Dandelion: The Extraordinary Life of a Misfit Read online

  And who was he to talk, strange looking thing that he was? Well, his words might have hurt Daisy, but they meant nothing to Dandelion. She didn't know what a dandelion was that first day of her life nor anything else for that matter, all the world being new to her then. She didn't know either that she was born already a possession. She thought herself free, belonging to herself, and that is how she lived.

  A busy time she had of it, too, once she saw her tantrums did nothing to keep her mother at her side and having all her own learning to see to.

  There was her field to discover and know, once she gave up her fruitless vigil at its gate and let her curiosity run free. It became a part of her that field. A friend, offering various shelters from the cold winds and driving rains, and a special place to stand in the mornings to catch the first warming rays of the sun. In the night, strange new things pushed up from its floor and Dandelion's mornings were kept busy nibbling and tasting all of them.

  It had a stream at one end. A narrow, shallow affair with a world of life in its waters once she learned to keep herself still long enough to study it. And a long time she puzzled at the pale, wavering creature staring up at her from its bottom with large questioning eyes until it came to her that she stared at herself.

  Besides Dandelion and her mother, the field sheltered and fed other creatures, too. There were rabbits and foxes. And mice and birds and insects and toads. She came to know them all. She knew where they lived and what they ate and where they went to find their food, their daily comings and goings being as familiar to her as her own.

  And as all about her was different every day and yet the same, so Dandelion, too, changed and grew but was still herself. She saw it in the stream and felt it in her bones. A wisp of mane and forelock began to sprout along the crest of her neck, the fuzz that was her tail lengthened, and flesh and muscle began to thicken under her hide.

  She grew in her abilities, too. From a creature that scarcely knew where it began or ended and had the devil's own time getting its feet under itself - all together and all going the same way at the same time - she became fluent. Things she could only imagine one day would come easily to her the next, though she failed to notice then, and for many a long year afterwards, how her actions always followed her thoughts. However that may be, her ungainly scrambling efforts at motion soon became a smooth trot and then she taught herself to canter and before she knew it she had mastered the gallop.

  Enchanted Dandelion was at the way her world changed when she saw it at speed. All the things she had known as whole, defined and stationary, could be changed to a blur of unfamiliar blues and greens and browns - the earth merging with the sky and the other way around - by the simple fact of her own amazing speed. A speed that was checked only by the great stone walls built by her mother and McCree long, long ago.

  Of all the things about her then, the thing she gloried in and loved the best was working with herself. She forgot her loneliness and sorrow, forgot her mother even, in the hours Daisy was away at her work.

  Every day and more each day, she whirled and played about her small green world, wild and dizzy with the joy of herself and what she could do. She taught herself to weave in and out of trees at a gallop, charmed at the important thud of her small hooves on the sod. She raced her own shadow and, learning from the toads, leaped the stream in a bound, enchanted to see her friends, the rabbits, flying for their lives at her swift approach.

  She learned to kick up her hind legs and to stand on them, too. And she learned to use her voice. Being born with it shrill, she taught herself to lower it, wanting to sound more like her mother.

  There being nothing in the world she liked better than showing off her accomplishments, she'd be hard at it when McCree brought her mother home of an evening.

  “Am I not the swiftest creature you ever saw?” she'd be asking by her actions as she sped by. “Faster than the rabbits and the squirrels. Faster even than birds that fly!”

  McCree would shake his head in disgust at her antics and trudge off to his cottage, muttering as he went, but her mother tried to be kind.

  “Indeed and you are,” Daisy nodded when she was through with rolling away the feel of her harness in the flat brown dirt by the gate and had drunk sparingly from the stream, taking care, in her fastidious way, not to muddy its waters with her hooves. “And if that was what you were born to do, a fine thing it would be, but running and playing is not what life is about as you will learn.”

  “Then what is life about?” Dandelion called, pulling up from a full gallop to walk in a curious, stiff-legged manner she'd taught herself that very day.

