Sailing on another new tack
Many of us have unfinished projects. I'm about to give a little exposure to one of mine. My excuse is that I'll be demonstrating how you can borrow scene ideas from great authors and make them your own.
Fyodor Dostoyevskiy, the wise 19th-century Russian writer who could have prevented the Communist takeover if only the Russian people had listened to him, described an incident which he suggested was appallingly commonplace in Russia: sadistic abuse of a work horse, just for fun. In the incident as described by Dostoyevskiy, there was no one to intervene on the unfortunate animal's behalf; but who's to stop me, when writing a derivative scene, from changing that?
Back before my Mary was stricken with cancer, I was working on a graphic novel of the historical-character-brought-into-modern-times genre. My chosen historical, or anyway legendary character was the most beloved hero from the medieval sagas of early Russia: Ilya Muromets, a peasant who had been a cripple until he was miraculously healed and given superhuman strength. If I'd been through what Ilya went through, and then was compensated with super power, I truly believe that I would always have a heart to help and protect the defenseless--having BEEN defenseless for so long myself.
Of my story project, suffice it here to say that I had Ilya supernaturally restored to flesh-and-blood life in Russia during the Boris Yeltsin era. He won the love of a Russian woman named Anastasiya (with a nickname of Anochka), who was as beautiful and sexy as I could manage to draw her. The portion of the novel I was actually able to draw and write before MY OWN true love was taken ill did not extend as far as Ilya and Anastasiya getting married; but that was where it was headed. Here, then, in prose without pictures, is a scene I intended to portray after the two settled down in Siberia, on the grounds of a former collective farm from Soviet times. Among the new-breed private farmers near them is an obnoxious clod tentatively named Seryozha, who uses horses to conserve motor fuel. That's all you need to know, hopefully, to appreciate this scene...
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Having finished cutting firewood, Ilya loaded it into the four carts he had chained together in a line, then began strolling back toward the cottage, casually towing the carts behind him. He was less than halfway home when he heard coarse male voices raising drunken shouts that wavered between phony-sounding laughter and sincere-sounding curses. One of the voices, not surprisingly, was that of Seryozha. And punctuating the vocal brawl, the cracking of a whip was ominously audible.
Quickening his pace to round the bend in the road, the ancient warrior saw the scene. An aging black mare whom he had seen before, one of Seryozha's animals, was hitched to a wagon--but a wagon loaded more heavily than ANY single horse should be expected to pull, let alone a horse far past her prime. The wagon, Seryozha's largest, was piled high with various pieces of machinery, their total weight surely not less than seven hundred kilograms; and on top of those, numerous large rocks were piled--for no other possible reason than simply to make the burden greater. On top of THOSE, not only Seryozha but five of his hooligan friends were sitting, drinking, and howling in celebration of their own cleverness...as Seryozha cracked his whip at the hapless mare. He was not just making the noise, he was hitting the mare's back and drawing blood. "Move, you worthless, lazy trollop!" he yelled at his four-legged victim. "Do you think you're some princess? Work, blast you, WORK!!" Ilya could see that the point at which the animal must have been hitched to this impossible burden was no more than six meters away. In however much time Seryozha had been tormenting the mare, her most desperate efforts to do his bidding had only managed to move the load this far. As Ilya came within speaking range of the tableau, two more of the bully's drinking buddies ran up from the wagon's rear and jumped on board, adding their guffaws and curses to the uproar.
Ilya reminded himself that he was no longer living in the eleventh century, and he was no longer a knight of King Vladimir of Kiev, empowered to judge life and death. In his own time, anyone Ilya had caught doing this to an innocent beast would have found _himself_ under the whip AND hitched to the same wagon in very short order; but this was the modern world, with its own ideas of justice; and he had Anochka to think about. So--
"Neighbor! Good afternoon!" Ilya exclaimed with a cheerfulness not more fake than Seryozha's indignation at the mare's "laziness." "Where do you need that load taken to?"
