Stables S.O.S.

by Janet Rising

  “Is there anything Natasha needs to know about riding Bambi?” her mother asked. Cat shook her head sulkily.

  “Only that she’s not right for you!” hissed James.

  “Shhhh!” said Katy.

  It took a while for Natasha to actually get Bambi going. Bambi did a great impression of a nappy pony refusing to go away from the gate, and then, when she finally did, she kept cutting the corners of the school, walking in a circle rather than a large oblong. We heard Natasha’s mother call out for Natasha to ride more positively, but Bambi was having none of it. She lumbered into a shuffling trot, then a reluctant canter, all the while keeping her head down and trying to slow down at every opportunity. She looked like the perfect first pony, whereas Natasha wanted a second one. When Aunt Pam had ridden her, Bambi had acted more like a fourth or fifth pony—anything but a first one. Confusing? I’d say!

  When Aunt Pam and Cat hauled in some jump wings and some poles, Bambi—who usually enjoys jumping—slowed down to a stop in front of the tiniest cross pole.

  Natasha’s mother had seen enough. After only five minutes in the saddle, Bambi’s potential new rider was dismounted, back in the SUV, and departing down the drive in a dust cloud of disappointment.

  “Victory is ours!” declared Katy.

  “Phew!” I sighed, relaxing a bit.

  “That was the easy part,” muttered James, and we watched as Aunt Pam’s head bobbed about in annoyance and frustration as she subjected Cat to an angry lecture.

  “She knows something’s up,” James said ruefully. “She can’t possibly know what, but she’s suspicious all right.”

  “She can’t be,” Katy said, shaking her head. “How could she possibly suspect?”

  But she did.

  “Aunt Pam is furious!” Cat told us once her aunt had followed Natasha and her mom’s tire tracks off the yard. “Natasha’s mother actually accused her of drugging Bambi, and Aunt Pam told me she knew I was influencing Bambi’s behavior.”

  “What?” I cried.

  “What did you say?” asked Katy.

  “I just denied it. I mean, how could I possibly have done it?”

  “So what happens now?” asked James.

  “Dunno,” said Cat miserably. “I expect more people will come and see Bambi. We can’t stop everyone. Someone will like her. I mean, who wouldn’t?” She stroked Bambi’s ears, and Bambi nuzzled her shoulder unhappily.

  I couldn’t help thinking that Cat was right. Someone would like Bambi. She couldn’t keep putting people off. It was only a matter of time before our best-laid plans would fail.

  Our misery was interrupted by the arrival of Jessica who’d been filming in the field. She was all smoothed hair, pink pants and cream shirt, and a huge purple gemstone swung from her neck. Opening her car door, she gave us a wave, totally misinterpreting our somber mood.

  “We’ll be back tomorrow to take some pictures and film our final scenes, and then we’ll dismantle everything, get out of your hair, and move onto the icehouse,” she said. “I know we’ve been in everyone’s way”—she gestured to the vehicles parked in stupid places—“but tomorrow’s pictures will be the most important ones. They’ll show the entire foundations of the house, which have only just been cleared today. You’ll be able to see the pictures in your local museum in the autumn once the show has been aired. I just want to thank you all for helping us with such an interesting episode, and I hope you’ll all enjoy watching it.”

  We all stared at her glumly.

  “Oh, I almost forgot!” she added, turning toward us, her car keys in her hand. “We’ve added some more fencing around the dig to keep the ponies out—as the foundations have been completely exposed now, it’s important they’re not disturbed. You won’t go under the ropes, will you? We’ve a photographer coming, too, to take the final still pictures for posterity.”

  “No, don’t worry, we won’t go anywhere near them,” Katy assured her, and we all nodded our heads in agreement.

  Satisfied, Jessica got in her car and drove off down the driveway. We all watched silently, until the car turned the corner around the laurel bushes and disappeared.

  “As if we’re interested,” sighed James. “Her precious bits of old stone are as safe as houses.”

