Free Before They Were Giants by James L. Sutter Page B

and—”
     
    “You shall have it, Son,” Daddy said warmly, absent-mindedly stripping off jacket and tie. Next week was Bradley Newton, Jr.’s sixth birthday, and Bradley, Senior had promised a copy of Now We Are Six and a pet for his very own. Newton was a man of means, so that this was no empty pledge. He felt he owed it to the boy, to make up in some token the sorrow of Mrs. N’s untimely departure.
     
    He eased himself into the upholstered chair, vaguely pleased that his son showed such imagination. Another child would have demanded something commonplace, like a mongrel or a Shetland pony. But a pegasus now—
     
    “Do you mean the winged horse, Son?” Newton inquired, a thin needle of doubt poking into his complacency.
     
    “That’s right, Daddy,” Junior said brightly. “But it will have to be a very small one, because I want a pegasus that can really fly. A full grown animal’s wings are non-functional because the proportionate wing span is insufficient to get it off the ground.”
     
    “I understand, Son,” Newton said quickly. “A small one.” People had laughed when he had insisted that Junior’s nurse have a graduate degree in general science. Fortunately he had been able to obtain one inexpensively by hiring her away from the school board. At this moment he regretted that it was her day off; Junior could be very single-minded.
     
    “Look, Son,” he temporized. “I’m not sure I know where to buy a horse like that. And you’ll have to know how to feed it and care for it, otherwise it would get sick and die. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?
     
    The boy pondered. “You’re right, Daddy,” he said at last. “We would be well advised to look it up.”
     
    “Look it up?”
     
    “In the encyclopedia, Daddy. Haven’t you always told me that it was an authoritative factual reference?”
     
    The light dawned. Junior believed in the encyclopedia. “My very words, Son. Let’s look it up and see what it says about. . . let’s see . . . here’s Opinion to Possibility . . . should be in this volume. Yes.” He found the place and read aloud. “‘ Pegasus—Horse with wings which sprang from the blood of the Gorgon Medusa after Perseus cut off her head.’”
     
    ~ * ~
     
    Junior’s little mouth dropped open. “That has got to be figurative,” he pronounced. “Horses are not created from—”
     
    “‘... a creature of Greek mythology,’” Newton finished victoriously.
     
    Junior digested that. “You mean, it doesn’t exist,” he said dispiritedly. Then he brightened. “Daddy, if I ask for something that does exist, then can I have it for a pet?”
     
    “Certainly, Son. We’ll just look it up here, and if the book says it’s real, we’ll go out and get one. I think that’s a fair bargain.”
     
    “A unicorn,” Junior said.
     
    Newton restrained a smile. He reached for the volume marked Trust to Wary and flipped the pages. “‘Unicorn—A mythological creature resembling a horse—’” he began.
     
    Junior looked at him suspiciously. “Next year I’m going to school and learn to read for myself,” he muttered. “You are alleging that there is no such animal?”
     
    “That’s what the book says, Son—honest.”
     
    The boy looked dubious, but decided not to make an issue of it. “All right— let’s try a zebra.” He watched while Newton pulled out Watchful to Indices. “It’s only fair to warn you, Daddy,” he said ominously, “that there is a picture of one on the last page of my alphabet book.”
     
    “I’ll read you just exactly what it says, Son,” Newton said defensively. “Here it is: ‘Zebra—A striped horselike animal reputed to have lived in Africa. Common in European and American legend, although entirely mythical—
     
    “Now you’re making that up,” Junior accused angrily. “I’ve got a picture.”
     
    “But Son—I thought it was real myself. I’ve never seen a zebra, but I thought— look. You