Spangled Legs
Every night Choopa dreamed the same dream. In it, he was galloping down a steep snowgrass slope, answering Dandaloo’s call. Where he stopped beside her, some little five-petalled, creamy, waxen stars were flowering out of cushions of brilliant green leaves in a trickle of water below a snowdrift. Each night, in the dream, he rubbed his head against Dandaloo’s outstretched nose, and then put his own nose down to the waxen stars and a marvellous scent rose around him.
The dream was for the night. By day he was still a prisoner, being taught to trot and canter round the yard on a long lunging rein. Sometimes, feeling desperate, he would stop, refuse to move and stand, legs planted and neigh, calling his misery to the empty sky. Then Franz would indicate that he must trot on and when he obeyed, Franz would praise him and give him some carrot, rub behind his ears and soothe him, until the dreams of rolling snowgrass hills faded.
Once Choopa fell over his flying forelegs and immediately somersaulted to his feet. Franz was there beside him in a second, offering him a carrot. Choopa learnt that it was not only young animals and other horses that enjoyed his somersaulting tricks. He somersaulted once on purpose, and got another carrot — he was certain, then, that Franz appreciated his cleverness.
Choopa soon learnt that Ludwig, the big white horse whom Franz called Ludo, loved Franz dearly, and he was amused — and pleased — when Ludo came shyly over to share the carrots. Ludo was a nice friendly animal and they shared the lucerne hay which Franz brought them. After a while they started lying down close together to sleep.
In every evening performance, Choopa was let into the ring soon after the camels. The camels loved to dance to music. They took no notice of the little dwarf who danced in amongst them, and Choopa took no notice of them.
After a few times of seeing Franz standing with Ludwig near the entrance, by the brightly coloured ropes that fenced the ring, and then Franz walking out to take hold of his headstall when the music was finished and give him some carrot, Choopa would start towards them, waltz up to them and then walk the last few yards on his hind legs. The clapping of the crowds of people in the ‘Big Top’ did not worry him. He simply bowed to Franz, touched noses with Ludo as they shared carrot, and let himself be led out.
Once he looked up at the crowd, and he really did not see them because the last dying notes of the music seemed to fade into the sound of the Snowy River running over granite rocks. Then, just for a moment, he did focus on a face looking at him from a front row, but his vision changed to a picture of Lake Albina, diamond blue, and he felt himself galloping down a snowgrass slope, as in his dreams, but then he plunged into the ice-cold water.
It was as though he felt the bite of the cold water around those short legs, and then his heart started thumping. There was Franz’s hand on his neck. It was all a dream. He was not in the mountains, standing in water that had once fallen as great, star-shaped snowflakes — snow clothing the mountains in white.
Choopa’s dreams might fade with daylight, but they were always there, at the back of his mind.
Each time the great tent with its red and white striped roof was taken down, and all the animals put in their cages and trucks, he became so restless that he could not do his tricks, but gradually even that restlessness quietened.
Franz petted the two horses — the dwarf and the tall white one — more and more, as though he knew that something within Choopa was almost breaking and the only way to save a breaking heart was with love.
Choopa was learning the capriole, the wonderful leap through the air — forelegs bent under the chest and hind legs extended — an act of marvellous grace when executed by a perfect white Lipizzaner stallion, in the riding school of the Hofburg. When the ugly little dwarf sprang, stretched out horizontal to the ground, the message was something other — it was a desperate, airborne leap towards a wild and lovely land. The longing of the little horse was surely visible for those who had the eyes to see.
It was only when he was waltzing that Choopa could give himself over completely to the swaying music and, at the same time, hear that other music of his dreams. He imagined that it was on the shores of Lake Albina where he danced, or on the high ridge above the Blue Lake with wind-driven clouds sometimes folding around him. Sometimes it was that crescent pass above the Snowy River and there was the drifting music from below, and the song of the Snowy River rising to the sky.