  Only that was where James was totally, totally wrong because they weren’t. They weren’t safe at all. When Bean and I arrived at the stable at the same time the next morning, we were greeted by Katy in a state of high excitement.

  “What’s up?” I asked as she galloped toward us.

  “You don’t want to know!” Katy told me grimly. I do, actually, I thought, that’s why I asked…

  “The ponies have all gone through the ropes,” she yelled, grabbing Bluey’s halter and rushing back to the field. “And they’ve totally trashed the Time Detectives’ dig!”

  “Have you no respect?” I asked Drummer angrily, fastening his halter and leading him outside the ropes.

  “Something had to be done,” he replied, totally unrepentant.

  “What, wanton destruction?” I asked him. He’d totally lost it this time.

  “I can’t understand it,” said Bean, letting Tiffany go outside the ropes and watching her canter off with her nose in the air, her mane and tail flying. “Tiffany’s spent the last week going anywhere but the site, snorting and carrying on—and suddenly her life depends on not just going near it, but actually on it. It doesn’t make sense.”

  “It’s not like Bluey, either,” Katy told us, looking at her blue roan thoughtfully. “But not because he’s like Tiffany, of course. He’s usually so well behaved.”

  Evicting the other ponies, we mended the ropes and returned to the scene of the crime to put things back the way they were.

  “You know what,” giggled Bean, “we ought to replace the ropes with POLICE, DO NOT CROSS tape!”

  She didn’t giggle for very long. Any ideas we’d had of removing the ponies, cleaning up, and no one noticing that anything had happened were squashed as soon as we saw the result of the ponies’ night’s work.

  “I don’t know why Time Detectives bothered with a bulldozer,” Katy remarked, “when our ponies’ digging efforts are nothing short of spectacular.”

  “Jessica will go crazy!” I gulped, remembering her plans for pictures showing the entire foundations of the house. The most important ones, I reminded myself.

  The previously orderly site was now in complete disarray. Where there had been neat, rectangular and square lines of foundations, there were now deep holes dug up, the dirt thrown around in a terrible mess. Bits of broken stone lay scattered about. Piles of earth littered the site. There was a particularly big hole right in the very center, like someone was planning a swimming pool. It had gone from organized site to bomb site overnight.

  “It looks like a gang of giant moles have been partying,” said Katy grimly, her hands on her hips.

  “Who’s going to tell Jessica?” I asked.

  “Tell her?” asked Bean, her face ashen. “My plan was to run home and let her find out for herself.”

  “We can’t do that!” said Katy.

  I agreed. I didn’t want to, but I knew we had to explain what had happened. “I’ll do it,” I said, my heart sinking. “I got her here, after all.”

  “Phew,” sighed Bean. “Glad you volunteered.”

  “She’s bound to be OK about it,” Katy said, smiling at me. “She’s so nice.”

  Yes, I thought, my heart leaping in hope, she is.

  “I still don’t understand why the ponies did it,” Katy mumbled, shaking her head.

  “It doesn’t really matter now, does it?” I said.

  “There’s not even any point in trying to fix the mess,” Bean said, looking around. “There’s just too much work.”

  “Y
ou never know,” Katy said hopefully. “Jessica may even think it’s funny!”

  There was a short silence as we all contemplated the odds on this happening. They weren’t high.

  I looked across the field at the guilty party. Drummer stood with Bambi, Moth, Tiffany, and Bluey, looking back at us. They didn’t look particularly guilty. They looked triumphant. What were they thinking? And Bluey never did anything naughty—or Moth, for that matter. It just didn’t make sense.

  Leaving the scene of the crime, we went back to the stable and told James and Dee, who had just arrived, the whole story.

  “Wasn’t my pony!” chimed in Dee, a grim smile on her face. “I’m off the hook with that one, phew!”

  “Who’s going to tell Jessica?” asked James, just as I had earlier.

  “I am,” I said, making a face.

  “I’ll come with you, if you like,” James volunteered.

  My heart leaped. James could be quite the knight in shining armor when he wanted to be. Or perhaps that was just how I liked to interpret it.

