“What happened to your mom?” Mickey finally asked.
“What do you mean?” I said.
“Well, where is she. Aren’t you curious?”
“No,” I said sullenly.
“Not at all? Not one tiny bit?” Mickey was pushing me but I didn’t want to talk about it. Why couldn’t she get that?
“Not one tiny bit so just drop it, please,” I begged.
“All right,” she said. “So the costume class, should it be split into under tens and over tens or should we just have one big class with everyone all mashed together?”
Mickey carried on like she hadn’t just poked a hornet’s nest but now I was all distracted. The mere mention of my mother sent fire raging through my veins. I was so mad at her. I’d been mad at her for leaving and now I was mad at her for coming back. In fact any time I thought about her, all I felt was rage, betrayal and confusion. Maybe I had more in common with the black horse than I thought.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“So I called all my contacts on the west coast and no one has heard of a jumper called Nyx,” Dad said the next morning.
We were sitting in the kitchen still eating breakfast so technically weren’t supposed to be talking but this was about business stuff so maybe it was okay. Plus I really wanted to know more about the mysterious, dangerous horse we now had in our barn.
“Maybe she changed his name,” I said. “Or Nyx is just his barn name.”
“My friend Bill said that there haven’t been any black horses doing well in the big classes all year.”
“Maybe your friend doesn’t go to the right shows,” I said.
“He goes to the best shows,” Dad said. “I think it is more likely that your horse is a fake.”
“Just because one person didn’t see him compete, doesn’t mean he hasn’t,” I said. “I can ask Denora for his show records.”
“Anyone can falsify show records,” Dad said. “And Bill told me something else.”
“I don’t think I want to hear it,” I said, dropping my spoon into my cereal bowl.
Milk sloshed out onto the counter and Meatball jumped up and started licking it. Missy would have yelled at me that it wasn’t sanitary and told me to push him onto the floor but Dad didn’t even seem to notice.
“Well you’re going to hear it whether you like it or not,” Dad carried on. “Because Bill said that there was a black horse a couple of years ago that everyone wanted. He could jump anything. Really talented but also a wild card. Screws loose. Not always playing with a full deck.”
“Can we just skip the metaphors and get on with the story?” I said. “If you’re trying to scare me, it’s not working.”
“He killed a girl,” Dad said, leaning in like he was telling a ghost story. “Put another one in a wheelchair. He was supposed to have been destroyed. People thought he was. Some horses are just too dangerous to live. They can’t all be saved.”
“Of course they can,” I said. “And you don’t know that Nyx is the same horse.”
“Not yet,” Dad said. “But I’m going to find out. Bill is going to do some digging for me.”
“Fine,” I said. “So does that mean I can’t ride him yet then?”
“That is exactly what it means,” Dad said. “And I don’t want you handling him either. He could kill you just as easily from the ground. Leave him to Henry. Got it?”
“Fine,” I said, getting up and leaving my bowl there on the counter because Missy wasn’t around to yell at me if I didn’t do my own dishes. “But I don’t know why you have to suck the fun out of everything.”
“Saving your life is sucking the fun?” Dad said. “You know sometimes I don’t understand you at all.”
“Well I don’t understand you either,” I said.
I slammed the front door and went down to the barn where Nyx was still pacing in his stall.
“You didn’t really kill someone, did you?” I asked him.
I stuck my hand through the bars and he lunged at me and tried to bite my fingers off. I knew that accidents happened. My sister had died in a horse riding accident and I’d never heard anyone blame the horse. It was just something bad that happened. If someone died in a car accident, you didn’t blame the car. But horses were animals. They had minds and wills of their own. They were bigger than you and stronger than you and they could hurt you without even realizing it and most of the time they never even meant to. But I knew that there were the odd ones out there. Damaged, dangerous horses that would hurt you on purpose just because they could because something inside them was broken and it wasn’t something you could fix. I just hoped that Nyx wasn’t one of those horses.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
By the second morning I went down to the barn, fully expecting the black horse to be swirling in his stall and attacking grooms for the fun of it. Instead it was oddly quiet. I walked up to his stall wondering if he’d given himself a heart attack in the night but he was just standing there calmly acting like a normal horse as though the previous two days had never even happened.
“Hello,” I said, sticking my hand through the bars.
This time he didn’t lunge forward and try to bite my fingers off. This time he just reached out and sniffed them and then let out a sigh.
“What did you do to him?” I asked Henry who was walking past with a full muck tub.
“Nothing.” He shrugged. “Horse was quiet as a lamb this morning when I got here.”
“Don’t you think that is kind of weird?” I said.
Henry didn’t answer. I knew that Denora said the horse just needed to settle but there was settling and then there was going from completely crazy to pony ride quiet. I slid open the door and slipped inside, standing there with my heart pounding in my chest. Deep down I knew my father was right. This horse could kill me just as easily on the ground as he could in the saddle. One rear in which a wayward hoof struck my fragile skull and I’d be gone before anyone had a chance to save me. But standing there in his stall was a bit like walking up to a wild horse out in the wilderness, one that had never been tamed or touched by humans. Nyx had of course. He’d been ridden and shown and won ribbons but he was also still wild at heart. I could see it in his eyes, that distrust lingering behind the quiet.
