chapter 10
sam and tully
PRINCESS’S mother didn’t come in the morning. She never came.
Winter came instead, a hard winter. The air was cold. Wind blew across the mountains, driving pellets of snow. The trainer blanketed Princess and gave her special vitamins, but she didn’t thrive. Her coat lost its gloss. Her ribs showed. She looked almost ugly, and inside she felt ugly, dull, and hopeless.
The vet came to look at her. He found nothing wrong, nothing physical. He and Roland quarreled. “For heaven’s sake,” the vet said. “Turn her out with the other weanlings. She’s starved for companionship! She needs other ponies.”
“It’s too late. They don’t know her, they’d gang up on her—”
“And she’d get over it! Ponies are tough! You’re treating this one like a porcelain doll. You’re afraid she’ll get scuffed or dirty! And yourself, too. You’re turning into an eccentric old loner, Roland, living way up here in your castle. Get out! See people!”
“People are a mixed blessing,” Roland said in a hard voice Princess had never before heard from him. “Sometimes they give you advice you haven’t asked for!”
“Someone has to!” the vet said.
Roland did not respond. When the vet was gone, he asked the trainer, “Do you know how to give shots, Charlie?”
“I’ve done it,” the trainer said, sounding wary.
“You’re going to do a lot more of it. I won’t have that fellow back on the place, not unless there’s a real emergency.”
Princess was not an emergency. There was nothing wrong with her that a veterinarian could help. But some things did help. The cat came most nights and curled up on her back to warm his toes. His purr and body heat pressed through the blanket and made her feel…not good, but better.
She felt better, too, when Roland was there. He spent hours with her, though the cold air didn’t improve his health. He wore a warm coat and scarf, and a bright red wool hat with a pom-pom on the top. Still, his breathing changed after a few minutes outdoors. He coughed frequently, and the trainer’s wife often wondered aloud why he didn’t winter in Florida. “We’ll look after things here,” she said.
“Princess needs me,” he always answered.
“He’s out there talking to her,” she reported to her husband one morning. “He’s telling her stories, just as if she were a child!”
Not exactly. The old man fed Princess sugar lumps out of his hand, not ordinary white cubes, but lumpy golden-brown ones, the kind that fancy restaurants served. He rubbed her neck, and he apologized.
“The name brought bad luck. I didn’t mean it that way. It just seemed right—but princesses lead difficult lives. It’s lonely at the top. If I’d turned you out with the rest of them, you and your mother, things would be different now. But I couldn’t bear to, and…well, let’s get through this winter, and we’ll see what spring brings.”
RAE’S class welcomed two new students after February vacation, Sam and Tully, twins. Sam’s red hair hung on each side of her face like ironed curtains. Tully’s red hair curled and bounced and frizzed. Sam had brown eyes. Tully had green eyes. Everybody wanted to be friends with them, but at lunch the first day, they asked Rae to sit with them.
“You don’t talk as much as everybody else,” Tully said. “We think that’s interesting. So—here’s what you need to know about us.”
Sam said, “We have plans. I’m a writer.”
“And I’m going to be a scientist,” Tully said.
A writer? A scientist? Rae loved books, but she didn’t imagine writing them. She liked knowing all about ponies’ bones and minds and insides, but most science had nothing to do with ponies.
But she liked Sam and Tully anyway—or thought she was going to—and they were waiting for her answer. “I’m going to have a pony,” Rae said. Her face got hot. It wasn’t the same thing, was it? Now they both were looking at her, heads tilted.
“Why a pony?” Sam asked.
“Not to be critical,” Tully said. “But a pony’s just a little horse, right?”
“A kiddie version,” Sam said. “Why don’t you want a real horse?”
It was a question Rae was asked often. Each time, she stumbled over the answer. Now, with Sam’s brown eyes and Tully’s green eyes watching her, she dug deeper.
“Because—look, people think ponies are cute and not serious. But ponies are tough! They live longer than horses. They get fat on hardly any food. They’re fast and strong, and they have a different kind of mind. Ponies don’t panic. They think. They take care of themselves. A horse is like an over-grown pony. Thinned out, kind of.”
“Like punch after the ice cubes melt,” Tully said. “Okay. We get it.”
“When you have your pony, what will you do with it?” Sam asked.
“Take…care of it?” Rae said. That was a thin answer. It didn’t explain why I’m going to have a pony was the first thing she’d wanted them to know about her. She did want to ride her pony. It was important. But not the most important thing. Having, living with, knowing, loving—that was what it was about.
“It’s simple,” Tully said. “She’ll be complete. We all have something we’re hungry for. I want to know things. You want stories. And Rae has a lost pony twin somewhere. When she finds it, she’ll finally be her whole self.”
“Are you sure you’re not the writer?” Sam asked. “Because that’s a great story!”
Sam was right. What Tully had just said was Rae’s true story, said in a way she had never thought of before. Nobody had ever understood her as well or as fast as Sam and Tully did.
“The thing is, we can’t afford a pony yet,” she said. “It might be a long time—and what if I get too tall?” It was her greatest fear.
They looked at each other, a twinny thing they did. “I need to meet your family,” Tully said. “Ask us over to your house.”
When that happened, a few days later, Tully looked Dad over. She asked to see photo albums. “Is that your mother?” she asked. “Are those your cousins?”
The next Monday at school she announced, “Good news! I’ve been studying the genetics. There’s almost no chance of you getting tall. Your family is all small, especially the women.”
“Thank you,” Rae said. Gammer had hinted as much, but without the backup of science.
“Do ponies come in different sizes?” Sam asked. “What’s the biggest a pony can be?”
Rae explained that ponies had to be smaller than fourteen and a half hands. Then she explained that a hand was four inches. Tully did the math. Fifty-eight inches.
“—and that’s at the withers,” Rae said. “The part of a pony’s back, just behind the neck.”
“And fifty-eight inches is okay?” Sam asked. “Or do ponies get less good as they get bigger?”
“Bigger is better, if you can only have one,” Rae said. “If I get a big pony, I never have to outgrow him.”
“And he’s a him?” Sam asked. “Does it have to be a boy?”
“I always say him,” Rae said.
“So he’s a boy,” Tully said. “Fancy? Or not so fancy?”
“We can’t afford fancy,” Rae said. “I’ll fancy him up by the way I take care of him. Like Dad. He makes sculptures out of things people throw away—”
“Wait, those sculptures are made out of trash?” Sam said. “I knew they were cool, but I didn’t know they were that cool! You have to invite us to your house again!”
“Besides—pie,” Tully said. “When does your grandmother get back?”
“In the spring,” Rae said.
Which came sooner than she expected this year. Time went faster when there was someone to read books with, and do chemistry experiments with, and educate about ponies. Tully and Sam were town girls. “I don’t see us riding, ever,” Sam said. “But we want to know all about it, because ponies are your art.”
“And your science,” Tully said.
“Yes,” Rae said. “Thanks.”