The Thunderbolt Pony Read online

  Jock growls and the creature returns my dog’s warning with a threat of his own – a deep, indignant snort expelling streams of mucus from his nostrils.

  This is not my horse. Not Pegasus at all, but the Minotaur. I am staring at the face of a great, white bull.

  CHAPTER 4

  The Sacrifices

  The white bull stares back at me, his eyes boring down my torch beam. For a moment, we hold each other’s gaze. And then I run!

  Almost immediately I know it’s the very worst thing I could possibly have done. Idiot! I curse myself for turning my back on him. But the fear is so deep and so primal, I’m not thinking, I’m just falling and getting up again and scrambling for my life, running through the deep grass and then tumbling forward, down on my hands and knees, panting and sobbing, as I try to escape.

  I can hear Jock behind me and he’s barking his head off! He didn’t run after me. The herding dog blood is so strong in him, he’s instinctively turned to face the bull. I’ve seen him do it before. Once he dominated a whole stampeding dairy herd and turned them round by holding his ground. But a white Charolais is not the same as a Friesian cow, and even a working dog with Jock’s awesome skills can’t back him off for long. I hear my dog’s valiant woofs and in reply come the angered snorts of the bull. There’s silence, a stand-off of sorts, and then the ground shakes and I think aftershock. But it’s not an earthquake this time. It’s the lumbering gait of the bull.

  I turn with my torch and see Jock, unbowed and unafraid, facing him down and barking like mad.

  The bull stops for a moment, and I think maybe Jock has him. But then he lets out this bellow, and the noise is so strong and low and terrifying, it’s like a lion’s roar. And then there’s the thunder of hooves once more and with my wobbly torch trained on the bull I don’t entirely see, but I know that he’s got Jock!

  I can hear him yelping!

  “Jock!”

  He keeps howling and I know he’s been hurt and without thinking I find myself running back to him. My heart is pounding, and all I care about now is Jock and reaching him before the bull can get him again.

  I run through the dark, stumbling and falling and getting up again until at last I reach Jock’s side. I stand over him and spin round in a full circle looking for the bull, making myself dizzy following the torch beam, hyperventilating with fear. Where is he? Where did he go?

  Then my torch casts a shadow and I catch a flicker of something white in the furthest reaches of the beam. It’s the bull! He’s about ten metres to the right of us, and he’s moving in our direction.

  At my feet Jock gives a whimper as if he’s trying to say, “You run!”

  I can’t run, though. Not without him. So I throw my torch to the ground and yank my sweatshirt over my head and for a second everything is black and I’m panting and blind, and then with a tug my sight returns and I snatch up the torch in my left hand, and with the sweatshirt in my right, I focus back on the bull.

  The sweatshirt is blue, which I know is the wrong colour. It should be red, right? Like a matador’s cape. But I am hoping that waving it around will have the same effect.

  “Hoi!” I call out to the Charolais. “Hey, Bully Bull!”

  I hold my sweatshirt out as far away as I can from my body and I wiggle it.

  The bull pulls up to a halt, he stamps a hoof. He’s looking at me.

  “No!” I say. “Not me. See the sweatshirt? Look at the pretty sweatshirt!”

  The bull prepares to charge. As he angles his massive forehead towards the ground, the horns rise up and I see their gleaming, bony tips and I realise far too late how ridiculous I am with my matador cape. The bull is ten times my size and the sweatshirt is like a postage stamp to him.

  I fling the sweatshirt hopelessly in his direction and I throw myself to the ground on top of Jock. And as the hooves thunder I know that any moment I will feel the impact. I’ve seen bulls attack cattle dogs. I once saw one on the farm get gored by a horn and he had to be put down. And that’s what I’m thinking this bull will do to me, and I can feel Jock squashed beneath me and I think at least he will be safe because the bull will get me first.

  And at that moment I am Theseus, facing the Minotaur.

  ***

  I’m back in the hospital for my second session with Willard Fox. I’m telling him about the Ancient Greek day we had at school.

