Читать книгу The Fire Stallion - Stacy Gregg, Stacy Gregg - Страница 7

Looking back, I can see that Gudrun had been preparing me before we’d even got to Iceland. It began the moment I met her, that first night in London.

This was the first time that Mum had taken me on one of her film jobs and I was nervous about tagging along to dinner that night. Katherine Kara, the director of Brunhilda, had decided to throw a get-together for the crew at a Japanese restaurant in Soho before we departed for Reykjavik.

Mum and I had only just arrived that morning on the long-haul flight from New Zealand. I was so jetlagged my brain was swimming and I could barely talk. “We can go back to the hotel and get room service instead if you’re tired?” Mum said, looking worried.

“I’ll be fine,” I promised. I knew that Mum felt unprofessional having her daughter along. It had never been the plan to bring me and it would never have happened if things hadn’t turned out like they did with Piper.

It had been the start of the eventing season. I’d been doing loads of fitness work on Piper, riding her on the beach each day, doing timed gallops along stretches of hard sand and then cooling her legs by walking her home in the salt water. We’d finished the season at the top of the one-metre class rankings at the end of last year and were about to step up to the big league. Taking on the Open class fences at a metre ten was like going pro, but we were ready for it. Nothing was going to stop us. Until it did.

It’s an odd thing because I don’t usually check on Piper at night, but that evening something made me go to her paddock. As soon as I saw her lying down like that, I knew. She was in this weird position, her neck craned uncomfortably, and she was sniffing at her belly, as though she was about to have a foal, except she couldn’t be – she wasn’t pregnant. I climbed over the gate and ran across to her, and when I reached her I could hear her making these groans, and then she nickered to me with this pitiful cry as if she was saying, “Oh, thank goodness you’re here – I’m in such pain!”

I pulled at her neck rug and got her to stand up, but almost straight away she dropped back to her knees and was lying down again. Then she kicked out at her stomach, really hard, so that she actually struck it with her right hind leg and then she collapsed back to the ground with an agonised groan.

“Piper!” I dropped to the ground, undoing her rug, seeing how soaked in sweat she was beneath it. I needed help.

“I’ll be back,” I promised her.

I remember running to the house, stumbling in the dark, feeling like I was going to throw up, and then I couldn’t find Mum or Dad anywhere and I was yelling for them and finally Mum came into the kitchen and found me sobbing.

“Hilly? What’s going on?”

“It’s Piper!” I couldn’t breathe to get the words out. “She’s got colic.”

Mum looked at me, her face ashen. “You go back to her,” she said. “I’ll call the vet.”

Piper was still on the ground when I got to her again. It took me, Mum and Dad to get her up on her feet. Then, for the next hour and a half while we waited for the vet to come, I had to keep her up. A horse with colic doesn’t realise what’s wrong. All they know is that their gut hurts, and so they can injure themselves really badly by trying to kick their own stomachs and you have to keep them walking to stop them from harming themselves. And so I walked her, in circles, around and around the yard, waiting for the vet to arrive. When it was almost midnight Mum had offered to take a turn, but I said no. Piper was my horse and she trusted me, I had to stay with her. Besides, I was so sick with fear I needed to keep doing something.

I had been so relieved when I’d seen the headlights of the vet’s truck snaking their way down the bush road that led to our farm. It turned straight towards the stables and when she got out of the truck she immediately began grabbing vials and needles out of her supply kit, gathering everything she needed before she ran to join us.

“Sorry it’s taken me so long,” she said. “I was delivering a foal on the other side of the gorge and there are no other vets on call tonight.”

She took out her stethoscope and began to listen to Piper’s heartbeat. I stayed silent, letting her concentrate.

“How long has she been like this?” she asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I found her at around seven thirty, so at least since then.”

The vet filled a syringe and injected Piper in the neck.

“What’s that?” Mum asked.

“Muscle relaxant,” she said. “You were right. It’s colic. Hopefully, if the relaxant works, then the contractions should subside.”

“And if it doesn’t work?” I asked. The vet didn’t look at me and she didn’t answer my question.

“I need you to keep her walking,” she said. “Check in with me by dawn and tell me how she’s doing.”

