Dream Riders

by Jesse Blackadder

  “It’s very ambitious,” said Shannon. “I’m not sure I like the idea of you putting yourself, or Zen, under that kind of pressure.”

  I thought fast. “We’ll make it an opportunity to learn,” I said. Shannon loved anything that involved learning. “And besides, Gillie wants you to say yes.” He had got up from his basket and was looking up at her expectantly, his tiny tail wagging.

  “Well of course he does. He loves it here. Life was very boring for him before, because I had to go out every day to work. You know, Frankie, even if I have to go back to my old job in the city for a few years, I’ll still keep my horses here, and come back on the weekends whenever I can. I’d have some kind of a caretaker here to supervise. You could still come here every day on the weekends, and after school.”

  I tried to picture being with the horses, and sitting on the verandah, and training in the round yard, alone.

  “Please.”

  Shannon sat gazing at the pile of bills and then suddenly she pushed them away. “Okay. Let’s try it. I love a challenge.”

  That was two of my brilliant ideas already happening, I thought to myself as I cycled home. There was just one to go.

  Twenty-three

  “I’m impressed,” said Dad. I had just finished explaining my grand plan to create the Dream Riders and wow everyone at the Mullumbimby Show. “You’re becoming a real leader, and I’m proud of you.”

  “A leader?” That’s what Shannon had said I needed to be with my horse. I couldn’t see how it applied to people, though.

  “You’ve had a vision and now you’re going to convince people to join in. You’re not just sitting around moaning about it, like some people.”

  Like you, I thought, but didn’t say.

  “You’re taking action and showing initiative. That’s even more leadership right there.”

  “There’s a catch, though,” I said. “A pretty big one, actually. And it involves you.”

  “Well, that’s easy,” said Dad. “You know I would do anything …”

  “I know,” I cut him off. “I want you to come to Pocket of Dreams and help me train, in the afternoons sometimes when you get home early from work, and on the weekends.”

  “Oh.” Dad swallowed. He put his hands in his pockets, then took them out and ran them through his hair. “The thing is, I don’t know if I have the time.”

  What are you talking about? I wanted to say. You spend all your spare time on the couch in your pyjamas, watching TV. But I didn’t want to make him feel even worse about himself, so instead I said something else that was true.

  “If I’m going to be spending even more of my time at Pocket of Dreams, working and getting ready for the show, we’re hardly going to see each other. I’ll miss you.”

  “I’ll miss you, too,” said Dad. He reached out to smooth back my hair. “It’s just … you know, your mother.”

  I caught his hand and held it. “I’ve thought about that, too. If you come on Tuesdays and Thursdays and in the mornings on the weekend, she won’t be there. Not unless she’s picking me up, anyway, and even then it will only be at the end.”

  “I don’t know.” He tried to take his hand back but I didn’t let it go.

  “You know, you never used to spend all your time on the couch when we lived in the city,” I said. “You used to go out and see friends and do things. You were always busy.”

  “I know, sweetie, but …”

  “I don’t want to have a hobby that doesn’t include you. At least some of the time.”

  “Oh, Frankie …”

  “I don’t want to push you, Dad, and I know it’s been hard. But the thing is, this might be good for you. Shannon says you can learn so much about yourself from being with horses.”

  He stared at me. I could tell by the way he kept opening his mouth to speak that he was trying to think of an argument. But each time, he closed it again, and finally he shrugged.

  “So I’ll be going to a horse place to watch you pick up poo,” he sighed.

  “It’s not a horse place, it’s an equestrian centre. And the technical term is manure. And there’s a very shady tree you can sit under, with wi-fi, if you need to work,” I said, with a pang. I pushed the thought of Kai away. “But I want you to come into the paddock and the round yard and hang out with me and Zen, too. He’s so gentle – stubborn sometimes, but quick at learning, if you can make it fun. And he’s got such a great sense of humour, you’ll see.”

  “So I’ll be spending my free time with a humorous horse now?” muttered Dad. “Now that’s something I didn’t foresee.”

