by Kate Lattey
“That might work,” Mum said, making my heart sink lower. You’re supposed to be on my side, I thought, but no matter how many times I told her that I didn’t like Misty, it wasn’t getting through to her – or Hayley. Well, Hayley knew. She just didn’t care. “I think we might have just over-faced her. Let’s have her drop him back to lower classes. Metre-five, metre-ten. Let her get her confidence before moving him back up.”
“A metre-ten? What a waste!” Hayley argued, but Mum was resolute.
“Tess just needs more time to get used to him. She doesn’t have to do the Pony Grand Prix just yet, not if she really doesn’t want to.”
I took my opportunity to say something. “Good, because I don’t.”
Hayley rolled her eyes at me dramatically. “I always found him easier when the fences were bigger, because it slows him down, but whatever. Fine. Jump him around the midget classes if you must, see if you can stay on. He’ll pretend they’re a metre-thirty anyway.” I repressed a shudder at the thought as Hayley marched on. “But we are not selling him.”
Mum looked at Dad, who was shovelling food into his mouth and reading the newspaper. “John, what do you think?”
“Hmm?” Dad looked up at her, still chewing. “What’s that?”
“About Tess riding Misty, and us not selling him.”
Dad frowned and swallowed. “I thought Tess didn’t want to ride Misty.”
“She’s just not used to him yet,” Hayley said.
Dad turned to look at me, and everyone else’s eyes followed his. I squirmed under their gazes, desperately wanting the pressure to be taken off.
“Tess?”
I shrugged. “I just don’t really like him.” I looked at Hayley apologetically. “Sorry. But he…he’s so bouncy,” I finished lamely. I still couldn’t say out loud that he scared me, because Hayley didn’t understand fear. To her, being scared of something was all the more reason to do it. To me, it was a definitive reason to run in the other direction.
“Sounds like Tess has decided,” Dad said, looking back down at the newspaper. “And these lamb prices just keep dropping, so we could really use the extra cash.”
Hayley flung her fork down on the table. A pea flew off it and rolled across the table towards Dad’s dinner. “Misty is not extra cash!”
Dad glared at her, his thick eyebrows sitting low over his blue eyes. “Hayley, you’re too old to be throwing tantrums.”
She pouted at him, and Mum interjected smoothly, calming the waters between them as always. “I see where you’re coming from, but lamb prices might pick up. And I do think it would be a real shame to let a pony as good as Misty go.”
“He’s part of our family,” Hayley insisted. “We can’t just sell him, that would be inhumane!”
“He’s livestock,” Dad told her. “And we live on a farm.”
“Then sell Tess’s stupid pony,” Hayley snapped back at him. “Useless thing can hardly jump anyway.”
“No way!” I said quickly. “We’re not selling Rory. She’s useful, she’s really good at stock work and she earns her keep.”
Hayley snorted. “Misty could do stock work if he wanted to, but he doesn’t because it’s boring.” She retrieved her fork and stabbed at her carrots. “He’s not for sale. End of discussion.”
“We’ll see,” Dad muttered, earning himself another dark look from my sister.
“Let’s give it until Christmas,” Mum decided, looking around the table at all of us. “If Tess is competing successfully by then, we’ll look at keeping him. Otherwise, he’ll go on the market.”
“That’s only six weeks away!” Hayley objected.
“Seven weeks,” I corrected her, and she kicked me under the table, making me wince.
“Whatever, maths genius. Seven weeks then, and you’re going to be riding him like a pro by then. Or else,” Hayley told me.
Mum smiled at her, taking Hayley’s threat as a joke. Dad had already gone back to his newspaper and tuned us out, the way he always did when we talked about horses.
“Hayley will help you,” Mum told me. “You just have to adjust to Misty’s way of going. Maybe we should turn Rory out for a while, give you more time on Misty instead.”
“No!” I shook my head adamantly. “Fine, I’ll ride Misty if I have to, but I get to ride Rory as well.”
“You make it sound like the worst thing ever,” Hayley grumbled at me. “I’d rather ride Misty than boring Rory any day of the week, but I guess there’s no accounting for taste.”
