ON SUNDAY MORNING, Jess rolled over in bed and stared at the clock. It was six o’clock. She’d had a weird dream that three bright lights were chasing her through a paddock, calling her name.
The sound of hooves clattered beneath her window.
Shara?
Since yesterday’s text message, Jess had blocked her – from her phone, from email, from Facebook, and any other possible place she could think of.
If she thinks I’m going to talk to her, she’s wrong.
She pulled herself up onto her knees and peeked out through the curtains. At the bottom of the verandah steps, Grace sat on a brown horse, looking like a turtle with her neck craned forward and an overstuffed pack on her back. Jess tossed off her doona and shuffled to the front door, squinting in the sunlight.
Grace motioned for her to come outside. ‘Your hair has gone crazy,’ she noted as Jess reached the bottom step.
‘Well, I’m still half asleep,’ Jess grumbled. ‘Do you always get up this early?’
‘Harry’s registering the foals today,’ Grace replied.
‘I guess that’s a yes.’
‘He lets Rosie and me help to name them. And we found that mare that went missing down on the river flats. She had her foal and it’s an Appaloosa!’ she said excitedly.
‘What mare that went missing?’
Grace lowered her voice and said in a dramatic voice, ‘The foal looks a bit like Diamond!’
Jess immediately woke up. ‘Wait for me.’ She ran back up the stairs and rummaged through the knee-deep squalor that was her bedroom. ‘Joddies, joddies, where are my joddies?’
Hastily dressed, she crept into her parents’ room and whispered to her snoring father. ‘Dad!’
‘What is it, honey?’ asked Caroline from the other side of the bed.
‘Can I go with Grace Arnold to look at the foals again? There’s one that looks like Diamond!’
‘At this hour of the morning?’ said Caroline.
Craig opened his eyes. ‘Where exactly are you going?’
‘To Harry’s place, to look at the foals. I went there yesterday, remember? There’s a new one that looks like Diamond.’
Craig sat up. ‘Who’s Harry?’
‘He’s Grace and Rose’s uncle.’
‘Harry who? What’s his last name?’
Caroline saved her. ‘They’re nice girls, Craig. We know them from pony club. Go on, Jess. But have some breakfast before you go.’
Jess flew out the door before her father could object.
When they arrived at Harry’s, Rosie, Tom and Luke were sitting on bales of hay on the back of a ute. Rosie waved enthusiastically. ‘Hurry up,’ she called. ‘We’re about to go!’
Jess dumped her bike and ran to the ute. She climbed up next to Rosie, slipped on a loose biscuit of hay and somehow landed in Luke’s lap. ‘Oh, sorry!’
Luke grinned but said nothing while she tried to climb off him.
Harry hobbled down from the house with a clipboard and pen. He saw Jess clambering off Luke and gave her a wink.
What? I wasn’t . . . I was just . . . I was not!
She climbed over Rosie and found a spot on top of a hay bale. It didn’t feel overly secure, but it was as far away as possible from the boys.
‘That’s one way to introduce yourself, I s’pose,’ said Harry as he reached for the driver’s side door, and before Jess could protest, he said, ‘Righto, who wants to come down the paddock and help me register this season’s foals? We’ve got to get a record of all their markings and colour and so on and so forth. Details, details, endless details . . .’ His voice trailed off into a mutter as he lowered himself into the front seat.
Grace ran out from the stables. ‘Wait for me!’
‘You give that horse some water?’ Harry asked as he leaned over and opened the passenger door for her. Grace nodded as she jumped in. The ute roared to life, and soon they were bumping their way down a long laneway with fences and horses on either side.
At the end, the mares cantered up to the gate, eager for some hay. The foals followed on awkward, jerky legs, frolicking and bucking. Harry drove around the paddock in a big circle and the mares flocked around as the girls tossed out hay in biscuits. As the horses settled into feeding, Harry pulled on the brake and got out his clipboard.
Luke grabbed some tools from the back and without a word, headed towards a leaky water trough. Tom jumped over the side of the ute and followed.
Harry shuffled through his papers. ‘Let’s start with Elly’s foal,’ he said. He hobbled towards a brown mare. She nickered softly to him as he ran a hand over her shoulder, checking her brands and marking them down in his notes. ‘What’ve you got for us this year, Elly?’ He turned to the girls. ‘Is that foal gonna be bay or black, Rosie?’
‘Black for sure, Harry. Look around its eyes!’ said Rosie. Sure enough, its brown foal fluff was beginning to shed, revealing glossy black circles around its eyes.
‘Sure it’s not buckskin?’
