The Island of Lost Horses

Beneath the dark canopy of the trees, the jungle floor was a tangle of snakewood and sea grape. I was looking for signs that the horse had been this way. You know, like they always do in movies, where they find a broken branch and then they know that the fugitive they are tracking has been there? Only I couldn’t see any broken branches, so I just kept walking.

As I pushed my way through the undergrowth, I thought about the horse, the way her mane had been tangled with burrs. If she really belonged to someone then you’d think they would have brushed her. The way I figured it, she must have been roaming loose for a long time. Maybe she didn’t even have an owner at all. I remembered that feeling I had when our eyes met, like we were bonded together somehow. My horse.

“You have an overactive imagination, Beatriz,” I muttered.

What I didn’t have was much sense of direction. As I walked deeper into the jungle I was beginning to wonder if I would be able to find my way back to the Phaedra again. When I had looked on the map, the island hadn’t seemed that big. I thought it would have taken me maybe half an hour to walk all the way across. But I had been walking that long already and I was still in dense jungle.

All the time as I walked, I had been listening to the birdsong, but now I heard another noise. In the trees to the left of me – the sound of branches snapping and crackling underfoot. I couldn’t see anything, but I had this feeling – like I was being stalked. Something or someone was in the trees with me, watching me, keeping their movements in step with my own. If I stopped walking, then it was quiet, but then when I set off again, I could have sworn I heard something.

“Who’s there?”

There was no reply.

I changed direction, heading away from the noises, walking faster, pushing my way through the trees.

I fought my way through the snakewood and pigeon berry and suddenly found myself in this vast clearing. I felt like I’d stumbled into a magical realm. The undergrowth disappeared completely, and there was a perfect circle of bare earth. At the centre of the circle was a massive tree. Its branches spread out in all directions, with sturdy limbs that were the perfect cradle for a secret tree house. The trunk was broad, with deep crevices, like folds in a curtain that you could have hidden yourself inside, and the roots stretched out like gnarled hands clawing into the earth.

I sat down on one of those roots, leant against the trunk and opened my backpack. I took out the sandwich and ate that and drank about half of the water in my bottle. Then I pulled out the rope and made a horse’s halter. I hadn’t ever used a real halter so I just fashioned it like the ones for my imaginary horses back in Florida, with a piece to go over the nose and another piece behind the ears – but big enough for a real horse obviously. I am good at sailor’s knots from being on the Phaedra so it looked quite sturdy once I was done.

I slung the halter over my shoulder and then I closed my eyes and I listened. I could hear the birdcalls, I could hear the leaves rustling above me, but there was also another sound – gentle, persistent, pounding in my head.

I could hear the sea.

I knew where to go now. The jungle began to thin out as the sea sound grew closer. On the other side of the island, the beach was quite different from Shipwreck Bay. The coast was one vast expanse of mudflats. Forests of mangroves sprouted up out of murky, shallow seawater pools, the remnants of the last tide that had been trapped and left behind.

I pushed my way through the tangles of mangroves and then stopped dead. Right in front of me in the middle of the mudflats, grazing on the marsh grass, was my horse.

She was real. And she was just as strange-looking as I’d remembered. With her crazy dreadlocked mane and her weird markings – the white face with the brown sunhat over her ears. But she was beautiful too. She had a pretty dish to her nose and a crest to her neck that made her look refined and elegant despite her bedraggled state. I thought about the way she had looked at me, when she first saw me in the forest, like she was queen of the island. There was that same nobility about her, even now as she stood fetlock-deep in the muddy waters, ripping up mouthfuls of the unappetising marsh tussock.

All the time I was walking, I had been planning what I’d do when I found her. My idea was to use the apple in my backpack to tempt her and then I would put the halter on. No, I am not joking – that was my plan. I can see how mad it was now, but the first time I met her, I had been so near, I figured I could easily get that close again and then the apple would do all the work.

Some plan. At the sound of me splashing and stumbling my way towards her through the mud she startled like a gazelle.

“No – don’t go!”

I wrestled frantically with my backpack, yanking it open to pull out the apple, but it was useless. She was gone already – galloping off across the mudflats, her tail held up high like a banner behind her, great splashes of seawater flinging up beneath her belly as she thundered across the mud.

I didn’t even try to run after her this time. She was way ahead of me, and she was so fast! I watched her, marvelling at her beauty, the way her legs gathered up and then drove back to earth again all at once, working like pistons powering her on.

And then, halfway across the mudflats, for some reason her strides slowed. She began to lumber along, her legs moving in an ungainly way, and then suddenly, out of nowhere, she fell. She went down hard and the way she lurched so violently reminded me of a zebra being taken down by a lion in a nature documentary.

As she struggled to right herself and get back up on her feet, I noticed that her hindquarters had almost completely disappeared into the mud. And that was when I realised. She hadn’t been taken down. The ground beneath had given way.

I thought she would fight her way free and get back to her feet. But she couldn’t seem to get out of the mud. She was flailing about, thrashing with her front legs. She got herself right up on her haunches, rearing up out of the sand, but then plunged back down again, rolling and twisting to one side as she fell.

