He gave her an annoyed look. “I was sick.”
“Oh, sure!”
“You great eedjit,” he said, “sometimes people really just get sick, you know? Still don’t feel so great.” Then he grinned. “Glad me mam and dad dragged me in here, though, even though they were so pissed. Wouldn’t have wanted to miss this—”
They kept running. Uchenna’s heart was still beating fast, not just because of the running, but of everything together: the awful time in the Headmaster’s office, her Mam being angry at her and then maybe not so angry any more, the scary excitement of the horses running down the road—but also more and more, as they got further away from the center of town, the way the fog seemed to be getting thicker, the way everything was getting strangely quiet, even the sound of their own running feet now muffled in the thickening mist. After a few minutes they had almost run out of the built-up part of town and were at the edge of another of the developments that were furthest west, and they slowed as Jimmy looked around him. It was hard to see anything in this strange afternoon murk: the street and the houses around it were shadows, fading away into the silvery nothingness after just a few feet. After a moment Jimmy said, “This way—”
He led them down a paved path between a couple of houses and into an area Uchenna had never seen before, a wide concrete space with strange lumps and humps of higher concrete in the middle of it. “There was a gas station here once,” Jimmy said. “They wanted to build something new on it, but the owner wouldn’t let them: so they just knocked the old place down—”
He led them along to the back of the property, where a chainlink fence stretched from side to side of the concrete walls that backed up the last apartment building on the right and the first mini-housing estate on the left. Someone had cut through the links of the fencing, though, and pulled it right back to make an opening ten or twelve feet wide. There were horse trailers off to one side, open, their back door-ramps down. But everything here was abandoned for the moment. Whoever had brought the horse boxes here had left them to go chase after the horses. Past the horse boxes, on the other side of the fence—
There was no telling what was there: beyond the concrete, and the visible patches and tufts of damp, dust-grayed weeds, everything was obscured in a shroud of silvery fog. Uchenna shivered. The warming effects of their run were wearing off: now that fog was starting to feel chilly. Next to her, Emer was looking a little dubious too. “Those stories everybody was telling, about stuff that happened in here—”
Jimmy, beside them, went over to the fence, stopped there. “I don’t know—”
From somewhere ahead of them in the mist came a strange strangled-sounding neigh.
“I don’t care!” Uchenna said, and went quickly through the gap in the fence, watching where she walked: the fog was literally so thick now that you could barely see your feet. The field on the other side of the fence was as bad as the field near the Condom Ditch, all ruts and raised tufts of weed and hillocks of stony dirt. Behind her she could hear Emer and Jimmy scuffling along through the weeds, and Emer cursing softly to herself as she ran into a patch of nettles that Uchenna had somehow missed.
Uchenna was still shivering. Just cold, she kept saying to herself, it’s just cold… But then she started shivering really hard, because she saw something in front of her, on the ground, lying there very still: something white, something big—
Oh no! She’s dead! was Uchenna’s first thought. But then the big white mass moved in a convulsive heaving shudder, and that scared her even more than the Mammy’s stillness had. Uchenna stopped still right where she was, staring—
The shape moved again. This time Uchenna could get a sense of what she was looking at. The Mammy Horse was lying on the ground: Uchenna was looking at her from behind. But there was something wrong with her back end. It looked weird—
Uchenna’s insides seized. “Oh holy God, look at that,” she said. “Something’s sticking out her back end—”
Emer came up beside her, and gasped. Then Jimmy caught up with them, and stared. “She’s having it!” he said.
“What is that?” Emer said, sounding very freaked out.
“It’s hooves,” Jimmy said. “The foal’s hooves. They come out first.”
Uchenna wanted to hide her eyes to stop seeing what she was seeing, except that wouldn’t do the Mammy Horse any good. “What do we do?” she said to Jimmy. “How can we help her? Should she be lying down like that?”
