Patricia Leitch: Horse of Fire (eBook pre-order out 7 November) Jinny 11

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Jinny Manders sat in the hall of Inverburgh Comprehensive School and galloped Shantih, her chestnut Arabian mare, over the bleak Finmory moors.
Deaf to the clatter of chairs, the stamping of feet, children’s voices and teachers’ shouting, Jinny heard only the whine of the wind through ruined bracken and bleached bones of heather, the sharp clip as Shantih’s galloping hooves struck sudden outcrops of rock. She saw only the far-reaching curves of moorland, the bulk of dark mountains compacted beneath the metal weight of the sky and far below her the tooled, pewter sea. Through this drear landscape Shantih soared over stone walls and stretched out in an ecstasy of flying speed, while Jinny sat neat and tight, balanced over her horse’s withers, her own red-gold hair bannering behind her as she urged her horse to greater speed.
‘You asleep?’ asked the girl sitting next to Jinny as she dug her elbow into Jinny’s arm. ‘That girl over there is trying to speak to you.’

Jinny jerked back to present reality, was aware of the school hall rapidly filling with pupils and the empty chairs marshalled on the stage waiting for the headmaster, Minister and guests. In another two hours the school Christmas service would be over and the holidays would have begun.

Days of freedom, freedom to ride Shantih lay ahead of her.

‘Over there,’ said the girl, pointing to the other side of the hall.

Somehow Jinny had got separated from the rest of her form and was sitting with children from another second year class. She stretched forward until she could see her form mates. Dolina Thomson who came from Ardtallon, the next village to Glenbost which was the village closest to Finmory House, was waving furiously at her.

‘I have to be seeing you,’ Dolina mouthed across at Jinny. ‘Urgent it is.’

‘What?’ Jinny demanded, trying to keep her voice lower than the noise in the hall, yet loud enough to reach Dolina. ‘What is it?’

‘Urgent message from …’ Dolina shouted back as a teacher’s hand closed on her shoulder, dragging her from her seat and forcing her to stand at the back of the hall.

Jinny watched helplessly. Normally she saw her on the school bus but this morning Dolina’s father had been coming in to the market and had given Dolina a lift. Jinny couldn’t imagine what urgent message she could have for her. It wasn’t even as if Dolina was horsy, so it couldn’t be anything about Shantih, and if it wasn’t about Shantih Jinny didn’t think it was likely to be too urgent.

The teachers’ macaw voices screeched for silence and the headmaster led the platform-sitters into the hall.

‘Two hours more,’ thought Jinny and let herself slip back into her daydream. She felt the gentle touch of Shantih’s mouth against the bit and the thrust of her powerful muscles. The headmaster’s black-gowned figure vanished from sight.

‘That’s you, isn’t it?’ said the girl next to Jinny. ‘Don’t tell me you’re asleep again?’

‘Special Art prize, Jennifer Manders.’

Stumbling to her feet, Jinny knew from the tone of the headmaster’s voice that this wasn’t the first time he had called her name. Never before had Jinny won a school prize. Normally she was near the bottom of her form, thinking all lessons except Art and some English so boring that she had dreamt and drawn her way through them until this term, when permission to show jump Shantih had depended on how well she did in the exams. She had been sixth in her form, but the thought of any prize never entered Jinny’s head.

She nearly tripped hurrying up the steps to the platform, aware of giggling frothing over the hall as she stood staring at the double row of seated zombies. At the far end of the platform a ferret-sharp woman was standing by a table holding a book in Jinny’s direction. Her pink lips lifted from brilliantly white teeth as she smiled coldly at Jinny, who hurried across to her, grabbed the book in her right hand and looked stupidly at the woman’s outstretched hand.

‘Can’t shake hands,’ thought Jinny, watching her own idiocy from high above her head. ‘I’m holding a book …’

‘The other hand, dear,’ said the woman and in changing her prize to her left hand, Jinny dropped it. She dived under the table to retrieve it and banged her head on the table. To the roars and cheers of the school Jinny had her hand squeezed by the ferret and fled the platform, hot-cheeked with shame.

‘For goodness sake, sit there,’ said a not-amused teacher’s voice and thankfully Jinny collapsed into a vacant seat in the second row.

‘Not my fault,’ she thought. ‘All the rest practised that hand shaking bit. They knew they were going to get a prize but I bloomin’ didn’t.’

Then for the first time she looked at it. It was a book of John Skeaping’s horse drawings. Turning the pages Jinny was lost in delight. With a few sure lines the artist had created racehorses, polo ponies and wild, galloping horses. They came leaping, alive, from the pages of the book.

