The Winter Pony (2 page)

I
was born in the forest, at the foot of the mountains, in a meadow I knew as the grassy place. The first thing I saw was the sun shining red through the trees, and seven shaggy animals grazing on their shadows.

They were ponies. And I was a pony, my legs as weak as saplings. My mother had to nudge me to my feet the first time she fed me. But within a day, our little band was on the move. I skipped along at my mother’s side, thinking I was already as fast and strong as any other pony, not knowing that the others had slowed to keep me near.

Our leader was a silvery stallion, as wary as an owl. We never crossed an open slope without him going first, standing dead still at the edge while he watched for wolves and mountain lions. He was always last to drink and last to graze, keeping
guard until we’d finished. Except for one dark patch on his chest, his whole body was the color of snow. I loved to see him in the wind and the sun, with his white mane blown into shimmering streamers.

We had a route that took a year to travel, from the snow-filled valleys of winter to summer’s high meadows. It brought us back every spring to a stony creek that we crossed single file. Our hooves made a lovely chuckling sound on the rocks as the water gurgled round our ankles. We climbed the bank on the other side, passed through a fringe of forest, and came to the grassy place, which I imagined to be the center of the world.

I thought everything would stay the same forever, that I would always be young and free, that day would follow day and the summers would pass by the thousands.

But even in my first year, I saw the young ponies growing older, and I saw an old one die. She was a big strong mare in the spring. But quite suddenly in the fall, she began to walk very slowly, to lag behind the herd. She didn’t complain, and she didn’t cry out for the rest of us to wait. She just eased herself away, and one night she wandered off to a watering place, all by herself in the darkness, and she lay down and didn’t get up. I saw her in the morning, her nose just touching the frozen water, her legs splayed out like an insect’s. I nudged her with my lips and found her cold and stiff, as though her body had become a stone. At that moment, I knew that nothing lived forever, that one day even I would die.

That was hard to understand. What did it mean to die? The grass didn’t mind to be eaten, and the water didn’t care if I drank it. But rabbits screamed when foxes pounced, and tiny
mice shrieked for help as they dangled in eagles’ talons. So why did the mare lie down so quietly, with no more grief or struggle than a fallen tree?

It scared me to think about it, and I was glad when the leader called me away. Across the valley, wolves were already howling the news of a fresh meal. So we hurried from there, off at a gallop through the forest. When wolves came hunting, ponies fled. We went on across a hillside, through a valley and up again, and we didn’t stop until we reached the grassy place.

The next morning was exactly like my very first on earth. The sun was red again, throwing shafts of light between the branches. The ponies were scattered across the meadow, their shaggy manes hanging round their ears as they grazed on the sweet grass.

When we heard the clatter of hooves in the stream, we all looked up together. My mother had green stems drooping from each side of her mouth. The leader turned his head, his ears twitching.

At the edge of the meadow, a crow suddenly burst from a tree. I stared at the place, wondering what had frightened the bird. And out from the forest, with a shout and a cry, came four black horses with men on their backs. They came at a gallop, bounding across the clearing, hooves making thunderous beats that shook through the ground.

I had never seen a man. I had never seen a horse. I thought each pair was a single animal, a two-headed monster charging toward me.

My mother called out as she bolted. She reached the forest in two long bounds and vanished among the trees, still shrieking for me to follow. But I was too afraid to move, and
the other ponies nearly bowled me over in their rush for the forest. Only the stallion stayed. He faced the four horses and reared up on his hind legs, seeming to me as tall as a tree. He flailed with his hooves, ready to take on all of the monsters at once.

They closed around him. The riders shouted. The black horses whinnied and snorted. They pranced through the grass in high, skittish steps, as though trampling foxes. And the stallion towered above them all with his silvery mane tossing this way and that.

Then one of the riders whirled away and came tearing toward me. His horse was running flat out, flinging up mud and grass from its hooves.

I cried for my mother, but she couldn’t help me. I raced for the trees faster than I’d ever run before. I left the stallion to his dreadful battle and fled blindly for the forest. I heard the strange shouts of the men, the snorts of their horses, and thought that each monster had two voices. Amid their babble were the shrill cries of the stallion, full of anger and fear, and the frantic calls of my mother fading into the forest.

I followed her cries. I crashed through the bushes and wove between the trees, dashing through a hollow, hurdling a fallen pine. I stumbled, got up, and ran again. I dodged to the left; I dodged to the right, aware all the time that the monster was behind me. I could hear its deep panting and its weird cries, and the crack-crack-crack of a leather whip.

