Rocking Horse War (3 page)

Pearl dragged Ruby along the path. As they walked briskly beside the mare’s hoofprints, the frantic ring in Pearl’s pocket calmed down, turning gently in the direction of their steps towards the chestnut tree.

Just as Pearl caught sight of the glossy green chestnut ahead, the sky above the treetops dimmed, and they heard a sudden tapping. Ruby jumped and looked round nervously.

“Calm down!” snapped Pearl. “It’s only rain on the leaves!” Then she looked at the path. The few drops getting through the leaf canopy were already splattering dark dots over the hoofprints.

“Run!” she yelled. “Run! We have to follow the trail as far as we can before we lose it!”

Pearl broke into a sprint, and as soon as she reached the crossroads, she fell to her knees and tried to read the tracks. The narrow moor path, the wider river path and the straight path home, all still showed the marks of hooves. But the rain had already blurred the prints so much she couldn’t tell which path now had an extra set of hoofprints. She had lost the riderless palomino’s trail already.

“Hurry up!” she shouted at Ruby, who was 
running into the raindrops in a flappy,
half-hearted
way.

“I can’t. My legs are sore.”

By the time Ruby had panted up to the tree, the paths had darkened almost to black, and the prints were nearly gone.

“What do you think, Ruby, should we head for the moors or the river? Should we follow Jasper or Emmie?” But her little sister was shivering too much to answer.

“You are pathetic, Ruby! If you ran faster you’d keep yourself warm!”

Ruby’s bottom lip quivered.

“Oh, for goodness sake!” Pearl would never catch up with the other two if she had to keep mollycoddling Ruby. She hauled her sister off the path into a stand of birch trees, where she had spotted a line so straight it must be man-made.

“Where are we going now?” Ruby whimpered, as Pearl felt the ring jump violently in her pocket.

“I’m going to find you shelter, and you’re going to stay there until I get back.”

“But I want to go
home
!
”

“If you can go home all on your own, and not meet any wooden horses or boys with guns, then fine, off you go. Or you can wait here, and I’ll come back for you.”

In front of them was a wooden hut, which Pearl guessed was the gamekeepers’ storeroom.

Pearl pushed the door, but it was locked. She knelt down and looked at the keyhole. A hand’s width below it, a hole was drilled in the wood. She carefully poked two fingers in, and felt a rough 
string dangling behind the door. Pearl nodded. The gardener’s toolshed at home used the same trick.

She gripped the string between her fingers, and pulled it through. There was a key tied to the end. She unlocked the door and waved Ruby in.

Ruby wrinkled her nose at the stink of aniseed, a smell pheasants love so much the keepers used it to encourage them to stay in the wood. Ruby tried to back out again, but Pearl gave her a gentle shove. “At least it’s dry,” Pearl said firmly, as she found a stool, a blanket and a tin of shortbread among the full bags of grain and empty chick coops. “These will keep you warm and fed. So stay here, and stay quiet.”

Ruby gulped down a sob.

“I’ll lock the door when I leave,” Pearl said, “then I’ll push the key back through. Untie the key and keep it in your pocket so no one else can get in. Don’t unlock the door until I get back. Don’t unlock it for
anyone else
. No one else but me.”

“How will I know it’s you? Should we have a password?”

“A password?” Pearl laughed. “Passwords are for people who don’t know each other, like spies. If you don’t recognise my voice, I’ll just tell you what I think of your new beaded frock. No one else in the whole world will be as honest as me.”

Pearl gave Ruby a quick kiss and left, locking the door and shoving the key back through.

She was on her own again, but at least she could move faster now.

She ran back to the chestnut tree, where the horses had split up, and where the shrew 
still dangled. The rain had wiped away all the hoofprints. There were no tracks left to follow.

Pearl thought for a moment, then unbuttoned her pocket and grasped the twisting ring between wet fingers.

“You want to be reunited with your horse and her bridle, don’t you? I can’t follow Emmie or Jasper, but if I follow Ruby’s horse I might find out what’s going on.”

She flicked the golden ring into the air, and watched it fall to the ground faster than the silver raindrops.

The instant the hoop hit the path, it began to roll.

It moved faster than Pearl expected; she had to run to keep up as it sped along the path towards the moor. She hoped it was leading her to Ruby’s mare and Jasper’s stallion. She hoped she wasn’t following the boy with the burnt black stick.

The rain was slowing to a drizzle, almost as if it had done its work obscuring the trail, and as the last drops fell to the ground, Pearl burst out of the woods into the deer forest.

