The pain is a thing alive, burning through my body. It races through me if I try to raise my head, so I hold it low, moving it as little as possible. Ahead, the man-thing moves back and forth, but I don’t follow and rush. I had done that earlier, when the man-thing had waved a shimmering, shifting shape back and forth before my eyes. Then, I had rushed to attack the shimmering shape and the man-thing that waved it, but all that happened was that I hit nothing. I followed the shifting shape and it shifted away from me.
I try to keep the man-thing in my vision, turning slowly to keep it ahead of me. If it were earlier I would have gone for it, but not now. There is the pain racking me, and I am tired too, my throat parched and my vision blurring. I shake my head to clear my sight, and the pain flares like a demon biting me.
I wonder why this has been happening to me. I have not asked to be here. A few days ago I was contentedly chewing the cud with my fellows. Then the man-things came with ropes. I was pulled out and brought far away to this strange place where there is sand, not grass, under my hooves, to this place where the Light in the Sky blazes down without pity and there is only noise and flickering infuriating things and pain.
At first the things that were happening were completely full of confusion. The man-thing with the shiny outer skin waved around the shimmering soft shape before me, angering me until I tried to snatch at it and destroy it with my horns. Then another two man-things came, on horses, and those I could rip at with my horns, but instead I felt the first of the gigantic shafts of pain spearing through my body. Each time I would rush at the horses I would feel the pain, so I could barely raise my head.
By this time I was beginning to realise that there was a pattern to this, but I could not get hold of it yet. The horses went away, and more man-things came in, all around me, with the sharp sticks that now hang from my shoulders and paint my skin with the blood the smell of which fills my nostrils. It’s my blood, and the fear and anger build in me until all I want to do is hurl myself at them and to destroy.
No, there are rules to this thing that is happening to me, and I must learn them. I must calm down and try to understand. The darting man-thing before me is coming closer and closer, waving something that flickers and shimmers. I must wait and conserve my energies, and ignore the heat and the waves of sound beating down from the man-things that I can sense all around this central space of sand. I watch the man-thing move closer. The rage is building again in me, but I try to control it, to give it a focus, and when it gets too much for me to bear I break through the pain hanging before me and rush on to the flapping, shimmering thing. The shimmering waving soft thing is before my eyes, I can’t see, and when I try to strike at it, it slips over my horns and away. The waves of sound come crashing down. “Ole!” the man-things are screaming. “Ole!”
I pause, but the shimmering thing is back, focusing my rage and pulling me on, and I turn and strike at it again, but again it slips past me. But now I know. Suddenly, as the cries of “Ole!” ring out, I know that it is not the soft waving shape that is my enemy, but the man-thing that is waving it. Yes, the rule to this is that the man-thing is the target and not what he waves.
I lower my head slightly, trying to see the man-thing. Yes, he is there, in the shiny outer skin that glitters in the glare of the Light in the Sky. I gasp air into my lungs, skidding round as quickly as I can, ignoring my pain, focussing my anger. The man-thing, I think. I must get the man-thing.
I know now that I am not going to see my sweet pasture again, I am not going to mount a cow or play with my herd-mates, my brothers with whom I have lived. Whatever happens to me now will end here, on this sand that smells of my blood and under a sky that knows no pity. But it will end, I’m determined, on my terms. I have not begun this, but I shall end it.
I flip aside the shimmering cloth and hook with my horns. The man-thing goes flying over my shoulder and I rip round, spraying sand, and smash at him again and again.
Ole, I think, horns slashing. If nobody else will cheer for me, I will. Ole.
No comments:
Post a Comment