The Island of Lost Horses

by Stacy Gregg

  “Admiral Columbus,” the Queen said. “Your men are prepared to sail?”

  “We have seventeen ships ready to depart,” Columbus agreed.

  “Excellent,” the Queen said. “Then allow me to make a gift to you.”

  The Queen gestured to her guards and with trumpets blowing a fanfare the doors of the great chamber of the Alhambra were opened and the strangest procession was brought forth. There were cows yoked together and goats too, trotting and bleating their way into the middle of the Queen’s court. I heard Lady Margritte shriek as a pig trampled her skirts.

  “My gifts to you, Admiral Columbus,” the Queen said, sweeping an arm before the carts filled with chickens, geese, ducks and rabbits. “Take them on this journey so that you may have everything you need to establish a new colony for Spain.”

  Admiral Columbus looked pleased. “Your Majesty is generous and kind,” he said. And then he hesitated. “But there is one more animal I require. I shall need horses. At least a dozen for myself and my men. Six stallions to ride and six mares to breed from.”

  “Of course,” the Queen said. “Twelve horses shall be yours.”

  ***

  “Those poor horses!” I said to Joanna. “How dreadful to be taken by Columbus and kept cramped up onboard his ship for months on end…”

  Joanna didn’t reply. She lay on her bed and watched as I put out her gown for dinner.

  “There!” I said brightly. “Now I will be back first thing in the morning to prepare you for breakfast.”

  I was about to leave when Joanna spoke. Her voice was tinged with bitterness.

  “Do not think you can keep abandoning me like this without consequences,” she said.

  I hesitated in the doorway, then replied, “Of course, my Princess,” and closed the door behind me.

  It was late evening by the time I reached my parents’ house. “Mama? Papa?” I cried out as I came through the door. “I have news! Admiral Columbus has returned…”

  My father came downstairs in haste to meet me. His brow was furrowed with concern.

  “Your mother is ill,” he said. “She has a high fever and pains all over.”

  I was shocked as my mother never took ill. “I will take up a damp compress to soothe her,” I said and went to climb the stairs, but my father blocked my path.

  “Your mother insisted that I do not let you see her, for fear her infection may spread.”

  “But she needs me! She is ill!”

  “Leave her be,” my father said. “Tomorrow the fever will have broken and you may visit her bedside.”

  There was no one to cook my dinner that night – so I had a humble meal of soup and bread. I am putting my diary aside – it has been a very long day and I need to sleep.

  The Obeah

  When I am lost in the pages of Felipa’s diary, I imagine that I am her. It must have been amazing to live back then – to be best friends with a princess and to ride horses all day. Instead, I am stuck on a boat with a mother who is totally unreasonable.

  “You know there have to be consequences, Beatriz,” Mom said, coming into my room later that evening. “You can’t just wander off by yourself, without telling me where you’re going.”

  “Mom… stop making a big deal—”

  “You disappeared!” Mom snapped. “You were gone for nearly two days and you didn’t call.”

  “Because my phone was dead.”

  “Anything could have happened to you!”

  How much more furious she would be if she found out about the mud hole!

  Finally Mom delivered her punishment. “I think you’d better stay on the Phaedra tomorrow,” she said.

  “Am I grounded?” I asked.

  “You’re not exactly on the ground,” my mom mused. “It might be more accurate to say you are watered.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “Neither is wandering off on your own halfway across the island and spending the night on some crazy woman’s sofa.”

  That night all I wanted was to disappear into Felipa’s diary again. But I couldn’t read it with Mom in the room. I didn’t want her to ask questions about where I had got it from.

  I was exhausted and I guess I fell straight asleep. When I woke up it was morning and my first thought was of the Duchess. I knew that Annie would be looking after her, but all the same I felt bad about leaving her there. I just had this feeling like it was my job to make sure she was OK, like I should have stayed with her.

  When I came up on deck Mom was at the bow of the Phaedra. She had her binoculars trained on a cluster of rocks near the mouth of the bay.