The name always made her smile. It had been one of Emmie’s favourite jokes when she was little: what kind of forest has no trees? A deer forest.

A deer forest was land where deer were bred, stalked and hunted. In Scotland, that was rarely woodland; it was usually moorland and mountaintops.

So Pearl followed the golden circle out of the trees into the treeless forest.

The hoop stopped, balanced on its edge, then began to roll uphill towards the first ridge. The 
path was bumpy and rough, and the ring skipped and wavered. Pearl, running hard, was able to keep close behind.

Then the ring rolled straight into a stone, and ricocheted off like a billiard ball. Spinning backwards, it banged into Pearl’s right boot. She stumbled and stood hard on the hoop. When she lifted her foot, the ring lay flat and still on the path, crushed into the ground.

“Sorry!” she said automatically. She shook her head at her own clumsiness and at her attempt to apologise to a bit of metal. Then she tried again. “Come on. Get up. We need to find that horse.”

She bent forward, and stroked the motionless hoop with her fingers. Suddenly it sprang up, hitting her hard on the nose, and rolled off.

Pearl followed, rubbing her nose and staying further back this time.

The ring led her to the top of the ridge, and a perfect view of land she only knew from her brother’s maps.

The top drawer of Pearl’s desk was packed full of Peter’s maps, locked securely against Mother’s panicked clearouts: maps her older brother had drawn when he was younger than the triplets, of the garden and the road to Perth; maps he had drawn when he was Pearl’s age, of the pathless moorland ahead and the rocky mountains above, with tiny notes of campsites and caves and other intriguing places; maps he had drawn when he was older, of climbing holidays in the Cuillins and the Alps.

And his final map. A map of the trench in France where he spent his last days. A map with 
depth rather than height. A pencil sketch of a long muddy hole.

Pearl didn’t need to carry these maps in her pockets; she held all the details in her head.

As she followed the ring off the ridge, she could see to the southeast the rocks marked on Peter’s maps as the Twa Corbies, and further off, the River Stane curving south round the base of the mountains.

It looked as if nothing large could possibly hide in the open moor. There were no trees or hills to shelter behind. Surely a huge wooden horse, or a missing younger brother, could be seen at a glance.

But Pearl knew, from long frustrating days stalking on similar ground to the north, that an antlered stag and a dozen hinds could hide from hunters just a few yards away.

The moor ahead was crumpled, like a rug shoved up against a wall. Dozens of streams from the mountains had worn away narrow gullies. There were soft soggy bogs in sudden hollows, and tangles of low ridges which made it hard to walk in a straight line.

Ruby’s horse, Jasper’s horse, Jasper, the boy with the stick, even Emmie and her horse, they could all be in the deer forest ahead of her, and Pearl wouldn’t find them unless she fell right over them.

Or followed this spinning golden ring.

The ring had been moving more slowly through the maze of heather stalks. Then suddenly it rolled faster again, over a patch of grass at the bottom of a slope. Pearl spotted a hoofprint where the 
heather met the grass, so she knew they were on the right track.

The ring skipped merrily over the bright green ground, quivering on the surface like a skimming stone, then it wobbled and started to sink.

Pearl jerked backwards. She suddenly realised why the ground was soft enough to hold a print even after rain.

This slope slid downhill into a bog.

“No! Come back!” But it was too late. The ring couldn’t roll back or forward in the soft wet ground. It was being slowly sucked down.

From a tuft of dry heather, Pearl watched the ring founder. It twisted and twitched, but couldn’t free itself. More than half its edge had sunk into the grasping earth. Its movements were getting smaller and more feeble.

Pearl knew the best advice for people trapped in bogs was: ‘Don’t struggle! Struggling makes you sink in further. Stay still and shout for help.’

The only person who could answer the ring’s silent call for help was Pearl. But if she got stuck, if she shouted for help, who would answer her call? She didn’t want to summon a rocking horse, or the tall boy.

Pearl hesitated. If she tried to rescue the ring, she could be caught in the bog herself. But if she didn’t, she would lose her last chance of following the rocking horses and of finding Jasper and Emmie.

The ring, heavy with mud, had stopped moving.

Pearl searched the ground for anything she could use as a hook. 

There were no trees in the deer forest, so there were no branches lying around. Heather stems and roots were too bent and knotted to reach any distance.

The only available tools were her own arms and hands. Pearl groaned in frustration. The ring was almost gone. She had to decide before it vanished completely. Would she risk herself for her brother and sister?

Of course she would.

