The Secret Horses of Briar Hill(25)

Something crunches under my foot. The red ticket. The glue is still tacky, and it sticks to the sole of my boot and I start to panic, trying uselessly to kick it away.

“Emmaline.” A voice whispers harshly at me from the stairs. Benny sticks out his pinched face, shadows cast over his eyes. “Get back to your room.”

“You don’t tell me what to do,” I say. He acts like Anna belongs to him as much as she does to me, just because she is kind to him, but she can’t possibly matter to him the same way. Anna and I, we are like sisters.

Through the crack in Anna’s door, I can see the back of Dr. Turner’s white coat. Sister Mary Grace, dropping cloths in the steaming copper pot. More coughs, and I flinch.

I push open the door just a tiny, unnoticeable inch. Dr. Turner moves aside to gather his stethoscope, and I get a clear view. It is Anna. Her nightgown. Her light brown curls so like Marjorie’s, though they are now soaked with sweat. Her face, though it is missing something. Her eyes are too dull.

All the sheets around her are soaked in blood.

“The morphine, Sister,” Dr. Turner says. She passes him a needle, and he sticks it into a bare patch of Anna’s skin, and then presses his stethoscope to her chest.

“It’s too late. The lung has collapsed,” he says.

Sister Mary Grace makes the sign of the cross.

I can see Anna’s dresser mirror from here. There are winged horses in the reflection of her window. Their muzzles are pressed against the glass. They are watching. They are waiting.

I push the door open wider, and it catches Dr. Turner’s attention. He sees my reflection in the mirror and spins. The Sisters look up as well.

“Emmaline! You aren’t to be here!” Sister Constance says.

I clutch the brass doorknob, hard. “What’s going to happen to Anna?”

Sister Constance comes striding toward me. “To your room, young lady.”

But as she reaches for me, I dart under her arm and sprint for the bed. Anna’s room isn’t big, even though it was once fit for a princess, and I’m able to grab the bedpost and jump on the mattress before they can stop me.

“Anna!” I cry.

I’ve never seen her face so pale. She reaches out an arm that is more bone than girl, and ruffles my tufts of hair.

“Emmaline.”

Her voice is so weak that it breaks on the sound of my name. A sob comes out of my throat, and I crawl closer, until I can wrap my arms around her. “Anna, you’ll get better. You’ll be fine.”

She is warm. Too warm. There is something inside her moving too fast, burning through everything she has.

“Em, I’m sorry I never saw your winged horses. I wanted to see them so badly. I kept looking at the mirrors. I did. But I never saw them….”

She presses her cheek against mine.

She is fire. She is life. She is sickness.

Two hands grab me under the armpits. Sister Constance pulls me away with fingers like iron. “Emmaline, you can’t be here!”

I tear at Sister Constance’s hands. The black sleeves of her habit are rolled back, and my fingers rip her skin. “Let me go!”

But she doesn’t. She pushes me through the open door. I try to scramble back inside, but Sister Mary Grace closes it and locks it. I claw at the wood. Pound on it. Tears are falling down my cheeks, and my middle finger is bleeding from where I clawed too hard.

“Anna!” I cry. “Anna, keep looking! They’re there! They’re right there! Do you see them?”

There is no answer. Only more coughing. Only Dr. Turner’s low voice.

“Anna! Do you see them?”

Nothing.

I kick at the door. I look through the keyhole, but the key blocks my view. They must hear me pounding. How can they leave me out here? How can they tear me away from her, when she is my only friend? She is the only one who shares her colored pencils with me, and tells me stories of the floating gods, and whose stomach gurgles just like Mama’s.

“Stop it!” Benny grabs my wrist. He is wearing a muddy-red sweater that matches his muddy-red hair and I hate him, I hate him, I hate him. “You’re acting like a child.”

“They won’t let me see her!”

“Dr. Turner needs to give her medicine without you crawling all over her and getting in the way. You’re only thinking of yourself. You’re a selfish little girl, and you have to grow up!”

My vision scatters into angry little dots. I twist out of Benny’s hold and shove him, hard, so that he crashes to the floor.

“I hate you!”

I run down the hall. The mirrors lining the walls flash by. Winged horses stand in each one of them. Peering at me curiously as I run, their heads swiveling to follow my progress. I have never seen so many of them. They are everywhere.

And yet the hall is empty.

I run to the kitchen and shove open the back door, and I can’t stop the coughs. They mix with sobs and I feel so shaky. Thomas is sitting on the stone steps with Bog at his side. They both jump up at the sound.

“Emmaline.” He blinks like he wasn’t expecting me. He swallows. “I heard Dr. Turner’s car. Is it…is it Anna?” He wipes his hand on his trousers.

What do I say?

How can I tell him what is happening, when I don’t even know myself??

I sink onto the highest step. I can’t seem to draw in enough air.