‘He’s a bit sore,’ her father said, not quite meeting her eye.
‘What sort of sore?’
‘I had to geld him on the way back. He just wouldn’t settle. It was too dangerous having a stallion in the truck with all those mares. One of them came into season and he was uncontrollable.’
‘You could have sedated him!’ Rachel burst out, feeling sick.
Mike shook his head. ‘I spoke to the Sheik, Rach. He wanted them all gelded and ready to travel. It was just a matter of time for Paruku.’
Rachel gripped the fence so hard that it hurt, and kept her face turned away from her father. Her eyes filled with tears so that she could hardly see Paruku. The chestnut mare was nosing him and the foal sniffed at him too, but he ignored them both and stood still, his head hanging. Even his white star was dirty, and his coat was crusted with dust and sweat.
He was a different horse from the wild creature she’d seen out at the lake, the creature who needed nothing from humans, who was proud and unafraid. He looked beaten. Could she ever make it up to him? Would she ever see that proud creature again?
‘Poor thing,’ Helen said. ‘He looks like he could hardly pull a cart.’
Mike sighed. ‘You wouldn’t know it, but he’s the best of the lot. I hope he comes good.’
‘Can’t we keep the little one?’ Helen asked. ‘He’s too cute!’
‘None of them are staying here.’
Rachel stiffened and held the fence even tighter.
‘The Sheik wants every single one we’ve caught. Even the foal. No exceptions. They’re all going to Dubai. I’m sorry, Rachel.’
‘But Dad …’ she choked.
‘I know, baby,’ he said. ‘I know you want to keep one, and I tried my best. I really did. But Rach, you’ve got to understand. We’re working for the Sheik. He paid for everything to get those horses. They belong to him, not to me.’
Rachel bit her cheek really hard to stop herself from crying out loud. She wanted to kick and scream. Then she looked at Paruku again, the broken way he was standing and the lost look about him, and she didn’t feel angry. She felt a terrible sadness.
She ducked down and climbed through the railings. He was more accustomed to humans now. She wanted to get close to him, to somehow apologise.
‘Be careful,’ Mike said.
She ignored him and started to walk slowly towards Paruku. As she approached, he raised his head, and saw her for the first time.
The change in him was dramatic. He pinned his ears back, snorted, and then reared. His piercing whinny seemed to bounce off the surrounding hills.
‘Get out of there!’ her father yelled.
Rachel backed away from Paruku. He pawed the ground with his front hoof, his ears still back, his eyes furious. She didn’t dare turn her back on him — he looked like he could charge. She stepped backwards until she felt the fence at her back.
Paruku neighed again, a sound more like a scream, as Rachel turned and scrambled through the railings and her father grabbed her and pulled her to the other side.
‘That horse looks dangerous,’ Helen said.
‘He’s all right,’ Mike replied, holding on to Rachel. ‘He hasn’t been like that with anyone else. He’s just disoriented and still in pain.’
Rachel wrenched herself away from him. ‘He hates me,’ she choked, glaring at Mike. ‘Thanks to you.’
She couldn’t pretend to be grown up about it. She swung around blindly and set off at a run towards the stables. She heard her father call out and her mother say, ‘Leave her.’
She fumbled with the door, flung it open and let it bang shut behind her. Rapscallion was in his stable and he rumbled in his chest at the sound of her footsteps.
‘Oh, Scally,’ she cried, wrestling with the bolt of his half-door. She wrenched it open, blinded by tears, and threw herself against him.
And he, her oldest friend, stood solid and firm while she gripped his shaggy mane in both fists, buried her head in his neck and cried for the loss of everything.
He sways from foot to foot in the dark to ease the sting. The mare stays close by him and the foal burrows into their warmth. The Two-Legs have done something terrible to him and he rocks back and forth with the sorrow of it. They’ve done it to all of them in the truck, taken something from the stallions and left them hurt and confused. The mares can’t understand, they sniff around the males and nip at them, but get no response, and then leave them alone.
