Choopa, too, could hear the songs and the murmured tales to which Dandaloo was listening, but he wondered what they meant and he was anxious. Yet all the time he knew, just as Dandaloo did, that they must press on to the high country.
Dandaloo felt certain that she was going to learn some secret of great importance. Choopa had the same sort of feeling, and yet, for him, a secret might be contained in music to which he could dance. Up on the very tops, the secret must exist, and he must try to learn it, even when the mist rose up around them.
Mist usually hid secrets, but this mist was carrying them … towards the very heart of … what?
Two
It was when Dandaloo and Choopa were beside the last rocky outcrop, with its dwarf snow gums twisting their way up out of the granite rock fissures, that the moon rose slowly over the Crackenback Valley, and trees and rocks grew ghostly moon shadows.
Choopa shied. Shadow, or huge, fierce stallion? Was there anything there at all?
Dandaloo did not shy, did not believe there was anything to be seen. They walked up on the snowgrass basin as moonlight began to flood it and the silvery light made their own river of mist glitter around their legs.
There was no sound.
A wallaby hopped out of the mist from behind Choopa, shone in the moonlight that lit upon particles of mist moisture which clung to its soft coat — and vanished.
Choopa was disquieted. He looked back. Dandaloo was still following. Why had the wallaby disappeared when it left the river of mist? Dandaloo must not vanish. She must not fade away, nor must he himself. They must go on together to the high lakes.
Was that only a moon shadow? Could it be a huge horse? Where had that wallaby gone?
Choopa tried to stop himself from being jumpy. He waited till Dandaloo was beside him. The mist seemed to get colder, wetter. The shadows thrown by trees and rocks were surely moving.
They climbed on up the big basin. Then the only shadows were their own — horse moon shadows climbing up beside them, but without mist around the shadow-legs. Choopa watched their shadows out of the corner of his eye — Dandaloo’s shadow behind his, and there was the happy, bumpy shadow of a wombat close behind hers, but no wallaby shadow. The wombat must be too cumbersome and too slow to jump out of the river of mist and vanish.
The river of mist was their safeguard, their promise.
The rocky tor of the South Ramshead was above them. Soon they would climb the last few feet up onto the ridge that looked down into the steep Leatherbarrel Valley. Choopa loved that valley, but the lakes kept calling him. Before the moon set he must get to that double lake in the Northcote Canyon and splash the water up into the silver light of the moon.
As he climbed the last few steps onto the top of the ridge, Choopa had a whole mixture of memories of that first journey he had made to the high country — memories of Son of Storm and of the foal, Bri Bri, who was now so much bigger than he. He remembered dancing into the lakes.
Bri Bri loved to watch him dancing, but she never danced. It would be fun to have a yearling or two-year-old of his own size who would romp and dance with him. He called a gentle call to the imagined playfellow. There was no answer.
The music which he had once heard way up near the highest mountains was lilting through his head. He did a few dancing steps, put his head down into the moon-glinting mist, and turned a somersault. Somehow, he felt sure that something exciting lay ahead — an answer to a question, the fulfilment of a dream. His dream or Dandaloo’s.
Moonlight flooded mountains and valleys. Such a lot of memories and dreams became like moon-shadows in Choopa’s mind … little blue-roan dwarf whose legs would keep doing a dance in the mist.
There were magic memories of the double lake; just dancing memories of happiness. It was at that other lake below the great overhanging snowdrift on the highest mountain that the men had caught him. Even though Franz, the man whom he loved, must have organised to have him caught, it really had seemed as if Franz were sorry, rubbing his ears and comforting him all through that long journey.
At last the long journey had ended, and then there was the music, the music and the dancing camels, the music and the dancing. Finally, there had been the unlocked gate and the long journey from the circus, over the rolling hills, till he found Dandaloo.
Choopa sighed deeply at his mixture of memories and dreams, and turned back to rub against Dandaloo.
