The Secret Horses of Briar Hill Read online

  She dries my hair with the towel, and wipes the ice off my eyelashes. I keep looking at that sliver of night reflected in the mirror. Waiting to see a flash of wings and kicking hooves. But there is nothing.

  Nothing.

  Nothing.

  Anna switches off the lamp and turns her back to me, but then after a few moments rolls over and interlaces her fingers with my own. She gives my hand a squeeze. Once she falls asleep, I can feel her temperature rise, night sweat soaking into the sheets. I drift off to the sound of twenty children coughing in their sleep, and I think about the white winged mare, of lightning, and of rat-a-tat hooves.

  SOMETIME IN THE NIGHT, the rain turns to snow. At first light, Anna and I push our faces against the bedroom window, watching it come down in quiet flakes. It is thicker here than I ever saw in Nottingham, where city snow quickly turns slushy and brown. The whole world outside is still, except for Thomas trudging through the snow to bring the sheep into the barn, and Bog, who nips at the sheep’s backsides.

  “Can I borrow your mittens?” I ask Anna.

  “You’re still going there, even though you know you shouldn’t?”

  “I have to.”

  She squints into the bright world outside. Thomas and Bog are rescuing one of the lambs, which has managed to wedge itself between two fence posts. Thomas’s cheeks are red, and his breath puffs in the air, but then he manages to free the sheep, scooping it up with just his one arm, and tossing it over the fence, where it goes stumbling through the snow to its mama sheep.

  “Then I’m coming too,” Anna says.

  “You mustn’t! You’re sick.”

  “So are you, you naughty goose. I’m tired of this bed, and I’m not a complete invalid, no matter what Dr. Turner says. I want to walk in the snow.” Slowly, frailly, she makes her way over to the cedar chest at the foot of the bed. Just that effort puts her out of breath, though she tries to hide it. Out come woolen mittens and hats and scarves that are all a dull shade of gray. She starts to wind a scarf around my neck.

  “The stitches are all uneven,” I mumble as I shrug on my coat and do up the buttons.

  “The Americans sent them for the war effort. Poor dears, Americans can’t knit to save their lives, though I suppose it’s good of them to try. Now, put these mittens on and show me how you’re always sneaking around without the Sisters noticing.” She pulls a hat over her own curls, glancing in the mirror to adjust them, then takes her coat off the hook behind her door.

  The only other person awake this early, judging by the sound, is Sister Mary Grace, getting breakfast ready in the kitchen. So we tiptoe like stealthy cats down the stairs and along the hallway to the library. There is a door the Sisters keep locked, but the lock on the middle window is broken. I push the window open. We climb out into the scrubby boxwood bushes. We have to leave the window ajar to get back in, but the wool blanket hides the evidence.

  The cold air hits us. Anna’s cheeks are already splotchy with red. I worry that this isn’t wise, her leaving her warm bed and the cups of tea brought to her. Her arms and legs are so painfully thin. The covers usually hide them, but now, against the bricks of the hospital, she seems so fragile, a girl made of twigs.

  “Go on, then,” she says. “I want to meet this magic horse of yours.” She cranes her neck in the direction of the barn, and her voice rises a little. “Do you think we’ll run into Thomas?”

  “Not if we can help it.”

  She looks disappointed.

  I start sneaking along the row of boxwoods and, once I’m certain the coast is clear, dart across the rear lawn to the garden wall. Anna shuffles behind me. She’s quick and light as a curled leaf, but her breathing is shallow and fast. She leans against the ivy, a mittened hand pressed to her chest. I can hear the rumble starting there. She leans over and coughs into the snow so hard I’m afraid she’ll tear something.

  “Anna—”

  “I’m fine.”

  “I think you should—”

  “I’m fine!” She turns abruptly. “What in heavens is that?”

  I tip my head up to see what she is looking at. The roof. A foot of snow sits on top like the icing Mama slathers on frosted cakes, only there is a patch where the snow has been disturbed violently. And there are prints. The shape is unmistakable.

  “See!” I cry. “Hoofprints!”

