The Wild Boy and Queen Moon Read Online Free

Club but rather far away, a dealer’s yard, and one riding school with quiet hacks.
    ‘It’s a pity he’s horrid,’ Sandy said, and went into a dream about Anthony Speerwell being as gorgeous as his horse, and after a few years falling passionately in love with her and taking her to live at beautiful Brankhead Hall, while his mother removed herself to a Marks and Spencer part of the world.
    Sandy went into dreams quite a lot. Much as she adored George, a fat skewbald of thirteen and a half hands (the sort, as Leo pointed out, that was more often to be found on a tether at the side of a road), she hankered after a pony that would win at shows and move like a dancer and turn on its hocks at a touch of the heel. A pony that would cause people to stare and envy, and who would put its trust in her completely, do anything for her, greet her with a loving whinny. George greeted her with a whinny but only if she had a food bucket with her.
    Both she and Leo were getting big for George and Puffin now. Neither of their fathers sounded as if they were going to shell out for new ponies, quite understandably, as they seemed to find it hard to pay for boring necessities like blazers and shoes and a hockey stick, not to mention a new car. Sandy knew better than to mention it. She knew she was lucky. But the Julia Marsdens of this world . . . ! Sandy knew that her remark in the school bus had been provoked by jealousy, and felt ashamed. Julia had everything and hated it. What was there to be jealous of?
    Disturbed, Sandy went upstairs to her room. Sometimes it was hard to know what she wanted – this great, strange, throat-lumpy feeling of longing and longing for she knew not what would take her up and make her head spin: as if she was drifting through outer space amongst the galaxies that were so far away they were a mere blur of paleness in the sky, not even proper stars. Sometimes she wondered why she was Sandy – who had arranged it? – that she should have been born at Drakesend, instead of in Bombay or Japan or Tierra del Fuego. Why did Ian, too, want what he couldn’t have, while Duncan, the boy who did the cows, said he would give his right arm to be Ian and have his own farm to inherit? Who arranged all that so badly? God? And why did they have wishes at all, when they were loved and fed and happy, and millions were starving and dying and didn’t have so much as a string vest let alone a pony? Why was Anthony Speerwell so horrid when he had everything a rich boy could desire? Why was her sister Josie so happy when she lived in a house without electricity and a lavatory down the garden and had a baby she hadn’t meant to? (Actually, there was an answer to that one: she was in love and lived with her lover, Glynn, who laughed a lot and loved her back.)
    Nobody knew Sandy had funny thoughts like this: she was known as ‘stolid’ (not an uplifting word) and unimaginative. She got jobs at school like clearing up sick because she wasn’t squeamish and she didn’t complain. She was said to be dependable. They liked her. She was boring, she thought. They didn’t like Julia, but Julia was spirited and pretty and temperamental, not
stolid
. They liked Leo but found her confusing because she was quirky and too clever and sometimes malicious in her teasing way; they were never sure of her, like they were with boring Sandy.
    So Sandy, not pleased with herself, gazed out of her bedroom window in the darkness and saw the beautiful scene she was so used to that she really never took it in: the marsh fields seamed with ditches lying like silver threads, and the river winding like a silver serpent in the moonlight.
    And on the sea-wall, lit by the moon and the stars, a boy on a pale grey horse galloping, silhouetted against the glittering river.
    Sandy sucked in her breath, staring – the Wild Boy! The rider no-one had seen close to, no-one had spoken to, no-one knew about . . . the boy who rode at night. As she watched, he