The Winter Pony Read online

  ALSO BY IAIN LAWRENCE

  The Giant-Slayer

  The Séance

  Gemini Summer

  B for Buster

  The Lightkeeper’s Daughter

  Lord of the Nutcracker Men

  Ghost Boy

  THE CURSE OF THE JOLLY STONE TRILOGY

  The Convicts

  The Cannibals

  The Castaways

  THE HIGH SEAS TRILOGY

  The Wreckers

  The Smugglers

  The Buccaneers

  This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2011 by Iain Lawrence

  Jacket art copyright © 2011 by Tim O’Brien

  Map copyright © Rick Britton

  All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Delacorte Press, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. Delacorte Press is a registered trademark and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.

  Visit us on the Web! www.randomhouse.com/kids

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  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Lawrence, Iain

  The winter pony / Iain Lawrence. — 1st ed.

  p. cm.

  Summary: An account—from the point of view of a pony—of what it was like to be part of Captain Robert Scott’s 1910 expedition to reach the South Pole before rival Roald Amundsen.

  eISBN: 978-0-375-98361-0

  1. British Antarctic (“Terra Nova”) Expedition (1910–1913)—Fiction. [1. British Antarctic (“Terra Nova”) Expedition (1910–1913)—Fiction. 2. Ponies—Fiction. 3. Explorers—Fiction. 4. South Pole—Discovery and exploration—Fiction. 5. Antarctica—Discovery and exploration—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.L43545Wi 2011

  [Fic]—dc22

  2010053550

  Random House Children’s Books supports the

  First Amendment and celebrates the right to read.

  v3.1

  WITH LOVE,

  FOR MY FATHER

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Map

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Cast of Characters

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  The year is 1910, and a great adventure is beginning. It will take two years to finish and will end in a desperate race across the bottom of the world, with a dead man being the winner. But for now it’s just an adventure.

  The American explorers Robert Peary and Frederick Cook are both home from the Arctic, each claiming to have beaten the other to the North Pole. There is now only one land unexplored, one place to discover: the South Pole. Men in six countries are raising expeditions in the hope of being the first to get there.

  Two are nearly ready.

  In London, Robert Falcon Scott is preparing a ship. He’s a captain in the Royal Navy, already a hero of southern exploration. Seven years ago, with Ernest Shackleton and Bill Wilson as companions, he discovered the polar plateau and pushed his way past 82 degrees south latitude, about five hundred miles from the Pole. No one had ever been nearer.

  There’s a strong feeling in England that a Briton should be first to the South Pole. Donations pour in to Captain Scott’s expedition. Eight thousand men volunteer to go with him. Lawrence Oates, a cavalry officer in the Inniskilling Dragoons, gives a thousand pounds in the hope that he can go along to care for the ponies that have been bought by donations from sailors. A young biologist named Apsley Cherry-Garrard is nearly blind without his glasses, but he donates another thousand to join up with Captain Scott. Schoolchildren raise money to buy sled dogs. Captain Scott himself travels up and down the country giving lectures and lantern-slide shows.

  In Norway, the explorer Roald Amundsen is planning his own expedition. But he’s keeping it a secret. He’s telling his financiers that he means to go north, to study the Arctic Ocean by drifting with the pack ice. He hasn’t even told his crew where they’re really heading in his borrowed ship, the famous Fram. It would make no difference; they would follow him anywhere. Amundsen was the first man through the Northwest Passage. He has driven sled dogs across the Arctic and learned the ways of the Inuit. He was first mate on the nightmarish voyage of the Belgica, trapped so long in the southern sea that his companions lost their minds.

  Both Scott and Amundsen know the frozen continent. Each wants very badly to be the first man to reach the South Pole.

  It’s an enormous prize they’re after. It’s fame and respect, a place in history. But what a trial to win it!

  To reach the Pole, you have to navigate a frozen sea that only opens late in summer. You have to push your way through broken floes that might close around you at any moment and trap your ship forever, or crush it in an instant. When at last you get to shore, you still have nearly a thousand miles to travel, around the crevasses of the Great Ice Barrier, over mountains of staggering height, across a vast wasteland where enormous waves of snow are driven along by the wind. You can’t carry all the food and equipment you’ll need, so you lay depots along the route, trekking far to the south and back again, moving supplies forward. Then you build a shelter on the shore and sit out the southern winter, with temperatures to sixty below and darkness that lasts for months. As soon as spring appears, you’re off to the Pole. You have to reach it—and return—in one long dash. You must be back before winter catches you in the open, before your food runs out, before your feet and fingers freeze.

  If you’re lucky, your ship might be waiting. There might still be time to get off the continent before the sea freezes again. But if you’re late, or winter’s early, you have to wait for another summer.

  There are seals and penguins to eat, though many men choose not to. Everything else is brought in your ship: food for men and animals; sledges; harnesses; skis and boots and winter clothing. There’s not a single tree on the whole continent, so you have to bring enough wood to build your hut, enough fuel to cook every meal.

