The Island of Lost Horses Read online

  As I pushed my way through the undergrowth, I thought about the horse, the way her mane had been tangled with burrs. If she really belonged to someone then you’d think they would have brushed her. The way I figured it, she must have been roaming loose for a long time. Maybe she didn’t even have an owner at all. I remembered that feeling I had when our eyes met, like we were bonded together somehow. My horse.

  “You have an overactive imagination, Beatriz,” I muttered.

  What I didn’t have was much sense of direction. As I walked deeper into the jungle I was beginning to wonder if I would be able to find my way back to the Phaedra again. When I had looked on the map, the island hadn’t seemed that big. I thought it would have taken me maybe half an hour to walk all the way across. But I had been walking that long already and I was still in dense jungle.

  All the time as I walked, I had been listening to the birdsong, but now I heard another noise. In the trees to the left of me – the sound of branches snapping and crackling underfoot. I couldn’t see anything, but I had this feeling – like I was being stalked. Something or someone was in the trees with me, watching me, keeping their movements in step with my own. If I stopped walking, then it was quiet, but then when I set off again, I could have sworn I heard something.

  “Who’s there?”

  There was no reply.

  I changed direction, heading away from the noises, walking faster, pushing my way through the trees.

  I fought my way through the snakewood and pigeon berry and suddenly found myself in this vast clearing. I felt like I’d stumbled into a magical realm. The undergrowth disappeared completely, and there was a perfect circle of bare earth. At the centre of the circle was a massive tree. Its branches spread out in all directions, with sturdy limbs that were the perfect cradle for a secret tree house. The trunk was broad, with deep crevices, like folds in a curtain that you could have hidden yourself inside, and the roots stretched out like gnarled hands clawing into the earth.

  I sat down on one of those roots, leant against the trunk and opened my backpack. I took out the sandwich and ate that and drank about half of the water in my bottle. Then I pulled out the rope and made a horse’s halter. I hadn’t ever used a real halter so I just fashioned it like the ones for my imaginary horses back in Florida, with a piece to go over the nose and another piece behind the ears – but big enough for a real horse obviously. I am good at sailor’s knots from being on the Phaedra so it looked quite sturdy once I was done.

  I slung the halter over my shoulder and then I closed my eyes and I listened. I could hear the birdcalls, I could hear the leaves rustling above me, but there was also another sound – gentle, persistent, pounding in my head.

  I could hear the sea.

  I knew where to go now. The jungle began to thin out as the sea sound grew closer. On the other side of the island, the beach was quite different from Shipwreck Bay. The coast was one vast expanse of mudflats. Forests of mangroves sprouted up out of murky, shallow seawater pools, the remnants of the last tide that had been trapped and left behind.

  I pushed my way through the tangles of mangroves and then stopped dead. Right in front of me in the middle of the mudflats, grazing on the marsh grass, was my horse.

  She was real. And she was just as strange-looking as I’d remembered. With her crazy dreadlocked mane and her weird markings – the white face with the brown sunhat over her ears. But she was beautiful too. She had a pretty dish to her nose and a crest to her neck that made her look refined and elegant despite her bedraggled state. I thought about the way she had looked at me, when she first saw me in the forest, like she was queen of the island. There was that same nobility about her, even now as she stood fetlock-deep in the muddy waters, ripping up mouthfuls of the unappetising marsh tussock.

  All the time I was walking, I had been planning what I’d do when I found her. My idea was to use the apple in my backpack to tempt her and then I would put the halter on. No, I am not joking – that was my plan. I can see how mad it was now, but the first time I met her, I had been so near, I figured I could easily get that close again and then the apple would do all the work.

  Some plan. At the sound of me splashing and stumbling my way towards her through the mud she startled like a gazelle.

  “No – don’t go!”

  I wrestled frantically with my backpack, yanking it open to pull out the apple, but it was useless. She was gone already – galloping off across the mudflats, her tail held up high like a banner behind her, great splashes of seawater flinging up beneath her belly as she thundered across the mud.

