Rocking Horse War

by Lari Don

  What else could she have done? She had hidden Ruby and told her little sister to stay in the hut until she returned, but Ruby must have opened the door for Jasper and the Earl. She had rescued Jasper, but he had bitten and betrayed her. She and Emmie had knocked Thomas off the summit and disarmed him, but now they were being herded tamely towards his grandfather.

  As they reached the foot of the ridge, Pearl heard Emmie ask Thomas politely how he’d moved the heavy plateau stones. Pearl shook her head. Didn’t Emmie remember that Thomas had nearly killed them both here?

  Pearl jumped off the ridge onto the squint slabs of the plateau. This violent landscape hadn’t been created by geological forces many millennia ago, but by an arrogant ambitious boy just an hour ago.

  She knelt down and searched the gaps between the nearest slabs. The pale roots of a small plant pointed up to the sky. There were no flowers left.

  Thomas and Emmie stepped onto the slab.

  “You killed the flowers!” accused Pearl. “You destroyed everything when you forced the land to move, just to trick Emmie into using up her power. If you really loved the land, rather than the power it gives you, you would never treat it like this.”

  To Pearl’s surprise, Thomas knelt beside her, and looked urgently around at the crushed plants and tumbled rock.

  Then he shouted, “Here! Here are some that survived!”

  All three heads bent over the dark gap between two slabs. In the warm shelter was a tiny plant with half a dozen bright blue trumpet-shaped flowers. A sudden smile swept round all three faces.

  “See! I didn’t destroy it, I just shook it up a bit.” Thomas patted the stone. “The whole plateau will be blooming by next year. Especially once the crowning ceremony allows us to sing with the mountains properly again.”

  He leapt up, filled with new confidence. “Come on.”

  Pearl and Emmie stood and watched as he moved over the land, crossing whole slabs with every stride.

  Pearl whispered, “I’m trying to think of an escape plan …”

  Thomas whirled round. “Come with me, Emmie.” He held out a hand. “You can go your own way, Pearl, or you can come and see your brother and sister again.”

  Emmie walked towards Thomas, but looked back at Pearl. “Please come, Pearl. I’d like you to see my destiny. Will you come with us?”

  Pearl couldn’t understand why Emmie was being so co-operative, but she nodded reluctantly.

  She trailed behind, her pockets heavy and her legs tired, snorting as she listened to Emmie chattering to Thomas about landlore. He was twisting his hands and staff, growing more extravagant every time Emmie said “Oh how fascinating!” and “Gosh, really?” and “My goodness, aren’t you clever!”

  Thomas might believe he’d beaten Pearl already, but he still needed all three triplets together to crown the Earl. If she could get Emmie away, the Horsburghs couldn’t complete their crowning. If she could get Emmie really far away — to Perth or Edinburgh or London or Paris — then Thomas could never crown his grandfather and Pearl would have time to rescue the others.

  They reached the edge of the plateau. Through the clear air, they could see the Grey Men’s Grave below and the Anvil opposite; the river to the south and the moors to the north; and far to the north and west, the silky smudges of even higher mountains on the horizon.

  Thomas lifted his hands high above his head. “All these mountains were created by movement deep under the earth’s crust, which thrust layers of rock over each other into great folds and ridges.” His hands sank down again. “Now they’re being worn away.”

  Emmie gazed at him. “Really! How amazing.”

  Pearl stared at her sister. Emmie always got top marks in geology. She knew all about mountain uplift and erosion. Why was she playing daft like this?

  “So the land is used to movement.” Thomas scuffed his boot on a slab. “Pearl’s angry that I shook the plateau, and she’s right to accuse me of breaking my own rules, but I will heal any damage as soon as we’re linked to the mountains again. Anyway, I haven’t wrecked it forever, because all land is used to change: change by earthquakes, by volcanoes, by ice ages. By man too.”

  “Which man?” chirruped Emmie.

  Thomas laughed. “All of us. The deer forests, grouse moors and pheasant woods of our land are as man-made as the fields and cities further south.”

  He crouched down and picked up a fragment of jagged rock. It was plain grey at first glance, but when Thomas twisted it in the sunlight it glittered with pink and white and black crystals.