  “I went as the goddess Athena,” I say.

  We had to dress as gods so I wore an old bed sheet knotted at the shoulder, and when I got on the bus George the bus driver gave me a look and said, “Your mum forget to wash your clothes?”

  Half the kids on the bus weren’t even in costume.

  “Moana was just in shorts and a T-shirt!” I tell Willard Fox. I was grumpy with her that day because we had a fight about superpowers.

  “I said my superpower would be to jump those really huge four-star cross-country courses like at the Badminton Horse Trials,” I tell Willard Fox. “But Moana said horse riding’s not a superpower, even though it totally is.”

  “So that’s why you had a fight?”

  I shake my head. “No, we had the fight after that.”

  Moana said her superpower would be mind reading and to show me she put her hands on my head with her fingers splayed at my temples. And that was when I panicked and pulled her hands off me because if Moana could read my mind then we wouldn’t be best friends any more. She would think I was a freak because of my OCD.

  “So Moana doesn’t know you have OCD?” Willard Fox asks.

  “No,” I say.

  No one at school knows. Especially not Mrs Lowry, and sometimes it’s hard because she picks on me because I can’t write certain letters – like M and N. And so my spelling is bad.

  At the Ancient Greek day, Mrs Lowry got Brodie to do the sacrifice to Zeus – because he’s her pet and he gets to do everything. But I am doing sacrifices too, every day and no one cares.

  The counting and the rituals … even my bedroom. Mum thinks it’s a “god-awful mess” but really it’s my gift to the gods, a complex matrix of talismans and portents disguised as dirty clothes and old bowls of half-eaten cereal. And, then there’s my backpack, the most precious piece of my OCD universe. And those two braids in Gus’s mane. I must do them. I have to get them just right. If I don’t manage to ace it all – then I unleash hell.

  “Evie, what if I told you that this is all the OCD? And it is tricking your brain. What if I told you that even though it seems real, your rituals don’t have the power to protect people?”

  Willard Fox leans forward. “You’re doing this because you really love your animals, don’t you, Evie?”

  I nod. “Of course I do! More than anything.”

  “Well, what would you do if Gus got really sick?”

  I feel my pulse quicken. I don’t like to imagine bad things happening to Gus.

  “I’m protecting him,” I say abruptly. “He’s not sick.”

  “Yes, but accidents happen, right?” Willard says. “So let’s say Gus gets hurt in the paddock. He cuts his leg. How would you fix it, Evie? Would you use your powers and do the braids in his mane? Pack things in and out of your backpack? Or …”

  Willard Fox looks at me. “Or … would you maybe call the vet?”

  I feel my cheeks turn hot. When he puts it that way I know that it is illogical, what I am doing.

  “I’d call the vet.”

  Willard looks at the backpack that I have beside me at my feet.

  The force of my panic surprises me.

  “Don’t touch it!”

  “It’s OK …” Willard Fox says. “I know it’s precious. How about you show me?”

  My hands are shaking as I pick up the backpack and put it on the table.

  It sits there between me and Willard, like an unexploded bomb.

  “Now what?” he says.

  “I have to do the zips,” I say. “I do them twice. Before I take the things out.”

  “OK,” Wil
lard says. “So that’s the OCD talking. And today, we’re not going to give in to it. Today, instead of doing it twice, Evie, I want you to just unzip the zip and close it again once and then leave it. Can you do that?”

  I reach out my hand, slowly, and when my fingers touch the zipper the bitter rush of pure adrenalin makes me want to be sick. Just the once? That’s so dangerous!

  I close my eyes and I take a deep breath and I do it! I unzip the front pocket. Just once. It’s sitting there gaping open – taunting me! Then I zip it shut again. Just the once! It’s so wrong. I can feel the bees surging in my brain, imploring me to do it again, to make things even!”

  “You’re doing great, Evie,” Willard Fox says.

  Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod!! I hold my hand there, wanting to unzip-zip it a second time, tantalisingly close to giving in to the urge to do it again. It takes every bit of my willpower to fight it and all the time I can hear Willard’s voice talking me down, but it sounds fuzzy through the buzz of the bees in my brain.

