Opal Dreaming

by Karen Wood

  Jess sat on the haystack staring at her.

  ‘There’s nothing more you can do, honey,’ said Caroline gently. ‘Come back up to the house and come to bed. You’ll be more use to her in the morning if you’ve had some sleep.’

  ‘I can’t leave her, Mum.’

  ‘Her mother is there with her. She’ll be more relaxed without people around her.’

  ‘I promised I’d ring Lawson if anything happened. He’s going to freak.’

  ‘It wasn’t anyone’s fault. He won’t be angry. Anyway, Marnie is fine. It’s the filly that got hurt.’

  ‘Do you think I should ring him now?’

  Caroline looked at her watch. ‘It will be daylight in a couple of hours. You can ring him then. No point everyone losing sleep.’

  While the rest of the house fell back to quietness, Jess sat peering out the lounge-room window. A thin stream of light shone from the shed. She pictured Opal lying listlessly in the straw, her legs torn and her lungs full of muddy water. ‘Surely I’m not going to lose another one,’ she whispered to herself. ‘That would just be too unfair.’

  5

  THREE DAYS LATER, Jess stood with John Duggin, Shara and Craig outside the yard. Only now had the floodwaters gone down enough for the vet to be able to get through. It was the worst flood the gully had seen for a decade.

  John had given Jess instructions over the phone, but every time she tried to get near Opal’s legs to clean the wounds, the filly bared her teeth and charged at her. She hadn’t eaten and her flanks were sucked in against her hips, leaving caverns of hunger down each side. Now she stood in the makeshift stable with her nose screwed into a permanent scowl and her head cocked awkwardly to one side.

  John stood with his legs apart, arms folded, and a serious look on his face while the girls waited eagerly for his diagnosis. ‘The leg’s not too bad. It probably should’ve been stitched, but we should be able to get that right with some antibiotics and a bit of iodine.’ He paused. ‘I’m more worried about that head injury.’

  ‘Head injury?’ said Shara, who had delayed going back to boarding school to support Jess and to learn as much as possible from John.

  ‘See the way she’s holding her head to the side?’ John tilted his own head as he studied the filly. ‘That’s not right.’

  ‘I thought she was doing that because of the pain,’ said Jess.

  ‘It’s pain, but it’s from her head, not from her leg. Did you say you dragged her out with a rope?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Around her neck?’

  ‘It was the only way,’ said Jess. ‘She would have drowned otherwise.’

  ‘With another horse right near her, you say? Could she have been kicked in the head, do you think?’

  ‘Yes, easily,’ said Jess. ‘She was thrashing around and kept going under the water.’

  ‘Could it be an ear infection?’ Shara asked.

  ‘It could be,’ John replied, ‘but I really need to examine her properly to be sure.’

  ‘I can’t get anywhere near her,’ said Jess. ‘She’s never been handled before.’

  John looked thoughtful. ‘We might have to get her onto a truck and bring her down to the surgery. I’m sorry, but she’s a real mess and she’s going to need a lot of care for a couple of weeks. I don’t think you’ll be able to manage her on your own if she’s not halter broke.’

  ‘We’ll have to take the mare too, then, won’t we?’ Jess said.

  ‘It would probably be a good idea.’

  Jess groaned. ‘Lawson’s going to freak. He wants to take Marnie droving next week. We’d planned to be weaning Opal now.’

  ‘It seems a bit cruel to wean her while she’s so sick,’ said John. ‘Opal really doesn’t need any added stress at the moment.’

  Craig stepped in. ‘I’ll give Lawson a ring and ask if he minds letting the mare go with Opal, at least for a few days. He might lend us his truck too.’ He set off towards the house.

  Jess slumped against the wall, feeling totally deflated. She had been busting to show John Duggin her new filly, but not like this.

  John gave her arm a gentle rub. ‘She’s going to be fine, Jess. There’s no way we’ll lose this one, promise.’

  ‘Thanks, John,’ she said. ‘You don’t know how much I needed to hear that!’ She used her shirt to wipe away the tears. John was the best vet in the whole world. If he promised that Opal would get better, she believed him. He had never promised her that with Diamond.

  ‘Where’s the other horse you wanted me to see?’