Nothing has hurt him like this before, not the gouges and bruises from the teeth and heels of other stallions, not the wrench of stepping wrong in the soft sand at a gallop, not the sear of the hottest days, not hunger, not thirst, not running. He doesn’t know how to ease it and he moves and shifts, though that makes the smarting pain worse. The mare nickers and snorts and scratches his hide with her teeth and he moves away. She can’t comfort him. Can’t reach him.
He is trapped in the world of the Two-Legs. When he sees Hair-of-Fire, he remembers the high-pitched sound of her voice just before the prick in his neck, when everything changed. He’s afraid of her, and angry. Her voice took away his freedom.
Chapter 12
Arriving in Dubai was even more of a shock than arriving in the Kimberley.
‘It’s not like anywhere else in the world,’ Mike said, herding them through the airport and outside into the brilliant, parched light. ‘Don’t be surprised by anything!’
Rachel blinked and tried to focus. She’d read a guidebook on the plane and memorised some words, and tried to match them to what she was seeing. Men floated past in traditional long white robes, called kandura, she remembered, looking impossibly clean and exotic. Many of the women were dressed in full black outfits of ayaba robes and headscarves. Others, younger, sported tight jeans, jewellery and makeup.
Ali, the stable manager, had sent a driver in a black Mercedes four-wheel drive to bring them straight from the airport to the stable complex, while the horses followed in a special air-conditioned truck. Still groggy from the flight, Rachel and Cassie peered out the windows as they roared along the huge multi-lane highway. High-rise buildings stretched up into a dusty sky, shimmering in the heat. Modern architecture, all steel and glass soaring high above them, stood side by side with traditional buildings that looked as if they were made of earth. Tall date palms towered above them, huge shopping malls flashed past, and men worked on building sites with scarves wrapped around their heads to keep out the blinding heat.
They emerged from the city and into a stark desert, speeding along a well-maintained road. Unlike the area around Paruku, Dubai really looked like a desert. The sand was pale and there were hardly any plants, just dunes that stretched forever and a few stunted bushes.
Rachel felt herself nodding off a few times. Helen fell asleep, her head lolling to the side. Everything felt strange and disorienting.
‘It’s jet lag,’ her father explained, turning around from the front seat. ‘Have a snooze if you want.’
‘I’m fine,’ Rachel answered him coolly, and turned away. Since he’d come back from the Kimberley she’d hardly spoken to him. No matter how many times he tried to make friends with her, she remained cold and distant. She couldn’t forgive him for what he’d done to the stallion.
In the days before they left for Dubai, her mother had worked with the brumbies using the training methods she’d learned from a horse whisperer in America many years earlier. She quickly got most of them wearing saddles and bridles and trusting the humans around them. It amazed Rachel that they could change so quickly. She could brush their coats, walk them around the yards with lead ropes, and feed them carrots. Some had even started to look out for her when she arrived in the mornings carrying a bale of hay and broke it up for them. Even though she knew it was cupboard love, Rachel was pleased.
But there was one exception. Paruku refused to forgive Rachel. She had spent their remaining days in Armidale trying to make friends with him. She’d fed and watered him, talked to him, stood behind the fe
nce of his compound so that he got used to her, and spent time gaining Marran’s and Marjii’s trust. But nothing seemed to work. He still pinned back his ears when he saw her, still pawed the ground and neighed shrilly when she was nearby.
Most infuriating was that both her mother and her father were able to get close to him. Helen and Mike could put a halter on him and lead him around. But although Paruku was calm with them, there was no sense of friendship. He treated people just the way Rachel treated her father, cold and distant, as though they hardly existed. He just stared right past them.
Her mother had decided to wait until they got to Dubai before introducing Paruku to a saddle and bridle, so he could fully recover from being gelded.
‘He’ll improve once we start him with a rider,’ Helen had said. ‘And he’ll get used to you. Don’t worry, you’ll see.’
The Mercedes slowed down at a gate with statues of bright blue prancing Arabian horses and a sign saying Seih Al Salam Stables. Helen woke and they all sat up, rubbing their eyes.
