Patricia Leitch: Jump for the Moon (eBook) Jinny 10 - pre order out 20 March 2025

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The low autumn sun dazzled the calm sea into a sheet of brilliance. Jinny Manders, balancing easily on the back of her rearing Arab mare, was silhouetted against its light.

‘Easy Shantih,’ Jinny whispered, feeling her horse plunging and dancing, desperate to gallop on over the stretching sands. ‘Steady now.’

Jinny held Shantih with the lightest touch on her bit, controlling her between hands and seat. Jinny’s fingers felt the reins as if they were living strands that brought all the energy of the chestnut mare under her command.
‘Steady,’ she whispered again and then, relaxing her hold, she released Shantih.

For a split second Jinny felt the power of her horse massed beneath her; felt Shantih held, both arrow and bow, by her own tension and then she was away. Neck stretched out; mane and tail bannered by her speed, the piston beat of Shantih’s hooves thudded into the shimmering sands. The great muscles of Shantih’s shoulders and quarters strained beneath the red-gold sheen of her satin skin. Her head with its dished muzzle, flaunting nostrils and dark-silver eyes dared into space in an ecstasy of galloping. Jinny crouched low over Shantih’s withers, her hands on either side of Shantih’s neck. Her own red-gold hair streamed out from beneath her hard hat and her tight, bony knees were welded against the saddle. ‘Faster,’ she shouted. ‘On you go, on you go.’

As the wind of their speed ripped the sound from Jinny’s lips she felt her horse surge forward. She rode now in a blur of speed. Sea, sand and sky were one. Only the gulls’ fishwife screaming was separate, clear beyond their flight.

But it wasn’t enough. Not enough to blot out the black mood that crouched on Jinny’s shoulders, holding on with knotted, monkey fingers as it whispered into her mind, ‘School tomorrow, school tomorrow, school tomorrow.’

Reaching the far side of the bay, Jinny brought Shantih to a spring-hoofed trot.

‘Where now?’ Shantih demanded with tossing head, clinking bit and prancing forefeet.

Without hesitation Jinny turned her at the sheep track that angled upward to the fields beyond Mr MacKenzie’s farm. Normally when Jinny took this track she rode cautiously, giving Shantih her head so that she could pick her own way up the almost vertical ladder of crumbling, sandy soil and boulders. But today she urged Shantih on, delighting in the strength of her horse; in seeing Shantih dig her toes into the soft earth and fight her way upwards.

Even when Shantih missed her footing and for a moment Jinny felt the clutch of gravity that could pluck them from the track and send them hurtling down to the sands below, she didn’t care. It was what she wanted. She wanted danger and excitement; wanted to fill the afternoon with action to stop herself thinking of going back to school tomorrow; of the weeks and weeks of boredom that lay ahead. The Christmas holidays were so far away they couldn’t even be imagined.

‘Fit horse,’ praised Jinny as Shantih burst from the confines of the track on to the open moorland. ‘I could ride you in a steeplechase and you wouldn’t even notice. You could jump the moon and the stars and the wall in the Puissance at The Horse of The Year show. That would be something worth doing. Not boring old school. Boring, boring school. How I hate it.’

Beneath Jinny, Finmory Bay had dwindled into a toy bay with its neat loop of water and arc of sand, held in the black jaws of rock. Across the fields was Mr MacKenzie’s farm, and beyond the farm, closer to the bay, was Finmory House where Jinny lived. It was a grey stone house, standing four-square and rooted. Its front windows looked out over garden grounds, past the field where Jinny kept Shantih and on to the bay. Behind the house a wilderness of moorland stretched to mountains bulked black against the sky. And that was all. Mountains, moor and sea. Jinny loved it with all her being. Asked only to be allowed to go on living there forever, free to gallop Shantih, to paint and draw, knowing that Finmory House and her family were always there.