  But he was humming as he went into the kitchen and started cooking dinner.

  Twenty-four

  The next afternoon Dad was waiting for me as I turned my bike onto the Pocket Road.

  “Hey, Horse Girl!” he said, getting out of the car.

  “Aren’t you meant to be at work?” I asked as he put my bike in the boot.

  “Early mark,” he said. “Actually, I asked if I could leave early and work from home, so I could hurry up and see you ride.”

  “I don’t know if I’ll be riding today,” I said, hopping into the car beside him.

  “I can watch you walk, then. I don’t care.”

  “It’s actually pretty interesting watching someone walk in a connected way with a horse.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  It felt so good to have Dad by my side again, out here in the world instead of at home on the couch. Who knew where life might take us? I thought as we drove up the Pocket Road, the lush green trees and paddocks whizzing by out the window. Whatever happened, we would be doing it together, and that made everything I had to pull off in the next three weeks feel completely possible.

  “It’s here,” I said, signalling with my arm out the window. Dad swung the wheel and pulled in to Pocket of Dreams.

  After I showed him around and introduced him to Shannon and the horses, he sat in the car, working on his computer and catching up on his phone calls.

  I think he liked it. The second time he came, he sat under the oak tree, in Kai’s old spot, with Gillie at his feet. Once he finished his work, he came over and hung out beside the arena where Zen and I were working with Shannon, preparing for our demonstration.

  “That was amazing!” he said, the first time he saw me ride.

  I had been riding Zen around the yard bareback, using just a halter, going from a walk into a trot and then back to a walk again – building trust between us, and learning how to understand more of Zen’s own specific “horse language”.

  “Really?” I felt thrilled, and at the same time weirdly shy. Dad had never even seen me with a horse before.

  “I had no idea you would be such a natural.”

  I couldn’t help myself, I beamed. Dad was a bit like Eloise – they were the only two people in the world who could possibly think I was any kind of expert with horses. And they happened to be two of my favourite people in the world, too.

  Shannon and I had decided to use music as part of my routine with Zen, which would all be done “at liberty”, which meant that we wouldn’t have a lead rope or anything connecting us – nothing except our energy. This didn’t sound easy when Shannon suggested it, and it turned out to be even less so. Zen kept wandering off or becoming confused, while I’d become frustrated and tense, and accidentally push Zen away when I wanted him to come forward, or make him go faster when I wanted him to slow down. Dad would call out encouragement when he could tell I was getting discouraged, and he’d dance and sway to the songs I’d chosen for us to practise with as they came over the loudspeakers.

  Dad and Shannon seemed to like each other, but the moment they met, Gillie and Dad fell madly in love. Gillie would whine outside the car door when we arrived, and the second Dad opened it she’d jump up into his lap. When he sat working on his computer under the oak tree it was a constant fight between Gillie and the computer for space on his lap, and when he walked around the property with me, Gi
llie was always at his heels.

  “I’ve never been a dog person,” Dad kept marvelling as we drove home in the evenings, “but then, Gillie is no ordinary dog.”

  Ever since our argument, Kai had stopped coming to Pocket of Dreams, which I was relieved about. I wasn’t going to tell Mum about his lies, but I didn’t want to be a part of them, either.

  “What did you do after work?” Mum would ask Kai when she was driving us home of an evening, after picking us up separately.

  “I went to the library,” or “the café”, he would reply, “where they have wi-fi.”

  “And you remember I’m trusting you, right, Kai?” Mum would remind him not-so-subtly, each time.

  Trusting you about what? I would wonder, before I could stop myself. Kai had offered to tell me – I was sure he had – that afternoon, but I didn’t want to know. I didn’t care about him any more.

  “I know you’re trusting me, Auntie Kate,” Kai would reply each time.

  You are such a sneaky hypocrite! I would think to myself. I could feel him looking at me, trying to catch my eye and make some kind of connection with me, but I was determined not to let that happen, so I just kept staring out the window.