  “Oh, we’ll all come with you,” said Katy. “We’re all responsible. You didn’t think we’d really let you face Jessica alone, did you, Pia?”

  “I did,” mumbled Bean.

  “Besides,” added Katy, “she’s bound to understand how it wasn’t our fault.”

  When Dee told Sophie, her mom just waved her hand in the air dismissively as she led Lester out of his stable and tied him up in the yard.

  “Frankly,” she said, “I don’t really care. The whole Time Detectives thing has been a complete waste of time; they’ve done nothing to help us, just made things very inconvenient at the yard with all their digging machines, camera crew, and whatever. I mean, yesterday, one of the dopey cameramen, the one with the legwear too long to be shorts and too short to be pants, asked me whether he could have some riding lessons at this riding school of ours. When I told him all the horses and ponies were privately owned, he got all huffy and virtually accused me of being a middle-class snob. And that girl with the pigtails goes about half-dressed all the time like she’s in some lingerie ad. I’ll be glad to see the back of that whole group. As for that Jessica, if she was any more full of herself…”

  We crept away. More doom and gloom wasn’t really what we’d been hoping for.

  Then Cat and Dec arrived.

  “No way!” Cat cried when we told her the news, her jaw dropping. “Shall we saddle up the ponies and make a quick getaway while there’s still time?”

  This particular plan of action hadn’t occurred to me, and I thought it had potential.

  Brilliant!

  Unfortunately, Katy didn’t agree, and plan A was very much restored.

  Poo!

  “It’s almost ten o’clock,” Katy said, looking at her watch. “Jessica will be here any minute now. Oh, here she is!”

  I gulped as Jessica’s car rumbled down the drive and pulled up by the barn.

  “OK,” I said, taking a deep breath, “let’s do it.”

  “Hello!” Jessica greeted us with a smile. She was wearing white linen pants, a blue shirt, and lots of silver bangles on both arms that jangled as she walked. The gemstone necklace of the day was big, red, and sparkly. “You all look very serious. What’s up?”

  I focused on her smile. Yeah, Katy was right, she’ll be OK about it. A bit annoyed, but OK, I told myself.

  “Er, well, funny you should ask,” I began, a nervous laugh escaping me. How inappropriate, I thought, forcing my face into serious mode. “It’s about the site—”

  “Oh yes, here comes the photographer now,” Jessica interrupted me, fixing her hair up on top of her head with a clip. “She’s early!”

  “I’m afraid she may actually be too late,” James butted in.

  “What do you mean?” asked Jessica, turning to look at James.

  “I think you’d better come and take a look,” I suggested, walking toward the field. Everyone fell in behind me, and we all trooped out to show Jessica the results of the ponies’ rampage. As we got nearer, I heard Jessica gasp.

  “Wow!” James breathed, surveying the carnage for the first time. “They’ve done a thorough job. I’ll give them that.”

  “Who did this!” Jessica demanded furiously, her hands on her hips.

  I jumped involuntarily and felt my stomach lurch. She so wasn’t OK about it.

  “The ponies,” Katy told her. “They got under the rope.”

  “They didn’t mean it!” said Bean hopefully.

  “Didn’t mean it?” cried Jessica. “DIDN’T MEAN IT? How could they not mean it? The site is wrecked. RUINED!”

  So she wasn’t going to see the funny side either. No surprise, really, considering there wasn’t one.

  We all stood there, silent. I chewed the inside of my mouth. My face felt hot—I imagined I was probably turning a nice shade of raspberry.

  “All that work!” Jessica snapped. “Just one more day—that’s all we needed, and then your wretched ponies could trash whatever they liked. Just one day!”

  “It is their field…” began Cat, rather rashly, I thought.

