Magic Horses—or Not?
Page 3
Sumatra paused to pluck a long, emerald blade of the grass and tie it into a pretty bow.
“I’m doing pretty well without my ribbons, too,” she said.
“And I have plenty of flowers to brighten my day,” Kona said as she spotted some vivid, violet morning glories, twined around a nearby fencepost.
“Sirocco!” Kona added with a twinkly smile. “Look what else I see over there!”
Sirocco slowed down and glanced at the flowers without much interest—until he saw what Kona was referring to. Then he skidded to a halt.
Swarming all around the flowers were … butterflies! All of them of different colors.
Sirocco stared at them. He was accustomed to flying around in a magic halo of the flittering insects, morning, noon, and night. But he hadn’t realized until just this moment how strange it had been spending the day without his little magical friends.
Only when these real butterflies had gotten their fill of nectar and flown away did Sirocco resume his journey toward Leanna’s house.
“Now, didn’t that make you happy,” Brisa chirped as she trotted next to Sirocco, “to spot some butterflies like your old ones?”
Sirocco just nodded. He didn’t want to admit that the real butterflies had made him unhappy. After all, it was his fault that his butterflies had gone away, along with Brisa’s jewels, Sumatra’s ribbons, and Kona’s flowers.
He also didn’t want to dampen his friends’ happy moods.
Little did he know, something else was going to do that for him—just then.
“Ew!” Brisa said as the grass began to thin. “The dirt here is wet and sticky. My new horseshoes are going to get dirty!”
A few steps more and the ground got wetter still.
“Oh, no!” Brisa cried, slowing to a tiptoe.
After walking another few yards, the Wind Dancers realized why they were feeling stuck in the mud. They’d arrived at a burbling stream with a wet, mucky bank.
“Hey!” Sirocco said in surprise. “How come we’ve never seen this brook before?”
“I guess because we were always flying so high above it,” Kona replied. “At top speed, I might add!”
“I’m sure I’ve noticed it,” Sumatra added. “But it must have looked so small from up in the sky, I never gave it a thought!”
The Wind Dancers stared at the stream.
“It sure doesn’t look like a trickle now,” Brisa said in a small voice.
The water flowed swiftly, making bubbling noises as it went.
The horses peered to the left and then to the right. The stream had no end in sight.
“We can’t walk across,” Kona said, thinking hard. “It’s too wide and too deep.”
“If I had my ribbons, I could weave us up a rope bridge,” Sumatra offered. “But I don’t think a grass bridge would hold us.”
“If I had my jewels,” Brisa added, “I could have made them into stepping stones.”
“Maybe we could try floating across,” Sirocco piped up. “We could spread out our wings like sails on boats!”
“That could work,” Kona said skeptically. “Or our wings could get waterlogged and heavy, dragging us under the current.” Then she added: “We know how to swim a little bit, but this looks like too much.”
Sirocco tried to come up with another option, or at least, a dose of cheer. But after searching for cheery ideas all day long, he was clean out of them!
Instead, he neighed, “Now what?” and stamped his hoof in the mud.
“Sirocco!” Brisa squealed. “You splashed mud on my beautiful coat! Leanna—”
“—won’t ever see your beautiful coat,” Sirocco said. “So it doesn’t matter anyway.”
“What do you mean by that?!” Sumatra demanded.
“We’re stuck!” Sirocco said. “We got down from our tree house without magic today. We made ourselves horseshoes without magic. We even managed to be happy without magic. At least, for a little while.”
The fillies exchanged troubled glances.
“But this,” Sirocco said, pointing with his nose at the deep stream, “has us stumped!”
“Stymied,” Kona agreed with a sorrowful shake of her head.
“Stopped,” Sumatra added, hanging her head.
“And we were so close to Leanna’s farm!” Brisa wailed in disappointment.
“Who knows if it would have helped anyway,” Sirocco said sadly. “Even if Leanna can see us now, we just can’t compete with her pony.”
“Right,” Sumatra replied. “We already know a girl wants to be able to ride her horse!”
“And grooming a Wind Dancer would take her only about thirty seconds—bo-ring!” Brisa added.
“And all she’d have to put in our trough is a few oats,” Kona noted unhappily. “Which isn’t exactly thrilling for a pet owner.”
“I don’t know why I even thought we should try this adventure,” Sirocco pouted. “I wish we could just go back to our old life. I miss our house. I miss being in the air. I miss my butterflies. I miss—”
“—the Wind Dancers.”
Sirocco jumped. His rant was interrupted by a girl’s chirpy voice.
By Leanna’s chirpy voice talking about the Wind Dancers! Over the tall grass on the other side of the stream, the little horses couldn’t see Leanna yet. But they could hear her, along with the rhythmic breaths and tromp-tromp-tromping hooves of her pony walking through the grass.
“Oh, you’d just love them, Sassy!” Leanna was telling her pony. “They were the prettiest, most amazing horses I ever saw, even if I only saw them for an instant, just once.”
Sassy nickered, as if in reply. The Wind Dancers heard Leanna pat the big horse with a warm thumpity-thump-thump.
Then Leanna went on to talk about that day—the Wind Dancers’ first day—with her voice full of wonder.
“It was a day a lot like this one, actually,” Leanna said. The Wind Dancers looked at each other with bright eyes. They’d just been saying the same thing! “I blew on a big dandelion and out popped four horses! Beautiful flying horses, colorful tiny horses, horses with shimmering wings. They had halos too. Of butterflies, flowers, jewels, and ribbons. I couldn’t believe it. But they disappeared as quickly as they’d come.”
