Riding on Air (3 page)

“Melissa, bloody hell, are you OK?”

I lifted my face out of Jinx's mane and turned around to see my two best friends. They were coming across the trampled grass to lean on the top rail of Jinx's yard—the scuffing sound of their boots on the hard ground had been blotted out by Jinx's grinding teeth. He flicked his ears at their presence, but didn't bother to remove his nose from his hay net. They were no threat to him or his hay, but he kept one ear cocked towards them, just in case they had any sneaky hay-stealing ideas.

“Yeah,” I said. “I'm good.”

Tash, with her strawberry blonde ponytail spilling over her shoulder like a golden waterfall, delivered a sceptical glance from sea green eyes. I sighed and gave Jinx's neck a final squeeze with my forearms before reluctantly removing myself. I squashed a surge of unworthy gloom at Tash's knock-you-dead beauty and glanced at Eleni, smaller, darker and rounder, but almost as pretty, hanging over the rail beside our super-model mutual friend. She was giving me a hopeful look from her big brown eyes, as though she was willing to believe me, but couldn't quite get there either.

“Guys, I'm fine. I fell off, whatever. We all fall off.”

“We haven't all got joints like you,” Tash retorted. Blunt as well as beautiful, that's Tash. I looked again from one to the other, almost giggly with relief that I had friends like them who accept both my condition and my need to not talk about it.

They even accept my obsession with proving myself and Jinx, though I know they don't really get it. They don't think it's normal to be more interested in reading dressage magazines than
Cleo
or
Girlfriend
. Sometimes all the eye-rolling gets annoying, like they don't trust me to know what's best for me, but today was not one of those times.

“I thought you might need help with Jinx,” Tash offered. She looked past my shoulder and frowned. When she looked back at me her face cleared. “Guess you must really be OK if you've already got him sorted.”

I opened my mouth, then hesitated. The advantages of not pointing out that I hadn't in fact put Jinx away myself were obvious. Tash could be relentless once she had the bit in her teeth and I'd have a hard time convincing her I was fine if she made up her mind I wasn't. With a mental apology for depriving William of the
humungous
points he would have scored in the eyes of my friends for looking after my horse, I shut my mouth, dredged up a smile and tried not to look guilty.

“So what happened? Susanna Trapper said Jinx bolted and you fell off,” Eleni said.

“Bolted! Susanna's
such
a drama queen,” I said indignantly and hid a wince as an echo of my headache rattled through my skull. I thought longingly of a hot bath and some paracetamol, but one, there weren't any hot tubs conveniently supplied at camp and two, I was going to have to tough it out if I wanted to have the good stuff if I needed it tomorrow.

“He didn't take off,” I said carefully. “I let him come in a bit too quick and just stuffed it up.”

“Typical. Bloody dressage riders, amateurs the lot of you,” Tash replied.

“Yeah, right, Miss Showjumper. I hear you didn't exactly cover yourself in glory on the cross country course yesterday morning,” I said, a grin creeping onto my face.

Tash shrugged and smiled, swinging away from the railing. “Nah, I leave that up to Eleni. She's our eventing expert.”

Eleni scowled. She can never take a compliment. It's like she's embarrassed to be so good at three-day eventing. She works so hard and she's so talented, it's a shame that any praise just makes her squirm. If you compliment her horse, though, she glows. I get that; love me, love my horse.

“If you did more dressage, Tash, your horse would jump a lot better,” Eleni said. We shared a conspirator's grin, while Tash just predictably rolled her eyes.

“Dressage is for pansies and eventers, no offence. We showjumpers are free spirits, you can't contain us behind little white fences.”

“No, it's over, under or crash right through for you lot,” Eleni said.

I'd just ducked down to begin my careful hand-protecting wriggle through the rails and had to stop for a minute while I finished laughing. I wish I could think of smart things to say as quickly as Eleni does. I never think of anything till hours later, if ever.

“There's nothing small about the fences I jump over,” Tash declared. She reached out a long arm, curling her fingers around my bicep to steady me as I slid cautiously between the rails.