So Pearl took off her pinafore and lay down at the edge of the bog. She spread her weight as widely as she could and inched forward towards the ring.

She reached out her right hand. The ring was barely visible now, and there were bubbles popping round it as it sank. She couldn’t quite touch it.

She flexed her toes against the springy heather and forced herself forward, feeling cold dampness seeping into her dress. As she pushed yet again, her body sank slightly into the clammy ground.

She stretched her arm. Her nails clicked on the metal. She risked one more push with her toes, and felt the ring with her fingertips. She eased it out of the mud and clutched it tight.

She wanted to leap up and run for the heather, but she knew that could be fatal, so she slid slowly backwards.

Her feet and legs were safe on the heather. Then her hips and waist.

She tried to drag her shoulders and torso through the bog, which made terrifying slurping sounds as it held her in its grip. 

Pearl couldn’t bear the feel of the ground holding her down, so she jerked up and swivelled round, shoving herself up onto the heather with her left hand. That hand and wrist were sucked down, but the rest of her was free. She leant backwards, using her whole weight to pull her hand out with a belch of boggy air. She fell over and stared at the sky. The ring wriggled between her fingers.

The daft hoop was still trying to roll right over the misleading green grass to where the
long-legged
mare had landed safely on the other side. If Pearl let it go now, it would just dive into the bog again.

She held the ring tightly as she rubbed her hands clean on the heather, and covered the worst of the dirt on her dress with her pinafore.

Then she walked round the edge of the bog, and let the ring go at the other side.

The hoop bounced carelessly over the heather as if it had been in no danger at all. It clattered down a steep gully, right through a burn, and back up the other side. The dip in the water washed it bright gold again, so Pearl could see it easily. It was rushing towards the Twa Corbies.

Pearl didn’t think the mossy grey boulders were big enough to hide people and horses. Then she remembered a gully marked on Peter’s maps, running along the side of the eastern Corbie, cut into the ground by a wide mountain stream. There might be enough shelter in there for a whole herd of rocking horses.

She decided to let the ring go on ahead and follow at a careful distance. She didn’t want to
meet Ruby’s palomino again without warning. She lowered herself into the thick heather, where she was surrounded by the warm scents of honey, thyme and juniper, and sudden rank whiffs of fox and weasel.

She watched the ring curve round the Twa Corbies and leap into the gully beyond. Now she had lost sight of it, perhaps forever.

Pearl followed cautiously, not pressing her weight widely as she had on the bog, but moving lightly on hands and elbows, knees and toes.

What would she see when she reached the edge?

If the gully was empty, and the ring had spun out of sight, her caution would have cost Pearl her last link to the triplets and the horses that had taken them.

Pearl tried not to hear the blood beating in her ears, and the dry rustling of the heather. She listened to the sounds in the empty space beyond the rocks. And she heard laughter.

It was Jasper’s laugh. Ringing, chiming, tinkling. Pearl thought he must be trying hard to make someone like him.

She edged round the Twa Corbies, trying to creep as slowly as the glaciers she knew had formed this landscape. Her face was so close to the heather it pricked her eyeballs as she peered over the top of the gully.

She grinned. The hunter had found her quarry. Two horses, and two boys.

The chestnut stallion stood proudly over Jasper, horsehair tail swishing behind his glossy wooden rump.

The palomino mare stood beside the boy from the gateway, her ripped bridle draped round her drooping head and twitching ears.

The tall boy was resting on a large rock, with his legs stretched out. His gun and stick lay by his right hand and he was twisting the golden bridle ring in his left hand while he talked to Jasper, who was sitting by the older boy’s feet, gazing up at him.

Jasper’s big green eyes were fixed on the tall boy’s face, and his mouth was partly open, his lips stained purple with blaeberry juice. At every 
dramatic pause in the story, Jasper nodded, giggled or asked an encouraging question.

Pearl wasn’t near enough to hear the boys’ words. This gully twisted and turned as the water found the best way down from the mountain. If she crept round a bend she might get nearer to the boys without being noticed, then she could hear what was going on.

Pearl retreated past the rocks, moved up the edge of the gully just out of sight of the boys and horses, and approached them again from behind. Now she couldn’t see them, but she could hear better.

“So, if you bring me your sisters, I will bring you your destiny.”

Pearl recognised the tall boy’s voice, though now it sounded inspiring rather than mocking.

“Why do you need them?” asked Jasper. “You have me. They’re just girls. Ruby cries and Emmie asks awkward questions.”

“We need them because the three of you are the jewels which will crown my grandfather Lord of the Mountains.”

