Riding on Air (18 page)

I circled around and popped him into trot, hoping the more energetic gait would help but when I tried for another shoulder-in I got pretty much the same result. I did a half-circle across the arena, then another to change direction, and brought Jinx back to walk. I gave him plenty of rein and let him stretch his top line muscles, while I puzzled over what was going wrong.

This was a very different horse from the one who'd nearly taken off on me a week or so ago. I frowned, feeling how sluggish Jinx was as he plodded around the arena with none of his usual energy and enthusiasm. I was starting to wonder if I'd overcorrected and overcooked him. He'd been such a handful that day when William was here. I'd been lunging him for a good half hour before I rode him and he hadn't had a day off since. Perhaps I'd gone from not enough work to too much.

I decided to do some canter to trot transitions on the circle and see how he went with that. If that didn't wake him up then I'd know for sure he was in need of a day off. Maybe even a check-up from the vet.

“Come on Jinx,” I said, gathering up the reins. Jinx quickened his pace immediately and I could have kicked myself. He wasn't supposed to do that, he was supposed to remain in an even tempo until I told him to change. That was my fault; I'd clearly telegraphed my intentions to him ahead of actually asking.

I got him settled and walking calmly again, getting him back on the bit without too much trouble, but I could feel the increased alertness. Hmm. If I didn't know better I'd think he'd been being lazy. But that's a fault Jinx had never ever suffered from. Maybe he was tired. Maybe he was sour.

I could have smacked myself. Of
course
, that was it. I'd been so worried about the upcoming dressage comp I'd been working him in the round yard or the arena ever since camp. We hadn't been for any of the relaxing rides out over the property that we would normally have had once or twice a week just for a change of scenery. I was such a dope.

Instead of gathering Jinx into a trot, I turned around and rode him out of the arena and across the paddock towards the back gate that led out to the hill paddock. I'd take him out there and we could have a bit of a canter up the long hill where I could use the long slope to make sure I could pull him up OK. As we rode past the yards, Jinx tightened up underneath me, hesitating. I looked around to see what he was seeing. A chaff bag had escaped from the tack room and blown up against the fence. In the rising late-afternoon breeze it was flapping a little, curling and rising then settling back against the mesh. Jinx eyed it with deep suspicion, trying to sidle away from it.

“Ah ah,” I said, “Never you mind, it can't hurt you—”

Sheila, one of the goats Jennie kept, jumped up from behind the yard fence, disturbed by Jinx's approach. I hadn't realised she was there and neither had Jinx, who had been too fixated on the scary chaff bag. The nanny's sudden movement spooked Jinx and he jumped sideways. Unprepared, I lost my seat, my upper body whipping sideways as Jinx plunged away and then took a giant leap. I scrabbled for my too-long reins as Jinx, frightening himself with his own leaping around, took another huge bound and whipped around.

I grabbed at my reins, my fingers screaming at such abusive behaviour but I was too busy trying to get back into the saddle and regain some control over Jinx to worry about it. I was literally clinging on by one ankle and my far-too-long reins, struggling to sound calm as I tried to talk Jinx into a whoa.

But Jinx was beyond that. He'd been out of sorts all week and he loathed all Jennie's goats in general, Sheila in particular because she'd butted at him once when he'd stretched his neck over the fence, curious about her kid.

I made another effort to haul myself back up by the reins and/or put enough pressure on Jinx's bit to slow him down, I wasn't fussy about which, but I couldn't grip tightly enough. Worse, to my horror, I could feel my fingers slipping, unable to grasp the reins tightly enough to counter my dangling body weight.

All this happened in seconds—Jinx was only about three strides from where the goat had spooked him. But it was happening in slow-motion, which gave me longer to realise that this time I was gone. You always know the moment. You know the moment when you've fought gravity and lost. You know the moment when you need to stop trying to hang on and start thinking about how to let go.

As my leg came over Jinx's back and the reins snapped free of my hands I knew that moment was here and as always I had that split-second to choose: hands out to protect my head or tuck and roll and protect my hands?

Tuck and roll, same as always.