  Her mother sniffed and when she spoke it was as if McCree spoke for her. “Work is what life is about. Work and serving your master. Clearing the land and planting the seeds. That is why you were born.”

  “You mean as you do?”

  “Exactly.”

  “But I can't. I'll not be having the time. It's meself I have to work with, there being so much I still have to learn. As I grow I will jump the walls of this small field and travel, faster than the wind, across the larger ones I see about us. I have too much to do to stop and work for another.”

  Her mother sighed. “Dandelion! Dandelion! Is it feathers you carry in your head in place of brains? Not even the wildest and boldest of your brothers ever talked of jumping walls and galloping off to nowhere. Why, where would you belong? Who would you work for? A horse without a master is... Well, it is nothing.”

  “I'll not be needing any master,” Dandelion called, executing a fast little sideways step.

  Her mother was deeply shocked and snorted her disapproval. “Not be needing a master? May the saints preserve us from your ideas. Tell me, is it wild horses you see running about the place with no master telling them where to go or what to do next? The very idea of such a thing!”

  Dandelion galloped to the far end of the field bringing herself up short at the wall, then wheeled about on her hind legs and careened back to her mother, stopping in a skid that took her forelegs under Daisy's belly.

  “And the mice and the rabbits?” she panted. “And the birds and the toads? Is McCree their master too? I don't see them running off to work the live long day as you do.”

  Her mother's lip curled. “It's speaking of different things, you are,” she sniffed. “They are wild animals. We are tame. Since time began we horses have worked for man. We are beasts of burden. That is our destiny.”

  “But why...?”

  “That'll be enough of your whys, Dandelion!” Her mother said sharply. “It's wearing me out with them you are. And you'll please me by not chasing about the place as though you had wasps at your tail. At least when the Master is about. It's a worry to him and meself besides. It's enough that you're small and look strange, without him thinking you're soft in the head as well. A hard-working man he is and a good master, too, and it's an obliging, hard-working horse he's needing to help him through his days.”

  Blessed was Dandelion to be away from the opinions and disapproval of the two of them enough in those early days that her high spirits and joy in herself were not dampened. Alone, she filled the green-gold days of her first summer with achievements that came to serve her well later in life.

  Her first autumn drifted in with soft rains and falling leaves and a cooling sun. She saw her friends the squirrels become enemies, one with the other, fighting and jabbering over nuts, saw the birds that had lived over her head since her birth fly away, saw the toads and frogs and insects disappear. She saw her own baby coat thicken and she saw her mother worked half to death bringing in the harvests for miles around.

  “And what is it then,” Dandelion asked Daisy one evening when she came home from work, “this thing called winter that has every living thing in such a state?”

  But her mother, the poor soul, never answered, though Dandelion asked a dozen times. Daisy was asleep on her feet before the gate swung shut behind her.

  So Dandelion learned of winter, too, a
lone, and she gloried in it. Exhilarated she was with the cold air at her head and the hardening ground at her feet making the sound of her flying hooves more impressive than ever. To be sure there was nothing left alive in her field to nibble on, but McCree threw her an armful of hay in the morning and when the weather turned colder than that, he brought the both of them into the barn at night. There they thought it grand to drowse on a warm bed of straw away from the cold earth and rain-filled, howling winds.

  And so Dandelion had a taste of all the seasons, and by the time she was a year old, she knew her little world inside out and thought there was no other. She forgot what it was to be new and unsure. She thought she had lived forever and knew everything there was to know.

  A rude awakening she was in for to be sure. A lifetime of learning lay ahead of her and Dandelion with ideas as narrow as her small field.

  THREE

  It happened that, with McCree and Daisy working as hard about their neighbor, Lord Harrington's land, as they did their own, a bargain had been struck between the two men: in exchange for Daisy's labor, Lord Harrington allowed her foals to graze with his own yearling stock until they were old enough to be broken to harness, grazing being in short supply on McCree's cultivated acres.

