Issie and the Christmas Pony

by Stacy Gregg

  Pony Club

  Secrets

  Issie and the

  Christmas Pony

  Stacy Greeg

  For Hayley and all the kids in Room 10, Merry Christmas

  Table of Contents

  Coverpage

  Title Page

  Map

  Dedication

  1 A Summer Christmas

  2…Four Years Earlier

  3 The Perfect Pony?

  4 Winterflood Farm

  5 Bombproof Bert

  6 Dream Pony

  7 The Chevalier Point Pony Club

  8 Auction Day

  9 Going Once…Going Twice…

  10 The Worst Christmas Ever

  11 The Christmas Present

  12 Forever

  Glossary

  The Pony Club Secrets Series

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  1

  A Summer Christmas

  Issie Brown was just a little girl when she realised that Christmas was all wrong. Not wrong exactly, but sort of mixed up, muddled. Not the way it should be.

  Christmas on TV was always cold and wintry. There were sleigh bells and snow and you crowded round a roaring fire with hot chocolate while your mum cooked roast dinner with turkey and plum pudding. You’d wrap up warm in coats and mittens to sing carols and then tuck yourself up indoors and watch the snowflakes patter against the window while you waited for Santa to arrive.

  Issie couldn’t make head nor tail of it. Because Christmas wasn’t like that at all in Chevalier Point. It wasn’t snowing for starters-in fact, it was positively baking hot, the middle of summer, without a cloud in the bright blue sky. And there wasn’t any turkey or plum pudding. Issie couldn’t remember ever eating that sort of food for Christmas. For as long as she could remember her family had cooked their Christmas lunch on the barbecue down at the beach. They would wake up on Christmas morning and open their presents, which nearly always included a beach toy like swingball or a boogie board. Then they’d race down to the beach, where Issie would meet up with Stella and Kate.

  While their dads put crayfish and scallops on the hotplate to sizzle and their mums set out the picnic blankets, the girls would swim in the sea, riding the waves in on their boogie boards. When lunch was ready, they’d sit down on the blankets, still wearing their swimming costumes, letting the hot sun dry their backs as they ate. Their plates would be piled with bright red crayfish claws, which they would smash open with nutcrackers, prising out the juicy white flesh, dipping it in hot melted butter and mopping up the juice with crusty bread.

  For dessert there would be pavlova and strawberries and ice cream, and afterwards Issie, Stella and Kate would lie back on the grass in the hot summer sun until their mums were convinced their food had been digested and it was safe to swim again.

  No roaring fire, no snowflakes. It was a very different Christmas. A New Zealand Christmas.

  It was hard to believe that when it was summer here in Chevalier Point, on the other side of the world it was winter. Right now, it was midnight in Europe and all the kids were fast asleep. Here, it was midday on Christmas Eve. The weather, as usual, was gloriously sunny, and Issie was in the kitchen at her house with Stella and Kate. The girls had come up with the genius idea of making Christmas cakes-with their own very special recipe.

  “I need more oats!” Stella was using a wooden spoon to stir the mixture in the mixing bowl. It was already so thick that the spoon actually stood straight up in the bowl even when she wasn’t holding it.

  “Here!” came a voice from underneath the bench. Kate, who had been rummaging around below the sink, popped her head up and passed the bag of oats to Stella.

  “I’ve got the apples too,” said Kate. “I’ll start chopping.”

  “I’ve found the secret ingredients!” Issie came through the door carrying a bag of something that looked like lawn clippings and a plastic bottle filled with thick black syrup.

  “Perfect!” Stella said. “You put it in the bowl while I stir.”

  As Issie sprinkled handfuls of alfalfa on top of the mixture, Stella’s vigorous stirring sent bits flying everywhere.

  “Hey, I think it still needs more oats,” Kate said, grabbing a handful out of the bag. “Oops!” She had managed to miss the bowl and drop the oats on the floor.

  “Kate!” Stella shrieked. “You’re getting it on my shoes!” There were oats all over the floor and alfalfa bits stuck to the walls.

