The stars seemed to shine brightly and the night air was tingling. Choopa took in a freezing breath. Suddenly the cold night air seemed to enfold him. He looked round to make sure that Dandaloo and Son of Storm were close. Something must be going to happen. If the air was so very cold, Strawberry might become coated with ice.
Then, one of the rocks moved … and Strawberry stepped out of the whole rock cluster.
Choopa stood still as though he were frozen.
Not one hair moved on Dandaloo. Nothing must tell Strawberry that they were there.
Strawberry never looked in their direction. He instead went up the ridge to get on to the Divide. Choopa headed silently down the shallow gully that led to Little Austria and, on the far side of it, up towards Carruther’s Peak. Soon they would see the heavy silhouette of Strawberry pacing along the Divide and they would follow quietly.
Sure enough, the big strong horse appeared above them on the skyline, walking along the quite narrow Divide, then he was going over the pointed top of Mount Lee, where a curled-over cornice of snow always hung in the winter.
Choopa, and Dandaloo and Son of Storm, followed him. Dandaloo looked back because she was sure something could be following them. She could not see anything, and just along the narrow Divide, there were no rocks to look like brumbies hiding.
As they got nearer to the top of Carruther’s, Choopa slowed down and walked more carefully. He knew that on the eastern side there was a straight drop into Club Lake. He had no wish to be as wet as Old Strawberry, and Club Lake, directly below, was another very deep glacial lake. The more he thought of that tremendous drop into Club Lake, the more carefully he put his feet on the ice-glazed shelf.
Dandaloo called him to come away quietly; the very direct descent into the Lake was dangerous.
From there they followed Old Strawberry over the top of Carruther’s Peak. Dandaloo looked suspiciously at some of the groups of flat rocks near the summit. There could be a strange horse lying among them.
Choopa, with every hair on his hide standing on end, looked carefully, too. Nothing was there, but his hide was still creeping cold as he walked on.
Son of Storm had quickened his stride. Choopa knew they must be getting near to the top of the Sentinel gully. In fact, he could see the peak of the Sentinel against the stars, and a wild excitement flowed through him.
The truth of some secrets had been promised him that he had not learnt of yet … tingling, he did a few graceful dancing steps.
Then they saw Strawberry turn down over the edge into the steep gully. He seemed to walk with ease, digging his hooves into the snowgrass. The gully was very precipitous. The three watchers, peering through a dark night in which the brilliance of the stars gave little visibility, could see the steepness and marvel at it. No wonder Old Strawberry had slipped and slithered and rolled down it when Son of Storm had chased him over the edge. The kestrel had mentioned a snowdrift at the bottom of the gully.
Choopa had learned to slide down fairly steep snow in his first winter, far south of their usual grazing grounds. Now he tried to imagine sliding on his back down anything as steep as this gully; imagine the speed he would reach.
Then, then, quite unexpectedly, Old Strawberry announced that he was rejoining his herd. He had a distinctive, deep call, deep, but resonant. Now he called loudly from halfway down the gully, and his neigh echoed off the sides of the funnel, echoed off the Sentinel, off Carruther’s Peak above them.
As the herd below began to answer, the echoing neighs rolled all around, and Choopa shivered. He had never heard anything like it — a weird cacophony of echoing neighs and dingo howls, all filling the gully and going around them. Dandaloo shivered, too, but Son of Storm reared up and screamed a challenge.
In a moment all the echoes died away, dying, dying, dying. It was then that the dingoes began long, drawn-out howls to slide between and into the echoes; wild and free came the cries of the bush and the mountain, rolling around the star-struck slopes of the Divide.
This time Choopa, too, reared in a perfect courbette, and threw his call to the highest mountains. Little roan dwarf, he threw his call to a secret that he knew existed but which he did not understand. Balanced on his hind legs, he called to the whole world, then he dropped to his four feet again, rubbed his head against Dandaloo, and stepped over the brink.
