Puzzle: The Runaway Pony

by Belinda Rapley

  “I’d better go,” she said, standing by the door for a second. “See you all tomorrow.”

  “Regular as clockwork,” Daisy smiled. “She leaves at the same time every day, almost to the minute.”

  “Hang on!” Rosie suddenly called out as she noticed something by her feed bin. “Pixie! You’ve forgotten your bag!”

  Alice picked up the canvas bag to pass it out to Pixie. It felt strangely heavy. And it smelled familiar. Alice was about to lift the flap and look inside when Pixie dashed back and grabbed it with her left hand.

  “Thanks,” she said, smiling awkwardly for a second before she headed back out and ran over to her bike. As Alice watched from the doorway, she saw Pixie glance anxiously over her shoulder.

  “Did anyone else just notice that?” Alice whispered as she watched Pixie disappear up the drive.

  “What?” Rosie asked, frowning.

  “Pixie just picked up her bag with her left hand,” Alice said, turning back to the feed room. “And her wrist seemed absolutely fine.”

  “Really?” Charlie asked. “That bag looked heavy too.”

  “It was,” Alice said, taking a deep breath. “And I think I know why.”

  AT school on Monday, Rosie yawned as she pulled a bit of hay out of her tangled hair. She was sitting with Mia, Charlie and Alice in their form room after lunch, avoiding the rain outside, as they went back over Alice’s theory from the evening before.

  “Pony nuts? You’re absolutely sure, Alice?” Mia asked for the third time.

  “Like I keep saying, I didn’t have a chance to look in Pixie’s bag,” Alice repeated, “but it smelled like pony nuts and it was really heavy. Like it was full of them.”

  “But what’s she doing with them?” Rosie asked. “Eating them? They don’t taste very nice – I’ve tried them.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?” Charlie joked.

  “Maybe she took them to use as a treat when she went out on her own looking for Phantom. You know, for when she found him?” Alice suggested.

  “A whole bagful?” Mia said, doubtfully. “And if your and Rosie’s pony nuts have been going down as much as you say, that can’t be the first lot she’s snaffled away.”

  They sat quietly, looking at Mia’s notebook now they’d added Alice’s new clues.

  “And you think Pixie might not have hurt her wrist, either?” Mia said, almost to herself.

  “Well, if she did,” Alice said sceptically, “it recovered very quickly afterwards – that’s all I’m saying.”

  “So, basically, you reckon Pixie faked it,” Charlie said grimly. “Although, to be fair, she really didn’t want to go to the Old Forge. Maybe that was her only way of getting us to turn round?”

  “When we were out looking for Phantom the other night, we bumped into Pixie looking too,” Rosie said. “She’d been near the Old Forge then, but she’d turned back because she was scared, remember? Maybe she’d just been seriously spooked that night.”

  “So spooked that she faked her own injury to avoid going back there.” Charlie nodded. “It’s possible, I suppose.”

  “I hate to say it, but the Old Forge keeps cropping up,” Alice said with a shiver.

  “I know,” Mia said grimly. “So maybe it’s time we found out a bit more about it. And I can only think of one way to do that.”

  “Please tell me you’re not about to say what I think you are,” Rosie said, putting her head in her hands. “It’s madness. The place is totally freaky.”

  “We need to find out what’s behind all this,” Mia said. “So, tonight after school before it gets too dark, I vote we revisit the Old Forge. Agreed?”

  Rosie groaned as Alice and Charlie took a deep breath, then they all nodded.

  The girls jumped off the school bus and rushed to the stables straight after school. They quickly gave Puzzle some fuss, checked his water and refilled his haynet, then hauled on their hi-vis riding gear and got tacked up.

  “Daisy and Pixie will be here pretty soon,” Alice said. “We should let them know where we’ve gone, otherwise they’ll wonder why the place is deserted when they arrive.”

  “Okay, I’ll text them,” Mia said, as they jumped into their saddles and rode out of the yard. She pulled out her phone and wrote a message:

  Gone to Old Forge to investigate, sorry to leave Puzzle on yard alone, but sure you’ll be there to keep him company soon!

