The Thunderbolt Pony. Stacy Gregg

I say. “He was already called that when I got him. You never change a pony’s name. It’s bad luck.”

      “And you’re superstitious about it, huh?”

      I raise an eyebrow, as this seems like a dumb question. I am superstitious about everything.

      “What sort of riding do you do with Gus?” Willard asks.

      “He’s really good at cross-country,” I say. We’ve jumped one-star fences at home, which is really big for a 14.2 pony. I think he’s good enough to make Eventing Champs.

      “His actual competition name isn’t Gus. It’s Pegasus. I just call him Gus for short.”

      “Pegasus!” Willard Fox exclaims. “Nice. Like the horse in the Greek myth?”

      “Well, Pegasus was white and Gus is kind of, well, he’s dapple-grey,” I say. “And so they’re the same except the Greek Pegasus had wings and he was born from the neck of the Medusa to be the carrier of thunderbolts for Zeus.”

      Willard Fox looks impressed. “So you know your Greek gods?”

      “We’re studying them at school.”

      I thought Willard Fox would be different from this. A psychologist should have a white coat or a stethoscope or something. Willard Fox wears a plaid shirt and jeans and his hair sticks up all scruffy and he’s got this smile that takes up his whole face. He gives me one of his big grins when he says, “You must be really upset to be missing school,” but I don’t smile back.

      “I’d rather be in school,” I say.

      “Really?” He doesn’t look at all offended, he just shrugs it off. “OK, cool. So this whole psychologist thing is all your mum’s idea, huh?”

      I don’t reply.

      “So why don’t you want to be here, Evie?”

      “Because,” I say, “I don’t even have OCD.”

      Willard nods. “Fair enough,” he says. “Tell me, why are you so certain, Evie, that you don’t have OCD?”

      I frown as I think about this. “Well, I don’t ever care if my hands are dirty.”

      Willard nods thoughtfully. “So that means you can’t have OCD, right? Because people with OCD are clean freaks, right? They wash their hands all the time and they keep things totally neat. And they say things like, “Oh, I simply have to keep the kitchen spotless because I’m sooooo OCD!”

      He waves his hands about theatrically as he says this and I can’t help laughing.

      He sees me laugh and he smiles too and his goofy little-kid grin takes up his whole face again.

      “Evie,” Willard Fox says, “it’s not about being a neat freak. There are lots of different ways to be OCD. So tell me about you. Let’s talk about what you do.”

      Then there is this enormous vacuum in the room where I say nothing for ages and Willard Fox just sits there and he says nothing too. And he waits and waits and when I speak at last my voice is all trembly.

      “I count things …”

      ***

      I shine my torch into the darkness in every direction but I can’t see Gus and I am just thinking I should give up when Jock, who is still glued to my side, lets out this low growl.

      “What is it?” I say.

      Jock growls again, and this time it’s in the back of his throat, and the growl gets lower and lower until it becomes a bark.

       Grr-woof, grr-woof!

      I put my hand down to touch him and realise that the hackles have risen up on the back of his neck. Does he sense that Gus is near or is it something else? “What’s up, Jock?” I ask him.

      The only time I’ve seen Jock act like this is when an aftershock is coming. And so I brace myself for the boom and the rumble beneath my feet, but then when it doesn’t come and he’s still growl-barking I know there is something out there. It must be Gus.

      Jock tenses up. He wants to go, but I’m worried I’ll lose him too! I grab his collar to hang on to him and he strains against my hand as I take the rope that I pulled down from the tree and I tie it on to him.

      A Border collie knows one hundred and sixty words. I remember Dad telling me that. I’ve always wondered how many words Jock really knows. I know he knows my name, and his. I’m pretty certain too that he knows “Gus”.

      “Jock,” I hold his muzzle in my hands as I speak to him. “Go. Find. Gus.”

      When I let go of him this time, I feel the rope go taut in my hand and he pulls me forward with a lurch. I stumble to keep up and I train my torch beam on to Jock’s back so I can follow him. I’m surrounded by darkness except for his blurry black and white form that moves ahead of me through the void.

      The rye grass is long and damp from evening dew and I feel wetness seeping through above the top of my riding boots as I half walk, half jog to keep up with him.

      I can feel the anxiety creeping up on me, making my pulse race. I hope the braids in Gus’s mane have held. I can’t do anything about them now, but there are other rituals I can do. I could stop again and arrange the contents of my backpack to squash the anxiety back down. But I push through the fear and keep going, even though my mind is racing with thoughts like What if we get lost? Then we’ll never find our way back and Moxy will end up trapped in the tent alone and she’ll be stuck in there forever and she’ll starve and die …

      … and just as I’m running all the worst-case scenarios through my head and I’m about to lose it, Jock stops running. He freezes in front of me and the hackles on his neck stiffen straight up and he starts barking his head off. But when I shine the torchlight ahead of us, there’s nothing there!

      What is he going on about?

      “Gus?” I call out.

      “Gus!”

      I shift my torch to the left and there in the clean, white beam of light he stands facing us. His white face is dappled like the moon, dark eyes reflecting and unblinking.

      If I had hackles like Jock, they would rise on the back of my neck too. Because the eyes captured in my torchlight are not the ones I expected. The fur is grey like Gus, but the face is broader and coarse, and gleaming above his temples there are two sleek, hard horns, lethal and as highly polished as sabres, curving and sharpening to a brutal point on either side.

      Jock growls and the creature returns my dog’s warning with a threat of his own – a deep, indignant snort expelling streams of mucus from his nostrils.

      This is not my horse. Not Pegasus at all, but the Minotaur. I am staring at the face of a great, white bull.

       CHAPTER 4

       The Sacrifices

      The white bull stares back at me, his eyes boring down my torch beam. For a moment, we hold each other’s gaze. And then I run!

      Almost immediately I know it’s the very worst thing I could possibly have done. Idiot! I curse myself for turning my back on him. But the fear is so deep and so primal, I’m not thinking, I’m just falling and getting up again and scrambling for my life, running through the deep grass and then tumbling forward, down on my hands and knees, panting and sobbing, as I try to escape.

      I can hear Jock behind me and he’s barking his head off! He didn’t run after me. The herding dog blood is so strong in him, he’s instinctively turned to face the bull. I’ve seen him do it before. Once he dominated a whole stampeding dairy herd and turned them round by holding his