Little Prince - The Story of a Shetland Pony Read online

  She shrieked; he stopped.

  “What is the matter with you, Dauphin? You have gotten so lazy!”

  This is just too much, Phin thought. She smacked him with the crop, and he flattened his ears and didn’t move. She smacked him again, and he turned neatly around to face the direction of the stables. He had simply had enough, and nothing the frustrated and furious girl on his back could do would make him canter again.

  It was a miserable ride back to the barn. Phin felt that he had never been so glad to be home, to see Jack, to know that a clean stall, fresh water, and a bucket of oats and sweet feed awaited him. He felt unpleasantly lathered and couldn’t wait to get his saddle off and get a good rubdown. This was the one task related to his care that Isabella usually performed. She loved having these final leisurely moments with her pony, stroking his coat, feeding him carrots, talking her sweet, girlish babble in his ear till her mother dragged her away. But somehow Phin knew that today Jack would be doing the rubdown. Sure enough, after Isabella had flung herself dramatically from his back, she shouted for the groom.

  “He was awful,” she whined to Hilda and her mother as Jack made his way toward them. “He wouldn’t canter, he practically fell going around a turn, and then he wouldn’t go anywhere except back to the barn! He’s gotten lazy and fat.”

  “Well now, Miss Izzy,” came Jack’s gentle voice, “he hasn’t had much exercise lately, has he? You haven’t been to see him in a while, and you don’t let the other kiddies ride him. He can’t stay fit without ridin’, can he?”

  “So this is my daughter’s fault, is it?” snapped Mrs. Ingram.

  “Well, not her fault that she’s, ah, gettin’ a bit big for him, no. I suspect she’s a wee heavy for the lad now.”

  “What? Are you saying I’m fat?”

  Jack’s protests were drowned in a chorus of indignation from the mother and daughter. Phin sighed. All he wanted was his stall. All he wanted was the end of what had been a very bad day in the life of the most beautiful pony in the city.

  CHAPTER 2

  The next morning, Phin decided to have a talk with Van der Luyden. He was as eager to complain about his owner as Isabella had been to complain about her pony.

  “Your owners don’t visit you very much, do they, Van der Luyden?” he asked in a careless tone, between mouthfuls of alfalfa.

  “Alas, no,” Van der Luyden murmured. “My master passed away two years ago, and my mistress soon followed him.”

  Phin choked on his hay. How awkward.

  “Erm, I hadn’t realized. I’m, um, very sorry for your loss.” Van der Luyden solemnly bent his head in acknowledgment.

  “But, you know, when they were alive,” Phin persisted, “did they ever, well, lose interest in you?”

  “Certainly there were times when the affairs of the world, and I daresay affairs of state, prevented them from having the leisure to ride, yes.”

  It’s not affairs of state keeping Isabella away, Phin snorted to himself. More like affairs of playdates …

  But even as the sour thought went through his mind, he felt a sting of guilt. Isabella was his little girl. (Well, perhaps not his little girl.) She was his mistress. It was practically programmed into the fiber of Phin’s being that he obey her in return for love and spoiling. And yesterday, he had not. The pony was overwhelmed by a sudden urge to confess.

  “I disobeyed Isabella,” he said abruptly.

  Van der Luyden’s only response was a subtle cock of his heavy head.

  “I wouldn’t canter. I mean, I did canter, but then I got tired.” Phin’s tone became more and more self-justifying. “My girth was pinching, and she used spurs on me—she’s never done that before—and she wanted to go faster and faster and I just, I just … wanted to go back to the barn,” he finished in a shamed whisper.

  “I see,” said the Friesian.

  Phin took another small mouthful of alfalfa. “She said I was fat and lazy. But I’d tried my best, as I always do.” An edge of indignation returned to his words. “She kept me waiting for over an hour. She hasn’t been to see me in weeks. She didn’t give me any sugar.…” Phin stopped himself, near tears. He risked a quick glance up at his companion. It was disconcerting how his view of Van der Luyden was always up his nostrils. However, the seventeen-hand stallion considerately lowered his head before answering the pony.