  “Here, take a look,” she said, passing them to me.

  I held the binoculars to my face and looked in the direction she was pointing.

  “I can’t see anything.”

  “Keep looking,” Mom told me. “A little to the left…”

  Suddenly a sleek flash of silver broke the surface of the water, rising up in an arc into the sky and then splashing back down.

  “What is it?” I asked. “A dolphin?”

  Mom shook her head. “It’s a swordfish,” she said. “It looks like it’s on the hunt. There must be jellyfish over there, maybe sea thimbles.”

  Jellyfish are like French fries to a swordfish – virtually their favourite food.

  “I’m taking the Zodiac to go and look,” Mom said.

  She was already strapping on her life jacket. I stood on the deck and looked out through the binoculars again and saw the swordfish perform a spectacular leap, rising right out of the water so that its tail seemed to flip it into the air. Its nose really was like a sword, a blade cutting into the water as it dived.

  “Beatriz?”

  “Hmmph?”

  “I said are you coming?”

  I shook my head. “No.”

  If you want to know the truth, I would’ve liked to have seen the swordfish up close, but I was being difficult I guess. After all, Mom never came to see the hoofprints. It is always about what she wants to do and never what I want.

  Mom was already climbing down the ladder and untying the ropes on the inflatable.

  “Do your homework while I’m gone,” she told me as she started the outboard motor. I watched her roar off across the waves, heading out towards the rocks, and then I went to the kitchen where Mom’s laptop was already open on the table.

  I was about to open my school folder on the desktop when I noticed an email in Mom’s inbox. It was from my dad. The subject line simply said Re: Beatriz.

  I hesitated and then I moved the arrow on to the email and felt my tummy tie in a knot as I took a deep breath and gave it a click.

  Maria,

  You are being totally unreasonable. I can only imagine what you’ve told Beatriz. I am sure that you have no hesitation in painting me as the bad guy, but let’s not forget you are the one who packed your bags and left with her. Don’t try to make it look like you are always in the right. Sometimes you have to listen to me. And don’t bother to reply to this. When you have calmed down then maybe we can talk.

  Rob

  I read the email twice. I nearly deleted it by mistake because my hands were shaking so much.

  I took a deep breath – then I typed out a message and left it on the screen right beside the email from my dad.

  “Gone out – back soon,” it said. This time Mom couldn’t complain that I hadn’t left a note.

  I swam in my clothes and my reef boots. I figured they would dry out soon enough – the sun was so hot. I was in the water and about halfway to shore when I paused and looked back across the sea at Mom in the Zodiac. She was staring out through her binoculars at the horizon. She could be there for hours. She wouldn’t even notice I was gone. I put my head down and began to swim harder.

  I didn’t think Annie was crazy like Mom said, but she sure was strange. The truth was the thought of going back to her house creeped me out, but I couldn’t just leave the Duchess there. I had to go back and make sure my
horse was OK.

  Those rickety pens at Annie’s house wouldn’t hold up if the stallion came back. Annie seemed to have a lot of faith in the power of a magic circle, but I wasn’t so sure that stallion was the sort to be scared off by a bunch of purple herbs.

  I got my bearings, taking the same path as before into the jungle. When I reached that massive old tree in the clearing I got the same prickly feeling down my spine. I stood there for a moment in silence, and I felt sort of like I was paying my respects to the tree before I could move on. Then I kept walking, cutting a path through the jungle, all the way to the mudflats.

  I crossed the mudflats carefully, making sure to stay well clear of the hole, keeping to the areas where the marsh grass was firm underfoot, all the way across to the hills where the jungle rose up before me and deep gouged tyre tracks led me to Annie’s little yellow cottage.

  The bottles were tinkling in the tree like wind chimes when I arrived. It gave me a shiver as I walked past. I think all of Annie’s talk about obeah was starting to get to me.

  Annie was in the pens at the back of the cottage. And there was my beautiful horse again.