The civil question, from a man who Seryozha knew held him in much-deserved contempt, took the stupid brute off guard; so he simply answered forthrightly: "This junk has to go to one of the lumberyard storage buildings, Number 17." His dull puzzlement at least made him forget to continue whipping his horse to death.
Ilya nodded, stroking his beard. "Ah, yes, I've seen that shed; it's a bit far at the pace you're going."
One of the other drunkards, too far drunk to remember to be afraid of insulting a man who could break his spine with one finger, leaned out and shouted with stinking breath into Ilya's face, "We'd get there soon enough if this cursed sluggish mare would start earning her feed!"
"Well, maybe I can help," said Ilya calmly. Hands working almost too fast to be seen, he unfastened the mare from the wagon, picked her up off her feet as easily as a common man might lift a cat, and set her down to one side--where she sank to the ground, unable to stand. Before Seryozha or his drinking buddies could react, Ilya told them, "Hold on tight!" Then, ducking below the wagon, he lifted it, with everything and everyone on it, and carried it at a strolling pace toward Storage Building Number 17. Setting the wagon down before the double doors of the large shed, he then said, "While you fellows unload the machinery, I'll go check on your horse. She was looking a little unwell for some reason."
When Ilya walked briskly, few men could keep up with him unless they ran headlong. As Ilya expected, the eight vodka-hounds, after getting over their amazement, began following him, their muddy brains beginning dimly to sense that they had just been rebuked. But they could not overtake him until he had reached the mare and had a moment alone with her.
"Trust me, dear creature," he said, stroking the suffering animal's mane. Then he closed his huge hand around the mare's nostrils and mouth, cutting off her breath. Barely able to struggle at all, the mare lost consciousness in seconds. Some of the other local residents, having heard the noise, were drifting to the scene, but not soon enough to see what Ilya had done to the horse.
When Seryozha and his gang came up, Ilya turned to face them with a solemn expression. "Your draft horse appears to have had a weak heart. Perhaps whatever accident caused her back to be bleeding so, contributed to draining away the last of her strength."
Another of the hooligans slapped Seryozha's back. "That's okay, brother, we had enough sport killing her."
Ilya ignored that interjection, keeping his gaze on the owner. "Since this animal will never work for you again, would you mind selling her body to me? I'll pay you twenty-five rubles for her."
Seryozha grunted. "Might as well, I guess." Ilya fished the twenty-five rubles out of his pocket and handed them over. Glancing at the newly-arrived onlookers, he said, "All of you are witnesses: he has sold me this horse of his own free will." There were nods and mumbles of agreement.
Ilya then planted his hands against the mare's chest and applied carefully-controlled pressure...until that chest expanded, and the mare was breathing again. She looked at Ilya as if it were somehow given to her to understand what he had done for her.
Seryozha went livid. "You SCUM!! You LIED to me!! Give me my horse back, NOW!!"
Ilya stood up. "I never said that she was dead. You _thought_ I was saying so, since you yourself had intended her to die from your cruelty. Be satisfied with your extra vodka money; this horse belongs to ME now." Scooping the mare up in his arms as before, he then hoisted her over his shoulders, so that he could resume hauling his firewood at the same time.
He did not get far before something whistled toward his right ear. The warrior's right hand, again moving like lightning, caught the whip aimed at his face, then yanked it out of Seryozha's hand, sending Seryozha skidding forward off balance to fall in a heap.
Three of Seryozha's friends drew knives; and Seryozha himself, recovering his feet, did the same. Ilya merely smiled...set the mare down again out of the way...picked up from the lead cart a log almost too big for his fingers to reach around...and with a squeeze of his hand, crushed it into splinters. His eyes bored into Seryozha's. "Oh, yes," he said softly. "Yes, try that. I _beg_ you to try it. All of your friends, too. I _beg_ you to try to use those knives on me."
After just enough delay for drunken brains to process the warrior's meaning as he took one step toward them, the eight rowdies ran for their lives, some stumbling, some of them wetting their trousers in fear. More than one of the other people present cheered for Ilya. And Ilya, picking up the mare again, resumed hauling his firewood carts, enroute now to inform Anochka that she had just acquired a new pet horse.
