Horse of the Same Colour

Pre-teen fantasy by Melodie Trudeaux

Melodie Trudeaux is the alter ego of crime writer, Penny Grubb. Horse of the Same Colour is the sequel to Horse of a Different Colour.

Review Quotes

The book is an adventure, a fantasy, and a parable all rolled into a hugely entertaining package that children will enjoy and parents will be happy to read to their younger ones … Melodie Trudeaux has managed to enter the strange minds of the younger generations … to present their often fragmented and nonsequential manner of addressing each other … The adults in the book are as well drawn as the children … The reader encounters monster plants with minds of their own, interactive invertebrates, and the inevitable horse of the title. Source

These young pals are a trial to their parents and teachers but great fun to be with. Reminds me of my own imaginative childhood! Source

Horse of the Same Colour

CHAPTER 1 — SPIDERS NEED THEIR SLEEP TOO

Megan Crewe awoke with a jolt. Her bedroom was dark with a soft glow from the landing light sneaking under the door. It didn’t seem to be getting-up time because she couldn’t hear Dad complaining about the water pressure or Mum saying, ‘Time to get up for school, Megan.’

What had woken her? Sometimes she had an exciting dream that made her zoom awake, but the dream picture in her head was a lorry stopping outside her house, and that wasn’t exciting. Maybe she hadn’t woken up yet.

Slipping out of bed, she padded across to the window. The carpet felt like a real carpet under her feet, not a dream one.

And there was the lorry, sitting just across the street; all battered with cracked paint showing orange from the streetlights. It had tiny windows close to the top and something was moving about inside. It looked like a horsebox. Megan shot it a narrow-eyed glare. After all that palaver in the summer, she’d had enough of horses to last her a lifetime. She and her best friend Amy had saved Jack the horse, but some really weird things had happened.

‘Am I dreaming about summer?’ she asked the cactus on the window sill.

The dream picture in her head was the inside of the lorry not the outside. It had a plain wall, dusty and cobwebby, and an empty net hanging from a hook. If the net had been full, it would have been stuffed with fresh hay, but there were just two strands. She could see them right in front of her and they looked inviting. Megan always took advantage of food in a dream; in fact she made a real effort to dream about chocolate so that she could eat it all night long, but those strands of hay looked fresh and crunchy so she reached forward and closed her teeth on one of them. Annoyingly, the strand got caught in the net and fell to the floor.

Without stopping to wonder why fresh hay should seem so much more inviting than chocolate, she reached down to retrieve the fallen strand, and found herself jerked to a stop. There were straps round her face and across her nose. She was tied by a rope to the same hook that the hay net swung from.

This was a dream for sure and she was determined to get at that hay.

Yanking at the rope didn’t work, so she stamped her feet and pulled hard, but instead of freeing herself, she just dislodged a black spider. It boinged down on its bungee rope and bounced in mid-air in front of her nose, where it narrowed all eight of its eyes and gave her a glare.

‘Sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I didn’t mean to make you fall out of bed.’

As she watched it climb back up into the darkness of the roof, there was a creaking sound and a small door opened up in the wall.

A man put his head through. ‘Steady on, old boy,’ he said to her. ‘We’ll be on our way any minute.’

Old boy? What was he talking about? What was he doing in her dream? What–?

Then she realised. A shock went through her like a lightning bolt.

She wasn’t dreaming about summer. It was happening again.

Wildly she looked down at herself. Through the gloom, she could make out her four hairy legs. She couldn’t feel the carpet under her feet or see her cactus. Somehow she’d swapped with this horse just the way she’d swapped with Jack in the summer. Back then it had happened by accident but she’d learned the dangers. If the horsebox drove off, she’d never get back to being Megan again.

‘It’s me! Megan!’ she shouted in a panic, and she heard the massive whinny echo off the metal surfaces of the horse box.

The man said, ‘Don’t you be botherin’ him, Arl,’ which made no sense to Megan and did nothing to help.

‘Not again!’ she moaned.

The man twisted to look over his shoulder and called out, ‘Get a move on, will you, he’s getting restless.’

‘It can’t be happening again!’ she wailed, and would have cried but she didn’t know how to with a horse’s big eyes.

Everything had been alright after Jack-the-horse was sold and moved away. She’d spent weeks being wary around horses and ponies but it had never happened again, not with any horse but Jack.

Never until now.

The man was saying, ‘Don’t worry, old boy. We’re nearly set.’

She needed her best friend Amy, but Amy would be asleep in her own bed the other side of the village. Amy was the only other person who knew about her swapping with Jack. Amy was the only one who could help.

Keep calm and work it out. That’s what Amy would say.

It was all very well for Amy, tucked up in bed. She should be here helping.

But wait a minute, there was a way. We had to see each other to swap.

She must have caught a glimpse of this horse through one of those tiny windows at the top of the lorry, and if she could see in from her bedroom window, then she could see out. But she must be quick because whatever was wrong with the lorry, they’d nearly repaired it and would be going any second, and then it would be too late.

With a huge effort, she scrabbled her front legs up the wall. It made a terrible clanging sound. She caught a glimpse of the man’s face. He looked horrified and started to shout.

The rope pulled tight. Her head was almost hitting the roof. She found herself eyeball to eyeballs with the spider.

‘I need to see out of the window.’

But of course, she could see out. She didn’t even have to turn her head. She could see almost all around her at once. It was weird, but it was also a relief because there across the road in an upstairs window was someone who was definitely her, leaning on the window sill, gazing out and chewing on something.

Then the wooden sill was under her chin. She was slipping sliding … thud! … on to the carpet, and she found herself sitting on the floor between her bed and the window.

And in her mouth … she scrunched her face in disgust … the most awful taste imaginable.

She spat out a lump of something well chewed. If that was hay, it was disgusting.

The rumble of a lorry’s engine starting up made her freeze. She mustn’t look out of the window, not until it was gone. I remembered from summer, she would tell Amy, I remembered that we had to see each other.

Cautiously, keeping low to the ground to avoid catching any glimpse of the horse box or its occupant, Megan turned towards the window. A rattly clanking signalled the lorry on its way; it would soon be out of sight.

The first brushstrokes of daybreak were painting themselves across the sky, and there silhouetted against the dawn were the contents of her window sill — her cactus, her rock collection, and her mechanical rat.

She pulled herself up with an exclamation of annoyance as she inspected them. She’d taken a bite out of her cactus.

Horse of the Same Colour

Horse of the Same Colour is published by Fantastic Books Publishing and is available as a paperback and an ebook online and from bookstores.

I own the copyright and have asserted my right to be identified as the author of this book in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.