Every night Choopa dreamed the same dream. In it, he was galloping down a steep snowgrass slope, answering Dandaloo’s call. Where he stopped beside her, some little five-petalled, creamy, waxen stars were flowering out of cushions of brilliant green leaves in a trickle of water below a snowdrift. Each night, in the dream, he rubbed his head against Dandaloo’s outstretched nose, and then put his own nose down to the waxen stars and a marvellous scent rose around him.
The dream was for the night. By day he was still a prisoner, being taught to trot and canter round the yard on a long lunging rein. Sometimes, feeling desperate, he would stop, refuse to move and stand, legs planted and neigh, calling his misery to the empty sky. Then Franz would indicate that he must trot on and when he obeyed, Franz would praise him and give him some carrot, rub behind his ears and soothe him, until the dreams of rolling snowgrass hills faded.
Once Choopa fell over his flying forelegs and immediately somersaulted to his feet. Franz was there beside him in a second, offering him a carrot. Choopa learnt that it was not only young animals and other horses that enjoyed his somersaulting tricks. He somersaulted once on purpose, and got another carrot — he was certain, then, that Franz appreciated his cleverness.
Choopa soon learnt that Ludwig, the big white horse whom Franz called Ludo, loved Franz dearly, and he was amused — and pleased — when Ludo came shyly over to share the carrots. Ludo was a nice friendly animal and they shared the lucerne hay which Franz brought them. After a while they started lying down close together to sleep.
In every evening performance, Choopa was let into the ring soon after the camels. The camels loved to dance to music. They took no notice of the little dwarf who danced in amongst them, and Choopa took no notice of them.
After a few times of seeing Franz standing with Ludwig near the entrance, by the brightly coloured ropes that fenced the ring, and then Franz walking out to take hold of his headstall when the music was finished and give him some carrot, Choopa would start towards them, waltz up to them and then walk the last few yards on his hind legs. The clapping of the crowds of people in the ‘Big Top’ did not worry him. He simply bowed to Franz, touched noses with Ludo as they shared carrot, and let himself be led out.
Once he looked up at the crowd, and he really did not see them because the last dying notes of the music seemed to fade into the sound of the Snowy River running over granite rocks. Then, just for a moment, he did focus on a face looking at him from a front row, but his vision changed to a picture of Lake Albina, diamond blue, and he felt himself galloping down a snowgrass slope, as in his dreams, but then he plunged into the ice-cold water.
It was as though he felt the bite of the cold water around those short legs, and then his heart started thumping. There was Franz’s hand on his neck. It was all a dream. He was not in the mountains, standing in water that had once fallen as great, star-shaped snowflakes — snow clothing the mountains in white.
Choopa’s dreams might fade with daylight, but they were always there, at the back of his mind.
Each time the great tent with its red and white striped roof was taken down, and all the animals put in their cages and trucks, he became so restless that he could not do his tricks, but gradually even that restlessness quietened.
Franz petted the two horses — the dwarf and the tall white one — more and more, as though he knew that something within Choopa was almost breaking and the only way to save a breaking heart was with love.
Choopa was learning the capriole, the wonderful leap through the air — forelegs bent under the chest and hind legs extended — an act of marvellous grace when executed by a perfect white Lipizzaner stallion, in the riding school of the Hofburg. When the ugly little dwarf sprang, stretched out horizontal to the ground, the message was something other — it was a desperate, airborne leap towards a wild and lovely land. The longing of the little horse was surely visible for those who had the eyes to see.
It was only when he was waltzing that Choopa could give himself over completely to the swaying music and, at the same time, hear that other music of his dreams. He imagined that it was on the shores of Lake Albina where he danced, or on the high ridge above the Blue Lake with wind-driven clouds sometimes folding around him. Sometimes it was that crescent pass above the Snowy River and there was the drifting music from below, and the song of the Snowy River rising to the sky.
