Moonlight: Star of the Show Read Free Page B

demanding her breakfast, until Rosie rushed over with her bucket.
    “Honestly, Dancer, all that fuss over a handful of pony nuts,” Rosie yawned.
    As the ponies slurped and sloshed their feeds the girls fetched their grooming kits from the tack room and started to brush their ponies.
    “I’m convinced that all grooming ever does is shift grime from Pirate onto me,” Charlie commented with a frown, looking from her baypony’s summer coat, which shone like a polished conker, with his black points over his knees and hocks gleaming, to her own pale green T-shirt and slightly too-short purple jodhpurs. They were already streaked with dirt.
    Once the ponies were sparkling and enough time had passed after they’d been fed, the girls tacked up. They set off filled with excitement and armed with a map and Mia’s notebook. Their pockets were stuffed with cereal bars and already squashed sandwiches for them and apples, carrots and mints for the ponies. As they left the back of the yard, the ponies started out down the usual well-worn route – past the turnout paddock and onto the bridleway that led through the woods beyond. They took the path to the left, with Pirate pulling at his reins, a bundle of endless energy jig-jogging all the way.
    The bridleway took them to the end of the woods and they cantered along the grassy edge of a field filled with shimmering golden wheat.At the end of the field they rode onto a dirt track and Charlie unfolded the map to check where to go next.
    “Down this way,” she announced, turning Pirate right along the track, which led onto a small, winding lane covered by the shade of overhanging branches. Once they’d left their familiar path, Pirate stopped playing up and his small, hard ears pricked alertly as he bobbed along at the head of the group. Charlie’s legs dangled below Pirate’s elbows, her feet out of the stirrups.
    They kept a lookout for a bridleway marked on the map that crossed a big field. They soon found the field but the map hadn’t warned them that it would be filled with cows. The cows crowded round in spite of the girls shooing them, clinging to the ponies and jostling them while Rosie dragged the gate shut across the thick grass. Scout shied nervously, then suddenly bolted. From the squeals and thudding hooves that Alice heard behind her, she guessed her pony wasn’t the only one.
    For a second Alice felt out of control as Scout thundered along. She grabbed a handful of mane, then she relaxed and leaned forward, lifting her weight out of the saddle and enjoying the exhilaration of speed. Suddenly Pirate was at her shoulder, racing Scout. Charlie grinned at Alice before Scout’s stride started to shorten and Alice began to pull him up as they reached the gate at the far end of the field.
    “Where’s Rosie?” Alice shouted, looking round and seeing Charlie cantering Pirate in a large circle to slow him down. Wish wasn’t far behind, looking gee’ed up by the gallop, unlike Mia, who was as cool as ever on top. Mia looked round too. That’s when they realised – only three of them had made it.
    Suddenly they heard a high-pitched squeal.
    “Can’t one of you please help me?”
    At first it was as if Rosie’s voice were coming from inside one of the cows, and Charlie wondered out loud whether she and Dancer had beenswallowed by one. But when they looked closer they saw that there, stuck in the middle of the herd of bustling cream Jerseys, was Rosie. Dancer was progressing slowly, her neck stretched upwards and her goggly eyes out on stalks, snorting wildly with every stride.
    By the time the girls had stopped laughing and were thinking about going to help, the cows had lost interest and wandered away.
    “Thanks a bunch!” Rosie said indignantly as she finally reached them. “Some friends you are!”
    “Er, Rosie,” Charlie said between big gulps of air, wiping the tears of laughter from her eyes, “what’s all that… that browny green stuff splattered all