  They headed out into the drizzly, grey late afternoon, armed with torches and a flask of hot chocolate, which Rosie had phoned ahead to ask her mum to make. Mia had rolled her eyes, muttering that they wouldn’t have a chance to drink it, but Rosie had slotted the flask into her rucksack beside some torches.

  They rode along the path that they were beginning to know with their eyes shut, and the ponies seemed bored at being taken in the same direction once again.

  “Hopefully, Dancer, this will really and truly be the last time,” Rosie told her mare, who huffed as she sluggishly clopped along. “Possibly because we’ll all die of fright. You have to promise that if anything happens to me you’ll carry me home safely, like a loyal friend would. Got it?”

  Dancer snorted and shook her head.

  “Very loyal, thank you,” Rosie sighed.

  Charlie led the group, with Mia just behind. Alice and Rosie rode side by side for as long as they could while they rode past the field where they’d pinned Puzzle’s notice. But as they turned onto the path into the woods, they had to go back to riding in single file.

  The girls fell silent as the path they were on crossed with the overgrown one that led to the Old Forge. They turned onto the overgrown path, concentrating as they rode through the biting brambles, and pushing branches out of the way. Alice’s heart was already starting to thump and her legs felt as jelly-like as they always did before she was about to go out and jump at a show.

  Wish started to get agitated well before the Old Forge came into view. And when the ruined building did finally emerge from the gloom, seeing it for the second time didn’t make it look any friendlier. A bat flew out of the dusk, fluttering past them and making Mia jump out of her skin. Then the ruin disappeared momentarily from view and they rode back into the thick clog of wood.

  As Wish danced back out of the dip, bunny-hopping into the clearing, the sun dropped below the skyline. For a moment the sky turned a dusky, bruised blood red. Mia patted her mare, whose ears were pricked forward, as she dismounted.

  Wish pulled at her reins, her delicate hooves skidding on the almost hidden ancient cobbled lane that cut across in front of the Forge. She whickered powerfully, deep within her throat. The sound was echoed back – hauntingly, hollowly, ringing around the clearing – just as Rosie, Alice and Charlie slid out of their saddles and landed on shaking legs. At that moment another bat brushed past Mia’s head. She squealed, closing her eyes and ducking. Then she screamed as she felt a tug on her arm.

  “Quick! This way!”

  Mia opened her eyes to see Charlie by her side. Rosie and Alice were ahead, trotting their ponies into the edge of the woods on the other side of the clearing and hunkering down. Hurriedly, with shaking hands, Mia dragged a mulish Wish behind Charlie and across to the others. They all huddled together, the trees sheltering them from the rain as they looked out into the fading light.

  “Er, so what do we do now?” Rosie squeaked as Dancer tried to reach some foliage behind her and planted a huge saucer-like hoof on the end of her riding boot.

  Suddenly a mobile phone chimed loudly into life, making everyone, including the four ponies, jump. Mia fished out her phone and read the text message.

  “It’s from Daisy,” she whispered, then read it out:

  At yard now, Puzzle fine. Pixie txted 2 say she couldn’t make it 2 yard 2nite, didn’t say why.

  “Maybe she realised I knew she’d taken some nuts yesterday,” Alice said, feeling bad suddenly, “so she couldn’t face coming in just in case we said anything.”

  “Maybe, but we�
��ll have to deal with that later,” Mia said, taking a deep breath. “Right now, we’re here, and if we’re going to do this properly I think a couple of us need to go inside the Forge, while a couple of us stay out here with the ponies. Any volunteers?”

  “You never mentioned anything about us having to go inside!” Rosie hissed, her eyes almost popping out. “There is no way I’m putting even a TOE inside that place, and I don’t fancy hanging around while anyone else does either – what if they go in and don’t make it back out? In fact, rather than sitting here wondering what’s going on I vote we make our escape, like, yesterday!”

  Wish raised her head, staring into the clearing. Charlie looked over at her. Suddenly she frowned.

  “Hang on though,” Charlie said to Rosie, gazing at the mare.

  “For what, exactly? Because, just so we’re clear, there’s no way I’m hanging about if there’s the slightest risk that me and Dancer may become ghost fodder!” Rosie whispered urgently, trying to keep her voice down so it wouldn’t attract the attention of any nearby ghouls. She got hold of her stirrup, ready to remount.