Dad went back to bed after that and so did my sister, Sarah-Kate, so it was just me and Mum after that. She made us toasted sandwiches and cups of tea and I walked Piper. I wouldn’t let anyone else do it. I stayed up all night walking her in circles, and the kicking subsided. Mum just about had me convinced that we were over the worst of it, and we should go to bed too, when it all started up again. Worse, this time. She was thrashing on the ground, kicking and kicking.

This time the vet got to us in under an hour. As she examined Piper she looked much more serious than she had last night.

“I think we need to go to surgery,” she said.

“What does that mean? What’ll you do to her?” I asked.

“We’ll put her under an anaesthetic and get her up on the operating table, and then make a cut along her underside on the belly from chest to tail so we can take the blockage out of her gut.”

I tried not to think about Piper with her guts inside out.

“How much will it cost?” Mum asked. I knew what she was thinking – Piper wasn’t insured.

“Including box rest afterwards? You won’t get any change from $10,000. And it’s major surgery. You need to factor in at least three months for the wound to heal on box rest.”

“Will she compete again?” Mum asked.

“Depends,” the vet sighed. “Some horses heal perfectly and they’re back out there doing what they love. Others never come fully right. I can’t give you guarantees. I’m sorry, surgery is still a risk.”

“Is there another option?” Mum asked.

“At this stage?” the vet said. “If you want to keep her alive, there’s no other option.”

Mum looked at my face and she didn’t hesitate. “Get Piper in the float, Hilly. We’re taking her to surgery.”

It’s funny how quickly priorities change. Twenty-four hours ago, the most important thing in my world had been competing at the Open. Now, all that mattered was keeping Piper alive.

I remember sitting in the darkness as we drove that night, crying, and I felt Mum reach out to clutch my hand.

“I promise, Hilly, everything is going to be OK,” she said. And when I didn’t stop crying, that was when she said, “Maybe, instead of eventing this season, you should come with me to Iceland?”

Now, sitting in a Japanese restauarant on the other side of the world, that all seemed like a lifetime ago.

Dinner had been booked by Katherine’s personal assistant, Lizzie, for twelve people. By the time that we turned up, most of the others had already arrived. I knew Jimmy, the assistant director – he was English but he’d worked in New Zealand a lot with Katherine. And Chris, the lighting guy, and Lizzie – they were old friends of Mum’s from film school.

So there were ten of us already seated and waiting by the time Katherine arrived. Katherine wasn’t one of those superstar directors who looked all Hollywood – she was just wearing a T-shirt and jeans. It was the woman beside her who was dressed as though she was famous. She had a really dramatic look about her with this flame-red Rapunzel hair. She wore this brilliant, floor-length purple patterned dress which looked incredible against her pale skin. Her eyes, a startling emerald green, seemed magnified behind her gigantic spectacles rimmed with red glitter frames.

“Everybody, I want to introduce you to Doctor Gudrun Gudmansdottir, professor of Norse mythology and Icelandic saga at Harvard University,” Katherine had said. “I’m thrilled to have someone of her stature on board to ensure the integrity of this movie and help us to bring the real Princess Brunhilda to life.”

Gudrun raised her hands in this spectral way, as if she were about to perform a séance or something, and then she reached out and picked up a champagne glass off the table and raised it to the light. “I have cast the runes and they tell me that the Norse gods will smile upon this production,” she said theatrically. “Now join me in paying thanks to mighty Odin by raising your glasses and drinking deep in his honour!”

I could hear Mum mutter under her breath beside me as she reluctantly raised her glass. I caught her rolling her eyes at Jimmy as if to say, “Who is this nutter?”

“To mighty Odin!” Gudrun’s toast was so loud the whole restaurant suddenly stopped talking. Draining her glass in one go, she put it back down, and then, rather than taking the empty seat beside Katherine, she walked the length of the table and made a beeline for me.

“I’ll sit here. Bring me a chair …” She waved a hand airily at the waiter. Then she positioned herself in between me and Mum and locked me into the tractor beam of her powerful green eyes. She put her hand out to shake mine. I’d been expecting her skin to feel cold it was so white, but it was almost like touching fire.

“I’m Gudrun,” she said.

“Hilly,” I replied. “Hilly Harrison.”

“Of course you are,” Gudrun said, as if she knew this already. “You’ve travelled a long way, Hilly. Are you prepared for Iceland?”