  “Bee-a-trizz,” she said without turning round to face me, “hand me that halter, will you, child?”

  Did she have eyes in the back of her head? The way she spoke to me was odd too, like as far as she was concerned I had never been gone.

  I stepped forward and handed her the halter. She took it from me with a grunt, still keeping her back to me. On the fence post alongside her there was a big tub of gooey green paste that Annie had been using on the Duchess’s hindquarters. The rope marks had already healed a little in just one day.

  “She looks a lot better,” I said.

  Annie gave the Duchess a pat on her rump. “She a strong spirit. She heal fast. Another day, maybe two and I take her back to de herd.”

  “Will you ride her back?” I asked.

  Annie looked at me as if I was the crazy one. “Mercy no, child! I tell you de mare is a Medicine Hat. She got de strong obeah. Ain’t nobody can ride a Medicine Hat unless dey is chosen.”

  “So who chooses you?”

  Annie laughed. “De horse, child, who else? De horse chooses de rider.”

  Annie peered at me with her black eyes shining. “You see de markings, Bee-a-trizz?” she asked, pointing at the brown patch over the Duchess’s chest. “De mark of de protector. You get chosen to ride a Medicine Hat and ain’t notink can hurt you.”

  Crazy old lady. That’s what my mom would have said. But I didn’t think Annie was crazy. The mark of the protector. That was the same thing Queen Isabella had said about Cara!

  “Annie?”

  “Yes, child?”

  “A Medicine Hat – those markings are pretty rare, right?”

  Annie grunted. “Very special, de rarest kind.”

  I looked at the Duchess. Her blue eyes held my stare.

  “What is it, child?” Annie looked at me. “Tell Annie what you thinkin’.”

  I took a deep breath. “That day, when you got me out of the mud and you brought me here? I had a fever and I… I had this weird dream.”

  Annie’s hands suddenly stilled and she nodded for me to continue.

  “Well, not like a dream exactly…” I said. “I can’t explain, but it felt real – like it was actually happening. And there was a horse. And the thing is, she looked just like the Duchess, with the same markings on her ears and the shield on her chest. The mark of the protector.”

  Annie took a deep breath and let out a low whistle. “Didn’t I told you, Bee-a-trizz?” she said. “You is got de obeah. It give you sight. Make you special.”

  Annie didn’t think I was daydreaming or lying. She knew I was telling the truth.

  “And I think it’s connected to the diary,” I continued breathlessly, “the one you gave me? I’ve been reading it and there’s a horse. Her name is Cara Blanca and she has markings just like the Duchess too…”

  “You been readin’ the old diary?” Annie asked.

  I nodded.

  “Good, good,” Annie grunted. “You be de guardian of de words, Bee-a-trizz. You take care of dem.”

  I shook my head. “You know, I really think the diary must be valuable. Like an antique or something. You should have it back.”

  Annie frowned. “It ain’t mine, child. If you be goin’ to give it back, best you give it to de tree.”

  Give it to the tree. It was a weird thing to say, even by Annie’s standards.

  “Do you mean because paper comes from trees?” I asked.

  Annie shook her head and gave a laugh. “You see. Annie take you home soon and on de way I show you…”

  We didn’t leave straight away. Annie got me to help out with the Duchess first. I put more potion on her cuts and mixed her feed and filled the trough with water, scoop by scoop. I watched the mare take big deep gulps and then play with the leftovers in the tub, flicking her nose back and forth. The way she was around me, she didn’t seem at all wild. There was a calm about her. She even let me stroke her and put braids in her mane. I could have spent hours there, just being with my special horse.

  While I was grooming the Duchess, Annie carried on with her yard work, feeding the chickens and weeding out the gardens. She went inside for a while and I could hear her in the kitchen chopping vegetables and rattling pots. Then she emerged from the front door with her straw hat pushed down over her dreadlocks.

  “Let’s go, Bee-a-trizz!”