  Suddenly the clearing was filled with the spine-chilling echo of a sad ghostly neigh. At once they were deafened by Wish’s neighing reply as her nostrils fluttered wildly and her body shook with the force of it, right next to them. As Mia struggled to hold her, Rosie squealed and immediately ducked back down with the others, her heart rocketing as she grabbed hold of Alice.

  “See!” Rosie whimpered. “Wish has got the right idea, she wants to get away too! She knows a ghost when she hears one!”

  But while Mia gripped Wish’s reins, stopping her from charging back into the clearing, Charlie stared at the palomino mare. Her ears were pricked hard. Then it clicked. Charlie passed Pirate’s reins to Alice.

  “Do you know what?” she said. “I don’t think Wish is desperate to get away from the Forge. In fact, I think she’s desperate to get into it!”

  “Why would she want to do that?” Mia asked, confused.

  But Charlie didn’t wait to answer. She scooted forward through the rain towards the ruin, her feet slipping on the cobbles as she crossed the old lane.

  “Charlie! Come back!” Rosie called frantically behind her. “Don’t sacrifice yourself!”

  Ignoring Rosie, Charlie crept up to the huge black doors that loomed out of the darkness in front of her. One door still had a huge windswept pile of orange and red autumnal leaves heaped against it. In front of the other one, the one that was slightly ajar and hanging off its hinges, there was a fresh scrape of mud, as if it had been hauled open. Recently. Charlie’s heart started to thud hard in her chest. She looked across the gloomy clearing to the anxious faces of the others. Rosie waved frantically at her to come back. But instead Charlie started to pull on the door that was already ajar.

  It scraped open with a low groan and she slipped inside, ignoring Rosie’s pleas for her not to be so daring (or it might have been ‘stupid’, she couldn’t quite hear). She stood for a second by the entrance, letting her eyes get accustomed to the dark. Inside, the ruin smelled dusty and dank, like wet stone and rat droppings. Charlie heard scuttling noises around her. Without warning, a dark shadow swooped silently down from the roof beams, gliding just over the top of her head, making her hair stand on end as she froze to the spot, her breath halting for a second. She whipped round to see a huge brown barn owl disappear silently through the doors. She breathed out, slowly, looking down. Then she saw something on the floor. It looked familiar.

  Charlie picked it up and examined it. She frowned.

  “I didn’t realise ghost ponies ate pony nuts,” she said out loud, trying to make herself feel braver as she pocketed her find and stepped quietly through the ruin. As she moved between the old, falling-down stables on one side and tools and ancient straw on the other, the ghostly whinny greeted her again. She stopped in her tracks. Now she was closer it sounded more anxious and scared than ghoulish and sinister. Charlie squinted through the damp half-light, feeling her way towards the dark shape in the end stable. A stable that was bolted shut, with a lead rope clip on the front.

  Charlie approached quietly, talking softly under her breath. At that moment she heard the familiar plop of droppings landing on straw, followed by the distinctive smell. A rather un-ghostlike smell, she thought to herself as she got closer. There, standing before her was the most beautiful horse she’d ever seen – a black horse wearing a purple rug, his head held so high that he looked enormous. He arched his powerful neck down towards Charlie, nervously blowing hard on her hand.

  “Charlie!”

  Charlie jumped as she heard Rosie’s voice and turned towards the door.

  “Are you still in there? Have you been eaten by the ghost? Answer me! What’s going on in there?!”

  “It’s all right,” Charlie called out, her voice echoing round the hollow building as the black horse shied backwards, the whites of his eyes showing as he raised his head. A head that had a striking white half-blaze. “I’ve found Phantom.”

  “SO all the time I thought Wish was terrified by the Forge, she was actually trying to get to her old best friend!” Mia said after they’d hauled open both doors and led their suspicious ponies out of the rain and into the ruin.

  Wish had dragged Mia straight down the centre of the Forge until she’d stopped outside Phantom’s stable and the old friends had reacquainted themselves, nickering through their fluttering nostrils.

