The Secret Horses of Briar Hill(28)

And I know: I must be strong for Foxfire, even now. The Horse Lord is depending on me.

I wait until Sister Constance is in her office and the other children are in the classroom working on letters home to their families, and sneak out through the library window. I won’t be missed. They think I’m in the attic.

My legs are so weak that the walk to the sundial garden feels longer than ever before. The climb over the wall feels like a mountain. But when I drop down, Foxfire is there.

She looks up at me.

And oh, how I have missed her.

I had forgotten her apple smell. I had forgotten her silken hair. I had forgotten how alive I felt with her soft dark eyes on me, the small nod of her head that says she missed me, just as I missed her.

And yet, strangely, there is no letter from the Horse Lord. Days have passed. I expected an entire stack of letters, especially as the full moon is only a week away, but there is nothing.

An uneasy feeling makes my hand tremble, but I manage to write a new note on a scrap of paper I brought with me, and tuck it under the sundial:

Dear Horse Lord,

Why haven’t you written? Are you all right? I do not know if you know this, but the Black Horse tried to attack. He is so wicked, so mean, that I truly hate him! But Foxfire is safe, and I am surrounding her with every colorful object I can find, though I do not know if it will be enough. Sometimes horses die when they get too sick. I do not want her to die. Please tell me what to do.

Truly,

Emmaline May





And then, it’s Christmas Eve. I don’t know how Christmas can arrive without Anna, but it does, and Sister Mary Grace tells me I must not keep to myself anymore.



And then, it’s Christmas Eve.





Our families are not allowed to visit, but Mr. Mason from the farm next door comes in the afternoon, when the shadows are long, with a Christmas tree. He pulls it in his donkey cart and stands outside, talking to the Sisters, who rub their bare hands in the cold. We all watch with our faces pressed against the glass.

“We’ve never had a tree before,” Peter says. He and Jack have been here the longest now, and have seen two Christmases at the hospital. “Sister Constance says Christmas is about Christ’s birth, not Saint Nicholas.”

“The Americans sent presents last year,” Jack says wistfully, nose pressed to the glass. “Enough to fill the whole chapel, but the Sisters only let us keep one each. I got my steam engine train. And now it’s gone missing.” He is silent, and I turn away, and hope my cheeks are not burning too red.

After a few tense moments of argument outside, when the donkey starts hee-hawing from the cold, Sister Constance throws up her hands. The farmer grins, and lifts the tree to his shoulder.

The other children cheer.

I watch the snow falling, standing apart from them all. It doesn’t feel right. Not without Anna. And now without the Horse Lord, too.

Then a tree is coming straight through the front door and into the library, filling the room with forest smells, and leaving a trail of sap and needles in its wake. “Benny, go find Thomas,” Sister Mary Grace says, “and have him fetch a bucket and some screws.”

Benny darts off down the hall.

“Emmaline, get a pot of water.”

I rub at my eyes, feeling too exhausted even to move. But then my eye catches on a flash of color. It’s a crumpled old handkerchief Mr. Mason is using to wipe the sap off his hands. He starts to stuff it back in his pocket but frowns at the sap, and tosses the worn hankie into our scrap bin instead, and my heart starts to thump, thump, thump in a way it hasn’t since Anna died. The handkerchief is a little frayed, but the color is unmistakable. 868-LAPIS BLUE.

Sister Mary Grace is looking at me curiously, as though she is tempted to take my temperature again.

I force myself to stand on shaky legs. “Yes, Sister. I’ll get the water.” I make my way to the kitchen, winded after just a few steps, where I take down a copper pot and set it in the sink. As I wait for it to fill, I look at my reflection in the pot’s side: Sunken eyes. Pale skin. There are two winged horses standing behind me, their wings outstretched, almost as though to shelter me from rain, though there is no rain indoors.

I carry the pot back to the library and stand close to the farmer. He and Thomas act like they’re building a war machine, with all the engineering that goes into getting that tree to stand up straight in the bucket. I lean in, pretending to watch, and very quietly reach down and draw the handkerchief out of the scrap paper bin. I cough as I stuff it into my boot.

He won’t miss it, surely. To him, it is just an old, worn-out scrap he threw away. To me—to Foxfire—it is hope.

They finish, though the tree still slopes a little at the top. Mr. Mason tells us we must water it every day. He tells us we must be very careful, when we tie candles to the branches, that it not catch fire.

“And best set out cookies for Saint Nick,” he says with a wink.

Sister Constance’s mouth goes grim.

We watch through the windows as he lights his cart’s lantern, and leads the poor frozen donkey back home.

“Let’s make decorations!” Kitty squeaks. “We can make a paste out of lye. It’ll look just like snow on the tree.”

The children jump up. They start tearing through the scraps of fabric and ribbon that Sister Mary Grace brings out in her sewing kit. Others drag down dusty boxes from the attic, where Arthur finds shiny red metal Christmas balls that he gazes at with delight. Two of the three little mice run outside to gather pinecones, and Sister Constance doesn’t even say anything about the no-going-beyond-the-kitchen-terrace rule.