I stood there for ages and in turn he stood there watching me. Eventually I took one step closer, then another and I reached out to stroke his neck. His muscles were hard beneath my fingers, his body alive with a trembling energy. He was acting calm but was it just an act? The horse was smart. Probably smarter than I was but I still wanted to ride him. It was all I could think about.
“Emily, get out of that stall right now.”
It was my dad, his voice calm so that it wouldn’t spook the killer horse but laced with anger and fury that I had disobeyed his instructions.
“But he’s quiet today, look,” I said as I came out of the stall and shut the door.
“I told you to leave that horse alone,” Dad said. “I don’t care if he’s quiet or not.”
“But you said if he was quiet then I could ride him. You want me to ride Canterbury and he put you in the hospital. I don’t see what the difference is.”
“The difference is that this horse killed someone,” Dad said, glaring at me.
“Allegedly,” I said.
“What are you, his lawyer?” Dad said. “Allegedly or not, stay away from him.”
Dad told me to stay away from the horse and since he was around, I didn’t have much choice but to obey him. I rode Bluebird and then Arion. Both horses worked well and I was pleased with them. Later I’d have to work Socks but I was waiting to see if Dad wanted to give me another lesson or not and then there was Four. He was always the horse that got pushed to the side but he needed work too if I was going to find him a new home. And Hashtag was jumping again but I had to keep up with his retraining as well if I wanted to shove the fact that he was still a fabulous horse and that he hadn’t been ruined in Jess’s face.
I didn’t have time to work yet another horse. There were only so many hours in the day and the more horses I took on, the less time I had to spend with each one of them. It was a losing battle. I could see that now. Dad had been right all along. It was better to focus on a couple than to divide your attention between a whole herd.
But the black horse was like some kind of forbidden fruit. He was dangerous and riding him would be an adrenaline rush. And right now that was what I craved above all else. I stood there looking at the horse, sticking my fingers through the bars every now and then to see if he’d changed his mind about snacking on them, then pulling them out when he didn’t tear them off and looking around guiltily to see if my father was watching but he had disappeared.
“Do you know where Dad is?” I asked Henry.
“He said something about going to pick some people up,” Henry said.
“Okay, thanks,” I replied as I walked away.
I tried to hide the betrayal I felt. The only people my dad would be going to pick up were my mother and Cat and what was he going to do after he got them? Bring them back here? I thought of my mother taking over the house and Cat sharing my room. I didn’t want that but I didn’t know how to stop it from happening but if my dad could do whatever he wanted then so could I.
“I’m taking Nyx out for a ride.” I stopped and called over my shoulder to Henry.
“Don’t forget your seatbelt,” he said but he didn’t try to stop me. That wasn’t his job and really, it wasn’t my father’s either.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
“What was wrong with you anyway?” I asked Nyx as I tacked him up. “Embarrassing yourself like that, you silly boy.”
I decided to approach the horse just like I approached any new horse, with the assumption that he wouldn’t do anything stupid but staying alert and on my toes just in case he decided to prove me wrong. So far he’d been as quiet and well behaved as any trained horse. He lifted all his hooves for me to pick them out. He hadn’t pinned his ears when I brushed the notoriously ticklish spots that even the thickest skinned horse protested at. And he didn’t blow up when I tightened his girth. He even opened his mouth for the bit.
“Dad was so wrong about you,” I said as I walked him out to the ring. “We’ll show him, won’t we?”
The ride started out nice and quiet. We worked at the walk and trot and the horse seemed supple and loose. He didn’t favor one side or the other or have a hard mouth or dead sides. He was responsive and obedient and I was beginning to doubt that I’d even seen him misbehave. Maybe I’d been dreaming or something. Or someone had switched out the horse that Denora had delivered with another one in the middle of the night.
When I asked him to canter he broke into a rocking horse stride, covering the long side of the ring easily. When I crossed the ring and asked for a flying change it was effortless. The horse was push button. There was no way he could have done the things they said.
We worked in the ring for twenty minutes until Mr. Rivers needed it for a lesson. Then I walked him on a loose rein over to the jump field. Something told me I should just quit while I was ahead and call it a day. Prove to my father that even though I didn’t have the best judgment I still knew when to stop. But I didn’t. I wanted to jump the horse. Then my father couldn’t say anything. He would have been wrong and I would be right.
Mickey would say that sticking it to my old man was a sure fire recipe for disaster. That doing things to prove something was when they usually went wrong. She would tell me that I was being an idiot. Luckily she wasn’t around. It was just me, the grooms and Mr. Rivers, who was teaching a beginner how to post on the lunge line, all his attention on saying up, down, up, down, over and over again, waiting for the girl to finally get the hang of it.
“You won’t hurt me, will you?” I asked Nyx.
So far he’d been a gentleman, everything you could ever want in a horse but I could still feel that nervous energy I’d felt when I first touched him. Electricity sparking beneath the surface, waiting. But waiting for what?
