Liberty and the Dream Ride (2 page)

One night around the kitchen table, Avery, Francoise, Issie and Stella made the sad decision to sell Amaretto, one of Laurel Farm's most promising young eventing horses, to raise enough funds for Issie, Avery, Stella and Comet to travel to the Kentucky Four-Star.

Issie had felt awful about parting with one of their best horses, but they had no choice. She knew that this was the hard truth all competitive riders faced – selling off their best horses just to stay in the game. And if Issie couldn't finish in the top ten rankings in Kentucky and claim some of the prize money, then things would only get worse. Next time she would be forced to choose one of her advanced eventers, and either Comet or Nightstorm could be up for sale when she got home.

Issie didn't even want to think about it! Instead she was pinning her hopes on recouping prize money in Kentucky. The winner of the three-day event would receive an amazing $100,000! The fate of Issie's horses, and the future of Laurel Farm, was riding on her success in Kentucky. Avery was right – things had changed. This was the big league – they weren't kids any more. And this was no trip to Disneyland.

Issie stood anxiously waiting at the front desk while the quarantine agent worked his way slowly and meticulously through the pages of Comet's paperwork.

“Has he been behaving himself?” she asked the quarantine agent nervously. “I'm sorry if he's been any trouble. Comet's not naughty exactly, but he doesn't like loose boxes, and he gets bored. One time he tried to roll in his box and then he got his head stuck in a feed bucket and couldn't get it off!”

Issie grinned, but the quarantine agent appeared unmoved. He looked up briefly from his paperwork, frowned and then typed something else into the computer on his desk before returning to the stack of papers. Issie looked at her watch. How much longer was this going to take? She'd been at the desk for nearly an hour! Finally, the official reached for the large rubber stamp on his desk and brought it down with a thump on top of Comet's forms.

“OK. You've been approved. It's all in order,” he told Issie gruffly, pushing the papers back across the desk towards her. “Take these with you and present them at the front gate. They'll let you enter the compound and pick up your horse.”

The guard at the stable block was no friendlier. “What's the name of the horse that you're collecting?” he asked without looking up as he flicked through the papers.

“Comet,” Issie said.

As Issie's voice echoed down the corridor of the stables, there was a sudden sound of hooves stamping on the straw from inside one of the loose boxes. A moment later a skewbald face appeared over one of the Dutch doors and Comet began whinnying and flicking his head up and down.

“Your horse?” the guard asked with a raised eyebrow.

“Uh-huh.” Issie beamed.

“You can go and collect him out of the loose box if you want,” the guard said.

Issie didn't need to be told twice – she raced down the corridor to greet her pony.

“Hey, boy.” She patted Comet's broad white stripe. “How are you? Have they been treating you OK in here? Have you made friends with the other horses?”

Comet was nickering vigorously, telling Issie all about his epic plane journey and the days of boredom in quarantine.

Issie listened and nodded sympathetically. “I know, I've missed you too, but it's OK now, we're here to take you with us. We're going to Kentucky.”

She clipped the lead shank to the pony's halter and led him out of his stall. She could hear the other horses in their stalls whinnying their goodbyes as she led the skewbald down the corridor of the stable block. Massive electronic gates swung open to let them out into the bright sunshine of the quarantine yard where Avery and Stella were waiting with the rental horse float hitched up to the back of their Jeep.

“Ohmygod, we've been waiting hours!” Stella said as she helped lower the ramp of the horse float so they could load him onboard.

“Let's get moving,” Avery told them. “We want to be on the freeway and out of Los Angeles before the traffic gets heavy.”

The skewbald was looking around the yard, his ears pricked forward. When he saw the rickety horse float that Avery was towing behind the Jeep, however, his ears went back. He refused to step up the ramp and in the end Avery had to place a lunge rope around his rump to urge him onboard.

“Poor Comet,” Stella said. “I'm not surprised he doesn't want to get on – look at the state of it!”

The horse float they'd hired was an ancient contraption. Issie had been quietly horrified when they picked it up from the rental yards yesterday and she saw the peeling blue paint flaking off the framework exposing the rust underneath. There was black lettering around the front of the float that must once have said
Horse Star
, but a couple of the letters had rusted away so that the sign read
Hose tar
.

“What's a ‘hose tar'?” Stella had wrinkled her nose up.

