I didn’t know that my mom’s sedate mare, Cocoa, could jump so high, but there she was, sailing over her pasture fence with at least a foot between her and the top rail. She looked like an expensive show jumper except for her unbraided mane and tail and the expression of horror on her face.
Tumpoo, her moosey pursuer, wasn’t quite so elegant. He scrambled over the fence like a knobbly-kneed, four-legged, spastic spider. Not over the top rail, though – that he simply sent flying with his newly muscled shoulders. On the other side, he straightened his long legs and looked around for his victim. The moment he spied her standing in the middle of the unfenced part of our meadow, desperately seeking a safe place to hide, he bawled with undisguised glee and trotted jauntily toward her.
“Tumpoo!” I yelled in exasperation. “Leave her alone!”
The moose ignored me, but Cocoa didn’t. She spun toward me and with a whinny of relief, sprinted in my direction, whickering for help as she galloped. When she screeched to a halt in front of me, I petted her already-dark-with-sweat neck.
“It’s okay, girl. I’ll save you.”
Cocoa shook her chocolate brown head and snorted snotty flecks all over me in appreciation. I patted her big behind as I stepped past her to face down my once small moose calf.
Tumpoo charged toward me, his mischievous eyes locked on Cocoa, who now trembled behind me, doing the horsey equivalent of praying for the mean moose to go away. His muscles moved like thick, knotted ropes beneath his glossy fur, and for a moment I wondered how it had happened so fast. He used to be so little and cute, so delicate and frail. My baby was growing up.
I pulled myself out of daydream land and waved my arms. He didn’t slow down. I yelled. Finally he noticed me and stopped – mere seconds before he ran me over, I might add.
“What are you doing, Tumpoo?” I asked, with my hands on my hips in my best imitation of Mom. Maybe if I acted like I had authority, he’d listen.
Nope. He turned and sauntered back to the barn, sending me the occasional sassy look over his shoulder.
It’s not easy having a moose for a pet, especially one who has a tendency to get bored and entertain himself by pushing, pursuing, or being pesky. In fact, he totally reminded me of Twilight, my almost-two-year-old buckskin filly, when she was feeling bratty. The only difference was that Tumpoo was like that all the time, plus with Twilight, I could always eavesdrop on her thoughts to find out what she was doing. I didn’t have that advantage with Tumpoo.
Yeah, I can understand horse thoughts. Yeah, it’s weird. I’ll talk more about exactly how weird later.
But right then I didn’t need to read Tumpoo’s mind to know what he was thinking. If I was going to ruin his game with Cocoa, he’d find something else fun to do – something even more destructive and irritating, no doubt. That’s the thing about wild animals. They not only haven’t learned to be polite, they see absolutely no reason to try. It’s beyond irritating.
Tumpoo doesn’t realize that he’s lucky. Wild moose his age are working all the time: finding food, watching for danger, and learning about survival from their mothers. Tumpoo, on the other hand? Well-fed, safe, and all too free to use his vast energy to keep himself entertained at everyone else’s expense. After I made the woodpile untippable, the front door of our cabin moose-proof, and stopped filling the big water trough so he had nothing to knock over, he simply looked for other forms of entertainment. The barn cats, Socrates and Plato, amused him for about thirty seconds and avoided him after that. Loonie, our ancient German shepherd, just barked at him, which he didn’t like. Mom and I refused to play his striking game with him. For days, Tumpoo wandered around the outside of the cabin, grumpy and beyond bored.
Then one day, he popped out from behind a tree and startled Cocoa, learning by happy accident that not all horses were tougher than he was. Rusty, my gorgeous gray gelding, simply ignored the brat, and if the moose calf threatened to upset his peace, he’d bite him. Twilight went straight to biting. No patient ignoring stuff for her. But Cocoa? Cocoa was a mild mannered, live-and-let-live creature, an eager napper and a reluctant nipper. She couldn’t imagine that Tumpoo would chase her for fun, and was totally convinced that he’d murder her if he caught her.
