The Island of Lost Horses

It was when I realised that I couldn’t move my legs that I truly began to panic. They’d gone completely numb under the mud. I tried to kick and felt myself sink deeper.

I clawed at the mud, driven on by raw adrenaline, but even the fear wasn’t enough to bring the strength back to my exhausted arms. My muscles were jelly.

“Help me!” The words came out weak and strangled. My throat was thick and dry, my tongue swollen. “Help me!”

I swear the parrots laughed at me. I heard them caw-caw. Why were they so horrible?

“Help me…” My words were choked with tears. I was so stupid. I should have left Mom a note. What if she never ever found me? I didn’t want to die out here in the middle of nowhere. I didn’t want to die.

My head was all woozy. I shut my eyes to block out the glare and my world became darkness and sounds. There was the constant lap and swell of the sea as it crept up on me, and the birds calling in the sky above us, the rattle of the horse’s breath and the mud gurgling beneath me. And then, cutting through all of these, I heard a shrill whine, like a mosquito at first, then growing closer and louder until it filled my ears. I opened my eyes and squinted into the sun.

It was a motorbike.

A Shadow on the Sun

The horse had lost all her fight. She lay submerged in the mud beside me, each rattling, heaving gasp she took seeming like it might be her last. Then the motorbike roared into the silence and brought her violently back to her senses.

She began to thrash about, legs flailing in the mud alongside me. I felt one of her front hooves accidentally glance against the hard bone of my ankle and I swallowed the pain in a wrenching gasp of agony. Trying to get away from her, I uselessly clawed at the mud again. But I had no strength left.

I tried to cry out again, to say, “I’m here!” but my tongue had turned to rubber. The motorbike noise filled my head, piercing my brain.

And then it stopped.

I could see a figure walking towards me. I screwed my face up against the blinding glare. My eyes hurt so much I had to shut them tight. When I opened them there was a shadow looming above me, blocking out the sun.

“My goodness, child! How long is you been like dis?”

I squinted up at the silhouette.

“I don’t know,” I replied. “Hours, I guess.” I could barely get the words out of my dry mouth. I was still sun-blind but when the figure bent down really low, putting her face near mine, I could see that it was a woman. She had dark coffee-coloured skin and her hair was matted in dreadlocks, tangled with grey. She had a thick, broad nose, and swollen lips. Her eyes stared into mine with a keen brightness.

“Here.” She held my head by the chin and pushed a water bottle to my lips. “Drink it.”

I took five or six deep gulps. I had to fight with my own tongue to get the water down. It felt amazing.

I drank again and the woman grunted her approval, then put the empty bottle back in the bag she’d slung over her shoulder. She stood up and her shadow, which had mercifully blocked out the sun, was gone. I shut my eyes against the sun’s glare and when I opened them again I could see her walking away.

“No! Don’t leave! No!”

The motorbike engine cranked back to life. She was driving away!

I shouted until my throat was raw. But she didn’t come back. Soon, I couldn’t even hear the bike any more.

I willed the old woman to return. But there was no sound except the lapping of the waves growing nearer and the cries of the seabirds spiralling in the sky. In my mind the birds became vultures, circling above, waiting for the life to ebb out of us. When a gull landed right in front of me I screamed and reeled back in fright.

“Go away!” I shouted, grabbing a handful of mud and throwing it as hard as I could. “Leave us alone!”

That was when I broke down and cried. My breath came in horrible hiccups, as I choked on my sobs.

I washed in and out of consciousness and when I was awake it all felt like a dream. I honestly don’t know how long it was before I heard the sound of an engine again. Not a whine this time, but a full-bodied roar. In the distance something big was rumbling across the mudflats. I shielded my eyes with my hands. It was an old farm tractor, ancient rusty red, but the old woman drove it like it was a racing car, speeding across the mudflats, flinging a sheet of water up in her wake.

When she reached us she swung round wide so she wouldn’t disturb the mud hole. Then the tractor engine went dead and the next thing I knew she was standing right there next to me.

“You got a name, child?”

“Beatriz.” I managed to get the word out through my swollen, sunburnt lips. “My name is Beatriz Ortega.”

“Well, Bee-a-trizz child, I be Annie.” She thrust a ragged bit of frayed rope at me. “Take it!” she insisted. “You needs to get your hand under de horse’s belly. You’ll have to dig de mud, Bee-a-trizz, dig hard.”

“I can’t do it!” I was weeping as I said it. My fingernails were already raw from trying to dig the horse out and my arms were too weak.

“Yes, you can, child,” Annie said firmly. “Come on now!”

Annie went back to the tractor and grabbed a shovel and then she came and began to dig on the other side of the horse. She was making a hole for me to poke the rope through. “Come on, Bee-a-trizz. Not much more… keep goin’.”

I dug until my fingers bled, tears running down my cheeks.

“Dat’s de way!” Annie encouraged me. “You is doin’ it, Bee-a-trizz child! We almost dere…”

And then I felt her fingers clasp my own and she had the rope in her hands. She pulled it beneath the horse’s belly and then knotted it across the horse’s back, taking another length, which she crossed through and ran round the horse’s hindquarters. I lay my face down on the mud, utterly exhausted.

