Choopa saw his own faint, diminutive moon-shadow, as he trotted on through the cold, crisp night. He knew exactly which way to go. The mountains called him and the call echoed through every part of him, flesh and blood and bones, and perhaps it was to his spirit that Dandaloo’s barely heard neigh called and called.
As the sky began to go grey with the first light, he searched for a good hiding place in thick forest, and there he crept under a big fallen branch and some bushes and hid till the day was past. It was three black cockatoos which showed him a hidden track to water, when he grew unbearably thirsty before nightfall.
Strange little dwarf horse, loving his mountain land with every part of his trembling body. Some inner compass told him where to go and where to hide — how, in fact, to make his way towards the high mountains, towards those lakes.
The Quiet Man, who had undone the bolts of his yard, had quite certainly known that nothing — neither man nor dog — would prevent him from getting home.
Franz, too, when he found the bolts undone, had known that his little horse — his Pferdl — would unerringly find his way home. In fact, Franz, so afraid that Choopa’s spirit might be broken by his grief and his longing, had almost wondered if he had undone the bolts himself, in his sleep. How stupid it had been to bring Choopa to this town in the foothills of the mountains, to make his longing unbearable.
Choopa went on through the bush, moving quietly, listening for any sound of danger, finding the shrubs which Dandaloo had taught him to eat, drinking at the fresh, cold streams. At last he came to grassy, bare hills, and the grass was springy snowgrass. Far away, he heard that neigh again — Dandaloo calling her dwarf son back to the mountains that were his heritage.
On and on he went till, at evening, he came to a great river, ice cold and swift. He put his nose in to drink, and the song that river sang was the one he loved. He walked into the current, felt its pull on his legs, then he sank his nose in further. Deep did he drink at the Snowy River.
He found a wide, shallow place where the water rippled over small stones, and where he could cross quite easily, watched only by the glittering stars. He splashed his way through the river and up the gentle, sandy bank into his beloved mountains. So good did it seem to be in his own world, that he suddenly did a dancing courbette, putting his weight on his lowered haunches, as Franz had taught him.
Far away there came that neigh again, and he would have answered it, but he knew he must preserve himself from danger till he got further and further from the world of men. Another night’s journeying and by then he might find Dandaloo …
He dropped to his forefeet after a few more dancing steps and realised a small possum was watching him, and he felt a longing for all those young animals who were his friends, near Quambat Flat, and wondered if they would be there to greet him.
Would he ever be safe there again? But it was the high country around the lakes about which he kept dreaming. Surely it was there from whence came Dandaloo’s call.
He slept during the next day, in a round grove of snow gums, and hidden by heath bushes. A rat came and looked at him, seeming to be unable to decide what this very small blue and white animal was. A dingo bitch with two pups came walking by at nightfall. The pups pulled at his mane and tail.
Choopa shook them off playfully, and did a somersault to please them and also as a celebration, because he was so nearly at his journey’s end.
The bitch and her pups followed him while he climbed a steep snowgrass slope. The moon rose high above as he neared the top of the hill.
Engraved on Choopa’s mind was an ever-repeated dream which was always evoked when that distant neigh of Dandaloo’s seemed to sound. In this dream he saw Dandaloo, her head bowed with grief, standing on top of a bare mountain, calling him. Then, in some way, she seemed to fade and become part of the mountains — blue roan mare becoming granite rock and snowgrass, even sometimes becoming the blue of the Blue Lake. Somehow she became all of the mountain country which his love encompassed — all that had created him. But now, Dandaloo’s misery seemed to vanish, in his vision, and she became an image of joy.
So he climbed on, up the mountain, leaping and bounding.
She was not there, on that next hill top, but still her call sounded, even more real. He knew he would find her. And Choopa did another courbette for joy, on a snowgrass knoll, high above the Snowy River.
There he danced, as the moonlight flooded the mountains, imagining music, sometimes waltzing on the snowgrass — strange little wraith with moonlight shining on his white patches and the night darkening his blue, the star-filled sky making him so small, moonlight giving a strange beauty to his flying legs and rather too big head.
So the dwarf horse, whom other horses often thought was so ugly, danced as a gift to an old blue mare, whom he knew was somewhere just ahead, and to the mountains of which they were both a part.
Onward and upward Choopa climbed — to the great, high, domed summit of Mt Twynam. Suddenly, he knew that Dandaloo was close and there, on the very top, he did a magnificent flying capriole just as Dandaloo appeared looking as though formed of starglow and night sky.
She gave a neigh of joy, and Choopa dropped on to his four feet beside her, nose touching nose, the old blue mare and the foal that had once seemed ugly. Round and round each other they romped, rubbed their heads together and romped, and then they galloped and bucked their way down Evidence Valley, right on to the ridge that makes one arm stretching along beside the Blue Lake.
What was it that created the moonlit splashing in the Blue Lake at midnight? Did an owl see the blue roan mare? Did a burramys possum see the dwarf brumby galloping to join his mother, somersaulting down the ridge where the golden everlastings flowered? Who but the stars and the moon had seen them plunging together into that great, deep lake which once had been filled with solid ice.
Birds and giant gliders must have taken the news through the bush; the news that Choopa, the jester, was free, out in the bush again, out in the mountains.
Blue Lake, Lake Albina, the Ramshead Range and Dead Horse Gap, where once a man’s hands had reached out of the mist trying to catch and to hold, yet also where the dance and the circle of young animals had cast a spell, in all these places something — trees, water or wind — seemed to whisper of the magic dancer.
