JESS WOKE to a broad, cushiony muzzle pushing into the small of her back. There was a quiet rumble, and then she felt the hard bone of horse’s nose nudging her.
She opened her eyes and groaned at the nauseating dullness that filled her head. As her vision sharpened she saw a heavily feathered hoof scraping at the ground in front of her. Above her, Rambo looked impatient.
She closed her eyes again and winced as she tried to move her arm. It worked, she realised with relief, but it hurt.
Rambo turned and walked away.
‘Wait,’ she croaked, trying to pull herself up.
The big horse clomped away, his rump swinging from side to side.
Jess stood, nursing her arm. All around, the forest looked the same. She was in some kind of deep gully, with shrubs so thick she couldn’t see beyond a couple of metres. The sky was overcast and she couldn’t tell east from west, north from south.
‘Don’t leave me,’ she called to Rambo, but his pace only quickened.
’Rambo, wait!’
When she caught up with him he stopped and bent his neck around in an arc, placing his head low. She stood to the side of him, put both arms over his neck and let him toss her up. His round back was as broad as a couch under her aching legs. Relieved, she curled her fingers around his mane. Rambo wheeled away at a trot. She didn’t know where he was taking her, but he seemed to be in a hurry.
Rambo’s shoulders dropped suddenly and Jess grabbed at his mane as he plunged into a steeply carved creek bed. Rocks clacked against each other as the big horse found his footing. Jess pushed away the spiky wattle leaves and leaned along his neck, pressing her face into his mane and moving her arms forward to feel the steady thrust of his shoulders.
Beyond the creek, there was movement in the bush. Rambo’s chest rumbled quietly. Soon they were joined by a small brown mare and a matching foal. Other mares, some pregnant, some with young ones, dropped down into the creek bed, pushing a break along the hidden route. No foal cried and no mare whinnied. Barely a branch or twig snapped or a stone turned beneath their hooves. There was just a soft swishing of moving branches, and the steady billowing of the brumbies breathing.
The brumbies travelled like this for nearly an hour until they reached a tiny beach of gravel on the edge of a small pool. Massive, angular columns of rock rose above them. Jess gazed up in awe.
And there the brumbies stopped. They rested as a tight herd, seven mares plus assorted foals, against the tall cliff of jagged granite that rose, perfectly vertical, for hundreds of metres. They were barricaded in by a wall of undergrowth, ti-tree and wattle so dense that Jess wondered how she would ever get out of there. The words of Matilda’s stories floated through her mind.
In a landlocked valley, deeply secret, wild and unclaimed . . .
Jess could hear nothing but the soft breathing of the horses, the wall of stone before them blocking out all other sound. Still, not one of the horses nickered or moved. They stood evenly on four feet, breathing quietly, ears flickering back and forth . . . waiting . . . listening.
When Jess slipped quietly from Rambo’s back they startled, and looked ready to run again. She crouched low, so as not to frighten them. There were palominos and buckskins, creamies and chestnuts, all mares and foals, all staring at her with either one or two blue eyes. Jess felt the skin prickle on the back of her neck.
Saladin’s spirit is born to the blue-eyed brumbies . . . It was a peculiar feeling, having all those eyes staring at her. And she sensed that there were more, hiding, silent, in other small pockets nearby. Jess crept on her hands and knees under the dense scrub and found a small, grassy clearing. Three small brown foals lay curled together with a mare standing over them. Babies. This place was a nursery. She sighed at the wondrousness of it.
The place, so exquisitely special, must be kept secret. But where was their stallion, she wondered? Were they Sapphire’s mares? Or had they belonged to the big golden stallion at the saleyards?
The mare turned an ear towards Jess and lifted her nose. Jess backed away and let the branches fold back, hiding her from the foals again.
As she looked at the brumbies, huddled closely together, she thought of her own horses. They had nowhere near the craftiness of the brumbies, their ability to slither through the bush as though they were a part of it. In a campdraft arena, Dodger was as sure-footed as they came, but through bush like this, he didn’t come close to the brumbies for stealth.
She thought of Grace riding him and suddenly had an uneasy feeling in her gut. What if Dodger went down a wombat hole, what if he stumbled onto rocks, or galloped off a cliff? He didn’t know this country. She silently prayed that he was okay.
Jess looked up at the purple, swirling clouds above and hoped it wouldn’t snow again. How long should she stay down here, in this secret place? She saw there were cracks in the stone above her and it looked as though the cliff might be fairly easy to climb. She took a deep breath and grabbed at a handhold.
The rock was hard and cold, it had no softness to it at all, and she realised it was going to hurt if she fell. A lot. But what choice did she have? No one would find her here; she had to find a way out for herself.
She squeezed inside the narrow gap in front of her and winced when she bumped her hip against a jagged piece of rock. Yep. This was gonna hurt. She kept going, finding a hold, pulling and reaching up with the opposite foot at the same time, ignoring the pain in her arm and keeping the momentum going as much as she could. She knew that once she stopped and had to haul her weight with her arms it would sap her strength, so she kept reaching out, looking for holds, pushing up with her legs and not looking down.
Jess kept climbing until she could barely breathe and a stitch threatened to split her ribs apart. The muscles in her arms and legs burned, but she forced them to keep going until the light lifted and she realised that she was rising above the trees and out of their shadow.
Still she did not look down. Up, up, she went, until she could see the tussocky grasses at the top coming closer. Her legs trembled with fatigue. She was scared they might seize up totally. Small plants grew from the rock, so much softer on her hands and so easy to hold, but she resisted the temptation. If they uprooted she would surely plummet to her death.
Finally, Jess dragged herself onto the top of the cliff and rolled onto her side, chest heaving, heart slamming so hard that she couldn’t move.
She closed her eyes and sucked in the biggest gulps of air she could, to soothe her body, feed it with oxygen, calm it and steady her pulse. For a good ten minutes she lay there, eyes closed, with barely the strength to roll over.
It was her mobile phone that finally roused her. A buzz and rumble. A text message. Without getting up, she shifted and pulled it from her pocket. It was from her mum.
Jess crawled to the edge and looked down. Not far below, the horses were gone. The secret place, it seemed, had closed its leafy doors behind her and it was as though it had never existed. She sat, feeling slightly dazed, and thumbed a reply:
I might be a bit late.
Jess walked away from the cliff face, past stringybarks and grey gums and through broken and parted undergrowth. She found hoof prints stamped on the churned-up forest floor. She followed them, down through a gully and onto a ridge. From there, she looked out over a wide, grassy hollow, dotted with twisting white eucalypts.
There was an explosive crack, and the surrounding hillside suddenly came alive with movement, flashes of white and the steady beat of hooves.
A coloured mare cantered across the open country. She was old and scarred, thin, with a greying brown face. Her brown-and-white sides were wet with sweat and she carried her head low. Beside her ran a knobbly-legged foal, and two blue dogs growled and snapped at her heels. Three horsemen followed, in mustering hats and oilskin jackets, whips cracking alongside their mounts. Their horses were tall and fit and eager, driving the exhausted mare until she could no longer continue.
She came to a stop and stood there heaving, eyes closed, head drooping, while her foal cried and butted and circled her.
The riders tossed ropes around her head and neck and pulled them tight. She was the weakest of the mob, the easiest to catch, but the runners were taking her anyway.
The men and their dogs kept pushing the wretched horse along the flat, in and out of the strappy-leaved lomandra grasses and granite boulders that littered the misty hollow.
Jess followed silently along the ridge-top, watching. What she witnessed next made her boil with anger.