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
There were always a few low jumps set up in the field for warm ups. I gathered my reins and trotted Nyx towards the first inviting cross rail. His ears were pricked and he seemed happy and alert. He didn’t rush or panic or freak out. He just trotted up to the jump, popped over it and cantered away easily. When I asked him to halt, he did so and I patted his black neck.
“Very nice,” I told him. “Let’s see what else you’ve got.”
We cantered over the low jumps and then I pointed him at the bigger ones. There was a rather wide oxer, a tall yellow vertical and a double combination. He powered over all of them, using his haunches to launch off the ground easily and effortlessly. Denora was right. He was a great jumper and if she did take him down south, she would have people falling over themselves to buy him. In the end we tackled everything except the water jump and I was just circling to take a stab at it when I saw Dad’s truck pull in.
He wasn’t alone. My mother was sitting next to him. Cat’s face stared out the open back window. My heart sank. It was what I’d been worried about. The thing I’d tried to stop but couldn’t. Well, he’d tried to stop me from riding Nyx and he couldn’t do that either. We were both as stubborn as each other and if my mother was going to stay here with us then she was going to have to put up with the fact that I rode horses all day, every day for a living and I knew she wasn’t going to like that. She wasn’t going to like that at all.
“Come on boy, we need to show them how good you really are,” I said.
I circled Nyx around and cantered him over the big jumps again, proving to my father that the horse was not what he thought him to be. I could see them getting out of the truck. My father’s hands on his hips. My mother’s hand over her mouth. I got a smug surge of satisfaction from that. We cantered on to the water. I applied my leg, encouraging him forward. He’d need that momentum to propel himself over the wide stretch of blue. It sparkled in the sun, rays hitting the shallow pool and reflecting back at us.
For a moment it looked like there were diamonds in the water, sparkling and shimmering up at us. A hidden pool of wealth. But in an instant they were gone as Nyx slammed on his brakes at the last minute, kicked up his heels in a dirty buck and launched me head first into the water. Suddenly I was flying through the air and all I could think of were Mickey’s words that I’d be a human lawn dart and I was. Only I was a water dart and I was in big trouble. Then everything went black.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
I came round a few seconds later with two faces hovering over me, my angry father and my mother, who was crying.
“I’m fine,” I said, sitting up.
“Just take a minute,” Dad said. “Anything hurt? Broken? Make sure you are okay before you stand up.”
“I said I’m fine,” I said, brushing his hand away and getting to my feet on my own.
Nyx was standing behind my father looking smug. He’d done it on purpose. I knew he had. The horse was crafty. He’d sensed my distraction, my need to impress and he’d taught me a lesson. And now that I’d learned it, it wouldn’t happen again.
“It was my fault,” I said, pulling the reins out of Dad’s hands. “Give me a leg up.”
“No,” Mom cried. “You can’t ride that horse.”
“It’s not really any of your business, is it?” I said, glaring at her.
If she thought she was going to come back into my life and start bossing me around, she was dead wrong.
“Emily is right,” Dad said. “She has to get back on.”
“No,” Mom shrieked, startling Nyx who spooked backwards.
“This isn’t helping,” Dad said. “Go up to the house.”
“You are just going to let her ride that wild beast?” Mom sobbed.
“Yes,” Dad said. “Because it is her job.”
“She’s a kid, she shouldn’t even have a job,” Mom said.
“Well she does and this is it,” Dad
said. “So if you are going to stay here then you are going to have to get used to it.”
I smiled sweetly at my mother as Dad gave me a leg up.
“Not the water jump again,” he said under his breath. “Pop him over a couple of the other fences and then you are done.”
“But Dad,” I said.
“It’s not negotiable.” He shook his head. “For all we know you might have a concussion. Jump a couple of fences to make sure your nerves aren’t ruined and then you are grounded for the rest of the day.”
I wanted to say that it wasn’t fair but I didn’t really have a leg to stand on and Dad had stood up for me in front of my mother when it came to my riding so that was at least something. Besides, the only thing that was ruined was my clothes. They squelched and slopped in the saddle as I gathered the reins and cantered Nyx at the biggest oxer out there.
“You don’t scare me,” I whispered as he thundered over the big fence.
But the way he’d tossed me into that water with glee, part of me knew that perhaps I should be scared after all.
CHAPTER TWENTY
I spent the rest of the day moping around the barn. I’d told my father that I wasn’t sharing my room. He said that for now my mother was sharing with him and Cat was taking the couch. I knew that wouldn’t go down very well with her and I didn’t care. All I wanted to do was ride. To take out one of my horses and gallop through the woods and out onto the trail where I could take my life into my own hands and forget about what was happening back here at my house. Instead I was stuck cleaning tack but since I kept my tack pretty clean in the first place that only kept me busy for about thirty minutes.
I hand grazed Bluebird for a while and took Four out for a bit too, making him step over poles on the ground and then back over them, trying to get him to accept the fact that they weren’t going to eat him. Most of the time he was fine and then all of a sudden it would be like a switch flipped in his head and he’d decide that one of them was definitely going to munch his leg off. And since Dad had only said that I couldn’t ride, I worked Socks and Hashtag on the lunge line. Just because I was grounded, didn’t mean they had to be.
Dark Horse (Show Jumping Dreams ~ Book 23) Page 4
