She'd never know now…
Chapter 2
The sun was extremely hot on the back of Megan O'Malley's neck as she rode in a careful circle, eyes ahead of her, taking care about how she sat in the saddle as she came around toward the painted white top rail of the fence around the arena-a sight which, after three straight hours of this, was now causing her a mixture of apprehension and disgust. Her muscles ached, but that was the least of her problems. The biggest problem on her mind right now was underneath her, a problem called Alistair's Kingstown Walk Softly, known to his friends as Buddy, and to his detractors-of whom Megan was rapidly becoming one-as the Big Stick.*
This was because he seemed to have a big stick, ramrod, or other such straight and inflexible implement stuck right down the middle of his spine. In a horse being trained for dressage-the art of riding a horse with seemingly effortless grace through complex steps and paces in the showring-this made for a problem, since one of the moves required of even beginners was to walk or canter gracefully and evenly in a circle. And at the moment Buddy didn't seem willing to bend his body into the slightest kind of curve. Nor was he terribly interested in walking in circles, either. Every time he got near one of the fence rails in the dressage arena, he tried to break out of the circle and follow it straight on.
Now they were approaching the rail again, moving softly through the sawdust in what for the moment was a tolerable enough curve. Oh, please just do it right this time, just once, Megan thought, more in despair than in any hope that it would actually happen. She concentrated on keeping her seat correct and looking straight ahead, rather than down between the brainless creature's ears at the spot where she would love to take a club and whack him, and at just the right moment shifted her weight in the saddle just fractionally to the right, just so, the signal for Buddy to turn. Megan knew that she was doing it right, she knew it, and sure enough he altered his angle toward the rail just enough, and began to make the curve, continuing the circle-and then at the point when he should have started to curve away, took another step straight, and another, and another-
Megan couldn't stand it. She reined him in and just sat there, looking around the arena, trying to find the patience to keep from saying all kinds of horrible things. Buddy stood there, chewing reflectively on his bit and looking completely unconcerned.
"What happened?" Wilma said.
"You saw! He just broke out of circle and started to go straight."
"You shifted-"
"I didn't! Not the wrong way, anyway." She let out a long exasperated breath, glancing around the sunny ring. "I swear," Megan said, "if I owned him, I'd sell this dumb cluck off to Amtrak and let them convert him for rails. He'd be more use as part of a freight train."
Leaning against the rails on the far side of the arena, Wilma snickered, then pushed off and walked over to her. Megan glanced around the arena, a duplicate of the one where they would be riding at Potomac Valley over the weekend-a rectangle sixty meters long and forty meters wide, surrounded by white three-rail fencing a meter and a half high. Under the downpouring sunshine, covered bleachers where all too many spectators would be sitting ran down both "long" sides of the rectangle. And in front of those spectators she and Wilma would both ride out, one at a time, on Buddy, to do their Level 3 routines…
And die horribly, because the horse has suddenly become a waste of time, Megan thought. But she didn't say it out loud. There was still a chance of a miracle, or that something had gone wrong here that wasn't wrong in the real world.
Wilma came over to her, looked Buddy over. It was Megan's considered opinion that Wilma Christensen had more brains, as regarded matters equine, than any other rider she'd met since she got started sitting on top of horses. Wilma seemed to think good things about Megan, too. At least, they had hit it off instantly when they'd met a few years back, though they made something of an odd pair-Wilma short and thin compared to Megan's height and somewhat athletic build, Wilma blond and fair where Megan was tanned and brown. In any case, they had become inseparable at riding school, and later it had seemed obvious that they would start eventing together. But neither of us thought we'd wind up with a horse who's overnight turned into an idiot, Megan thought, and a "model" who seems to be doing the same thing…
Megan wondered, though, if Wilma was having the same kind of thoughts as she patted Buddy and walked around him, looking him over. "Are you sure you're not giving him some other kind of signal besides the weight shift?"
"I am not giving the big stupid lump any signal except that I want him to go in a circle," Megan said, annoyed, "that being probably one of the first things that a dressage animal ever learns, and which he knew perfectly well how to do until about a month and a half ago, except that now he doesn't. He just glues himself to the rail and goes forward, like a train. A very dumb train." She let out a long breath. "Do horses get aphasia, I wonder?"
Wilma narrowed her eyes at Buddy as he leaned over and began to crib thoughtfully at the top rail of the fence. She poked his muzzle with one finger to try and stop him. He tossed his head and snapped at her. "Question should be more like, can one recover from being hit repeatedly in the head with a ball-peen hammer? Because that's what he's working up to."
"Yeah." Megan gave him a look. "You," she said to Buddy, "are nothing but a collection of potential cans of dog food flying together in close formation. Do you know that?"
The horse regarded her with an expression of complete unconcern and tried to start chewing on the rail again.
Wilma looked at this with mild concern. "Maybe it's his diet," she said.
"It's about as likely to be sunspots," Megan said, unconvinced. "He gets every vitamin and mineral supplement known to humankind as it is. And more than he needs to eat, if you ask me."
"You suppose that's the problem? Too much grain? It's late for grass bloat."
Megan shook her head. Her suspicions were far worse. "I doubt it. I think it's the modeling that's gone wrong somehow."
"I don't know if it's that wrong. The real one is doing the same thing."
"Cribbing?"
"Yeah, but not just that. The rail problem, too. All yesterday afternoon." Wilma's expression was eloquent of annoyance as severe as Megan's. "I was mortified."
Megan leaned on the rail. "You know, you might be right, though," she said. "If it's some obscure muscle or bone thing… the supplements wouldn't necessarily be enough to put him right"
"Maybe it's why he keeps cribbing," Wilma said. "Minerals."
Megan sighed. "Without getting bloods drawn on him and having them sent for an analysis, and the figures fed into the model, there's no way to tell that for sure. If the model is doing what the real horse is, then the chances are that it's something weight- or motion-based. Which is unfortunate for us…"
"… Because it makes it look like we're doing something wrong, instead of him."
"Please," Megan said. She was desperately tired of the way the model was behaving, but the Region One Young Riders Championship of the U. S. Dressage Federation was only four days away, and she dared not waste any possible practice time. The championship was a dream that had been some time coming, for Megan was not the kind to compete at something without a suspicion that she might actually make some kind of decent showing. She and Wilma had together been working with Buddy for the past year, and a respectable score in the championships had actually started to look possible. So together with various other kids from the local riding club, they had filed their statements of intent, paid their entrance fees, and had successfully ridden the qualifier test, the FEI Prix St. Georges Freestyle. Now they were in the final stages of preparation for the trials to be held at the dressage center at Potomac Valley. And all this would have been just wonderful, except that Buddy seemed suddenly and inexplicably to be losing several very basic skills which he and his riders were nonetheless going to be expected to exhibit in the ring, and as a result, both Megan and Wilma both now seemed doomed to be horribly embarrassed in front of thousands of people. Everybody who saw them would (as was only to be expected) assume that the horse's poor performance was something to do with the inadequacies of the rider, and she and Wilma were both going to die hundreds of deaths. Or at least so it seemed to Megan.