  You’re in the loneliest place on earth. But there are signs here and there that others have come before you. A whole ship lies at the bottom of the sea, splintered by the ice. A wooden hut sits above the beach, food and sleeping bags still frozen inside. The walls of a stone shelter crumble by the shore. Tattered remains of abandoned tents blow in the wind like the clothes of old scarecrows. And little cairns of snow still stand on the dreadful Barrier, though the wind whittles them away, month by month.

  You might wonder if it’s worth the trouble, all the danger and the fear. But if you’re the right sort of person, the answer is easy. All you can think about is that prize, the honor of being first to the Pole. So many men want it, but only one can have it.

  Amundsen is taking nearly a hundred dogs. He believes they can pull light sledges all the way to the Pole. He means t
o move quickly, taking little food and few supplies.

  Captain Scott is planning a lengthy stay and a careful assault. He’s taking scientists to study the ice and the weather, the geology, the plants and animals. He’s bringing motor sledges to carry the load for the polar party. He saw them in action in Norway and was so impressed that he now has three of the machines. Each can haul a thousand pounds at seven miles an hour, on and on, with no need for food or sleep.

  He’s taking harnesses for man-hauling, the British way of polar travel. But he’s taking dogs as well, though he’s afraid they’ll let him down. On his last expedition, he had great trouble with his dogs and had to kill them all. Now he sends a man to Siberia to buy the best he can find.

  Scott knows that Ernest Shackleton had greater success with ponies on his later expedition. So he instructs his man to pick out twenty ponies once the dogs are gathered. They must be light colored, every one, he says. All of Shackleton’s dark-colored ponies died.

  The man is Cecil Meares, an expert on dog teams and sledding. But he knows almost nothing about ponies. So he hires a Russian jockey to help, and they set out for the Great Wall of China, to a horse fair in the town of Harbin. He goes searching for Manchurian ponies.

  CHAPTER ONE

  I was born in the forest, at the foot of the mountains, in a meadow I knew as the grassy place. The first thing I saw was the sun shining red through the trees, and seven shaggy animals grazing on their shadows.

  They were ponies. And I was a pony, my legs as weak as saplings. My mother had to nudge me to my feet the first time she fed me. But within a day, our little band was on the move. I skipped along at my mother’s side, thinking I was already as fast and strong as any other pony, not knowing that the others had slowed to keep me near.

  Our leader was a silvery stallion, as wary as an owl. We never crossed an open slope without him going first, standing dead still at the edge while he watched for wolves and mountain lions. He was always last to drink and last to graze, keeping guard until we’d finished. Except for one dark patch on his chest, his whole body was the color of snow. I loved to see him in the wind and the sun, with his white mane blown into shimmering streamers.

  We had a route that took a year to travel, from the snow-filled valleys of winter to summer’s high meadows. It brought us back every spring to a stony creek that we crossed single file. Our hooves made a lovely chuckling sound on the rocks as the water gurgled round our ankles. We climbed the bank on the other side, passed through a fringe of forest, and came to the grassy place, which I imagined to be the center of the world.

  I thought everything would stay the same forever, that I would always be young and free, that day would follow day and the summers would pass by the thousands.

  But even in my first year, I saw the young ponies growing older, and I saw an old one die. She was a big strong mare in the spring. But quite suddenly in the fall, she began to walk very slowly, to lag behind the herd. She didn’t complain, and she didn’t cry out for the rest of us to wait. She just eased herself away, and one night she wandered off to a watering place, all by herself in the darkness, and she lay down and didn’t get up. I saw her in the morning, her nose just touching the frozen water, her legs splayed out like an insect’s. I nudged her with my lips and found her cold and stiff, as though her body had become a stone. At that moment, I knew that nothing lived forever, that one day even I would die.

  That was hard to understand. What did it mean to die? The grass didn’t mind to be eaten, and the water didn’t care if I drank it. But rabbits screamed when foxes pounced, and tiny mice shrieked for help as they dangled in eagles’ talons. So why did the mare lie down so quietly, with no more grief or struggle than a fallen tree?

  It scared me to think about it, and I was glad when the leader called me away. Across the valley, wolves were already howling the news of a fresh meal. So we hurried from there, off at a gallop through the forest. When wolves came hunting, ponies fled. We went on across a hillside, through a valley and up again, and we didn’t stop until we reached the grassy place.

  The next morning was exactly like my very first on earth. The sun was red again, throwing shafts of light between the branches. The ponies were scattered across the meadow, their shaggy manes hanging round their ears as they grazed on the sweet grass.

  When we heard the clatter of hooves in the stream, we all looked up together. My mother had green stems drooping from each side of her mouth. The leader turned his head, his ears twitching.

  At the edge of the meadow, a crow suddenly burst from a tree. I stared at the place, wondering what had frightened the bird. And out from the forest, with a shout and a cry, came four black horses with men on their backs. They came at a gallop, bounding across the clearing, hooves making thunderous beats that shook through the ground.

