Season of Ponies (2 page)

“This is for you, Pam. I don’t think I ever told you before, but when I first met your mother she lived with her old grandmother. Granny was a very wise and wonderful old lady. Right after your mother died, she gave me this and said it was for you. She said I would know when the time came for you to have it. I wondered about that, but—she was right. Somehow, I’m sure this is the time she meant.”

Pamela tried not to look. She didn’t want him to think she had forgotten his betrayal. But she couldn’t help being curious. A gift given to her so long ago was fascinating enough, but when it concerned her mother, her mother who was so seldom mentioned, it was almost irresistible. Slowly she turned her head and opened her fingers.

In her hand was a sort of amulet or medallion on a slender chain. On each side of the amulet were strange raised figures. On one side there was a small triangle at whose points were a cat, a snake, and a beetle. On the other, odd little symbols that seemed to be letters of some kind ran all around the outside, and in the center was a large eye.

Through the depths of her disappointment there ran a sudden ripple of excitement. What was it? What did the mysterious symbols mean?

“What is it?” she heard herself asking, almost against her will. “What does it mean?”

“I don’t know myself, Pam. Granny wouldn’t say much, except that it was very old—and very powerful.”

“Powerful,” Pamela repeated. “That sounds like it’s magic. Do you suppose it gives three wishes?”

Father smiled. “That’s funny. You know, I asked the same thing. I was joking—but Granny didn’t seem to think I was very funny. She got quite indignant. ‘Do you think,’ she said, ‘I’d give my great-granddaughter anything so dangerous as that?’ ”

“What do you suppose that meant?”

“I don’t know, unless she felt most people wouldn’t use three wishes wisely. She wouldn’t say much more about it. But she did tell me what the writing says. It doesn’t make much sense to me. I wrote it down.” He took out his wallet and from a card pocket produced a small piece of worn and discolored paper.

Pamela took it eagerly and read,
“Give the searching heart an eye, and magic fills a summer’s sky.”

“I don’t understand it,” she said after a moment. “It sounds like a riddle.” Disappointment welled up again, choking her throat and burning her eyes. “I wish it had been three wishes. Then I could have wished to go with you—and even Aunt Sarah couldn’t have stopped me.

Father’s eyes dropped, and he reached for her hand. They sat quietly for a few moments, and then he took the amulet and fastened the chain around her neck. He let it slip down inside her dress. Their eyes met, and she recognized his “we’ve got a secret” grin. She turned away without smiling. She had always loved to share a secret with her father, but this time it only made her feel angry again.

As they climbed down the hill, she noticed that dark clouds had begun to fill the sunny sky.

Pamela felt no comfort in the amulet as she watched her father’s car disappear down the Valley Road that afternoon. The summer stretched before her as dreary and as endless as the huge bank of black clouds that by now completely hid the sun. It’s just an old necklace, she thought bitterly. It doesn’t make anything any better. It doesn’t change not seeing Father until October. It doesn’t change not having any friends or pets. It doesn’t change not ever going anywhere. Everything is just the way it always was, and it will always be the same.

Her throat was getting tighter and tighter. The aunts had already gone back in the house, so no one saw Pamela as she turned and ran through the kitchen, up the backstairs, into her room and threw herself face down on her bed.

She cried at first with angry bitter sorrow. Then for a long time she cried softly with old tired sorrow for all the sadness of her ten years of life. And much later she cried because she was tired of crying and couldn’t remember how to stop.

The last thing she remembered was that rain had begun to beat on the windows and that she was very tired.

P
AMELA WOKE UP SLOWLY
and reluctantly. At first she couldn’t remember why she was lying on her bed with all her clothes on, or why she felt so sad. Then it all came back with a rush. She sighed a long quavering sigh and rubbed her eyes hard with her clenched fists.

Something hard seemed to be pressing against one of her ribs making her vaguely uncomfortable. She sat up and, rubbing the spot, discovered that she had been lying on the amulet. She took it out and studied it carefully. It did look magical with all those weird figures and strange writing. But it certainly hadn’t done anything about Father’s leaving. She gave it a little shake. “Why don’t you do something?” she said impatiently.