“Once we find the girls, once we’ve crowned your grandfather, what happens then?”

Pearl nodded. Jasper had asked the question she would have asked.

“Then you’ll have the honour of helping our family hold the power of the mountains as well as the moors.”

“Why do you need us for that? Can’t you just buy the mountains?”

“It’s not about money and legal papers, Jasper. 
It’s about taking responsibility for the land, listening to its music, using the lore to store and share its power.”

Pearl was as close as she could get, so she heard the tall boy’s unlikely words perfectly.

“No one has sung with the mountains since the Grey Men died, so they’re suffering from neglect. But we can’t sing with them until the war ends.”

“The war?” Jasper sounded shocked. “But the war ended in 1918!”

“Not the Great War, Jasper. We don’t need a peace treaty to end this war; we just need to crown my grandfather. So let’s go and search for your sisters.”

Pearl, lying as still and low as a stone in the heather, frowned. If the boys left the gully on horseback, how could she keep up with them?

“But where will we find them?” Jasper objected. “I haven’t seen the girls since my stallion brought me here. Ruby’s mare must have followed us, but I don’t know where Ruby is. I was going to look for her after I’d had a snack, honestly I was. But then you appeared. How did you find me?”

“I knew your stallion had galloped onto the moor, but I didn’t know where you were hiding. Then I heard the mare’s hooves and saw her leap down here. She’s found her brother, now we have to find your sisters.”

“But how?”

“Well, we know someone separated Ruby from her horse …”

Pearl held her breath guiltily for a moment. But the boy couldn’t know she had tricked the horse, 
nor that she was just above him.

He kept talking, “… and the tracks of Emerald’s horse led round the mountains towards the Laird of Swanhaugh’s lands. It’s the Laird who’s fighting us for the right to the mountains, so he might have forced the horses to split up, like he sometimes forces the land to do his will. He might even have captured your sisters. He’s a vicious man, but he probably won’t hurt them while there’s a chance he can use them to crown himself.”

Pearl frowned. Perhaps she was going to meet all her strange neighbours today. The Laird of Swanhaugh was an eccentric who never ventured out of his parklands to local events. Her mother didn’t disapprove of him, but the local gossips did.

Jasper was still asking questions. “How will you make him give Emmie and Ruby back? Can he do magic like you?”

The tall boy laughed. “I don’t do magic, Jasper, I just hear the music of the land. But the Laird is also skilled in landlore, and he won’t give up the girls easily. However, we have a few advantages. He’s ready to defend himself against my grandfather, but he’s never duelled with me. He’s tired of the long war, but I’m fresh.”

Pearl considered what she was hearing. Were there any useful facts in the boy’s wild fairy tale? He was involved in a disagreement over land, and thought the triplets could help him, when really he’d be better off with a decent lawyer. He was trying to persuade Jasper to join him with dangerous words like “destiny”. But he’d lost the girls, and thought they were both with the Laird. 
Pearl knew Ruby was safe in the keepers’ shed, but what if Emmie was with the boy’s enemy?

Pearl had discovered Ruby guarded by a violent horse and Jasper being entranced by a dangerous boy. She wondered who she’d have to defeat to free Emmie.

She shook her head. She couldn’t get distracted by unanswerable questions or vague fears; she had to concentrate on saving her family one by one.

There was no point in grabbing Jasper and trying to run home. Even on the bumpy moorland, the horses would overtake them. She would have to distract the boy, sneak Jasper away and hide him until it was safe to go home.

The boy was still talking, his voice warm and persuasive.

“Your names are part of your destiny. Jasper, Emerald and Ruby, three precious gems.”

Where could she hide Jasper? After a searching look round the deer forest, she stared at the Twa Corbies. Which symbol had her brother drawn beside them on his maps? She hoped she remembered correctly.

Her fingers poked around under the heather until she found a couple of pebbles. The boy’s voice rolled round the gully as she weighed them in her hand.

“The horses were a gift from us, to protect you until you were old enough for the crowning ceremony. They did their job today, getting you away from the Laird’s ambush. I just wish they hadn’t split up! If they’d stayed together I would have all three of you already.” 

Pearl lifted her arm and flung one stone as hard as she could over the top of the gully to the other side.

It landed silently in the heather. She sighed.

She lifted her arm again and flung the other stone. It clattered on a rock.

The boy below stopped talking. Pearl held her breath until she saw him clambering up the other side of the gully, towards the noise.