  Jessica turned on her. Sparks flew out of her eyes and flames gushed from her mouth (or I may have imagined that part) as she lost it. Completely. I don’t remember the exact words because she said it very fast and very, very loud, but the gist of it was that we were all very silly little girls who didn’t understand the importance of the work she did, and didn’t realize that she’d won awards for her docudramas, and the last thing she needed was her creativity destroyed by some animals who didn’t have the collective brains she had in her little finger, or something like that. Anyway, it wasn’t good, that was for sure, and it provoked much flinching from her unwilling audience. Nobody said anything—not even James or Dec at being called silly little girls.

  When Jessica stopped screeching I noticed the ponies had all come over to gawk—no doubt amused at the scene they had caused. Then, as Jessica drew breath for another blast, they started heckling.

  “Ooooh, look at her!” I heard Bambi snigger.

  “Talk about overreacting!” Drummer added.

  “She’s not getting it, is she?” Bluey said.

  “What a screamer. Tell her to keep it down, won’t you?” asked Tiffany.

  Moth just stood there, her ears going back and forth.

  Lining themselves up against the rope, they continued to add insult to injury.

  As Jessica started her next tirade, ducking under the tape and stamping about in the wreckage of her dig, we were joined by the bemused photographer. The sight of the camera seemed to fill Jessica with further fury—just when we thought it couldn’t get any worse.

  “There’s nothing to photograph!” she screamed. “These, these”—she waved her hand toward the ponies—“stupid horses have ruined everything.”

  “Oh,” said the photographer, looking grave. She glanced at me, and I just shrugged my shoulders and bit my lip.

  “Tell that banshee woman to take a closer look,” Drummer yelled at me.

  I looked at him. Was he for real? Leaving the others, he came over and stood by my side, looking down at the mess below us.

  “Tell her,” he said, nudging me with his nose.

  “Tell her what?” I whispered.

  “She’s looking in the wrong place,” I heard Bambi say.

  “That’s right—tell her to take a closer look at that big hole we’ve made,” ordered Drummer. “The really big one,” he added.

  I didn’t want to. I couldn’t see any way any good could come of it, and I could imagine Jessica hitting someone if I suggested what Drummer wanted me to suggest. And that someone was likely to be me.

  Drummer wasn’t going to let it go. He nudged me forward and repeated the order.r />
  “Tell her to look in the big hole. Tell her!”

  James gave me a funny look. He could tell Drummer was saying something.

  I swallowed. Twice. Drummer knew something. This was either the biggest practical joke my pony had ever thought up, or…

  “Er, Jessica,” I began, my voice croaking in fear. “Jessica!”

  “WHAT!” Oh poo.

  “I think you need to take a look…”

  “A GOOD look,” Drummer interrupted me.

  “Take a good look in the big hole in the middle.”

  There. Done. I braced myself. I was soooo dead.

  Breathing hard, Jessica narrowed her eyes at me with absolute hatred and made like she was sucking a lemon. She didn’t move. She didn’t look in the big hole.

  “I’ll look,” said James, ducking under the rope, jumping into the hole and peering downward.

  Nobody said anything. At least Jessica had stopped yelling.

  “Found it yet?” asked Bambi. All the ponies leaned against the rope and gazed down intently at James. And so did everyone else. I had a sudden vision of buried treasure, a pirate’s chest overflowing with gold coins and treasures. Oh, if only…

  “Well?” Jessica asked, folding her arms and looking militant.

  “Er, well, I can’t see anything, just a few bits of broken tiles…It looks like someone’s old bathroom in here,” James said, squatting down and poking the soil with his hands.

  “WHAT?” yelled Jessica, leaping over the mounds of earth to kneel down beside James with a sudden and urgent interest.

  “Oh my God!!!” she exclaimed, scrabbling away at the dirt with her bare hands as though her life depended on it. “Oh my…!”

  “At last!” Drummer said. “I thought she’d never get there.”

  “Come on,” said Bambi, turning to go, “our work here is done.”

  “Hey!” I said, grabbing Drummer’s mane behind his ears and anchoring him to the spot. “Don’t just hit-and-run like that. What’s going on?”

  “Ouch, let go!” Drummer ordered me, shaking his head.

  “Not likely!” I told him. “Spill the beans!”