Beltane by Thea Hartsong
Chapter 12. The pony drift
When I finally got out of the hospital a couple of days later I made a promise to myself that this time I really would try to keep my life as stable, predictable and boring as possible. Rebekah helped to make sure I took my headzappers regularly and I gradually began feeling better again. I became a grade A student and a grade A party-pooper; spending every evening either doing homework or reading.
I also decided to put myself on a ‘no myths or legends’ diet. Nothing remotely fantastical made it onto my reading list I didn’t want to stimulate my imagination with anything remotely supernatural. I have to admit it was a real wrench, since practically everything I enjoyed reading was no longer permissible.
I didn’t throw any of my old books away or sell them or anything. I don’t think any amount of money would part me from the Brothers Grimm or from my Norse legends, but I operated a strictly no magic policy in my new purchases.
I quickly became a fan of the historical novel, filling my time with medieval monks, Elizabethan ladies in waiting, and Victorian factory workers. Even so I missed re-reading my special favorites; they were all so much a part of my life it was hard to be without them.
Although I didn’t want to see her I couldn’t help wondering what had happened to Shanty. It was peculiar the way she had just disappeared from the village. Whenever I visited the Papermill to refill my stock of novels I took a quick glance at the Black Cat, but it remained firmly shut, and began to look quite neglected.
Millie dropped by to see me one evening shortly after I’d returned home to tell me rather shamefacedly that she couldn’t remember anything about the evening in the Glade, and that she wanted me to fill in the gaps for her. I made some polite noises and avoided the question.
I knew none of it was Millie’s fault. I just couldn’t help resenting her and the others for prizing me out of the house that night. If I’d stuck with the Brownies and movie plan, none of the other stuff would have happened. She left promising that we’d get together soon, though we both sort of sensed that it probably wasn’t going to happen for a while.
I suppose I became a bit of a recluse over the next few weeks. I went to college; I just didn’t hang around the canteen over breaks, and took the early bus home whenever I could. I figured it was better to stick to what was safe than to take any further chances with my, obviously fragile, mental health.
The Jem thing was awkward of course. I knew I owed him a thank you at the very least for what he’d done, but I still couldn’t stand the sight of him. Fortunately for some reason our paths never seemed to cross, and when they did I could see Jayne hovering close by just itching for another chance to slap my face.
It’s funny how what you feel about someone on the surface, and what you feel about them deep down inside can be completely the opposite thing. Let me give you an example of what I mean. I knew that Jem was a nasty piece of work; I’d seen the evidence with my own eyes.
Even so he still managed to make an appearance in one of the hottest, sweatiest, dreams I’d had in a long time a week or so after the incident in the glade. Thinking about it still makes me blush. Let’s put it this way when he rescued me he didn’t just stop at the kiss of life!
Night time adventures aside, the only place I went to other than college was the village Post Office and that was generally only if Rebekah had forgotten to buy milk. Unfortunately she tended to do that a lot. It was during one such emergency milk incident that I bumped into Audrey Brakes and Caesar for the first time in months.
Caesar had grown a lot, and was almost big enough to wrench Audrey’s arm clean out of her socket. He certainly made a good attempt when he saw me. His rough tongue nearly sandpapered a hole through my gloves as he licked my hands enthusiastically, whipping his tail around like a propeller.
“Ah! Thea, just the person I wanted to see.”
Audrey’s face was red enough to make a beetroot look pale, “I’ve been meaning to ask you to help out with the Pony Drift.”
“The what?” I asked, trying to get Caesar’s paws off my thighs.
“The Pony Drift. Just make sure you’re up at the farm on Saturday, we’ll need all the help we can get.”
The Pony Drift turned out to be another one of the New Forest traditions Audrey was so keen on. Once a year the Commoners round up all of the ponies in the forest to check their overall health, and to make sure all of the new born foals have been branded. It’s rather like a giant rodeo, and even though Audrey wasn’t officially a Commoner herself most of her neighbors were so she always took part.
Just imagine having the chance to go charging around a forest on horseback yelling like a complete idiot, chasing wild ponies into corrals so that they can be counted. It was fantastic fun, one of the most enjoyable things I’d done in ages. Sharing the thrill of the chase with a group of other riders, was a great way to unwind. I didn’t have time to think about anything except not falling off my horse!