  I had never seen a man. I had never seen a horse. I thought each pair was a single animal, a two-headed monster charging toward me.

  My mother called out as she bolted. She reached the forest in two long bounds and vanished among the trees, still shrieking for me to follow. But I was too afraid to move, and the other ponies nearly bowled me over in their rush for the forest. Only the stallion stayed. He faced the four horses and reared up on his hind legs, seeming to me as tall as a tree. He flailed with his hooves, ready to take on all of the monsters at once.

  They closed around him. The riders shouted. The black horses whinnied and snorted. They pranced through the grass in high, skittish steps, as though trampling foxes. And the stallion towered above them all with his silvery mane tossing this way and that.

  Then one of the riders whirled away and came tearing toward me. His horse was running flat out, flinging up mud and grass from its hooves.

  I cried for my mother, but she couldn’t help me. I raced for the trees faster than I’d ever run before. I left the stallion to his dreadful battle and fled blindly for the forest. I heard the strange shouts of the men, the snorts of their horses, and thought that each monster had two voices. Amid their babble were the shrill cries of the stallion, full of anger and fear, and the frantic calls of my mother fading into the forest.

  I followed her cries. I crashed through the bushes and wove between the trees, dashing through a hollow, hurdling a fallen pine. I stumbled, got up, and ran again. I dodged to the left; I dodged to the right, aware all the time that the monster was behind me. I could hear its deep panting and its weird cries, and the crack-crack-crack of a leather whip.

  I came to the foot of a long hill. For a moment, I saw the herd of ponies above me, my mother among them, their white shapes galloping ghostly between the trees. And then a loop of rope fell over my head, and it snapped tight around my neck. I tumbled forward, my head wrenched right around until I thought my neck was broken. I lay on the ground, half strangled and breathless, as the monster glared at me with its four eyes.

  I couldn’t make sense of what I was seeing as the creature seemed to break in two. The man heaved himself up, then down from the saddle, and I realized the horse was much like a pony, just bigger and blacker. Without a word from the man—all by itself—the horse stepped backward to keep the rope taut around my neck. It kept staring right at me with a cold look, unconcerned by my pain. I didn’t struggle; it was all I could do to keep breathing. I watched the man come walking toward me, and I wondered what sort of creature he was, that he could turn horse against pony so completely.

  The men took me far away, half dragging me most of the time. I cried for my mother again and again, but it did no good. They took me down from the mountains, out of the forest, into a land full of people. They put me into a building as dark as a cave, into a narrow slot made of wooden fences. There were no more meadows and no more rivers for me. I drank from a rusted pail that gave my water a bitter taste. Once a day, a canvas bucket was shoved over my mouth and tied to my head, and I slobbered up the handful of grain that lay at the bottom.

  Every morning, I was dragged outside, into a muddy corral. Ther
e I was broken. I was tamed and harnessed, then taught how to serve men. I learned to pull heavy weights, to obey commands that were always shouted at me. If I wasn’t quick enough, I was struck with a stick or a whip or a fist. Once I was hit with a bottle, again and again, until it shattered against my collarbone. Every day was the same. The lessons lasted for hours, until the men grew tired of beating me.

  To go from a life in a forest to a life like that made me sad. I wanted to drink from a stream, not a bucket. I wanted to run on the hillsides, to lie in the grass. I couldn’t turn around in my stall, and I certainly couldn’t lie down.

  There was a whole row of ponies in the building, each pushed into its own slot, and among them—somewhere that I couldn’t see—was the silver stallion. I often heard him snort and whinny. Sometimes he kicked at the fences, smashing the wood, and men came barging into the building. There were awful sounds then: cracking whips; shouts of men; the hideous scream of a pony.

  I didn’t like to hear that sound, and I let my mind wander away. Most of the time, it went back to the forest, to summer meadows, and I heard the whine of the black flies and the swishing of our tails. But one day, it wandered away to a different place altogether.

  I saw a land of snow and ice, a gate so huge that its posts were mountains, its arch a curve of clouds. I saw it shining in the sunlight, the ice a glorious field of sparkles.

  My mind didn’t take me through the gate. But I somehow knew what lay beyond it: a place for ponies. I knew that the old mare from my herd was there, and all the others that had died before I was born. I told myself that I would go there one day if I was lucky enough to get through the gateway, and if I did, I’d find my mother waiting.

  This wasn’t a frightening vision at all. It gave me great comfort to know that there was a pony place waiting for me if I could reach it. Whenever I was sad or lonely, when life seemed very hard, I let my mind wander to that sunny slope of snow.

  The men sold me to another man, a Russian, short and fat, who liked to spit a lot. The first thing he did when he saw me was hook his big fingers into my lips, pry them open, and peer at my teeth. His fingers tasted of horrible things, and his nails were like little stones jammed against my gums.