  Anna doesn’t stop staring at the roof. Her eyes narrow like she’s on the verge of remembering something, but then a gritty sound climbs up her throat, and she doubles over in coughs. They shake her hard, which shakes the ivy, and a dusting of snow powders the air. Her hat goes tumbling off.

  Suddenly Bog comes thundering around the corner of the gardens, barking like mad. We’ve been discovered. In another second Thomas trudges round. He stops when he sees us. Bog keeps barking until Thomas gives a sharp sss, and he sits right on cue.

  Anna reaches for the ivy, trying to pull herself back up. “Look!” she says in a weak voice. “On the roof.”

  Thomas doesn’t glance at the roof as he comes forward to help her stand up. “Yes, I saw those marks this morning, but really, you shouldn’t be out here, Miss Anna. You’ll catch cold. Emmaline, get her hat.”

  “Emmaline is going to…show me the sundial garden.”

  “Not today she isn’t, not with you looking like that.”

  I stand on tiptoe to put Anna’s hat back on her head. I try to angle it the way she likes, so the curls show.

  “Maybe another day, Emmaline,” Anna says. “I so badly want to see that horse of yours.”

  But the spirit is out of her. Her face is a paler shade than I have ever seen it. Her arms are a thin layer of skin over brittle bone. I think there is more stillwater in her veins now than blood.

  Thomas looks back at me. “Are you coming, Emmaline?”

  I shake my head.

  “Promise you won’t stay out long, then,” he says. When I nod, Thomas helps her back toward the house.

  Bog and I watch their two brown coats against the snow. They move slowly, as though each step is an effort. I do not think Anna will talk about walking in snow again.

  Thomas whistles, and Bog leaves me too.

  I CLIMB OVER THE garden wall and drop to the other side. I am a little scared of what I will find. Could it have been my winged horse up on the roof, gnashing with hooves, her wing not as wounded as I’d thought? What if she has never seen snow before and thinks little pieces of the sky are falling, that the clouds are getting shorn like sheep?

  The snow forms deep drifts in the gardens that swallow my ankles. All the grays and browns of our world are gone now, replaced by white. Maybe this is what the winged horse’s world is like all the time. Beautiful and white, soft and cold. Maybe she feels more at home now, in the storm, than she ever has before. I shake the cold from my hands as I peek around the corner into the sundial garden.

  She is there.

  I feel my chest lift with relief and the wonder of her.

  She is standing in the lee of the highest wall, the only protection from the snow, though it isn’t much. Her wings are tucked into her sides but pulsing slightly, as if she wants to take off but can’t. Puffs of steam blow from her nostrils. Her feet are nimble and anxious, as though she’s never walked in snow.

  No, this is not familiar to her. Whatever snow is like in her world, it isn’t this stretch of colorless blank.

  I step on an old turnip and yelp, and her head swivels toward me.

  Her eyes are so wide that I can see the whites of them. She skitters back into the corner, and she paws harder, boxed in. I hold my hands out so she knows I am no threat.

  “Easy. Easy.”

  Sometimes our horses back in Nottingham would get spooked. They were used to storms, but not bombs. Their eyes would roll, and they would kick the doors of their stalls, wanting to be set free. But Papa was away at war, and we couldn’t let them out or they would run wild through the streets and never come home. Marjorie would climb into bed with me an
d hold me tight, singing in my ear so we wouldn’t hear their cries.

  I try to take a step forward, but the winged horse snorts in protest. She has pawed the snow in her corner of the garden into a muddy mess. But her prints are small and dainty, not at all like the rough marks on the roof.

  But if it wasn’t her…

  The willow stick still rests on the fountain. I take a careful step to the left, moving very slowly so I do not scare her, and break up the frozen water again so that she can drink, and then set the stick back down. Mud has dulled her color. Beneath it, I know she is as white as chicken feathers, and just as soft. I ache to brush away the dirt and press my cheek to her side, feel the rise and fall of her breath, tend to her hurt wing like Mama does whenever I have a bruise. Her eyes are still wide, but they have stopped rolling. She lifts her right foot, and then sets it down.

  Papa says you cannot rush a horse to be broken, or else it will be just that—broken.

