The Horse Must Go On Read online

  But instead, she was filled with something else—an idea!

  “A fabulous idea!” Sumatra breathed to herself. “One that’s so crazy, it just might work!”

  She burst out of the willow tree with an excited rustle. Her friends looked her way with heavy-lidded eyes.

  “Aren’t you a happy horsey,” Kona observed carefully. “Do you have some more complicated new choreography for us?”

  “Nope!” Sumatra replied. “Just an announcement. I’ve decided that we’re ready. The show is going to go on—tomorrow! Let’s spend the rest of the afternoon spreading the word through the woods. And then, we’ll have our final dress rehearsal.”

  “What?!” Brisa shrieked. “But we have so much more work to do. Our twirls are terrible!”

  “Our pirouettes are awful!” Kona added.

  “And our jazz hooves!” Sirocco cried dramatically. “Don’t even get me started.”

  “Don’t worry, guys,” Sumatra declared with a gleam in her eyes. “Leave everything to me!”

  “That settles it, then,” Sirocco said with wide, scared eyes. “I’m now worried!”

  CHAPTER 5

  Lights, Camera, Surprise!

  By that evening, Kona, Sirocco, and Brisa were worse than worried. They were terrified!

  The three Wind Dancers were getting ready for the dress rehearsal “backstage”—which was really just an abandoned bird’s nest in one of the tall forest trees. Brisa had made mirrors out of magical jewels and propped them on the twiggy walls of the nest. Several fireflies were clustered around each mirror to give the Wind Dancers light to see by.

  “I feel dizzy,” Brisa said as she peered into her mirror, decorating her mane and tail with more magic jewels.

  “I feel hot, then cold, then hot again,” Kona said. She was putting on her stage makeup—berry juice on her lips and black wood-ash around her eyes.

  “I think I’m going to throw up!” Sirocco said. The magic butterflies in his halo were looking a little green, too. “Maybe I shouldn’t have eaten so many apple muffins at lunch.”

  Suddenly, Sumatra flew into the nest to join her friends. She was all ready, wearing a dramatic headdress of bright rainbow-colored ribbons and lots of berry juice lipstick.

  “It’s not your lunch, Sirocco,” she informed the colt. “What you’re feeling is stage fright. It’s completely normal before a big show, even if we won’t have an audience until tomorrow. But guess what? I’m going to tell you something that’s going to take all your worries away.”

  “Nobody’s coming?!” Sirocco cried excitedly. “The show’s off?”

  “Oh, no,” Sumatra said happily. “Everybody’s excited about it. The squirrels have already said they want all the balcony seats—”

  “Balcony?” Kona said. “What balcony?”

  “The tree branches!” Sumatra replied, pointing at the tall trees that surrounded the dirt stage. “And lots of other bugs, birds, and animals are coming, too.”

  Sirocco’s face fell.

  “Well, then,” he said to Sumatra queasily, “I really don’t think you can say anything to make me feel better.”

  Kona and Brisa looked just as gloomy.

  “How about this?” Sumatra replied with a sly gleam in her eye. “I have an idea. An idea that changes everything…”

  * * *

  And that’s how the Wind Dancers found themselves—happily—in their bird’s nest dressing room again on performance day the next evening.

  Just as they had the day before, they all decorated their manes and tails with jewels, flowers, ribbons, and butterflies.

  But one thing was different from the day before.

  The flutters in their bellies? The dry mouths and trembling hooves? All of those things had disappeared.

  As Sumatra put the finishing touches on her ribbon-y costume, she peered out of the bird’s nest to the stage below.

  “The audience is packed!” she reported to her friends. “It’s standing room only! Well, standing and flying and clinging to tree trunks, that is!”

  “Bring it on!” Sirocco cried.

  “You’re not nervous anymore?” Sumatra asked him.

  “Why be nervous,” Sirocco said with a grin, “when you’ve got talent like mine?”

  Sumatra grinned.

  “Let’s gather for a good-luck nose nuzzle, you guys,” she called to the group. All four Wind Dancers scurried to the center of the nest and touched noses.

  “Ooh, I can’t wait!” Brisa said.

  “Good,” Sumatra announced. “It’s show-time!”

  * * *

  A moment later, Sumatra flew out over the audience, her ribbons trailing behind her. Paws, hooves, and antennae clapped together as she introduced herself and got ready to begin her performance.

  This is it! she thought to herself. My big show has begun. I only wish Leanna could see me now!

  And then, Sumatra began to dance. Her number was full of challenging moves—twirls and whirls, flips and flops, jumps and pirouettes. And lots and lots of jazz hooves.