  “When the land is shaped by hot rocks shifting deep in the earth, it has a pulse and a rhythm, it has its own music. When it’s exposed on the cold surface, the memory of that rhythm keeps the land supple so it can adapt to change. Weather and time; shifts in temperature and sea level; man’s farms and factories: these can become part of the landscape, rather than destroy it.

  “But if no one listens to the land, if no one stores and shares the rhythms, then the land forgets its music, forgets the movement. It becomes brittle, it fractures rather than flows under pressure, and it’s worn away too easily by ice or rain or wind.

  “For the land, movement is life. For the land, erosion is death.”

  He stood up again. “These mountains are silent because our ancestors lost the keystone, and forgot how to sing to them, so these peaks are crumbling faster than normal. If I don’t win, they’ll become scree …” he glanced at Pearl, “… scree and pebbles, sand and clay. Then there will be nothing here but a flat gritty desert.”

  “A desert? In Scotland?” Pearl laughed uncomfortably. She’d finally found a statement of his which she could challenge. “It would be a very cold wet desert.”

  “Cold but not wet,” said Thomas. “Without the mountains, there’d be less rain. They reach to the clouds and pull down the water which wears them away. But if we can link to the mountains’ music again, it’ll take much longer to wear them down.”

  Pearl was determined not to crumble under Thomas’s contradictory weapons of strong science and convenient nonsense. But before she could challenge him again, Thomas and Emmie strode off down the heathery slope below the plateau. Pearl trudged after them, wondering how to stop this boy and his dangerous plans for the triplets.

  She had no magic, no lore, no fancy powers. But she was walking behind her enemy on a mountain, and anyone can harness gravity. She speeded up to get closer.

  Emmie was asking, “So, Thomas, does all the land in the world need songs?”

  “Once, every piece of land had its own songs, sung by its own families. In most places, the families still sing quietly, the land prospers and no one notices. But a few families have left or died out, and some land has been forgotten or fought over. That silent land is eroding faster, just like our mountains. But even long neglected land still holds a few echoes, like you found on the Keystone Peak, and I think I could hear those echoes and help that land.

  “Most landlore families can only hear their home, the land they’re connected to, but I can hear more. I’ve sung with the grounds round my school, because I spend half the year there. So, with a stronger lorefast, I think I could sing with any land that has been abandoned and forgotten.”

  “How wonderful!” Emmie said enthusiastically. “And of course, once the land is singing again, you’ll find other people who can hear the land to share it with, won’t you?”

  Thomas stopped, and Pearl stopped too. She needed to stay behind him.

  Thomas stared at Emmie. “What do you mean?”

  Emmie smiled innocently. “Don’t you think it would be fairer? Surely people would love their land best if they only had a small piece each?”

  “You think I should do all the work: babysitting the three of you, fighting off protective big sisters, learning my landlore, earning my lorefast, practising skills day and night for years, building up my strength and power, waking and nurturing and loving the land, then give it away? Just give it away?”

&n
bsp; “Oh, I’m sure you know best. I was just wondering …” Emmie shrugged and walked on, followed by Thomas, then Pearl.

  Pearl was wondering too. What was her sister doing? Perhaps she wasn’t being quite as co-operative as she seemed. Perhaps she did have a plan.

  But Pearl had a plan too, and she had to act soon or lose her chance forever.

  They were leaving the plateau at an angle, heading towards a corrie which led straight down to the Laird’s land, avoiding the Grey Men’s Grave. The corrie was a steep bowl of space scooped out of the side of the Keystone Peak: the most direct way down, but not the easiest. As they arrived at the highest point of the corrie, Thomas stopped and looked around.

  “My grandfather has wanted to hear these mountains all his life. But I want,” he swept his arms out to pull in the entire landscape, “I want to hear the whole island, the whole planet.”

  Thomas balanced elegantly on the top edge of the corrie, looking not at his feet, nor at his audience, but at the world he wanted to conquer.

  Pearl focused on a spot between his shoulder blades and flung herself forward.