We all had lunch together in the middle of the day, sitting in front of a roaring fire at the Handmaid’s Arms, before mounting up once more and charging off in pursuit of the strays.
I was just trying to round up a pair of rather tricky mares which were leading me a merry dance when I caught a glimpse of something white in a brake off to my left. I wheeled Abacus around and cantered towards the bushes. There in front of me was the white coated pony I’d seen on the day we moved into Rose Cottage just peeping through the foliage.
I spurred Abacus hard with my heels and he sped forwards, charging across the rough turf like a knight’s charger. The pony retreated a pace or two, and vanished behind a patch of evergreen. Although I reached the spot only a few seconds later I was disappointed to find it completely empty. There was no sign that the white-coated pony had ever been there.
I couldn’t spare the time to hunt through the rest of the bushes to find it again so instead I headed back into the clearing, surprising the two mares by appearing behind them, and shooed them ahead of me all the way down to the pasture with the corrals.
By the end of the day we’d managed to collect dozens of ponies of all shapes and sizes. There was a large crowd of people around the corrals watching the branding, the hoof trimming, and teeth rasping as the horses got their annual wash and brush up.
Walking through the jostling farmers, commoners, and tourist trying to find Audrey, I ran slap bang into Jem Masterson. He must have been in his Doctor Jekyll phase because he smiled. I’m afraid I actually flushed with embarrassment. It was so confusing. I wanted to yell at him about the way he’d treated the horse in the stables at Draxton Manor, while on the other hand I owed him my life.
I tried to mumble my thanks in a way I hoped would make it clear that I wasn’t forgiving him, while at the same time showing I was grateful for his help. I probably just sounded surly and aggressive because he winced slightly.
“I’m just glad I got to the glade when I did.”
I was somewhat distracted by this; I was sure he’d been there the whole time. I tuned back into what he was saying.
“…saw your hair floating on the top of the pool, and waded straight in”
For the first time in my life I thanked providence for giving me masses of frizzy hair. I didn’t want him to say anything about the kiss of life, as I knew I’d start thinking about that erotic dream again so I quickly interrupted him.
“When did you say you got there?”
“Sometime after midnight. Almost everybody there was completely wasted. If I hadn’t shown up I don’t think anybody else would have noticed you. What were you doing? Did you get drunk or something, lose your footing?”
“What?” I was really annoyed that he could be so obtuse. “Of course I didn’t get drunk. I don’t even drink alcohol.”
“Oh, OK!” he backtracked quickly, “sorry.”
I was still full of righteous indignation, and gave him a hard look.
“Um. I’ll see you arou
“Whatever!” I said it under my breath, though I couldn’t really be bothered about being polite anymore.
He hesitated, then came loping back to me slightly sheepishly. “You really shouldn’t stay around here longer than you have to. It’s just not a safe place to live. Trust me.”
With that he slipped off into the crowd again leaving me shaking my head. Trust you? As if that could ever be possible. Jem Masterson, I thought to myself, must be so conditioned to lying he doesn’t even know he’s doing it. He’d just lied directly to my face even when he must have known that I knew he was lying. And it was a completely pointless lie too. I’d seen him in the grove much earlier than midnight with my own two eyes. OMG! I thought to myself; please just don’t let such a complete bonehead into any more of my dreams.
Autumn turned to winter coating the forest in a blanket of hoarfrost, and before we knew it Christmas was upon us. It was the first Christmas without dad for both Rebekah and me so it was a tricky time. We both tried hard to make it fun. I made lots of paper chains to decorate the house, and constructed a door wreath from some holly and mistletoe I got from the trees at the end of our garden. I’d made up with Millie and took part in a ‘secret Santa’ with some other friends at college. I got a lovely set of scented candles and a corkboard for my bedroom which pleased me a lot. Now I finally had somewhere to stick my pictures.
On Christmas Eve we went carol singing out on the village green accompanied by the Brockbourne brass band, and followed it up with a party at Audrey’s house. Audrey wore one of the most eye-wateringly floral skirts I have ever seen and a Christmas sweater that would put Bridget Jones to shame.