I ran out on to the mudflats, dropping my backpack halfway across. It was like those dreams you have where your legs are stuck in glue and you can’t lift them and everything goes into slow motion. The mud suctioned at my feet, dragging at my legs. I was fighting for every stride. My breath came in panicked, desperate gasps.

My poor horse was going totally crazy. She lurched and faltered so that her neck swung like a pendulum, her head smacking down hard into the mud with a sickening thud. She was trapped, and struggling was only making it worse.

I kept running to her until I felt the ground beneath my feet go really soft. From here on in I had to test the ground with each step. I circled right round the horse, padding as I stepped, trying to find the best spot to approach from, where the ground was more solid.

My horse was foaming with sweat and shaking all over. She didn’t seem scared of me though; she was too focused on fighting her way out of the mud. I could see the whites of her eyes showing at the edges, making her blue eyes look even wilder. I could feel my heart hammering, but I had to get closer if I was going to help her, so I kept edging forward. I’d only taken a couple of steps when I felt the mud beneath me give way. I let out a squeal and the horse stopped thrashing and looked at me. Stay calm, I told myself, you can do this. I was almost close enough to reach her.

I ploughed on and felt the ground devouring me with each step. Then my foot got stuck and I collapsed hard against her.

The horse swung her neck as I fell, trying to move away from me, but she had nowhere to go. I grasped her soaking wet mane and clung on to it.

“I’m sorry,” I said. I tried to push myself back off her but I was stuck. Her shoulder was pressed up hard against my thigh and I sank further into the mud.

“Easy, girl. Stay calm. I’m going to get you out.”

I still had the rope halter slung over my shoulder. With fumbling hands I tried to slip the loop over her nose and then I lifted the earpiece over her head. She didn’t flinch from my touch. It was like she knew I was trying to help her.

Once I got the halter on, the hard work really began. It took me ages to pull myself back out of the mud. I would work one leg free only to have it suctioned back down as I fought to loosen the other limb. In the end I managed to crawl free by clawing my way out with my hands, using my fingers like grappling hooks to pull myself out. At least I knew that I could get free again if I needed to. But while I was light enough to get out of the mud hole, my horse wasn’t. And the more she struggled, the deeper she sank.

I moved round so that I was facing her, and then, grasping on with one hand each side of the rope halter, I leant back with all my weight, dug in my heels and I pulled. I pulled with all my strength, as hard as I could.

And… Nothing. The only thing that happened was I began sinking faster than before back into the mud.

I tried again, really yanking at the halter so that the ropes dug into the horse’s face. But even as I tried again I knew it wasn’t going to work. The horse must have weighed at least ten times as much as me and she was stuck deep.

I looked around me for something I could use – a stick or a branch. But there was nothing except marsh grass and tidal pools. And the sea. The sea, which, as I now noticed, was getting closer. The tide was coming in.

This whole mudflat must end up underwater when the tide was high. My horse would end up underwater. I searched more desperately for something to pull her out with. And then, when I couldn’t find anything, I began to dig. Maybe I could make a channel through the mud so that she could fight her way back to the surface again.

I used both hands, scooping up the sand through my legs like a dog. There was a frenzy to my digging as I shovelled the mud up and threw it aside, and I flung myself into the task, digging the channel as fast as I could. With every handful of mud that I dug up, more mud oozed in to take its place. All I was doing was making the hole more and more squishy and unstable.

I tried to dig closer to the horse, and felt the mud cave away completely so that I was up to my thighs once more.

It was futile to try and get her out. So instead, I made up my mind that I would stay with her for as long as possible. She struggled less if I stayed close and stroked her, spoke soothing words to her. I could drag myself out when the time came, but until that moment I would not abandon her.

“It’s OK.” I cradled her head. “It’s going to be OK.” But I believed this less and less. She was exhausted and so was I. The sun was right overhead and it was hot, really hot. My head was throbbing, and I felt prickly all over, like my skin had hot needles pressing into it.

I became mesmerised by the lapping of the sea, the way it kept creeping forward, slowly but surely. We had another hour left at most before it reached us.

“I’m sorry,” I kept saying to my horse. Because I knew now that I couldn’t save her. But I couldn’t leave her. Not yet.

Maybe it was the sun that made me dizzy, I don’t know, but at some point I must have begun slipping in and out of consciousness. I would wake up with a jolt and then sink back into a dream.

Get up, I told myself. Things have gone too far now. It was time to get myself out of the mud. It probably sounds weird to say I was freezing, because the sun was right up overhead, but suddenly I felt chilled to the bone.

It was when I realised that I couldn’t move my legs that I truly began to panic. They’d gone completely numb under the mud. I tried to kick and felt myself sink deeper.

I clawed at the mud, driven on by raw adrenaline, but even the fear wasn’t enough to bring the strength back to my exhausted arms. My muscles were jelly.

“Help me!” The words came out weak and strangled. My throat was thick and dry, my tongue swollen. “Help me!”

I swear the parrots laughed at me. I heard them caw-caw. Why were they so horrible?