I turned back to give her a comforting rub behind her dark chestnut ears. She rolled her eyes at me, still a little freaked out. I could only hope that Tumpoo would tire of his bullying soon, because I knew exactly how much stress Cocoa was going through because of him. Her panic and nervousness still jittered through my body like an electrical current. The poor girl.
“Come get some oats, Cocoa,” I said, then sent a faint mental image to her of oats in her stall, hoping to make her feel better. She perked up immediately, and the two of us walked toward the barn. Cocoa lives for oats.
And now about my gift: yes, I can communicate with horses. With Rusty, Twilight, and Wildfire, who is now a wild horse, I can even speak a telepathic language. However, most horses think on too elemental and emotional a level to use words, especially the wild ones who have no contact with humans. This is how it feels to hear them: if a mustang rolls in the snow after a good run, the snow’s delicious coldness lingers on my back, the heat of the mustang’s muscles pulses in mine, the mustang’s enjoyment and pleasure lives in my mind. It’s really cool actually, especially now that I’ve learned to stop myself from being overtaken by their stronger emotions. That part kind of sucked.
Anyway, I’d just started speaking to other horses again – after a bad experience that I don’t want to tell again – and was being super careful to use soft and subtle images. And it was working.
When Cocoa and I entered the barn, Brat, I mean Tumpoo – who had been pushing against the barn stove’s chimney – rushed toward us. Cocoa’s fear lanced into my body, but I was able to push it down right away and it only gave me a glancing blow.
I stepped toward Tumpoo and put my hands out like signs. “Stop!” I commanded, though it sounded more like a panicked shriek.
Tumpoo stopped. Trying to exercise patience with all my might – I mean, he honestly thinks this is fun for everyone – I shoved him over so Cocoa felt safe enough to walk past him to her stall, then I ran to open her stall door before she got there. Of course, Tumpoo followed right behind me at a brisk trot. This was going to be close! Cocoa tossed her head up and looked back with wild eyes as I passed her, then broke into a trot too. I reached the door and jerked it open. Cocoa ducked inside and I slammed the door behind her, bumping her big bum and clipping Tumpoo’s nose.
The moose calf looked at me as if he couldn’t believe I’d ruined his fun again. “You’re coming with me today, you big pest,” I said and gave him a neck scratch, then a hug. “You need to get out.”
No mushy stuff for him. He bumped me away with his nose, then strode down the barn aisle toward the door.
“Stay out of trouble,” I called after him. Honestly, I’d give almost anything to be able to lecture Tumpoo for five minutes and have him understand me. I’d explain a few things to him that would make all of our lives easier. Like, clothes drying on the line aren’t food. The kitchen floor isn’t a bathroom. Cabbages aren’t wild beasts that you need to attack. You are neither a horse nor a predator of horses.
Ready to go? I asked Rusty, who was out grazing. Moments later, I heard hoofbeats, then Rusty and Twilight clattered into Rusty’s stall together. Rusty nickered eagerly. He was so ready to get out. I could hear him thinking that it had been days since he’d been out for a good run. Yeah, two days. And he had his big pasture, so it wasn’t like I was abusing him or anything. But at the same time, I could understand why he loved getting out. I was going to enjoy today too, as much as possible.
I saddled and bridled Rusty while Twilight looked over my shoulder and poked her golden face and jet-black nose into everything I was doing. She was trying to hurry me along, I think.
I didn’t bother putting a halter on her before we left. I needed her to babysit the brat. He’d never come on one of my trips to Kestrel’s house before and Twilight was good at keeping him out of trouble – as long as she could keep out of trouble herself, that is. On the ride over, they could run alongside me and Rusty, and play. They’d both use up some energy and be less destructive while we were at Kestrel’s house, or that was the theory, anyway.
We left the barn and stopped outside the big front window of our three-room cabin, where I yelled for my mom’s attention. She was standing in front of her easel, paintbrush in hand, totally zoned. I yelled again. And again. When she finally looked up – a distant look in her eyes – I pointed at Tumpoo and motioned that he was coming with us, then waved goodbye. Mom nodded absently and looked back down at her painting.