She looked around expectantly, but not a thing happened. It was very quiet in the big old house. Aunt Sarah and Aunt Elsie were probably taking naps. She looked at the clock on her dresser. Over two hours till dinnertime and nothing to do. And then there would be all the rest of the summer and part of the fall, stretching away, day after day. Pamela lay back on the bed and closed her eyes.

She lay limply, keeping her mind empty, trying not to hear the smothering silence of the old house. And then, quite suddenly, out of the quietness, there came a soft uncertain breath of distant music. The first faint rippling trill faded, and Pamela wondered if she had imagined it. But it came again, a little nearer now and she thought perhaps it was a bird singing. But then, as the sound grew stronger, she knew that it was not. It was too patterned to be the song of a bird or a brook and yet too free to be a human melody. The music rose and fell in lovely liquid spills of sound. Pamela knew now it was something she had never heard before. A secret singing sound that was not a voice, and yet sang a joyous open song of fun and freedom.

The music came nearer and nearer, and very slowly and carefully Pamela stood up and went to the window. She was afraid to make a sound or even move quickly for fear it would fade off into a dream. Outside the light was dim under the great oak trees. The air was clear and clean and smelled of rain. Slanting rays of sunlight slid through the black branches here and there to turn the last raindrops to crystal tears. Out by the creek a strange white mist drifted and swirled. Long fingers of fog wavered up across the wet lawn, past the twisted trunks of the oaks which seemed to rise from ghostly white islands. Nothing moved but the flowing fog.

The music grew and grew. Pamela found she was shivering, not with cold or fear, but with the certain knowledge that something was about to happen—something strange and wonderful, something beyond imagining.

Then shadows moved in the white mist and suddenly the fog was full of—ponies! They were coming right down the old Valley Road just beyond the creek. They came out of the dim light and the swirling mist, but Pamela could see them quite plainly.

They were only a little taller than Shetland ponies, but not stubby and shaggy like Shetlands at all. Their heads were very small and as delicate as the heads of sea horses. Their necks were long and slender and sharply arched. Like Arabians, their long legs were quick and supple and their dark eyes vulnerable and proud. They were of many pale and misty colors; cloudy grays, pale golds, smoky blues, and even a dusky pink like the color of clouds at sunrise just as they fade from pink to gray. But, perhaps most wonderful of all were their manes and tails. Of deeper and brighter shades then their pale bodies, their manes and tails foamed and plumed in clouds of color as they pranced through the swirling mist.

Pamela’s breath came in quick little gasps and her heart pounded just at the bottom of her throat. She had never seen anything so beautiful as the proudly prancing ponies moving through the wisps of fog, tossing their sea-horse heads. The last one was larger than the rest and—and there was someone on his back. It was a boy! Not a valley boy, surely, but a stranger, a stranger with curly brown hair, too long for a boy, that fell down over his forehead like a pony’s forelock. A stranger with pale gold skin and great dark eyes.

The boy sat straight and slim on the dancing pony’s back and played a flute. As the pony passed, the boy did not stop playing, but he turned his golden face toward Pamela’s window. And then, just as he began to fade into the mist, the pony whirled back to face the house. The boy raised his hand and pointed with the shining flute straight towards her window, and Pamela thought she saw him smile. Then he turned quickly and disappeared into the mist.

The music began again and once more the damp air was full of the wild sweet sound. But it was fading now, softer and farther away, and Pamela was alone again with the shadows spreading under the oaks and only raindrops falling from the eaves breaking the silence of the old house.

P
AMELA STOOD AT THE
window for a long time, although everything was still now, except for the drifting fog. “What a strange thing to happen,” she mused. “Ponies don’t really look like that. They were like ...like ...” She ran to her bookcase. On the top shelf were dozens of horses. Horses her father had brought her from all the places his work had taken him. Horses she had bought herself whenever she had had a chance. Even two little china horses from Aunt Elsie.

There were horses of china, copper, silver, wood and—glass! That’s what they were like. The glass ponies were at one end of the shelf arranged on their own green silk handkerchief pasture. They were her favorites. Her father had once taken her to watch a man who shaped animals, birds, and ships, from slim tubes of molten glass. They had bought every horse he had. The smallest was a colt of clear yellow glass with a little golden teardrop of a tail.

