The Shining Stallion Read Online Free Page A

motion, then stillness.
    A breeze stirred the leaves.
    There! Starlight showed her a swath of gleaming blackness. The sheen was too far above the ground to be a panther slipping through the shadows, and too low for an ebony owl spying out dinner from a branch.
    Standing stiff so that no sound—not even her arms brushing her sides—came from her, Darby listened.
    If she could tell that something was hiding nearby, why weren’t the dogs barking?
    Canines could see and hear better than people could, and their sense of smell was about a hundred times more powerful than humans’.
    Stop holding your breath, Darby told herself, then exhaled in tiny increments.
    Maybe she hadn’t heard hoofbeats, but heartbeats.
    Maybe nothing was wrong, except that her mind had knit a disturbing dream out of leftover worry.
    That was probably it, Darby told herself. Her punishment had turned out to be not so bad and her mind was still dealing with its relief.
    Maybe.
    Determined to find out if her imagination was running amok, Darby took a large step off the porch.
    The horse exploded from cover.
    Darby heard hide scrape tree bark. She smelled soil and leaves dug up by hooves. A whirlwind snatched Darby’s hair and waved the ends against her cheeks.
    She heard it. She felt it. She even smelled hot horseflesh. But she didn’t see a thing.
    The dogs didn’t bark. Hoku didn’t neigh. And now she was alone.
    The kicked-up dust made her sneeze. As she rubbed at her nose, Darby tried to be her usual analytical self.
    â€œOkay, let’s look at the possible explanations,” she said out loud. Her voice was higher pitched than usual.
    She sat down on the front step and laced her fingers together. Looking at them, she told herself to think, but her pulse was still pounding as her mind replayed what had happened.
    Darby heard boots as the door opened wider behind her.
    Dressed in khaki pants and a pressed shirt, Jonah stood in the doorway.
    â€œIt’s five o’clock, time to be up,” he said.
    Darby nodded. Her teeth almost chattered in her eagerness to tell her grandfather what had happened, but she wasn’t sure how to explain.
    Staring over the ranch yard, Jonah asked, “They bothering you?”
    â€œWho?” Darby knew her grandfather’s teasing tone. This wasn’t it.
    â€œThe menehune .”
    â€œNo, it wasn’t little people,” she said. Sometimes he sounded serious about weird stuff, and he’d toldher before about the menehune , who could help or hurt you. “I heard a horse.”
    â€œYeah?” Jonah stepped off the porch. Hands on hips, he surveyed his surroundings. “When?”
    â€œJust a few minutes ago.” Darby shifted uneasily on the step. If he asked her to describe the horse, she was sunk.
    â€œWhich horse?” Jonah asked.
    â€œI didn’t exactly see it. More like, I woke up when I heard hooves moving around. And when I came out here, the horse wasn’t gone, but it wasn’t really here, either.” Darby shook her head. “What I mean is, I could barely make it out under the tree. It held so still”—Darby’s hands moved to make a frame in the air—“it just blended in. Then, when I stepped off the porch, it bolted. And I couldn’t see what color it was because there was no real light.”
    Out of breath, Darby waited for Jonah to respond to what might have been the longest string of words she’d put together since she’d arrived.
    â€œCould have been a dream. A night mare , you know?” he joked.
    â€œI thought of that,” Darby said. “But it smelled like a horse.”
    â€œMaybe a spirit horse, then. There’s the Shining Stallion of Mauna Kea—a mountain over on the Big Island. He’s been stealing mares and breaking down fences for a couple hundred years.”
    â€œI don’t think—”
    â€œHe’s sighted at daybreak and