  “On a scale of one to ten,” he is saying, “where are you now Evie?”

  “… eight,” I pant out the word. “I can’t breathe!”

  I want to make the world safe!

  “Evie,” Willard Fox says my name like he’s invoking a god. “You. Can. Do. This! I want you to say out loud with me: ‘I’m in charge, OCD. I’m taking the reins!”

  I look at him and I feel a lump in my throat that blocks the words.

  “Come on, Evie!” Willard says. “You don’t want to be controlled like this so do something about it. You need to fight it. Do it!”

  And there, in the middle of his office, I hear his voice and then I hear another voice and it’s mine but it doesn’t sound like me. I’m screaming. “I’m in charge, OCD. I’m taking the reins!”

  When I finish shouting the words, I burst into tears. Great big gasping sobs, and Willard is right there with me, telling me it will be OK and to take breaths, big deep breaths.

  “Good work, Evie,” he says to me. “I’ll see you next week.”

  ***

  Fear is not static – it is a living thing. Like the earth beneath my feet, constantly moving and changing. It sounds crazy, but looking back, at that moment in Willard’s rooms the zip on my backpack was just as terrifying to me as this half-a-tonne of Charolais bull in front of me is.

  In the beam of my torch, the bull is bearing down on me. I know what’s coming and I’m about to close my eyes and brace myself for the death blow, the sharp stab of the lethal point of the horn into my gut. But the impact doesn’t come.

  Thunder rolls through the ground once more and I look up and see a pale shadow appear from the darkness, galloping its way towards us and coming between me and Jock and the bull. In my torch beam, the grey dapples bleach away so that the horse looks almost white and the tail that unfurls behind him is flecked with stars. He looks like a creature from a Greek myth himself, like Pegasus. But he’s totally real, and my heart soars.

  It’s my pony. It is Gus.

  CHAPTER 5

  Pegasus and Athena

  Gus charges in at a gallop, and he pulls to a halt right between me and the Charolais. I see his eyes, dark and burning, as he squares off against the bull, and I feel the hairs on the back of my neck stand up at the heat of the desert blood in him. Gus taunts the Charolais, flashing back and forth in front of him in a high-stepping trot, then circling around, keeping just far enough away so that the bull cannot reach him. I keep my torch trained on them and its beam becomes the spotlight illuminating a grand performance as Gus dances rings around the Charolais. The dance is deadly, but there’s such grace and beauty to it. He spins and arches his neck, hocks driving beneath him so that one moment he almost seems to trot on the spot and the next he’s flying forward, his mane whipping in the vortex created by his acceleration. I have never seen him look more Arabian than he does at this moment.

  Compared to the fluid beauty of my horse’s movement, the Charolais looks like an old, punch-drunk prizefighter who’s been beaten too many times in the ring. He’s a lumbering oaf, slow and witless. He staggers around, bewildered by Gus’s display, and then, shaking his enormous head as if he’s been dazed and suddenly woken up, he gives a snort and charges. He is too slow. Gus is already gone, and the bull misses completely and now Gus loops behind him and circles round and round, still just out of reach in his high-striding trot, and then as he dashes past once more he shoots off, moving purposefully away from me and Jock so that the bull gives chase. They disappear into the darkness and that’s when I know we have our chance to get to safety. I grab Jock by the collar and we run.

  Jock is on his feet and he’s matching my stride. I still don’t know how badly he’s injured from the bull’s strike but despite his wounds he can move well enough. He bounds on in front of me, leading the way, and my torch beam is wobbling so that the world seems to fling about in front of my eyes but I keep running. Then up ahead of us I can see the tree where I tied Gus last night and I know we have somehow found our way back to camp.