  We stand looking at one another, each of us taking in the other. I do not come closer, and she does not panic. We are just two warm bodies in the snow. I have heard that horses can smell whether a person is gentle or not. I imagine it is a scent like flowers, maybe lavender or Russian sage, but not roses, because even horses know that roses have thorns.

  A gust of wind blows, and something flutters beneath the sundial. Paper. Someone has tucked a note beneath the sundial’s golden arm. Who else has been here? Did Benny finally get up the courage? Or the three little mice?

  I tiptoe through the snow at the speed of growing ivy, until I can pull out the paper.

  It is soggy with snow. It’s been here all morning, I think. The paper is thick, like the kind Dr. Turner uses for his prescriptions, but there is a silken red ribbon tied around it. I glance at the horse. She is watching me, breathing steam, as I untie it with numb fingers.

  To whoever receives this message,

  I am in desperate need of assistance. I have brought this horse to your world because her wing is broken, and I need a safe place to hide her. You see, she is being pursued by a dark and sinister force from our world—a Black Horse who hunts by smell and moonlight—and she cannot fly away to escape him. My own crossings between worlds are limited, and I would be forever in your debt if you would watch over her until I can return.

  Ride true,

  The Horse Lord

  Postscript: Her name is Foxfire. She likes apples.

  A letter from the world behind the mirrors! The Horse Lord himself—I didn’t even know there was a Horse Lord! Wind pushes at the letter. It is so cold that my eyes water and make the script swim, but I blink away the cold and read it again. No wonder she hasn’t touched my turnips—she likes apples. The handwriting is careful and lovely, with little flourishes at the ends of the t’s just like Anna makes. In my excitement, I crumple the letter accidentally, and then smooth it out the best I can.

  “Foxfire?” I say to the winged horse. “That’s your name?”

  She doesn’t answer; but then again, she is a horse. She turns toward the fountain. I step back. She comes forward cautiously, dipping her head to drink. Her muscles ripple beneath snow-white horseflesh. There are no markings on her girth or back from where a saddle would rub. She is wild, and too proud to have a master, so I think the Horse Lord must be more like a guardian. I imagine him to be a young and handsome prince, who takes care of the wild winged horses of his world.

  She is closer now, as she drinks. I can see the muscles of her neck moving. If I took a few steps forward and reached out a hand, I could touch her. But I don’t. She wouldn’t let me, not yet. I have to earn her trust.

  A dark shadow passes overhead. The same silent shadow as before, with outstretched wings, that I mistook for a German plane. Foxfire looks up through the snow. Her ears turn back. Somehow, we are linked—I feel her fear within me.

  Overhead the shadow is circling, circling.

  Only now I recognize the outline. The horses I’ve seen in the mirrors have been all different colors: white and dappled and chocolate brown, but never black. Until now. Flying through the storm like thunder embodied, circling like a crow, searching for Foxfire.

  This is the dark presence the Horse Lord warned against. The gnashing beast on the roof.

  The Black Horse.

  I flip over the Horse Lord’s letter and take out my chalk, still in my pocket from last night. It makes fat lines, but I don’t need to say much.

  I accept.—Emmaline May

  I STAND OUTSIDE of the barn with my arms hugged tightly around my chest. Inside, someone is pounding a hammer. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. I take a deep breath and push open the door.

  Thomas sees me and stops repairing the broken kitchen bench, which he has already repaired three times before. He’s sweating with the effort and his dark hair is smeared across his face and I suddenly don’t want to be here, but I promised the Horse Lord.

  “Did you need something, Emmaline?”

  His voice isn’t as angry as the tight set of his face. I point to the bucket of old apples Thomas gives the sheep. “May I have one of those?”

  His eyebrows knit together, but then he sets down the hammer and digs around in the bucket until he finds a good one. He starts to hand it to me, but at the last minute gives me a suspicious look. “This wouldn’t be for the winged horse in the sundial garden, would it?”

  I eye him warily. He said that he’d seen the winged horses too, but Thomas is practically an adult. If Benny and the three little mice won’t even believe me, why would he? But Thomas’s face is very serious. It’s a plain kind of face. His chin is rather weak, and his forehead stretches for miles when he brushes his sweaty hair back like that. But he has nice eyes. They are green, like mine.