“Umm… Is this thing actually roadworthy?” Issie had asked nervously.

Avery had clambered about underneath the chassis and pronounced the horse box perfectly sound. “It's not pretty, but it will get us to Kentucky.”

Now, with Comet finally loaded onboard, they pulled out on to the Los Angeles freeway, and listened as their satnav gave Avery directions through the complicated spaghetti junctions of the city, until finally they were on the open roads of Route 40, heading towards Kentucky.

By midday the landscape had changed. The houses had disappeared and been replaced by desert. The view out the car windows was like watching a cowboy movie, nothing but dust and cacti as far as the eye could see.

“You couldn't keep a horse here,” Stella observed. “This is terrible grazing!”

She gazed out the window wistfully. “I can't wait to get to Kentucky to see the
blue
grass.”

“What?” Avery looked at her like she was mad. “Stella, Lexington, Kentucky is called ‘bluegrass country', but it's a nickname – it doesn't mean they really have blue grass.”

“Well what colour is it then?” Stella said.

“It's green, Stella,” Avery rolled his eyes. “Just like ordinary grass.”

“Well that is majorly disappointing!” Stella flopped back in her seat. “I thought it would be like Smurf-land or something.”

Issie looked at her watch. “What time is it in New Zealand?” she asked Avery.

“About five p.m.,” Avery said. “You can call your mother when we stop for lunch if you like.”

Issie looked around at the alien landscape of the Mojave Desert and felt a sudden pang of homesickness for her old life in Chevalier Point. She felt a bit weepy for a moment, but she knew she was just exhausted because of jetlag. She was still having trouble sleeping at night and kept waking up, sitting bolt upright in bed at three in the morning, unable to get back to sleep. And now, here they were in the middle of the day and she could hardly keep her eyes open.

“How come I have jetlag and Comet seems to be totally fine?” Issie asked Avery.

“Horses and humans react entirely differently to long-distance travel,” Avery told her. “For horses, it takes several weeks for the jetlag to set in. Right now, Comet hasn't got jetlag at all. That's why we've brought him here on such a tight schedule right before the competition. The timing is crucial because we want him in peak condition and jetlag-free when we're in Kentucky.”

Issie wished she was jetlag-free. She felt like an ocean tide was washing her in-and-out, in-and-out. Her brain was swimming in a warm pool, making it impossible to think clearly. As Avery drove on towards Flagstaff she was inexplicably gripped by a desperate urge to go to sleep, and so she succumbed.

It was probably the noise of the trucks whizzing by on the freeway that made her start dreaming. She had flashed back in time five years to that fateful day at Chevalier Point Pony Club. She could see it all so clearly, as if it was real – which of course it was, because this wasn't actually a dream. It was a memory, an event that had happened long ago, and that had haunted her ever since.

It was her very first gymkhana at Chevalier Point Pony Club and Issie and her pony Mystic had just left the show ring with a blue ribbon when chaos broke loose.

Natasha Tucker had stamped out of the arena after losing the showjumping and in misguided fury she had viciously taken a swipe with her whip at her poor pony Goldrush. Issie watched in horror as the terrified Goldrush backed away and barged into Coco and Toby who were standing right beside her, tied to a horse truck. Natasha lost control of Goldrush completely and Coco and Toby both panicked and tore themselves free from the truck. Then all three horses bolted, heading straight for the pony-club gates.

As people began to run after the horses, trying to divert them before they reached the gate to the main road, Issie realised they'd never catch them in time on foot. But maybe she could reach them on Mystic.

The horses were out of the gates and had reached the road before Issie got to them. Cars were honking and swerving as she pulled Mystic around in front of Toby, and waved an arm at him, spooking the big bay, driving him back towards the pony club. The other two loose horses followed Toby's lead and scattered back off the road. Issie was just about to turn Mystic and follow them to safety when she heard the deep low boom of the truck horn. There was a sickening squeal of tyres as the truck driver tried to stop, and the intense smell of burning rubber as the truck went into a slide. To Issie, it seemed as if everything began to move in slow motion. She felt Mystic rear up beneath her to face the truck, like a stallion preparing to fight. As the grey pony went up on his hind legs he threw Issie back with such force that she flew clear out of the saddle.

She was falling, the tarmac racing up to meet her. She braced for the impact, but this time it never came. Instead, she was jolted out of her dream state by the sharp honk of a car horn and a man's voice shouting.

