The Secret Horses of Briar Hill(14)
I can see the bedsheets rising and falling as Anna breathes. She is asleep. Alive. Voices come from downstairs. Sister Constance must be back with the medicine.
I’ve slept through supper, but the Sisters have left me some ham beneath a napkin. As I sit alone at the kitchen table and eat, something moves in the reflection of the copper teakettle. The angles of the kitchen are warped in its curving sides, so that the ceiling looks tiny, and the fireplace inflates into a roaring inferno behind me. My nose is the size of a swollen plum, my eyes unnaturally small. A gray winged horse is nosing around the table behind me, probably hungry for toast with jam. It snuffles against my mirror-chair, then against my mirror-shoulders. I shiver, even though my real shoulders have felt nothing. A stick cracks in the fire, and the horse turns toward it. Afraid of the flames or curious, I am not sure. It stretches its wings so suddenly that I duck.
“Be careful,” I whisper. “The fire could burn you.”
Does my voice carry to the world beyond the mirror? The gray horse swivels its head to the left, then to the right, then folds its wings and walks into the ground-floor hall.
I push away the kettle. I do not want to see my reflection. The hair that has grown back unevenly. My hand drifts up to untangle the tufts, and I taste ashes that don’t have anything to do with the kitchen fire. Even without the kettle’s distortions, Benny is right. I do look odd.
Can I tell you a secret?
This is not the first hospital I have been in. I have not always had the stillwaters. That came later, after the fire, after the bandages. After the horses kicking at their stall doors, and no one to let them out.
The kitchen door slams, and the three little mice come in with red cheeks. They’ve recruited a fourth into their ranks now: Arthur, the blond boy who never speaks and sucks his thumb. They’ve dressed him as a pirate prince and given him a shiny kitchen ladle as a sword, but he’s only gazing at his own reflection in it. Kitty, the leader of the mice, holds up two long black feathers. They look like crow feathers, except they have a sheen like wax and are the length of her arm.
“Look what we found on the terrace!”
She holds one feather in each hand, flapping her arms like a giant bird and cawing at the ceiling, and the girls giggle and run down the hall.
WHEN I WAS FIVE, my sister Marjorie found a wounded bird in the street. Our neighbor’s cat had gotten it and thrashed it about, before Marjorie chased it off. The bird didn’t move, though its heart flit-flit-flitted beneath our fingertips. Its body was so soft, as though just touching it might break something. Marjorie made a cage out of an old sieve and filled it with leaves. We dug through Mama’s garden for worms, and chopped them up, and fed them to the bird on the end of a small twig. Our neighbor said the bird would never survive, but Marjorie was patient. Every day, she dug for more worms. After three weeks, the little bird was flapping its wings around, trying to take off in the makeshift cage. We carried the cage to the edge of the empty building behind the bakery. Marjorie opened the door, and the bird flew away.
But Foxfire isn’t that little bird. I do not think worms and a bed of leaves will fix her.
She is waiting for me as I crawl over the garden wall. My spine tingles as I meet her eyes. I still can’t believe she’s real, but here she is, standing in front of me. The torn skin on her right wing is raw, and the dent in the bone looks painful. She tries to stretch out her wings. Her left one will extend, but the right one catches.
“I have something for you,” I say softly.
Her ears perk up when my hand goes into my pocket, but her eyes are still wary. She is used to the wind and the sun, not to little girls.
“The Horse Lord wrote me that you liked these.” I take out the shiny red apple I got from Thomas. Her ears swivel forward, curious. She raises her right hoof, but then lowers it again. I take a slow step forward, with the apple resting in my flat palm. “It’s all right. I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to give you this apple.”
When I reach the fountain, my bulky coat knocks off the willow stick, and she jerks at the whip of movement. Her eyes flash their whites.
“Easy, Foxfire.”
But the next step I take is too far. She snorts and paws the snow with muddy hooves. Her thick mane flies as she tosses her head, warning me back.
I stop.
Slowly, I crouch to the earth and roll the apple to her corner of the garden. She stops thrashing. Her eyes never leave me, but she lowers her head. Sniffing. Snorting. Her inquisitive lips grope until they feel the shape of the apple.
She jerks her head up, and munches on it contentedly.
I back up slowly, until I reach the sundial, where there is a new letter tucked under the golden arm, tied in ribbon. I unroll it while Foxfire finishes the apple.
Dear Emmaline May,
I must once again ask you for assistance. Though I thought it impossible, the Black Horse has crossed over into your world and is, at this very moment, in pursuit of Foxfire.
The Black Horse is strong and relentless, but he has one weakness, and it is this: color. Color burns his eyes. The only light he can see by is colorless moonlight—the brighter the moon, the clearer he sees. Tonight, there is a new moon, which means the sky will be dark and he will have to hunt by smell alone. But as the moon grows brighter each night, you must surround Foxfire with colorful objects large enough to be seen from a distance—one for each color of the rainbow—to create a spectral shield that will hide her from his vision even during the brightest full moon.