One night he had walked and leapt and danced on his hind legs so beautifully that there had been no laughter at the sight of the queer little blue and white dwarf, only clapping. Once more, Franz, giving carrots and praise, had fixed glittering tinsel above the small hooves for another performance, and Choopa could see his own flying legs shining in the myriad of lights. He had no idea how exciting and marvellous it looked to all the children who were watching. To him, it might be spray from a freezing mountain lake.
In the front row, that face watched him once more.
They were on the move again, next morning. While all the packing up and fastening of cages was going on, Choopa could hear Franz and the circus owner talking, but did not know what it all meant except that he knew Franz was anxious.
‘Not next stopping place,’ the owner was saying, ‘but the one after that … special request … it’ll be all right.’
Then Franz said: ‘I tell you, there were others after him, not only me.’
‘Don’t worry, we’ll make sure it is okay.’
On and on, the circus rumbled, from town to town, and summer was rolling towards winter when the ice trees would play their wind-chime music and old dreams would sing in the streams beneath the snow.
Choopa could not lay still. Surely he must dance upon the mountains like a flame.
It was a longer journey than usual. When at last they stopped, Choopa followed Ludo out of the float and into their yard. There was the same fence set up as usual, and the heap of lucerne hay that Franz always put for them. He and Ludo walked stiffly towards it and began to eat.
There was something different — Ludo did not seem to notice it. Perhaps it was the unusually cold air. Presently they lay down together and went to sleep. Ludo did notice that his miniature friend was restless all night long.
In the morning when Franz came to lunge him, Choopa felt too tired to move. Perhaps he had been galloping all night long — not only dreaming it. Just when Franz led him forward to practise the capriole and persuade his tired forelegs to bend up under his chest and his hind legs to stretch out towards heaven and earth, three black cockatoos flew with their slow wing-beat, right across the circus, there on the fringe of the town.
Choopa stopped still, remembering the three black cockatoos that flew towards the white disc of the old moon, promising him something. Then he took a few cantering steps and leapt, horizontally above the ground, stretching out towards a blue line of hills.
Franz rewarded his beautiful act, and bent down to put his arms around the little blue and white neck, as though he, Franz, were in his long ago boyhood in Vienna, hugging one of the great Lipizzaner stallions.
That night, as Franz and Ludo stood with Choopa, waiting for the music to begin playing the waltz that Choopa found irresistible, Choopa saw, out of the rows of children’s faces, a man’s face which he seemed to have seen before, then it was lost in the movement of the audience finding seats.
Franz fixed tinsel round Choopa’s pasterns, just above the hooves. The music started. This time the lights went out in the tent, except there were spotlights, illuminating Choopa and letting the camels move like half-seen ghosts. Choopa danced, barely aware that he was in a circle of light, surrounded by darkness, each foreleg making a glittering, shimmering movement, as though borrowing light and time from stars’ intricate patterns. It meant nothing to Choopa that his feet were making these shining patterns. He was dreaming of a circle of young animals whom he wanted to entertain, so he somersaulted and executed caprioles.
There was a hushed silence for a moment, beneath th
e Big Top, and Franz began leading his two horses out before the roars of applause could frighten Choopa. Then he gave them carrots as they walked towards their yard and their bran mash.
In the dark of the night a man came creeping — a quiet man with a memory of a cap and bells of fire, and a vision of a minute blue horse dancing in Lake Albina. His fingers had no trouble in unlocking the bolts that held the yard gate securely.
Was it a neigh coming from far, far away that Choopa heard? Surely he was not just imagining Dandaloo’s neigh?
Choopa stepped out of the yard and walked quietly through the cages and trucks. Not one animal stirred, not even a chattering monkey gave him away. Then he was out in a big paddock, some distance from the lights of the town, and that far away neigh was insistently calling.
How would he know where to go, except where the night breeze blew him? Would he just follow the call of the hills, and would that neigh keep calling him?
