She looked back to make sure he was still able to keep walking, even though she could feel him against her flank.
Son of Storm was nudging her along and she was nudging little blue Choopa. She caught sight of the shadowy shape of Wingilla and Bri Bri, and, occasionally, other mares.
The only way in which they knew that the day was ending was when the world, instead of being densely white and grey, became black. The snow was wetter, by then, and not falling quite so heavily. They must soon find grass and some bushes that were not bowed down and covered.
Once or twice after the dog had vanished, Dandaloo felt certain they were being followed; once she had thought she heard the clink of a bridle ring in the distance.
Choopa moved slower and slower, and nothing appeared through the cloud and blowing snow behind them.
At last they reached a long ridge where the grass showed in patches, and then clear areas of grass beneath the trees appeared, and some bushes. It was time to stop forcing the foals to keep going.
So they slept. Even Dandaloo finally slept, though she stayed awake for a long time, listening and wondering, and in that dark night, the snow began to fall even more heavily; again, no one came.
The man and the dog had given up before complete darkness, and gone back to light the fire in the hut. The dog answered the faraway howl of a dingo, and the rugged-up horse neighed to brumbies out there in the night and snow.
So there was another morning of a white world, cloud and wind and blowing snow, and the grass they had grazed the night before had vanished under the white blanket.
Some of the shrubs that were sheltered by trees were not yet bowed down and covered, so there was food for the mares, but no water to drink, and they must have water as well as food to make milk. Wingilla went searching for a stream, but when she dug in a depression in the snow, where a stream should surely run, it was frozen solid.
Mouthfuls of snow only made them more thirsty.
Son of Storm half-remembered tales of a beautifully warm valley somewhere west of south — towards the sunset. Perhaps it was only a story, perhaps they might find it, but the herd had better eat while it could, while there was food still showing above this all-pervading snow.
When they had grazed on the shrubs for some time they moved on, little Choopa struggling along the tracks made by the others, and Dandaloo keeping him close to her. Sometimes he just dropped on to the half-beaten track, and Dandaloo kept nudging him, so that he did not sleep.
Son of Storm found a creek that was deeper and not frozen right through. He broke a hole in the ice from which they could all drink.
All through that day of falling snow, they went on and on, veering slightly to the west. Dandaloo realised Choopa really could go no further, just as a reddish glow seemed to suffuse the snowflakes, yet somehow they kept struggling on, towards the sunset.
A warm fanning of air came up out of a valley. Only a little way down the bushes seemed free of snow; there were areas of grass. Dandaloo gave a deep sigh. Somehow she managed to urge her little dwarf a few feet downwards, till she found a snow-free place where he could lie. She lay down beside him, waking him whenever she knew he should have some milk, if he were to survive the onward struggle through the blizzard.
A man was riding loose-reined on his horse — riding through the snow back to Benambra. Both horse and dog knew the way through pouring snow as well, or better, than he did.
Days later, in the Golden Age pub at Omeo, he mentioned having seen a dwarf foal in the blizzard, and that he reckoned it would be dead by now.
The Black Mare
In the lower country, the pod-bearing bushes were stronger and taller, and not covered over by snow. Dandaloo and Wingilla found plenty to eat, so that there was milk for their foals. Bri Bri grew a little, in spite of the hard, cold winter season. Choopa remained as small as ever, but he did not become thin and weak.
On the slopes that faced the sun, the snow was thinner and melted between falls. The bushes quickly shook themselves free. As the year turned towards spring, streams began to break free, or bubble and gurgle beneath the ice.
The foals were filled with excitement in this, the first spring since the one in which they were born. They would race over the patches of snow, rear and plunge. Other young animals came out of burrows to play. Soon they, too, were forming a circle around Choopa while he romped and danced.
