Rocking Horse War Read online

  “No. I will not let you past. This is not a good day for you to leave the quiet safety of your family’s grounds.”

  Pearl glanced up at the sky to hide her irritation. “The weather’s fair, it’s hours until dusk, I’ll be fine. Don’t worry about me.”

  “There are clouds over the mountains.”

  She looked over, and saw grey wisps swirling round the rocky tops of the southern mountains.

  She laughed. “There’s not a lot of rain in those.”

  He laughed too. “You’re right. There’s no rain at all in those clouds.”

  She squinted at the clouds. Did they look more like smoke? Surely not, there was nothing to burn at the summits. She looked at the boy again. Was he one of the neighbours Mother was so worried about?

  “May I ask your name?”

  “You may ask, but I can’t be bothered telling it to someone so small and insignificant.” He shrugged slowly, a ripple of contempt sliding down from his shoulders.

  Pearl stared at him, amazed at his ability to say the rudest things with the most glittering smiles. He gave the impression that it was a gentle joke, it meant no harm, that a good sport would take it all in good heart.

  But Pearl wasn’t feeling like a good sport this morning, and this boy was standing between her and the triplets. However, she needed to know more about him before she decided whether to fight back.

  “What are you hunting? You’re carrying a rifle, not a shotgun, so you can’t be shooting grouse or pheasant, and you’re dressed too smartly to be stalking deer.”

  “What I’m hunting, I won’t shoot, unless I have to. But the gun is for swans, if I see any.”

  “You can’t shoot swans! Isn’t it illegal?”

  He chuckled. “It may be illegal, but it’s often wise. I prefer wisdom to obedience, don’t you?”

  So Pearl made what she hoped was a wise decision.

  That dark stick whistling between the gateposts left no space to push past this boy. He wasn’t going to be moved by argument or force, and she never bothered trying to charm people, because she didn’t have the triplets’ skill.

  So Pearl gave up.

  “Alright. As you’re clearly so much older and wiser than me, I’ll take your advice and go home to help Mother clear out cupboards.”

  “Very sensible. I hope your housework is as successful as my hunting.”

  “I hope so too.”

  Pearl trudged off, head down, looking defeated and confused, until she was on the other side of the rockery.

  Then she stopped. The highest Alps blocked the view from the gate to the house, so the tall boy couldn’t see whether she was still walking home.

  Pearl heard him laugh. Perhaps he found it amusing to win an easy victory over a weak opponent.

  She waited a moment, then dropped to the ground, slid to the edge of the rockery and looked round the foothills of the Alps.

  He was still in the gateway, leaning casually against the gatepost, twirling that stick. He looked at his wristwatch, brought the stick gently to rest, pulled the gate shut and stepped to the side, behind the wall.

  Then Pearl heard him start to sing: a low gentle chant, in long soft syllables which were almost words. Like the nonsense songs the triplets were always inventing, but with proper verses rather than repetitive nursery rhymes.

  As the sound rose, she saw a wash of colour rise up the gate, a gritty red brown blooming up and over the black metal. From this distance, it looked like rust, but surely it couldn’t be, not so fast?

  When the singing stopped, Pearl counted to a hundred then ran up and pushed at the gate. It was stuck solid. The lock and latch were rusted to the frame. It would take the strength of a horse to shove it open. She couldn’t climb over either, because of the long sharp spikes along the top.

  How had the gate corroded so badly in such a short time? It had been fine when she stood here ten minutes ago.

  She kicked the gatepost. She wouldn’t reach the southern lands through this gate today. But she was still determined to leave the garden. Because now it wasn’t just Mother who was worried about the triplets being out of sight.

  Chapter 3

  Pearl sprinted to the old orchard, where bent apple and pear trees grew right up to the high wall. Pearl and the triplets often climbed these trees, so Pearl’s pleated skirt and lacing boots weren’t a hindrance, as she clambered quickly up the biggest apple tree.

  She scrambled from its branches to the top of the wall, and balanced there, arms open wide to the southern lands. The mountains looked closer already.