The Quiet Man had been sure that the little blue dwarf would find his own way — hide himself by day, travel at night.
Blue Brumby, a Classic Statue Against the Dark Australian Bush
Choopa saw his own faint, diminutive moon-shadow, as he trotted on through the cold, crisp night. He knew exactly which way to go. The mountains called him and the call echoed through every part of him, flesh and blood and bones, and perhaps it was to his spirit that Dandaloo’s barely heard neigh called and called.
As the sky began to go grey with the first light, he searched for a good hiding place in thick forest, and there he crept under a big fallen branch and some bushes and hid till the day was past. It was three black cockatoos which showed him a hidden track to water, when he grew unbearably thirsty before nightfall.
Strange little dwarf horse, loving his mountain land with every part of his trembling body. Some inner compass told him where to go and where to hide — how, in fact, to make his way towards the high mountains, towards those lakes.
The Quiet Man, who had undone the bolts of his yard, had quite certainly known that nothing — neither man nor dog — would prevent him from getting home.
Franz, too, when he found the bolts undone, had known that his little horse — his Pferdl — would unerringly find his way home. In fact, Franz, so afraid that Choopa’s spirit might be broken by his grief and his longing, had almost wondered if he had undone the bolts himself, in his sleep. How stupid it had been to bring Choopa to this town in the foothills of the mountains, to make his longing unbearable.
Choopa went on through the bush, moving quietly, listening for any sound of danger, finding the shrubs which Dandaloo had taught him to eat, drinking at the fresh, cold streams. At last he came to grassy, bare hills, and the grass was springy snowgrass. Far away, he heard that neigh again — Dandaloo calling her dwarf son back to the mountains that were his heritage.
On and on he went till, at evening, he came to a great river, ice cold and swift. He put his nose in to drink, and the song that river sang was the one he loved. He walked into the current, felt its pull on his legs, then he sank his nose in further. Deep did he drink at the Snowy River.
He found a wide, shallow place where the water rippled over small stones, and where he could cross quite easily, watched only by the glittering stars. He splashed his way through the river and up the gentle, sandy bank into his beloved mountains. So good did it seem to be in his own world, that he suddenly did a dancing courbette, putting his weight on his lowered haunches, as Franz had taught him.
Far away there came that neigh again, and he would have answered it, but he knew he must preserve himself from danger till he got further and further from the world of men. Another night’s journeying and by then he might find Dandaloo …
He dropped to his forefeet after a few more dancing steps and realised a small possum was watching him, and he felt a longing for all those young animals who were his friends, near Quambat Flat, and wondered if they would be there to greet him.
Would he ever be safe there again? But it was the high country around the lakes about which he kept dreaming. Surely it was there from whence came Dandaloo’s call.
He slept during the next day, in a round grove of snow gums, and hidden by heath bushes. A rat came and looked at him, seeming to be unable to decide what this very small blue and white animal was. A dingo bitch with two pups came walking by at nightfall. The pups pulled at his mane and tail.
Choopa shook them off playfully, and did a somersault to please them and also as a celebration, because he was so nearly at his journey’s end.
The bitch and her pups followed him while he climbed a steep snowgrass slope. The moon rose high above as he neared the top of the hill.
Engraved on Choopa’s mind was an ever-repeated dream which was always evoked when that distant neigh of Dandaloo’s seemed to sound. In this dream he saw Dandaloo, her head bowed with grief, standing on top of a bare mountain, calling him. Then, in some way, she seemed to fade and become part of the mountains — blue roan mare becoming granite rock and snowgrass, even sometimes becoming the blue of the Blue Lake. Somehow she became all of the mountain country which his love encompassed — all that had created him. But now, Dandaloo’s misery seemed to vanish, in his vision, and she became an image of joy.
So he climbed on, up the mountain, leaping and bounding.
She was not there, on that next hill top, but still her call sounded, even more real. He knew he would find her. And Choopa did another courbette for joy, on a snowgrass knoll, high above the Snowy River.
