Blue: A soul warming young adult novel by Maggie Joan

Author:Maggie Joan [Joan, Maggie]
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
Published: 2020-12-21T06:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

I woke up to a snuffling noise. Blinking the sleep out of my eyes, I looked around, half dazed, to see the stallion stood under the trees outside the barn. Not the oak tree, the other trees closer to the barn, closer to me. He was sniffing the ground, blowing little clouds of dust up as he searched for food.

“Hey, boy. Good morning,” I said. “Busy night eating your way up here, huh?”

He flicked an ear in my direction but that was all I got. I frowned. Did I dare move? When I saw him pick up a piece of mouldy straw, put it in his mouth, and then spit it back out, I realised he was hoovering up the flakes of straw from where I’d thrown all the bad stuff outside.

I grabbed a handful of straw and held it out to him. He snorted as if to say ‘nice try’. Careful not to rustle my bed too much, I crawled towards him on my hands and knees, still with a handful of good, clean straw.

He allowed me to get within around twenty feet of him before he squealed and cantered off. I sighed and resisted the urge to face palm myself. Refusing to give up, I placed the straw where he’d been foraging and retreated back to my corner. I expected to wait hours for his return but to my sheer delight, and surprise, and wandered back over within a matter of minutes. I presumed the lure of the straw was what did it.

Whatever did it, the fact he was eating what I put out for him meant there was some basis of trust there. He could have run off, disappearing completely, or he could have chosen the grass to eat, but he didn’t. He chose to risk coming near me to eat the straw. If I could build on that then I’d be able to clean his wounds and hopefully make him better.

With his nearside facing me, and him only being metres away from me, I could see his injuries better, especially now it was daylight. He had two cuts—one on his shoulder and one on his knee. The one on his shoulder looked pretty superficial, but it had bled a fair bit. The one on his knee however seemed particularly nasty given the swelling around it. Flies were already swarming around the congealed blood, making him flick his foot every so often to get rid of them.

I needed to tend to that knee first. Glancing at my water bottle, I had just over half a bottle left which would be more than enough to wash away the dirt and dried blood. But of course, I hadn’t even managed to get within six feet of him yet.

“Was that good?” I asked him, as he ate the last piece of straw.

To my utter amazement, he took several steps towards the barn for a lone piece of straw on the ground near the entrance. Excitement buzzed all through my veins and my heart was racing like a racehorse.

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