  On a fine spring morning then, all unknowing, Dandelion stepped out of one world and into another, and the narrowness of her thinking quickly became apparent.

  Fresh-groomed she was and in a dither because of it, it being her first and her not understanding the reason for it. In a dither, too, was McCree, vexed at her sidling and nervousness, and grudging the time she kept him from his work. If he'd had more time and the interest besides, he'd have noticed, with the mud and Dandelion's winter coat coming off under his brushes, how her once pale coloring was darkening to a rich chestnut and that she was well muscled for her age. If he'd taken the trouble to measure her with the palms of his hands from the ground to the top of her shoulders, he'd have seen she was already approaching fourteen hands and not so small after all. But next to her mother, towering at sixteen hands and wide enough to make three Dandelions, he saw her as a runt still and treated her like a fool.

  He put a halter on her head and oil on her hooves and then, Daisy and her cart on one side of him, Dandelion on the other, led them out of the yard and into the lane.

  Dandelion was agog, her already prominent eyes bursting out of her head in her eagerness to see for herself where it was her mother disappeared to every morning of her life.

  A beautiful place she thought that leafy lane, though her pleasure in it did nothing to calm McCree's already outraged patience.

  “Will you be calming yourself!” he roared as Dandelion dashed ahead the length of her rope, trying to see around each corner before they came to it.

  And, “Will you be moving yourself!” as she stood transfixed at the wonder of a large lake shimmering in the sunlight.

  He cursed her soundly when she went up on her hind legs at the unexpectedness of a rabbit crossing their path and begged the saints for mercy when, her attention elsewhere, she stumbled into a puddle and muddied the three of them.

  “Where are we going?” she asked her mother, but too excited, too entranced by the scenes unfolding around her to listen to her reply.

  Presently they turned into a long driveway and Dandelion had under her hooves the delightful, unaccustomed sound of scrunching gravel. A long time they followed the curves of that drive, in and out of parklands and through woods, and with each step Dandelion felt tension mounting within her. Her hide prickled and she broke a sweat, sensing already, picking out of the air, unfamiliar sounds and odors. A feel of excitement. Of anticipation...

  One last turn they rounded and the drive opened into a large yard surrounded on all its sides by stables. Dandelion stopped so sharp she'd have had McCree on the ground if her mother hadn't been there for him to cling to.

  Over the top of each stable's half door, curious horses' heads peered out. There were friendly ones among them, calling out to them, nuckering a welcome. There were jealous ones too, their ears back, not liking the interest the newcomers created. And there were the restless, turning away to prowl the straw of their stable and then, fearful of missing something, darting back to the door for another look. And ones, too, that were bored and set to yawning by the homeliness of the visitors.

  Horses everywhere then! Calling shrilly, stamping iron-shod hooves on cobblestones and kicking at doors, insisting on their feed, demanding attention. And not just in stables either, but those with riders on their backs, going away somewhere, heads high, tails streaming. Anxious! Keen! And others coming back from somewhere, wet with sweat, necks drooping, exhausted.

  In a turn of her head then, Dandelion saw more horses and more men than she had known existed, and she was amazed. For there were stable lads too, and jockeys and grooms. All of them calling out, whistling, jostling animals aside to get in and out of stables, cursing, pushing wheelbarrows, laughing...

  Twisting and turning in tight little circles, her heart knocking with excitement, her hide a-tremble under its shine, Dandelion tried to see and hear all of it at once.

  But McCree would have none of it. He had his day's work ahead of him and leaving the good Daisy where she stood, dragged Dandelion away.

  It was quiet and calm out behind the stables. Old mares grazed and new foals played. Seeing them, Dandelion was reminded how grown up she was by comparison and drew herself up tall, trying to give her stride some authority. After all, she was a young lady. For a moment she was. And then her ears picked up the sound of drumming hooves and she forgot her manners and whirled about, near dragging McCree's arm out of its socket in her haste.