  ‘Over in the yards,’ said Jess, leading him to where Chelpie stood looking lethargic and hungry. ‘You know Katrina Pettilow’s horse, Chelpie?’

  As John walked around the shed to the yards he stopped in his tracks. ‘Is that her?’ His face didn’t give a lot away, but Jess knew that anyone who had seen this horse in her glory days would be utterly shocked at her appearance now. ‘How did she get here?’ he asked.

  ‘She keeps breaking out of her stable and escaping to the river flats. It’s because she’s so hungry, I reckon.’

  ‘Katrina locks her up and forgets to feed her,’ added Shara. ‘She’s been here since the night of the flood.’

  John stepped through the lower rails of the yards and walked up to Chelpie with a hand out. She screwed up her nose at him, then resumed staring into space. The vet raised a hand to her neck and ran it over her shoulder. Muttering something under his breath that Jess didn’t catch, John moved to her head. He pulled her eyelids down and inspected them, and opened her mouth to press at her gums.

  ‘She looks pretty bad, don’t you think?’

  John looked Chelpie all over, then nodded. ‘Yeah, she’s not a happy horse.’

  Craig came back down from the house. ‘Lawson said we can go to his place and pick up the truck now. He’s just finishing off a job, then he’s going to come over and check on the mare.’

  ‘That’s settled then,’ said John. ‘I’ll see you at the surgery in a couple of hours.’

  ‘What about Chelpie?’ asked Jess.

  ‘I’ll make some phone calls,’ said John.

  At the clinic, the filly was heavily sedated and settled in a large stable. It had taken both Craig and John to restrain her. She still thrashed about so wildly that John gave her a needle to knock her out, saving them all from trauma and bruises.

  John let Jess and Shara assist as he tended to Opal’s leg wounds and injected a cocktail of drugs into a dripline, then squeezed and poked and pulled at her head. He looked into her mouth and put his gloved fingers into her ears. ‘I can’t find anything obvious. With any luck it’s just an ear infection from the floodwater and the antibiotics will fix it.’ He removed the drip and face cover. ‘She’ll wake up in half an hour or so.’

  While Shara followed John up the stable aisle, pestering him with questions about antibiotics and anaesthetics, Jess sat beside the unconscious foal and stroked her neck gently. As she ran her hand over Opal’s thick, soft foal fur, she realised that it was the first time she had ever patted her. She ran her hand between the filly’s ears and rubbed her forehead. ‘You’re going to be okay, little sweetie,’ she whispered. ‘You’re my once-in-a-lifetime horse, and I’m going to look after you no matter what, okay?’

  Jess ran her hand over Opal’s shoulder and traced her fingers slowly around the three white markings, just like she used to do with Diamond. ‘We’re going to be the best of buddies, Opal.’

  Lawson agreed to leave Marnie there for a few days to keep the foal settled, but he was firm that the mare would then be going droving. The six-week trip had been organised for months and he’d be needing his good horse if he was to go. Jess knew there was no way Lawson would miss out on this trip for the sake of a scrawny, chance-bred foal. It was his way of saying goodbye to Harry. Ryan had already headed off and was organising permits and camping gear, but Lawson and Luke needed to finish up work with several of their clients before they left.

  A
s Jess and Shara jumped up into Lawson’s truck to leave the vet’s, another car pulled into the surgery carpark. It towed a white float with the letters RSPCA on the side of it. In the back of the float, Jess could make out the knobbly spine of a white horse. She gasped. ‘It’s Chelpie!’

  ‘Oh my God, Katrina’s going to spew!’ Shara stared at Jess, scandalised.

  ‘Get ready for some nasty phone calls,’ said Craig.

  Jess chuckled. ‘We’re going to need a new private number!’ She strained around in her seat and looked out the window. A woman was opening the front door to the float. She quickly jumped back as a white nose lunged at her, baring an angry set of teeth.

  ‘Yep, that’s Chelpie, all right,’ said Shara.

  ‘Wow, Chelpie taken by the RSPCA . . .’ Jess could hardly believe it.

  ‘Talk about falling from grace,’ said Craig.

  After school the next day, Jess visited Opal at the vet’s, and was annoyed to find that Chelpie occupied the stall next door to her filly’s. Chelpie was alternating between biting and chewing on the timber door and rocking from side to side with her head between her legs.