  I didn’t even try to run after her this time. She was way ahead of me, and she was so fast! I watched her, marvelling at her beauty, the way her legs gathered up and then drove back to earth again all at once, working like pistons powering her on.

  And then, halfway across the mudflats, for some reason her strides slowed. She began to lumber along, her legs moving in an ungainly way, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, she fell. She went down hard and the way she lurched so violently reminded me of a zebra being taken down by a lion in a nature documentary.

  As she struggled to right herself and get back up on her feet, I noticed that her hindquarters had almost completely disappeared into the mud. And that was when I realised. She hadn’t been taken down. The ground beneath had given way.

  I thought she would fight her way free and get back to her feet. But she couldn’t seem to get out of the mud. She was flailing about, thrashing with her front legs. She got herself right up on her haunches, rearing up out of the sand, but then plunged back down again, rolling and twisting to one side as she fell.

  I ran out on to the mudflats, dropping my backpack halfway across. It was like those dreams you have where your legs are stuck in glue and you can’t lift them and everything goes into slow motion. The mud suctioned at my feet, dragging at my legs. I was fighting for every stride. My breath came in panicked, desperate gasps.

  My poor horse was going totally crazy. She lurched and faltered so that her neck swung like a pendulum, her head smacking down hard into the mud with a sickening thud. She was trapped, and struggling was only making it worse.

  I kept running to her until I felt the ground beneath my feet go really soft. From here on in I had to test the ground with each step. I circled right round the horse, padding as I stepped, trying to find the best spot to approach from, where the ground was more solid.

  My horse was foaming with sweat and shaking all over. She didn’t seem scared of me though; she was too focused on fighting her way out of the mud. I could see the whites of her eyes showing at the edges, making her blue eyes look even wilder. I could feel my heart hammering, but I had to get closer if I was going to help her, so I kept edging forward. I’d only taken a couple of steps when I felt the mud beneath me give way. I let out a squeal and the horse stopped thrashing and looked at me. Stay calm, I told myself, you can do this. I was almost close enough to reach her.

  I ploughed on and felt the ground devouring me with each step. Then my foot got stuck and I collapsed hard against her.

  The horse swung her neck as I fell, trying to move away from me, but she had nowhere to go. I grasped her soaking wet mane and clung on to it.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. I tried to push myself back off her but I was stuck. Her shoulder was pressed up hard against my thigh and I sank further into the mud.

  “Easy, girl. Stay calm. I’m going to get you out.”

  I still had the rope halter slung over my shoulder. With fumbling hands I tried to slip the loop over her nose and then I lifted the earpiece over her head. She didn’t flinch from my touch. It was like she knew I was trying to help her.

  Once I got the halter on, the hard work really began. It took me ages to pull myself back out of the mud. I would work one leg free only to have it suctioned back down as I fought to loosen the other limb. In the end I managed to crawl free by clawing my way out with my hands, using my fingers like grappling hooks to pull
myself out. At least I knew that I could get free again if I needed to. But while I was light enough to get out of the mud hole, my horse wasn’t. And the more she struggled, the deeper she sank.

  I moved round so that I was facing her, and then, grasping on with one hand each side of the rope halter, I leant back with all my weight, dug in my heels and I pulled. I pulled with all my strength, as hard as I could.

  And… Nothing. The only thing that happened was I began sinking faster than before back into the mud.

  I tried again, really yanking at the halter so that the ropes dug into the horse’s face. But even as I tried again I knew it wasn’t going to work. The horse must have weighed at least ten times as much as me and she was stuck deep.

  I looked around me for something I could use – a stick or a branch. But there was nothing except marsh grass and tidal pools. And the sea. The sea, which, as I now noticed, was getting closer. The tide was coming in.

  This whole mudflat must end up underwater when the tide was high. My horse would end up underwater. I searched more desperately for something to pull her out with. And then, when I couldn’t find anything, I began to dig. Maybe I could make a channel through the mud so that she could fight her way back to the surface again.