Now they must reach that ice-cold, double lake. Together they walked on. And the lake where the men had captured Choopa lay shining in the moonlight below its very high mountain and the curved cornice of the dust-stained snow of last winter. There was still a long way to go — right over two heads of the Snowy River and up and over the Northcote Pass before they would reach the glowing, jewel-like double lake.
It was indeed a long way, and longer by moonlight, but they crossed those two heads of the great Snowy River and had climbed up on to the crescent pass before the moon had started to slide behind the long and rocky Townsend Spur.
Choopa and Dandaloo stood breathless on the Northcote Pass looking at the lake that lay absolutely without a ripple on the floor of the Canyon. The water was all diamonded by moon shafts.
Choopa gazed for one moment, then sprang off, down the steep slope, in a wild gallop, his queer legs flying out sideways — galloping on and on, right to the glittering brink, then plunged in, for it seemed as if the water were calling him, the lake calling him from its freezing depths.
Excitement was rising up inside him like a huge bubble. The moment had come when he was plunging further and further into that marvellous lake again.
Suddenly he was over the edge of the stony shelf, swimming in deep, deep water. Dandaloo had followed Choopa into the lake, but not over the edge of the stony shelf, backing off as soon as she felt nothing but deep water beneath her forefeet. She simply stood on the edge, watching her strangely misshapen dwarf swimming. Just then he seemed, to her, to be a big and beautiful stallion, his head and arched neck just out of the water as he swam out there in front of her, in the lake of dreams.
She called him in a soft, gentle neigh that floated out over the surface of the lake.
Choopa swam back to her and scrambled out onto the stony shelf. Then the two blue roans circled round and round each other, bucking and rearing on the snowgrass bank, where they bucked and reared, rolled and played, till they were dry. Finally, they lay down on soft snowgrass and a ribbon of white purslane. Choopa dropped off to sleep in a few moments, and dreams invaded his mind …
He had reached the fabulous lake, and reached it when the moon was still above the Townsend Spur. Now, in his dreams, shafts of moonlight tracked the waters of the double lake, and sometimes it seemed as if small horses, with spangled fetlocks like Franz had made for him, were dancing on the moon-shafts across the water. In dreams he heard the music to which they danced. Immense happiness filled him as he slept.
Dandaloo slept contentedly beside him.
Choopa woke once and opened his eyes. A faint mist rose over the water and flowed up the bank. Sitting in the mist was the wallaby. Mist had brought him dreaming back. His paws were folded and a look of age-old wisdom was on his face. The secrets of the ice might be made clear to him …
Wallabies had lived in the Snowy Mountains centuries before the brumbies had escaped from the white graziers’ unfenced acres below the snow. Choopa knew that there were secrets which he must learn to understand before he could dance on the surface of the lake.
The moon had vanished, pale and white, behind the rocky outcrops of the Townsend Spur. A light-coloured bird flew up from the finger of land between the two lakes; its harsh cry was the voice of a blue crane. Choopa tingled with excitement as that pale bird flew towards that first creeping light of the dawn.
It was time now, before the deep darkness that precedes the dawn, to go again to Charlotte Pass. Surely the music would be playing now.
Off Choopa and Dandaloo went, crossing the Snowy again and c
limbing up the rough Pass.
Three
Silence; only the whispering leaves of those ancient snow gums on the crescent pass above the Snowy River and sometimes a weird wind howl from the rocks high up on Mount Stillwell. In the dense darkness before dawn, a shadow moved.
Choopa could not muffle his snort of fear. His blue roan hide was creeping. In imagination he saw himself galloping along the road, heading for home, heard his hoofbeats.
He did not gallop. Suddenly that shadow moved more definitely, became a huge stallion, then it was a rock again, and a snow-gum branch … now a rock …
A bright light appeared, in that building on the valley floor … and a sound … a sound floating on the air. There it was, the smooth swaying rhythm. Was Franz there? Could that shadow be a camel?
Choopa began dancing, just as he had that night when he first heard the music floating up on to the pass. He danced, even though he was trembling with fear. It was not the circus band playing for the camels. It was the same soft, mysterious music that had drifted up to the pass, long ago — the music which Franz loved, and to which Franz had taught him to waltz — or, in fact, was it the music that had made his legs, his whole body waltz, before Franz had taught him?