  As Sumatra danced, she could hear the audience oohing and aahing. They gasped when she dove and sighed when she soared. When Sumatra performed her big finale—complete with lots of big, bold kicks—the animals cheered and shouted.

  Sumatra was thrilled as she took her bow.

  But it was when she flew offstage that she got really excited.

  Wait till the crowd sees Kona in action, she thought. She hurried over to the side of the stage, where she’d stashed a feed bucket. The bucket had a hole in the bottom. Sumatra bent her head, put on the bucket, and neighed through the hole. Her voice emerged from the other end, loud and echoing.

  “Thank you, thank you!” she boomed through her makeshift megaphone. “For Act Two, we have … Kona! Doing a different kind of dance.”

  Proudly, Kona flew out of the nest, looking lovely in her headdress of flowers. From the side of the stage, Sirocco head-butted an acorn toward her.

  The audience gasped in confusion—until Kona kicked the acorn with all her might. It shot through the air and landed squarely in a knot in a tree. Right on target.

  The audience cheered!

  And loudest of all cheered Sumatra.

  Sirocco tossed more things, and Kona went after them, all with a big showbiz smile: kick, kick, kick!

  By the time Kona took her bow, she had punted an apple into Sumatra’s feed bucket, a dandelion into the bird’s nest dressing room, and a blackberry directly into Sirocco’s open mouth.

  The crowd went wild!

  “I guess I’m not talentless, after all,” Kona whispered to Sumatra as she bowed to the audience.

  “Nope!” Sumatra declared. “You just had to find your talent, Kona!”

  Sumatra beamed. Finally, she could say something nice—and really mean it.

  Act Three was Sirocco—doing wind sprints! He circled the stage so fast, he was no more than a blur of golden wings and whizzing butterflies. Then he played a trick, plucking a nut out of a squirrel’s paw and planting it into the clutches of a nearby chipmunk so quickly, he could barely be seen.

  “Ooh, you better slow down, Sirocco,” Sumatra narrated through her megaphone. “The hummingbirds are getting jealous!”

  In response, Sirocco grinned and darted upward, flying so high and fast that he poked a hole in a cloud.

  The crowd went nuts!

  Finally, it was Brisa’s turn. She flew out in front of the audience and smiled sweetly.

  “I’m going to do a dance, too,” she announced. “But mine is a little different.”

  Brisa began to move. And as she did, she tossed her head.

  Her movements hit her halo of gems in such a way that they tinkled out a tune! A lovely, clear dance kind of tune.

  A deer was the first one to start moving to the pretty music, tapping one hoof in the dirt.

  Next, a beaver began thumping his tail on the grass in time with the deer’s tap.

  A chipmunk hopp
ed in place, and several birds jumped into the air, fluttering their wings joyfully.

  Sumatra—who was watching Brisa’s performance with Kona and Sirocco—gasped.

  “Everybody’s having such a good time,” she realized, “they’re dancing!”

  “Well then,” Kona said, smiling at Sumatra crookedly. “I guess you got your dance show after all!”

  “Except that nobody’s pirouetting or dressaging,” Sirocco pointed out, with mischief in his voice. “And, ooh, look at that cardinal. He’s whirling when he ought to be twirling!”

  “And the rabbits are hipping when they should be hopping!” Kona added. “And that deer’s jazz hooves are atrocious!”

  “Kona!” Sirocco said with a mock frown. “That wasn’t nice. You should have said nothing at all! Or you could have said something super-nice. That’s what Sumatra would do!”

  “Okay, okay, enough teasing!” Sumatra protested with a laugh. “But you know what? You guys are right. Instead of trying so hard to say lots of nice things or not say not-nice things, I should have just been honest with you. And with myself. Then I might have realized sooner that trying to make us all into dance stars wasn’t going to make us happy.”

  “Lucky for you,” Kona joked, “our true talents were too dazzling to be ignored.”

  “Hey, I’ll dance to that!” Sirocco said.

  He held out his foreleg to Sumatra. Grinning, Sumatra hooked her foreleg around his, and they started whirling wildly through the air together. Kona began jigging on the breeze beside them, while Brisa continued to tinkle away on her musical jewels nearby.

  “So,” Sumatra called to her friends as they danced, “do you forgive me for all I put you through the past few days?”

  “How can we not?” Sirocco replied with a shrug and a sly grin. “In the end, we all got what we wanted. We were fabulous!”

  There’s No Business Like Show Business

  A few days later, the Wind Dancers found themselves in another backstage dressing room. But this time, they weren’t in the forest. They were in Leanna’s school.

  School desks were cluttered with mirrors, pots of makeup, scripts, and sheet music.

  The only things missing were the children! That’s because Leanna and her classmates were onstage, putting on their big talent show.

