The Thunderbolt Pony
A dramatic and emotional story about one girl’s determination to stand by her beloved animals – and her refusal to give up, even in the face of impossible odds.When a devastating earthquake hits Evie’s hometown of Parnassus on New Zealand’s South Island, she and the rest of the town are forced to evacuate. Evie’s injured mum is one of the first to be rescued by helicopter and Evie will be next. But when realises that she will be forced to leave her beloved pony, Gus, her dog, Jock, and her cat Moxy behind, she is determined to find another way. Before the rescue helicopter returns, Evie flees with Gus, Jock and Moxy in a race against time across difficult terrain to reach the port of Kaikoura, where she has heard that people will be evacuated by ship in three days’ time. Surely there will be space for her, Gus, Jock and Moxy there?But the journey is harder than Evie could ever have imagined, and with aftershocks constantly shaking, Evie will have to draw on all her bravery, strength, and resilience to bring her and her animals to safety . . . and hope that they reach the boat in time.
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First published in Great Britain by HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2017
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Text copyright © Stacy Gregg, 2017
Cover design © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2017
Cover images © Shutterstock.com
Stacy Gregg asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of the work.
A catalogue copy of this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins.
Source ISBN: 9780008257019
Ebook Edition © 2017 ISBN: 9780008257026
Version: 2017-09-05
My heartfelt thanks to clinical psychologist Hilary Mack for his support and advice, and to Suzanne Winterflood, who kept my feet on the ground in this year of earthquakes.
Contents
Chapter 1: The Bringer
Chapter 2: One Year Ago – How I First Became a Thunder God
Chapter 3: The Minotaur
Chapter 4: The Sacrifices
Chapter 5: Pegasus and Athena
Chapter 6: Seven-Point-Eight
Chapter 7: Moxy and the River Styx
Chapter 8: Trapped
Chapter 9: The Odyssey
Chapter 10: Helen of the Hundalees
Chapter 11: The Riddle of the Sphinx
Chapter 12: Creatures of Poseidon
Chapter 13: The Gates to Tartarus
Chapter 14: Six Legs at Dusk
Chapter 15: Pegasus, Son of the Sea God
Chapter 16: Coming Home
Epilogue – Six Months Later
Other books by Stacy Gregg
About the Publisher
On the top of Mount Parnassus, in the grand temple where the gods hang out, I am struggling to load my thunderbolts into the two white sacks strapped on to Gus’s back.
“Stand still!” I use a firm tone with my pony as he fidgets. “This is hard enough without you messing about.” The thunderbolts have these sharp, pointy edges that make them almost impossible to stuff into the sack and I’m trying not to jab Gus in the flank, but I’m in a desperate hurry. The white fluffy clouds beneath my feet are trembling. The whole mountain is shaking from the bottom up. There isn’t much time – we need to get out of here.
“Evie!”
A voice booms through the temple and I turn round to see Zeus striding towards me across the clouds, white robes flowing behind him.
“Put the thunderbolts down, Evie.”
I ignore him and continue packing. I can’t stop now and leave the job half done. That would drive me mad. Two thunderbolts absolutely must go in each sack. Two plus two. An even number. I must get the ritual right, do it in sequence, or terrible things will happen. But then terrible things are already happening. The ground thunder is coming. I can feel its rumble beneath my feet, unstoppable and uncontrollable.
“Evie –” Zeus is beside me – “I want you to tell me how much anxiety you would feel, on a scale of one to ten, if you stopped doing this right now?”
His voice is soft, reassuring, and suddenly I realise that beneath his big white fluffy beard Zeus is not a Greek god at all but actually Willard Fox, my psychologist.
“Evie,” Willard says, “this is the OCD trying to trick you. I know you want to make everyone safe, but you cannot control what is to come. There are things in the universe beyond your powers …”
I feel tears prick my eyes when he says this. I want to stop the rituals. I don’t want to be OCD’s slave any more, but I’m so scared. And the earthquake is here now. The shaking that has been rocking the mountain is growing stronger and the air around us turns electric as the thunder rolls under our feet.
Laden with his pannier bags full of thunderbolts, Gus has been getting more and more agitated and suddenly, with a panic-stricken jerk, he wrenches free of my grasp. I lunge at his reins.
“Gus!”
He gallops off and I break into a run, chasing after him, but then the clouds disintegrate beneath my feet and suddenly I am wheeling through the sky. It’s like falling from a plane. Air rushes by me with incredible speed. I look down and I can see Parnassus far below. Not Parnassus the Greek mountain, but my own Parnassus. The small South Island town in New Zealand where I have lived for all twelve years of my life. Parnassus looks very different from above. I can see the rust-red rooftop of the town hall, and the dairy, and Wrightsons farm supplies, and along from the shops is my school, five classrooms set out in a horseshoe, and the chestnut trees bordering the green expanse of the playing fields. The main street looms up towards me as I plummet headlong. Even as I’m falling, in my death plunge I get this sense of wonder, because there’s something cool about seeing the town from above. It all looks so tiny, but then Parnassus is pretty weeny. Mum says the tourists blink and miss it when they drive through on the way to watch the whales in Kaikoura, further up the main state highway where the road hugs the coastline of the Southern Ocean.
