The Secret Horses of Briar Hill(34)

“NO!” Benny yells. “Someone took it!”

There are frantic footsteps and more shouting from beyond the attic door. Benny saw me sneaking around in his room. Benny has sharp eyes like a hunting dog. He will know it was me.

But he can search my room all he wants—he won’t find it.

I take one long look outside. Is Foxfire waiting for me? Is the Black Horse blinking, clearing his vision, waiting for the light of tomorrow’s full moon so he can attack again? But my limbs are shaking and my vision is going wavy and it’s all I can do to crawl to my attic room. One inch at a time, each step its own small battle, and I think of the men in the rubble, lungs choked with dust from German bombs, crawling and crawling to safety. At last, I reach my bedroom. I kick the door shut and lean against it, breathing hard. The stillwaters beast is not going to calm down this time. It came for Anna and now Anna is gone and it wants more lungs to thrash around in, other throats to claw and shred.

I pull myself onto the rope mattress and collapse on the quilt. The cough comes freely now. I let it. It shreds the inside of my throat, forcing its way out. I feel like someone is wringing me out. No water left. No life left. I taste the bitter bite of blood. Beyond the doors, there come angry footsteps stomping up the stairs.

They stop outside of my door.

KNOCK, KNOCK.

Benny’s voice. “I know it was you, you thief!”

The door opens a few inches. Benny’s angry face haunts the crack, his sharp eyes hunting around the room, his spindly nose sniffing. Then he sees me and his eyes go wide. “Emmaline? Are you…” He stumbles back. “Sister Constance, come quick! There’s blood everywhere!”

His footsteps going down the stairs are even faster.

I smile. It is the last thing I remember, before my head lolls back. I smile, and think of the rainbow that Marjorie and I saw that day in the rain. I was afraid it would be the last one I’d ever see.

But soon. Soon. I will finish my own.





MARJORIE IS SITTING ON the edge of my bed, wearing her yellow raincoat, reading Benny’s comic book. She smells like fresh apple pie and cinnamon, and oh, I have missed that smell. I have missed her. My sister. I try to sit up, but my head is so heavy that I crash right back down against the pillows. The attic feels too warm. I want to throw off the covers, but Marjorie is sitting on them firmly.

“That comic…” My voice doesn’t sound like my own. The stillwaters beast has shredded my throat. “Put it back. Keep it hidden….”

She flips a page and smiles at a drawing of Popeye riding a camel. “You worry too much, Em. You always worried too much.” She flips another page. My head feels like only half of it is there, but where would the other half be? And why is Marjorie wearing a raincoat indoors? When I sit up, my body careens to the left, and then to the right, and it feels like the entire attic is on the back of a camel, swaying and swaying. The stillwaters clump in my throat like rotting leaves in a marsh, and I know—I know—the beast is down there, waiting. I rub the center of my chest.

Marjorie tilts the comic book to show me a drawing of Olive Oyl tumbling down a sand dune. I press a hand to my head. The pages ruffle, showing the inscription.

Love, Dad.



“Marjorie.” My lips are so dry. “How did you get here?”

Marjorie didn’t board the first trains out of Nottingham. Neither did I. We both stood in front of our house, watching the neighbors dragging heavy suitcases toward the station, their faces somber, their parents trying not to cry. The night before they left, my mother sat us down around the dining room table. “Many children are leaving the cities,” she said. “Their parents believe it is safer in the country. But you must understand, girls, no place is safe anymore. Your father is not safe in Libya. Your uncle is not safe in London, working with the air chief marshal’s offices. And so we will stay together, the three of us. We will do ourselves the work your father and the bakery boys did. We will look out for each other. Marjorie, you will take care of Emmaline, and Emmaline, you will take care of Marjorie.” She paused, and then gave my hand another squeeze. “But I will take care of you both a little extra, because I am your mother, and you will always be my two special rabbits.”

Marjorie flips another page.

I can’t stop coughing. I paw at the corner of the quilt, pressing it against my mouth, trying to hold in the stillwaters, but there is no stopping something like that.

Marjorie watches, and shakes her head sadly.

“Mother was right,” she says. “No place is safe anymore.”





IN MY DREAMS I hear Benny. I know it was you, you thief. Marjorie comes and goes. She always wears her yellow raincoat. And then, suddenly, she is a black ghost with a white face, only it isn’t her at all anymore, but Sister Mary Grace in her nun’s habit.

She strokes my head.

“Shh,” Sister Mary Grace says. “Try to rest, child.”

There is someone else in the doorway. Muddy red hair and a muddy red sweater.

“It’s all right, Benedict,” Sister Mary Grace says. “You can go. She’s waking up now.”

He looks at me—wide eyes, no hint of his usual sneer—and then quickly looks down and leaves through the open door.

“He came and got me right away, and wouldn’t leave until you woke. Now, try to drink some tea.” Sister Mary Grace tips the edge of the steaming cup toward my lips.