As he danced, Choopa forgot the menacing shadow. He was dancing there, encircled with snow gums, on the crescent pass — music and rhythm filled his mind and body. He knew that Dandaloo was standing there, pressed into the snow gums, and he began to realise that she was silently calling out to him, to stop him dancing away forever, into an unimaginable future.
At last he danced towards her, feeling the power of her silent calls.
It was Dandaloo who saw the shadow move out of the snow gums.
Choopa touched his nose to hers. He never saw the huge foreleg and hoof, never saw the blow coming, only felt himself being knocked sideways as he danced.
Dandaloo’s scream of fury was not silent, and, as she screamed, she hurled herself at the enormous stallion that was no longer a shadow of rock and snow-gum branch. Dandaloo would fight for Choopa until the day she died. Her dancing, clowning dwarf was entirely beloved.
She did not wait for the immense stallion to gather himself together, but sprang at him again. She called out as she leapt, called out her own private call for Son of Storm.
Choopa had never heard her call this call before, but he was somehow not surprised when, as if out of the sky, the big, gentle brown stallion was there, answering Dandaloo’s call quietly, before he grabbed the stranger by the neck and shook him fiercely.
Dandaloo gave a glad neigh of greeting, and Choopa mingled his greeting with hers. They were safe now, safe from shadows and enormous, unknown stallions, safe from clamouring secrets.
For Choopa, the gentle swaying sound of Franz’s favourite waltz rose from the valley floor and drove away the painful throb of that stallion’s blow to the side of his head.
Now Choopa really did hear galloping hooves sounding from along the hard road. The stranger stallion had fled from the fury of Dandaloo and the strength of Son of Storm, and the two were chasing him, driving him away from Dandaloo’s beloved dwarf.
Occasionally Choopa heard Dandaloo give a scream of anger. Sometimes he heard a stallion’s roar from Son of Storm.
The drumming hooves got further and further away, but the sweet music still rose up from the valley floor, and Choopa was dancing there, on Charlotte Pass, above the Snowy River, when Dandaloo and Son of Storm trotted back.
Choopa waltzed along the road to meet them when he heard them returning, and a blue crane rose from the banks of the Snowy and flew above them, almost invisible in the fading starlight, pale bird calling a greeting.
All the bush birds and animals were Choopa’s friends, but he just wished that this crane would not seem to be following them.
But it was the crane that gave Choopa the idea of going down to the Snowy River just as dawn was breaking. As that bird flew overhead, he felt he must go — felt the same imperative call as he had earlier felt demanding he go to the double lake in the canyon.
As the first band of rose-and-gold appeared in the eastern sky over the Monaro, and that blue crane floated across the pass again, and the last sound of music died away, Choopa headed away, off the pass, through bushes and rocks down to that Snowy River that was like a pewter ribbon without one gleam of light from the faint dawn.
Choopa stumbled and fell, turning the fall into two or three somersaults. He was filled with joy; he had the music still sounding in his head, and surely he must be going to learn something from that rushing Snowy River.
At the river bank, he realised that the water at the crossing place was not deep enough to flow right over him, nor was it even as cold as that magical double lake’s water which would have been ice in winter. The Snowy River would freeze to ice, too, and be covered deeply in snow, but now the water was snow melt, and moving very fast.
Choopa saw a wombat trundling down from the pass. Wombats were always his great friends, so he turned a somersault there on a little flat of snowgrass beside the foaming water.
The wombat stopped to watch, small eyes eager and bright. Choopa rose up on his hind legs and did a few dancing steps, and danced on into the river. He knew there were two or three flat-topped rocks just below the surface of the water, knew they were the first of a series of stepping stones. He danced on, over them, and then backed out onto the snowgrass again, and did another somersault especially to amuse the wombat.
As he stepped into the water again and onto the stepping stones, he saw a faint radiation mist wreathe up off the river, and just then the first reflection of the dawn lit up that mist.