  ‘She’s a basket case,’ said Jess, peering over the stable door at the wretched white horse.

  ‘I’ve never had one so bad,’ said John, joining her.

  ‘She’s been stabled since she was a week old. No herd to run with.’ He shook his head. ‘Totally dysfunctional.’

  ‘Does she have to be next door to my horse?’ asked Jess.

  ‘It’s the only other horse she likes,’ said John, apologetically. ‘She won’t eat unless she’s next to Opal.’

  ‘Wouldn’t she be happier in a paddock?’

  ‘Undoubtedly,’ said John. ‘She just needs a few days to pick up and then we’ll try to integrate her into a herd, if we can find one.’

  Jess moved on to Opal’s stall. The filly rushed to hide behind her mother as soon as Jess opened the stable door, where she stood with her ears back and a hind leg raised. She was jittery and nervous, impossible to catch, and John had to sedate her again to handle her. Jess tried to help John while he updated her needles and checked her over. It did seem that Opal was looking healthier. Her temperament, however, was a different story.

  As the filly grew stronger she became more difficult to handle. The following day, John was able to catch and restrain her, jostling her to the ground. Jess had to hold Opal down by the neck while the vet checked her temperature and injected antibiotics and other drugs. But the whole forceful episode just made Jess wish he had sedated her again.

  On the third day, the filly rushed at Jess as she approached the stable, slamming hard against the stable door. Jess backed away, hurt and distressed, and waited for John to come and help. When she did manage to get a look over the stable door, she noticed that Opal’s head stayed slightly tilted, and one ear seemed to lop unevenly to one side. As John finished another round of X-rays, Lawson arrived with a horse float to pick up Marnie.

  ‘You promised you would leave her here until Opal was better,’ said Jess, as he walked towards the stable with a halter in his hand.

  ‘I promised I’d leave her for a few days, Jess,’ Lawson corrected her. ‘And you promised me I could bring her back into work after seven months. It’s already been ten. Sorry, but I need my good mare back.’ He looked through the stable door just as Opal rose groggily to her feet. As John put a hand out to help her, she reared away from him, shaking her head violently and stumbling backwards.

  Lawson watched the filly pull itself up off the ground, his face grave. ‘Are you sure all this is worth it?’

  ‘What do you mean?’ asked Jess.

  ‘I mean, look at her,’ said Lawson. ‘She’s got her father’s temperament. She’ll be totally unpredictable. Why do you think I’m selling her to you so cheap?’

  ‘She’s just sick, that’s all,’ said Jess.

  At that moment, Opal lunged at John. ‘Whoa!’ he said, waving her away.

  ‘Sick horses don’t do that,’ said Lawson, opening the stable door and walking in. He raised an arm at Opal and yelled, ‘Get out of it! ’

  Then he haltered Marnie, led her out of the stable and looked Jess in the eye. ‘There are a lot of other good fillies out there, Jess. I can help you find one if you like. You don’t need to pay me for this one.’

  Jess looked at him, bewildered. ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘I’m just saying it might be kinder to . . . find something else.’

  ‘No way!’ said Jess. ‘How could you even think that?’ She looked around for John, who was letting himself out of the stable.

  ‘I don’t think we need to consider that yet,’ said John, frowning at Lawson.

  ‘Go away,’ said Jess, angrily. ‘Take Marnie and just go home, Lawson. I’ll drop your money off later this afternoon.’

  Lawson tried a gentler tone. ‘If you want my opinion—’

  ‘I don’t want your opinion,’ said Jess, her voice rising. ‘I already know what your opinion is!’

  ‘No, you don’t, so shut up and listen,’ snapped Lawson.

  Jess set her jaw hard, folded her arms tightly across her chest and glared at him.

  ‘If you really want her to get better,’ Lawson began, ‘then we should wean her as soon as possible. Don’t leave it until she’s on a truck and on a long stressful journey to Longwood. Give her a couple of weeks at Harry’s place to bond with the other young horses, and then let me take her out to the station. You should still put her out there and see if she heals. Do or die. If she’s got any heart, if she’s worth her salt at all, then she’ll fight. She’ll get through it.’