  “Wish’s behaviour makes sense now,” Alice agreed, “but Pixie’s doesn’t. I don’t get it – she asked us to try and find Phantom but she knew where he was all along.”

  “And she put us off finding him, twice,” Charlie said, thinking about the time they’d bumped into her on her bike near the Old Forge and when she’d come for the ride at the weekend. “Falling off Puzzle was a sure-fire way to make us turn back so we didn’t reach the Forge. That way she managed to keep her secret, with Phantom hidden away from where anyone could find him.”

  Charlie stood by Phantom’s delicate head and tried to calm him. They looked round at the dismal home the nervous black horse had lived in for the last week. His smart leather headcollar with its engraved brass nameplate looked totally out of keeping.

  “The question is,” Rosie said, “why?”

  At that second the door creaked.

  “I can answer that,” a faraway voice whispered. The girls whipped round and saw a silhouette framed in the doorway. It was Pixie.

  Rosie poured a cup of hot chocolate out of her flask, looking pointedly at Mia, and saying that she’d known it would come in handy. She passed the cup to Pixie, who took a gulp of the hot, sweet drink. Pixie looked up at the girls’ expectant faces.

  “I know you must all think I’m mad bringing a horse like Phantom here – any horse here – but I didn’t know what else to do,” she explained, as Phantom continued to be fractious. Charlie slipped into his stable to stand near him. “I was so miserable and scared that I couldn’t even think straight. It… it all started when my mum and dad split up nearly a year ago,” Pixie gulped, then carried on. “Up until then Dad had taken me riding every weekend – it was something we always did together. I used to joke about wanting a pony and he’d always smile and say, ‘One day, Pixie, one day’ – although I knew deep down we could never afford it. Then, after they broke up he got a job in New York. I guess he felt really guilty, because just before he left he took me to Compton Manor and there, in a stable with a pink bow on the door, was Phantom. Dad said he was all mine.”

  Pixie sighed.

  “But nothing could make up for Dad moving to America, and things seemed to go wrong from the moment he left. Mrs Compton told me Sasha was going to look out for me, and to go to her with any questions. Only, Sasha made me feel really unwelcome from the second I arrived. At first she kept saying that Phantom was too good for me, and that I was a rubbish rider. I didn’t really know how to look after a pony and Sasha wouldn’t help – all she did was laugh at me.
Then she started to say that I’d turned Phantom into a horrible, useless horse. It felt like I was doing everything wrong and I ended up dreading going each day. It wasn’t what I expected it to be like at all. It wasn’t small and friendly, like the riding school where I learned to ride, or Blackberry Farm.”

  “So why didn’t you just change stables?” Charlie asked, gently stroking Phantom’s elegant neck.

  Pixie’s eyes glistened and she took another gulp of her hot chocolate, the plastic cup wobbling as she lifted it up. “I couldn’t. Dad had paid for Phantom’s stable, and before he left he said that he’d take care of the bills. But then Sasha told me that my next payment was overdue and Mrs Compton couldn’t get hold of Dad. She said I ought to start looking for somewhere else for Phantom if he didn’t cough up some more money soon.” Pixie looked at the floor. “Only, I knew that would be pretty unlikely.”

  “Why?” Mia asked gently.

  “Because I haven’t heard from Dad since he left,” she said, sniffing quietly and wiping her nose on her sleeve. “Mum said something about him meeting a new girlfriend at his work. It’s like he’s forgotten all about me and Mum, back here in stuffy England and all boring. I suppose I secretly hoped that he’d remember about the livery fees and sort it all out with Mrs Compton, but he didn’t. I tried to tell Mum about it, but she hates talking about him, said we didn’t need him anyway and that was the end of it. I didn’t want to keep upsetting her, so I let it drop. Then I got to Compton Manor last weekend before anyone else and found Phantom wandering about the yard. I looked at his stable door and saw that the clip had been taken off it. I guessed it was one of Sasha’s so-called pranks. I was about to lead him back into his stable, when I had an idea – if I moved quickly I could pretend that Phantom had just strayed from the yard and got lost. I grabbed a few bits and I just led him out and did the only thing I could think of…”

  “Hid him at the Old Forge,” Mia said, frowning.