He frowned, moved closer to the Mammy. “Maybe not,” he said. “I’m not sure. Mostly they do it standing up—”
“This time,” Emer said, “I think we really better call for help—”
Uchenna couldn’t argue the point. “Go ahead,” she said, moving around the front of the Mammy. “But I don’t know—”
The Mammy Horse’s belly heaved. “Might not be time,” Jimmy said, joining Uchenna around the front.
“What do I do? Do I call 999?” Emer said, hurriedly getting her phone out.
The Mammy Horse made a noise like a moan, sucked in a big breath, moaned again. “Yeah,” Uchenna said. “Ask for the police. They’re all over the place in town—we should be able to get some of them back up here! And they should know who brought these horse boxes. There must be somebody with them who can help the Mammy—”
Jimmy was studying the Mammy’s head. “She’s still got that old halter on her!” he said. “Let’s see if we can get her up.”
Emer frantically started dialing. Uchenna and Jimmy both grabbed the halter and hauled on the Mammy’s head. She grunted and strained, waving her legs around. “Not that way,” Jimmy said. “Toward the legs! That way maybe she’ll roll over toward them—”
They both pulled. Uchenna heard Emer babbling something into the phone, but she couldn’t take the time to pay attention to it: all her attention was on the Mammy’s eye, so placid once, now wide and rolling with distress. The eye closed, opened again: the big pink nostrils blew, sucked air, blew again. Suddenly the Mammy rolled over, got her front legs under her, sort of knelt on them, and then, with more puffing and blowing, staggered to her feet.
She wobbled, and Uchenna and Jimmy staggered into each other, both holding onto the halter. The Mammy Horse put her head down until the front of it pushed up against the front of Uchenna, as if she was bracing herself. To keep from losing her balance, Uchenna threw her arms around the big head. That horsy smell, part mud, part sweat, part green grass, filled Uchenna’s nostrils for a moment, distracting her—until she heard a heavy noise, a kind of wet thud on the ground, like someone dropping a really full bin bag—
“Wow,” Jimmy said, staring.
“What?” Uchenna said, peering around.
And then she saw. Something was moving around behind the Mammy on the ground. It was blotchy and splotchy and shiny-wet, black and white and brown, and suddenly it started waving little skinny legs in all directions, thrashing and staring with eyes that were amazingly big for such a little head.
The Mammy pulled her head out of Uchenna’s grip and turned around to sniff at the new foal, poking its head with her big blunt nose and licking it once or twice. The strange wet little face waved its ears at her, blinked a couple of times—the eyes were absolutely black-dark, with no whites that Uchenna could see—and all of a sudden rolled over more or less the same way the Mammy had. It looked like it was kneeling forwards on its knobbly front knees and apparently backwards on its back ones, and when the Mammy snuffled it between its ears, it got up all at once, in a rush, as if it had springs. It stood there with its skinny legs all spraddled away from it, trying to get its balance.
Emer was putting her phone away. Somewhere in the distance Uchenna could hear sirens, suddenly cut off as they got closer.
“Don’t,” she said. “Your phone camera’s better than mine. Take a picture, quick! So I can see how their legs go.”
Emer pulled her phone out again, circled carefully around the Mammy and the foal, and started taking pictures. “Ho
w can something so cool,” she said under her breath, “be so gross. Or the other way around…”
“There’s more stuff coming out,” Jimmy said.
“I’m not looking!” Emer said. She closed her eyes and tried to take more pictures: then let out a hiss of annoyance at herself, opened her eyes again, and kept snapping, though she made a lot of faces while she did it.
Uchenna went slowly closer to the foal, watching the Mammy carefully: but the Mammy didn’t seem to care, just snuffled her baby again and poked it with her head. The foal’s ears wiggled around some more, and then it put its head underneath the Mammy’s still-saggy tummy and started having its first drink of milk. “Look at that,” Uchenna said, as Emer came up beside her. “Its hooves are white.”
“Like nails,” Emer said. “Or new sneakers. Probably not for long, though…”
From behind them they could hear cars driving up into the concrete plaza of the old gas station. Uchenna turned and saw the blue lights flashing, and immediately her heart started pounding again. The pounding got worse when, out of the first Garda car, Sergeant Moran got out … closely followed by Mr. Mallon, and her Mam.