They were all tiny things, so fragile you were almost afraid to pick them up. When you held them to the light their pale colors glowed. Their necks arched proudly, and their dainty hooves were poised for prancing.

A sudden thought made Pamela catch her breath—the amulet! She examined it thoughtfully. It looked just the same; the same strange symbols and wisely staring eye. Nothing was a bit different. But still—
“Give the searching heart an eye, and magic fills a summer’s sky.”
Could it be that magic might really fill the sky, even the sky of Oak Farm?

“Pamela! Time for dinner.” Aunt Elsie’s voice startled her. It seemed to come from another world. With a sigh, she tucked the amulet back under her dress. She gave her hair a quick brush and hurriedly checked her hands and face. They would have to do. No time to get ready properly. But as she walked down the stairs, slowly and with her head up as Aunt Sarah felt was necessary for young ladies, she suddenly laughed out loud. It was almost fun to be dignified and ladylike when underneath you had such an unbelievable secret.

The giggle seemed to startle Brother, Aunt Sarah’s haughty tomcat, who was sitting on the landing where the stairs turned. He gazed at Pamela sternly. Once, Aunt Elsie said, there had been two kittens, Brother and Sister, but Sister had died years ago. Pamela thought it was almost as hard to imagine Brother as a kitten as it was to imagine Aunt Sarah as a little girl. Brother was now the only animal on all the many acres of Oak Farm, and he felt his importance keenly. He resented Pamela, and his cold green stare and flicking tail plainly said so. But he was often sitting on the landing when Pamela came to dinner, and she thought she knew why.

Pamela sat down and put her face close to Brother’s. His whiskers twitched nervously. “You mean old thing,” she whispered. Just sitting there hoping I’ll try to make friends again just so you can snub me. Well, I don’t need you for a friend any more. So there!” Pamela marched on down the stairs while Brother batted his green eyes in surprise.

In the dining room the aunts were already at the long table. Aunt Sarah’s frown told Pamela that she was late. She slipped quickly into her chair. “I see you have forgotten the talk we had about punctuality just a few days ago,” Aunt Sarah said.

“I’m sorry, Aunt Sarah.”

Very little else was said until the meal was half over. Then Aunt Elsie cleared her throat nervously. “About the school, Sarah,” she said.

“All right, Elsie. I hadn’t forgotten,” Aunt Sarah replied. “Pamela, your Aunt Elsie feels you are lonely and that, in spite of the problems involved, you would be better off attending the Valley School. She tells me that there is a summer session beginning next week.”

Pamela’s mouth flew open.

Aunt Sarah raised her hand. “Now I want you to think carefully before you answer. You have been told my reasons for keeping you at home. Your Aunt Elsie is a trained teacher, and you have been making good progress in your work. Valley Road isn’t kept up as it should be, and the school bus is in a disgraceful state of disrepair. Finally, as you well know, many of the children who attend Valley School now are not the kind of people you would enjoy. However, your Aunt Elsie—and your father I might add—feel you are not being sufficiently amused here at Oak Farm. I want you to consider all these things carefully before you answer.”

Pamela didn’t need the warning. She was speechless with surprise. She didn’t remember when anyone had changed a decision of Aunt Sarah’s, certainly not Aunt Elsie. Pamela could imagine what Aunt Elsie must have been through. At any other time she would have wept with joy. For years she had pictured herself in a classroom surrounded by friends. But now, did she want to go? Now—when something strange and wonderful had come to Oak Farm?

Pamela closed her eyes for a second and tried to bring back the old pleasant picture of herself in a real schoolroom—but somehow it was gone. The eyes of her mind were full of something else—something that moved mysteriously through a white mist. Something that ran and danced to a brave wild song of freedom.

Hanging her head so she wouldn’t have to look at Aunt Elsie, she mumbled, “I don’t mind studying at home. I don’t think I want to go to Valley School, Aunt Sarah. Thank you anyway.”

Even Aunt Sarah seemed surprised at Pamela’s answer; but her eyes gleamed triumphantly as she said, “You see, Elsie? I was right. All the fuss was quite unnecessary.”