  “Our bond with humans is ancient, and like all long relationships, occasionally fraught. While we may expect a certain amount of care and rational demands from our masters, it behooves us to recall that, ultimately, we may neither predict nor predicate their actions. I might suggest that it is our duty—our honorable and enriching duty—to attempt to meet these demands in as accurate and timely a manner as is within our personal capacity.”

  Oh, that’s helpful, Phin thought. See what I get for looking for some sympathy from the aristocracy …

  “I guess my ‘personal capacity’ was a little low yesterday,” he grumbled. The stallion didn’t answer. Phin knew Van der Luyden would sooner eat his water bucket than openly criticize anyone—particularly humans, but even ponies. He reserved his expressions of disapproval to a sort of chilly, thick silence; a subtle turning away of his royal Roman nose; and feigning sleep. Phin was getting the chilly, thick silence now. He decided to press the point.

  “So I failed in my duty? Even though she doesn’t come to see me? Even though it’s her fault if I’m, if I’m, well, a bit out of shape? Even if she’s … not very nice to me?” The Shetland’s voice rose higher and higher, sounding childish even to his own ears.

  The Friesian bent his head lower, causing his long, rippling black mane to swing forward. He fixed the pony’s gaze with his, and his expression was serious but kind.

  “We endure,” he intoned, “even without sugar.”

  * * *

  A week passed, a dull, Isabella-less week. The weather grew even balmier, spring frothed even more frothily, and as the barn filled with children, Phin knew that school must be out for the summer holiday. And then on Wednesday morning, Jack appeared outside his stall, holding Phin’s plush saddle over his arm and carrying his bridle in the other hand. The pony’s ears pricked forward. On Wednesdays, he usually took his constitutional in the park … but apparently not today. Isabella! Phin gloated. She does still love me. I knew she couldn’t stay away once school was out! That must have been it—indeed, I was a ridiculous Shetland for worrying so. (Or, as Poppy would have phrased it: Ain’t you da pernyim one? Ya skirl at a flee.1)

  He cast a cocky glance up at Van der Luyden, but the Friesian had fallen asleep after his morning oats and was snoring lightly in the comfortable gloom of the depths of his box stall. Looking at the gentleman giant, Phin vowed to be a perfect pony for Isabella today. Not that he would then brag to Van der Luyden—certainly not. He would simply allow word to spread—quietly, nothing pushy—of their renewed brilliance. Perhaps one of the grooms, while cleaning Van der Luyden’s stall, would say to another, Did you see how well our Phinny looked today? Miss Isabella said they had a very nice ride.

  Very nice? the other groom would protest, half laughing. No … he gave her a perfect ride. What do you think, Jack?

  I think he’s a perfect pony is what I think, Jack would say fondly, laying an affectionate hand on Phin’s silken blond mane. Phin would bow his head modestly, perhaps just catching a glimpse of the old Friesian, his face shining with admiration.…

  “Phinny, what are you up to? Get your head back up here so I can get this bridle on.” Jack’s impatient voice cut through his reverie. Phin snorted, realizing with embarrassment that in the midst of his daydream he actually had lowered his head in a coy fashion. He jerked it up hastily, bonking Jack on the nose. As his groom scolded him with language quite unfit for the Chadwick, Phin was heartily grateful that Van der Luyden was asleep.

  * * *

  But the figure standing by the mounting block as Phin and Jack made their way down the last ramp was not Isabella. It was too
slight to be his mistress, and on closer inspection, turned out to be a small boy, black-haired and imp-faced. Phin sighed. Late again. He’d been hoping that he and his owner could start the ride on a good hoof, but he felt the familiar resentment stealing over him.… How long would she keep him waiting today?

  Phin couldn’t have been more surprised when Jack led him straight to the mounting block, saying to the little boy, “Well, here he is, and what do you think?”

  “He’s fat,” said the boy.

  Jack grunted. “Nothin’ that regular exercise won’t cure.”

  “He looks like a girl.” The boy giggled, flicking Phin’s silken forelock with one finger.

  Jack hid what sounded suspiciously like a chuckle under a cough.

  “Well, up you go,” he said cheerily, and the boy sprang on Phin’s back like a monkey.

  Phin gazed up at Jack with an agonized expression. Am I really going to be subjected to this? he pled with his eyes. Jack ignored him.