  Before she could collide with Thomas to send one or both of them over the edge, she was knocked sideways and landed with a mouth full of heather at Thomas’s heels.

  Thomas stepped neatly out of the way, as Pearl twisted round to stare up at his rescuer, now sitting heavily on her chest.

  Emmie.

  “Why did you do that?” the girls shouted at each other.

  Emmie put her face close to Pearl’s, and their voices dropped.

  “What are you trying to do?” Emmie whispered.

  “I’m trying to save you,” Pearl croaked back. “I don’t know why I keep trying. Whenever I get you away from him, you all just trot right back like puppies. Do you really want to be with that poisonous boy?”

  “Yes!”

  “Yes?”

  “Yes! He will teach me so much if I ask the right questions, and he’s leading us to Ruby and Jasper. We have to stay with him.”

  Pearl shook her head. “If he gets all of you together, they’ll force you into this crowning rite. If we keep you apart, they can’t use you.”

  “If the three of us are so powerful together, perhaps it isn’t just the Horsburghs who can use our power.” Emmie leant closer. “Trust me, Pearl.”

  “Be careful. He’s more dangerous than he looks.”

  “I know that,” replied Emmie. “But so am I.”

  Emmie rolled off and let Pearl sit up. “Did anything fall out of your pockets when you landed?”

  Pearl patted her pinafore. “No, I don’t think so.”

  “Good. Come on, and listen to what he says; you might learn something.”

  Thomas grinned as the girls stood up and brushed dried heather from their skirts. “Don’t you like your little sister chatting to me, Pearl? Are you still trying to get her home for tea?”

  Red-faced, Pearl muttered, “We’re going to need to eat eventually.”

  Thomas laughed. “Are you hungry? Is that why you’re so grumpy?” From his slim waistcoat pocket he pulled a paper packet of mintcake, the food climbers and explorers carried to give them energy.

  Pearl, Emmie and Thomas stood together, the world glowing at their feet, the sweet mintcake dissolving in their mouths, the sun warming their tired shoulders. Pearl wondered how such a gorgeous day could be so threatening and strange.

  Then Emmie wiped her mouth on her sleeve and said, “Let’s go and see whose destiny is being shaped down there.”

  Chapter 22

  Pearl was so angry with herself for failing to save Emmie, so angry with Emmie for not wanting to be saved and so angry with Thomas for absolutely everything which had happened that day, that she didn’t talk or listen or try to learn. She just concentrated on getting out of the corrie, to the boulders and bracken at the foot of the Keystone Peak.

  Everyone around her had powers she didn’t understand. But she did know she had to stop Thomas gathering all three triplets in one place.

  She didn’t know what would happen if they crowned the Earl, but the Laird’s snide comments and Thomas’s silence suggested the triplets would be in danger.

  And she did know she couldn’t go home and leave the triplets to face danger without her.

  They reached the wall which marked the boundary of the Laird’s land and turned east towards the River Stane. Pearl glanced back at Emmie, who was smiling up at Thomas, asking him another admiring question.

  The triplets used to look at Pearl like that. Now Pearl had nothing to offer them. Except an alternative to Thomas’s destiny.

  Thomas had promised Pearl the chance to show her brother and sisters they had a choice. She didn’t have glamour or music or power, but perhaps she could persuade them with common sense. Or perhaps she needed a more dramatic argument.

  They reached the hole Thomas had blasted in the wall.

  “Now what?” Pearl demanded, speaking to Thomas and her sister for the first time since they left the Keystone Peak.

  Thomas answered, “Now we find my grandfather, reunite the triplets, capture the Laird — who I hope is still lying under the wreck of his ballroom — then march up to Landlaw Hold for the crowning ceremony.”

  Pearl looked up and saw the old castle on the side of the Anvil, broken and crumbling, but still powerful. The keep crouched above them like a sharp grey beast defending its territory. Pearl closed her eyes briefly.

  “You don’t have to come, Pearl,” murmured Thomas. “I don’t need you, and I haven’t promised you to my grandfather. You can go home if you want.”

  Pearl turned to Emmie, who nodded. “I’m sure I’ll manage on my own.” But her hand slipped into Pearl’s and she grasped her big sister’s fingers.