She went back to her meal, satisfied that she’d won the argument. I just felt defeated. I’d come home from Hastings last weekend utterly determined that I would never ride Misty again. Had promised myself I would never get back into his saddle, and never put myself back into that situation. I was sick of riding him, sick of Hayley yelling at me constantly, sick of everyone staring when I got it wrong, when Misty refused or threw me off in the ring. It was upsetting and embarrassing and made everything worse. But it looked like I was stuck, because I was too much of a wimp to throw a tantrum like Hayley would have. I wished I was brave enough to put my foot down, but no matter how badly I wanted to, I couldn’t make myself do it.
“Why don’t we go to Waipawa tomorrow?” Hayley suggested. “They’ve got low classes there, I think they only go up to a metre-ten for ponies.” She pulled a face as my stomach squirmed. A metre-ten might be tiny for her, but it still seemed immense to me.
“I need you all here tomorrow,” Dad said, butting into the conversation. “Got that drenching to do, and you said you’d be home.”
Mum nodded, though she looked disappointed. “Yes, of course. We’ll all be there to help, won’t we girls?”
I murmured assent, but Hayley made an exasperated noise and stabbed the sausage on her plate with her fork. We all knew that the likelihood of her being up early enough to help with the drenching was slim to none, but that was nothing new. Hayley never did anything helpful around the farm anymore.
When the meal was over, Dad left the table and went straight to his office to fret over the accounts. National sheep prices were dropping, and some of the stock hadn’t wintered well, putting us on the back foot. He was already planning which paddocks to put the newly weaned lambs on to try and fatten them for the Christmas market, but he was worried that he might have to start buying in extra feed, something no farmer wanted to have to do. Selling Misty would bring in a good chunk of cash and provide a useful buffer to the hard times that we might be about to face, but it would have to wait a little longer.
Seven more weeks. I was counting down already.
“Let’s get this table cleared,” Mum said as she set down her cutlery. I stood up and stacked Dad’s plate on top of mine, but Hayley groaned and put her head in her hands. Mum looked over at her in concern.
“What’s the matter?”
“Headache,” Hayley muttered. “Bad one.”
“Again?” Mum frowned anxiously. Hayley had been getting sporadic migraines for the last few weeks, although they always seemed to come on at the most opportune times. Funny how the very mention of doing the dishes would set her off, while she would ride all day at horse shows without the slightest affliction. But Mum fell for it every time.
“Just go to bed darling, and I’ll bring you a cold compress. Tess will get the dishes done.”
Hayley got up, still holding her head. She staggered slightly as she moved towards the door, and I rolled my eyes. Overdoing it a bit, I thought bitterly, stacking the plates on the table and carrying them into the kitchen. I groaned at the sight. It looked as though Mum had used every pot and pan we owned, and they were scattered messily across the long bench. This was going to take forever.
I grumbled to myself as I rolled up my sleeves, turned the hot water taps on and shoved the plug into the bottom of the sink. Steam started to fog the window in front of me that looked out across our sparse garden. The lawn needed mowing, but that was another one of Hayley’s allocated chores
, so it wasn’t likely to be done any time soon. I couldn’t even remember the last time she’d actually done it herself, because there seemed to be no shortage of local boys who were willing to do anything to curry favour with her. It was a bit sickening really, but when I complained that she was shirking her responsibilities, Hayley just laughed and told me I was jealous that none of the boys liked me.
What a lie that was. Aside from Bayard, who did like me and – even better – couldn’t stand her, the local boys were hardly worth writing home about. They were all loud and rude and thought fart jokes were hilarious, and they routinely fell all over themselves when a pretty girl walked by. I wasn’t pretty enough to attract their attention, and none of them attracted mine. No great loss there, as far as I was concerned.
I poured dishwashing liquid into the water and watched the bubbles form on the surface, wondering if there was any possible way of getting out of riding Misty. Why had I agreed to it again? Maybe next time I’d fall off and break my arm, and be unable to ride at all. The thought was actually somewhat appealing.