  When we were at Mum’s place I tried to keep the atmosphere as normal as possible. That was easier than I thought it would be, when Eloise and Mum and Viv were around. Kai and I could still do chores and joke around together at Viv’s place, I realised with relief. We could still enjoy being in a group together for meals and all the crazy activities Viv and Mum kept dreaming up – for example, we were going to be helping Mum hand-dye her first batch of wool on the weekend, but first we were meant to help spin it. So far this had involved a lot of mistakes and laughter, but we were slowly getting better. When I had a choice, though – like at school, or when the others weren’t around – I’d go to my room, or to the library at lunchtime, because we were no longer real friends.

  “What’s going on?” asked Mum one evening after dinner, a week after our fight. Kai had excused himself early to go to his room, and I was sitting at the kitchen table working on my flyer for the show.

  “What do you mean?” I said innocently.

  “Every time you two are together there’s an atmosphere, and it wasn’t there before,” said Mum. “Even Eloise has commented on it.”

  Oh. And I had thought I was doing such a good job of keeping it all low-key. “I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, concentrating on my drawing.

  “Really, darling?” said Mum, sitting down next to me.

  I gripped my pencil, torn. What I really wanted to do was tell her everything that had happened that day, between me and Kai and between me and Violet, and to see if she had any advice. But that would mean telling on Kai, and I had said I wouldn’t do that.

  “Yes, really,” I said.

  “Okaaay,” she said reluctantly, and stood up. “You know, Frankie, if you’re going to be a leader, that means if you have an issue with someone, you have to be the one to try to sort things out.”

  “Leader?” I stopped drawing and looked up at her. Why was everyone saying I was becoming a leader all of a sudden?

  “Oh, sorry. I thought you were forming the Dream Riders because you wanted it to be a certain way.”

  “I do! I want it to be fun and not competitive, and I want everyone to be friendly and get along. But what does that have to do with me and Kai?”

  She looked at me and I swallowed, which was definitely a sign that I was thinking and understanding, exactly like a horse.

  “You and Kai are important to each other,” said Mum gently. “Even if you’re not going to be close friends any more, you have to try to fix this.”

  “But why do I have to be the one to do it?” I burst out. “Why doesn’t he?” And then I thought of how he’d been trying to talk to me for the last week and I kept brushing him off, and how he kept saving a place next to him at lunch every day – which I ignored, of course – and trying to catch my eye.

  “Okay,” I said crossly, before Mum could say anything more. “I’ll try.”

  When I walked into the kitchen the next morning, Kai was standing at the counter looking at my flyer.

  “Good morning,” I said, giving him a bright smile. “Your hair looks nice.” He’d stopped spiking it up with gel, so now it hung loose around his face.

  “Thanks,” he said. “What’s this?”

  “My flyer, for the show,” I said, suddenly feeling shy.

  “It’s a brilliant idea, and it’s all great information,” he said.

  “But it’s hopeless, isn’t it?” I’d wanted it to look cute and hand drawn, which is why I’d done the lettering myself, but looking at it in the clear light of morning I realised it was actually just a mess.

  COME AND JOIN THE DREAM RIDERS

  A new kind of pony club for riders aged 12 –18, beginners to advanced.

  Come and learn how to connect with your horse from your heart, make new friends and have fun!

  Sundays, 9 am–1 pm Pocket of Dreams Equestrian Centre, The Pocket

  • • •

  See a natural horsemanship demonstration by Zen the wonder horse and Frankie Jameson (beginner), 10 am, and by Spirit and Shannon Falkiner, state dressage champion (advanced) 1 pm, Saturday 1 September in the Small Arena, Mullumbimby Agricultural Show

  “No, it’s really good,” said Kai, smiling at me eagerly. “I was thinking you just need to do it a bit darker and more spaced out to make sure it comes out well on photocopies. But in any case, it’s great.”