  I take the apple. “Have you really seen the winged horses?”

  He picks his hammer up again. “Yes.”

  “In the mirrors?”

  “In the frozen lake on the Mason farm, just beyond the back fields. When the sun shines, the ice is like a mirror, and you can see them plain as day.”

  I run my finger along the dusty edge of his workbench. “I know what caused the hoofprints on the roof after the snowstorm,” I tell him. “There’s another horse that’s crossed through the mirror. A black one. I got a special letter about it. Have you seen him?”

  Thomas wipes the sweat from his forehead again. “Not yet, no.”

  “Well, be careful. He is a dark and sinister force.”

  Thomas raises an eyebrow. Then he nods toward Bog, who is asleep, dreaming dog dreams, by a stack of pine boxes. “I wouldn’t worry too much about the Black Horse. If he gets close, Bog will bark like mad. He scares away the foxes. He can scare away anything.”

  I like Bog. He’s a smart dog, and he’ll chase after a stick if you throw it, but I don’t think all the barking in the world could scare away the Black Horse.

  “Thank you,” I say. “For the apple.”

  “Give my regards to the winged horse in the sundial garden. I haven’t seen him, but I think I’ve heard him moving around. Tell him I hope his wing heals soon.”

  “It’s a girl,” I say. “Her name is Foxfire.”

  He pauses the hammer. “My mistake.” And then, “A good name, for a good horse.”

  I stand up, hugging my arms against the cold, and then I think of something. “How did you know about her broken wing?”

  Thomas swings the hammer with his one arm. “Well.” He swings the hammer again. Thwack. “If she didn’t have a broken wing, she would have flown away.”

  I reach into my pocket and rub the Horse Lord’s ribbon between my fingers.

  Maybe Thomas sees the winged horses because he didn’t go off to war like the other young men in the village. Maybe missing the war means he hasn’t entirely grown up. And yet, as he swings that hammer, there is something about him that is like the twisting old oaks on the front lawn—ancient and knowing.

  DR. TURNER CANNOT COME to the hospital on account of the snow. Sister C
onstance rings up the chemist in Wick who delivers our medications once a week, but he can’t make it either, so Sister Constance has to borrow the donkey that lives on the Mason farm, and the cart, and ride into Wick on her own. It’s funny to see her in her black nun’s habit, under a thick coat and four layers of blankets, steering a rickety old donkey through the snow. I laugh, but Anna chides me.

  “Hush, Em. Would you rather make the trip to Wick?”

  I sigh. Then Anna starts coughing into her handkerchief and I feel awful, because out of all of us, Anna is the one who needs the medicine most.

  She suddenly lurches forward in bed, coughing harder than ever. I pick up the colored pencils and my latest drawings, because they’re really the best drawings of Foxfire I’ve done, and I’d hate for them to get ruined. Anna’s whole body is shaking now each time she coughs, and her face has gone very white. Not white like snow, or Foxfire’s wings, but a translucent, greasy kind of white like the rancid lard Sister Mary Grace throws out.

  Anna removes her handkerchief away from her mouth, and we stare at it, then at each other.

  There’s a spot of red.

  Blood.

  “Fetch Sister Mary Grace,” she says.

  Her voice wavers and there are tears in her eyes. I scramble off the bed with pages and pages of drawings in my arms, and think I should leave them, no, I should just go, and end up dropping everything in the hallway outside and tripping over it all as I run downstairs to the kitchen. Sister Mary Grace is just making our afternoon tea, and the kettle is starting to steam.

  “It’s Anna!” I say. “I think she’s dying!”

  Sister Mary Grace drops the butter knife and grabs a kitchen towel, then runs past me up the steps toward Anna’s room. The kettle is whistling now. I hear murmurs of the other children—they’ve probably heard the commotion and are popping their heads out of their rooms like birds peeking out of their nests, curious. The kettle is whistling louder. I should go back to Anna’s room, but I don’t want to. I don’t want to see the blood. I don’t want to hear that coughing, that coughing, mixed with her tears. In the hallway, my drawings are scattered like autumn leaves, half crumpled underfoot. Ruined, but I don’t care anymore.