  Through pockets of mist she saw a group of horses hurtling towards her on a fenced track. Riders were stretched out along their manes clear up to their ears, and she heard them calling out, demanding more and still more of their mounts. All of them traveling at such urgent speed Dandelion thought the devil himself at their tails. As they came alongside, she felt the sting of flying soil in her eyes and the ground beneath her tremble. Thinking them terrorized, she was herself, and with a wrench of her head, freed herself from McCree's grip and was off after them, scattering a group of men who stood in her way.

  A long time she galloped such was her fright. A longer time still before it came to her that she galloped alone and she slowed her pace to look behind.

  She saw only a peaceful sunlit day. No ugly demon at her tail. No frightened horses. No shouting men. Only McCree, dark as a thundercloud, walking deliberately towards her.

  Averting her eyes, she pretended she didn’t see the man at all nor yet hear his voice calling her name in honeyed tones. She may have been young and confused by the startling events of the morning, but still she was not fool enough to believe a word of the blarney he cooed in her direction. She judged her fate to be terrible indeed, from the look of him, if she let him catch up to her before she caught up with her mother.

  As though preoccupied with thoughts of her own then, out on a quiet walk of her own choosing, she set off in a direction wide of his own. She heard his boots in the long grass quicken their pace, and she picked up her own. She heard him start to run and broke into a trot - not fast, mind - but enough to keep her out of his reach without showing the panic she felt inside.

  A lad caught the flying end of the rope dangling from Dandelion's halter as she made what she thought to be a casual re-entry into the stable yard. But her mother, standing yet where McCree had left her, was not fooled for a moment.

  “Dandelion, Dandelion,” she sighed, her daughter's appearance telling her everything. “You ran away! How could you?”

  Gone was Dandelion's fine grooming. Streaked with sweat she was, her mane awry, her hooves muddied and, at her tail, a worse demon than any she had imagined - McCree.

  “And is this what caused me to drop me stop watch then?” a voice called, and a man detached himself from a group standing nearby and walked towards them.
/>   McCree's face turned darker yet. Ashamed he was of Dandelion's antics and angry as well. Quickly he snatched his hat from his head. “Aye, me Lord, the same it is, and if you'll be telling me the price of the watch I'll pay you for it and it's sorry I am for the bother,” he answered, taking Dandelion's rope from the lad and making to hurry her off.

  “Not so fast,” Lord Harrington called, walking towards them. “You'll not be telling me you bred this one out of Daisy, will you?”

  “Aye, me Lord, the same. And it's thinking meself lucky I am that it weren't the first or there'd never have been a second.”

  “And what were you mating her with, eh? A Shetland pony?”

  A fine laugh the men had at those words, though they meant nothing to Dandelion.

  McCree scowled. “`Twas the same sire as fathered her others, me Lord, only me old Daisy was past it and meself thinking her good yet for another.”

  “A throwback is what you've got there,” another man, a veterinarian, said. “That's Arabian blood you're seeing in that head.”

  “Arabian blood?” McCree fairly spat. “Why, that's foreign blood! No wonder it's spending its days racing about like it's got feathers in its head in place of brains. Flighty it is and vain besides, and not a soul in the county willing to buy her off me. It's getting me money back I should be doing if it's Arabian blood I'm after dealing with.”

  “She'll be settling down in a year or so,” the veterinarian said. “Might make you a nice saddle horse in time.”

  “Saddle horse?” McCree screamed with even more indignation than he had shown at the mention of Arabian blood. “And what in blazes would I be wanting with a saddle horse? It's a work horse I'm needing, and if you'll excuse me now, sirs, it's to me work I'll be going. Where will you be wanting me to put it?”

  “You'll find the yearlings in the south meadow same as always,” Lord Harrington answered turning away.