  “Hmm, good point,” I said, snatching it away. “But I don’t have any more time.” I had to start letting people know about the Dream Riders today if I was going to have any chance of getting five people to sign up in the next two weeks. Because that was all the time I had left, I realised with a mixture of equal parts excitement and terror, counting the days off on my fingers.

  Okay, no more procrastinating! I told myself that morning at recess. The playground was buzzing with kids, as usual, but all I could see were Ash and Lesley walking slowly towards me across the asphalt.

  “Hi Ash, hi Lesley,” I said, planting myself directly in front of them. I felt shaky, but my voice sounded normal.

  “Oh, Frankie, hi!” smiled Ash. She was wearing a black jumper over her uniform, and thick black stockings with Doc Martens. My old school had been meticulous about insisting we wear the correct school uniform, so I was dressed in the regulation maroon blazer, maroon tunic and maroon stockings. I hadn’t realised it was okay here to customise.

  “We didn’t see you at pony club,” said Lesley. Her hair was exploding in curls as usual, but she was wearing it loose today, so the curls lay soft and luxurious across her shoulders. I hadn’t realised her hair was so beautiful.

  “And we haven’t seen you lately at school, either.”

  That was because I’d been avoiding them, still embarrassed over the Violet incident, but they didn’t need to know that.

  “I’ve been really busy working on a new project,” I said instead, trying to sound excited even though suddenly it seemed like the dumbest idea in the world. I wished I had my flyer so I could just hand it to them and walk away, but it was still sitting on the kitchen counter, waiting for me to make photocopies.

  “What kind of a new project?” asked Ash.

  They listened politely, giving me all their attention as I tried to explain, stumbling over my words and getting the names of the horses confused.

  “So what is it, exactly?” asked Lesley, once I was done. “This – what did you call it – natural horsemanship?”

  “Natural horsemanship is learning how to connect with your whole horse – with their emotional, spiritual, psychological and physical capacities,” I said. “It’s a training method that uses horse behaviour and psychology to train with the whole being.”

  I was quoting Shannon, but I could see I’d only made them more confused.

  “You don’t use a bridle, or saddle
, or anything, at first,” I added.

  “But isn’t that dangerous?” Lesley burst out.

  “It’s actually less dangerous, because before you do anything even the slightest bit risky you make sure you’re really connecting with your horse.”

  “Uh huh,” said Lesley, but I could see she wasn’t getting it.

  “What about if you still want to have a bridle and a saddle, though, like for show jumping, or dressage?” asked Ash.

  “You can still do that,” I said eagerly. “A lot of people combine natural horsemanship with other kinds of riding – you just learn how to do them in a better way. You could join the Dream Riders and still be in pony club, for example. Natural horsemanship just makes you a better rider. And it’s really fun, too …” I trailed off, staring at my feet. It wasn’t sounding fun, and I was starting to sound kind of desperate.

  We were all silent for a moment, and the noise of the other kids around us suddenly seemed very, very loud.

  “Well, I think it sounds interesting,” said Ash finally.

  “It will be really fun,” I repeated, in about the most boring, un-fun way you could possibly imagine.

  “Maybe we should come and watch your demonstration so we can get a better idea,” said Ash.

  She was so nice, I thought. Even now, after I had made it sound completely weird, she was still being kind about it.

  “I think you’re brave, to be doing a demonstration on your own in front of everyone,” said Lesley. “We’ll be looking forward to it. Hey, listen, why don’t you come and sit with us, and you can tell us some more about it?”

  I looked over to their table. Violet was sitting there, surrounded – as usual – by a crowd of girls. “Sure,” I forced myself to say, following them over to their table and sitting down. I didn’t say much, other than “Ham and cheese,” when Ash asked me what was in my sandwich, and “Not today,” when Lesley asked if I was going to the beach this afternoon. She’d seen me there with Eloise a few times, when she’d been there with her little sister. Violet glanced at me occasionally, but neither of us said anything. The last time she had seen me was in the barn at Pocket of Dreams. And obviously neither of us – probably for very different reasons – wanted to talk about that.