The funnel below seemed even darker as the echo from his own call rolled around and around. An answer came, thrilling, beautiful …
Just as he was wondering how to get down that steep funnel, he saw a wombat at his feet, and the faint sign of a track going across the slope. The wombat turned back, nudged one of Choopa’s forelegs, and then started along that faint track.
Choopa followed the trundling wombat. The barely visible track went right across the head of the funnel, then looped around on the slopes of The Sentinel and turned back across the gully, only much lower. If the track went on going back and forth, back and forth across the gully, lower each time, it would finally get to the bottom, and Choopa meant to get right down. The wombat kept looking back, willing him to follow.
Strawberry neighed again, and the mares’ neighs blended with his. He was almost down with his herd. Choopa hurried, stepping up closer behind his wombat guide. Wombat looked back rather crossly, having no wish to be trodden on or pushed from behind.
Choopa was quite exhausted by the time they reached his beloved double lake, and he lay down to sleep on the snowgrass bank, beside Dandaloo. The bank was very cold because a long-lasting snowdrift had lain there. The Alpine marsh marigold had been flowering beneath the icy fringe of the drift and some were still in full bloom, there below Choopa’s head.
Their scent enfolded him and his dreams.
Realising how exhausted he was, and how soundly sleeping, Dandaloo got up and stood over him to protect him from whatever might come … she was sure there was danger somewhere close.
Though Choopa’s eyes were tightly shut, he was seeing his beloved double lake and the opposite bank where mist curled faintly, and there were two white colts, and Jounama, the filly more beautiful than a flake of snow, galloping, bucking and playing — flitting ghosts. All three like drifting flakes across his dreams. White foals galloping, bucking, rearing.
The three small horses were only foals, far younger than Choopa; they were not fully-grown dwarfs, as he was. Or was there one … one that seemed older and perhaps a dwarf?
Choopa drowsed, his dreams full of playful white foals with whom he would have loved to join in. He could teach them how to somersault, teach them airs-above-the-ground, as Franz had taught him. What fun it would be to be dancing with other young horses. And he could hear Franz’s music flowing in his head, feel the swaying rhythm in his feet, feel his muscles contracting for a perfect levade.
One day he would dance over the surface of the beautiful double lake. Every time he saw that place in his dream, the surrounding mountains were covered in snow and the lake was solid ice, as it had been so long ago, so long ago.
Why did he feel there were secrets of those long ago years?
He rubbed the side of his head on the snowgrass, smelt the faint scent of the creamy-coloured stars that grew there, where the drift had lain. That scent rose all around him as Dandaloo pushed her blue head up against his.
In his dream, the young horses played around them and the sweet scent was all-enfolding.
Choopa and Dandaloo slept; starlight touched the five point, scented waxen stars. The dream of the young horses blended into a miracle of scent and stars.
Six
Before dawn light touched Carruther’s Peak and began to slide down the western slopes, Choopa’s eyelids flickered open. There above the valley, in the cleft of Little Austria, was the menacing silhouette of the strawberry roan stallion.
The menace and threat were all directed towards Choopa. He was wide awake instantly and the fear that raced through him was also for the beautiful young horses that were playing all around him, all
around the double lake.
Then the stallion neighed his deep-throated call and one of the playing young ones — a filly, who seemed older — stopped in mid-gallop and listened.
The kestrel had said there was a filly, the jewel of Old Strawberry’s herd, more beautiful than a flake of snow and no bigger.
All of those young horses were as beautiful as flakes of snow … two white colts with strange coloured eyes, and Jounama the filly, with forelock, mane and tail threaded with strawberry-coloured hairs.
Choopa waited to see if the jewel filly would go to her father, or if Old Strawberry would come down.
Dandaloo, awake, aware of some danger in the air, waited too. The beautiful young horses racing and bucking … the older one, perhaps a dwarf … it was all interesting. Dandaloo was wondering what would happen next. She did not expect Choopa to make the next move, but Choopa shook himself and got slowly to his feet, just when the young gallopers gathered together and suddenly encircled Choopa, blotting him from Strawberry’s view for a moment.
