Loving Spirit

the show now because he won’t go in the horsebox, and then there’s you. I’ve got to find a way to persuade Uncle Len to let me keep you but I don’t know what I can do.’ She could feel the panic starting to curl around inside her, building and swirling like smoke from a smouldering bonfire.Time was ticking away. Thursday loomed large in her mind.
    Spirit breathed softly on her hair. Ellie shut her eyes, drawing strength from him. She’d think of something. Her racing thoughts gradually slowed and her mind emptied. A picture came into her mind. But there was something different about it. She frowned, trying to work out why. It was as if the energy wasn’t quite the same, she realized. She let herself sink into the picture, wondering what Spirit was showing her.
    It was dark. There was a lorry full of foals. There were no partitions and the foals were crammed together, stumbling against each other as the lorry threw them about, hooves grazing each other’s delicate legs. The atmosphere was charged with fear and loss. Mother, mother, mother …
    The air was filled with the foals’ silent cries, and suddenly she knew the foals were all being taken away from their mothers for the first time. They were very young and terrified. But she had shared Spirit’s memories of his first journey away from his mother before and it hadn’t been like this. What was going on? Other pictures took over. The lorry stopping. Being herded out into a yard they had never seen before with lots of other ponies there. Shouting. Rough handling. Utter confusion and, running through it all, a deep sense of loss and longing …
    Picasso came into Ellie’s mind. She stared at Spirit. This isn’t you , she thought. It’s Picasso. Are you showing me what you know about him?
    She felt his answer. Yes .
    Ellie pieced together Picasso’s story from the images Spirit was sending her. The bay pony must have been taken away from his mother when he was very young. He’d had a terrifying journey to a different yard and then he’d never seen her again.
    It explained why Picasso had never travelled well. Ellie felt her heart go out to the pony. Every time he went into a horsebox, it must remind him in some way of that day when he had lost his mother. Was that why he wouldn’t box now? But no, that didn’t make sense. He had travelled many times since he was a foal. Something else must have happened more recently to make him so scared.
    Do you know? she questioned Spirit.
    A picture of a snake filled her mind.
    A snake?
    To be sure, she sent the picture back to Spirit.
    His certainty was overwhelming. Yes .
    Ellie saw a snake writhing in the straw on the floor of the horsebox behind Picasso’s back legs.
    No . She started to shake her head in confusion. It can’t be .
    Yes , she felt Spirit insist.
    Ellie frowned. There couldn’t have been a snake, there just couldn’t. There weren’t many snakes in this part of England and snakes hibernated in winter anyway. And even if by some remote chance there had been a snake in the horsebox, Picasso would certainly have killed it with his hooves and Joe or Stuart would have found it when they were clearing the straw out. She remembered the bay pony charging out of the box, neck lathered, rug askew, tail bandage left in a heap in the straw behind him …
    Tail bandage .
    Ellie’s eyes widened suddenly. Was that it? Maybe the bandage had come loose while Picasso was travelling. She imagined it slowly unravelling as Len had driven along. The end would have brushed against his back legs. If Picasso had swished his tail, it could well have moved through the straw behind him like a snake. He’d been bitten when he was younger, Stuart had told her that, so if he’d thought there was a snake in the straw lining the box then it was no wonder he’d panicked and gone mad.
    The importance of what she was figuring out gradually filtered through to Ellie. If it was true then maybe Picasso’s fear of horseboxes could be cured. What they had to do was convince him there was no snake in the horsebox and help him find the confidence to go inside.
    But then a new picture came to Ellie. She saw herself with Picasso, stroking him outside the horsebox, and then she saw Spirit inside it. Around him there seemed to be a warm and comforting glow. There was movement and a thud of hooves as Picasso walked up the ramp and joined him.
    Ellie stared at Spirit. You mean you think we could get him to go into the