I came to the foot of a long hill. For a moment, I saw the herd of ponies above me, my mother among them, their white shapes galloping ghostly between the trees. And then a loop of rope fell over my head, and it snapped tight around my
neck. I tumbled forward, my head wrenched right around until I thought my neck was broken. I lay on the ground, half strangled and breathless, as the monster glared at me with its four eyes.

I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing as the creature seemed to break in two. The man heaved himself up, then down from the saddle, and I realized the horse was much like a pony, just bigger and blacker. Without a word from the man—all by itself—the horse stepped backward to keep the rope taut around my neck. It kept staring right at me with a cold look, unconcerned by my pain. I didn’t struggle; it was all I could do to keep breathing. I watched the man come walking toward me, and I wondered what sort of creature he was, that he could turn horse against pony so completely.

The men took me far away, half dragging me most of the time. I cried for my mother again and again, but it did no good. They took me down from the mountains, out of the forest, into a land full of people. They put me into a building as dark as a cave, into a narrow slot made of wooden fences. There were no more meadows and no more rivers for me. I drank from a rusted pail that gave my water a bitter taste. Once a day, a canvas bucket was shoved over my mouth and tied to my head, and I slobbered up the handful of grain that lay at the bottom.

Every morning, I was dragged outside, into a muddy corral. There I was broken. I was tamed and harnessed, then taught how to serve men. I learned to pull heavy weights, to
obey commands that were always shouted at me. If I wasn’t quick enough, I was struck with a stick or a whip or a fist. Once I was hit with a bottle, again and again, until it shattered against my collarbone. Every day was the same. The lessons lasted for hours, until the men grew tired of beating me.

To go from a life in a forest to a life like that made me sad. I wanted to drink from a stream, not a bucket. I wanted to run on the hillsides, to lie in the grass. I couldn’t turn around in my stall, and I certainly couldn’t lie down.

There was a whole row of ponies in the building, each pushed into its own slot, and among them—somewhere that I couldn’t see—was the silver stallion. I often heard him snort and whinny. Sometimes he kicked at the fences, smashing the wood, and men came barging into the building. There were awful sounds then: cracking whips; shouts of men; the hideous scream of a pony.

I didn’t like to hear that sound, and I let my mind wander away. Most of the time, it went back to the forest, to summer meadows, and I heard the whine of the black flies and the swishing of our tails. But one day, it wandered away to a different place altogether.

I saw a land of snow and ice, a gate so huge that its posts were mountains, its arch a curve of clouds. I saw it shining in the sunlight, the ice a glorious field of sparkles.

My mind didn’t take me through the gate. But I somehow knew what lay beyond it: a place for ponies. I knew that the old mare from my herd was there, and all the others that had died before I was born. I told myself that I would go there one day if I was lucky enough to get through the gateway, and if I did, I’d find my mother waiting.

This wasn’t a frightening vision at all. It gave me great comfort to know that there was a pony place waiting for me if I could reach it. Whenever I was sad or lonely, when life seemed very hard, I let my mind wander to that sunny slope of snow.

The men sold me to another man, a Russian, short and fat, who liked to spit a lot. The first thing he did when he saw me was hook his big fingers into my lips, pry them open, and peer at my teeth. His fingers tasted of horrible things, and his nails were like little stones jammed against my gums.

The Russian took me back to the forest. At first I thought it was kind of him to lead me there, and I hoped he would turn me loose to run again with the wild ponies. But he led me instead to a camp in the mountains, far from the place where I was born. He had a gang of men who were cutting trees and trimming them down to timbers. I had to drag the logs out of the forest, with one man pulling at my head while another whipped my flanks with a willow stick. All day I pulled in the harness, through mud and snow, in cold and heat, for so many months that I lost track of them all, and the months turned into years. In summer, flies laid eggs in the long welts across my back, and the itching nearly drove me mad. In winter, the maggots froze, bringing relief in one way but agony in another. With every smack of the stick, I screamed.

There was not even a stable. I was tied to a tether near the bunkhouse, where the men all slept. When the weather was cold, I shivered for hours, and when it was warm, the flies came so thickly that I thought I’d be eaten alive. Every night, I hoped that I would slip away in my sleep and find myself at the gateway. I dreamed of that, of galloping up the slope to the ponies’ place.

The work lasted five years, and when it was done, so was I. Just eight years old, I felt like seventeen.