Dandaloo realised it was lucky that Choopa had a moment or so in which to gather his thoughts together before Strawberry saw him. She was certain that Old Strawberry had not given up.
Choopa did not waste that moment. He stood there, flexing his muscles, filling his lungs as Franz had taught him, breathing in the scent of those five-star flowers and of the double lake, and looking at the three young horses who stood grouped together: two little white colts, exactly similar, and the filly with strawberry roan on each ear. Then he burst into a gallop, went straight through the group, seemed to stumble, and did three somersaults up a steep slope to rest towards where Old Strawberry stood, throwing another unanswered neigh.
Something must happen now, Dandaloo thought, and sure enough Old Strawberry began to thunder down the slope towards her clowning dwarf.
Dandaloo gave a scream and galloped towards Choopa. Old Strawberry heard that screaming mare — and stopped in his stride, sliding in the snowgrass.
Choopa seized that moment to rise in a courbette and dance as he had danced with the camels, and the stars shone onto his legs and hooves as though he wore spangles. Just as he had done in the circus ring, Choopa felt that he looked beautiful and he carried himself with beauty and strength and immense confidence, though his only audience was Old Strawberry, the three young horses, one wombat and an owl.
There was sudden quiet. The three young ones ceased their galloping, bucking and rearing, and simply stood and watched the wonderful show of dancing which Choopa was giving.
Old Strawberry stood stock-still, too, and uttered no sound until the little filly, his daughter, more beautiful than a snowflake, began to move closer to Choopa, then Strawberry trumpeted his call to her, to come to him.
Choopa heard his call and started Franz’s airs-above-the-ground, and he moved with greater perfection than he had ever done before. If only his hooves were spangled it would have been the most glittering performance the little dwarf had ever done. Even the brilliant stars seemed to stand still.
Breathless at last, Choopa stood firmly on the snowgrass, and suddenly the young gallopers galloped around him and forced him to join in. Round and round they all went, above the magic lake.
Choopa, galloping, somersaulted immediately.
It was more fun, even, than playing with all his young animal friends on Quambat Flat. It was just what he had always wanted — splendid games with other young horses … And was there that one, older than the others, who was a dwarf like himself?
Old Strawberry must be made to go. Choopa led the others to force Strawberry back up onto the Divide, then the young ones galloped back to the lake again.
Dandaloo, settling down to sleep, saw the blue and white wave galloping down off to her side, and she sighed because there was Choopa playing the way he should, with other young ones, and one no bigger than himself.
She sighed and dropped off to sleep, with a last picture in her mind of her beautiful, graceful son in a levade against the stars, and little white animals all around like small ghosts, as light and airy as the white windflowers that grow out of the last drifts of snow.
There were the little ghosts galloping off and around Choopa as he did his airs-above-the-ground.
And Dandaloo slept, wrapped in happiness, for her son was with friends. The streaked reflections of the stars moved like magic over the double lake.
Seven
When the stars were still in the sky, the small ghosts had left. Only Old Strawberry stood on the Divide, looking over, wondering whether he should gallop down and give a thrashing to that conceited blue roan dwarf.
But, Dandaloo woke and saw the shape of Old Strawberry trotting around the lake. Before he got close enough to see her lying there, Dandaloo had crept between two big rocks.
Eventually she slept again.
The threat-filled image of Old Strawberry did not invade her dreams. All she saw, as she slept, was her beloved Choopa playing with the two white foals and the small filly, as beautiful as a flake of snow. Choopa playing joyously with other young horses as he should have been able to all the years of his young life. Choopa, so happy that he looked perfect and beautiful.
Everything might be well now, but who knew? For in the Snowy Mountains, nothing was certain — a storm could come out of the blue.
Those white foals were too young to be far from their mothers, and if their mothers came, she thought, there could be trouble.
