The Secret Horses of Briar Hill(13)

“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 Constance 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.

Benny comes charging into the kitchen and jerks the screaming kettle off of the stove. I can smell metal burning. I expect him to yell at me for letting it boil clean dry of water, but he doesn’t. He sets it on a wooden trivet and gives me one long look, and then his eyes flick to the stairs, where we can both hear Anna’s bone-deep coughs.

“You should have left it,” I say. “You should have let it keep whistling.”

“Emmaline—” His voice, for once, isn’t a sneer.

He’s seen my tears. But I don’t want his pity! I shove past him and run outside into the frozen world of snow and ice. Cold stings my bare hands—I’ve forgotten my coat, but I can’t go back. I run and run though my lungs scream at me to stop. When the princess had this place built, did she imagine that one day children would die here, crying so loud you could hear it even over a screaming kettle? Did she think, while she threw open the doors and let music pour onto the back lawn, that one day a black winged horse would circle around and around the roof, tirelessly, always on the hunt?

I collapse in the snow. The coughing fit hits me hard.

The barn door is ajar. Steam is coming from the crack. I pull it open to investigate, cautiously, in case Thomas is there, but it is only the sheep. They are pressed so tightly together, and there are so many of them, that their heat makes the barn as warm as toast from the oven. I crawl over the stall gate and curl up in the middle of them, in the straw and wool and breathing bodies, and at last feel warm.





WHEN I WAKE, I am in my own bed.

My sheets are soaked with sweat. I don’t know who found me in the barn and brought me back. My dreams were coffee-scented, and Thomas is the only one who drinks coffee, though Benny takes a sip every now and then and pretends he likes it. But I can’t picture a one-armed man carrying me, even though I saw him pick up that lamb and throw it over the fence into its pasture. I wrap a blanket around my dress and shuffle down the stairs and hover outside of Anna’s room. The door is open a crack. Sister Mary Grace is there, tidying up spilled broth.