Blaze and the Dark Rider. Stacy Gregg

Francoise said in a syrupy French accent. She smiled coolly as she shook hands with each of them. “I hope you did enjoy the show?”

      “Francoise was one of the riders with the Arabian mares,” Issie explained to the others. “She trained at the Cadre Noir de Saumur in France.”

      “Oui” Francoise smiled. “But that was a long time ago, Isadora. I have been now with El Caballo Danza Magnifico for many, many years. I train all the horses at their riding school back in Spain, and when the school goes on tour I come along too and I ride in the shows.”

      She smiled at Mrs Brown. “Your daughter, Isadora…such a pretty name. She tells me that her horse, Blaze, is very much like my own dancing horses? Is this so?”

      “I expect it is,” Mrs Brown nodded, “but I’m hardly the one to ask. I can hardly tell one end of a horse from the other. It’s the girls that you should be talking to.”

      “Blaze is exactly the same as them!” Stella blurted out uncontrollably. “She is the same size and the same colour and she’s totally beautiful just like them. Honestly! You should see her!”

      “Perhaps I will,” mused Francoise. “Why not? We are in town for several weeks putting on the show It is not far from the city here to Chevalier Point, is it? I will be able to come one day to see you, no?”

      “No—I mean yes!” Issie laughed. “Yes please, Francoise. I would love it if you came to the pony club to meet Blaze.”

      “Then it is a date.” Francoise smiled. “À bientôt! I must go now and help my girls to groom the mares and put them to bed. It can be very tiring when you are doing two shows a day! See you soon.”

      Francoise waved goodbye and headed back towards the stables.

      “Come on, girls, we need to get you home. Look at the time!” Mrs Brown said, holding out her watch. It was five minutes past twelve.

      “Hey, Issie! It’s after midnight. That means it’s your birthday!” Stella laughed.

      “So it is!” Mrs Brown smiled. “OK, let’s go home, birthday girl.”

      Issie paused and stood there for a moment, watching the dark-haired Frenchwoman as she disappeared through the vast stable doors on the other side of the arena. Then she turned and ran to catch up to her mother and her friends. She couldn’t believe she was actually thirteen. It felt different somehow. Something told her this was going to be a very big year.

       Chapter 2

      The first rally of the new pony-club season had finally arrived and Stella was fizzing with excitement. “It’s so great to be back!” she grinned as she tied Coco up next to Blaze underneath the big plane tree at the far end of the Chevalier Point grounds.

      “Coco is totally psyched to be here, aren’t you, girl?” Stella giggled and gave her chocolate mare a slappy pat on the neck.

      Coco, who never got excited about anything ever, looked at Stella with a sleepy expression and immediately shut her eyes and began to doze away in the shade, her tail lazily flicking away the odd fly that happened to buzz by.

      “Yeah, Stella, she’s thrilled,” Issie laughed.

      Even if Coco wasn’t excited by the prospect of the new pony-club season, the girls certainly were. This summer the club schedule was jam-packed and the most important event on the competition calendar was the Interclub Gold Shield.

      The Interclub was a huge event involving all the clubs in the Chevalier district, from Chevalier Point in the north to Garnet Ridge in the south. Teams trained for the competition throughout the season and then the six district clubs competed in the grand event to see who would take away the trophy.

      “St Johns, Mornington, Marsh Fields, Westhaven and Garnet Ridge!” Stella rattled the names of their rivals off by heart.

      “Have you seen the Gold Shield? I’ve seen it. Whoever wins gets all their names engraved on it!” Stella was raving to Issie. “It’s not actually a big gold shield at all—well, it is big, but it’s made of wood and then it has all these little gold shields all over it and each shield has the names of that year’s winners engraved on it. It’s like, centuries old. OK, maybe not centuries, but really, really old. Even Avery has his name on it! He was in the team way back in, like, the seventies or something—”

      “It was 1985 actually, Stella, thanks for making me feel even older than I usually do,” Tom Avery said stiffly.

      “Oh no,” Stella groaned. She hadn’t noticed their riding instructor standing right behind her.

      “Hi, Tom!” Issie grinned. Most of the riders at Chevalier Point were scared of Avery. He had a brisk, authoritative manner. But Issie knew that a lot of his strict attitude was just an act he put on for show.

      Avery loved horses with a real passion. He worked part-time for the ILPH—the International League for the Protection of Horses. It was Tom who had brought Blaze to Issie so that she could be her guardian. She still remembered that day when he turned up at the River Paddock with the sickly, half-starved chestnut mare that he had rescued. Even though Issie was still hurting after losing Mystic she knew immediately that it was her job to nurse this mare back to health. And she had done just that. Blaze was now a beautiful, incredible horse.

      Today, as usual, Avery carried a tan leather riding crop, which he now struck vigorously against his right boot with a loud thwack to get the girls’ attention. “Right. Got yourselves sorted for the first event this morning, I hope? We’ll be fielding a team of six riders at the Interclub, which I will be choosing today…”

      Avery paused for a moment as he noticed Coco dozing next to him. He shook his head, tut-tutted and made an adjustment on the throat lash on the mare’s bridle, tightening it by three holes. “Two fingers,” he told Stella, placing his own two fingers in the gap between the throat lash and the horse’s windpipe to illustrate his point. “Leave no more than a two finger gap on the throat lash…” he trailed off again.

      “Anyway, yes, as I was saying—at the last two Interclubs we have been pipped at the post each time by our archrivals at Marsh Fields. But not this time. This time I mean to choose a team that will win us back that shield and do us proud.”

      He looked Stella in the eyes. “Selection day is serious. I am not in the mood for hijinks today. Are you in the mood for hijinks, Stella?”

      For once the bubbly, freckly redhead seemed to have nothing to say for herself. “Ummm, no?” Stella offered eventually.

      “Excellent, excellent!” Avery smiled at her. “Off we go then. Mount up and round up the rest of your mob. Your groups are all listed up on the walls of the clubhouse so head over there to see who you’re teamed up with. Right? Excellent.” Avery gave the side of his boot one more thwack with the whip for emphasis and then spun about and set off.

      He was only just out of earshot when Stella whacked her leg with her crop just as Avery had done, imitating his gruff voice and barking at Issie, “Are you in the mood for hijinks, Isadora?”

      Issie fell about laughing.

      “What’s so funny?” Kate asked as she trotted Toby over, pulling up to a halt next to Blaze and Coco.

      “Avery,” said Issie. “He’s not in the mood for ‘hijinks’. He’s determined to win the Interclub Shield back again.”

      “Well, I can’t say I blame him,” Kate said. “Marsh Fields have really rubbed it in ever since they won it for the second time in a row.”

      “So Avery is choosing six of us out of the whole pony club?” Issie asked. She felt a sudden tingle of excitement as she realised how much this mattered to her.

      “Eight, actually,”