What was it that the kestrel had told everyone in the mountains? The jewel of Strawberry’s herd? His daughter, as small and as beautiful as a flake of snow? And touched with the rose colour of spring — wind-dust on spring snow?
Dandaloo and her son, Choopa, were two blue roans, blotched with white — blue roan, the colour of the sky when reflected on the deep cold waters of a glacial lake.
Dandaloo suspected there might still be a huge block of ice as part of the double lake, and like Choopa, she had wondered what secrets that lake might hold.
Once upon a time, great sheets of ice moved down this canyon. On the other side of the Divide, glaciers moved slowly into the fabled Snowy River. Further south still, the Crackenback River had once had several steep glaciers creeping down into it, tumbling rocks in the river bed, freezing bodies of whatever animals lived in the mountains then.
Dandaloo lived — and survived — by a credo of ‘sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof’. After all, fierce-screaming mare though she could be, it was not always easy to survive or to make sure Choopa survived.
She peered through her rock walls and could see Old Strawberry standing, bewildered, on the grass border of the lake … sufficient unto the day … she should remain quiet. There was no sign of Choopa or the other young animals, and she could not go searching for them while Old Strawberry stood there.
In fact, Choopa was standing on Carruther’s Peak, also waiting to see what would happen next. It was Fate’s turn to move, in this game of life and death.
The young ones were having rough games beside him. It really was no place to play — Club Lake was directly under the precipitous eastern slopes. Choopa rounded up the three young ones and brought them back to safer ground. There he stayed, stamping his forefeet if they tried to move.
Just as it seemed as if he could hold them, fascinated, by dancing in front of them and holding their eyes, there was the sound of Strawberry’s imperious ‘come here’ trumpet.
Choopa stood still for one moment and took his eyes off the young ones — and the filly burst past him, switched around to go to her father’s call, lost her footing and began to tumble down towards the slopes above Club Lake. She was still upright, but going very fast and out of control towards cliffs and rocks, only remaining upright if she kept going.
Choopa shot off after her, and soon Old Strawberry was after her too — a mad chase in which not one of them could stop, and in which a fall would mean a long free descent ending in the Club Lake. And could, indeed, mean death.
/> The slopes surrounding Club Lake, when covered in snow, were known as the steepest ski slopes in the Main Range. Somehow they almost seemed vertical.
Choopa knew he was only just succeeding in keeping on his feet. He must not stumble, no place to somersault there! Even if he tucked his head in, like an echidna, he could be killed.
He was looking where he was going, placing his feet with all possible care, but also watching that tiny filly on ahead. Suddenly she caught a hoof in a piece of shale and seemed to fly through the air. Her other hooves kicked up the blooms of white everlasting that grow across the top of Carruther’s, so that there was a cloud of little white flowers following her.
She vanished over an edge.
Choopa tried and tried to stop, but he couldn’t. The enormous force of gravity was pulling him to the brink of the cliff over which the filly had gone.
He knew he must not fall, must keep on his feet. He dug in and clung on with his hooves and tried to keep upright; sharp shale dug into the frog of one hoof. He gathered his muscles to try to jump upwards. One white everlasting hit him on the nose, then he was flying through air.
He was on his side, falling, falling. Then one shoulder hit a heap of rock. He pulled his legs up under his belly, heard his own breath sobbing, forced his eyes open, caught a fleeting glimpse of the filly falling through space below him. The fading stars of the dawn sky seemed to reflect on water, far below.
Then space engulfed him, held him, as he fell fast. It seemed to Choopa that he heard a sound. Every one of his blue or white hairs tingled. He forced his eyes open again. That faintly starlit water was close, but something had broken its mirror surface in ripples — that sound …? Maybe he would hit the water soon himself?
Then something broke the surface, rose up out of it … that filly …? Engulfed in space, with air rushing by, he succeeded in letting out a neigh, but there was no answer. Whatever rose up in the lake sank again.
Choopa knew he was desperate. How hard could he hit water without being smashed …? Better be an echidna, and tuck his head right under his chest …