“Touché,” Eleni acknowledged. She stepped up and wrapped a hand around my other arm as I emerged from Jinx's yard. As soon as I was upright they let go. They know just how much help to offer; just how much I can accept without feeling stupid. Again, gratitude rolled over me, making my chest tighten. I blinked, ambushed by the emotional rush and determined not to get soppy. If I got teary my well-meaning friends would have me back at the St John's Ambulance before you could say JRA to have me checked for a brain injury.

“Come on then, let's go. I'm starving,” Tash said, jerking her head in the direction of the lunch tent.

As I fell into step between them on our way to eat and they started arguing about the merits of dressage for jumping horses— “the German showjumping team does dressage and they've won a gazillion gold medals” from Eleni, countered by a darkly muttered “not lately” from Tash—my headache returned with a vengeance, pounding behind my eyes. I flexed my fingers experimentally, just reassuring myself.

Whenever it was this bad, when my joints grew hot and sluggish, I was always afraid. What if this time the pain didn't ever let go?

It was lucky I'd pocketed that pill. It had been an impulse at the time, a tiny white circle of insurance because I was feeling pretty sore and I knew from experience that if I'm hurting right after a fall it's going to be 10 times worse the next day. When I edged my aching body out of bed the following morning, with more of those pain-bombs going off in my bones and joints, I didn't muck about. I downed the pill with the contents of the water bottle I always keep beside my bed. Then I slowly gathered my shower things and shuffled out to apply hot water to the outside of my body while the drugs got to work on the inside.

By the time Stacey appeared with her trusty little bum-bag, I'd loosened up enough to pass her inspection. But I was still bad enough for her to offer me another pill. I repeated my magician's trick, knowing I was going to be in a state by the end of the morning's dressage session and afraid I would be too sore to get any sleep that night. The pill I could ask for the following morning wasn't going to be much help to me during a long and potentially miserable night of aching joints.

As I wiped my mouth, Stacey frowned, her eyes following my hand. I froze, a horrible moment of fear clamping my guts when I thought she'd busted me. I didn't have to take risks like this at home. I kept a few extra pills hidden in a bottle out in the tack room for emergencies. But she didn't accuse me of anything, just told me to take it easy and not to hesitate to come see her if I had any pain.

“Don't ride if you feel dizzy or weak,” she'd cautioned me and I had promised not to. I went out to saddle Jinx, feeling a little wobbly in the legs (and a lot guilty) at the risk I'd taken. Never again. I wasn't cut out for this sneaky pill-palming stuff.

Now sweat slid down my face in sticky trails and the muscles in the front of my thighs quivered as I circled Petra Hein in sitting trot. The beautiful morning had continued to heat up, shooting past fine and tipping over into scorcher about half an hour ago. We were all getting tired and were all way past hot as the dressage session drew to a close. Then Petra had started pulling us in for individual work.

Jinx strode out, back swinging rhythmically beneath me, and I forced myself to keep breathing regularly, striving for a sort of attentive relaxation that allowed my body to move with his, ready to act but never hindering his movement.

“Yes, Melissa, good, good. Now ask for a bit more,” Petra called out and my stomach clenched. I didn't think I had any more in me. I'm pretty fit thanks to all the lap swimming I do as part of my joint mobilisation program, though it doesn't help that much for riding. But when an instructor asks, you try. And I wanted this, didn't I? I wanted to impress Petra with how talented Jinx was so she'd pick him—us—for the squad. I lifted my ribcage just a little bit and wrapped my legs around Jinx's swinging sides, squeezing my legs against him with a pulsing motion in time with his strides. Being Jinx, he went faster.

“Yes, Melissa, now half-halt, block with the hands, sit tall and then release and drive him on.”

I did as she demanded, breath rasping my throat, simultaneously trying to keep track of the fifty other things you need to make your body do when you're actively trying to shape your horse underneath you. I closed my fingers on the reins—barely an ache there, yay for the painkillers—and squeezed my upper arms against my sides, giving Jinx a ‘stop' message through the reins, feeling for the hesitation in his stride as he responded to the signal, and then opened my fingers a little to allow him to continue on, in theory with his speed checked, redirected into more impulsion, more ‘oomph' in his stride.

I almost laughed out loud when it worked.