My shoulder slammed into the ground and a flash of intense pain went off like a bomb in my neck. I could hear Jinx's hooves thudding as he trotted off. At least the grass was a damn sight softer than the cross country course had been. But then there was a dark curtain falling over me like a blanket. I couldn't hear Jinx anymore. And then I was fading out too.

“Melissa. Oh my God, please be OK, please.”

“Hnnuh?”

“Melly, thank God, thank you. Baby, can you hear me?”

“William?”

“Yes. Yes, oh thank you, thank you God. No, don't move, just lie there for a minute.”

“But—” I moved my legs and tried to roll over, but William's hands pressed gently against my shoulders.

“Please just lie still. Don't try to move until you're fully with me.”

That didn't sound good. I lay still, quelled as much by that thought and the strain in William's voice as by the light touch he had on my shoulders. I blinked, becoming aware that my neck and shoulder hurt, as if someone had tried to rip my arm right off. Or maybe my head.

“Hurts,” I said.

“What? What hurts?”

“Shoulder. Neck.”

William lifted his hands off me as if I'd set them on fire. It would have been funny except my neck and shoulder really did hurt. My head too. I blinked again and William's face stopped being this vague blob hovering over me and came sharply into focus. I blinked again. It was like the time we'd been examining slides in science—fiddling with the microscopes, just about to give up, convinced we'd never get it right. And then, without warning, there was the image so big and sharp and clear it almost gave you a fright.

“You're upside down,” I said.

Upside down William smiled and his fingers stroked my face. It made me shiver, but then his fingertips left my skin.

“Don't stop.”

“What day is it?”

“I don't know.” I frowned.

“Did you have school today?”

“Yeah. Double maths. Only a moron would schedule that on a Friday afternoon. Hey, it's Friday.”

“Yep. Does anything else hurt?”

I considered. “My hands. But they always hurt.”

A shadow passed across William's wrong-way face, making him look weird. I wondered if I'd said something wrong.

“Are you sure nothing else hurts?”

“I'm sure,” I said.

“Do you remember what happened?”

“I fell—Jinx! Where is he?” I struggled again to sit up and William quickly put a hand out to stop me.

“He's fine. Waiting by the gate. Don't try to sit up yet.”

“No, I need to. Help me up,” I said urgently. I had to see Jinx for myself and make sure he hadn't stepped on his reins and hurt his mouth or run into a fence or anything.

“Melissa—”

“I'm fine, really. Well, not fine exactly, but you know what I mean. Come on, please?”

“Are you sure? Is your vision blurry or anything?”

“I'm fine, come on.”

William put his hands on my arms and helped me up. As I got to my feet my vision blurred, making me a liar. A tickle of déjà vu from that fall at camp raised the hair on the back of my neck. I blinked and swallowed against a ripple of nausea, even as a lance of pain stabbed briefly into my skull above my ear on the side my neck and shoulder hurt. Bizarre; I could have sworn I'd fallen onto the other side.

“OK?” William asked anxiously.

“I'll live,” I said as the nausea and the pain subsided just as quickly as it had risen.

I gingerly ran a kind of internal systems check, making sure I really was as OK as I thought. I didn't want to try to take a step and fall on my face. That would make me look a right idiot in front of William. Bad enough he'd had to come and pick me up out of the paddock. I glanced at him swiftly.

“Where are Dad and Jennie?” The absence of any hovering panicking parent or step-parent was evidence enough they weren't close by, but they'd be around somewhere. I took a quick look around just to reassure myself but it seemed I'd got lucky in that regard. Where I'd fallen off was hidden from the house by trees and I couldn't hear any sounds of activity coming from that direction. Or from anywhere else, for that matter. Good. I spotted Jinx waiting by the top gate and scowled. Him standing there in saddle and bridle was enough to hit my family's hot buttons if anyone did happen to come that way.

“I don't know,” William said. “I came straight up here and I just found you.”

I looked at him, surprised to see he was pale and, oddly, shamefaced.

“I'm glad you did,” I said softly and his expression changed to one of surprise.