Rosie tossed a piece of hay at him.
‘Okay, if you say so. Black it is!’ he chuckled, writing it down in his notes. ‘Geez, what day was it born? I think this one was born last Saturday, wasn’t it?’
‘It’s a colt, Harry. Let’s call him Biggles,’ said Grace.
‘No, it has to be an Aboriginal name like Biyanga,’ said Rosie.
‘What does Biyanga mean?’ asked Jess.
‘It’s an Aboriginal word meaning “father”,’ explained Harry. ‘When Biyanga was born he presented backwards, and an Aboriginal stockman helped me to turn him.’ He shook his head. ‘Bloody amazing horseman, he was. He saved the foal and the mare so I asked him if he’d name the foal. He said the colt would grow up to be a great sire, so he called him Biyanga.’
Rosie grinned at Jess. ‘Good name, isn’t it?’
‘I reckon,’ said Jess.
‘Let’s call this one Billabong!’ Rosie suggested.
‘Billabong: I like that,’ said Harry, writing it down. ‘We could call him Billy for short.’
They went from mare to mare, recording their brands, colour and markings, and thinking up worthy names for the foals. They called a chestnut colt Boomerang, a black colt Corroboree, and black filly Coolamon.
As they went about naming and recording details, the foals stayed close to their mothers, nuzzling udders for milk or just taking shade in their shadows. From beneath a chestnut mare, Jess could see a small muzzle snuffling for its mother’s teat. Its little round chin was covered in long wiry hairs.
She bent down on one knee so that she could get a closer look. As another mare brushed past its rump, the foal scrambled beneath its mother, and popped out in front of Jess with a confused expression. It looked straight into Jess’s eyes and paused, cocking its head to one side.
Jess held her gaze. ‘Beautiful girl,’ she whispered.
Then the filly trotted unsteadily around to face its mother again, displaying a white snowcap marking over the rump of its chestnut body.
Jess felt a rush of joy. For that brief moment, while the little animal stared into her eyes, all the fractured and broken pieces of her soul came back together, making her feel complete. She was connected to something again. Somehow this filly was a part of her. It was bizarre.
‘She’s a little Appaloosa,’ said Rosie. ‘Her colour was a complete surprise to her owners. They thought the mare was just a solid colour, but if you look, she’s got a few speckles here and there. Harry reckons she’s an Appaloosa too, but she just has minimal markings.’
‘Why doesn’t Jess name this one?’ suggested Harry. ‘There’s something special about her, don’t you think?’
‘Won’t her owner want to name her?’ asked Jess.
‘Nah, he just wants her registered.’
Jess thought about it. There was indeed something very special about her. ‘How about Walkabout?’ she asked.
‘She’s been walkabout all right,’ laughed Harry. ‘She gave us a real run-around down on the river flats. We couldn’t find her for days.’
‘That’s a perfect name, Jess,’ said Rosie. ‘We can call her Wally for short.’
‘Walkabout it is,’ Harry said, writing it down. Then he scratched his chin and said thoughtfully, ‘She’s an old soul, that one.’
‘What day was she born?’ asked Jess.
Harry thought about it and said, ‘Last Tuesday, probably . . . no, last Wednesday. That’s right. The mare went missing after the Wednesday feed delivery.’
Jessica’s heart skipped a beat. That was the day Diamond had died. She couldn’t help feeling that there was some weird link between Diamond and the little filly, something Jess couldn’t quite put her finger on, the way she made her feel, the familiarity with which she looked at her. It was haunting.
‘You look as though you’ve seen a ghost,’ said Harry.
‘It’s like she knows me or something,’ said Jess.
‘She’s the pick of the bunch, I reckon,’ he said. ‘Shame I don’t own her.’
Behind Harry, Jess saw Grace crawling on her hands and knees among the herd, gaining the curiosity of one of the more inquisitive foals. She sat cross-legged, letting the foal come up and sniff her head, while she stayed perfectly still.
Rosie shook her head. ‘She’s gonna get herself killed one day.’
While Grace and Rosie decided on their favourite foals and tried to get close enough for pats, and the boys patched up some holes in the fence, Jess couldn’t take her eyes off the chestnut Appaloosa filly.
She walked home that afternoon feeling alive for the first time in days. A million thoughts rolled around in her brain, all leading back to the filly. That funny little look she gave her before she displayed her rump. Jess wanted to go back and see her again. She really wanted to tell Shara about her.
Jess reached for her phone, then realised she hadn’t brought it – and anyway, she wasn’t talking to Shara. She could just miss out!