  Jess looked to John, who stood listening with his hands in his pockets. He nodded at her. ‘I think Lawson could be right, Jess. She’s obviously had some sort of knock around the head, but there’s nothing showing in her X-rays. I’ve treated her with some long-acting antibiotics and pretty much done all I can for her. It’s up to her now. She needs to go and heal.’

  Jess looked at Opal, pacing anxiously around the stable, occasionally stumbling with the lingering effects of the sedatives. She would be a mess when they totally wore off. But she looked generally upright and alive – there was no way Jess was giving up on her yet.

  ‘Can you leave Marnie here for just one more night? Please?’

  He dropped his shoulders and let out a slow, unimpressed sigh.

  ‘Come on, Lawson,’ she begged. ‘Just one more night and I promise I won’t argue anymore. Tomorrow Marnie and Opal can travel together to Harry’s place and I’ll put her in with Luke’s brumbies. Then you can take Marnie home.’

  She also wanted to get Opal away from Chelpie. She had a gnawing feeling that the filly would come good if Jess could just get her away from that psycho white horse. She looked pleadingly at Lawson.

  Lawson gave a reluctant nod. ‘One more night, then.’

  6

  JESS STUCK TO her word and helped wean Opal the next day at Harry’s place. They put the filly in with Luke’s two brumby foals, Rusty and Tinkerbell, and Jess spent the afternoon listening to her scream piteously for her mother while she paced about the yard.

  Over the next week the filly gradually stopped pacing, and stood sour-faced in a corner by herself.

  As Jess stood by the yard gate, Luke walked out of the stables with a bucket of tools in one hand. He seemed even lankier than when she last saw him, and his rusty brown hair was as wild as ever. He still lived at Harry’s, helping Annie to take care of the place in return for his keep. Lawson had helped him convert a couple of the stables into a flat.

  ‘How’s she going?’ he asked, as he joined her at the gate.

  ‘Anytime I try to go in there she just rushes at me,’ said Jess. ‘I can’t get anywhere near her.’

  ‘Don’t forget she’s only just been weaned. She’s had a rough week,’ said Luke.

  ‘I wish she’d eat a bit more. She’s so skinny.’ Jess watched Opal cower behind the other horses in th
e yard. She had tried to tempt the filly with everything from bran mashes steeped in molasses to small portions of oats. Opal remained uninterested.

  ‘She’ll put weight back on when she goes out onto the station and settles in a bit more.’

  But Jess knew it was more than just weaning. Something was wrong. It wasn’t Opal’s body that was sick. It was her spirit. ‘I don’t want her to go,’ she said, ‘not while she’s so . . . miserable.’

  ‘She’s not happy, that’s for sure,’ Luke said, pulling out his chaps. He swung them around his waist and began to buckle them over his jeans. ‘Do you want me to give Dodger a trim?’

  ‘Sure, that’d be great.’ Jess opened a stable door and pulled Dodger out. In the next stable, Luke’s two wolf-dogs whimpered and barked. Filth stuck his wet nose between a gap in the doors and Fang howled. With their huge feet and soft, shaggy coats, they were like bears, the most huggable of dogs. ‘Can I let them out for a run?’

  ‘Yeah,’ Luke shrugged.

  Jess unlatched the door. She threw a stick for Filth and Fang and laughed as they gambolled clumsily after it. She swung Dodger around and stood him up for Luke. ‘Thanks for doing him on your day off.’

  ‘No biggy,’ said Luke, reaching for a hoof.

  Jess sat on an upturned bucket and let Dodger put his big head in her lap. She scratched his forehead while she watched Luke work.

  Luke reached a hand out behind him. ‘Pass me the trimmers?’

  She peered into his toolbox and rummaged around. ‘These ones?’

  ‘Yep.’ Luke grabbed them and got to work on the hoof.

  ‘Lawson reckons Opal’s got a bad temperament,’ said Jess. She grabbed a rasp and held it out, anticipating his next request.

  ‘Ta.’ Luke reached back and took it from her hand.

  ‘But it’s just all this forceful handling she’s had,’ said Jess. ‘It’s teaching her to hate people.’

  ‘She’ll be okay with the right handling. Harry always said, “The younger they are, the more you can turn them around.”’