  “Ohmygod…” Issie giggled. “If mum sees this mess, she’ll…”

  “She’ll what?” The girls turned round to find Mrs Brown standing in the doorway behind them. She did not look best pleased that her kitchen had been turned into a bomb site.

  “What on earth is going on in here? What are you girls doing?”

  “Hi, Mum!” Issie grinned. “I know it’s a bit of a disaster, but we’ll clean it up.”

  “Yeah, Mrs B,” Stella chimed in. “We were going to tidy up when we finished.”

  “Finished what?” asked Mrs Brown. “Isadora? What are you up to?”

  “We’re making Christmas cakes!” replied Issie brightly.

  Mrs Brown looked at the suspicious line-up of ingredients on the bench. “With molasses and chaff?” She wrinkled up her nose. “Issie, why didn’t you ask me to help you girls? I’ve got a great Christmas cake recipe…”

  Issie laughed. “No, Mum. Not for us. Christmas cakes for the ponies!”

  “We’re going to make them in these.” Stella pointed to a stack of old plastic ice-cream tubs on the bench beside her. “That way each horse gets their own cake.”

  “And we’ll use slices of carrots and apples to decorate the tops,” added Kate.

  Mrs Brown shook her head in disbelief. “Do you think your ponies actually know that it’s Christmas tomorrow?”

  “Toby knows,” Kate grinned. “He’s got a list of things he wants from Santa.”

  “What’s on the list?” asked Stella.

  “A new summer rug, some floating boots, one of those cool pink riding crops…”

  “I hardly think Toby would want a riding crop!” Issie giggled.

  “Yeah, good point,” mused Kate. “I didn’t think of that when I was writing the list!”

  “I’ve asked for a new bridle,” Stella said, “and some proper long black leather boots. But the ones I want are really expensive. Mum said if I’m lucky, Santa will get me some black rubber ones at least.”

  “What about you, Issie?” Kate said.

  “What?”

  “What do you want for Christmas?”

  “I really want some new jods,” Issie said. “Mine are all too small.”

  “All your clothes are too small,” said Mrs Brown. “When you turned fourteen you shot up like a beanpole.” She smiled at her daughter. “I think Santa can probably stretch to a pair of jodhpurs. In fact, there’s a suspiciously jodhpur-shaped present under the tree with your name on it.”

  Even though it was just Issie and her mum at home for Christmas, there were loads of gifts under the tree. Issie’s Aunty Hess had sent her a present, wrapped in the most wonderful pink and gold horsey paper. (Issie was pretty sure it was a new halter for Storm.) There were a couple of gifts under there from her dad too-mailed at the last minute as usual. Issie had given one of the boxes a shake and it sounded like a board game of some sort. He usually sent her a board game. The other gift was about the right size and shape to be a Barbie doll. Issie had learnt by now not to be disappointed by her dad’s presents. Last year he gave her a book all about fairies with glitter on the cover that was totally babyish. It was like he didn’t realise that she was fourteen now, and still treated her like a kid. In h
is mind, Issie was still the same nine-year-old she had been when he had left. She hardly ever saw her father. He had remarried and had a new family-Issie had a half-sister and a half-brother-so he never came home to see her at Christmas time.

  Issie missed her dad at Christmas. Even if his presents did, well, kind of suck. It seemed strange without him here, with just Issie and her mum.

  “Is one of those presents under there for me?” Stella asked hopefully, eyeing up the tree.

  Issie pointed at a small package wrapped in pink and red candystripe paper. “That little pink one at the front is for you from me, and the purple one is for Kate.”

  “Ohhh…let’s see!” Stella rushed over to the tree and prodded her package. She let out a shriek. “Is it a dandy brush?”

  Issie looked crestfallen. “Stella, you’re not meant to guess! It’s supposed to be a surprise.” She watched Kate holding up her present, which was really badly wrapped and quite obviously shaped like a sweat scraper, the curved rubber sort you use to dry off a wet pony.

  “I think I can guess what mine is too,” Kate grinned.

  Mrs Brown shook her head at them. “I can’t imagine what we used to buy you lot for Christmas before you had ponies. Your Christmas lists read like a tack-shop inventory.”