  She glanced to her right. There was no one standing beside the gate. So she dangled down from the top of the wall and let go, landing with a thump on new unexplored land.

  She searched for the trail of hoofprints, and found faint marks among the tall grass leading to the pheasant wood. She smiled with relief when she identified three different sets of hooves. She was still tracking three horses and three triplets.

  Suddenly Pearl heard a deep thrumming above the wood. Two magnificent white swans flew overhead, their long necks pointing towards the River Stane, their massive wings drumming the air.

  She made a swift wish that the arrogant boy with the stick wouldn’t get them within range of his rifle, then ran into the wood.

  This pheasant wood wasn’t truly wild or natural. Just like the woods Pearl knew to the north, it was tended by the neighbours’ gamekeepers as a shelter for pheasants, to keep them safe and happy until the autumn shooting season.

  She followed the hoofmarks along a path just wide enough for horses to trot single file, past glowing silver birches, hunched hawthorns and tall smooth beeches.

  As she ran, she noticed bootprints mixed in with the hoofprints, and hoped she was wrong about who they belonged to.

  Then, by a massive chestnut tree, the path split into three. And so did the line of hoofprints.

  Pearl slid to a stop. The triplets never split up. Why had they gone in different directions this morning? And which triplet should Pearl follow?

  She spun round, looking at each path in turn. The widest path led further into the dimness of the trees, the narrowest path curved up towards the moorland, and the third path led down towards the River Stane, which flowed round the foot of the mountains.

  Pearl crouched down to examine the prints. Father had taught her to read the tracks of deer and foxes, not horses, but she could read these prints clearly enough.

  The hooves had grown from the small circles which had ripped free from the rockers into massive ovals larger than Pearl’s hand. Looking closely and measuring with her fingers, she decided that the horse which had taken the narrowest path, to the moor, was the largest and heaviest. It must be the chestnut stallion, Jasper’s horse.

  With her face so close to the path, she could see that the faint bootprints were on top of the hoofprints. The feet were larger than hers, but smaller than a man’s. The prints were narrow, with a distinct heel, like riding boots.

  So the boy with the stick had prevented her following the triplets, then followed them himself. And when they split up, he had chosen the same path as the largest horse.

  “What I’m hunting, I won’t shoot, unless I have to,” he had told her.

  Was he hunting Jasper, Ruby and Emerald? What possible reason could he have to shoot them?

  Pearl rubbed at her eyes with shaky fingers. She had to decide fast: should she follow the boy following Jasper, or try to find the girls first? If she followed one of the mares, which would she choose? She couldn’t tell which was Emmie’s and which Ruby’s from their hoofprints.

  Pearl stood up, leaning forward to rest her forehead against the solid trunk of the old chestnut while she tried to decide. But her skin brushed against something soft rather than hard, so she backed away fast, and saw the dangling body of a shrew, nailed by its tail to the bark.

  She was scrubbing at her forehead with the back of her hand when she heard a noise: a sob, cut off short and sudde
n by a dark silence.

  Ruby!

  Ruby had never grown out of the habit of crying prettily to get what she wanted. Or, if she didn’t get everything she wanted, weeping and howling until she nearly dissolved away.

  Pearl decided who to follow. Not a possible Emerald, nor a possible Jasper, but a definite Ruby. A little sister in tears, deep in the wood, who needed a big sister to comfort her, and who might be able to tell that big sister what was going on.

  Pearl ran down the path into the heart of the wood, as softly and quietly as possible. It wasn’t like Ruby to break off a good weep, and Pearl would prefer to see what had silenced her sister before it saw or heard her.

  The path crossed a couple of clearings, areas kept free of trees and bushes to allow the lazy pheasants to enjoy the sun. Pearl realised she hadn’t seen any pheasants in this pheasant wood. Maybe they had been startled recently.

  Under the constant rustle of twigs and leaves, she heard the hiss of fast water over stones. Through the trees to her left, she saw a burn, rushing down from the mountains.