I started towards Jinx, moving faster once I was confident everything really was working properly. Personally I'd have preferred William to secure Jinx first but I understood the rest of the world tended not to think that way. Most people were fixated on the humans first. Certainly humans before horses. And William was a guy. Definitely going to check on me before Jinx.

“Jinx is fine,” William said, effortlessly reading my mind. “I saw him on the way into the paddock.”

“Mmm,” I said, not about to say I still needed to check him for myself. My head ached and my shoulder and neck felt all stretched and yanked, but apart from that I felt OK. My hands hurt, sure, but no more than they had before I fell off.

Stupid hands, it would have served them right if they did hurt more, after they'd let me down like that. My skin chilled as the thought tried to intrude that I'd got off lucky this time. I remembered that excruciating but thankfully brief spear of pain into my neck and shoulder when I hit the ground and how I'd gotten it all turned around in my mind anyway. I moved my arm gingerly, but the pain was most definitely and inarguably on the other side of me than the one I remembered actually hitting the ground. Totally bizarre.

“Hey boy,” I said quietly to Jinx as I came close to him. I wasn't sure if he was still spooky and I didn't want to startle him, but he just turned to face me calmly and then came to me. He was walking fine and the reins, though hanging down in a big loop on one side, had stayed around his neck rather than going over his head, so he hadn't stepped in them and broken them—or anything else. Horses can break their legs or even their neck if they gallop on a trailing lead rope or their reins and I felt almost sick with relief that Jinx hadn't suffered that.

I gave Jinx's nose a rub and straightened the reins, then gathered them carefully into my left hand. Without even turning my head I said to William, who'd come up behind me, “Can you give me a leg up, please?”

“You've got to be joking.”

I did turn my head then, expecting him to be the one who was kidding around. But one glance at his face convinced me he was far from joking.

“I have to get back on.”

“No you don't. You've definitely got a concussion. You need to go to hospital.”

“No way.” I turned all the way round to stare at him incredulously. “I'm not going to the bloody hospital. I'd sit there for seven hours just to have them tell me to take an aspirin and go home. And I haven't got a concussion, my head doesn't hurt at all.” Well, it didn't hurt much. I'd had headaches that were worse.

“You were lying in the paddock barely conscious. You definitely have a head injury and if you're lucky it will only be a concussion. There is no way in hell I'm letting you get back on that horse.”

I scowled. My neck and shoulder were killing me and my hands throbbed with the bitter sing-song of overuse. I doubted I was capable of getting on Jinx without William's help and judging by the grim set of his jaw, that help had about a snowfall's chance in January of being offered.

“I wasn't completely unconscious, though,” I mumbled.

“Don't even try it. We're going to put Jinx away and then we'll go and tell your parents you fell off and—”

“We can't do that,” I interjected, aghast. “They'll ground me for sure and I'll never get Jinx ready in time.”

“Of course we have to tell them. You could have a fractured skull or a clot or anything.”

“I'm fine,” I said. “I'd know it if I had a brain haemorrhage.”

“Ever heard of walk and die syndrome?” William asked me.

I pressed my lips together. “No.” I didn't think I wanted to, either.

“People can seem fine after hitting their head and then a short time later they bleed out and drop dead. You'd have a hard time riding at Goulburn if that happened, wouldn't you?”

I stared at William, panic rising up to swell my throat almost shut. Not that I might have talk and die or whatever he called it, that was a bit extreme considering I'd ploughed in on my shoulder, not my head. No, I was more afraid that this might be one fall too many in Jennie and Dad's books.

“You can't tell them what happened, William. Just say I fell off and you're taking me to be checked out. Please. If they think I can't manage Jinx they won't let me ride him.”

William reached out and unclipped my chin strap. He slid my helmet gently off my head and then held it out in front of me. I looked at the long scrape that had damaged the velvet, the scuff marks on the side of it that most definitely hadn't been there when I put it on that afternoon. I gazed at this undeniable proof that my head had hit the ground and a cold shiver rippled up my back. I recalled the horrible jolt of pain, the almost crunching sensation that I'd felt in my neck, and wondered queasily just how close I'd come to breaking my neck. Or my skull.