“Emmaline?” A cool hand presses against my forehead. I smell fresh, steaming tea. “Sister, help me get her into bed. She’s burning up.”
Those same cool hands lift me. Then, there are soft sheets. A bed that smells of straw. Pillows soft as clouds.
“It’s so cold up here. We should bring her down to Anna’s room right away. There’s a fireplace.”
But I like the smell up here, I want to say. It reminds me of sheep, with their soft, soft wool.
“But Dr. Turner said not to move her. He’s coming back first thing in the morning.”
“That might be too—”
“Shh.” The hands are on my brow, pulling the sheets higher around my neck. “Emmaline? My child?”
“She can’t hear you.”
But I can. I can. I try to tell them, but only a ragged cough comes out. I taste something bitter. One of the nuns stifles a gasp, and then a cloth is pressed to my mouth.
I hear paper rustling.
“All these drawings. Do you think she…she really sees these horses in the mirrors?”
“Sister Mary Grace,” Sister Constance chides. “It is our place to care for the children, not to indulge their feverish delusions.” There are more hands around me, fluffing the pillow, and then Sister Constance adds softer, “Though part of me hopes that she does.”
Sister Mary Grace still shuffles through my drawings. “If only there were someone to send them to. It’s awful, isn’t it? The reports of that bakery during the Nottingham blitz. The bombs, and then the fires. To lose your mother and sister like that—I can’t imagine, and her father the same week in the siege of Tobruk.” Her voice drops. “They were trapped, you know. Her mother and her sister. Dr. Turner heard it from the driver who brought her here. Emmaline was asleep in a different part of the bakery in the middle of the night—you know how she wanders off—when the bombs hit. She must have heard her family banging on the doors, but couldn’t get to them in the rubble. She was burned badly.”
My heart is flit-flit-flitting.
No, I want to tell them. They’re wrong. It wasn’t my father. It wasn’t my mother. It wasn’t Marjorie—Marjorie was even here just yesterday, in her yellow raincoat! It was the horses, kicking at their stalls. The big bay gelding and two smaller mares. Spice. Ginger and Nutmeg.
Paper rustles again. “I suppose all the horses died too.”
“Horses?” Sister Constance opens the door and shuts it behind them, but her voice still carries from the other side. “What horses? Her family worked at a bakery in the middle of Nottingham, far from the nearest pastures. She never had any horses.”
The stillwaters are rising. They are rising and rising, drowning everything they touch. I can hear the horses kicking at their stalls. Their frightened yells sound almost like a person screaming. The stable door is shaking and shaking, but I can’t get to it to let them out.
I can’t help them.
I can’t do anything at all.
—
When I open my eyes, I am alone, and the tea is long cold.
I release a fit of sobbing coughs. The stillwaters are rising fast now.
My head falls to the side. My reflection in Thomas’s small hand mirror shows fever-red cheeks and damp tufts of hair. I snatch it up. Where are the winged horses? Why aren’t they nosing through my tea on my bedside table? Why aren’t they clomping against the wall behind me?
For Emmaline May, from your friend Thomas.
The handwriting is blocky and careful and somehow familiar. But…no, it can’t be Thomas’s. Thomas can’t write. It’s tied to the mirror with…
I sit abruptly.
No, no, no.
…It is tied with a silky red ribbon.
Outside, in the dark, there is a rumble of tires. Headlights flash in the window. It must be Thomas’s aunt come to take him away to London.
“No!” I throw back the sheets. No, the stillwaters haven’t drowned me yet. No, Thomas hasn’t left yet. No, no, no.
Benny can’t be right.
The Horse Lord is real. He lives beyond the mirrors and he was friends with the old princess and he sent Foxfire to our world to protect her.
Thomas can’t have written those letters.
THE HALLWAY CLOCK CHIMES. I lose count of the tolls but they go on for a while—it’s getting late. I make my way slowly down the residence hallway, leaning against the wall for support. All the doors are closed. The soft sounds of sleeping children seep through the cracks in the doors. On the walls, the mirrors are empty. No winged horses watch my journey.