  Then the hoofprints vanished completely under her running feet. Pearl slowed and looked behind her. The prints had veered onto the confused ground under the trees.

  The horse had stepped off the path and headed for the water. Did rocking horses get thirsty?

  Pearl hid behind the trunk of a wide beech tree and looked down at the banks of the burn. There were no prints, no horse and no weeping child.

  She peered further upstream. There! At the edge of the water, she saw the curve of a hoofprint.

  Keeping well back from the exposed bank, she crept upstream.

  After five minutes of pushing through tangled scratchy bushes, she reached another clearing, where the stream spread out into a broad shallow pool. Pearl pulled back quickly into the cover of a holly bush.

  On the other side of the pool stood a horse. A large horse with a pale blonde mane and tail and a peachy orange body, wearing a leather saddle, bridle and reins.

  However, this horse didn’t shine with grooming and good food, but with varnish. This horse, taller than Pearl, and shifting its golden hooves restlessly, was made of gleaming carved wood.

  This was Ruby’s palomino pony, her wooden rocking horse, now large enough to carry a man, and moving like a real muscle and bone horse.

  Pearl had almost accepted that she was following the hoofmarks of galloping rocking horses. But now she had found this impossible wooden beast, her muscles clenched in disgust at whatever twisting of nature and logic had forced it into being.

  The mare had her head down, gazing at her reflection in the water, swinging her elegant nose from one side to the other so she could see her eyes and nostrils and mane. She snorted with delight at her beauty.

  Pearl looked round. There was no sign of Ruby. Had the horse thrown her? Had she run off?

  Then she heard a familiar noise, a tiny muffled sob.

  Pearl and the horse both jerked their heads up.

  Ruby was perched on the lowest branch of a grey beech tree on the edge of the clearing.

  The mare lunged at the child, rearing up to her full height and snapping at Ruby’s boots. Ruby gasped and pulled her feet higher. The long teeth of the horse missed her by the width of a girth-strap.

  Ruby was silent again, though Pearl could see tears running down her cheeks. The horse went back to gazing at herself.

  Pearl looked at Ruby, clinging to the high branch. How had she got up there? Beech trees were very hard to climb: their trunks wide and smooth, their lowest branches above head height. Even standing on the horse’s back, Ruby would have struggled to reach that bottom branch.

  Had she actually flown? Was Pearl’s unspoken suspicion actually true?

  Perhaps this time, with Ruby on her own, Pearl would get a clearer answer than “I was just playing” or “It just happened”, which were the triplets’ usual answers to her questions about how they ended up on top of chimneys or Christmas trees.

  To ask Ruby any questions, Pearl would have to get her down from the tree, and she couldn’t do that until the horse was under control.

  Pearl studied the horse. She was a gorgeous beast, with an arched neck and muscled haunches. But she was nervous, her eyes white-rimmed, her ears straight back and her hooves constantly moving over the ground. If she was attacking Ruby, her own rider, she certainly wouldn’t allow Pearl to get close enough to soothe her and tie her up.

  The mare seemed content to let Ruby stay in the tree so long as she was silent. Was the rocking horse guarding her, keeping her here for someone? Pearl had to rescue her sister before that someone arrived.

  Chapter 4

  Pearl watched the rocking horse’s head bend lower towards the pool, as if the mare wanted to touch her own reflection. Her smooth muzzle brushed the cold water and she leapt back, surprised.

  Pearl nearly giggled. Silly vain beast! What that horse really needed was a mirror!

  A mirror? Pearl raised her eyebrows and started patting her many pinafore pockets. She had experimented a few weeks ago with reflections and light: setting fire to dry grass with a magnifying glass, signalling in code using reflected sunlight. Did she still have …?

  Yes! A mirror, wrapped in oilcloth, tangled up with string and stones in a right-hand pocket. It wasn’t large, but at least it wasn’t cracked. Pearl rubbed it with her sleeve, and looked at the horse again.

  The mare was gazing at herself side on, to see her flank and legs.