The Sheik’s stable complex was surrounded by a high fence, and the Mercedes stopped at the guardhouse before the gate was opened to let them in. They all stared, open mouthed, as the car drove inside.
The United Arab Emirates team had won the world championships in endurance riding several times in recent years, and according to Mike the stable was one of the top facilities in the world. No expense was spared to make sure the horses were comfortable, and to turn out the world’s best endurance mounts and riders. Solid white post-and-rail fences covered the stretch of sand inside the gates, dividing it into a series of small enclosures. The centre of the complex was paved with bouncy blue asphalt. Enormous pavilions covered the stables and some of the arenas, sheltering them from the sun. The complex stretched into the distance, shimmering in the midday heat.
A man wearing a white kandura robe and keffiyeh headscarf was waiting to meet them. They clambered out of the cool Mercedes, the heat hitting them like a brick, and he stepped forwards.
‘Welcome to Seih Al Salam Stables of His Highness Sheik Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum,’ he said with a small bow. ‘I am Ali Mohammed Al Mohairi, manager of the stables.’ He straightened and then winked at Rachel and Cassie. ‘But you can call me Ali.’
Mike introduced the family to Ali and the two men shook hands. Then Ali pointed to a group of buildings in the distance. ‘You’ll be staying just over there. I’m sorry it’s not more glamorous. We don’t usually keep our guests at the stables, but you did insist.’
‘That’s right,’ Mike said. ‘We want to be right next to those horses for the next two weeks.’
‘Let me show you to the villa,’ Ali said. ‘I’m sure you’ll want to rest. The brumbies will be here in an hour or two and I can show you around the stables later on.’
He looked at the girls again and raised an eyebrow. ‘Unless of course you can’t wait.’
Rachel couldn’t help smiling back at him. ‘I’d love to see the stables now, if you’re not too busy.’
‘Wish I was young again,’ Helen groaned. ‘Ali, you’ll have to excuse me, but I need to lie down. The flight has wiped me out, and I want to be a bit rested when the horses arrive. I want Cassie to have a rest too. She’s only just out of hospital.’
Cassie looked like she was thinking of arguing, but she was pale and tired after the long flight, and just nodded. Mike, who’d been to the stables before, clambered into the car with them and Rachel watched them drive off.
Ali swept out his arm, gesturing towards the stables. ‘Come on.’
She followed him through the long lines of stables where rows of horses stood patiently, most of them dozing in the heat.
‘How many horses do you have here?’ Rachel asked.
‘About two hundred at any one time,’ Ali said. ‘There’s more than one hundred staff working here — riders, grooms, stableboys, and of course people to look after all those people — cooks and cleaners and the like. Everyone lives on site.’
Ali waved her into a spotless white-tiled room at the end of the stables. It was lined with rows of blue buckets, labelled with names, and the walls were covered in whiteboards. ‘Here’s the feed room. Every horse’s feed is mixed individually.’
Next was the shoeing bay, where rows of horses’ names ran down another whiteboard, next to the date of their last shoeing. ‘We shoe ten horses a day,’ Ali said.
She followed him to the spa room, with a cold-water spa that opened at one end for the horse to be led into.
‘The horses work hard,’ Ali explained. ‘They’re ridden about fourteen kilometres a day. The cold water reduces any inflammation.’
There was a doughnut-shaped swimming pool that horses entered via a ramp and swam around. There were treadmills for the horses that weren’t broken in yet, and round yards containing circular exercise machines to which horses were tied so that they trotted in circles. There was a complete veterinary clinic staffed by a full-time vet, Ali told her.
When they’d been through the stable area, a small electric buggy pulled up beside them and the driver hopped out. Ali gestured for Rachel to take the passenger seat and got into the driver’s seat beside her. The buggy pulled away smoothly without a sound.
Ali began to take her around the perimeter of the complex, and as they trundled along a sandy track marked with hoof prints Rachel saw how huge it was. Ali pointed to the areas bounded by the white post-and-rail fencing. There was only pale sand on the ground, but each area had a shaded shelter, and a single horse.
