The Secret Horses of Briar Hill(11)

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 and 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?