by Stacy Gregg
That left Stella, Issie, Aidan and Dan still in the competition. The wall had been raised to a metre forty for the fourth round. On the sidelines the Blackthorn Riders were all cheering and shouting.
“Boys against girls! Boys win!” called a voice from the arena railing. Issie turned around to see Arthur’s cheeky face staring up at her.
“Don’t count on it, Arthur!” she shouted back.
There was whooping from the girls on the sidelines as Stella turned to face the wall at one metre forty–and then cries of dismay as Coco refused and Stella flew forward on to the mare’s neck and had to struggle to stay on. She turned her pony away from the wall and trotted her back over to Avery. “I think that’s Coco’s limit,” she said. “That’s way the highest we’ve ever jumped in our whole lives!”
Avery nodded. “I agree. Good decision to stop her there, Stella–and a great jumping effort.”
The boys on the sidelines had their second disappointment when Dan attempted the metre forty wall and Madonna dropped her feet and knocked out a brick.
“Bad luck,” said Issie as he rode off. Then she pushed Comet into a canter and began to prepare to take the wall for the fourth time. Comet popped easily over the painted rails–and even more easily over the metre forty wall, giving his usual heel flick and clearing the top of the fence with room to spare!
The girls on the sideline went wild–except for Kelly-Anne, who was creeping Issie out by sitting on the railing all by herself and staring at Comet with greedy eyes.
Issie was the only one to make the height of a metre forty so far. That just left Aidan to try his luck. “Get ready for a jump-off,” he grinned at Issie as he breezed past her at a canter to face the warm-up fence.
But there wasn’t going to be a jump-off at all. Destiny did exactly the same thing that Madonna had done, dropping his hind legs just enough to dislodge a brick and dashing his chances to the ground.
“Issie wins on round four!” Avery announced.
There was much bragging from the girls on the sideline and Kitty was pulling faces at George. “Girls rule!”
Avery walked over to Issie with a broad grin on his face. “That was very nicely taken at a metre forty,” he said.
Issie beamed. “Comet took it easily.”
“He’s got an amazing jump in him,” Avery said, “and a very clean pair of hind feet.” Then he added cryptically, “It’d be interesting to see just how high he could go.”
The next day, the girls decided that since the kids had enjoyed watching the Puissance so much, they would have one of their own for the riding-school pupils.
“Cool!” George yelled. “A chance for the boys to win their glory back!”
Stella rolled her eyes, and Kitty looked nervous. “We’re not going over the big wall like last night, are we?”
“We’re going to use the wall,” Stella said, “but we’ll make it much lower. We’re going to start it at twenty centimetres.”
The riders were all lining up ready to go when Kelly-Anne rode forward on Julian with a face as sour as month-old milk. “I don’t think it’s fair,” she said, fixing Issie with a determined look. “Julian is a useless jumper so there’s no way I’ll win.”
“Kelly-Anne,” Issie said through gritted teeth, “we’ve been through this a million times. Julian is actually quite a good showjumper and he’s perfectly capable of doing jumps like this.”
Kelly-Anne sneered. “I was watching you last night. You think you’re a really good rider, but you’re not. It’s just because you have a good horse. That’s why you won’t let me ride Comet, isn’t it? I bet I could ride him just as well as you can! Go and saddle him up for me! I want to ride Comet!”
For weeks now Kelly-Anne had been the riding school’s resident pain in the neck. She was rude to the other riders, mean to the horses and grumpy to her instructors, but this was the worst, most miserable outburst yet. Issie didn’t know what to say. But luckily, as it turned out, she didn’t need to say anything because Aunty Hess was standing behind the riders and had heard everything.
“That’s it, Kelly-Anne!” Hester barked. “You’ve had plenty of warnings. That’s the final straw. You should never speak to a riding instructor like that.”
Kelly-Anne stuck her bottom lip out. “But I wasn’t doing anything. I was just saying…”
“I heard everything you said, Kelly-Anne.” Hester’s voice was firm but calm. “You can take Julian back to the stables please. Stella will come and help you unsaddle him. I’m not willing to put up with this behaviour in my school any longer. I’m calling your mother, and you can pack your bags. You’re going home.”