There he danced, as the moonlight flooded the mountains, imagining music, sometimes waltzing on the snowgrass — strange little wraith with moonlight shining on his white patches and the night darkening his blue, the star-filled sky making him so small, moonlight giving a strange beauty to his flying legs and rather too big head.
So the dwarf horse, whom other horses often thought was so ugly, danced as a gift to an old blue mare, whom he knew was somewhere just ahead, and to the mountains of which they were both a part.
Onward and upward Choopa climbed — to the great, high, domed summit of Mt Twynam. Suddenly, he knew that Dandaloo was close and there, on the very top, he did a magnificent flying capriole just as Dandaloo appeared looking as though formed of starglow and night sky.
She gave a neigh of joy, and Choopa dropped on to his four feet beside her, nose touching nose, the old blue mare and the foal that had once seemed ugly. Round and round each other they romped, rubbed their heads together and romped, and then they galloped and bucked their way down Evidence Valley, right on to the ridge that makes one arm stretching along beside the Blue Lake.
What was it that created the moonlit splashing in the Blue Lake at midnight? Did an owl see the blue roan mare? Did a burramys possum see the dwarf brumby galloping to join his mother, somersaulting down the ridge where the golden everlastings flowered? Who but the stars and the moon had seen them plunging together into that great, deep lake which once had been filled with solid ice.
Birds and giant gliders must have taken the news through the bush; the news that Choopa, the jester, was free, out in the bush again, out in the mountains.
Blue Lake, Lake Albina, the Ramshead Range and Dead Horse Gap, where once a man’s hands had reached out of the mist trying to catch and to hold, yet also where the dance and the circle of young animals had cast a spell, in all these places something — trees, water or wind — seemed to whisper of the magic dancer.
It was Dandaloo who was kept wondering what the future held. She looked forward to finding Son of Storm, who was so calm and brave. Choopa, leading Dandaloo, simply went on travelling by night as though man was his only danger. He just had a tremendous urge to go back, perhaps just for once, to Quambat Flat — to see all the young animals that were in his circle and then … then what? The high country, the canyons, the tumbling streams, the lakes?
At sunset, in the spring, up in the high mountains there would be the scent of the mountain ash trees, rising up in the gullies;
and in bad weather the black cockatoos would scream. Dandaloo would be with him, and for her he would dance on a bare mountain top — for Dandaloo, the moon and the stars.
On they went through star-bright nights, brushing through the last flowering of white heath. Once at sunrise they walked down a field of golden everlastings where a host of golden butterflies rose like a cloud. They flew up all around Choopa and he reared up and played among them. There was no one except Dandaloo to see the loved and famous circus dwarf aglow with golden butterflies, more lovely than any tinsel.
There were brumbies in the Cascades, but all of them were grazing at the topmost end of the valley. Dandaloo and Choopa cut across the lower end, just before sunrise, and found a good hiding place among the huge mountain ash above the Murray River, and there they slept for the daylight hours, grazing occasionally on the shrubs that grew around the massive tree trunks.
They were not very far from Quambat Flat. They would pass the head of the Ingegoodbee River, skirting the old tin mine huts and yards. No smoke went up from the chimneys; there were no hobbled horses in the paddock.
Choopa knew that the colts who had been born earlier in the same spring as he would have grown on the summer’s sweet, green grass, and the leaves and seed pods of the bushes.
Even with Franz’s carrots and bran mash rewards, and lucerne hay, he had barely grown at all. All the training in the beautiful dancing of the white horses of Vienna which Franz had given him had made him stronger and far more supple; quicker on those strange flying legs that had glittered with tinsel.
Here his legs would shine in moonlight, but the dark of the moon had dimmed the night’s brilliance. It was now, without moonlight, that Choopa and Dandaloo must go to Quambat Flat.
When they got there and searched the length and breadth of it in darkness, there was not a brumby to be found.
Silver Brumby Echoing Page 11
