Star Dancer Read Online Free PDF Page B

beautiful youare, Dancer! She thought.
    ‘Your horse knows what you’re thinking,’ Anne had often said to Suzanne. ‘And if you’re very good, you can read his thoughts, too. To be a first class rider you must put yourself inside your horse’s mind.’
    Suzanne tried to do that now. She could tell from the stiffness of Dancer’s pricked ears that he was tense, and that he was looking towards the judge’s box. Was he afraid the people in the box would move suddenly? Suzanne made her hands go softer on the reins, telling Dancer that it was all right, there was nothing to worry about. She felt the tension leave him as they came to a perfect halt in the exact middle of the dressage arena, and she nodded her head to salute the judge.
    The judge, a large man with grey hair, gravely returned the salute, but his movement did not startle Dancer, who waited calmly for Suzanne to close her legs against his sides and tell him to go forward.
    That was a good halt, Suzanne said to herself. A good start for the test.
    She was pleased. Dancer could feel her pleasure in her hands, in her legs, in the way she sat in the saddle. With increasing confidence, he began moving through the familiar pattern of the dressage test that he and Suzanne had practised many times before.
    Watching from the stands, Mr O’Gorman said to Ger, ‘Everything in a dressage test has a purpose. You see, what we called dressage began as a way of teaching war horses to be obedient on the battlefield. They had to learn to go forward even in the face of guns. They had to be able to wheel and turn at anymoment, to speed up or slow down, and even to take great leaps or move sideways to carry their riders away from danger. When we watch a horse do a dressage test now, we’re seeing the patterns that were used to train those war horses. Suzanne taught me all that,’ he added with a smile.
    ‘But it looks like dancing,’ Ger replied.
    Mr O’Gorman nodded. ‘It does, yes. The horse has to become very agile, like a dancer. And modern dressage horses must look very beautiful in motion, that’s part of it. Suzanne tells me that a dressage horse should look as if he’s doing everything of his own free will, for the joy of it.’
    For the joy of it. Yes, thought Ger, his eyes glued to Star Dancer. That is how it looks. The horse was out there in the middle of the ring dancing for the joy of it, and he just happened to be carrying Suzanne along.
    Suddenly Ger longed with all his heart to be sitting on Star Dancer himself, dancing for the joy of it.
    The test was over.
    Suzanne’s heart was beating fast, and she knew there was a smile on her face. ‘We did it, Dancer,’ she whispered to her horse as they halted again for the final salute. They hadn’t made any bad mistakes, though she knew Anne would tell her a lot of things could have been better. Dressage could always be improved. It wasn’t like jumping. When you jumped, you either got over the jump or you didn’t.
    I mustn’t think of jumping, she reminded herself. But in that moment her muscles had tightened and Dancer felt her nervousness. He lifted his head and shifted weight, refusing to stand still for the salute.
    In his box, the judge frowned and told his secretary to write something down on the scoresheet kept for each rider.
    Ger did not know Star Dancer had made a mistake. He only knew that the horse was beautiful. The horse stood for everything that was missing from his own life.
    He noticed other grooms going to meet their riders, so he slipped out of his seat and ran down to meet Suzanne as she came out of the dressage ring. ‘That was brilliant!’ he told her.
    She shook her head. ‘I made a mistake,’ she said. ‘I ruined the final halt, it was my fault.’
    Ger had never heard anyone admit a mistake so easily. He was surprised. When he did something wrong, he never admitted it.
    Suzanne slid off her horse. ‘We’ll take him back to the stable now and cool him off,’ she told Ger,