Mum came back into the room and opened our medicine cabinet, muttering to herself. I watched her reflection in the steamed glass as she fussed around, then left the room without even glancing at me. Hayley had always been the high-maintenance child, and Mum was always entering into the dramas she created, while Dad and I stood on the sidelines and watched. I was the dependable one, always where she was supposed to be, too timid to ever rebel.
I grabbed a saucepan off the bench, shoved it into the scalding water, and got to work.
CHAPTER TWO
I was back at the kitchen table eating scrambled eggs the next morning when Dad came into the house, clomping down the hall in his heavy gumboots. He stopped in the kitchen doorway and looked at me.
“Oh good, you’re up. I need you to ride back up the gully and see if you can find a couple more lambs. We’re two shy of what we thought we had. They’re probably buggered, but it’d help us out if you went and checked anyway.”
I nodded, and swallowed my mouthful of egg. “Okay. Can Bayard come with me?”
Dad shook his head. “I need him to help with the drenching now that Luke’s broken his wrist. You’ll be right on your own, won’t you?”
I nodded, and Dad patted me on the head with his large hand. “That’s my girl. Go right up to Last Post and back down the far side, see if you can find any trace of them,” he instructed me before turning and clomping away again.
“You could take Misty out,” Mum suggested to me as she passed me a piece of freshly buttered toast. The thought filled me with dread, and I shook my head quickly.
“No thanks. I don’t want to ride him on my own yet.”
“He’s perfectly safe,” Mum insisted.
You ride him then, I wanted to say, but I resisted the temptation. “I’d really rather take Rory. Besides, if I do find one of the lambs and have to bring it back down, she’s much more dependable to carry one.” I shovelled more egg into my mouth, and spoke around it. “I’ll ride Misty later.”
“As long as you do,” Mum said. She shoved the remaining eggs around the pan a bit more, then looked up the hall towards Hayley’s bedroom with a frown. “I’d better go check on your sister. See if her headache’s eased off any.”
“Doubt it,” I whispered to Colin, who had snuck inside when Dad came into the house, and was now lying under the table at my feet. I passed him a piece of toast while Mum was out of the room, then finished up my eggs and went to pull my boots on. I added a windbreaker, because despite the sunshine, it still got chilly up on top of the hills, and pulled the door open.
“Let’s go,” I told my dog, who bounded out of the house ahead of me, tail wagging in happy anticipation of another adventure.
I leaned forward and let Rory canter on up the side of the hill. She dug her hooves into the soft turf and made her way steadily up, and I smiled and patted her neck. No surprises, with this pony. If I’d been riding Misty, he’d probably have bolted to the top by now, or bucked me off and galloped home. But Rory was dependable and sweet, and I grabbed a hank of her mane and stood up in my stirrups as she made her way to the top of the ridge.
We’d already found one lamb. Colin had sniffed it out in the marshy ground that followed the edge of the creek, and I’d made no effort to move the corpse. Poor thing had probably fallen into the creek when we’d had that heavy rain a couple of weeks ago. When a sheep was immersed in water, their wool got so heavy that they almost never made it out, unless you found them in time. Sadly for this one, nobody had. It was one of the unfortunate facts of life when you lived on a farm. As Dad always said, where you’ve got livestock, you’ll have dead stock. Unromantic, but true. He wasn’t going to be happy when I told him though, and I dreaded the thought.
I checked the rest of the ridgeline, but couldn’t find any trace of the other missing lamb, so I let Rory head back down the hill, planning to sweep the scrub at the bottom. Colin jogged ahead of us, his ears pricked up and tail erect. The day was getting warmer, and I unzipped my jacket and shrugged out of it, fastening it to the ties on the front of my saddle as Rory strode on, reins swinging loose on her neck.
It was nice to be riding alone, but it got a bit boring after a while without anyone to talk to. My mind began to wander, and I wondered what it would be like if Hayley and I had been born the other way around. What if I was the older sister, and she was the younger one? Then it would be Rory being handed down to Hayley, not Misty to me. But I couldn’t imagine Hayley having much fun on my quiet, sensible pony. Maybe if there was no Hayley, and we had a younger sister instead. I’d have liked a younger sister. Jonty Fisher, who was in my year at school, had three little sisters, and he was always complaining about them. But then, he was a boy. It was probably in his DNA to find them annoying.