Kelly-Anne was too stunned for once to bite back. She looked like she was trying very hard not to cry as she turned Julian around and headed back to the stables. The rest of the riders sat there on their ponies watching her leave.
“Serves her right!” George muttered.
“George!” Issie told him off. She had never thought she would feel sorry for a girl like Kelly-Anne, but at that moment, as she watched her riding back to the stables alone, she felt sympathy for Kelly-Anne for the first time.
Kelly-Anne didn’t turn up for dinner that night.
“She’s probably embarrassed,” Hester said. “Let’s leave her alone. I’ve spoken to her mother, and she wasn’t at all surprised. Apparently she’s been having some trouble at home. Her parents are going through a rather nasty divorce–which I didn’t realise. Anyway, they sent her away to pony camp to keep her out of the firing line, so her mother wasn’t exactly pleased to hear she needed to come and pick her up. She’s coming to get her tomorrow after breakfast.”
The punishment of being sent home was doubly cruel, Issie now realised. If Kelly-Anne’s mum came to get her on Saturday, she wouldn’t be able to come with the other riders to the Horse of the Year Show on the Sunday as they’d planned.
“It’s her own fault,” Stella said when Issie pointed this out. Still, Issie couldn’t help but feel bad about being responsible for getting Kelly-Anne sent home. She knew how awful she had felt when her parents split up. Maybe she had misjudged Kelly-Anne a little.
Issie was exhausted by the time she went to bed that night. She had big plans to read her manual of showjumping rules to make sure she was ready for Sunday, but the boring rule book made her eyelids immediately feel heavy and she gave up and switched out the light.
It was just before dawn when she was woken up by a sound outside her bedroom. Issie sat bolt upright in bed. She could have sworn she had heard hoofbeats outside–and her first thought was that Comet had jumped the fence again. Then she realised that she had left him in his loose box last night. It couldn’t be Comet. Maybe she was imagining it? She slid out of bed and felt the cool wood of the floorboards against her bare feet as she tiptoed over to the window.
The sunlight was beginning to creep across the horizon. Issie guessed that it must have been about 6 a.m. In the early morning gloom, she could make out shapes and shadows on the lawn down below her bedroom. As she was standing there, with her nose pressed against the glass, she realised that one of these shadows, right in the middle of the lawn, was moving.
Issie stayed perfectly still. Was the shadow really moving or was she imagining it? There was no doubt in her mind a few moments later when the light picked out the colours of the shadow-shape and she saw a flash of dapple-grey, the shimmer of silver mane. The shadow on the lawn below was her horse. It was Mystic!
Issie pulled on a pair of jeans, not bothering to change out of her pyjama top, and hurried down the stairs. At the back door she shoved on her riding boots before racing across the lawn to the place where she had seen Mystic.
The horse wasn’t there any more, but as she looked around, Issie thought she caught a glimpse of him again, heading between the trees towards the stables. Issie could hardly breathe. It was like her heart was in her throat, choking all the air out of her as she ran across the back lawn. By the time she reached the stables,
she was gasping for air and had to bend over for a moment with her hands on her knees to catch her breath. She stood up again and looked around, expecting to see Mystic, but the grey gelding wasn’t there. Had he been there at all or had she just imagined it? No, Issie had been quite sure it was Mystic on the lawn, but why was he here now?
Panic gripped her as a thought occurred. The last time Mystic was here he had been watching over Comet. Was that why the grey gelding was here? She looked down the row of loose boxes to the stall at the far end. It was still bolted shut, just as she had left it when she put Comet in herself last night.
“Comet?” she yelled out as she began to run up the row to the stall. “It’s OK, boy, I’m here.” Issie fell against the door of the stall and struggled to work the top bolt free to swing it open. Inside the stall, Comet didn’t respond. The awful silence from behind the door gave Issie a chill of fear. Her fingers fumbled desperately as she opened the stall.
