Liberty and the Dream Ride. Stacy Gregg

and led him out of his stall. She could hear the other horses in their stalls whinnying their goodbyes as she led the skewbald down the corridor of the stable block. Massive electronic gates swung open to let them out into the bright sunshine of the quarantine yard where Avery and Stella were waiting with the rental horse float hitched up to the back of their Jeep.

      “Ohmygod, we’ve been waiting hours!” Stella said as she helped lower the ramp of the horse float so they could load him onboard.

      “Let’s get moving,” Avery told them. “We want to be on the freeway and out of Los Angeles before the traffic gets heavy.”

      The skewbald was looking around the yard, his ears pricked forward. When he saw the rickety horse float that Avery was towing behind the Jeep, however, his ears went back. He refused to step up the ramp and in the end Avery had to place a lunge rope around his rump to urge him onboard.

      “Poor Comet,” Stella said. “I’m not surprised he doesn’t want to get on – look at the state of it!”

      The horse float they’d hired was an ancient contraption. Issie had been quietly horrified when they picked it up from the rental yards yesterday and she saw the peeling blue paint flaking off the framework exposing the rust underneath. There was black lettering around the front of the float that must once have said Horse Star, but a couple of the letters had rusted away so that the sign read Hose tar.

      “What’s a ‘hose tar’?” Stella had wrinkled her nose up.

      “Umm… Is this thing actually roadworthy?” Issie had asked nervously.

      Avery had clambered about underneath the chassis and pronounced the horse box perfectly sound. “It’s not pretty, but it will get us to Kentucky.”

      Now, with Comet finally loaded onboard, they pulled out on to the Los Angeles freeway, and listened as their satnav gave Avery directions through the complicated spaghetti junctions of the city, until finally they were on the open roads of Route 40, heading towards Kentucky.

      By midday the landscape had changed. The houses had disappeared and been replaced by desert. The view out the car windows was like watching a cowboy movie, nothing but dust and cacti as far as the eye could see.

      “You couldn’t keep a horse here,” Stella observed. “This is terrible grazing!”

      She gazed out the window wistfully. “I can’t wait to get to Kentucky to see the blue grass.”

      “What?” Avery looked at her like she was mad. “Stella, Lexington, Kentucky is called ‘bluegrass country’, but it’s a nickname – it doesn’t mean they really have blue grass.”

      “Well what colour is it then?” Stella said.

      “It’s green, Stella,” Avery rolled his eyes. “Just like ordinary grass.”

      “Well that is majorly disappointing!” Stella flopped back in her seat. “I thought it would be like Smurf-land or something.”

      Issie looked at her watch. “What time is it in New Zealand?” she asked Avery.

      “About five p.m.,” Avery said. “You can call your mother when we stop for lunch if you like.”

      Issie looked around at the alien landscape of the Mojave Desert and felt a sudden pang of homesickness for her old life in Chevalier Point. She felt a bit weepy for a moment, but she knew she was just exhausted because of jetlag. She was still having trouble sleeping at night and kept waking up, sitting bolt upright in bed at three in the morning, unable to get back to sleep. And now, here they were in the middle of the day and she could hardly keep her eyes open.

      “How come I have jetlag and Comet seems to be totally fine?” Issie asked Avery.

      “Horses and humans react entirely differently to long-distance travel,” Avery told her. “For horses, it takes several weeks for the jetlag to set in. Right now, Comet hasn’t got jetlag at all. That’s why we’ve brought him here on such a tight schedule right before the competition. The timing is crucial because we want him in peak condition and jetlag-free when we’re in Kentucky.”

      Issie wished she was jetlag-free. She felt like an ocean tide was washing her in-and-out, in-and-out. Her brain was swimming in a warm pool, making it impossible to think clearly. As Avery drove on towards Flagstaff she was inexplicably gripped by a desperate urge to go to sleep, and so she succumbed.

      It was probably the noise of the trucks whizzing by on the freeway that made her start dreaming. She had flashed back in time five years to that fateful day at Chevalier Point Pony Club. She could see it all so clearly, as if it was real – which of course it was, because this wasn’t actually a dream. It was a memory, an event that had happened long ago, and that had haunted her ever since.

      It was her very first gymkhana at Chevalier Point Pony Club and Issie and her pony Mystic had just left the show ring with a blue ribbon when chaos broke loose.

      Natasha Tucker had stamped out of the arena after losing the showjumping and in misguided fury she had viciously taken a swipe with her whip at her poor pony Goldrush. Issie watched in horror as the terrified Goldrush backed away and barged into Coco and Toby who were standing right beside her, tied to a horse truck. Natasha lost control of Goldrush completely and Coco and Toby both panicked and tore themselves free from the truck. Then all three horses bolted, heading straight for the pony-club gates.

      As people began to run after the horses, trying to divert them before they reached the gate to the main road, Issie realised they’d never catch them in time on foot. But maybe she could reach them on Mystic.

      The horses were out of the gates and had reached the road before Issie got to them. Cars were honking and swerving as she pulled Mystic around in front of Toby, and waved an arm at him, spooking the big bay, driving him back towards the pony club. The other two loose horses followed Toby’s lead and scattered back off the road. Issie was just about to turn Mystic and follow them to safety when she heard the deep low boom of the truck horn. There was a sickening squeal of tyres as the truck driver tried to stop, and the intense smell of burning rubber as the truck went into a slide. To Issie, it seemed as if everything began to move in slow motion. She felt Mystic rear up beneath her to face the truck, like a stallion preparing to fight. As the grey pony went up on his hind legs he threw Issie back with such force that she flew clear out of the saddle.

      She was falling, the tarmac racing up to meet her. She braced for the impact, but this time it never came. Instead, she was jolted out of her dream state by the sharp honk of a car horn and a man’s voice shouting.

      “Hey, buddy! You’re on the wrong side of the road!”

      She was suddenly wide awake. They were at a petrol station and Avery had just swerved to avoid another driver, honking vigorously and waving his fist as he went past them.

      “Stupid Americans,” Avery muttered under his breath, “It’s not my fault you drive on the wrong side of the road. Why can’t you drive on the left like everyone else?”

      Then he caught sight of Issie’s face.

      “Are you all right, Issie?” he asked with genuine concern. “You look utterly exhausted. I’m sorry you got woken up.”

      “I’m fine,” Issie said. “I guess I’m a bit jetlagged.”

      She was relieved that the honking had woken her up. At least she didn’t have to relive the rest of that nightmare. After the fall on the road that day, Issie had been knocked out. She remembered the crack of her helmet on the tarmac, the taste of blood in her mouth and then everything had turned black.

      When she woke up again, she was in a hospital bed with her mum sitting at her side holding her hand.

      “Mum? Where is Mystic? Is Mystic OK?”

      The look on her mother’s face told her everything she needed to know even before she spoke. “Isadora, there was nothing anyone could have done… the truck… Mystic is dead.”

      Overwhelmed