‘They’re our champions,’ Ali said. ‘See that mare? She’s won three endurance races. And the horse next to her has won four. The champions get special treatment.’
Rachel was silent. With two hundred horses here, the fourteen brumbies wouldn’t be anything special. They’d probably be separated from each other, and mixed in with all the other horses. And they’d be kept in a stable all day long, just like the rest. How would they stand it?
‘Your father tells me you’re a great horsewoman,’ Ali said, as they glided along past the white railings.
‘Oh no, you’re thinking of Cassie,’ Rachel said. ‘She’s the champion of the family. She wants to showjump for Australia one day.’
Ali shook his head. ‘No, I’m not thinking of your sister. I’m thinking of you, who went out to the desert to help catch these horses. Your father says you have a special way with them.’
Rachel crossed her arms. ‘He’s wrong. Paruku won’t allow me anywhere near him. He screams at me.’
‘Paruku is the one who responded badly to the gelding? But he is slowly improving, Mike tells me, and a stallion takes a while to settle from being gelded. Bringing a horse in from the wild is not easy, and it’s a great responsibility. If Paruku reacts to you, perhaps it means you are a worthy match for him.’
‘My mother trains horses with kindness. I can’t show kindness to a horse who won’t let me near him.’
‘Let’s see what happens,’ Ali said. ‘Inshallah. If Allah wishes. It will be good for the brumbies to have familiar people here to help them settle in. These are very special horses for us.’
‘How can they be special?’ Rachel asked. ‘You’ve got two hundred horses here. You wouldn’t even remember their names.’
‘You think not?’ Ali asked. ‘With respect, young Rachel, I can tell you the name of every horse here, and the name of its mother and of its father. I can tell you where it was born. All of our horses are special. We treat every single one as a precious creature.’
‘But these horses are different. No one knows who their mothers or fathers were. They’ve never been touched by humans until a few weeks ago, and now they’ve been rushed halfway across the world.’
‘If they’d stayed with you longer, they would have got used to being there,’ Ali said. ‘This is their home now. It was best to bring them here as soon as possible. And anyway, Rachel, in a way we do know their mothers and fathers.’
‘What do you mean?’
Ali laughed. ‘They come from Arabian bloodlines. This is the land of their ancestors. They’re more at home here than in Australia!’
Rachel wondered if the horses had any idea that they’d been bred here. It wasn’t really possible, she decided.
Ali glanced at his watch. ‘It’s hot out here, and the brumbies are due to arrive soon. Why don’t we head back and have a cool drink? I’m sure you’re impatient to see them.’
He turned the buggy and Rachel gripped the side. He was right. She was desperate to see Paruku. He might hate her, but she still thought about him all the time.
The air was starting to cool down and the riders were gathering for the afternoon ride when the truck arrived. Everyone came out to see the brumbies: the riders, the stableboys, even the cooks gathered on the blue bitumen in the centre of the complex, talking and laughing, their eyes alight with expectation, as the truck manoeuvred into position for unloading.
Rachel was surprised to see a large group of female riders, cheerful-looking young women who talked and laughed while they waited. Only one wore a hijab; the rest were bareheaded under their helmets, their long dark hair falling down their backs. A couple of them waved and smiled at Rachel and Cassie, and they waved back shyly.
‘Everyone is excited about the brumbies from Australia,’ Ali said to Rachel and her family.
The big door at the back of the truck opened, and Mike and Helen and the grooms who had flown with the horses went inside to let them out. The truck was much more glamorous than the one in which they’d travelled across Australia. Every horse had its own air-conditioned compartment.
Rachel was so tired that she had trouble focusing her eyes. When the brumbies were led out one by one, most of them looked as groggy as she felt. Some snorted and danced around, but most stood still, their ears twitching, as they tried to take in their unfamiliar surroundings.
‘Ah!’ everyone said when the bloodstained mare came down the ramp. Rachel looked around in surprise. She’d seen many spectacular horses in these stables, but everyone seemed very impressed with the bloodstained mare — now called Jalka, the Walmajarri word for great egret — as if she was the most beautiful thing they’d seen.
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