  “I still don’t get it,” Sirocco said as he and the fillies flitted around the room. “Why are we back here in the dressing room instead of in the audience, watching the show?”

  “Because,” Sumatra declared, “we have a job to do here. And besides, it doesn’t matter if the show is perfect.”

  “Or if there’s a jazz hand out of place,” Brisa volunteered.

  Suddenly, Sumatra jumped. She could hear the thunder of footsteps and the chatter of excited children.

  “Quick!” she urged her friends. “We have to finish!”

  The Wind Dancers stopped chatting and began to fly from desk to desk, focused on their task. They finished just as the dressing room door flew open and children spilled into the room.

  The horses flew up to a windowsill to watch.

  “This is actually like a show! I can’t wait to see what happens,” Brisa said breathlessly.

  “Shhh!” Sumatra said with a smile. “It’s about to start.”

  The horses watched the kids high-five each other and shout out congratulations. Then one girl’s voice cried out: “What’s this?”

  “Look!” Sumatra said, pointing her front hoof. “That was Leanna!”

  It was indeed. Leanna was standing in front of her desk, gazing at a beautiful bouquet of wildflowers. A similar bundle of congratulatory flowers lay on every desk in the room.

  Leanna’s teacher gazed at all the bouquets in surprise. Then she turned to the class.

  “A star should always be given flowers,” she said with a perplexed smile. “I’m just wondering who brought all of you these bouquets.”

  Everyone looked happy, but bewildered, too, as they scooped up their pretty flowers. But Leanna didn’t look puzzled at all.

  She gazed up at the window where the Wind Dancers were perched, almost as if she could see them.

  It’s the Wind Dancers! she thought to herself, hugging her fragrant bouquet tightly. “I just know it.”

  Sumatra grinned at her friends.

  “I think that’s our cue,” she said with a wink. “Take a bow, everyone.”

  Laughing, Brisa, Kona, Sirocco, and Sumatra bowed and blew invisible kisses to the celebrating children. Then they turned and flew out the window.

  And as they headed off, they twisted, flipped, and danced joyfully through the air.

  Here’s a sneak preview of Wind Dancers Book 4:

  Horses’ Night Out

  CHAPTER 1

  Rise and … Shine?

  In the sleeping stalls of the Wind Dancers’ apple tree house, all was quiet.

  Well, sort of quiet.

  Kona was snoring noisily from beneath her horse blanket.

  Brisa was giggling her way through a funny dream.

  Sumatra’s feet were tap, tap, tapping on her stall’s wooden floor as she dreamed she was dancing in the air.

  And Sirocco’s stomach was growling. Loudly.

  “Mmmm,” Sirocco murmured in his sleep, his closed eyes smiling. “A second helping of shoofly pie? Don’t mind if I do. I hate flies, but I love pie!”

  As Sirocco bit into the pie in his dream, his actual teeth began click, clack, clicking.

  His lips smacked wetly.

  And he swallowed with great, big galumphs, even though all he was really swallowing was air.

  “Yum!” said the sleeping horse.

  Of course, in real life, Sirocco’s belly was still empty. His stomach was so noisy, in fact, that it woke him up!

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Sibley Miller, author of the Wind Dancers series, is the pseudonym for an author of novels for teens. You can sign up for email updates here.

  Tara Larsen Chang is the illustrator of The Fairy Chronicles. Jo Gershman is the illustrator of The Nutcracker Ballet and The Night Before Christmas. You can sign up for email updates here.

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  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Meet the Wind Dancers

  CHAPTER 1. All That Jazz

  CHAPTER 2. American Bridle

  CHAPTER 3. Gotta Dance

  CHAPTER 4. The Show Must Go On?

  CHAPTER 5. Lights, Camera, Surprise!

  There’s No Business Like Show Business

  Teaser

  About the Author and Illustrator

  Copyright

  A FEIWEL AND FRIENDS BOOK

  An Imprint of Macmillan

  WIND DANCERS: THE HORSE MUST GO ON! Copyright © 2008 by Reeves International, Inc. All rights reserved. BREYER, WIND DANCERS, and BREYER logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Reeves International, Inc.

  For information, address Feiwel and Friends, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  Our e-books may be purchased in bulk for promotional, educational, or business use. Please contact the Macmillan Corporate and Premium Sales Department at (800) 221-7945, extension 5442, or by e-mail at [email protected].

  Feiwel and Friends logo designed by Filomena Tuosto

  First Edition: November 2008

  www.feiwelandfriends.com

  eISBN 9781250120281

  First eBook edition: March 2016

  >   Sibley Miller, The Horse Must Go On