Liberty and the Dream Ride. Stacy Gregg

betrayed his lack of breeding. He had spent most of his life sleeping rough without so much as a rug, even in winter. He had never been pampered and he certainly wasn’t accustomed to being on fancy jet planes. And yet, of all the three horses, he was the one that had coped the best with this epic journey. He had settled immediately in his stall and during the course of the trip he’d eaten his way through a miraculous eight netfuls of hay and kept the two grooms assigned to his care constantly on their feet with his antics and demands.

      “He’s a real comedian,” the groom with bushy eyebrows said as he offered the skewbald water from the bucket he was holding. He stood and watched the gelding make a fuss, snorting and blowing theatrically as he drank.

      “Did you see the way he swiped my sandwich out of my hand this morning?” the other groom, a sandy-haired man replied. “Man, he is one cheeky pony! I’m really gonna miss the little fella.”

      “Well, I ain’t gonna miss him!” The groom with the bushy eyebrows glared at the skewbald. “He pick-pocketed my cellphone when I was doing up his halter and he bit the aerial off before I could get it back again!”

      “What breed do you suppose he is, anyway?” The sandy-haired groom, whose name was Clement, leant up against his stall and stared at the skewbald. “He don’t look like no purebred I’ve ever seen.”

      The bushy-browed groom was called Harrison. He eyed the skewbald warily before stepping forward to lift the clipboard down off the wall to examine the pony’s paperwork. “It says here he’s a Blackthorn Pony,” he replied. “Now what in the blue blazes is a Blackthorn Pony?”

      “I’ve heard about them,” Clement said. “They’re from New Zealand, a wild breed from the hill country near Gisborne. They’re small, just like this little guy here, but they’re bred to jump.”

      “Well this one must jump pretty darn high,” Harrison said, “because it says here that he’s travelling to Lexington for the Kentucky Three-Day Event.”

      “You’re kidding me!” Clement said. “That’s a Four-Star competition! The best eventing horses in the world are going to be competing at Kentucky. That’s no place for a little guy like this.”

      The bushy-browed man shrugged. “I ain’t arguing with you, Clement, but that’s what it says on the forms.”

      Clement gazed at the skewbald and shook his head in disbelief. “What kind of a crazy man takes a pony like this to a competition like that?”

      Harrison examined the skewbald’s paperwork. “Not a man,” he said, “a girl.”

      He peered at the papers. “This pony’s owned by some teenager and she’s requested fast-tracking through quarantine because she’s planning to ride him in a week’s time in the Four-Star.”

      “So you’re telling me that a teenage girl is riding him at Kentucky?” Clement said. “All right then, what’s the name?”

      “It says here the pony is called Comet.”

      “No, no,” Clement shook his head. “Not the pony’s name! I mean the girl! What’s the girl’s name?”

      “Oh, right.” Harrison shuffled through the papers once again. “Here it is!” he said at last. “The rider’s name is Brown… Isadora Brown.”

      Isadora Brown stood on the tarmac at Los Angeles Airport, shielding her eyes with her hands as she peered into the sky.

      “I hope he’s OK, Tom,” she said to the tall man with brown curly hair standing beside her. “You know what Comet’s like. He’s not used to standing still for more than a minute. He’s probably tried to jump out of the shipping stall by now. Eleven whole hours in a plane is going to drive him insane…”

      “Issie, relax!” Tom Avery said. “He’ll be fine. Have you ever known Comet to be fazed by anything?”

      “As long as there’s food he’ll be happy,” Stella agreed. “That pony is ruled by his stomach!” She looked over at Avery. “Do you suppose the horses get to choose what they eat on the plane?”

      Avery frowned. “What are you talking about, Stella?”

      “You know, do they get a menu?” Stella said. “Can they choose, like, the vegetarian option?”

      “Stella, they don’t get served dinner on a tray. All they get is hay,” Avery said. “And do I really have to make the obvious point that all horses are vegetarians?”

      The bubbly red-head was about to open her mouth to speak again before Avery added, “And before you ask an even stupider question, the answer is no, there are no in-flight movies for the horses. It’s a cargo plane, for Pete’s sake!”

      “Poor ponies,” Stella said, “how boring for them.”

      “Hey!” Issie pointed at a plane taxiing towards them. “Look! That must be him!”

      The plane with three distinctive red cubes painted on the tail eased to a stop beside the cargo hangar. Issie wanted more than anything to race out across the tarmac and greet her horse, but she was caged behind the wire fence surrounding the quarantine area.

      Issie groaned. “This is awful, being so close, but not being able get to him!”

      “It’s only another forty-eight hours,” Avery said, “just until he clears quarantine. We’ll fill in the paperwork today and then in two days we can claim him from the stables…”

      Issie was only half listening. She was staring at the crates being forklifted from the 747 on to the tarmac. She’d watched a bay horse and a chestnut being loaded out and now at last she caught sight of a familiar face with chestnut and white patches sticking up over the top of the high walls of the shipping crate. There he was, with his usual cheeky expression, his eyes bright and curious as he checked out his new surroundings.

      “Comet! Over here!” Issie shouted, but her voice was drowned out by the noise of the jet engines. “Comet!” she tried again and this time the pony heard her. His ears pricked forward and he turned his face in her direction and gave a vigorous whinny as if to say “Hey! Here I am! Get me out of here!”

      Comet’s eyes were glittering with excitement, his nostrils wide. He gave another wild whinny and Issie shouted back to him. “Only two more days! I’ll see you soon!” She pressed her face to the wire mesh as the forklift picked up Comet’s crate once more and ferried the shipping stall away towards the hangar at the far end of the runway.

      Issie watched him go, the wind from the jet engines whipping her long dark hair against her cheeks. She felt Avery’s hand on her shoulder. “They’ll take good care of him,” her trainer reassured her. “These international air-transit grooms are experts in equine care, they know exactly what to do. Comet will have lost as much as twenty kilos from dehydration on that flight. He’ll need to drink and eat lots to get over his journey. By the time we get him on Thursday he’ll be fit and ready to leave for Lexington.”

      “Until then,” Stella said, “I say we go sightseeing. I’ve got a map of LA with all the celebrity mansions marked on it. We should go down Hollywood Boulevard and check out the Walk of Fame…”

      She noticed Avery glaring at her. “What?”

      “Stella,” Avery said, “we’re not here on holiday. Kentucky is Issie’s first Four-Star event and as her groom you have work to do. Once Comet is free from quarantine we’ll be on the road to Lexington and we need to be prepared. In just nine days the competition gets underway.”

      “Umm, the thing is, Tom…” Issie hesitated, “we were thinking maybe we could spend a day at Disneyland and—”

      “Disneyland! What the…?” Avery sputtered in disbelief. “Isadora! You’re seventeen years old. This isn’t some pony club rally we’re about to face – this is serious stuff, and you want to take off on a tour of The Mickey Mouse Club? Have you lost sight of how important this is?”