Two years ago the Manders family—Mr and Mrs Manders; Petra, Jinny’s elder sister who was sixteen, and Mike, Jinny’s younger brother who was eleven—had all lived in Stopton, a city of endless traffic and vibrating noise. Mr Manders had been a probation officer until he became so disillusioned that he had decided to become a potter, had bought Finmory House and brought them all to live in the north-west of Scotland.

Petra was a weekly boarder at Duninver High School. Jinny went to Inverburgh Comprehensive, riding Shantih into Glenbost, the nearest village, and leaving her there during the day while she caught the school bus into Inverburgh. Until now Mike had ridden Bramble, a black Highland pony borrowed from Miss Tuke’s trekking centre, into Glenbost, leaving him in the field with Shantih, while he attended the village school. Now he was starting at Inverburgh Comprehensive and would be setting off every morning with Jinny.

‘Boring, boring, boring school,’ Jinny repeated aloud.

At the back of her mind there was something that made it more than boring. Something that had happened at the end of last term. It hadn’t mattered then because the summer holidays were starting, her return to school in September had been a lifetime away and Jinny hadn’t cared. Now she couldn’t remember what it was; only knew there was something waiting for her.

‘Better take a look at your term-time field,’ she said to Shantih and, closing her legs against Shantih’s sides, she trotted off in the direction of Glenbost. The village consisted of Mrs Simpson’s shop, two churches, a garage and a primary school, all surrounded by a cluster of crofts.

As she trotted along, Jinny’s black mood settled in on her. It was like a cold, wet cloak that wrapped itself round her, blinkering out the bright day.

‘Not as bad as Stopton,’ Jinny said, struggling to free herself from its grip. ‘And I’d have been going back to school there too.’

Suddenly Shantih snorted, shied violently as a hoodie crow erupted from the heather and was cantering down the road before Jinny had recovered her seat.

‘Fine day,’ called Mrs Simpson from her shop doorway.

‘School tomorrow,’ answered Jinny in a voice of doom.

‘Now do not be grumbling at that. When I was your age and younger, I was down on my knees all day scrubbing the floors for the gentry.’

‘Wouldn’t have liked that either,’ agreed Jinny.

‘Indeed and you would not.’

‘But it doesn’t make school any better.’

‘It is grateful you should be for the chance to be at the education. All those books and not a penny to be paid for them. Wasted you are with so much handed to you on plates.’

At the mention of school books the monkey voice chattered more clearly in Jinny’s head but still she couldn’t remember, couldn’t quite hear what it was saying.

‘And it is your brother will be for Inverburgh school this term?’

‘He’s looking forward to it. Doesn’t know what’s waiting for him.’

‘Och, he’s got more sense to him than you’ll ever have and that is a sure thing.’

‘You could be right there,’ agreed Jinny, thinking how Mike had spent his summer helping Mr MacKenzie on the farm, learning to drive the tractor, to milk the cows and to work Betsy, Mr MacKenzie’s sheepdog. ‘He wants to be a farmer.’

‘There’s the sensible thing now. Could you not settle yourself to something the same? You’re too old to be carrying on with your nonsenses.’

‘Thirteen,’ said Jinny. ‘Old age pension, here I come. Actually I’m thinking of being a village shopkeeper. Seems like a nice hobby.’

‘Get away with you,’ said Mrs Simpson, not amused.

‘Have to check the horses’ field,’ said Jinny, riding on.

‘It will be pleasant having their company again. Many’s the wee word I have with them through the day. And it is the more civil tongue the poor dumb beasts have in their heads than those who own them,’ called Mrs Simpson, getting the last word.

‘Be nice for you not having to wait on your own for me to come home,’ Jinny said as she led Shantih round the field, checking the hedges in case they should have developed any horse-sized gaps, and searching the grass for any glass or wire. ‘Now Mike is coming to Inverburgh we’ll all be able to ride home together. That is when I’m not in detention. The few little wee times when I am not in detention.’ Again Jinny almost remembered what it was that had happened at the end of last term. Almost but not quite.