  “So you’ve been on a horse before, right? This isn’t your first time riding?”

  The boy shook his head maniacally. “My parents took me to a dude ranch last summer, and that’s when I decided I was going to be a cowboy! Giddyap! Hyah! Get along, doggies!” the boy shrieked as he began flapping Phin’s reins up and down his neck. Phin stood stock-still, revolted.

  “It’s not quite the same—” Jack began, but he never got the chance to finish his sentence. With a piercing whoop, the boy took the reins in one hand and brought them down with an impressive amount of force on Phin’s hindquarters. Instinctively, Phin bolted.

  “No!” Jack shouted and began running after the fleeing pony. “Hold on there, Elliot, I’ll catch him!”

  But the boy wasn’t frightened. He was thrilled.

  “Hyah, Silver, hyah!” he screeched, pounding his legs into Phin’s sides and waving the reins wildly. Phin lost his head completely and ran straight out the barn door and onto the street.

  It was a nightmare version of his usual route with Isabella. Phin ran in a blind panic, sideswiping a taxi, nearly knocking over a stroller filled with triplets, and causing a waiter to drop his tray of iced coffees right onto the laps of three lunching ladies. Instead of cries of appreciation, shouts of anger and fear followed in their wake. Still the tiny cowboy on his back goaded Phin on, shouting his peculiar form of encouragement:

  “Yee-haw! Hi-ho, Silver! Yeeeeee-haaaaaaaaaaw!”

  It wasn’t hard for Jack and Hilda to track the runaways. They simply followed the path of destruction—swearing cabdriver, screaming triplets, outraged ladies—to the park, where Phin, panicked into a state of total lunacy, had jumped into the fountain, sending Elliot over his head with a resounding splash. This is where the groom and trainer found them—Phin standing wet and wild-eyed beside a bronze mermaid, and the boy pounding the water with his fists, crowing.

  “That was the best ride ever! Did you see us? I think I’ll call her Goldilocks—Goldie for short! Hyah, Goldie, hyah!”

  Phin shuddered, brought back to full, miserable consciousness by the boy’s last words. Goldilocks? He turned pained eyes to Jack, and the groom was staring at him with a curious mixture of anger, laughter, and pity.

  It was the pity that stung most of all.

  * * *

  The next two weeks were extraordinarily confusing.

  Since he and Jack had been sprung from the carnival, Isabella had been Phin’s only rider. She insisted on it: No one was to have the privilege of mounting her beautiful pony, sitting in her tiny, impeccably polished saddle, besides herself. Now that rule—all of the rules of Phin’s comfortable life, it seemed—had gone out the window. On Friday, he was again groomed, tacked, and led to the mounting block, where a weedy, trembling girl with glasses was standing, her arms folded around herself as if to keep her heart from popping out. That ride at least hadn’t taxed Phin’s energy; the weed was petrified of him and remained frozen in the saddle, weeping quietly, as Phin wandered aimlessly around the small ring. On Monday, he was subjected to two riders: a five-year-old boy who wet his breeches, sending a flood of pee down Phin’s sides, and a hard-bitten gymnast in long braids who attempted to vault onto the pony’s back as if he were a crossbeam. By the end of the week, the Shetland had been wept on, peed on, vaulted on, sneezed on, yelled at, and generally assaulted by a fairly representative cross-section of the city’s younger set, and still no Isabella … and no explanation.

  At first Phin thought he was being punished. Then it dawned on him that perhaps these children had been enlisted to give him the “exercise” he “needed” (the Shetland remained unconvinced of his lack of fitness). Either way, it was insulting. Isabella, he felt, should be getting him in shape herself, especially since the Fairmont Country Club Pony Show was merely weeks away. (Phin gazed wistfully at the silver bowl, still gathering dust in his trophy case, that they had won last year … “Miss Isabella Ingram on Dauphin!”) Or, if this was his punishment for their one unhappy ride, surely enough was enough?