As usual, she was creating another masterpiece; this time a country road lined with autumn trees, their leaves fiery red and dazzling yellow – and hidden in the picture beneath the trees, two weanling deer, just old enough to lose their spots. Mom had told me she was calling this painting “Silent Steps.” I loved it already.
At first, we galloped to use up Rusty’s extra energy, then slowed to a lope. I breathed deeply. This was so awesome. A day away from chores and schoolwork. Yay! I slowed Rusty further and sat back to relax and enjoy the sounds of the birds and other creatures. Twilight and Tumpoo could care less but I knew that winter was coming on and soon most of the birds and insects would be gone. I always missed them. Well, most of them. The mosquitoes I could do without.
I savored the future visit as we meandered along – Kestrel and I were going to have such fun. It had been ages since I’d been to her house. Mom didn’t like to associate with anyone and only made an exception for Kestrel and her family because she was afraid of how strange I’d be if I grew up knowing only her and the animals. Good thing she doesn’t know about my horse-telepathy gift or she’d really freak.
Even though Mom encourages the weekly visits from Kestrel for most of the year and every two weeks in the winter, she hardly ever allows me to visit Kestrel’s house. And Kestrel’s house is so cool! They have a generator that makes electricity. They have a TV and DVD player for movies. And an inside bathroom! We can listen to music in Kestrel’s room with her battery powered CD player. We can fool around with her older sisters’ makeup and jewelry if they don’t catch us. We can eat lots of awesome food. Kestrel’s mom makes the world’s best cakes. Don’t tell my mom.
If I sound a little freakishly excited about Kestrel and her family, it’s just because at home, Mom and I are the only humans. No sisters, no brothers. No dad. Just the two of us, and one of the two of us is very quiet and reclusive – yes, you guessed it – not me. Mom spends hours a day painting or thinking about her paintings or planning her next painting or daydreaming about her paintings. If I hadn’t started talking to Rusty at age three, can you imagine how weird I’d be?
Soon we sped up to a lope again, and next thing I knew, Rusty and I were riding through Kestrel’s massive ranch gate. Tumpoo and Twilight were nowhere to be seen. They’d disappeared on a side excursion while Rusty and I were listening to the birds. I knew they could be gone for hours chasing shadows and exploring, but I didn’t care what they did in the bush, as long as they had fun and didn’t get hurt.
“Evy!” Kestrel was standing on their porch, waving to me. James, her sable and white collie, glided down the steps to greet us. “Hurry!” Kestrel yelled. “I can’t wait any more. My aunt sent me a cool DVD.” Then she turned and bolted back into the house.
Okay. Feeling a little put out that she didn’t come out to the corral to help me, I took my time taking care of Rusty. I removed his tack and made sure he was comfy, gave him a couple flakes of hay, and petted him for a minute, then after one more look at the big gate for my two brats – still nowhere to be seen – I scratched James’s ears and meandered toward the house.
Kestrel stepped out the back door again just as I was climbing the porch steps. “What’s taking you so long? We have show jumping to watch.”
I followed Kestrel through their kitchen, said a quick greeting to Nova, Kestrel’s second oldest sister, who was sitting at the table and grimacing down at a schoolbook, then we trailed into the living room. Kestrel plopped down on their worn out sofa and I sank in beside her. Kestrel clicked “play” on the remote and a gorgeous white horse appeared like a dream, cantering across the television screen, perfectly collected as he approached his first jump – oh, and of course, his rider looked pro too. I always forget to mention the riders.
“I thought you said you waited for me.”
Kestrel looked at me and grinned. “Sorry, had to start. You took too long.”
“You’re so patient,” I said and thought about rolling my eyes, but the horse was too awesome to chance looking away from the screen.
I won’t bore you with the play-by-play of the competition. Just believe me when I say that the horses were stunning, the fences high, the crowds noisy, the riders skilled, and bonus, there was a jump off!