  My fingers fumble to unzip the tent. I can hear Moxy yowling her distress inside. I scoop her up in my arms, and she does this thing she does when she is really, really pleased to see me where she bites my face. And then she even smooches all over Jock, which is unusual because she’s mostly a bit stand-offish with him and not all cuddly like she is with Gus. I see her sniff at Jock’s side, examining him, and he whimpers and begins licking the spot with his tongue and I can see now where the bull got him. There’s a cut on his flank where he got nicked by the tip of the horn. Even though there’s blood, the wound is shallow. If I was a vet I don’t think I’d even do stitches, and Jock is licking it clean so he will be OK.

  Jock and I lie there beside each other, both of us panting, exhausted from running all the way back, Moxy purring all around us. I shine the torch on my watch and see that it’s four am. I want to get out and search for Gus again but it would be better to wait until it’s light. At least I know he’s close now and we can find him when the dawn comes, but I’m not going back into the dark with the bull still out there. Gus can outrun him, I’m certain of that. But we’re not as quick. And so we lie there and when I get my breath back, I pick up my backpack and I zip and unzip it again. I do my rituals, until my heart is beating at the regular pace once more.

  Not all rituals are bad. Mum used to say it was “our ritual”, whenever we went to see Willard Fox, to stop off on the way back in Parnassus at the dairy to get an ice cream.

  If my friend Gemma was working, I’d always get a single cone of vanilla because Gemma does big scoops. But if Scary Mary was behind the counter then I’d have to go for a Choc Bomb because Scary Mary’s scoops are too stingy.

  Scary Mary owns the Parnassus Dairy. She doesn’t let you browse the Horse & Pony either. She has a grumpy handwritten sign up over the magazine section that says: “Please purchase before you read. This is not a Library.”

  Anyway, I’m in my tent doing my ritual with the backpack, and I’m thinking about Willard Fox and the very last time I saw him. We were rating all the things that give me OCD on a scale of one to ten, and then Willard Fox came to my backpack.

  “On a scale of one to ten,” Willard Fox asks me, “where would you put the backpack, Evie?”

  The backpack is my portable OCD world. You could take the sum of all my fears and shove them together and they would fit neatly inside that backpack. I look at Willard Fox. “A ten.”

  “Evie,” Willard says, “I feel like we’ve been here together in the foothills for a long time now and you’ve done all this stuff in preparation, and now you’re ready. It’s time to go up Mount Everest.”

  I know what he wants and it makes the bees in my brain start humming.

  I mutter something about how I’ve done enough. My OCD is much better now, and maybe I don’t even need to come and see him any more, but Willard Fox still wants to look inside my backpack.

  “What’s in there?” he asks m
e.

  “It’s personal,” I say.

  Willard Fox leans forward, his elbows on his knees. “Do you know what rust is, Evie?”

  “Like on a car?” I say.

  Willard Fox nods. “The thing about rust is, if you remove it, you have to get rid of all of it because if there’s still a little bit of it left then it grows back again.”

  He looks at me. “OCD is like rust. We need to get it all out …”

  “Or the OCD will come back again …” I finish his sentence.

  I clutch the backpack to me. “If I let you look inside,” I say, “it will ruin it.”

  Willard Fox nods. “Do you want to tell me then?”

  I take a deep breath. “There’s a pen,” I say, “and a takeaway container, and a pair of glasses and a notebook.”

  “And why these four things?” Willard Fox asks.

  “Because I like even numbers.”

  “Why else, Evie?”

  There’s a pause in the room and you can hear the clock. I listen to it ticking. Willard Fox is good at silence, though, and he holds on and he waits for me.

  “They were on my dad’s beside table,” I say. “In the hospital. When I did it.”

  “When you did what, Evie?” Willard Fox says.

  I don’t answer.

  “Evie, do you think you made something bad happen?”

  I am shaking. I look down at my hands and see that they’re bound in a tight knot. This was why I never wanted to come here! I knew it would come to this eventually. Willard Fox is too smart for me. I knew he would find out what I’ve done.

  “Yes … no … maybe.”

  “Well, that covers all the bases,” Willard Fox says.

  I haven’t admitted this before, not to Mum or even to Gus. But with Willard the words just come out before I realise I’ve said them.