The Thunderbolt Pony. Stacy Gregg

Ocean.

      I can see our farm as I free-fall. The big oak marking out the lawn beside our villa with its green roof and the driveway to the stable block and the steel grey of the milking sheds. It must be almost milking time because the cows are coming in, moving slowly down the track to the shed as Jock, my Border collie, runs behind them. He’s barking his head off and the noise of his bark is almost as loud as the rumble of the earth, and even though I am in mid-air I can still feel everything shaking. The green fields are coming towards me super-fast now and I brace myself. I take a deep breath and prepare for the fact that I’m about to crash-land head first into the ground …

      And then, with a jolt and a heave, I wake up.

      I’m surrounded by pitch black. Something heavy is crushing my ribs and pinning me down, and beneath me the ground is bucking and rumbling with a noise like a train.

      It feels so raw and so close this time in the darkness, lying here on the ground in a pup tent, with nothing between me and the rolling, turbulent earth. It was different in the first quake two days ago. I was asleep that time too and the quake threw me clean out of bed. I remember grabbing my backpack and me and Jock running for our lives as the house collapsed and feeling the cold jolt of realisation that Mum wasn’t with us, then turning back and seeing her lying on the lawn, not moving. That was the quake that destroyed Parnassus and started all of this. The evacuation and my mum being taken away in the rescue helicopter, the others taking the inland road to meet the rescue ship at Kaikoura.

      They all wanted me to go with them, but I couldn’t. I had to make my own way. I chant the names in my head: Parnassus, Hawkswood, Ferniehurst, Hundalee, the Stag and Spey, Kaikoura. This is our journey. Me and Gus and Moxy and Jock …

      “Jock?”

      The heavy weight that’s been squashing my ribs gives a whimper and I realise it’s him on top of me.

      As he struggles to stand up, he shoves his paws deep into the soft bit of my stomach. I give a squeal as his claws dig into my flesh, but before I can push him off me the ground gives another hard buck that throws both of us flat. The impact leaves me winded and I can’t get any breath into my lungs. I begin to hyperventilate and it’s like I’m going to die from not breathing and the more I think about dying the more I can’t breathe and I begin to make these choking, gasping cries.

      You want to know where I am right now on a scale of one to ten, Willard? I am a million!

      And then the ground stops. I lie there, panting like a dog and shaking. My heart is hammering in my chest and I still can’t get any air into my lungs. I’m gulping, trying to make my breath work again. And then my hot skin goes goosebumpy as I feel something cold and hard against my thigh. Torch! I grab for it and as soon as I have it in my hand I flick the switch and suddenly the tiny black space of my pup tent is illuminated. The first thing I see is Jock’s eyes shining back at me in the light and I nearly scream at the sight of him because he looks deranged, all wild and wolfish with his hackles raised. He gives this low, panic-stricken growl, and at the same time another sound choruses in, an awful howling noise like a baby bawling. It’s Moxy. She must still be in here somewhere, but even with the torchlight on I can’t find her.

      “Moxy!” I begin to burrow through the bunched-up folds of sleeping bag.

      “Moxy?”

      Moxy has worked herself head first into the bottom of my sleeping bag. I worry that she’s dug herself in so deep she’s going to suffocate, but when I try to pick her up she hisses and lashes out with a paw, swiping viciously at me. I take her seriously since I still have scars on my arm from the last time. I leave her alone and unzip the tent and squirm out of the flap with Jock behind me and then zip Moxy in. I don’t want her to escape and get lost.

      Outside the tent the night is totally black. There’s not a flicker of light, no houses for miles in any direction. Parnassus is not exactly bright-city-lights, but the hills of Hawkswood are really remote. This is the middle of nowhere and it’s just me and my cat and my dog. And somewhere, out there in the dense black nothing that surrounds us now, is my horse.

      When the big earthquake, the seven-point-eight, shook me out of bed in Parnassus, there was a full moon to see by. Tonight the moon is clouded, the stars seem faint and distant, and the beam of my torch is gutless, so I can’t see more than a couple of metres in any direction. For all I know, the earthquake might have destroyed the land all around me. Maybe everything has slid away and right now I’m perched on a cliff edge. I shine the torch beam as far as it can go and stand rooted to the spot. I turn slowly round, trying to find the tree that I tethered Gus to before I went to bed.

      “Gus?”

      No answer. I keep circling with my torch beam and then I see the tree. The torch beam wobbles as I search for him.

      “Gus!”

      My heart sinks. There’s the branch where I tied his rope off, and the rope too, but I can’t see him.

      My eyes blur with hot tears. I’m having trouble breathing again.

      The rope is frayed at the end where he strained and broke free. I feel bad when I think about how terrified he must have been to destroy the rope. But of course he was afraid. I had Jock and Moxy with me when the quake struck. Gus had no one.

      This is the second time that Gus has been alone when the quakes rolled. The first time was the big one, back in Parnassus. Was it really only two days ago? It feels like a lifetime ago now. When Mum was about to be airlifted to hospital in the helicopter, she told me that Gus would be fine on his own. But she never saw how he was after the first quake struck, the pure terror in him. He’ll be feeling that same fear again right now, and once again I’ve let him down because I wasn’t with him.

      I should have slept with him. Like a Bedouin nomad who brings his horse into his tent to sleep right beside him for safety. That’s what I should have done with Gus.

      He’s an Arab – you’d know that straight away if you saw him, with that delicate dapple-grey coat and skinny ballerina legs and his pretty dished face. I should have taken him inside my tent, except it’s only a pup tent and it’s way too small. It could barely fit me and the dog and cat. So why didn’t I sleep outside under the tree with him? We should never have been apart. This is all my fault. Who leaves their best friend alone like that?

      I shine the torch around again, like I still expect Gus to magically appear beneath the tree. Then I walk back to the tent with Jock hugging so close to me he’s almost wrapped round my thigh. Working dogs usually stick close, but Jock is like glue and I know he’s worried that we’re going to lose each other too.

      “Good boy,” I reassure him with a pat on his head, and then I bend down and unzip the tent very carefully, making the smallest gap possible to let us both back in and at the same time make sure Moxy won’t bolt out. We’ve been through enough in the past few days and I don’t want to lose her again. I want to look for Gus, but first there’s something I need to do. I can see Willard Fox at this moment looking down from the clouds still dressed as Zeus with his beard and everything, frowning as he tells me that OCD is a war. “In a war, Evie, you can’t win every battle. Sometimes you have to accept a loss or two. But you can still win the war.”

      On a night like this, my OCD is too hard to fight. And so I give in to the urges, and once Jock and I are back inside the tent and all zipped up, I begin the rituals.

      I pick up my backpack and undo the side pocket. Then I do up the zip and then I unzip it again. Unzip-zip-unzip and already I feel a lot better. My heart isn’t pounding so hard in my chest any more, but my hands are still shaking as I take the contents out of the pocket and lay them in front of me in the torchlight. There are four items: a gold pen that writes with blue ink, an old takeaway container, a pair of glasses and a pocket notebook.

      Somewhere out there in the dark, Gus is lost and I need to find him. But I can’t go yet. I want desperately to go and search for my pony, but the rituals override logic and compel me to continue.

      I line up the objects like precious artefacts in a museum. I check them and