“Comet?” she said softly. She was still hoping that the pony would appear and thrust his cute little skewbald face out to greet her. But the minute she opened the top door she could see that this wasn’t going to happen. She braced herself and stuck her head over, expecting to see the worst. But she wasn’t prepared for what she actually saw. Her pony wasn’t in his stall at all. The loose box was totally empty. Comet was gone.
Chapter 12
Stay calm! Issie told herself. Comet couldn’t just disappear. That was crazy. She must be confused. Maybe she put him back in a different stall last night? Or perhaps Hester or Aidan had changed their minds and put him out to graze instead? No! She knew where she had put him last night–the stall she was standing in right now. She hadn’t moved him and neither had anyone else. He had simply disappeared.
Issie took a deep breath. Horses didn’t just disappear. She had to calm down and think clearly to make sense of this.
Acting on a hunch, she ran out of Comet’s stall, sprinting all the way down the stable corridor to the tack room. Her blood pounding and heart racing, she grabbed the tack-room key from its hiding place on a nail behind the hat on the wall and fumbled to work the padlock. The lock was fiddly and her hands were trembling. It finally came open and Issie barged straight through the door and into the dark room on the other side.
She switched on the tack-room light and began frantically scanning the racks of saddles and bridles. She soon found what she was looking for–or rather she didn’t find it. Comet’s saddle and bridle were both missing.
Well, that solved part of the mystery. Comet hadn’t disappeared by himself. Someone had taken him. But who would do that? There was the shuffle of footsteps behind her and Issie turned to see Kitty in her pyjamas looking pale and scared beneath the stable lights.
“Ohmygod, Kitty!” Issie gasped. “Don’t sneak up like that! You startled me! What are you doing here?”
“Kelly-Anne took him,” Kitty said.
“What?”
“Kelly-Anne. She took Comet. She woke me up. I was asleep and I heard a noise and then I saw her dressed in her jodhpurs so I asked her where she was going. She said it was unfair, that she wanted to ride Comet but you would never let her. She wanted to ride him just once before her mum came to take her home. I told her she shouldn’t do it, but she got really angry at me and made me promise not to tell anyone…”
Kitty looked like she was going to cry. “I’m really sorry, Issie. I should have tried to stop her. It’s all my fault…”
Issie shook her head. “You did the right thing, telling me. And don’t worry about Kelly-Anne. I’ll find her and I’ll get Comet back and everything will be OK, I promise.” Kitty wiped her nose with the sleeve of her pyjamas.
“How long ago did she leave?” Issie asked her.
“Ages ago,” Kitty said, sniffling. “She said she’d be back again by breakfast and no one would ever know she had taken him.”
“OK, Kitty, I need you to do something else for me,” Issie said. “Can you go and find Aunty Hess and tell her that Kelly-Anne has taken Comet and I’ve gone to follow her? Can you do that for me?”
Kitty nodded and then she turned and set off down the long corridor past the stalls and out the back of the stables, heading for the manor, leaving Issie standing alone in the tack room.
Issie’s mind flashed back to that jumping lesson when Kelly-Anne had lost her temper with Julian. She still remembered Julian’s wild eyes, the poor pony’s terror and confusion as Kelly-Anne had whipped him again and again in front of the jump.
If she does anything like that to Comet, if she hurts my horse…Issie was almost shaking with anger. What did Kelly-Anne think she was doing? Comet was too fiery for her to handle. Kelly-Anne simply didn’t listen and now she was going to get herself hurt–and Comet too!
Issie looked back at the racks of bridles and saddles. Kelly-Anne had a head start. She would need a fast horse if she wanted to catch up with her. Her first thought was Destiny. The black horse had a huge stride, plus he had grown up on the hills around the farm and he was surefooted across country. But then she remembered that Aidan was planning to ride the stallion in the Horse of the Year. Taking Destiny on a ride like this the day before the event was crazy. The farm terrain was uneven and rough and there was every chance that Destiny might stand in a rabbit hole or throw a shoe. If he went lame then Aidan would be devastated and Issie would never forgive herself. No, she couldn’t risk it.
