Nothing excites Zago about work, who at eighteen, loudly objects to having to hold two jobs. Yet, he readily admits that it must be his destiny to provide for his ailing parents, if he survived the car crash that crippled both of them, unhurt. He often says that everything happens for a reason, something that his parents also tell him, more so after the accident. Zago loves his parents. He tells them so. He also tells them that he believes they will walk again.
Zago often says his family is strange, and he seems even thrilled about that. Many others apparently also see something weird about the family. Neighbours still gossip about the accident, almost two years after it occurred, vivid, albeit often bizarre, eye-witness accounts feeding public interest in the matter. Some insist that moments before the accident a massive object its form, indefinable galloped across the road in the direction of the tree into which the vehicle in which Zago and his parents were traveling crashed. Others wonder how such a small vehicle literally could shear a massive oak, with anyone surviving the accident.
Even Zago tells his friends about feeling invisible tiny hands removing him from the tangled mess of his parents’ car as it hit the tree. He often says he is different from everyone now, that he is on a mission, to help his parents, and to save the world. When his friends ask him why he feels this way, Zago only gives them a wry smile. At work, they tell him that he is a freak. He responds that he is a séance. They openly avoid working with him but he is unfazed. He even often ends up doing more work than he should, which within him as he professes, is proof that he has special powers.
Zago returns home from work everyday often beat. He does his chores, feeds his parents and relaxes in the living room on a wooden recliner that his father bought just days before the accident. It is still in the same spot, facing the window, where outside, a tree provides shade from the sun. His factory work, a four-hour night shift that ends at midnight starts only a few hours after he returns home from his job as a janitor at the local government headquarters. In recent times, Zago tells his parents that he has been feeling increasingly worn-out, that he thinks something is about to happen soon, which his parents atypically dismissed.
Zago wakes up one morning and gets ready for work. It seems to be just another day. The day starts with a rainstorm, sprinkled with deafening claps of thunder, the sky almost permanently lit by unyielding lightening flashes. It is cold and dreary later, a clatter of drizzles lingering, then waning, the clouds still dense, even as they seem to grudgingly let through a faint flicker of the full moon lurking beyond. As he lapses into a snooze on the recliner, Zago starts to talk, at first almost inaudibly, but then louder, the hitherto staccato, clearer at first, then becomes bizarre chaos, to which he outwardly seems oblivious, even as his parents, who seem to hear all that he is saying, scream his name, perhaps to jolt him out of what looks like a trance.
The tree is apparently swaying sideways, leisurely, tucked in its branches, a stallion, in a haze, apparently awaken by Zago, whose comments about the beauty of the horse, it seems powerless to ignore, even as it sleeps, his verbal response to its gratitude, coupled with a chuckle. Zago seems to know its name. It appears the stallion responds positively every time he calls it Mariah. And when Zago asks about the many stallions it seems to say reside in its womb, all of which it also calls Mariah, he shudders at the unmistakable gloom that pervades it, which it concedes and explains, Zago pressing, apparently at first unable to extract a response from the stallion.
Zago wonders aloud why Mariah is so helpless to feed the stallions it says are hungry and dying. He smiles, now and again, his glazed eyes seemingly struggling to remain open. He gleefully offers to help feed all the stallions but seems visibly upset moments later asking Mariah why it says that they first need to come out of its womb. Then, he pauses, his eyelids fluttering persistently, sometimes sobbing, quietly, then out loud.
Suddenly, he starts to scream, beg, cajole, and curse, all at once. He gives Mariah instructions, and tells it to back off, get off the tree, run. He is shifting from side to side in the recliner. It is as if he wants to get up, but unable to do so. Something appears to be holding him down. `Stop it. Stop. Stop. Please stop, ` he yells, but whoever he is speaking with does not seem to be listening. Then he goes limp, apparently exhausted, saying nothing. Just as he seems to have fallen into a slumber, he gets up and heads for his parents` room, obviously livid.
They do not have to ask him what is going on. He sits at the foot of their bed and tells them that someone is attacking Mariah and that even as it finally comes off the tree to escape its attacker, and the other stallions fall off helplessly, as the attacker kicks and punches it, it struggles to save them. He says Mariah refuses to come off the tree to start with because it wants to nurse the stallions back to life when it is strong enough. He is sweating profusely as he talks, his gaze fixed on his parents, gesticulating as if asking them to get up from the bed. They do not. His parents appear befuddled.
After a while, his mother asks him if he has shut the windows. She tells him the rain is becoming heavier and it is getting very windy. At first noticeably hesitant, Zago then slowly gets up and walks toward the recliner, and the window, staring vacantly at the tree. It appears to be just a tree, other than swaying vigorously battered by furious winds and heavy rain. Zago shakes his head, and shuts the window, but just as he turns away he stares back at the tree as if something briefly catches his attention, and his mouth slightly agape, mutters, ``Oh Mariah!``