The snow became crystalline, like sugar, having been melted and frozen over and over again. It was Choopa who was the first one to learn the joy of rolling in it. Down he would go, legs in the air, his whole body wriggling in the coarse, slippery snow. Then, one time, as he wriggled, he began to slide, his head pointed downhill and then he slid quite fast on his back. The first time he found himself slithering head first, he felt rather unsure as to what would happen when he reached the fringe of ice at the bottom of the drift, and the wet grass, but it was all so splendidly upside down that nothing mattered, and when he reached the grass there was no jolt and he simply swung his short, stocky legs over and leapt to his feet.
Suddenly, from somewhere high up, there was the sweet music of a western warbler. He did a few waltzing steps on his strange legs, dancing to the warbler’s song as he went upwards towards the tall messmate in whose high branches the tiny bird was whistling.
Choopa had begun to lose his winter coat, and a more pronounced pattern of strange markings had appeared, particularly on his head, where one white blotch crossed over his offside eye, and seemed to have splashed down from his ear. The nearside eye had a deep blue patch above the white-encircled eye, making an enquiring expression. His belly was white and his back seemed to have blue stripes. His blue roan rump had a shining white circle right at the butt of his tail.
Dandaloo watched him going over to the source of the music, and she thought — with a great swelling pride — how lovely he was. It was only once — that moment after he was born — that she had thought him terribly ugly.
The heat of the sun became stronger. The snow melted all through the lower country. It ran in rivulets into the sunset valley. Far above and far away, the high, snow-covered peaks glittered.
Dandaloo and Son of Storm began to feel a great restlessness and longing for the high country — the longing to be on the move. Quambat Flat, the Cascades, Dead Horse Gap, the Ramshead — all that world called them insistently. Dandaloo also felt a nagging certainty that men lived very close to this lower country. It must be time to go. The snow would be melting everywhere, leaving long roadways of grass, all the way to the Limestone, to the Cascades. They should start to graze their way to their home.
Once the idea of home, and the high mountains above it, got into their minds, the insistent longing became a clamour, and Son of Storm and Dandaloo gathered the others together, and they started off. The young wombats trundled after them for a while, but soon went home to their mothers and their warm burrows. Choopa looked back sadly at them, but ahead were all the friends who had stayed at Quambat. There were the two young wombats who had kept him warm when he fell in the snow, unconscious. They were brothers for ever. He was eagerly looking forward to finding them again.
Very soon, even though the foals had been quite well fed in the sunset valley and were strong, they began to tire, because Son of Storm, longing for home, set a faster pace than usual. Choopa was tired before the others, and after a few miles of pushing himself on and on, exhausted dreams began to take possession of him.
The snowy, shaded side of ridge and hill, the long strips of grass between snowdrifts, all began to merge into an ever-changing pattern moving hither and thither in front of his eyes. Shadows were black and deep blue, snow was glittering white, and, in his dreams, he was leaping and bounding on soft drifts of snow and he was dancing … some steps and movements which he did not know. He was moving in time to a birdsong he had never heard, and he was dancing as though his life and Dandaloo’s depended on him performing such intricate movements as he had never seen. Somehow, if h
is dance was perfection, he would be rewarded. A great bare hill, high, high up in the sky, such as they had seen above the beautiful mountain lakes, would be his, to give to Dandaloo so that she could graze there, all the days of her life.
And he would be tall, and strong.
The ugly dwarf foal stumbled on and on, while the strange dreams were pictures in his head. There seemed, in those dreams, to be some big stallions staring at him — horses that could hurt him. Surely it was his galloping and falling and somersaulting that had made the stallions and mares accept him in that Quambat Flat area, when Dandaloo first took him there.
Little, exhausted, dreaming dwarf, he stumbled beyond recovery and fell, managed to tuck his head under, and half-somersault, but was too tired to get up. Dandaloo stopped immediately, stood over him till his flanks were not heaving so desperately as he gasped for breath. Presently she nudged him to get up and drink.
Son of Storm, too gentle to force them all to go on, began to graze until every foal was rested.
So the trek homewards began. They were not driven, now, by the terror of being caught in the deep snow, but drawn by the magnetism of home and the high mountains further up.