“Oh, no!” I thought she had the wrong idea. “I mean, yes, I’m coming, but I’m not working as part of the crew or anything. I’m here with Mum.”

Gudrun narrowed her eyes at me. “Do not underestimate yourself, Hilly. You have a role of your own to play. And a very important one it will be too.”

She leaned close to me and whispered conspiratorially: “I threw the runes this morning and the gods told me everything. The future holds great adventure for us, Hilly. Ready yourself …”

“Excuse me—”

It was the waiter.

“What would you like to order, madam?”

Gudrun didn’t open her menu, she just smiled up at him. “Do you have any puffin?”

The waiter looked horrified. “No, madam!”

Gudrun sighed with genuine disappointment. She turned to me. “It’s so difficult to find puffin on the menu outside of Iceland. They’re delicious roasted. The Icelanders catch them in butterfly nets.”

Instead, Gudrun ordered the Atlantic salmon. I had the teriyaki chicken. As we ate, she asked me all about my life in Wellington and seemed genuinely excited when I told her that I rode.

“It must have been hard to leave your horse at home, to be away for so long?” Gudrun said.

I said nothing. I didn’t want to talk about Piper.

“You’ll find the Icelandic horses very different to the ones back home,” Gudrun continued. “They’re bred to be highly spirited and hot under saddle and they have five gaits.”

I didn’t understand. “Five gaits?”

“Most horses have just four gaits – they can walk, trot, canter and gallop,” Gudrun replied. “An Icelandic horse has no gallop – instead they pace, and they have a fifth gait, the tölt, which is super fast – it’s like a trot except it’s so smooth you do not need to rise out of the saddle. When you ride a tölting horse, it feels like you’re flying. You can sit on their backs quite comfortably like this for great distances.”

“Have you ridden at a tölt?” I asked.

Gudrun smiled. “Of course. As a girl I grew up riding every day. Everyone rides in Iceland. There are only three hundred thousand people, and there are a hundred thousand horses. The Icelandic has the purest blood of any horse in the world. Their breeding hasn’t changed for a thousand years. They are the horses of the Vikings.”

“So do you live in Reykjavik?” I asked.

Gudrun shook her head. “I grew up there, but New York’s my home now. When Katherine asked me to work on this project, I knew I had to come back, though. Brunhilda is very important to me.”

I had taken a look at the Brunhilda script when Mum was reading it on the plane. “So it’s about the princess from Sleeping Beauty, right?”

Gudrun’s face darkened. “Sleeping Beauty is a nonsense story! Brunhilda is not some fairy-tale princess. She was a real girl. This is precisely why I am here – so that this movie won’t become some ridiculous recounting of her history, a helpless fawn waiting for a prince’s kiss to awaken her. The true Brunhilda was the fiercest, the noblest of warriors, willing to fight to the ends of the earth for what she believed in. I have worked all my life to serve her truth.”

Gudrun looked at me hard, her green eyes searching mine. “But why are you here, Hilly?”

I gulped down my sushi roll and thought about telling her everything about me and Piper and the worst time of my life, but in the end all I said was the truth.

“I didn’t want to be home.”

The flight to Iceland took us into Keflavik airport, an hour from the capital Reykjavik. We were picked up by three minivans and got on board with our bags before driving off in convoy. The landscape out of the window was like looking at Mars – plateaus of bare, rugged black rock patchworked with lichen, moss and snowdrifts with strange curls of smoke coming out of the ground.

“Steam not smoke,” Mum corrected me when I pointed it out to her. “There are a hundred and thirty volcanoes here. Thirty of them are still active and even in summer there’s snow. They call it the land of fire and ice.”

We turned off the motorway not far from Keflavik because Lizzie thought it would be fun to stop for lunch at Blue Lagoon, a vast natural hot water lake.

“It’s just so touristy,” Gudrun said as we got out of the vans. “There’s hot water everywhere in Iceland but this place is a little too crowded for me.”

It smelled like the hot pools back home in Rotorua with a rotten tang of sulphur in the air. The hot water lake was huge and the water was an ice-cloudy blue.

Mum and I changed into our swimming costumes along with the crew and got in, sitting up to our armpits. Gudrun was off having an intense conversation with Katherine and didn’t join us.

“Slip this on,” Lizzie said, giving me a wristband.

“What’s it for?” I asked.

“Anything you want!” She winked at me.