  She drove the tractor back the same way we had gone yesterday, with me perched up behind on the wheel arch. The ride was just as bumpy as last time, but my arms could handle it better now that I wasn’t so sick and exhausted.

  When we drove through the snakewood and pigeon berry and entered the clearing by the big tree, Annie pulled the tractor to a stop and cut the engine.

  “We be arrived,” she said.

  I felt the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. She’d driven us straight back to the clearing in the jungle.

  Annie walked over to the tree and caressed the trunk as if it was made of velvet, and when she turned back to me her black eyes were glistening.

  “Dis be a Jumbie tree,” she said. “Very old. Full of ghosts.”

  She was starting to creep me out again. I stayed where I was on the wheel arch and didn’t move a muscle. The jungle around us had gone strangely quiet. The parrots were silent and there was a powerful stillness to the air.

  “Come here, child,” Annie beckoned. “Come see…”

  I didn’t move.

  “Listen,” Annie insisted. “The ghosts be callin’ you. You can hear them, child. Come closer…”

  I didn’t hear them, but I sure could feel something. I was shivering all over as I steeled myself and slid down from the tractor. I walked slowly over to where Annie stood at the base of the tree.

  “Now look up,” Annie said. “Do you see it, Bee-a-trizz? Just above your head? Here, let me lift you and you can look.”

  She grasped me round the waist and raised me up off my feet.

  In the trunk of the tree, too far up for me to see it on my own, there was a hole. It must have started out as a knot in the wood, but it had been chiselled away and hollowed out so that there was a cavity inside the trunk, a hole about the size of my head. It had been made a long time ago, but I could still see the cuts and the grooves in the bark. I stared inside. It was empty.

  Annie lowered me back down.

  “Dat is where I found de diary,” she told me. “So you see, Bee-a-trizz, if you want to give it back, you don’t give it to me. You give it to de tree.”

  ***

  Mom was waiting for me on the Phaedra when I swam back. She didn’t even give me a chance to dry off before she launched into my telling-off.

  “Are you determined to make me mad? Is that your plan?” she asked.

  “I wasn’t doing it to annoy you,” I insisted. “I had to go and see Annie – she has my horse.”

  Mom
looked stunned. “Beatriz, I told you specifically that you weren’t allowed to go back there again. And the first thing you do is disobey me?”

  “You’re always telling me what to do,” I snapped. “I’m old enough to make my own mind up about stuff.”

  “You’re twelve, Beatriz, and as long as I am looking after you I get to make the decisions about what is best,” Mom said.

  “It’s my life and I get to decide too,” I shot back. “If I want to go and live with Dad in Florida you have to let me.”

  “No,” Mom said. “I don’t. You live here with me, Beatriz. That’s the way it is and that’s final. And by the way you aren’t allowed to look at my emails without asking. It’s terribly rude.”

  “So you get to make all the rules and I don’t even get a say?”

  “Oh please, Beatriz! You act like I’m being unreasonable when you’re the one who has run off to that crazy old island woman and… Beatriz! Don’t walk away from me…”

  But I didn’t want to listen. I stomped downstairs, shut the door behind me and threw myself on my bunk.

  I expected Mom to come after me, but she didn’t. I lay there for a while, listening to my heart pounding. I hate Mom sometimes!

  Then I dug around in the drawer beneath my bed, took out the diary marked with Felipa’s golden initials and I began to read.

  F.M.

  18th September, 1493

  In the middle of the night I was woken by screams. At first I thought I’d been having nightmares, but then I realised the cries were quite real. They were coming from upstairs.

  “Mama!”

  I raced to the top of the landing and as I reached Mama’s bedroom Papa flung open the door.

  “No, Felipa,” he pleaded. “Stay back! You can’t help her – it is too dangerous.”

  I looked over his shoulder and caught sight of my mother lying on the bed. Her body looked so frail, bed clothes soaked with sweat, her hands outstretched, eyes bulging with terror.

  “Felipa!” she called out. “My dear sweet Felipa…”