“Yes, yes, that's it!” Petra yelled, her enthusiasm thickening her German accent and sending a flush of happiness through my body.

I felt Jinx's back lift me up, as he rounded himself, his weight transferring a little to his hindquarters as he thrust himself forward and up from the ground with more energy. It was
amazing
.

“Wonderful Melissa, yes, good! Now back to walk, when you're ready, and give him a stretch and a pat.”

Oh, I was ready. For all the magnificence of that moment on Jinx, I could sense how fragile it was, how close I was in my exhaustion to losing it, and I gratefully let my weight sink into the saddle, stretched down into my knees and closed my fingers on the reins. Jinx made an unbelievably smooth down transition into walk, soft and willing in my hands, sweetly on the bit and going forward into a rhythmic, swinging walk. I fed the reins through my fingers, offering him more freedom, and he took it happily, following the contact with my hands and stretching his neck, just like he was supposed to.

I was going to really feel it in my knuckles a few hours from now, but I didn't care. It was worth it. My throat squeezed tight with the sheer wonder of it, the magic of that brief moment of perfect self-carriage and impulsion from Jinx. A moment of perfect unity between us. I wanted to laugh and scream and cry, all at once.

“Fantastic effort, Melissa, well done. He's a very nice horse, this one. Very nice. Are you entering the Novice championships at Goulburn next month?”

“I think so,” I managed to choke out, mind spinning. ‘A very nice horse' was the highest praise from Petra Hein, or so I'd heard.

“Good, good. I think you'll do very well. I look forward to seeing you there,” she said.

“Me too,” I said. “Thank you so much, that was an
awesome
lesson.”

She grinned. “A pleasure, you are a good student. You've done enough, now, so you can go back if you like. Get your horse out of the sun so he can cool down, rest.”

Then she turned away, clapping her hands together, calling out for the next rider and leaving my head almost exploding at the unexpected praise. Or maybe it was just the usual helmet-induced baked-skull headache.

As I pointed Jinx towards the gate, I was kind of surprised to realise just how much I'd improved in the last two years since I'd been going to pony club and having other occasional lessons when I could earn enough extra pocket money. That's tricky when your hands sometimes aren't much use. You can't just volunteer for most of the usual household chores even when you're after more cash.

I slid my feet free from my stirrups and dropped the buckle of the reins on Jinx's sweat-darkened neck. I held my hands up and flexed my fingers cautiously, but the painkiller was obviously still doing the job. I had a dull sort of ache in the bones of my fingers and my knuckles were a bit warm, the skin stretched tight over the swollen bulges, but that was as good as it got during a flare like this. My shirt stuck to my back and my face was so hot and sweaty I was sure it was beyond red, probably as purple as a beetroot. But I didn't care about that, either. I was so happy I felt like I was walking—no, make that riding—on air.

I rode Jinx right up to our horse float, slid off and swapped his bridle for a halter, tying him to string so if he got a fright and pulled back he wouldn't injure himself. I unsaddled him, thrilled all over again to be able to do it with so much ease and so little pain. I felt like I normally did when the arthritis wasn't active in a flare; still swollen and stiff and kind of wrong in my joints, but basically functional. Almost ordinary. I even managed the buckle of my helmet and dumped it inside the float, closed the door and locked it, then untied Jinx.

“A nice cool shower for you, my star,” I told him, offering a carrot I'd grabbed from the bag inside the float. Jinx bit the end off, gigantic teeth gleaming, and crunched noisily, dribbling little orange flecks over me as he nudged with his muzzle for more. I gave him the rest and then led him towards the wash bays; concrete slabs surrounded by pipe railings where we could hose the sweat off our horses.

Both bays were empty, although there'd be horses queued up all the way back to the floats as soon as everyone else finished their sessions. If I was quick I could be done and have Jinx back in his yard before anyone else showed up. Jinx followed me onto the concrete where I tied him up and untangled the hose. I took hold of the tap and went to turn it on. But nothing happened.

Bugger. Whoever had turned it off last had done it really tight. I dropped the hose and tried with both hands, but still nothing. Leaning over the bar in between the two bays, I tried the tap on the other side, but it too had been turned off by someone with superpowers.