Read Online Sea Horses by Louise Cooper - Free Book Online Page A

spring tides, which happened at new and full moons. The sea came in and went out much further than at the neap tides in between. With any luck, she and Joel could canter all the way along the beach this weekend.
    The wind boomed and the rain lashed round Chapel Cottage all evening, and Tamzin went to sleep with the noises in her ears. When she woke up it was nearly dawn, and she wondered what was different. Then she realized that the squalls had gone and the world outside was quiet and still.
    She felt wide awake. And she was thinking, again, about Nan's picture.
    She got up, pulled on a sweatshirt and padded quietly downstairs. The first dim light was creeping in at the windows, and Baggins greeted her with a sleepy meow from his favourite chair in the kitchen.
    Tamzin went into Nan's studio. It was still too dark to see much, but the unfinished painting was just visible on its easel. She went up to it and peered.
    The painting showed nothing but sea and sky. The horse Nan had begun to draw wasn't there any more.
    Tamzin's heart bumped painfully. What had happened? Where was the horse? She ran to switch on the light, and as brightness flooded the room she hurried back to view the picture again.
    One look, and she realized what an idiot she was. The horse's outline hadn't been spirited away by some awful, supernatural power.
    Nan had simply painted over it; Tamzin could see the new paint shining wetly where it had been.
    Suddenly she had an overwhelming impulse to do what Nan had suggested and draw a horse of her own on the painting. Nan used charcoal, she knew, and there were some sticks of it in a box on a nearby table. Tamzin picked up a stick and stood squarely in front of the picture. She imagined Moonlight standing sideways on to the sea, his head high and his mane and tail blowing in the wind. If she could just capture that…
    She reached out and made a bold, sweeping stroke with the charcoal, as she had seen Nan do. But she had forgotten about the wet paint. Instead of the clear line she wanted, the charcoal smeared in a huge, ugly grey smudge over the picture.
    Tamzin stared, horrified, at what she had done. Grey , over the blue. In a single moment all the terrors that she had tried to put out of her mind came rushing and tumbling back. She had to clean the grey off! She mustn't leave it like this!
    Snatching up a cloth she rubbed frantically at the charcoal smudge. But though a lot of it came off, some stayed, and spread further across the painting. It almost looked like a horse's shape.
    Tamzin came close to panicking. There was only one other thing she could try, and she rummaged among Nan's tubes of paint until she found a blue that was about the same colour as the area she had spoiled. It took her nearly half an hour to cover up the charcoal smudges. But at last the grey could no longer be seen. Blue over grey. She had blotted out the dark influence. Nothing bad would happen. It wouldn't. It couldn't .
    Feeling sick and frightened and horribly alone, Tamzin put the paint away, switched off the light and ran back upstairs to her room.

D espite Tamzin's fears, nothing dreadful happened that day. To her relief Mrs Beck didn't ask about the horse picture again, and she went home after school with the happier prospect of a weekend of riding ahead.
    But that night, the bad dream came back. Again she was running through darkness with the wind raging around her and the sea roaring. This time, though, another sound was mingling with the racket of the storm – the sound of bells. They were ringing a wild peal, and to Tamzin's dream-locked mind the clanging tones seemed to be saying, ‘Blue, Blue! To you! Blue! Blue! To you!’
    Suddenly she snapped out of the nightmare and woke with a gasp. Her bedroom was dark but the sound of the bells was still going on. ‘To… you … To… you …’ It was real, it was in the room…
    Then Tamzin realized that her new mobile phone was ringing.
    She grabbed the phone from her