When it was over and I came back to reality, I felt a big empty space in my middle. No, I wasn’t hungry. I just wanted to climb back into that world inside the TV where horses leaped through the sky. Maybe Kestrel and I should get into horse jumping. Twilight would make an awesome jumper when she got older, and in the meantime, Cocoa obviously would. I just had to motivate her by getting a renegade moose calf to galumph along behind us. And that reminded me...
“I wonder if Twilight and Tumpoo got here,” I said, and jumped up from the couch. I hurried back through the kitchen and opened the outside door. Hopefully, they were still in the bush or had just arrived. The last thing I needed was to have them wandering about Kestrel’s ranch yard, completely free to create havoc.
The yard looked empty. Rusty was sleeping in his corral in the shade of the barn. His small pile of hay was almost gone and his bottom lip drooped. His ears splayed side to side. He looked like relaxation itself, only surpassed by James. The collie was a collapsed, slow-breathing mound of white and tawny hair at the top of the porch steps. That meant Tumpoo and Twilight couldn’t be hiding somewhere in the yard. The only way in was through the big gate and James would’ve seen them and barked – especially at Tumpoo, since the calf was a stranger to him, and a moose too. James wouldn’t normally have a lot of moose coming into his yard.
I reached out with my horse mind. Twilight?
Busy.
I smiled. She wasn’t too far away and she was okay. I would be sensing any mishap if it occurred. And they hadn’t gone home. Major relief. Poor Mom needed a break from their antics too.
The door creaked and Kestrel joined me. “Are they here?”
“Not yet, but I’m sure they’re okay.”
“They’re probably having fun knocking down saplings, or chasing poor unsuspecting forest creatures, or having a biting competition.”
I laughed. Kestrel knew them so well.
“Hey, look at this. I forgot.” Kestrel pulled her hair back to show me her swollen earlobe. A glittering blue earring peeped out from the red soreness.
“You got your ears pierced. Ouch!”
My friend grinned. “Yeah. And I got more earrings. Come and see.”
I suddenly sensed trouble. No, not from Kestrel. From Twilight. Just an inkling of worry, a tiny doubt.
But storms start with just one breath of wind.
I followed Kestrel to her room, lifted her cat, Snarly, from her bed and gave him a cuddle, then admired her new earrings – and all the while, attempted to act normal as I tried to understand what was making Twilight nervous. Was a predator stalking them? Was Tumpoo lost?
“We should write to Ally today. Mom is going to town tomorrow and she can mail our letter,” Kestrel said.
“Awesome,” I managed to choke out, as I felt Twilight move closer to whatever it was that was making her nervous. Why didn’t she move farther away? “You do the writing, though. You’re neater than me.”
Kestrel got a paper and pen, and wrote “Hi Ally” at the top of the page, and then the date. Then waited for me to say something.
“Uh, maybe just ask her how she is first? And say something about how cute her new kitten must be.” Just a quick rundown on Ally; she’s my Vancouver pen pal and she’s been doing some investigating for us. The problem is that Edward, Mom’s agent, told Mom last spring that her paintings weren’t selling well anymore. Then Kestrel and I saw one of her paintings hanging on the wall behind a famous equestrienne in Kestrel’s horse magazine. Things weren’t adding up, so we asked Ally to go to Edward’s art gallery. She wrote back to say that my mom’s paintings were super expensive and that Edward said they were selling fast. This didn’t fit with what he’d told Mom, and thus warranted further investigation.
As Kestrel scribbled out a few lines, I reached out again to Twilight, felt her walking, heard the snap of the twigs she stepped on, saw the tree trunks she walked between...
“What next?”
I was about to answer when Twilight reached the edge of the forest and looked across the swamp before her. Nothing there but normal swamp stuff.
Looking for Tumpoo? I asked her.
Twilight took one more step forward and suddenly, Tumpoo came into view at the far end of the swamp, sneaking up behind a massive black cow moose – an unbelievably stupid thing to do!
I stopped breathing. Didn’t he realize that this moose could stomp him into calf jelly?