I pass a window and push back the wool blanket. Outside, in the lights of a car, a woman in a brown coat is talking to Sister Constance. It is snowing harder now, and the car’s windshield wipers are fighting a losing battle. I can no longer see the moon overhead, but it is there, shining full silver light over everything. Sister Mary Grace holds a piece of rope attached to Bog’s collar so that he won’t run off after his master when the car leaves.
Thomas emerges from his cottage with a small, plain suitcase.
I press a hand against the frosted glass. “Not yet!” I cry. But my voice doesn’t carry. I lurch down the hall, into the library with Mr. Mason’s Christmas tree still in the corner. I fumble with the latch on the window until it pushes open. Wind and snow howl at me, but I howl right back. Fingers clawing at the window frame, I manage to get one leg through.
“Thomas!”
He doesn’t hear over the wind.
“Thomas, don’t go!”
My other foot catches on the icy windowsill; I slip and tumble into the bush. Bog jumps up and starts barking, and I hear someone cry out, and then the car’s headlights are pointing toward me and I shield my eyes, the snow blowing harder, and squint into the light.
Bog runs up, the rope dangling from his collar, and licks my face. A second later a shadow looms over me. Thomas. He wraps his coat around my shoulders, then picks me up with his one arm, just like he did the lamb that day. His arm doesn’t shake at all.
“Emmaline, what are you doing out here?” He’s already carrying me toward the warmth of the house. He shouts to the woman in the car. “Five minutes!”
He hurries us up the steps as the snow stings our faces, shoulders open the door, sets me down on the princess’s sofa by the Christmas tree, and tugs down one of the wool blankets to tuck around me. “Hang on. Let me fetch Sister Mary—”
“No!” I claw into his arm. With my other hand I dig out the tag. It is damp with sweat and crumpled, and I hold it up like an accusation. “It’s you, isn’t it?” I yell. “It was you all along! I should have listened to Benny. You wrote the letters!”
A light flickers in the doorway. Sister Constance, coming in from outside, holding a lantern.
Thomas’s eyes go wide.
“You said you couldn’t read or write!” I accuse.
He shakes his head, holding out his hand like I am something that might shatter at any moment. “I didn’t say that. You misunderstood.”
“You wrote the letters!”
“No, please—”
“Tell the truth!”
“All right!” His voice is strained. “What do you want me to say? I lied to you! Is that what you want to hear? I did write the letters.”
I stare at him. No, no, it isn’t possible.
But maybe I have been keeping too many secrets, even from myself.
Maybe Marjorie and her yellow raincoat are gone.
Maybe Mama and Papa are gone.
Maybe the bakery and our home are gone too. And maybe the stillwaters—the tuberculosis—is just as bad as Dr. Turner says it is. I start to breathe very fast. Am I…am I going to die here? Like Anna? Like Mama, and Papa, and Marjorie? And I press a hand to my chest, but there’s no breath there. I am empty.
“There is no Horse Lord,” I sob. “You made it all up. You never saw the winged horses in the mirrors.”
His eyes go wide. “I wasn’t lying about that. I saw them. I swear.
”
“Liar!”
The left side of his face crinkles as if he doesn’t know what to do. His hand runs over his mouth, kneading at the skin and the bridge of his nose. “I’m not a liar.” He glances over his shoulder at Sister Constance. He turns back to me, and his eyes are determined. His mouth is set firmly. “There’s something I haven’t told you. I did write those letters, yes, but I didn’t make it up.” He sets his hand over mine. “Emmaline. I am the Horse Lord.”
I stop crying. The clock is tick-tick-ticking in the hallway. Behind us, Sister Constance’s lantern is flickering.
Thomas’s eyes are so green. Thomas, the Horse Lord? Thomas, who shovels turnips and throws sticks for an old collie—the Horse Lord? Thomas, the monster in all of Benny’s stories—the Horse Lord?