  “I can,” Stella said. “I mean, I can remember what it was like before we had the ponies.” She looked at Issie. “Do you remember that Christmas when we went on the pony-club camp? You know, the Christmas you got Mystic?”

  Issie felt a shiver run through her as Stella said Mystic’s name. Of course she remembered that Christmas. She remembered that it was their first ever Christmas without her dad, which had been awful. But in a way, it also turned out to be the best Christmas she had ever had. It had been the start of everything.

  When Issie looked back on that time now, she realised that Mystic was meant to be hers-that their lives were inextricably intertwined somehow. Of course, back then she couldn’t possibly have known what was to come. That Mystic would be taken away from her so tragically. And how could she possibly have known that his death was not the end at all, but the beginning? Issie’s bond with the little grey pony was so deep and so powerful that her horse would never really be gone. Whenever she needed him most he was there to watch over her and her horses and keep them safe. Not like a ghost or anything, but as a real horse, flesh and blood. Right by her side for the rest of her life.

  At Christmas time, more than at any other time, Issie found herself recalling memories of the times before Mystic died, when he was still with her as a regular pony. But most of all she remembered the Christmas when she and Mystic first met. Had she found Mystic or had he found her? It didn’t really matter. What mattered most was that, with each day, she realised more and more just how magical that Christmas had been.

  “I remember,” Issie said to Stella. “I remember…”

  2

  …Four Years Earlier

  Issie stared into the eyes of the giant pink pig. Gently she reached her hand under its belly. Her fingers fumbled around, grasping the cork. With one swift tug she released the stopper and a waterfall of money cascaded noisily out of the pig’s tummy on to her duvet. She pushed the ten and twenty cent pieces to one side and began picking out the notes and the gold $1 and $2 coins.

  “Isadora? Are you dressed yet? You need to leave in ten minutes!” Mrs Brown called up the stairs.

  “I’m just finishing something!” Issie yelled back. She was already in her uniform and her hair was brushed. All she needed to do was pull on her school shoes and she was ready. But first she wanted to check how much she had in the piggy bank. She sat cross-legged among the coins on her bed and began to sort the money, counting in her head as she went.

  “Do you want a banana in your lunchbox?” her mum called up the stairs.

  “Mum! You made me lose track!” Issie sighed and put all the ten cent pieces back into the pile to start again.

  “What?” her mother shouted back.

  “Nothing!” said Issie distractedly. She carried on counting. “That makes $5 dollars, plus another $5 is $10…” Issie had been saving up for a pony ever since she could remember-from the moment her mum told her that if she was really serious about getting a pony then she would have to buy one herself.

  “If I save up enough to buy one then can I really have one?” Issie had asked.

  “Well…yes, I suppose so,” Mrs Brown had agreed.

  “How much is enough?”

  “I should think about $1000 would be enough to buy a pony,” her mum had said.

  Years later, Mrs Brown admitted that she never thought Issie would reach $1000. “I didn’t think you were serious,” Mrs Brown recalled. “I thought it wouldn’t take long before you gave up on the whole horse nonsense and splurged it all on toys instead.”

  But Issie didn’t give up. She saved and saved-all her birthday money and pocket money from doing chores. It took ages for the pig to fill up, but eventually the coins were crammed past its tummy all the way to the snout and the pig was so heavy Issie could hardly lift it.

  There was the moment of triumph when she finally reached her goal of $1000-followed by bitter disappointment when her mum still refused to buy her a pony. “You’re only nine years old; that’s too young,” Mrs Brown had said. “A pony is a big responsibility, Issie. You have to be able to groom it and feed it and take care of it. They’re a huge commitment.”

  “I know that!” Issie had insisted. “I will look after it. You said I could have one when I had $1000.”

  But Mrs Brown was firm. “Wait until you’re ten. Ten is a good age for a pony.”

  Wait until she was ten? This, as far as Issie was concerned, was changing the rules halfway through. In fact, Issie would have pointed out exactly how unfair this was, but she figured that since she was already nine and three-quarters-which was so close to ten anyway-she would take the new deal that was being offered. It wasn’t that much longer to wait. And her mum couldn’t wriggle out of it this time. Once Issie turned ten she had to let her have a pony. Didn’t she?