“Evy, what else do you want me to write?” Kestrel asked again. She was doodling a flower in the corner of the paper.
“Um, what about telling her what we found, in the magazine?”
She glanced sideways at me, suddenly suspicious. “We already did. In the last letter, remember?”
“Oh, yeah. Well, let’s just ask her to do an Internet search on Edward, then.”
“Okay.” Kestrel started to write again.
Tumpoo crept closer to the massive moose cow. Surely, she knew he was there. Why wasn’t she warning him away?
Closer. Closer.
Do something, I said to Twilight. My filly snorted loudly. The noise should have alerted the wild creature to their presence but the cow moose didn’t even look up. Okay, so that meant she was either deaf, which was highly unlikely, or she was ignoring them, probably hoping the calf and horse would go away. Or maybe she didn’t want to waste energy pummeling Tumpoo until he got close enough to be easily pummeled.
Do something else.
What? Twilight sounded a little peeved at me.
“Okay, now what?” Kestrel asked brightly.
Huh? What had we been talking about? “Oh yeah, your earrings look great.”
Kestrel raised an eyebrow. “You want me to write about my earrings?”
“Why not?” I asked, trying hard to sound nonchalant and look unembarrassed.
“Because this letter is supposed to be from you.”
“Uh, I’ll help you in a minute. Be right back.” I’d just had a brilliant idea. If I was in the bathroom, I could concentrate on Twilight, and Kestrel wouldn’t think I was ignoring her.
Kestrel looked at me with amused eyes. “Okay,” she said, her mouth twitching as she tried to control her smile. She thought I was funny, as in odd funny. She knew how much I wished our cabin had an inside bathroom, and thought I was just going to hang out in her bathroom for a while. Like I’d ever done that before – or very much anyway. But now wasn’t the time to correct her misconception.
Luckily, no one was in the bathroom. I turned the lock and slid down the solid wood of the door to sit on the floor, then took a deep breath and re-opened my mind to Twilight.
She was trotting toward the two moose. The massive dark one looked even bigger and meaner as Twilight drew near – and then the long face turned to glare at my small golden filly. Twilight stopped short and I stopped breathing.
Tumpoo, looking miniscule behind the black hulk, didn’t seem to register Twilight at all. Even after she nickered insistently to him, he gave no response, not even an ear flick in her direction. She nickered again. Tumpoo ignored her again. But the big moose didn’t. She shook her head at Twilight and a front hoof struck out, sending water flying. Flies lifted around her in a living cloud.
Two yards behind her, Tumpoo sttrrreeeetttcched out his neck toward her hock, his nostrils wiggling.
Do something! I mind-yelled to Twilight.
What?
I had no ideas either. The adult moose was a lot bigger, tougher, and meaner than Twilight, and on the soft ground of the swamp, probably faster too. The moose could hurt Twilight just as easily and effortlessly as she could Tumpoo.
Someone knocked on the door behind me. “Hurry up, Kestrel!” Nova yelled through the door. “I have to get ready to go.”
Uh-oh.
The big black moose wheeled around and charged Tumpoo so fast that Tumpoo’s eyes bulged from his head. He jumped back and Twilight reared with surprise – and I threw my head back and smacked my skull against the heavy bathroom door. The door rattled almost as much as my head did.
“What are you doing in there?” Nova’s irritated voice knifed through my brain’s pain fog.
Even as Tumpoo raced away from the huge irate moose, my face became hot with embarrassment. Then things got worse.
“Mom! Kestrel’s goofing off in the bathroom!”
A crowd outside the bathroom door. Lovely. I knew nine people in the whole world, and now most of them were going to know that I was completely nuts. Nova would tell this hilarious story to her family over dinner, and everyone would laugh. She’d write a letter to her older sister, who was away at University, to tell her how the neighbor’s kid finally went off the deep end, in their bathroom, of all places.
And Kestrel would decide there were far cooler, less freaky people to hang out with.
And all this because of my gift. Lucky, lucky me.
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