the pony-club camp? You know, the Christmas you got Mystic?”
Issie felt a shiver run through her as Stella said Mystic’s name. Of course she remembered that Christmas. She remembered that it was their first ever Christmas without her dad, which had been awful. But in a way, it also turned out to be the best Christmas she had ever had. It had been the start of everything.
When Issie looked back on that time now, she realised that Mystic was meant to be hers-that their lives were inextricably intertwined somehow. Of course, back then she couldn’t possibly have known what was to come. That Mystic would be taken away from her so tragically. And how could she possibly have known that his death was not the end at all, but the beginning? Issie’s bond with the little grey pony was so deep and so powerful that her horse would never really be gone. Whenever she needed him most he was there to watch over her and her horses and keep them safe. Not like a ghost or anything, but as a real horse, flesh and blood. Right by her side for the rest of her life.
At Christmas time, more than at any other time, Issie found herself recalling memories of the times before Mystic died, when he was still with her as a regular pony. But most of all she remembered the Christmas when she and Mystic first met. Had she found Mystic or had he found her? It didn’t really matter. What mattered most was that, with each day, she realised more and more just how magical that Christmas had been.
“I remember,” Issie said to Stella. “I remember…”
Issie stared into the eyes of the giant pink pig. Gently she reached her hand under its belly. Her fingers fumbled around, grasping the cork. With one swift tug she released the stopper and a waterfall of money cascaded noisily out of the pig’s tummy on to her duvet. She pushed the ten and twenty cent pieces to one side and began picking out the notes and the gold $1 and $2 coins.
“Isadora? Are you dressed yet? You need to leave in ten minutes!” Mrs Brown called up the stairs.
“I’m just finishing something!” Issie yelled back. She was already in her uniform and her hair was brushed. All she needed to do was pull on her school shoes and she was ready. But first she wanted to check how much she had in the piggy bank. She sat cross-legged among the coins on her bed and began to sort the money, counting in her head as she went.
“Do you want a banana in your lunchbox?” her mum called up the stairs.
“Mum! You made me lose track!” Issie sighed and put all the ten cent pieces back into the pile to start again.
“What?” her mother shouted back.
“Nothing!” said Issie distractedly. She carried on counting. “That makes $5 dollars, plus another $5 is $10…” Issie had been saving up for a pony ever since she could remember-from the moment her mum told her that if she was really serious about getting a pony then she would have to buy one herself.
“If I save up enough to buy one then can I really have one?” Issie had asked.
“Well…yes, I suppose so,” Mrs Brown had agreed.
“How much is enough?”
“I should think about $1000 would be enough to buy a pony,” her mum had said.
Years later, Mrs Brown admitted that she never thought Issie would reach $1000. “I didn’t think you were serious,” Mrs Brown recalled. “I thought it wouldn’t take long before you gave up on the whole horse nonsense and splurged it all on toys instead.”
But Issie didn’t give up. She saved and saved-all her birthday money and pocket money from doing chores. It took ages for the pig to fill up, but eventually the coins were crammed past its tummy all the way to the snout and the pig was so heavy Issie could hardly lift it.
There was the moment of triumph when she finally reached her goal of $1000-followed by bitter disappointment when her mum still refused to buy her a pony. “You’re only nine years old; that’s too young,” Mrs Brown had said. “A pony is a big responsibility, Issie. You have to be able to groom it and feed it and take care of it. They’re a huge commitment.”
“I know that!” Issie had insisted. “I will look after it. You said I could have one when I had $1000.”
But Mrs Brown was firm. “Wait until you’re ten. Ten is a good age for a pony.”
Wait until she was ten? This, as far as Issie was concerned, was changing the rules halfway through. In fact, Issie would have pointed out exactly how unfair this was, but she figured that since she was already nine and three-quarters-which was so close to ten anyway-she would take the new deal that was being offered. It wasn’t that much longer to wait. And her mum couldn’t wriggle out of it this time. Once Issie turned ten she had to let her have a pony. Didn’t she?
Issie’s tenth birthday arrived in September. Mrs Brown came up with a new excuse. “It’s practically still winter,” she reasoned. “There’s no point in buying you a horse when it’s too wet and cold to ride.”
Issie had protested that she didn’t care about the weather, but her mother had stood firm. And so Issie waited. She watched the seasons change and the days get longer. It was December now, summer was here and she was ten years old and three months. Her piggy bank was now bulging with a whopping $1274-thanks in part to two rather large birthday cheques from both her grandmothers. This time when she approached her mother, she was bound to win the fight. Mrs Brown was completely out of excuses.
Issie bounded down the stairs from the bedroom into the kitchen and put the piggy bank down on the table with an emphatic thud. Mrs Brown looked up from her newspaper. She saw the familiar face of the pink pig and sighed. “How much is in there now then?”
“$1274,” Issie said as she pushed the pig closer to her mother. “Please?” she begged as she nudged the piggy bank across the table until it bumped into Mrs Brown’s coffee cup. “Mum, please! You said I could get a pony when I was ten and I was ten ages ago…”
Mrs Brown looked back at the paper as if she were hardly listening, “Did I say that? That you could have a pony when you were ten?”
Issie’s face dropped. This couldn’t be happening! “Mum! Don’t you remember? You said when I was ten! We talked about it!”
Mrs Brown gave a heavy sigh. She had been wishing and hoping that it wouldn’t come to this. Hoping that this whole pony thing was just a phase. But here she was, being confronted by a ten-year-old with a pink pig full of cash. She looked up from the newspaper and saw the desperate look on her daughter’s face, her trembling lower lip as she fought to hold back the tears. At that moment Mrs Brown knew that she had lost the battle and her daughter, finally, had won.
“All right,” she said. “I was just winding you up. I did say you could have a pony when you were ten, didn’t I? And I can see I’m going to be forced to keep my promise.”
“What?”
Mrs Brown smiled. “We’ll look at the horses for sale in the paper when you get home from school, OK? And we’ll go online and look at that horse trader website. What’s it called again?”
“Trade-a-pony!”
