Our "American Girl" of horses, each novel in the Breyer Horse Collection―based on Breyer Animal Creations' top-selling horse breeds―tells a compelling story that captures the true essence and personality of each horse. And now, for the first time, we have a historical novel. Annie Wedekind takes us back to Europe in World War II―a time and place that tested the courage of the noble Lipizzaner horses. In 1930's Austria, life for Favory Mercurio, a Lipizzaner stallion bearing the crest of the renowned Piber stud, begins with his mother's abandonment. From that moment on, the young horse feels different, as if he has a missing piece― even though, despite his doubters, he has talent enough to be accepted into the famed Spanish Riding School. Slowly, but doggedly, Mercury perseveres through the rigors of his years of training. But then, as the war bears down on Vienna and the school is forced to flee two advancing armies, his beloved trainer and rider, Max, with whom he has formed a true bond, is suddenly gone, and Mercury is abandoned once more. Will he have the chance to become one of the great Lipizzaner stallions, or will he lose the people, horses, and home that he loves? Annie Wedekind grew up riding horses in Louisville, Kentucky. Since then, she’s been in the saddle in every place she’s lived, from Rhode Island to New Orleans, South Africa to New York. Her first novel, A Horse of Her Own , was praised by Kirkus as “possibly the most honest horse book since National Velvet . . . A champion.” She is also the author of The Breyer Horse Collection books, including Wild Blue , Little Prince , Samirah’s Ride , and Mercury’s Flight . She lives with her family in Brooklyn, New York. Mercury's Flight The Story of a Lipizzaner Stallion By Annie Wedekind Feiwel and Friends Copyright © 2011 Reeves International, Inc. All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-312-64451-2 CHAPTER 1 My war started, I suppose, in the spring of 1939. Of course, I did not know this at the time. I did not know that life was going to change — I was about to say forever, but the strange thing is, that isn't true. Life did not change forever. And that gave hope to people — that some things continued, after the bombs and the tanks and the guns. Even if we were only horses. Only horses. I can imagine what the Colonel would think of that idea. For the Colonel, the white horses of Lipizza were everything — his life, his work, his mission. Of course in the beginning, in my beginning, I did not know that such a man as the Colonel existed. His rather horselike face, with its long crooked nose, expressive eyebrows, and creases that ran in grooves down his thin cheeks, had not yet peered over my stall, a look of dismay on his face, shouting, God, Max, do something to cheer him up! It was one of the moments at Die Spanische Reitschule — or the Spanish Riding School — that I never forgot, even when home was so far away that I feared I would forget the way it smelled. In the beginning, in my beginning and in most everyone else's, was a mother. A mother and a place that shaped my character with equal importance. Meadowlands starred with flowers, mountain streams, apple trees, and the air as cool and fresh as the sparkling, dancing waters that fed our pasture ... a heaven of horses. But if you come from such a place, how can you bear to leave? How can you bear to grow up? It was different for me, this heaven. I experienced its beauty much as the other colts and fillies did, grazing the summer pastures, running and frisking and experimenting with our strong, young bodies. We were dark moons orbiting the white suns of our mothers, and this is where I was unlike my companions, growing up in a world next to but not the same as theirs. For my sun, my mother, was unlike the others. She did not want her dark moon. She did not want me. My earliest memories of Mercurio, the beautiful white mare who foaled me, are indistinct, both because it was so long ago and because I did not have the cause or the urge to revisit them, until my advanced training began. I suppose the first thing I knew, and now the first thing I remember, is not her, but her absence. Among my first memories is being alone, dirty and unable to stand, in a large, dark stall, sweet smelling with hay and that clean barn dust. It was comfortable but empty, and what I wanted at that moment was to be near something, near someone, brought close and warmed. But there was nothing but the deep evening, the quiet sounds of unseen horses rustling in the adjoining stalls, the song of summer outside the doors I could not see over. I felt, unaccountably, that I had done something wrong. And though the night was mild, I was so cold. How does a new creature, who knows almost nothing, know that something is missing? I suppose because we ache for it — for the rough, cleansing tongue, the throaty nicker of concern, the muzzle gently pushing us to our feet and toward the large, warm body and