Emer’s mom and the Garritys got out of the second Garda car, and they all headed for Uchenna and Emer and Jimmy. Uchenna suddenly got the urge to grab the Mammy’s halter, in case she should panic at the approach of all these people. Or maybe it’s just so I have something to do to keep from freaking out… Uchenna thought.
She hung onto the Mammy as all the adults surrounded them, and there was a brief period during which everybody seemed to be talking at once. Uchenna looked from her Mam (who was regarding the Mammy Horse and her foal with astonishment) to Mr. Mallon (who was shaking his head) to Sergeant Moran (whose frown seemed for the moment to have fallen off, replaced by an expression that was more resigned than annoyed). “Now tell me why I’m not surprised to find you three here,” the Sergeant said.
Emer actually shrugged at him as she put her phone away. “We deduced that this was where the Mammy was,” she said.
Uchenna rolled her eyes at the word. “It just made sense,” Jimmy said. “The Mammy Horse was the only one who didn’t come running down the street. So she was probably still be wherever they came from. Which was here. O’Shaughnessy’s Field.”
“But how did they get out?” Uchenna said—a question that, now that all the excitement seemed to be over, had started to bother her. “They were supposed to be locked up here so they could go to—wasn’t it the pound?”
“The ISPCA shelter,” said the Sergeant, glancing over his shoulder as another Garda car came along, followed by yet another white car with the blue and white ISPCA logo on one of its doors. “We finally got them sorted…and here comes the vet. So now that we’ve got the other horses all rounded up—”
“Thanks to Mr. and Mrs. Garrity—” Uchenna’s mother said.
They both smiled at her, and then gave the gathering Guards a rather grim, even smug look.
Sergeant Moran sighed. “Then maybe we should all go back to the school, because there are a few more questions that I’d like answered—”
“But why on Earth?” the Headmaster said. “You’ve now got all the horses you were looking for. Plus one.” There was some chuckling from behind him among the other Guards. “And as you told me on the way up here, you’ve got the man who’s been behind it all—”
“What? What man?” Uchenna said.
“A gent named Mihaul Tiernan,” said Sergeant Nolan, and got his frown back again.
“A former Garda,” said Mr. Garrity, with maybe a little too much relish, because the Sergeant turned and frowned at him.
“And you’ve got his phone,” said the Headmaster, “with all the calls and texts to his various accomplices, the people who kept moving the horses around. These kids are plainly nothing to do with it.”
“Well,” the Sergeant said, “there are still some—”
“Questions? What questions?” Mr. Garrity said. “Are you really going to ask Mrs. Flora there for her little girl’s cellphone records? After the record you people have with Tiernan? Bet the local papers would love hearing about that. Or RTE.”
One of those silences fell among the adults that was of the kind Uchenna immediately knew should not be broken by anything a kid might say. Emer, however, was now out of her own personal terror zone, and her cocky streak was beginning to assert itself. “Sorry,” she said, “but how did the horses get out again?”
“Mr. Tiernan,” said Mr. Garrity, “chased them out. That little white Ford that ran down the street after them? That was him.”
Sergeant Nolan was frowning harder now. “Apparently he and the… persons who were assisting him… had some bones to pick with the people whose land they were putting the horses on each night. And it has to be said that some of those people were of interest—” He stopped himself, looked around at Mr. Mallon and the others. “Well,” he said. “If there’s anything else that needs to be cleared up, we’ll be in touch—”
He went off toward his car. Uchenna watched him go, then looked at her Mam, who was looking with interest at the Mammy Horse, now grazing unconcernedly while her baby suckled, and at the ISPCA vet. Uchenna’s Mam went over to the vet, who was checking out the Mammy’s rear end. “Any complications?” she said.
The vet shook his head. “Don’t see any,” he said. “Textbook delivery.”
“We made her get up,” Jimmy said. “The foal came right away.”
“Good work, that,” the vet said. “The right move.”
