Title：Kate Thompson - Annan Water.epub
- Title：Annan Water
- Author：Kate Thompson
- Publisher：Open Road Media
- Date：2013-04-30T24:12-06:00
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- Score：
Michael is inexplicably drawn to Annie, but a deep and mysterious river divides themMichael Duggan feels lost. After the death of his younger sister in a riding accident, his parents have relocated their family and their horse dealing business to Scotland. Days and nights are taken up with caring for the horses and ponies, showing them to buyers, and competing in shows. School is a blur—Michael has no friends and no clear sense of who he is. He feels completely alone in the world, until he meets Annie, a girl who, like him, seems to want to escape something, a girl who has some dark secrets. Michael desperately wants to be with Annie. But she lives on the opposite side of the treacherous Annan Water . . .
Annan Water
Kate Thompson
For Isobelle
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‘Annan Waters’
Versions of this song, some under the title ‘Allan Water’, date back as far as the late seventeenth century. It was collected by Francis James Child in the 1890s and published in volume 4 of The English and Scottish Popular Ballads. I first heard it sung by Phil Callery in Kinvara a few years ago. He has recorded it, as ‘Annan Waters’, on his CD From the Edges of Memory, which was released in 1999. It is his version of the song that is used in the book.
Kate Thompson, 2004
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MICHAEL WAS IN NO doubt that the mare would jump the gate. Even though he had turned her head away from it, he could tell that she was still thinking about it. She fretted and snatched at the bit, her hocks under her, her front feet barely making contact with the wet ground. Beside her the big chestnut cob stood like a rock, wasting no energy. Michael tugged at his bridle, trying to wake him up and prepare him for what he was required to do.
The mare plunged forward, wrenching Michael’s shoulder and almost tearing the cob’s reins out of his hand. He pulled her up. She was getting into a stew, defeating the whole purpose of the exercise. He slackened the reins and spoke softly. The mare relaxed, but her ears still twitched. She hadn’t forgotten the gate.
Michael hadn’t either. He looked back at it.
There was no way of opening it without the right tools. Wire had been wrapped around the posts at both ends and stapled to the wood. It no longer functioned as a gate, but as part of a boundary, separating the land his parents were renting from the next farm. But there had been a time, not all that long ago perhaps, when the green lane he could see on the other side of it had been a thoroughfare. It was overgrown now with low branches and reaching brambles, and it was impossible for Michael to see how far it went before it p
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