  I used both hands, scooping up the sand through my legs like a dog. There was a frenzy to my digging as I shovelled the mud up and threw it aside, and I flung myself into the task, digging the channel as fast as I could. With every handful of mud that I dug up, more mud oozed in to take its place. All I was doing was making the hole more and more squishy and unstable.

  I tried to dig closer to the horse, and felt the mud cave away completely so that I was up to my thighs once more.

  It was futile to try and get her out. So instead, I made up my mind that I would stay with her for as long as possible. She struggled less if I stayed close and stroked her, spoke soothing words to her. I could drag myself out when the time came, but until that moment I would not abandon her.

  “It’s OK.” I cradled her head. “It’s going to be OK.” But I believed this less and less. She was exhausted and so was I. The sun was right overhead and it was hot, really hot. My head was throbbing, and I felt prickly all over, like my skin had hot needles pressing into it.

  I became mesmerised by the lapping of the sea, the way it kept creeping forward, slowly but surely. We had another hour left at most before it reached us.

  “I’m sorry,” I kept saying to my horse. Because I knew now that I couldn’t save her. But I couldn’t leave her. Not yet.

  Maybe it was the sun that made me dizzy, I don’t know, but at some point I must have begun slipping in and out of consciousness. I would wake up with a jolt and then sink back into a dream.

  Get up, I told myself. Things have gone too far now. It was time to get myself out of the mud. It probably sounds weird to say I was freezing, because the sun was right up overhead, but suddenly I felt chilled to the bone.

  It was when I realised that I couldn’t move my legs that I truly began to panic. They’d gone completely numb under the mud. I tried to kick and felt myself sink deeper.

  I clawed at the mud, driven on by raw adrenaline, but even the fear wasn’t enough to bring the strength back to my exhausted arms. My muscles were jelly.

  “Help me!” The words came out weak and strangled. My throat was thick and dry, my tongue swollen. “Help me!”

  I swear the parrots laughed at me. I heard them caw-caw. Why were they so horrible?

  “Help me…” My words were choked with tears. I was so stupid. I should have left Mom a note. What if she never ever found me? I didn’t want to die out here in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t want to die.

  My head was all woozy. I shut my eyes to block out the glare and my world became darkness and sounds. There was the constant lap and swell of the sea as it crept up on me, and the birds calling in the sky above us, the rattle of the horse’s breath and the mud gurgling beneath me. And then, cutting through all of these, I heard a shrill whine, like a mosquito at first, then growing closer and louder until it filled my ears. I opened my eyes and squinted into the sun.

  It was a motorbike.

  A Shadow on the Sun

  The horse had lost all her fight. She lay submerged in the mud beside me, each rattling, heaving gasp she took seeming like it might be her last. Then the motorbike roared into the silence and brought her violently back to her senses.

  She began to thrash about, legs flailing in the mud alongside me. I felt one of her front hooves accidentally glance against the hard bone of my ankle and I swallowed the pain in a wrenching gasp of agony. Trying to get away from her, I uselessly clawed at the mud again. But I had no strength left.

  I tried to cry out again, to say, “I’m here!” but my tongue had turned to rubber. The motorbike noise filled my head, piercing my brain.

  And then it stopped.

  I could see a figure walking towards me. I screwed my face up against the blinding glare. My eyes hurt so much I had to shut them tight. When I opened them there was a shadow looming above me, blocking out the sun.

  “My goodness, child! How long is you been like dis?”

  I squinted up at the silhouette.

  “I don’t know,” I replied. “Hours, I guess.” I could barely get the words out of my dry mouth. I was still sun-blind but when the figure bent down really low, putting her face near mine, I could see that it was a woman. She had dark coffee-coloured skin and her hair was matted in dreadlocks, tangled with grey. She had a thick, broad nose, and swollen lips. Her eyes stared into mine with a keen brightness.

  “Here.” She held my head by the chin and pushed a water bottle to my lips. “Drink it.”

  I took five or six deep gulps. I had to fight with my own tongue to get the water down. It felt amazing.