Her next choice was Diablo. The piebald was fit and almost as fast at a gallop as Destiny. She grabbed Diablo’s saddle and bridle from the rack and ran down the corridor to his stall. The black and white Quarter Horse gave a nicker of surprise as she opened the door to his loose box and stepped inside.
“Hey, Diablo,” Issie said. “We’re in a hurry so no grooming today, OK, boy?”
She threw the saddle straight on to the piebald’s back and did up the girth. Then she adjusted the stirrups to a short length. She was going to be riding fast and for the sake of speed she would need to stay up in two-point position in the saddle the whole time.
As she slipped on Diablo’s bridle and did up the throat lash, Issie heard noises out in the corridor. “Kitty?” she called out. “Are you still here? I thought I told you to go up to the house?”
But when she led Diablo out of his stall there was no one there. Issie looked back down the row of stalls. They were all shut tight apart from Comet and Diablo’s boxes. The place was empty. She turned again to lead Diablo out the back of the stables through the open doors towards the paddocks and that was when she saw him.
Standing in the doorway, framed by the dawn light, was a grey pony. Issie could see the soft bloom of his dappled coat and the thick silvery mane shining, his coal black eyes staring intently at her.
“Mystic!” she called out. The grey gelding raised his head and nickered to her, and Issie waited, expecting her pony to come to her as he always did. But he didn’t come closer; he shifted about restlessly, dancing this way and that, shaking his mane in agitation.
“Mystic?” Something was wrong. Issie dropped Diablo’s reins and began to run towards him, but it was too late. Mystic had already turned on his hocks and set off at a canter, disappearing through the stable doors and out of sight.
“Mystic!” Issie began to run faster, her blood pounding, pulse racing. Why didn’t her pony wait for her? When she reached the stable doors and ran outside she almost expected him to be gone, and was a little surprised to see him standing waiting for her next to the paddocks beyond the cottage. “Mystic!” she called out. The grey gelding didn’t move. Issie didn’t understand. Mystic had never been like this before. Why wouldn’t he come to her? Then the thought occurred to her. He wants me to follow him!
Well, she realised, she wouldn’t get far like this. She needed Diablo. When Issie had dropped Diablo’s reins to run off after Mystic, the Quarter Horse had remembered his stunt training and stayed rooted to the spot where Issie had left him at the far end of the stables.
I
ssie spun around to face him, put her fingers to her lips and blew a short, sharp whistle. Diablo reacted to this cue as if on pure instinct. Without hesitation, he broke into a canter, his hooves clattering on the concrete floor of the stables as he ran to Issie’s side.
“Good boy, Diablo,” Issie said, grabbing the reins and swinging herself swiftly on to the stunt horse’s back. “Let’s go.”
Mystic was still standing by the paddocks waiting for them, but the moment he saw Issie and Diablo emerge from the stables he turned away and began to canter ahead of them, towards the back fence of the paddock and the rise of Blackthorn Hill. The countryside beyond the fenceline was hilly and the terrain was rough and covered with scrub. There was no path or clear ground to ride over. Issie would never have come this way herself. She would have ridden along the well-worn ridge track. But she quickly understood why Mystic was leading her this way. It may be more dangerous, but it would take half the time.
Issie clucked Diablo into a canter and they began gaining on Mystic, who was heading straight for the back fence. Issie scanned the fenceline, looking for the gate. She didn’t realise the flaw in Mystic’s plan until it was too late. There was no gate. If they were going to get to the other side, they were going to have to jump their way out.
Issie looked at the fence. It was a post and rails, about one metre twenty. Comet would clear a fence like that easily. But could Mystic and Diablo? As the grey gelding approached the fence, Issie held her breath. She needn’t have worried. Mystic took the fence with ease, his legs forming a graceful arc above the rails. He looked just like a dolphin diving, Issie realised. A perfect bascule!
She was getting close to the fence herself now and, considering she had never even seen the piebald jump a fence before, let alone ridden him over one herself, she decided she would just have to ride hard at it. As Diablo approached the back fence she heard him give a nervous snort, as if he had only just realised what she was asking him to do.