“Hey, buddy! You're on the wrong side of the road!”

She was suddenly wide awake. They were at a petrol station and Avery had just swerved to avoid another driver, honking vigorously and waving his fist as he went past them.

“Stupid Americans,” Avery muttered under his breath, “It's not my fault you drive on the wrong side of the road. Why can't you drive on the left like everyone else?”

Then he caught sight of Issie's face.

“Are you all right, Issie?” he asked with genuine concern. “You look utterly exhausted. I'm sorry you got woken up.”

“I'm fine,” Issie said. “I guess I'm a bit jetlagged.”

She was relieved that the honking had woken her up. At least she didn't have to relive the rest of that nightmare. After the fall on the road that day, Issie had been knocked out. She remembered the crack of her helmet on the tarmac, the taste of blood in her mouth and then everything had turned black.

When she woke up again, she was in a hospital bed with her mum sitting at her side holding her hand.

“Mum? Where is Mystic? Is Mystic OK?”

The look on her mother's face told her everything she needed to know even before she spoke. “Isadora, there was nothing anyone could have done… the truck… Mystic is dead.”

Overwhelmed with grief at the loss of her beloved Mystic, Issie truly believed that she would never ride again – but then she didn't know what was to come, or that the bond she shared with Mystic would prove to be unbreakable.

The first time he returned, Issie didn't know how it could possibly be happening, and yet she instinctively knew somehow that the grey pony standing before her was real. Mystic had returned to her – not a ghost, but flesh and blood, and here to help her.

Ever since then Mystic had been her protector and her guardian, turning up out of the blue whenever Issie and her ponies really needed him.

Issie knew it wasn't just the jetlag that had brought on her dream. She'd had premonitions like this before. It was a sign that trouble was looming.

She didn't dare to fall asleep again. Instead, she stared out the car window, listening to the country music pouring out of the car stereo as they drove up mountain ranges through the dense conifer forests, and into the heartland of New Mexico.

It was almost seven and the sun was turning blood-red on the horizon when they finally reached their destination for the evening – a motel called The Hacienda on the outskirts of the township of Rio Rancho.

The motel buildings were old Spanish Mission plasterwork painted pale pink and there was a pink neon sign on the roof above the office that read:
Vacancy. Horses welcome.

Stella stared at the sign with wide eyes. “I've never stayed at a horse motel before,” she said. “Does Comet get his own bedroom or will he sleep with us?”

Avery looked at her. “Stella, they have loose boxes here for the horses.”

“I was only joking,” Stella grinned.

Avery backed the horse float up beside other floats parked in front of the stable block.

“I'll unload Comet,” he told Issie. “You go in to the front desk and ask them for two rooms and a loose box for Comet. Oh, and get them to provide some hay too.”

As she trudged across the motel forecourt, Issie realised that despite her nap in the car she was still exhausted. All she wanted to do was get those room keys, get Comet bedded down in his stall for the night and get some sleep.

At the reception desk, Issie waited patiently while an elderly couple checked in, and then it was her turn. She was about to step up to speak to the manager, when out of nowhere a boy slipped in front of her, barging in and taking her place.

“I'd like to book a room for the night, please…” the boy began.

Jetlagged and exhausted, Issie lost her cool. “Uhh, sorry, but I think I was next.”

The boy turned around to look at her. He wasn't much older than Issie, and had short-cropped, ginger-blonde hair and wore dark blue jeans and a white T-shirt.

“Actually,” he replied, in an English accent, “I was here first. You didn't notice me because I was just sitting down over there waiting.”

“Sitting around isn't the same as being in the queue,” Issie said. “I thought you English wrote the rule book on how to queue.”

The boy gave a faint laugh. “There was no queue when I got here because
you
weren't here,” he pointed out. “I was just waiting for my turn.”

“Well it didn't look like you were queuing, that's all…”

“Ah, excuse me?” the motel manager spoke up. “Do either of you actually plan on checking in at any stage or is this going to go on forever?”

Issie sighed and gestured defeat with a tired wave of her hand. “You go ahead,” she said to the boy.

“Thank you,” he said and turned to the man at the desk. “Right! I'd like a room, please, and a loose box for my horse.”

The man behind the counter handed him a key and pointed out the directions. “Park your horse truck over there with the others and you can put your horse in the last stall at the end of the stables.”