  Pearl looked directly at Thomas. “You promised I could tell the triplets that there’s no such thing as destiny. If I come with you, will I have a chance to argue my case? And once they’ve heard me, if they choose to, can they come home with me? Can they decide for themselves?”

  “I gave you my word, Pearl, so yes, you can make your case, and yes, they can choose. I’m confident they’ll choose their destiny, but if every single triplet wants to go home with you, I won’t stop them, and I won’t let my grandfather stop them. However, if even one of them wants to follow their destiny, then all of them must link hands and crown my grandfather.

  “You would have to persuade all three of them, Pearl. Can you do that? They don’t often do what you tell them, do they?”

  Pearl thought of Ruby’s tears, Emmie’s fascination with the lore and Jasper’s admiration for Thomas. But she forced a smile and said, “We’ll let them decide.”

  As they clambered over the rubble of the fallen wall, Emmie asked, “So where do we go to find Ruby and Jasper?”

  “My grandfather’s hornblast came from the Stane Bridge. We’d better get there before he gets impatient.”

  So they didn’t head for the pink and yellow castle, saggy and squint in the distance. They walked briskly southeast towards the River Stane.

  “How can he be sure you’ll come?” asked Emmie. “After all, you very nearly didn’t catch us.”

  “He knows I keep my word, and I promised to deliver you all to him in return for the ancient lorefast.”

  “Deliver them!” snorted Pearl. “You can’t deliver them! They’re people, not parcels.”

  “Return them, if you prefer. Return them to their rightful owner, the man who created them.”

  Emmie stopped and looked at Thomas. “Created us? What do you mean?”

  Thomas smiled. “You didn’t know about that? Pearl didn’t tell you? She seemed interested enough earlier.”

  Emmie glared at Pearl, then turned to Thomas again. “But what did he create us for?”

  Thomas laughed. “Have neither of you worked out what our three jewels are for yet? The Horsburghs don’t need to search for the keystone any more, because we’re forging our own new link to the mountains.
r />   “Our new link is a crown. A crown of gemstones.

  “A crown of Ruby, Jasper and Emerald.

  “So my grandfather’s three precious gems will give him all the power and music of the mountains.”

  “They aren’t your grandfather’s gems,” insisted Pearl. “They don’t belong to anyone!” Her voice rose until she was almost shouting.

  Thomas held up his hands at Pearl’s passion. “Don’t argue with me, Pearl, it’s your family you need to persuade.”

  Pearl looked at the sister by her side. Emmie was very pale, glancing quickly back at the Keystone Peak.

  “Oh!” said Pearl suddenly. “But you don’t need …”

  Emmie grabbed her arm and whispered, “Don’t tell him. I think the keystone is more powerful for us as a secret, don’t you?”

  “I don’t need what?” Thomas asked, puzzled.

  “Er … you don’t need me any more,” Pearl stuttered. Then she added wistfully, “No one needs me any more.”

  Thomas frowned, but Emmie smiled at him and asked, “Do you think my white horse will be waiting at the bridge?”

  So Thomas led them over a slight rise, where they could see the bridge, the river, and on the far bank, a small group of people and horses.

  Pearl saw the widest figure clamber on the tallest horse and gallop over the bridge. The huge black horse thundered towards them as heavily as a carthorse, but stopped in front of them as precisely as a competitor in the dressage ring. The stallion’s rider leapt off and flung his arms round Thomas.

  “My boy, my boy! I knew you wouldn’t let me down. I knew you would keep your promises.”

  The Earl of Horsburgh was dressed, like Thomas, for the hunt. But his hairy green tweeds were baggy, unflattering and several decades out of date, whereas Thomas still looked sharp and fashionable even after a day on the hills.

  The Earl grinned widely, showing large yellow teeth in his broad red face, and he waggled his bristly ginger eyebrows at Pearl and Emmie. Pearl took a step back. He was jolly, welcoming and absolutely terrifying.

  “So, who do we have here?” he asked as he handed Thomas the reins of his horse. “Who do we have here?” he repeated, bending down and pinching Emmie’s cheeks.