Free The Wish Pony by Catherine Bateson Page A

run to Mum.
    She was standing at the bedroom door clutching the balloon and around her feet was a kind of puddle of water.
    â€˜Mum!’ I couldn’t believe it. She’d wet herself. My mother had wet herself like a kinder kid.
    â€˜Rita!’ Dad almost screamed. ‘I’ll ring an ambulance. Don’t move.’
    â€˜Mum doesn’t need an ambulance,’ I said, ‘she needs a nappy.’
    Dad shot me a vicious look. ‘Her waters have broken,’ he said angrily, ‘that means the baby’s coming.’
    â€˜What? But the baby can’t come yet. It’s too early ...’
    â€˜Exactly.’ Dad’s voice, even from the lounge room, sounded cold.
    â€˜Oh Mum!’ I didn’t know what to do. If I hugged her, would that make the baby come more quickly? She was shaking and I picked up her dressing gown and hung it on her shoulders.
    â€˜Thanks, Ruby,’ she whispered, ‘thanks.’ Her voice was small and scared and when she looked at me her eyes were scared as well. She looked like a little girl who’d suddenly realised she was lost.
    â€˜Oh Mum.’ I wanted to cry, but I couldn’t because she was crying and I had to look after her. ‘Do you want to sit down?’
    â€˜I don’t know,’ she said, ‘I don’t know, Ruby,’ and the tears spilled down her face.
    I found a hanky in her bedside-table drawer and mopped up her face. ‘You just stay there, Mum, it’ll be okay. I can hear Dad putting the phone back. That will mean the ambulance is on its way. They’ll look after you.’
    â€˜It’s hurting,’ she said, ‘the contractions have started. I shouldn’t be having this baby yet. It’s not time. He won’t be big enough, Ruby. He’ll be too little. He’ll … die.’
    â€˜Mum, don’t cry,’ I said hopelessly, feeling my face get wet from my own tears, ‘it’ll be fine. Really really little babies still live. I’ve seen photos in the paper.’
    The ambulance arrived at the same time as Magda. The ambulance men drove off with Mum on a stretcher and Dad beside her, paler than I’d ever seen him, holding her hand.
    Magda was wearing a purple dressing gown and a paler purple turban.
    â€˜I was doing my Tibetan whirls,’ she said to me as we both watched the ambulance drive away, its siren blaring, ‘that’s why the dressing gown. Oh Ruby, your poor mother!’
    â€˜Magda,’ I said, ‘I want you to take the Wish Pony. I think it’s my fault the baby’s going to come early. It’s all my fault.’
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    Of course she’d blame me, the Wish Pony thought. Why not? Easier to do that, after all. Easy not to look into your own conscience. Huh! He snorted through his nostrils. Well, she’s stuck with me. That’s the rules. Magda knows.
    Still he felt sorry for the girl with the shiny name. It was awful having a sick mother and then the possibility of your baby brother not living long enough to get to know him. It wasn’t any wonder she was upset. He would have liked to whiffle gently into her face and nudge his head under her hands so she had to pat him, but he couldn’t do that.
    Instead he wished for her.
    I wish the shiny girl’s brother lives.
I wish her mother gets better fast.
    He wished these two wishes over and over. They thudded through his head like hoof beats.

It seemed like hours before Magda spoke. She and I just looked at each other until my eyes burned from trying not to blink.
    â€˜I can’t,’ she said finally, ‘I’m sorry, but I’ve given him to you and I can’t take him back again.’
    â€˜Why not? Why can’t I give him to you? You gave him to me, I give him to you. That makes sense.’
    â€˜Anyway,’ she said, fiddling the bobbles on her dressing gown, ‘you don’t seriously think a little glass ornamental