It was the coolest thing ever. All I had to do was wave my digital wristband at the kiosks and I was given whatever I wanted. Soft drinks, chips and hotdogs – well, Icelandic hotdogs, which were kind of like American ones but with this weird creamy mustard sauce. I asked for tomato sauce instead but even that was a little strange and tasted like sweet cheese.

We soaked in the pools until my skin wrinkled. It felt chalky and dried-out when we got back out and dressed in the cold air. Then we piled back into the vans, all toasty from the hot water.

Most tourists go to Reykjavik and stay there but we drove straight through. It wasn’t a big city so it didn’t take long and pretty soon it was like we were driving across a moonscape, all spooky and barren with scattered patches of snow despite the summer. Then, just as suddenly as it had appeared, the snow vanished and we were driving through tussocky plains, bare and desolate. It looked prehistoric here, almost as though humans had never existed.

We passed a roadside diner that looked closed except for the flashing lights that insisted it was open. By now it must have been late, but it was still eerily light. I looked at the time on the clock on the dashboard of the van: 11 p.m.

“There’s the hotel.” Mum nudged me and pointed off the main road to the right. In the far-off distance, I could see a long, low wooden lodge that looked like something the Vikings would have lived in except it was much bigger. It stood alone, in front of a massive forest of grey-green fir trees.

“So, that’s our base for the next two months,” Mum said.

The sign outside the hotel said ISBJÖRN. It translated as “ice bear” – polar bear, I guess it meant, since there was a giant stuffed polar bear standing on its hind legs in the foyer. Isbjörn had twelve rooms inside the lodge and another twenty-three cabins. The whole place had been rented out so that we were the only ones here. Katherine and the actors were going to be in the main lodge. The rest of us were allocated cabins around the grounds. Lizzie was methodically doing the rounds of the vans with a clipboard as everyone clamoured around her to find out where they were sleeping.

“Jillian, I’ve put you in the woods – total Hansel and Gretel job, little footpath into nowhere, but, trust me, it’s very pretty …” Lizzie handed Mum our key on a wooden tag and a map of the hotel grounds.

“Which way?” Mum asked.

“Go through the hotel foyer,” Lizzie called back without looking round. “Out the other side you’ll see the path into the forest. Follow the middle track. On the map I gave you your cabin is marked with a red cross.”

“You navigate, Hilly,” Mum said, passing it to me.

I took the map and started reading. “We go this way,” I said, pointing at the walk-through pavilion that divided the two main wings of the hotel.

The path was there. It split three ways and each artery was signposted for cabins three, four and five.

“That’s us, cabin five.” I led the way.

Mum was already on her phone, talking to Nicky, her assistant, who was arriving tomorrow with the costumes. Some of the cast were on Nicky’s flight but the main actors and actresses weren’t due to arrive for two more weeks. Mum had already done fittings for all of them, but there were still details to go through and more clothes to source. She wanted to have everything on hand to do final fittings before shooting began. I could hear Nicky’s voice on the other end of the phone, all shrill and panicky. She was saying there were problems getting the suits of armour through UK customs. The customs officer thought the shoulder pads with the spikes should be classified as weapons. Mum was so calm as she advised her what to do – it made me realise how good she was at her job. The other night at dinner, when Katherine had introduced everyone to Gudrun, she had referred to Mum as the “Oscar-award-winning costume designer Jillian Harrison”. Mum didn’t care about her Oscar – she was currently using it to prop open the cat flap at home – but it made me feel proud.

“No bars. I need to backtrack,” she said suddenly, holding her phone up above her head, searching for a signal. “I have to clear this up now. You keep on going, Hilly. I’ll catch you up at the cabin.”

It was like something out of a movie in that forest. The trees around me were so damp they dripped water. Bright green moss grew on the trunks on the dark side where no light could reach it. I walked slowly at first, thinking Mum might catch me up, but then I got cold and my fingers were numb so I sped up again, and then I saw the little red toadstool on the ground. Not natural but manmade with a sign beside it, an arrow made out of wood with the number five on it that pointed in the direction of our cabin.

When I look back on what happened next, I still can’t figure out how she did it. I remember we were all waiting by the minivans when Lizzie gave us our keys and allocated our rooms. Mum and I had set off down the path to our cabin straight away after that. I hadn’t seen anybody else come this way. So how was it that Gudrun was already on the doorstep of the cabin, sitting on a rocking chair and waiting for me?

