Little Prince - The Story of a Shetland Pony by Annie Wedekind

Author:Annie Wedekind
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781250120397
Publisher: Feiwel & Friends

CHAPTER 7

Du ain’t no better than a mark, du ain’t, du peerie pony. Du is dy midder’s bairn, and no mistake. Not that I’m smackin’ down dy midder, mind. I’ll nae forget the day she came trottin’ past the floss wagon.1 Outside of Natichoches it was—she was enterin’ some contest … pullin’ a braaly2 white cart all bedecked with posies. But dy midder was better’n any posy. Gold all over, like you are, with the sweetest expression on her boany3 face, but fire in her eye! Aye, she was an arg4 one. She won that contest, then I won her—ha!

Phin always shuddered to think what form Poppy’s wooing of his mother had taken. Over time, his memories of the golden mare he so much resembled were gilded into myth. He’d had less than a year with B&B Barn’s Summer Serenade (Serena for short): Her owner, disgusted that his champion American Show Pony had been put in the family way by such a low-class rogue, had dumped Phin at Jack’s trailer when the carnival had come back to town the next season.

Standing alone in the parched field of Nowheresville, Phin closed his eyes and tried to conjure up his mother’s limpid eyes, the feel of her velvet muzzle touching his flank as he nursed, the freshly shampooed smell of her penny-bright coat. And yet, the time he’d spent at her home hadn’t been an altogether happy one. He was the hard evidence of Serena’s fall from grace, and thus, at best, ignored by the B&B’s owners and staff. Like so much in the pony’s past, it was complicated.

No, Phin thought, the only place I’ve been truly happy—the only place where I’ve been appreciated—was the Chadwick.

Jack had taken him from the drudgery of carnival life, had brought him to the Fairmont Country Club Pony Show (where the halter class trophy was presented to them practically on bended knee), and had sold him on looks alone to Hilda Holzen, head trainer at the grand Chadwick Ostlers. The Chadwick proved to be a home for them both: Jack got a job as a groom, was quickly promoted to barn manager, and settled into city life as happily as his friend.

And yet, and yet … had he ever really belonged there? This was the question that was now tormenting Phin and dragging forth the echoes of his father’s contemptuous harangues. The pony felt sore all over: stiff from the long, bumpy trailer ride; heart-sore from missing Jack and from being abandoned and unloved in general; and now his brain hurt from thinking, an exercise he generally avoided doing to any strenuous degree. He was also thirsty—and that at least he could do something about.

The “crick” wound haphazardly through the Funny Farm like a tangled, discarded ribbon. The first spot that Phin approached was a discouraging, muddy-brown trickle purling between steep banks that looked too difficult for the pony to navigate. But as he continued downstream, Phin discovered what a changeable creature the small stream was:

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