They met a few strange horses — horses who had come from places which even Dandaloo did not know. A black mare shied with fright when she saw Choopa — shied, then stood with spread legs, and stared, before she tossed her head and mane, and galloped away.
Choopa watched as she returned cautiously — ears laid back — but she went away without coming close. He suddenly felt crestfallen — hurt. None of the Quambat Flat horses had ever shied away from him in fright. He knew he was much smaller than the other foals, but nothing had ever made him feel as though he really looked queer. Was he so ridiculous? Was he so ugly that a mare would shy away from him?
He tried to draw himself up taller and taller, as that mare kept stopping and looking back at him — occasionally snorting.
Then a few other mares and yearlings that were with her began to come closer around him. One yearling even took a little nip at his rump.
Choopa squealed with anger, and Dandaloo, already angry, swung round and kicked at the yearling. Choopa, frightened and offended, rose up in a rear, dancing around in sudden anger, creating, without thinking, his only form of self-protection — his comic tricks.
As the mares and yearlings stood back, a flash of pride came to the little dwarf. He could play and dance, in a way that no one else seemed able to do, and that was what the other young animals enjoyed and that was what made them love him.
High above, a magpie sang and Choopa romped and reared. Finally he did a few galloping strides, stumbled, fell and somersaulted, then he tucked that strange blue and white head under and somersaulted again, leapt up and went round and round on one spot in the centre of the circle that the strangers had made.
Dandaloo’s anger at the unkind fear and curiosity had quietened down, and she lay in the centre of the magic circle — an old mare who had seen so much, and now, because of this unusual foal she had borne, was not going to be able to live in peace.
When, at last, Choopa grew tired and lay down beside her, the mob of stranger horses melted away, leaving them both to sleep. Son of Storm, Wingilla, and the rest of the herd grazed nearby.
Dandaloo and Choopa were both half-sleeping, half-waking. The rhythm within the dance had woven a sort of calm around Dandaloo, but she knew that Choopa had been made unhappy by the black mare’s behaviour.
Choopa had suddenly been forced to realise that he looked ridiculous. Aware that he was small, he was unable to see the odd markings on his head and body which, along with his unusual size, made other horses wary of him. He pushed himself closer to his mother and hid his strange blue and white head behind her shoulder. When he fell into a sound sleep, he dreamed of the soft, warm fur of the two little wombats who had kept him warm in the snow.
Dandaloo had seen the misery in his eyes, but, except to love and protect him, there was nothing she could do for him. Maybe that love would be his armour and his own sense of fun be his protection, too.
Choopa Dances to Music above the Snowy River
A little stream of water ran quite close beside where Dandaloo and Choopa lay. It ran from under the fringe of a drift of snow. This rivulet of melted snow would run into the Quambat creek, and then join the Indi River, flowing on and on to the sea.
Dandaloo touched the half-sleeping Choopa with her nose.
Time flowed by in the old mare’s half-sleeping mind. A picture came of that really frightening-looking bundle to which she had given birth, in the scrub and tall trees, almost a year ago, and she saw the huge stallion staring at it for a moment, almost gently, and then moving on.
That black mare shying away from Choopa reminded her of how she had been afraid of the herd’s reaction to the strangeness of Choopa, and how she had not taken him to join the others for a long time, just because of this — fearing they might kill him. Half asleep, listening to the kookaburra’s evening laughter, she knew that it was Choopa’s somersaulting, and his joyous clowning, that had won the affection of the other horses, even of the supercilious yearlings. Choopa was nearly a yearling, himself, now.
An evening breeze began to rustle the eucalyptus leaves, to move the wattle fronds that would soon be ablaze with fluffy golden blooms.
A south wind was stirring the snow gum leaves. Images and truths floated through Dandaloo’s head — pictures of Choopa performing more of his tricks within his circle of young animals, weaving a circle of enchantment. That fun, that enchantment, was quite clearly his protection against what could be mob cruelty to an odd outsider. She saw in her dreams, too, the young wombats lying on his withers, warming Choopa in the snowstorm.