  Issie’s tenth birthday arrived in September. Mrs Brown came up with a new excuse. “It’s practically still winter,” she reasoned. “There’s no point in buying you a horse when it’s too wet and cold to ride.”

  Issie had protested that she didn’t care about the weather, but her mother had stood firm. And so Issie waited. She watched the seasons change and the days get longer. It was December now, summer was here and she was ten years old and three months. Her piggy bank was now bulging with a whopping $1274-thanks in part to two rather large birthday cheques from both her grandmothers. This time when she approached her mother, she was bound to win the fight. Mrs Brown was completely out of excuses.

  Issie bounded down the stairs from the bedroom into the kitchen and put the piggy bank down on the table with an emphatic thud. Mrs Brown looked up from her newspaper. She saw the familiar face of the pink pig and sighed. “How much is in there now then?”

  “$1274,” Issie said as she pushed the pig closer to her mother. “Please?” she begged as she nudged the piggy bank across the table until it bumped into Mrs Brown’s coffee cup. “Mum, please! You said I could get a pony when I was ten and I was ten ages ago…”

  Mrs Brown looked back at the paper as if she were hardly listening, “Did I say that? That you could have a pony when you were ten?”

  Issie’s face dropped. This couldn’t be happening! “Mum! Don’t you remember? You said when I was ten! We talked about it!”

  Mrs Brown gave a heavy sigh. She had been wishing and hoping that it wouldn’t come to this. Hoping that this whole pony thing was just a phase. But here she was, being confronted by a ten-year-old with a pink pig full of cash. She looked up from the newspaper and saw the desperate look on her daughter’s face, her trembling lower lip as she fought to hold back the tears. At that moment Mrs Brown knew that she had lost the battle and her daughter, finally, had won.

  “All righ
t,” she said. “I was just winding you up. I did say you could have a pony when you were ten, didn’t I? And I can see I’m going to be forced to keep my promise.”

  “What?”

  Mrs Brown smiled. “We’ll look at the horses for sale in the paper when you get home from school, OK? And we’ll go online and look at that horse trader website. What’s it called again?”

  “Trade-a-pony!” Issie’s voice was trembling. She had waited for her mother to say this for so long now, had pestered and begged her every day, but it never seemed as if this moment would ever arrive. And now, here they were. It was finally happening!

  “Mum?” Issie asked. “Do you really mean it?”

  Mrs Brown nodded. “I think it’s time to buy you a pony.”

  Issie squealed with delight and threw her arms around her mum’s neck, giving her the biggest hug ever. When she had stopped hugging her mum, she began to pogo about the kitchen, jumping up and down with excitement. “Can we look for a pony now? Please? I can go get the paper!”

  “You seem to have conveniently forgotten the little matter of going to school!” Mrs Brown laughed. She picked up Issie’s schoolbag off the chair and stuffed a lunchbox in it along with a drink bottle and a book bag before passing it to her daughter. “There’ll be plenty of time for horse-hunting when you get home. Why don’t we find a few ponies worth looking at and we can go out and see them this weekend?”

  “Thanks, Mum!” Issie’s voice was a high-pitched squeak. “I don’t believe it. I’m really getting a pony!”

  “Go on!” said Mrs Brown. “Canter off or you’ll be late for school.”

  Stella almost burst with excitement when Issie told her the news. “Ohmygod, Issie! This is so cool!” she squealed. “I bet you get your new horse in time for pony-club camp!”

  “Shhh!” Issie muttered at Stella. Their teacher, Miss Willis, was giving them a stern look. They were supposed to be doing silent reading with their library books-not talking about ponies.

  As far as Issie was concerned, there were only two kinds of kids at Chevalier Point Primary School. There were the ones who were totally horse-mad (like her, Stella and Kate) and then there was the rest of them. Issie couldn’t understand how anyone could not like horses. Especially when you lived in a place like Chevalier Point. The town was horse heaven, surrounded by rolling green fields, perfect for grazing your pony. The pony club was within hacking distance and there were beaches and forests to ride in.