Chapter Twenty-One, Part Two

That night Sophie lay in the small hard bed of her father’s old room –her bedroom now – and tried to sleep, but her brain refused to quiet down. So many new things had happened today that she simply couldn’t stop thinking. And there was even more to see and do tomorrow! Her father had promised they would go through the lodge to see what condition it was in. Apparently the upstairs part was full of individual rooms for people to sleep in, as well as common rooms for dining or visiting with friends after skiing. Father had said there was also a large empty room that people could rent for dancing or parties. Sophie thought of some of the dances she had attended in Kentucky. They typically used someone’s barn for that sort of thing, after clearing it of hay and equipment, and decorating it to suit the occasion.

Sophie blinked back sudden tears as she thought of her friends. There had been one boy in particular – Sean from East Ridge Farm, who was a year older than her. He always sought her out for dancing, and her friends had teased her about having a “boyfriend.” She wasn’t sure what having a boyfriend entailed, although she suspected it involved kissing. Sean had never tried to kiss her, and she wasn’t sure if she would have liked it if he had, but she had always been willing to try the experiment. Would she ever see him again? Probably not.

Her father said that after they explored the lodge, he would take her to the school and get her enrolled. This was what most intruded on Sophie’s thoughts as she lay in the dark with a sliver of moonlight coming through the window. She had never thought much of school, but at least in Kentucky she was always with her friends and they could play together at recess and cheerfully ignore their homework in the afternoon while they hung around the stables and paddocks of Northwind, learning about the horses and helping out where they could. Back home, horses had been all that mattered to her and her friends.

What did the children here like to do? She hoped they weren’t good students, since that was a standard she had little interest in meeting. The thought of spending the next ten years of her life looking at books and helping out at the store was enough to make her want to cry. She hoped at least a few of the other children in Castaño loved horses like she did. Most of all, she hoped she would find some girls and boys, whatever their interests, that she could be friends with.

By now the moon was casting its glow across the quilt covering her bed. How she wished she could climb up one of those moonbeams and slide down the other side, right back home! But was Northwind really home anymore? Before her mother died, Sophie had roamed fearlessly, regardless of the hour, sometimes even sneaking out her window so she could walk the dewy pastures in the early morning stillness. But then everything changed, and not just in the cottage that had been her home all her life. The hills and paddocks now murmured ugly things, and even the barns, where she once found so much enjoyment with the horses, whispered vague threats if no cheerful stable hands were around to distract her.

Northwind was no longer a safe haven. And who knew what Castaño would turn out to be? Sophie pulled the covers up over her face. She didn’t want to see the moon. Or anything else.