Blaze and the Dark Rider. Stacy Gregg

       Chapter 1

      The lights had gone out. In the gloom of the circus tent Issie looked around frantically for Stella and Kate. She edged forward in the blackness, feeling her way. “Ow! Watch where you’re going!” a man snapped.

      “Excuse me!” Issie winced—she had just stood on his foot.

      What a nightmare! Trying to find your seat while keeping three ice-cream cones balanced in one hand was hard enough, and now it was too dark to see.

      “Issie! Over here! Hurry up, the show is about to start!”

      Issie looked ahead of her. Thank goodness! There they were. She could just make out Stella’s bright red curly hair. Stella and Kate were both waving excitedly at her. Issie waved back with her free hand then wriggled past another row, trying not to stand on any more toes.

      “Excuse me! Excuse me!” She threw herself down into the empty seat next to Stella, Kate and her mum. Her friends quickly made a grab for their ice-cream cones before they fell out of Issie’s hands.

      “Oh, this is going to be great!” Stella whispered loudly. “Thanks for bringing us, Mrs Brown.” She took a big lick of her ice cream and peered into the darkness, trying to see if anything was happening in the arena down below them.

      “Mmmm, yup, thanks, Mrs Brown,” said Kate, who was concentrating on eating and not getting her ice cream stuck in her long blonde hair.

      “Yeah, Mum! This is the best birthday ever!” Issie beamed.

      “Good grief! I’ve never seen you girls so worked up.” Mrs Brown laughed. “I knew this would be a good surprise.”

      It was Issie’s thirteenth birthday tomorrow. So she wasn’t at all suspicious when her mum suggested that they celebrate a day early by taking her best friends Stella and Kate to the movies. Then, in the car, Mrs Brown had produced tickets to El Caballo Danza Magnifico—the Magnificent Dancing Horses. The girls had screamed so loud that Mrs Brown threatened to pull the car over to the side of the road so that she could cover her ears. They hadn’t calmed down since.

      “Look!” Kate squeaked out. “I can see something happening down there. Here they come!”

      Suddenly, there was a blinding glare as spotlights cast perfect circles on the sawdust floor of the arena below. Then the silence was broken by the clack-clack-clack of castanets, and the strumming of flamenco guitars over the loudspeakers. The twelve spotlights were circling now like searchlights. The guitars were getting louder.

      The spotlights froze on the entrance to the arena and out came two rows of perfect white horses. Their manes, which were so long they hung down well below their necks, flowed like silk. Their tails trailed behind them like a bride’s wedding train, snowy white and almost touching the ground. The twelve horses moved gracefully in pairs down the centre of the ring, trotting in perfect time to the clack-clacking of the castanets. Then they fanned out and moved to the side of the arena, each of them drawing to a halt, illuminated by their own spotlight.

      In the full beam of the lights the horses were so white that they glowed like marble statues. Issie admired the high arch of their necks, and the classical shape of their head. These horses were Lipizzaners—the famed white horses used in the Spanish Riding School in Vienna, bred from the ancient bloodlines of six great sires.

      The horses held themselves so proudly, they reminded Issie