Silver Brumby Echoing

Author:Elyne Mitchell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2013-09-21T16:00:00+00:00

His Magic Carpet Began to Go Faster and Faster

Ringaroo had kept climbing, forcing himself to go on and on through the blizzard. Because there was no break in the clouds, no shafts of light at all, he felt no fear of the burning reflection off the snow by day. He, the midnight galloper, would forge his way through the dark blizzard, and find his mare and her foal …

It was a lonely journey. Sometimes he saw kangaroos and wallabies as they made their way down to lower country, but possums stayed in their hollows and wombats rarely ventured from their burrows. All was quiet except for the wind-howl and the occasional swish of a bough springing up as it dropped its load of snow.

He seemed to have to travel further than he expected, endlessly further, and he had no idea where he was. After long, dragging hours he felt sure he heard a neigh. Wirrilinga, his beautiful mare, must be somewhere close. If he called, she could come to him, and he dreamt of her walking towards him through the storm.

Highly-strung stallion, he became more nervous the further he went. He shied violently as a limb cracked under its weight of snow. He leapt into a gallop on a stretch of gently rising ridge when a black, giant flying phalanger, all dusted white, came gliding down off the high branches of a ribbon gum and landed near him.

He closed his eyes in very fear when an oblique beam of light broke through the clouds, and he pressed against the woolly butt of an alpine ash, so that he would have some anchor if vision failed.

The beam of light was extinguished, and the day seemed to be darker. He did see a robin amongst some eucalypt leaves. A little ground dove peered out from under a fallen leafy branch.

If only he could hear the hoofbeats of his herd, he would not feel so alone. He called into the storm, but called Wirrilinga.

Burra listened to Ringaroo’s neigh, then he peered all around through the dense-falling flakes, trying to make out the shape of the land into which he and Coolawyn had slipped, trying to remember it, as he had seen it in summer … surely something would tell him what they should do, where they should go, but that eerie howl of the wind came, and the wind picked up clouds of snow and all vision was obscured.

Burra knew he had to find Yarra and that white mare and her foal, or he would never stop Coolawyn wandering off, trying to find Yarra. He must get them all together and keep them together. Of course, if Wirrilinga heard Ringaroo call, she would try to get to him, go with him, take the foal. Maybe she would take Yarra, and Coolawyn would go …

They were in a hollow: the shape of it could only be made out if they walked around it. It was, in fact, a round basin. They knew that by their tracks.

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