Rocking Horse War by Lari Don Read Free Book Online Page B

rescued.” He glanced over at Jasper, sitting on a rock, gobbling blaeberries again. “Perhaps you should have hit him on the head before you hid him?”
    Pearl tried not to smile. She had wondered the same herself.
    The boy continued his argument in a gentle voice. “When I find the girls with the Laird, they may not know which of us to trust, particularly if he’s charmed them rather than scared them. But if you’re with me, they’ll trust me. Then I can rescue them.”
    But Pearl wasn’t persuaded by a shared joke and a soft voice. “There’s a slight flaw in your rescue plan too, I’m afraid.”
    “Really? What flaw?”
    She raised her eyebrows. “I don’t trust you myself, and I don’t believe your story. Even if I did, I don’t think it’s my sisters’ duty to help you in some petty feud with your neighbours.”
    He wheeled away from her, and his voice hardened. “You heard what I said to Jasper, but you weren’t really listening, were you? Typical! You people stomp all over the surface of the land, but you don’t ever listen to it.”
    Pearl’s voice rose in anger to match his. “Are you telling me I don’t listen to the world around me? Are you telling me I can’t read the land? I tracked two horses here faster than you did.” She jabbed her finger in turn at each of them, her quarry successfully tracked and taken. “I found you, I crept up on you, I listened to your secrets and I stole Jasper from you with a trick a three-year-old wouldn’t have fallen for. I can read and hunt the land better than anyone else here.”
    The boy strode round her, flinging words at her. “You can read it, but you can’t hear its music or feel its pain! You might notice the thin grass, skinny game and flaking stones in the mountains, but you don’t know that the bedrock underneath is turning cold and brittle. And you can’t do anything to help or heal the land.” He paused, breathless with passion.
    Pearl frowned. Before she could ask the dozen questions his words had prompted, he spoke again, more quietly. “If we don’t sing with the land, it loses its music, then its strength. The Horsburghs and Swanns have fought over these mountains, rather than cared for them, for too long. We’ve even lost the key which lets us sing to them. If the war doesn’t end soon, there will be no mountains left to fight over. That’s why we need to defeat the Laird; that’s why we need the triplets.”
    Pearl waited. He seemed to have run out of words. So she asked the most important question. “Why the triplets?”
    “Because they can hear the music of the land too.”

Chapter 8
    The tall boy called, “You can hear the land, can’t you, Jasper?”
    “Can’t I what?” Jasper looked up.
    “Shh, just listen.” He walked over and put his hand on Jasper’s shoulder.
    Pearl could hear the water shooshing, the birch trees creaking, the horses’ hooves shifting, the boys’ breaths whistling. She heard a stag boom in the tops, and the machine-gun call of a startled grouse on the moor.
    She watched Jasper and the boy. Their faces were still, their eyes half shut.
    The boy whispered, “Now sing back, Jasper.”
    Jasper started to hum a tune which swirled round and round, moving like the water at their feet, the air around them. The older boy smiled, a small serious smile.
    Then he joined in. Pearl shook her head. The triplets always did that: sang new songs no one else had ever heard, as if they came into each of their heads at the same time.
    The boy started adding consonants, vowels, syllables, almost but not quite words. Jasper’s eyes snapped open. Like he recognised something. Like he understood what the boy was singing. Then he started to sing along. After a few bars, his eyes bright and his purple mouth wide, he leapt ahead, anticipating, singing new sounds and words before the boy.
    Then the boy pointed his stick at the water, which swirled faster round the rocks, catching the sunlight in rainbows and