“You got to do another tink for me, Bee-a-trizz.”

Annie passed the rope to me again. “Tie it off by her belly and we is done. Tie a strong knot, make it tight.”

I plunged my hands back into the mud once more. I did the knot by feel, tying it blind beneath the mud. My hands were so weak and numb it took forever, but I managed it. The rope now ran right the way round the horse’s belly, closing the circuit and creating a harness.

Annie checked the knots and grunted with satisfaction. Then she came over and bent down on all fours and clasped me under the armpits.

“Hang on to me, child!” she commanded. I was shaking so badly I could hardly grip. “Get a good strong hold!” Annie snapped at me. “You gots to be ready when I pull. You cling to me, child, and you stay dead still. Ain’t gonna do no good if you kick about.”

With her arms wrapped round me, Annie crouched low and then she took a deep breath and strained. With a firm, sudden yank she heaved me out and dragged me clear of the mud hole. For an old woman she was plenty strong! I lay on the sand, gasping like a fish that had just been landed on a dock.

She dragged me up the beach a little way and then gave me another bottle of water to drink and went back to her tractor. Humming to herself, she got behind the wheel and revved the engine. The tractor lurched forward and the ropes went taut. Then suddenly the tractor tyres began to spin, straining against the weight. The tractor was going backwards, being dragged into the hole, falling in on top of the horse!

Annie didn’t seem concerned. Still humming, she cranked up the gears and put her foot down. The engine revved and, in fits and starts, the tractor edged forward. As it did so, my horse seemed to stir back to life. Reawakened, she began flailing with her forelegs.

The tractor had loosened the mud’s grip and with a dramatic scramble of limbs, the horse lurched forward. She came halfway out so that her front legs were visible above the mud. She only needed to get her haunches out and she would be free. But her legs didn’t seem able to move any further. They had gone weak and numb from their hours thrashing beneath the mud. When Annie finally dragged her up so that she was almost standing, the horse wobbled as her hind legs collapsed. She was going to fall back into the hole!

Annie was ready for her. She let the horse find her feet, ignoring the seawater that had begun to fill the hole and the tractor tyres rapidly sinking down into the mud.

Then the tractor gave a loud growl as Annie suddenly gunned it forward and the horse was catapulted clear out of the mud hole.

I watched in horror as my horse stumbled and fell to its knees. For a sickening moment I thought she might break a leg, but Annie kept the ropes taut so that the horse managed to go forward in a series of awkward stumbles until it stood at last on firm ground.

Annie dug a handkerchief out of the sleeve of her dirty floral dress and used it to mop the sweat off her brow. Now that the horse was out, she had a look of utter relief on her face as she jumped down off the tractor.

The horse didn’t flinch at Annie’s touch. She stood weak as a kitten while Annie ran her hands over her and then untied the ropes and refastened them to the halter and hitched the horse to the back of the tractor.

“She be OK,” she said, nodding sagely. “Notink broken. Just some scratches is all.” Then she looked me over. “Bee-a-trizz,” she said, “look at you shakin’! You gonna catch youself ammonia from bein’ in dat hole. You be comin’ home wit’ me.”

Annie helped me up on to the tractor so that I was sitting on the wheel arch of one of the massive tyres.

“I want to go home,” I said. My voice sounded weird to me – so small, so pitiful. Annie didn’t even seem to hear me – or at least she didn’t say anything. She clambered up to take her place at the steering wheel in front of me and put the tractor into gear.

And so, with the horse following behind the tractor, and me perched up there on the wheel arch, Annie chugged slowly back across the mudflats. Not towards home, but in the opposite direction, away from Mom and the Phaedra, towards the dark jungle hills of Great Abaco.

Annie’s Crib

“My boat is in the other direction… please…”

It was useless. Annie didn’t even acknow-ledge my words. She just kept driving, humming away to herself.

The ride got even bumpier when we left the mudflats and took the wide dirt track that cut up through the jungle hills. The horse stumbled on behind the tractor on wobbly legs, doing her best to keep up and I clung on, flung about with every pothole and rut we struck.

I was still feeling really woozy and I was about to beg Annie to stop when she cut the engine and said, “We is here.”

‘Here’ was a bright yellow and turquoise beach cottage, a tiny hideaway with its front porch poking out from beneath the trees. To the side of the cottage there was a rusted-out old car wreck, and beside it some makeshift wooden pens that looked like they were used to house animals, although they were empty at the moment. The only living creatures were three scrawny brown chickens roaming free and a painfully thin white cat who ran at the sight of us. A tinkling like wind chimes came from a tree in the middle of the front yard, its branches strung with beer bottles. Annie caught me staring at the bottle tree and gave a cackle.

“Dey for keepin’ away de evil.”

Annie jumped off the tractor and helped me down from the wheel rim.

“I want to go home,” I mumbled weakly as she lifted me to the ground. I felt like a four-year-old begging for Mommy. Annie paid me no attention. She just walked up to the front porch and I had no choice but to follow her.

The porch floorboards were so old they bent dangerously beneath my feet. Tangles of chicken bones and purple herbs were bound in knotted red twine and strung from the eaves, and I had to duck underneath to get inside.

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