Now the light in the Wind Dancers’ eyes dimmed.
“Maybe,” Sumatra said, “now that she has a ‘real’ horse, Leanna doesn’t really believe in us anymore.”
Before Sirocco could reply, Leanna and her pony came into view. Leanna’s cheeks were pink and her hair was tousled from riding. Sassy ambled down to the stream and stepped over it effortlessly. The rushing brook that had thwarted the Wind Dancers was nothing but a little speed bump to the life-sized pony.
“The strange thing is,” Leanna confided to her horse as they walked closer to the Wind Dancers, “I know my little Wind Dancers are still out there. Somewhere.”
Leanna looked around the pretty meadow with a smile and a sigh.
“Sometimes they leave little presents for me,” Leanna said. “Like they’re watching over me, always nearby.”
Sassy rumbled, again sounding as if he were chatting. Leanna seemed to think so, too, because she laughed.
“It’s nice to be able to tell someone about the Wind Dancers,” she said with a smile. “Nobody else would believe me!”
Then she added: “I know they’re real. Even if I never see them again!”
Sirocco was so excited, he reared back on his hind legs, kicked the air, and whinnied.
“I’ve never been so happy to be wrong!” he neighed. “Leanna loves us! Even if she can’t see us! She loves us just as much as Sassy.”
The fillies joined in on Sirocco’s happy celebration, whinnying and kicking their horseshoed hooves. It was only after they finished their dance of joy, breathing hard, that Kona cocked her head.
“It’s kind of funny, isn’t it?” she asked. “Now that Leanna can see us, we realize that she doesn’t need to see us.”
Siroc
co gasped and stared at the violet filly.
“I’d almost forgotten!” he whinnied. “Leanna can see us now!”
The Wind Dancers looked at each for one electric moment. Then they came to a wordless agreement. Whether or not Leanna needed to see the Wind Dancers to love them completely, it would still be a thrill to finally come face-to-face with her.
To watch her light up with joy when she saw them.
To feel her fingertips petting their heads and stroking their noses.
To hear her talking to them the way she chatted with her pony.
Together, the Wind Dancers launched themselves into the air and darted over to their friend. They hovered before Leanna’s pretty face and waited for it to light up with recognition and joy.
But … nothing happened!
Leanna looked straight through the Wind Dancers, as if she didn’t see them at all.
And that’s when Sirocco gasped again and realized the Wind Dancers had just launched themselves into the air!
“We’re … we’re flying again!” Sirocco squeaked.
Brisa whinnied!
Sumatra neighed!
Kona tossed her head and twirled in the air.
“I was so excited to see Leanna, I didn’t even realize it!” the violet horse gasped.
“None of us did!” Sirocco neighed.
As he spoke, Sirocco realized that Kona’s halo of beautiful, bouncing flowers had returned.
Brisa’s jewels were back, too, as sparkly as ever! Sumatra’s blue, green, and purple ribbons flowed around her again, too, as prettily as the little stream flowed through the meadow.
Finally, Sirocco glanced around himself and saw his old pals, the butterflies, flittering and fluttering a happy hello.
“I can’t believe it!” Sirocco said. “I must have wished our magic back! I didn’t even know I was doing it!”
The Wind Dancers hovered in the air and watched Leanna and Sassy continue across the meadow—away from them.
“She never even knew we were here!” Kona said with wonder in her voice.
“Except,” Sirocco reminded her, “she kind of did! Like Leanna said, she’s always known we were nearby. She’s always loved us!”
“Still,” Brisa said with just a hint of a pout, “it would have been nice to have gotten our magic back after Leanna got a glimpse of us. Even just a little one! We came all this way, after all!”
Kona smiled at Brisa.
“I think it’s safe to say that whatever Leanna would have seen of us, she would have liked,” she said.
“She likes us just the way we are!” Sumatra added, doing a happy flip in the air.
“I wouldn’t have it any other way,” Sirocco said with a big grin.
And he meant it.
He knew that he’d wish for things again. For more adventures. For new ways to have fun with his friends. For an endless supply of appley treats.
But never again would Sirocco wish to be anything other than what he was—a tiny, magical, flying horse. Invisible to people, but loved just the same.
As they came together in a sweet group nose nuzzle, Sirocco felt sure that Sumatra, Kona, and Brisa felt exactly the same way.
And then—as they did at the end of each adventure—the Wind Dancers headed home. Never before had they flown with this much excitement, this much gratitude, this much joy.
I Think I Hear Them Calling My Name
Trotting along on her pony—far below the once-again flying Wind Dancers—Leanna thought she heard something sweet in the air.
A distant echo of a whinny.
A faint, tinkling neigh.
And maybe, just maybe, deep down, Leanna knew that what she heard was the sound of her happy Wind Dancers. Always nearby, always close to her heart.
A FEIWEL AND FRIENDS BOOK
An Imprint of Macmillan
WIND DANCERS: MAGIC HORSES–OR NOT? Copyright © 2011 by Reeves International, Inc. All rights reserved. For information, address Feiwel and Friends, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
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Series editor, Susan Bishansky
Feiwel and Friends logo designed by Filomena Tuosto
First Edition: 2011
www.feiwelandfriends.com
eISBN 9781466890763
First eBook edition: January 2015