Pearl slid her head and shoulders over the edge. “Oi!” she whispered to Jasper. “Come up here now!”

Jasper looked at her and frowned. She mouthed, “NOW!” and reached her arm down to him.

He shrugged and climbed towards her.

She grabbed him, almost lifting him off his feet, though he was nearly as tall as her, then she ran with him towards the rocks.

Behind them, the horses neighed in alarm. But however swift rocking horses were on the flat, they wouldn’t be very fast scrambling up the gully’s steep sides.

Pearl and Jasper sprinted to the Twa Corbies, where she shoved her brother through a tiny gap she’d guessed was hidden between the two grey rocks, into the cramped cave which Peter had marked on his maps.

As she got used to the dim light, she noticed words scratched into the rock at the narrow entrance.
Peter Chayne, August 1915
. Her big brother had been here exactly twelve years ago. She ran her fingers over the grooves forming his name. 

Jasper wriggled beside her, jabbing his elbow into her leg.

“Be quiet, and they might not find us,” she whispered.

“What are you doing, dragging me in here?” he whispered back.

“Saving you from that boy and his horrid horses.”

“That boy is my friend and my stallion is fantastic. I don’t
want
saved!” Jasper’s voice was rising.

“Shhhh!” Pearl slapped her hand over his mouth.

He squirmed.

“Shh shh shh, Jasper,” she murmured, like he was a wee boy again. “Shhhh.”

He bit her fingers and shoved her off.

Then he screamed, “I’m here! I’m here!” His voice rattled round the tiny space.

“You little … toad!” spat Pearl. “I don’t know why I bother …”

“Come out, dearest Jasper.” The tall boy’s voice moved nearer as he spoke. “Come on out.”

Jasper pushed past Pearl and slid out.

She crouched on the cold ground. Would her brother betray her, or would he leave her, hidden and safe?

She didn’t really have to wonder.

“I didn’t run off, really I didn’t. She grabbed me. I bit her, though, and that’s when I shouted. She’s still in there. “

“What a hero you are, Jasper. Shall we ask her to come out too?”

Pearl pressed herself to the back of the stone space. 

A voice whispered just outside, “Will you come out? Or shall I come in and get you?”

Pearl shivered, and looked at the narrow entrance. She remembered the boy as tall but slim, and he could probably fit through. She would rather meet him again, if she had to, in a larger space than this.

“I’m coming out.”

She squeezed out awkwardly, to the cool smile of the tall boy and the sideways smirk of her revolting little brother.

“A brave rescue attempt,” sneered the boy. “It might even have succeeded, except Jasper didn’t want to be rescued. Just a slight flaw in your plan.”

Pearl glared at Jasper as she stood up. He retreated, muttering, “This is my big sister.”

“We’ve met,” said the boy, towering over both of them. “I thought I’d left you safely at home. You must be brighter than you look.” He glanced in amusement at her muddy clothes.

Then he looked behind him very briefly, perhaps checking the horses were out of sight. He began to twirl his stick.

“Your brother and I were just exploring the deer forest. I’ll look after him, so you can go home now, you don’t need to worry.”

“Of course I need to worry. You’re filling his head with nonsense about wars and destiny. We’ve had enough of that in our family. It’s not Jasper’s destiny to fight anyone else’s war. There’s no such thing as destiny. He can make his own decisions.”

The tall boy was now staring at Pearl. Not at her 
dirty hands, or lumpy pinafore, but at her eyes. His stick swung faster.

“What did you hear me say?” he asked sharply. “Before you tried to run off with Jasper, what did you hear?”

Pearl shrugged. “I hardly heard anything. I couldn’t get much closer than this.”

“But you heard us talk about the war and Jasper’s destiny. What else did you hear?”

Though she hadn’t understood or believed most of what he’d said in the gully, it didn’t seem sensible to admit she’d heard his silly secrets. So instead she turned to Jasper.

“Come on, let’s leave this boy and his daft wargames. Mother’s probably got elevenses ready now, so come home, and we’ll find Emmie and Ruby later.”

Jasper glanced at the tall boy, who smiled. “So, Jasper, do you want to go home with your big sister for tea and toast, or do you want to come with me and fulfil your destiny?”

Pearl’s brother hesitated, then took a deliberate step towards the tall boy, who immediately slowed the moving stick so it didn’t hit Jasper.

The moment the stick stopped creating its pattern, Pearl heard the crashing and scrambling of hooves. The palomino leapt over the edge of the gully and galloped straight at her, with teeth bared, ears flat back and white-rimmed eyes looking for revenge.