  Pearl took a slow breath and stepped out of the bushes. She crossed the burn in one long stride and walked round the pool towards the mare, clicking her tongue softly.

  The horse wheeled round and bared her teeth.

  Pearl spoke calmly, “Here girl, here girl,” and held out the mirror. She moved it slowly, so the horse could see her reflection slide across it.

  Ruby called, “Pearl! Help me!”

  Pearl said in the same calm voice, “Shhh. Don’t distract her.”

  The mare stood still, staring at the mirror as Pearl approached.

  “Look, aren’t you pretty?” Pearl held the mirror steady so it reflected the mare’s face.

  She stepped nearer. The mare backed away and bared her teeth again.

  Pearl looked at the restless hooves, sharp as saw blades and heavy as axes. But the horse was still staring at the mirror.

  Pearl didn’t want the mare near the pool; she needed her near the trees. She took a few steps to her left, towards a rowan tree, still angling the mirror at the horse.

  “Look, this won’t get you wet. You can touch your reflection in this.” She laid the mirror on the ground under the tree and stepped back. The mare walked cautiously over, looking down, turning her head, dipping her nose down to nuzzle herself.

  Pearl darted forward, grabbed the reins, yanked them over the mare’s lowered head and knotted them round the sturdy trunk of the rowan tree.

  Then Pearl leapt out of range as the mare suddenly realised what had happened and lashed out with her hooves, rearing and bucking. The horse didn’t hit Pearl, she didn’t break her jewelled bridle, she didn’t splinter the tree, but as her front hooves crashed down, she did smash the mirror.

  The rocking horse screamed her anger.

  Pearl ran to the base of Ruby’s tree. “Jump!”

  “I can’t.”

  “You have to! She’ll soon snap the bridle, or pull up the tree. You have to jump NOW!”

  “I can’t. I’m scared!”

  “I’m scared too, but I’m not sitting weeping. Jump and I’ll catch you!”

  “I’m safe here,” sniffed Ruby. “She can’t hurt me here.”

  “You’re safe from your horrible horse there, Ruby, but someone else is tracking you all, and you won’t be safe from him up there. He’s got a gun. So get down here!”

  Pearl heard the horse fighting to free herself. Ruby wriggled with indecision on the branch.

  “Ruby Chayne, I’m going away and leaving you here on your own, i
f you aren’t down when I’ve counted to …”

  Ruby jumped, without waiting for Pearl to count to anything, and landed on her sister in a pile of petticoats at the base of the beech.

  The horse was now hauling backwards with all her strength. The tree was bending and the leather bridle was stretched taut.

  Pearl looked round. Where could they go? More importantly, where couldn’t the mare go?

  She dragged Ruby round the beech tree to a clump of bushes, thick, thorny and very low to the ground. “Crawl in there and stay quiet.”

  They struggled under the branches and leaves, then watched from their dark hide as the bridle finally snapped and the mare almost fell onto her rear.

  She regained her footing and galloped over to the beech tree. When she saw her captive had gone, the palomino slashed the trunk with her front hooves, leaving pale wounds in the bark.

  Then she stalked round the pool, stepping easily over the stream, her head swinging and her ears cocked. Pearl and Ruby held their breath. Huge polished hooves passed just in front of their clenched fists and bowed heads.

  After three slow searching circuits, the mare went back to the rowan tree, her neck drooping. She picked up her tattered bridle with her teeth, turned her haunches towards the girls, then galloped towards the path.

  Pearl and Ruby stayed still and silent for a few breaths. Then Pearl saw movement under the rowan tree.

  She slid out, catching the back of her dress on the thorns, and crept over to the disturbed ground. A gold ring, a little bigger than the circle Pearl would make with her thumb and forefinger, was tugging itself free from the tree roots and mirror fragments. Pearl watched, not as surprised as she would have been an hour ago, as the ring rose up on its edge and started to roll away, in the same direction as the mare.

  Pearl dived forward and grabbed the ring. It twirled and turned in her hand, but she held it tight.

  Ruby tiptoed up to her. “What is it?”