Reva." came my mother's voice. She was standing beside me (I had no idea how), and a good distance away, I could see Thunder's mother looking anxious, but not daring to get close to the bad-tempered bay mare. " Come on, you two." My mother herded us off, leaving the bay mare speechless with shock at her sudden appearance. Then, as we trotted away, we heard the bay mare recover, and mutter, under her breath, but still loud enough for us to hear,
"outsider". My mother pretended she didn't hear anything when we looked questioningly at her. " That's Reva and her filly, Blaze. You'll want to be careful around them. Reva's usually nasty and unpleasant; she's always telling off all the other colts and fillies, except her own, and if she gets really mad, you'd better watch out for her hooves or her teeth. Blaze's not that bad, but she'll soon be like her mother." Golden came trotting up. "Thanks Bella," she whinnied gratefully. " You're the only one with guts enough to stand up to her, aside from Northlight of course." She threw a dark look over her shoulder, at the bay mare still standing there, seething with rage. My mother didn't say anything else until we reached the group of mares standing together. Golden and Thunder ambled off to visit with another mare. The moment they left, I pounced on my mother and nearly suffocated her with my questions.
"Who is Northlight?"
" Why was Reva so mad?"
" Has she always been that way?"
" Why did Gold-"
"Slow down!" my mother interrupted, tossing her mane in annoyance. "Northlight. That's the copper stallion who came the morning you were born. He's always around, though you don't get to see him much. I don't know why Reva's that nasty, but she's always been that way from the time she came. That was last spring …Northlight got her along with two other mares when he defeated Saber, the big, black stallion who's got his mares just over the ridge… Saber's been wanting to get her back ever since… I don't know what he sees in her, I hear he's just as nasty as she is…" Her nostrils flared, and she snorted. "Anyway, Saber's always getting in trouble with the other stallions, trying to steal their best mares. He's a bit of an idiot though…he was beaten by Northlight lots of times, and he's still coming around here, trying to pick a fight…you'd think that he would've learned to stay away after what happened to him two springs ago."
"What happened?" I asked.
" Northlight beat him to a bloody pulp, hoping he'd have learned his lesson and never come back, but then, last winter, he turned up again, asking for trouble as usual…mind you, he's got a big, ugly scar right over his left eye you know…It was Northlight that gave him that scar…" Her eyes had a faraway look in them when she turned to me.
" And you!" Her eyes were suddenly blazing. " Wandering off without telling me! If you'd only wondered whether we worried or not! What if something had got you? You know perfectly well that there are coyotes and other-" she shuddered. "things out there…" She gave me a hard, reproachful, nudge that nearly sent me tumbling.
That day, I learned an important lesson, one of the many that my mother would be teaching me in the following days: not to stray off again without telling my mother where I went. I never did stray off again, until the time when I was weaned. And I didn't know it then, but it would be the cause of my downfall.