Jinny found two lemonade bottles which made her search worthwhile, but no holes in the hedge. The open shed that sheltered both horses and tack was still sound and rainproof.

Shutting the field gate behind herself, Jinny was about to mount Shantih when Mr Simpson appeared round the corner of the hedge. Shantih sprang away in mock terror, eyes goggling, tail high.

‘Och, it is not one bit better she is,’ declared Mr Simpson, putting down the box he was carrying and stopping to watch Jinny struggling to calm Shantih down. ‘Wild as the heather that one.’

‘She is not!’ exclaimed Jinny. ‘It was you creeping up on us like that. Shantih’s a million times better than when I got her at first.’

‘Well, maybe the fraction improved from when she was running wild on the moors after Jock MacKenzie had bought her from the circus.’

‘You could be right there,’ said Jinny.

‘Now I knew there was something I had to tell you—wee thing my brother was after telling me. It’s over on the east coast he lives, and a few weeks ago there was a nasty accident at his very door. A circus van crashing into his wall and the driver taken off to the hospital.’

At the mention of a circus a shiver had run through Jinny. When they had first come to Finmory the Manders had spent their first night in an Inverburgh hotel and Mr Manders had taken Mike and Jinny to a travelling circus.
It had been a third-rate circus but the last act had been Shantih, billed then as Yasmin the Killer Horse. She had been trained to rear up and lash out with her forefeet when the ringmaster whipped her. Jinny had watched with utter horror and then dashed from her seat and flung herself at the ringmaster, screaming at him to stop.
Driving back to the hotel that night had been one of the blackest depths in Jinny’s life. She loved the chestnut Arab, totally and forever, but there had seemed nothing she could do to save her from the circus.

‘Now it was after the accident,’ continued Mr Simpson, ‘My brother was hearing the interview on the radio with the ringmaster. And I’m thinking it must have been the very same circus as the one her ladyship came from, for was he not telling the interviewer how one of his vans had been in a crash before and how his valuable Arab horse had escaped on to the moors and him not able to catch her.’

In an instant Jinny relived the day—three days after they
had visited the circus—when the circus van loaded with Shantih and two other horses had crashed with a lorry on the Inverburgh road. Jinny and Mr MacKenzie had been watching from the hillside. They had raced down to the accident in time to see Shantih break out from the wreckage and gallop to freedom over the moors.

‘And here’s the strange thing,’ continued Mr Simpson. ‘The ringmaster seemed to think that when he was back in this district he would be reclaiming his horse. And us all believing Jock MacKenzie had bought her from the circus and it was yourself had bought her from Jock.’
Jinny stared in horror at Mr Simpson. She burst out, ‘Of course Mr MacKenzie bought Shantih from the circus and I bought her from him. Of course she belongs to me!’

Mr Simpson pondered Jinny’s indignation. ‘Then maybe my brother was not listening too carefully,’ he said. ‘Maybe the ringmaster was saying he would be buying her back.’

‘As if I would ever sell Shantih!’ exclaimed Jinny scornfully.

Turning away from Mr Simpson Jinny swung herself into the saddle. She wished she had never met Mr Simpson. It was all the day had needed—the thought of the ringmaster coming to Finmory and trying to buy Shantih back.

After Shantih had escaped from the circus van she had roamed the moors for months, refusing to let anyone near her. Only when Jinny had found her, close to death, in a snow blizzard, had she been able to bring her back to Finmory.

‘I would NEVER sell Shantih!’

‘Maybe not,’ said Mr Simpson. ‘But if there’s money in it for himself I’m thinking Jock MacKenzie could fix anything.’

Humans: Jinny, Mike, Petra and Mr and Mrs Manders, Ken, Mr MacKenzie, Miss Tuke, Nick (Nicola) Webster, Mrs Webster, Aunt Ag, Richard, Steph, Mrs Raynor

Horses: Shantih, Bramble, Brandon

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