Spring of Secrets

By Angela Dorsey

When Evy’s mom decides to take a trip to the city, Evy is thrilled. Finally, she’ll get to investigate some of her mom’s mysteries. But then her mom says she must stay behind.

Yeah, right!

With the help of some mustangs, Evy stows away in the back of her mom’s borrowed truck and heads out on the wildest ride of her life, where she’ll meet a foal in trouble and a horse who looks like an angel. She’ll find adventure, a new friend, and answers – answers so mystifying they might as well be questions.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Enchanted Pony Books
• Release date: Sep 20, 2012
• ISBN: 9781927100271

Book preview

SPRING OF SECRETS

Whinnies on the Wind Series: Volume 6

by Angela Dorsey

Copyright 2012 Angela Dorsey

www.aydorsey.com

Published by Enchanted Pony Books

www.ponybooks.com

License Notes:

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Table of Contents

Spring of Secrets

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Summer of Desperate Races

Also Available by Angela Dorsey

Connect

Little black hooves

Skip and prance

Little black knees

Bend and dance

Little black nose

Sniff and snort

Little dark eyes

Search and sort

Little black ears

Listen and…

There! The monster!

JUMP! LEAP! RUN! RUN! RUN!

Oh. Just a windblown leaf…

Little black mouth

Drink and yawn

Little black legs

Bent, withdrawn

Little dark eyes

Droop, then close

Little foal mind

Dreams transpose

Chapter 1

I knew something was up the moment Mom asked me to stop weeding and come inside. I mean, she never asks me to stop weeding, probably because it takes her so long to get me started. Today she’d nagged for an hour before I got out there. I know that makes me sound like a bad daughter, but really I was just being responsible. First, I desperately needed to clean the stalls, and then my two horses urgently required grooming.

By the end of the extended grooming session, Rusty was gleaming, his coat shiny as a gray pearl and his dark mane and tail flowing like ebony silk. I turned him into his pasture and he started to graze the bright spring grasses, looking so amazing that I wished my mom would paint the perfect vision of him on canvas. I knew if anyone could make him right, she could. She’s a super talented artist. However, she’s weird on what she decides to paint. She may even find Twilight the more interesting subject. Twilight is my buckskin mustang filly, and yes, she glowed too – until I told her I was finished and she headed for the nearest mud pit. All that smooth glimmering gold coat was… well, I don’t want to even say it. The artistic clumping of mud that covered her might have been too interesting even for Mom.

But back to the weeding. It was actually fun, believe it or not. Fun because it was a sunny spring day and the weeds weren’t too high yet. The birds were going nuts, tweeting and twittering in the bushes and trees all around me. I could hear ducks in the lake behind our house, plus the strange wild laughter of the loons. The sight of Rusty grazing beside his long-time buddy, Cocoa, in their field completely relaxed me – as long as I didn’t think about what trouble Twilight was probably getting into. Add Loonie, my ancient German Shepherd, snoring at the edge of the garden, and how could I not love sitting there, daydreaming, and plucking the occasional pigweed?

And then came the summons. Mom poked her head around the side of the cabin, said Evy, please come inside. There’s something we need to discuss before tomorrow, and disappeared.

Puzzled, I walked toward our rustic cabin. Weeding the garden was important – or so Mom had been telling me all morning, interspersed with comments about how I’d be doing lots of weeding this year to make up for last year. We’d had a pathetic garden then, thanks to a moose calf that my best friend, Kestrel, and I rescued from certain death. Tumpoo, the frail wisp, quickly grew into a muscular bully with a weakness for pampered garden plants. As a result, our veggies were toast and believe me, that’s a bad thing when the dining alternative is rice or boiled wheat or some other healthy but dreary meal.

That’s what comes of living in the middle of nowhere, and I mean nowhere! It would take us half the day to get to the store and that’s if we had a vehicle, which we don’t. Nor a phone. Nor electricity. That’s because Mom is hiding from someone. I still don’t know who. Or why. Believe me, I hate not knowing. And believe me too, I will figure it out – but let’s leave all that for now.

I slipped my shoes off at the door and walked into our tiny three-room cabin. Mom stood in the kitchen section of the main room, reaching for a clean mug.

Sit down, Evy, she said. I have something important to tell you.