  I drank again and the woman grunted her approval, then put the empty bottle back in the bag she’d slung over her shoulder. She stood up and her shadow, which had mercifully blocked out the sun, was gone. I shut my eyes against the sun’s glare and when I opened them again I could see her walking away.

  “No! Don’t leave! No!”

  The motorbike engine cranked back to life. She was driving away!

  I shouted until my throat was raw. But she didn’t come back. Soon, I couldn’t even hear the bike any more.

  I willed the old woman to return. But there was no sound except the lapping of the waves growing nearer and the cries of the seabirds spiralling in the sky. In my mind the birds became vultures, circling above, waiting for the life to ebb out of us. When a gull landed right in front of me I screamed and reeled back in fright.

  “Go away!” I shouted, grabbing a handful of mud and throwing it as hard as I could. “Leave us alone!”

  That was when I broke down and cried. My breath came in horrible hiccups, as I choked on my sobs.

  I washed in and out of consciousness and when I was awake it all felt like a dream. I honestly don’t know how long it was before I heard the sound of an engine again. Not a whine this time, but a full-bodied roar. In the distance something big was rumbling across the mudflats. I shielded my eyes with my hands. It was an old farm tractor, ancient rusty red, but the old woman drove it like it was a racing car, speeding across the mudflats, flinging a sheet of water up in her wake.

  When she reached us she swung round wide so she wouldn’t disturb the mud hole. Then the tractor engine went dead and the next thing I knew she was standing right there next to me.

  “You got a name, child?”

  “Beatriz.” I managed to get the word out through my swollen, sunburnt lips. “My name is Beatriz Ortega.”

  “Well, Bee-a-trizz child, I be Annie.” She thrust a ragged bit of frayed rope at me. “Take it!” she insisted. “You needs to get your hand under de horse’s belly. You’ll have to dig de mud, Bee-a-trizz, dig hard.”

  “I can’t do it!” I was weeping as I said it. My fingernails were already raw from trying to dig the horse out and my arms w
ere too weak.

  “Yes, you can, child,” Annie said firmly. “Come on now!”

  Annie went back to the tractor and grabbed a shovel and then she came and began to dig on the other side of the horse. She was making a hole for me to poke the rope through. “Come on, Bee-a-trizz. Not much more… keep goin’.”

  I dug until my fingers bled, tears running down my cheeks.

  “Dat’s de way!” Annie encouraged me. “You is doin’ it, Bee-a-trizz child! We almost dere…”

  And then I felt her fingers clasp my own and she had the rope in her hands. She pulled it beneath the horse’s belly and then knotted it across the horse’s back, taking another length, which she crossed through and ran round the horse’s hindquarters. I lay my face down on the mud, utterly exhausted.

  “You got to do another tink for me, Bee-a-trizz.”

  Annie passed the rope to me again. “Tie it off by her belly and we is done. Tie a strong knot, make it tight.”

  I plunged my hands back into the mud once more. I did the knot by feel, tying it blind beneath the mud. My hands were so weak and numb it took forever, but I managed it. The rope now ran right the way round the horse’s belly, closing the circuit and creating a harness.

  Annie checked the knots and grunted with satisfaction. Then she came over and bent down on all fours and clasped me under the armpits.

  “Hang on to me, child!” she commanded. I was shaking so badly I could hardly grip. “Get a good strong hold!” Annie snapped at me. “You gots to be ready when I pull. You cling to me, child, and you stay dead still. Ain’t gonna do no good if you kick about.”

  With her arms wrapped round me, Annie crouched low and then she took a deep breath and strained. With a firm, sudden yank she heaved me out and dragged me clear of the mud hole. For an old woman she was plenty strong! I lay on the sand, gasping like a fish that had just been landed on a dock.

  She dragged me up the beach a little way and then gave me another bottle of water to drink and went back to her tractor. Humming to herself, she got behind the wheel and revved the engine. The tractor lurched forward and the ropes went taut. Then suddenly the tractor tyres began to spin, straining against the weight. The tractor was going backwards, being dragged into the hole, falling in on top of the horse!