She dreamt on, until a flight of crimson and blue lowries flew chattering overhead and disturbed Choopa. Dandaloo became wide awake, and knew absolutely that nothing must ruin Choopa’s joy in his own ability to weave spells with his rhythm and his dancing.
The lowries had gone and Choopa slept again.
There was the faint sound of water trickling as the little stream ran from below the melting snow.
The moment came, a few days later, when they looked on to Quambat Flat from a fringe of trees at the foot of the Cobberas. Choopa saw a scattered mob of horses grazing on the flat. Not all the ones he remembered as friends were there, and those that were, seemed ragged and thin. The mares looked poor, too, and very rough in the coat. It was Dandaloo and Son of Storm who wondered if these mares had failed to force their way into sufficiently low country to be out of the deep snow. The grass still looked brown and pressed flat from weight of snow.
Bri Bri was nervous. Choopa was really longing to play. He started to trot towards the startled herd. Dandaloo followed him. Choopa began to gallop as he got closer to the others. This time he did not fall — strange blue and white foal with legs in flying rhythm. Suddenly he realised that the mares and yearlings had gathered together.
Dandaloo, just behind him, felt her heart beginning to thump with anxiety. Were the mares and yearlings going to turn and gallop away, and make Choopa feel utterly an outsider? Or, worse still, would one of them attack and hurt him? A queer cry of fear was forced out of her, as she watched that strange-looking foal galloping towards the silent, stiff, unwelcoming mob.
If only he could realise that his only defence was the comedy which he could create, and the spell which his rhythm and dance could cast over all who watched him. Then she saw Choopa wavering in his gallop. In the last few strides before he reached the herd, Choopa simply knew that he had to somersault, as he had done before, in front of the Quambat herd. This time he had to fall on purpose, right in front of those mares and foals, and somersault, nearly to their feet. He did it! He fell and somersaulted — that odd-looking ball of blue and white — then sprang up, reared and danced. He danced about, bowing, whirling round, and then, in a way he had never done before, he swayed from side to side, walking on his hind legs, right up
to the oldest of the mares, and stretched up his white-splashed nose to hers, then dropped on to all four feet and bowed.
The whole mob gathered around Choopa, and Dandaloo, with a sigh, moved forward to be part of it all. Then out of the bush trundled two wombats, wallabies, and an echidna. The day was won, and Choopa had not been ridiculed again.
A watcher from the black sallees had seen the whole unbelievable act.
Thus it was that Choopa was left in peace, to play in the spring sunshine and in the snow that still sometimes fell. Yet there was someone who had seen that strange and beautiful dance — the dance of courage and oblation.
So someone had seen St Elmo’s fire momentarily touch that foal’s head, like a cap and bells, the day the fireball set the bush alight. Someone had seen him like a wraith in that wild summer blizzard — blizzard and place so near to that which von Guerard had survived nearly a century before. Someone had seen that blue and white foal standing in a rear in the wind-ruffled waters of the lovely double lake. Someone else had come out of that hut which could barely be seen in the fearful snowstorm, someone whose dog nearly caught Choopa. And all these reports of sightings seemed to add up to an ever-varying legend of a dancer, dancing to music which no one heard.
Now, spring sun was going to make the grass green and thick. The bacon-and-egg bushes would bloom with the golden and brown peas from which come the delicious seed pods. All the young animals would grow — though a dwarf might not.
Dandaloo and Son of Storm had brought their little herd safely through the winter, safely through the biggest snowstorms which either of them had ever known, stumbling and forcing their way through deep snowdrifts, and through dense-falling flakes that had turned each mare and foal into an invisible ghost. The whole world had been invisible and soundless — except for the roar, or cry of the wind at night through the granite rocks — yet they had battled through.
Dandaloo had never been so frightened in her life as she was almost that whole winter — not frightened for herself, but for her foal. Now spring was coming to the mountains, and she could relax. She had survived the heaviest winter she had ever known — and helped Choopa through it, too.
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