Rebekah organized for a company to come in to scrub out the kitchen Aga, and we both cooked Christmas dinner together using its oven. Audrey supplied us with a duck free of charge, and although I felt slightly guilty about eating an animal I’d probably thrown corn to six months ago, it tasted amazingly good. Admittedly the sprouts were too hard, the potatoes were overcooked, and we forgot to put the stuffing in, but none of that really mattered.
I think we were both rather proud of the fact that we had managed to get it all together without setting fire to the house. Rebekah gave me a beautiful silver ring with a Celtic design on it, and I gave her a gift basket of soaps, lotions and creams made from New Forest wild flowers. As we pulled our cracker together, listening to our traditional Nat King Cole Christmas CD, and tucking into a bowl of Christmas pudding with clotted cream things didn’t seem too bad at all.
We saw the New Year in at the Handmaid’s Arms. They had a ‘disco’, actually a man with a CD player and two colored lights, who played a variety of cheesy hits with maximum dance floor appeal. It turned out to be surprisingly enjoyable, particularly when he played a compilation of Abba’s greatest hits followed by the best of Michael Jackson. My favorite bit of the evening was watching Rebekah try to moonwalk.
Singing Auld Lang Syne always makes me melancholy and this year was no exception. I tried not to get weepy, though it was a battle - it had been quite a year. I remember going outside into the pub garden on my own to get a breath of fresh air and standing there in the darkness for ages, looking up at the full moon, wondering what the New Year would bring. If only I’d known.Those sisters certainly weren’t done with their weaving.
By the time Spring came around I was starting to forget all about my bad experience in the Glade. It’s amazing how resilient human beings are really. The worst things can happen to people and for the most part, in the words of Nat King Cole, they pick themselves up, brush themselves off, and start all over again.
I was helped by the fact that springtime in the forest is truly special. A sea of Bluebells filled the woodland with a wash of color, so welcome after the greys of the winter months. The sun returned again, though being England you could always guarantee a shower, so there were glorious rainbows arching across the sky almost every day.
Our art teacher Miss Payne had a new project for us to work on through the Spring Term called ‘hidden in plain sight’. The idea was that we often ignore the things that are right in front of us. We were allowed to make up our own minds how we wanted to approach the project, so I decided to look at the parts of buildings we don’t tend to notice much even though we see them all the time. Things like drainpipes, chimney pots, door hinges etc.
I made some sketches of the light fittings in Rose Cottage, a funny little window on the side of the Papermill, the stairwell at College, and the cracked paint on the Post Office windowsill. It was interesting to try to see ordinary things from a new viewpoint, to try to take notice of what normally slides under your radar.
After a bit of persuasion I got Rebekah to agree to let me come with her up to the Lodge so I could draw one of the corridors. I know it might seem a bit strange considering what I said to her about not wanting to be a patient there, I just thought it would make a really strong image; an empty corridor.
Corridors aren’t really destinations in themselves; they’re just a way of getting from A to B. So although we see them, we don’t really see them.
Understandably Rebekah wasn’t keen on the idea. She was concerned that there could be a repeat of the ‘grabbing incident’ that had happened the last time I visited her at work, though I assured her I hadn’t been bothered by it.
She finally insisted that I was only allowed to go to one of the less-used corridors away from the wards, and then had to go straight to the staff common room, so that there was less chance of me bumping into any of the patients. I was perfectly happy with that arrangement and settled down to draw a long empty corridor at the heart of the building. I hardly saw a soul. A couple of nurses passed me about ten minutes in, then after that I was on my own.
I suspect that Rebekah might have been right to try to encourage me not to visit because I managed to spook myself slightly. I’d been completely engrossed in my drawing, hardly even moving to stretch my legs. After about an hour of hard work I realized I was stiff and tired. I put the pad down, and stood up to shake out my stiff limbs.
It was only when I looked back at my drawing that I realized I’d added the enormous eye from my nightmares to the picture. I’d drawn it in great detail right slap bang in the center of the double doors at the end of the corridor, and what’s more I’d drawn it staring directly at me.