Back before Hayley had decided she was too good to go to Pony Club anymore, we’d seen quite a lot of Jonty. Riding his ugly black pony Taniwha, always with a grin on his face and talking practically non-stop to anyone who would listen, zooming up and down the bending poles at lightning speed. He’d been a familiar sight at the local gymkhanas, riding hard and beating everyone – even Hayley, much to her disgust.
But things had changed in the past few years. Hayley and I had moved on to bigger ponies and more prestigious shows, and Jonty had long since outgrown little Taniwha. He’d kept him around for his sisters to ride, but none of them seemed very keen, so Tani spent most of his days grazing around the old cottage that Jonty’s family rented from my parents.
We called it the cottage, but it was little more than a shack. It had been built years ago for the farm manager that had lived on the place when my grandfather had to go fight in the war, and rumour had it that Pop hadn’t thought much of the man, so had put up the most basic accommodation possible. Devoid of charm, character and insulation, it was an eyesore that Dad had been talking about pulling down for years until the Fishers had asked if they could move in. Jonty’s dad was one of hundreds of workers who’d struggled to make a living after the meat works in town had closed down four years ago, and he’d come to Dad the following Christmas practically begging to be able to put a roof over his family’s head – even one as shabby as the cottage. They’d lost their house in town because they couldn’t pay the rent, and because it was Christmas, Dad couldn’t bring himself to say no. It was only supposed to be temporary, but they’d fixed the place up a bit, and planted vegetables and settled themselves in, so had Dad shrugged and left them to it. Mum complained about it, because they didn’t pay rent, but Dad said it didn’t cost us anything to have them there either, and would she rather they were starving on the streets? Despite that, I didn’t reckon that Dad liked Nathan Fisher much, although I could never put my finger on exactly why.
Rory and I reached a fork in the trail, and I turned her uphill. When they’d first moved there, Jonty had been excited to live on a farm, but he’d quickly made a nuisance of himself, strutting around like he
owned the place and constantly getting in the way. After we’d come home to find him riding Misty around the paddock bareback one day, Dad had told him to clear off and keep out of our way. Jonty had done as he was told, but whenever Hayley and I rode past the farm cottage he’d come out and ask if he could ride with us, or beg for a go on one of our ponies. Hayley thought it was funny, and used to ride slowly until he reached our side, then go galloping off and leave Jonty standing on the side of the road, but I just changed my riding routes so that I never rode past the cottage anymore. Sometimes Jonty tried to talk to me at school, but I usually pretended not to see or hear him. I knew it wasn’t very nice of me, but his constant chatter put me on edge and stressed me out. I could never think of anything to say in response, and then worried that I was being rude or antisocial. Much easier just to avoid the situation altogether, which was why I hadn’t talked to him for almost two years, despite him living less than a kilometre from my house.
The trail widened, then narrowed again, and I dug my knees into the saddle as Rory scrambled up the steepest part of the track. We crested the hill and I reined her in, feeling her sides bellow in and out beneath me as she caught her breath. This was the highest point on our farm, which we called Last Post, because it was where Pop’s ashes had been scattered after he died. From here, you had a 360 degree view of the farm, rolling out in all directions. The road was a winding grey ribbon, the sheep speckled the green grass, and as long as it wasn’t raining, you could see right out to the ocean.
Rory’s dark mane lifted in the breeze, and I shivered, debating putting my jacket back on before deciding to get just carry on moving. I pulled my phone out of my pocket and took a photo, tugging Rory’s head up first and framing her black-rimmed ears and blowing mane in the bottom half of the screen. I set it as my screen background so that I could look at it when I was stuck at school, or in town shopping, or sitting in the truck at a horse show. Whenever I was somewhere else that I didn’t want to be, I could close my mind to everything else and bring myself back here.