Choopa moved onto the third stone and was immediately wreathed around with mist. Cold tendrils touched him, but music still sounded in his mind. He rose in a courbette on his hind legs. The stone was slippery, but it was possible to dance as though he were dancing for Franz in that circus ring and the drops of Snowy River water that fell from his forefeet shone like the spangles which Franz had fastened to them a year ago.
Choopa neighed, proclaiming the beauty that he felt was his.
Dandaloo’s neigh drifted down from the Charlotte Pass, saying that, to her, the blue-roan dwarf was a most beautiful horse.
There he was dancing in the great Snowy River, all silvered by a dawn-glowing radiation mist, and given some benediction by the river and by that music that still played on in his head.
Dandaloo and Son of Storm had traversed a little to the east for easier walking down the steep, rough side of the pass, so that now they were between the first rays of the rising sun and the dancing dwarf.
Dandaloo stopped and stood still simply gazing at the image which she saw. There was her last-born foal, encircled in a mist bow as he waltzed on the stepping stones. There were bright lights, too, making the whole picture an age-old symbol of a promise, or a secret. It was as though Choopa was contained in a shining mist halo.
Dandaloo, suddenly feeling very old, as old as the surrounding granite mountains, saw Choopa rearing and dancing, and saw him as something of a great beauty imprinted on the air and on the place, as though he would be forever dancing there, near the source of the great Snowy River — the source of the legend.
Choopa, the little horse, looking up, could see his mother and Son of Storm against a dark band of snow gums. He could not see what else Dandaloo and Son of Storm saw — the only partly-lit bulk of that huge stallion, whom they had chased, just coming round a corner on the road above the river, as he came back, seeking Choopa.
Dandaloo would always remember Choopa dancing in the Snowy River, but linked to the brilliant vision would be that of the returning enormous stallion. That horse had a touch of red roan in his hide, and he was obviously very strong. Dandaloo knew, somehow, that he was set on finding Choopa — and there was Choopa dancing on the stepping stones in the Snowy River, as though just for that stallion to see and remember forever.
Son of Storm started to climb straigh
t up on to Charlotte’s Pass, aiming to intercept him on the road. Dandaloo just stood, watching Choopa, though looking up at Son of Storm and the huge roan horse drawing closer and closer together.
Then the roan was no longer there.
Dandaloo began to follow Son of Storm immediately. She had realised the scare value in her furious onslaught and her screams.
Both Choopa and the entranced wombat seemed oblivious to any drama. After a while, the wombat bumbled his way closer to the water and had a drink, then he started slowly up the pass again, looking back constantly at the blue roan dancing in that river mist.
Only the wombat saw first Son of Storm and then Dandaloo disappear off the road.
At last sounds came down through the river mist from the area of the road and, suddenly, Dandaloo’s furious screams. Choopa heard it and dropped to his four feet, spun round on his flat rock, and looked up in the direction of the screaming. Then he set off, up to the pass, to join the other two.
Just then, Choopa saw the roan stallion seem to rise up out of an invisible gully below the road. Dandaloo and Son of Storm were at his heels, both of them snapping and biting and screaming.
Choopa knew he could be of no help, and he was not even thinking that the big stallion was really seeking him. He hurried, wishing his legs were longer. Then there was a thundering and a thumping and more screaming and roaring … All three burst out of some thick heather bushes, and they were all coming straight for Choopa.
No time to think.
Always, before this, his clown-like somersaults had saved him. No place to clown around on this rough, steep slope. He flung himself into a somersault that landed him under a thick, heath bush which was only just big enough to hide a dwarf.
Even though it was still cold, early morning, the scent of those tiny white stars enfolded him. It was as though he was playing there above the Snowy River with Bri Bri again — though she would, now, be so much bigger than he.
Choopa was sobbing for breath. The roan went galloping, stumbling, past him, and Son of Storm shot past, too, but Dandaloo stopped beside his hiding place and peered under the bush, nosing him gently.