Читать книгу Snow Foal - Susanna Bailey - Страница 6

Everything around him was changed: white, shifting, silent. The wind had form now: it swirled around him, like feathers from the forest floor, hiding the sky. Hiding his mother.

The foal sniffed the ground. That had changed, too. It clung to his muzzle. It stung.

He smelled the air, seeking his mother’s warm, milky scent. He called. Listened. Called again. He thought he heard his mother’s voice lifting through the trees.

His mother was gone.

Driven by hunger, the foal left the shelter of the old oaks, and drifted across the open moor. He nuzzled the newly white earth, seeking green blades of grass, or the prickly yellow gorse he had been learning to eat alongside his mother’s milk.

He moved slowly, his body tensed for flight. He listened out for the black monster, with its glaring eyes and thunderous roar.

And for the humans who had forced his mother into its terrible jaws.

As darkness fell, and the moon spilled silver light across the moorland, instinct pulled the foal towards the protection of the hedgerow. He pushed his soft muzzle beneath frozen branches, twisted his tongue around the bitter, brittle leaves that nestled beneath. He shook snow from his nostrils and stretched forward, searching for more food.

Then he was sliding, falling: thin legs flailing amidst a tangle of sharp twigs. Snow slid with him, pressing him into the ditch behind the hedge.

When he opened his eyes, the foal could no longer find the moon.