One night he had walked and leapt and danced on his hind legs so beautifully that there had been no laughter at the sight of the queer little blue and white dwarf, only clapping. Once more, Franz, giving carrots and praise, had fixed glittering tinsel above the small hooves for another performance, and Choopa could see his own flying legs shining in the myriad of lights. He had no idea how exciting and marvellous it looked to all the children who were watching. To him, it might be spray from a freezing mountain lake.
In the front row, that face watched him once more.
They were on the move again, next morning. While all the packing up and fastening of cages was going on, Choopa could hear Franz and the circus owner talking, but did not know what it all meant except that he knew Franz was anxious.
‘Not next stopping place,’ the owner was saying, ‘but the one after that … special request … it’ll be all right.’
Then Franz said: ‘I tell you, there were others after him, not only me.’
‘Don’t worry, we’ll make sure it is okay.’
On and on, the circus rumbled, from town to town, and summer was rolling towards winter when the ice trees would play their wind-chime music and old dreams would sing in the streams beneath the snow.
Choopa could not lay still. Surely he must dance upon the mountains like a flame.
It was a longer journey than usual. When at last they stopped, Choopa followed Ludo out of the float and into their yard. There was the same fence set up as usual, and the heap of lucerne hay that Franz always put for them. He and Ludo walked stiffly towards it and began to eat.
There was something different — Ludo did not seem to notice it. Perhaps it was the unusually cold air. Presently they lay down together and went to sleep. Ludo did notice that his miniature friend was restless all night long.
In the morning when Franz came to lunge him, Choopa felt too tired to move. Perhaps he had been galloping all night long — not only dreaming it. Just when Franz led him forward to practise the capriole and persuade his tired forelegs to bend up under his chest and his hind legs to stretch out towards heaven and earth, three black cockatoos flew with their slow wing-beat, right across the circus, there on the fringe of the town.
Choopa stopped still, remembering the three black cockatoos that flew towards the white disc of the old moon, promising him something. Then he took a few cantering steps and leapt, horizontally above the ground, stretching out towards a blue line of hills.
Franz rewarded his beautiful act, and bent down to put his arms around the little blue and white neck, as though he, Franz, were in his long ago boyhood in Vienna, hugging one of the great Lipizzaner stallions.
That night, as Franz and Ludo stood with Choopa, waiting for the music to begin playing the waltz that Choopa found irresistible, Choopa saw, out of the rows of children’s faces, a man’s face which he seemed to have seen before, then it was lost in the movement of the audience finding seats.
Franz fixed tinsel round Choopa’s pasterns, just above the hooves. The music started. This time the lights went out in the tent, except there were spotlights, illuminating Choopa and letting the camels move like half-seen ghosts. Choopa danced, barely aware that he was in a circle of light, surrounded by darkness, each foreleg making a glittering, shimmering movement, as though borrowing light and time from stars’ intricate patterns. It meant nothing to Choopa that his feet were making these shining patterns. He was dreaming of a circle of young animals whom he wanted to entertain, so he somersaulted and executed caprioles.
There was a hushed silence for a moment, beneath the Big Top, and Franz began leading his two horses out before the roars of applause could frighten Choopa. Then he gave them carrots as they walked towards their yard and their bran mash.
In the dark of the night a man came creeping — a quiet man with a memory of a cap and bells of fire, and a vision of a minute blue horse dancing in Lake Albina. His fingers had no trouble in unlocking the bolts that held the yard gate securely.
Was it a neigh coming from far, far away that Choopa heard? Surely he was not just imagining Dandaloo’s neigh?
Choopa stepped out of the yard and walked quietly through the cages and trucks. Not one animal stirred, not even a chattering monkey gave him away. Then he was out in a big paddock, some distance from the lights of the town, and that far away neigh was insistently calling.
How would he know where to go, except where the night breeze blew him? Would he just follow the call of the hills, and would that neigh keep calling him?
The Quiet Man had been sure that the little blue dwarf would find his own way — hide himself by day, travel at night.