She jumped straight up, an air of impatience about her, as if she’d been there for hours.

“Throw your bags inside quickly, Hilly,” she said. “We need to hurry.”

“But …” I was confused. “Mum’s still back there. She’s on the phone.”

But Gudrun ignored me. As I put the key in the lock, she turned the handle for me, then helped me to put my bags in the room. I only just had time to look around and see the shadowy shapes of deer antlers hanging on the walls before she had bustled me back out again and we were walking on the path that took us deeper into the forest.

Gudrun walked so fast I was panting with the effort as I skipped to catch up with her.

We walked like this, saying nothing for a little way. Just when I was about to summon up the courage to ask her where we were going, the woods cleared in front of us and we were obviously in the place she wanted me to see.

Years ago when I was little we’d taken a family holiday to Rome and visited the Colosseum. I remember standing at the side and staring down into the depths of it and imagining all those fights to the death on the sand between the gladiators with their swords and tridents, and the wild tigers and lions being let loose to eat the Christians.

This place we were in now was like a miniature version of that, a circular structure of stone steps sinking down into the earth to create an enclosed arena. Not big enough for the colosseum, but still pretty big. I couldn’t figure out whether it was natural or man-made – the stone steps were covered in grass. Gudrun began to vault down them towards the arena. She was carrying a tote bag across her back and it bounced as she leapt, making a clattering noise like it had bells inside.

I clambered after her, tentatively taking the first step in an ungainly fashion, before figuring out that the best way to get down was to do what Gudrun was doing and leap and land then leap again. Finally I reached the bottom too – not sand like the real Colosseum but dry tussock grass. Gudrun strode out until she was standing right in the middle of the arena and began pulling items out of her bag, including a garden trowel.

“Here!” she called to me. “Come and help me to dig.”

I did as she asked and dug, chipping away at the hard crust beneath the grassy surface. It was tough at first but, once I’d broken through, it crumbled away more easily and soon I’d made a decent hole, with a mound of earth beside it.

“That will do,” Gudrun said. She was still fossicking in her bag.

“Gudrun?” I finally summoned up the nerve. “What are we doing?”

“We’re preparing,” she replied, pulling out a cow’s horn from her bag and laying it down next to the hole.

“Soon it will be the Jonsmessa – the apex of midsummer,” Gudrun said. “In ancient Iceland this was considered a most magical time. And so, to honour the ancients, we prepare for the ritual. We will bury this horn now and then, when the time is right, we will return.”

Gudrun produced a bundle of purple herbs and some yellow flowers, shoving half of them into the cow’s horn before turning to me. “May I have your necklace please?”

There was a silver chain around my neck that Mum had given me for my birthday. I hesitated. “My necklace? Why?”

Gudrun sighed. “The ritual requires something that has touched your flesh.”

I frowned. “Will I get it back again?”

“Yes, of course,” Gudrun said, as if she’d made this obvious already. “We will return for it.”

I took the necklace off and I was about to hand it to her but she shrank back. “No,” she instructed. “Not to me. You must put it in the horn.”

So I slipped the necklace inside, on top of the purple herbs, and then Gudrun took some more yellow flowers and pushed them into the horn too. Then she laid the horn carefully on its side in the hole I’d dug before patting the soil flat back over it.

She beckoned for me to stand up again. She stood beside me, her eyes closed and her hands raised above her head, and chanted a verse in a language I didn’t recognise. When she opened her eyes again she was smiling at me.

“All done,” she said brightly. “You can go home now, Hilly. Your mother will be wondering where you are.”

It was true. Mum was already waiting for me when I got back. When she asked where I had been, I knew it would wind her up if I mentioned Gudrun. Mum clearly found her annoying already. So I just said I’d gone for a look around while she finished her call.

In our cabin that night, I slept really well because I was so jetlagged. I didn’t notice that the night sky was as bright as day. When I woke up, the clock said it was morning, although time seemed meaningless by then. For a moment, I couldn’t work out how I’d even ended up here, and when I thought back to the whole episode in the Colosseum with Gudrun, it felt so surreal I could have sworn I’d imagined it. But then I put my hand to my neck and realised, with a shiver, that my silver chain was gone.