  Phin struggled to find an appropriate response to the new regimen of riders he was expected to carry. He was tempted to refuse their commands altogether. On the other hoof, if he was the picture of a diligent, well-behaved Shetland … quietly submitting to an undignified fate … Isabella might be overtaken with remorse and longing for her perfect pony. Except that she wasn’t around to watch him be perfect. And so Phin settled for apathy, performing the bare minimum required of him and no more. It felt low-class … school-horseish, even … and Phin shuddered to think what Poppy would have thought of his behavior (Ya por aamus craetir!2), or Van der Luyden for that matter. That the two stallions, as much alike as corn dogs and caviar, should be linked in his mind in any way seemed preposterous, but Phin was certain that they would agree to disapprove of him.

  All in all, life at the Chadwick, penthouse suite or no, had definitely taken a downwardly mobile turn.

  CHAPTER 3

  A week before the Fairmont Country Club Pony Show, Phin started getting nervous.

  That morning, Jack had again groomed and tacked him, and as he led Phin down the three ramps to the ring, the pony sullenly girded his hindquarters for another strange (and no doubt allergic, cowardly, or crazy) rider. He was just coming off a welcome break—he’d had no “exercise” except for his walks with Jack all week—and so it was with a heavy heart that he approached the mounting block, where a ponytailed girl stood wiping her nose on her sleeve. Another allergic one. Phin sighed.

  But being sneezed on was not the chief of his worries. It was Isabella’s attitude toward the pony show that concerned him. Her continued absence from the Chadwick showed a more than healthy confidence, and Phin supposed he should be flattered, but never had he felt so out of training for a big event. Of course, he probably was meant to be getting his conditioning from the string of pinch hitters, but they were hardly Isabella-quality riders. Van der Luyden took an unexpectedly rosy view of the whole situation.

  “When my master and mistress went to the country house,” he’d commented over their morning oats, “they were often thoughtful enough to provide me with exercise riders. I am glad to see that the Ingrams … second cousins, you know, to my departed mistress … are in the same habit. I’m sure you’re learning as much from your young charges as I was fortunate to learn from Otto and Rosemarie. They still stop by for a carrot and conversation when they’re in the neighborhood.” The Friesian’s eyes twinkled with fond reminiscence.

  “Um,” Phin said. There really was no reply to half of Van der Luyden’s conversation.

  Now, as the sniffling girl put her feet in the stirrups and timidly asked him to walk, Phin’s conscience pricked. Exercise riders … The idea of learning from this motley crew was laughable … and yet, Van der Luyden had had a similar experience and he, of course, had probably found it “enriching.” Perhaps, Phin mused as he sauntered slowly toward the trail, he wasn’t being broad-minded enough. And what if Isabella arrived, dressed and ready for
the pony show, that familiar hawkish gleam in her eye as she homed in on another trophy … and Phin was still “fat” and “lazy,” as she’d declared him weeks before? With sudden determination, Phin injected a bit of spring in his stride and tucked his chin down to go on the bit. The sniffler didn’t deserve it, of course, but he had to think of the big picture. She was simply the lucky recipient of his conscientiousness and talent.

  And when Jack called out, “That’s my Phin! You’re lookin’ yourself today, lad!” the pony’s spirits lifted. It had been weeks since anyone … Jack, Isabella, Van der Luyden, his riders … had praised him (excepting the mad cowpoke, who hardly counted), and he’d almost forgotten what it was like, this lovely warm feeling that put even more bounce in his step and made the burden on his back seem literally lighter. Phin walked, trotted, halted, and turned circles with quiet ease, responding handily to the sniffler’s most inept signals. He was even pleased when at the end of the ride, as Jack lifted her off his back, the girl squeaked, “That was amazing! I wish I wasn’t allergic.”

  “Can’t you take any medicine for it?” Jack asked.

  The sniffler sniffed and shook her head. “It doesn’t matter—my mom’s already said no … but I had to ride him just once. He’s the prettiest pony I’ve ever seen.”

  Phin felt a glow of pride, of well-being, return at her words. Jack, however, seemed disappointed, sighing heavily as he led Phin back to his stall.

  “What’re we going to do with you, Phin?” He placed a work-roughened palm on the Shetland’s neck. “The first time you’re in form, the kiddo is takin’ a joyride. Ah well.”

  Phin didn’t understand his meaning; he was too absorbed in a daydream about the upcoming pony show … “Miss Isabella Ingram on Dauphin!” … to pay much attention.