“But what happens to her now?” Uchenna said. “Is everybody still going to be trying to find out who she belongs to?”
“We’ll make a last few inquiries,” said the vet. “But nobody’s reported a loss of a horse like this, and she’s just been seized in a criminal matter—so both of those together mean we get her: whoever the owner was, their negligence means we’d be taking her off them anyway.” The vet patted the Mammy. “She’ll go straight out to our nice big place out in Offaly, and we’ll take care of her and her foal until they’ve both had time to recover from all of this. Afterwards—we’ll find somebody to take care of them: but only somebody who’ll promise never to sell them on. No more being shuttled from field to field for these two.” He grinned.
That relieved the last of Uchenna’s fears—or almost the last. She went over to her Mam, still a little timidly. “Mam—”
Her Mam put an arm around her as the Mammy Horse’s head came up and looked at them both: that mild expression again. “What, sweet?”
“I had to help her. You know why!”
Uchenna’s Mam reached out very slowly and then started to rub the middle of that big broad forehead. The Mammy Horse’s ears flicked back, flicked forward. “Well,” her Mam said, “maybe. Maybe.” She sighed, then looked down at Uchenna and smiled. “Come on, you,” she said, “your dad’s going to be home soon, and he’ll want to know where we are. And I have to go back to work still…”
They turned and walked away together. Emer’s mom had her in tow now, and Emer, as usual, was tapping away at her phone. The Garritys caught up with them, having finally pried Jimmy away from the ISPCA vet and the Mammy. “That was a great job you did there in the road,” said Uchenna’s Mam to Mr. Garrity. “Especially keeping that one horse from running over the Sergeant—”
The Garritys both grinned. “Ah, sure, it’s not the kind of thing you can stand there and let happen,” Mr. Garrity said, “no matter how you feel about somebody.” And he gave Uchenna’s Mam a rather sheepish look as they made their way past the fence and out across the concrete. “Maybe,” he said, “it’s possible to say too much too soon—” And he looked a little sharply at Mrs. Garrity.
“Yeah, true,” said Mrs. Garrity after a moment.
Uchenna’s Mam just nodded. “So we’ll be seeing you up at the next parents’ meeting, then?” she said. “Somebody ought to introduce you around. Helps keep things going smoothly.”
“Tha
t’d be a kindness,” said Mrs. Garrity: she looked a little sheepish too.
“Two weeks from now, I think it is?” Uchenna’s Mam said. “No matter, my daughter has your son’s number, we’ll be in touch—”
The adults nodded to each other, headed off in their separate directions: Jimmy waved at Uchenna and Emer as his folks led him off. “Text ya—” Jimmy said.
Uchenna nodded as she and her Mam started the walk back up to where the SUV was still parked. She threw a last look over her shoulder. Through the fog she could just see the vet starting to lead the Mammy Horse toward one of the horse trailers: the foal was toddling along behind her, looking wide-eyed and amazed by everything. “Bye bye…” she said in a whisper.
They vanished, lost in the foggy dimness. Behind her, Emer and her mom were almost ghosts themselves. Uchenna’s Mam caught her glimpse around. “Such strange weather,” she said, glancing up into the sky toward a faint, faint white circle just starting to break through the clouds: the sun. “They say it’s going to break tomorrow…”
Uchenna nodded. “Meanwhile,” her Mam said, “dinner for you and Dad…then I’m off.” Her Mam hugged her as they walked, and Uchenna finally was able to relax, feeling at last that everything had really turned out all right.
10: Residency
It took something like a week for the rest of the details to sort themselves out: though the local papers started digging into the story right away, because it was full of what Uchenna’s dad described as “lots of delicious dirt”. The Naas People gave the story of the Great Adamstown Stampede four pages in the front of the paper. One of those pages even had a picture of the horses: Uchenna could just make out the Mammy and her foal in the background. But that was the only story Uchenna could find anywhere, even on the Web, that talked about the horses themselves very much. What everybody was really interested in was the man who’d been at the bottom of the way they kept moving around.