‘At this Christmas in the twentieth century, I ask myself how the three kings would have travelled to worship the Child. The traditional camels seem unlikely. High tech suggests Concorde or space shuttle. You will each have your own ideas,’ preached the headmaster’s voice.

Suddenly Jinny was listening to him. She knew exactly how she would travel to find the Christ Child, for of course, she would ride Shantih. Golden, galloping, enchanted, Shantih would carry her to the stable where Jesus lay.

‘However you travel,’ continued the headmaster, ‘I would like you to consider what gifts you would bring with you. Frankincense, or Frankenstein as my five-year-old daughter would have it, and myrrh are more than a little remote to our way of life. Maybe a computer would be more appropriate. A painting by Francis Bacon or a nuclear warhead? A football scarf or roller boots? A television set perhaps? Yet I think that today’s Christ might be hoping for more than material gifts, would find most acceptable the gift of an awakened consciousness.

‘Each one of us has many things in our lives that we do not care to look at too closely or think about too much. Perhaps our gift to the Child this Christmas might be to look at one of these hidden corners in our minds, to really look at it, and when we have acknowledged the reality of starving children in a world of plenty, or the way we treat our gran, or the time we waste staring at TV soaps, see if there is something we can do about it, now we know.

‘Still, I have kept you here long enough. A very happy Christmas holiday to you all,’ and his open armed gesture released his school.

Pushing her way to the cloakroom, Jinny was looking out for Dolina but could see no sign of her.

‘Urgent? What could be urgent?’ Jinny’s brain
computed possibilities.

‘Congratulations,’ said her Art teacher’s voice.

‘Super book,’ grinned Jinny.

‘Thought you’d like it. Jinny Skeaping someday?’ he added as the press of children carried him on past Jinny.

‘A book for the Child,’ Jinny thought, ‘A book of my drawings and paintings of Shantih?’ But Jinny knew that the headmaster would not consider a few paintings enough. To try to stop fighting with Petra, her sixteen-year-old, pluperfect sister who was two years older than Jinny and was always, always right? That would be more the kind of thing he had in mind.

There was no sign of Dolina in the cloakroom nor was she on the school bus that took them to Glenbost.

‘Need to phone her,’ thought Jinny. ‘Can’t wait until I bump into her in Mrs Simpson’s shop.’

At Glenbost village, Jinny and Mike, her eleven-year-old brother who had only started at Inverburgh Comprehensive that year, jumped off the bus and into the bitter wind.

‘Freedom,’ said Jinny swinging her arms, long hair and school bag in delirious circles. ‘I’m going to do nothing but ride Shantih!’

‘Surprise, surprise,’ said Mike as they hurried over to the field where Shantih and Bramble, the black Highland who was on loan from Miss Tuke’s trekking centre, waited for them.

‘Dolina was looking for you,’ remembered Mike, vaulting over the field gate. ‘Knickers in a twist, whatever it is she wants to tell you. Her dad took her off in his car. Wouldn’t wait.’

Jinny flung her arms round Shantih’s neck, burying her face in the silken mane and breathing in the warm, pungent smell of Arab horse.

‘Dear horse,’ she murmured. ‘Your last day for ages, hanging round this field waiting for me to come home from school,’ and Jinny gave Shantih a secret sugar lump.

With a pig squeal of jealousy, Bramble came barging up, knocking Mike to the ground.

For a moment there was a panic of splurging horses and plunging hooves as Mike struggled to find his feet and Jinny shouted at Bramble, her voice shrill with disaster.

‘Your bloomin’ fault,’ said Mike emerging unharmed. ‘I could have been kicked to death. You know you can’t feed Shantih titbits. Bramble always smells them.’

‘Sorry,’ said Jinny contritely. ‘I forgot.’

She dragged off Shantih’s New Zealand rug, fetched her tack from the shed and with numbed fingers struggled to fasten throatlash and girths.

In minutes they were both mounted and, riding through the gateway, they turned their horses into the wind, to ride the moorland road from Glenbost to Finmory.

Humans: Jinny, Mike, Petra and Mr and Mrs Manders, Ken, Mr MacKenzie, Dolina, Miss Tuke, Tam, Sara, Mr Redding

Horses: Shantih, Bramble, Guizer, Callum

1. For Love of a Horse
2. A Devil to Ride
3. The Summer Riders
4. Night of the Red Horse
5. Gallop to the Hills
6. Horse in a Million
7. The Magic Pony
8. Ride Like the Wind
9. Chestnut Gold
10. Jump for the Moon
11. Horse of Fire
12. Running Wild