It was Dandaloo who was kept wondering what the future held. She looked forward to finding Son of Storm, who was so calm and brave. Choopa, leading Dandaloo, simply went on travelling by night as though man was his only danger. He just had a tremendous urge to go back, perhaps just for once, to Quambat Flat — to see all the young animals that were in his circle and then … then what? The high country, the canyons, the tumbling streams, the lakes?
At sunset, in the spring, up in the high mountains there would be the scent of the mountain ash trees, rising up in the gullies; and in bad weather the black cockatoos would scream. Dandaloo would be with him, and for her he would dance on a bare mountain top — for Dandaloo, the moon and the stars.
On they went through star-bright nights, brushing through the last flowering of white heath. Once at sunrise they walked down a field of golden everlastings where a host of golden butterflies rose like a cloud. They flew up all around Choopa and he reared up and played among them. There was no one except Dandaloo to see the loved and famous circus dwarf aglow with golden butterflies, more lovely than any tinsel.
There were brumbies in the Cascades, but all of them were grazing at the topmost end of the valley. Dandaloo and Choopa cut across the lower end, just before sunrise, and found a good hiding place among the huge mountain ash above the Murray River, and there they slept for the daylight hours, grazing occasionally on the shrubs that grew around the massive tree trunks.
They were not very far from Quambat Flat. They would pass the head of the Ingegoodbee River, skirting the old tin mine huts and yards. No smoke went up from the chimneys; there were no hobbled horses in the paddock.
Choopa knew that the colts who had been born earlier in the same spring as he would have grown on the summer’s sweet, green grass, and the leaves and seed pods of the bushes.
Even with Franz’s carrots and bran mash rewards, and lucerne hay, he had barely grown at all. All the training in the beautiful dancing of the white horses of Vienna which Franz had given him had made him stronger and far more supple; quicker on those strange flying legs that had glittered with tinsel.
Here his legs would shine in moonlight, but the dark of the moon had dimmed the night’s brilliance. It was now, without moonlight, that Choopa and Dandaloo must go to Quambat Flat.
When they got there and searched the length and breadth of it in darkness, there was not a brumby to be found.
Wondering where all the horses had gone, Choopa went up to the top of the clear country again, just to make sure that no horses were hiding on the edge of the forest. No one was there and he started to canter back.
He stumbled and fell, somersaulted and was back onto his feet again, but he stood still because he heard a rustling, and he felt movement. Then suddenly there was a thunder of hoof beats. A big, strong colt stood in front of him, ready to strike. And then out of the bush there came — scuttling, hopping, leaping, hurrying — his friends, with whom he had created his spell from the time he found he could somersault and dance. They rushed up to him now, touching his nose with their noses, or patting him with soft kangaroo and wallaby paws, pushing the aggressive colt away.
Choopa began to spring about with joy. The animals seemed to clear a space around him … and then, as though Franz were there, indicating exactly what he was to do, Choopa leapt into a magnificent capriole there under a darkening night sky on Quambat Flat, with the first stirrings of leaves in a wind making the music for his ‘airs above the ground’. Here there was no fabulous riding school in the Habsburg palace, the Lipizzaner white horses were only there in a dream. Here, only Choopa, the dwarf, almost forgetting his circle of friends, dancing his ‘airs above the ground’ for love, and a gift to the high mountains up above.
Dawn was breaking. Choopa and Dandaloo must not be out in the open in broad daylight for all to see. Even if only Dandaloo were seen by men, now, it would be realised that Choopa was not far away.
Clouds had drifted over the stars in the last part of the night, and the cold was leaden: the sharp bite of frost had gone.
Shadows of big horses seemed to glide through the trees all around the flat, but their footfalls made no sound. There, too, apart from all the shadow horses, were the two silver stallions, kings of Quambat Flat, to greet Choopa and Dandaloo.
Dawn came in showing dark and lowering clouds. It was time to find somewhere to hide.
The first snow of winter came with break of day, falling in great, cupped flakes, like the petals of the windflower anemone that grows beside the summer drifts. It was just a light fall, to coat leaves and tree trunks, to linger on grass stems. It began to melt during the day and then the night brought a hard frost, giving every leaf a globule of ice.
It was cold for the man who was camping away from a hut. He had a fire, and the flickering light from his fire made the ice on the leaves glitter and gleam. Before he got into his sleeping bag, he put a few little heaps of carrots around about. He had no lasso, no halter, nothing with which to catch a brumby, nor did he intend to do so, because a man who loves a wild horse that he is training knows when the spirit within that horse has almost reached breaking point, and he would never wish to break its spirit.
Sometime, in that night’s wandering, Choopa and Dandaloo got the scent of a dying fire. Curiosity kept nagging at Choopa, and he traced the scent of the fire till he found the first small pile of carrots.
He gave a queer little sigh, and ate them.
He looked at the shape in the sleeping bag. There was another heap of carrots. Choopa, with profound trust, sniffed closer, finally sniffed near the sleeper’s face. There were carrots quite close. Franz’s eyes opened as Choopa’s whiskers lightly moved over his cheeks, over his lips. Slowly Franz’s hand moved up to stroke behind Choopa’s ears. Choopa snuffled his face once more, staying while the hand stroked, then he ate the carrots before moving, without a sound, down to the last heap of carrots by Franz’s feet. He ate them and then rose in a perfect courbette, illumined by the frosty stars, saluting the man.
Choopa dropped onto his forefeet and bowed, rose once more like a classic statue against the dark Australian bush. Then he faded backwards, into the forest.
A faint stir of air moved the trees, and the ice music rang.