The Secret Horses of Briar Hill(39)

“Come along, child.” She has to clear her throat. “Time for bed. Into Anna’s room. Sister Mary Grace has a fire going.”

A fire? But why do I need a fire? I am ablaze inside. There is no way the snow and the cold can reach me now. And then I realize that maybe Papa and Mama and Marjorie aren’t gone at all—maybe they’re just in the world beyond the mirror, with Anna and the Horse Lord’s father, stretching their wings, hooves prancing in the sun.

Sister Constance rests one hand on my shoulder, and then presses it against my forehead.

I am ablaze.





HOW STRANGE TO BE in Anna’s room without Anna. The blanket isn’t as warm. There is no smell of lavender anymore.

After Sister Constance pours medicine down my throat, she feels my forehead, and sighs. Her eyes go to Christ on the crucifix hanging above the bed. She makes the sign of the cross. Then her eyes go to the floating gods on the ceiling, and I can’t believe it—she whispers a prayer to them, too.

“Ring this.” She presses a bell into my hand. “If you need me. Dr. Turner will be here first thing in the morning.”

As soon as she is gone, I roll over toward Anna’s desk with the secret drawer. Even broken, maybe one of the colored pencils’ tips is still good, and I can draw the Horse Lord’s winged horse-and-rider insignia before I forget what it looks like. My fingers fumble to pull the latch, and the secret drawer pops open. There is the box of pencils, just where I put them, broken bits rattling. And the paper. And…

My hand stills.

No.

No, this can’t be right.

Beneath the papers, right where I hid it, Popeye looks back at me. Benny’s comic book. My heart drums in my chest, threatening to stir the stillwaters. But Thomas promised. I saw his shadow outside with Bog….

Then I see that Anna’s naturalist book with the dog-eared pages is gone, and I understand: Thomas kept his promise—but he took the wrong book.

Outside, the wind groans. Small cracks in the windowsill let in slips of cold that ruffle the heavy blanket. The corner is still pinned up. Beyond the windows, there is a blustering wall of snow. And then something flickers in the bright moonlight, and I gasp.

A black shadow.

I throw off the covers and scramble to the other window, but the car is gone. Thomas is gone. I start for the door but my legs won’t hold me up. I sink to the sooty old rug, coughing at the dust.

Volkrig is out there, and it’s a full moon, and he can see everything, he can see Foxfire!

I twist toward the bell—I’ll ring for Sister Constance—but no, she will only put me back in bed. I could crawl down the hall—the three little mice’s room is next door to Anna’s—but I have told them before about the winged horses. They don’t believe me.

I clutch the comic book tightly, tightly, as tight as my lungs feel now, and then I twist toward the door.

There is no one left to save her but me.

I wrap Anna’s coat around me and put on her slippers with shaking hands. I shove the comic book in the large inside breast pocket and hug it to my chest. And I think of Foxfire out there alone. She must be so scared.

What if I’m already too late?

My hand slides off the doorknob. I’m sweating too much, but I eventually get out and down the hall and through the front door. Snow stings my face all the way down to my scalp. I draw the coat tighter and slip out in the snow. It’s gotten deeper in just a few hours.

The night is so dark, I can see only a few feet from the hospital: snow, and night, and my own blowing tufts of hair. The sundial garden might as well be in Berlin.

I crawl through snow that soaks into my nightgown. My socks, my shirt, Anna’s coat are all cold and wet, and I can’t keep from shivering. I crawl. My fingers are red at the tips. I didn’t know cold could burn before now. I keep crawling through the trenches of snow. My face feels too tight in the cold, and I’ve lost feeling in my nose. Bullets of ice assault me. But I keep crawling, until a wall of ivy looms in the darkness. With aching bare fingers I take hold of the twisting vines. I pull myself up. I climb. And climb. The wind tries to push me back down. The ivy wraps around my bare ankles, but I kick it away, and throw a leg over the top. And then my legs give out, and the stillwaters come and I am falling, and falling, and falling.





SOMETHING WARM NUZZLES MY NOSE.

I blink. The sky is filled with thousands of shooting stars, moving back and forth like will-o’-the-wisps, like the tiny glowing creatures Anna told me about, too many to wish on at once. I’m asleep in a cloud that is soft, so soft, that I could lie here forever.

And then a warm gray muzzle and deep brown eyes and a blaze in the shape of a spark push themselves into my vision.

“Foxfire!”

I sit up in a snowdrift, amid the churning flakes that aren’t shooting stars at all, and throw my arms around her neck. She smells of apples. I stroke her with shaking fingers, crying because she is still here.

“I was so afraid.” I pull back, searching her eyes. “I—”

A shadow passes overhead, and we both look up.

A dark stain moves across the clouds, impossibly high, in precise circles. I catch my breath, holding it tight. My fingers knit against Foxfire’s muzzle as both our eyes follow the shadow.

Volkrig’s black wings beat once, and then he veers sharply toward us. His circles spiral tighter and tighter, until he is just over the sundial garden.