Over his shoulder, the mirror above the fireplace is still empty.
“I don’t believe you.” I am shaking my head, shaking and shaking and shaking some more. “You’re still lying. There is no Horse Lord. There are no winged horses, and there never were!”
His face flickers. Sister Constance has one hand pressed to her mouth, and the lantern is shaking in the other. A sulfur-tasting bubble rises up my throat. The stillwaters, fighting back.
Thomas cradles his face in his hand, shaking his head too, and then suddenly he looks up. His eyes aren’t sad anymore. “I can prove it! Wait here.”
He pushes up from the floor and runs past Sister Constance down the hall. His boots echo in the long corridor. So does the sound of the kitchen door slamming shut. Bog starts barking from outside. The snow is coming down harder now. The car is still running, its engine clunking outside as the windshield wipers go back and forth, back and forth.
Can I tell you a secret?
I want to believe Thomas.
I want to believe he is the Horse Lord. I want to believe that Foxfire is safe in the sundial garden and that Anna has a set of wings now and that the winged horses still live in the mirrors and that Volkrig, sinister Volkrig, will forever be prevented from landing on this protected place.
The kitchen door slams again. Thomas comes running down the hall, snow caught in his hair and eyelashes and the shoulders of his coat. He gets to one knee and holds out a wooden box.
It is beautiful, this box. It gleams with polish. There is an insignia carved into the top, a regal-looking crest that couldn’t belong to anyone other than a king or a prince—or a lord.
Thomas opens it and hands me a shiny silver medal on a crisp red ribbon.
I run my fingers over it slowly as my eyes go wide.
On it is a majestic horse rising on two legs. Two wings stretch out from its shoulders as it takes flight. A rider sits on its back in a magnificent crown and cape.
My mouth drops open.
“You mean…”
“These are precious treasures from my land beyond the mirrors,” he says. “I brought them with me when I crossed over.”
My eyes go even wider as I look at the treasure. They look like soldiers’ medals, but these are different. Special. I can just tell. Many have horses on them. Some with wings, some without. Some with riders, some on their own. The horses’ magnificent metal muscles tear across unseen wind. Each ribbon is a different color of the rainbow: purple, and red, and blue as deep as the sea.
And there is more treasure too. There’s a gold ring that seems almost too big for Thomas, a pair of emerald jewels, and a golden pocket watch. Everything gleams in polished silvers and golds, more valuable than anything I’ve ever seen in my life. In the lamplight, the Horse Lord’s treasure shimmers.
“These are precious treasures from my land beyond the mirrors.”
Is it true?
Is everything he has said true?
Thomas closes the box. Words are carved into the wooden top around the royal insignia:
Utrinque Paratus. Bellerophon et Pegasus.
It must be the language of the world beyond the mirror.
“Do you believe me now?” Thomas whispers.
I press a hand to my mouth. I want to hold in the stillwaters. I want to hold in my voice. I want to hold in everything, but tears come out anyway. “But…why didn’t you tell me?”
Outside, the car honks. He throws a look over his shoulder.
“I should have,” he says quickly. I never noticed before, but the way his hair curls really isn’t like a wild bear at all, but like it is made for a crown to rest upon it. “But it was a secret. I’m not supposed to live in this world. I didn’t have a choice, though, you see? I’m like Foxfire. Wounded. But for me, what’s broken is on the inside. I’ve been running from the Black Horse too, all this time. You’ve been protecting us both.”
My mouth drops open.
He reaches out and touches my cheek. Outside, the car honks again, and I remember that his father has died. The funeral in London.
Did his father know who he truly was?
“I must go.” He closes the box and stands. “Thank you, Emmaline. And…ride true.”
He takes the treasure from his world with him. As he slips down the hall, the last thing I see is the royal insignia carved on the front of the box, flashing in the lamplight.
Sister Constance presses a hand to her chest. She is fighting tears.
“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.