Uh, oh. Had she found my stash of letters from pen pals around the world? If so, I was in deep trouble. Mom didn’t allow me to communicate with anyone other than her, Kestrel, and Kestrel’s family. What she didn’t realize is that I had to have more than one friend, even if all the others were far away and I only knew them through the words they wrote. I gritted my teeth. There was no way I was going to stop writing to my friends, and with Kestrel mailing and receiving my letters, there was no way Mom could make me.

Mom didn’t seem to notice my inner struggle – her back was to me as she poured a cupful from the coffeepot on the stove – but Rusty sure noticed.

What wrong? he asked from his pasture.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention that one tiny, miniscule oddity about me. I can understand horses. With most horses, it’s not on a verbal level but Rusty and I developed our own telepathic language. I can talk with a few other abstract thinking horses too, and in fact, that’s how Twilight came to live with us. However, I don’t use words to communicate with most of them, including Cocoa, Mom’s horse, or Twitchy, Kestrel’s mare. They’re both simple souls, far more concerned with their next meal and a snooze than anything else. Even if they understood me, they’d think anything I had to say was completely irrelevant.

Evy! Mom was standing at the table now, impatient with my dallying. As usual.

Will talk soon, I thought to Rusty as I settled at the table.

Twilight perked up and I felt her inner decision to get home quick so she could interrogate me – which only made me wonder where she was. I thought of asking her but then changed my mind. I needed to concentrate on what Mom was saying, not on what mischief Twilight was finding. I have a tendency to zone out of the human world when I’m talking to the horses.

That’s when I noticed Mom staring at me like I was an alien. What’s wrong? she asked, echoing Rusty’s question.

I sat down on one of our homemade chairs. Nothing.

Mom sat opposite me and took a sip of her coffee. So how’s the weeding going?

She’d called me away from weeding to have a conversation about weeding? Or –aha! – she was trying to make me think this conversation was no big deal, which of course meant it really was. Well, two could play that game. I looked casually out the window behind her. The weeding is great. Very rewarding. What’s happening with you?

Mom tried unsuccessfully to hide a smile behind her coffee cup, then took another sip and lowered her mug to the table. She looked over my shoulder and breathed a lingering, artful sigh. Okay, so she was totally winning the playing-it-cool competition. After fifteen seconds, I wanted to reach across the table and pull words from her mouth.

Finally she spoke. Ever since I had to fire Edward, I’ve known that I— She met my gaze. Well, you know.

I did know. Edward had been her agent for years, until last fall when we discovered he’d been stealing money from us. Of course, Mom had to fire him. Yeah, you have to get another agent. I leaned forward in my seat. The trip-to-Vancouver conversation. I’d been expecting this for a while. I was prepared.

Mom nodded. Except not a new agent. I’ve written to different art galleries in Vancouver to see if I can find a few that would be interested in carrying my paintings and—

You mean you’re not going for an actual agent again? This part was a surprise – a nice one. As Mom’s agent, Edward had not only driven all the way out into the bush, twice a year, to pick up her paintings, he did our shopping for us too. So this might mean – hope, hope – that with no one to bring us our supplies, we’d do our own shopping! Happiness sparked and radiated from my center. Not only would Edward never again choose my clothes and books, no one else would either. And I’d get to go grocery shopping for the first time in my life. The thought was like the world’s best chocolate on my tongue. So sweet!

I thought I could represent myself, supply the galleries myself, said Mom.

That’s awesome! I enthused. What a great idea, and so fun to make regular trips to… where? Vancouver?

Mom flinched at the sound of the city name. Old wounds still hurt. My dad died there when I was a baby, but I suspected that Mom’s aversion to Vancouver had to do with more than that. I didn’t know for sure because she’d never told me anything but I was sure someone there had something to do with the big mystery of why we were hiding out in the bush.

Yes, Vancouver, because people know my work there. But one trip, she added, correcting me. "That’s all I’ll take, one trip. After I meet the gallery owners and set everything up, I’ll mail the paintings to them."

Second surprise. Plus I didn’t see how it was practical because we’d still need to buy things: food, clothes, supplies for my home schooling. But I wasn’t going to argue that right now. Mom had just said there was one trip to Vancouver, and for today, that was enough. Cool! When do we go?

"I go tomorrow."

What? You’re not taking me? Though this wasn’t a surprise at all, my face grew hot at her actual words. Kestrel and I had discussed this possibility to death, what we could do if Mom tried to leave me behind, but now that the time had arrived, I couldn’t believe she’d actually be so cruel. An