The Secret Horses of Briar Hill(10)

In the darkness, I cannot see her face. She switches on her light, and then studies me with frowning eyes. She glances at the small oval hand mirror on her bedside table. It reflects a small sliver of the window that the wool blanket hasn’t quite covered; a slice of the outside, which is dark now.

“I thought it was the one from the garden,” I continue, “but it can’t be because her wing is hurt and she can’t fly. It was so loud, pawing and pawing like it was angry. Didn’t you hear it?” She is still looking at the mirror, oddly, as though her thoughts are elsewhere. “Anna, didn’t you hear it?” I shake her by the sleeve.

She blinks. “No. But…I’m all the way down here on the second floor, and your room is right beneath the roof. Are you certain it wasn’t branches falling?”

“I need to check on the horse in the garden. Something awful might have happened to her.” When I start to roll out of bed, Anna snaps upright and grabs me.

“You can’t! You’ll freeze out there.”

“She’s all alone!”

She holds me firmly. “Well, you can check on her in the morning. You won’t be able to help her if you catch fever. Now fetch that towel from the banister, and put on these socks. You’re shaking.”

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?”