Did this belong to the old princess? I can’t imagine a proper, distinguished lady dressed in pink silk and lace. I giggle a little at the thought, and then cover my mouth.
I should leave it in the box. I can’t go stringing up ladies’ underwear on the garden wall. What if Thomas peeks into the garden? What if the Horse Lord himself sees it, while delivering one of his notes?
But pink is not a common color. There is no powdered blush here. There are no sweetheart boxes of chocolates. So I fold the nightgown and gather the string of beads. Four colors now, and four to go. And then my cheeks go warm. I think about that old princess dancing around in her fancy pink nightgown, and I laugh out loud, before pressing a hand once more to my mouth, and then stifling a cough.
“OH, POOR THOMAS! You should have told me straightaway.”
Anna is cross with me. I give her back the yellow colored pencil, hoping it will make her feel better. She sighs, her eyes red, as she places the box back in its proper spot and lays it on her bed, next to the open book of Flora and Fauna.
I pick up the box and run my fingers over the sharpened pencils’ tips. 865-EMERALD GREEN. Other than Jack’s train, what else matches this color? Pine needles would only turn brown. There’s the faded sofa in the library, but I’d need four grown men to lift it.
It has to be the train.
“Was Thomas’s father quite famous?” I ask.
“He was well decorated, yes. He even received the Victoria Cross. Back during the Great War, when he was Thomas’s age, he was a private in the cavalry, and during the Battle of Cambrai they say he rode so fast he was able to warn every man in the trenches about encroaching gas. That was before they mechanized everything. In this war, they promoted him to sergeant and assigned him to the Special Air Service. There are newspaper articles about him and everything, you know; Thomas keeps a scrapbook. His aunt in Wales started sending him the clippings, after his mother died.” She sighs again and looks down at her hands. “He wasn’t exactly acknowledged by his father.”
“Why?”
Her cheeks flush. “He couldn’t be a soldier because of his arm.”
“What will he do now?”
“The same as the rest of us. Stay here. Tend to the sheep. Eat rotting onions and wait.”
I replace the green pencil in the box. “Do you think he can pick a horse’s hoof with just one hand?”
Anna raises an eyebrow. “Why do you ask?”
I shrug.
She looks wistfully toward the ceiling and presses a hand against the base of her throat. “I think Thomas can do anything. I think if they’d just have put a gun in his hand, he’d have won this war.”
I roll over onto my back and look at Anna’s ceiling. This was the princess’s own bedroom, once. The ceiling is covered with an oil painting of Greek gods, some strong and handsome, others with fat little bellies and curls cut from stone. She tells me stories about them. Zeus. Hera. Hades. But only when the Sisters aren’t nearby. They call those stories blasphemous.
“Do you miss your family?” Anna asks suddenly.
I take out the blue colored pencil. No. The red. Some things are red in the hospital. Anna’s felt hat. The soup cans in the kitchen pantry. But I already have the Horse Lord’s red ribbon.
“Emmaline?”
I replace the red colored pencil. “I miss my horses.”
She settles back into her pillows, gazing out the window, running her fingers lovingly along her book’s spine. “You’ll see them again.”
“No. I won’t.” I think of Thomas’s father, and I picture my horses, and my mouth is filling with ash, and I swallow it down, and down, but it keeps coming up. “They’re dead.”
Her head snaps to me. “Oh, little goose. I’m so sorry.”
I think of the horses kicking and kicking at their stalls, and no one to let them out.
“The stories of the bombings were just awful,” she says. “Everyone talks about London, but Nottingham got it bad too, didn’t it? So many souls lost, in just one night. And all the fires. I heard they still found some fires smoldering even after a week, when they went through the rubble looking for…people.” She pauses. “Do you want to talk about it, Em?”
I take out the purple pencil and hold it up to the light.
Anna reaches out and strokes my short tufts of hair. “Of course you don’t. You’d have to be mad to want to think about that sort of thing. Much better to think about when we go home and see our families again. I’m going to hug them all, especially my brother, Sam. He’s going to make it through the war, I know it.”
She tilts her book in my direction. “I’ve decided that I’m going to study to be a professor of natural sciences. I did some research on the name of your winged horse, Foxfire, and I discovered the most magnificent thing.” She flips the page and points to an illustration of a glowing insect. “Did you know there are creatures that glow? It’s a phenomenon that happens in certain insects and fungi and sea creatures.” She traces a hand down the page, lovingly. “Before people knew what caused it, they thought it was magic. They called it will-o’-the-wisp, and fairy fire, and honey glow.” She smiles. “Fox fire, too.”
“Foxfire is named after glowing bugs?”
“Fox fire is a type of glowing plant,” she clarifies with a laugh. “As logs decompose, a bioluminescent fungus grows within and casts a blue light. In some cases, it’s bright enough to read by at night.”
I stare at the illustrations in her book.
“I was thinking that when you’re an explorer and travel the world, you could find fox fire on your own. The bioluminescence, I mean—not the horse. Darwin wrote about it once: ‘While sailing in these latitudes on one very dark night, the sea presented a wonderful and most beautiful spectacle. Every part of the surface glowed with a pale light.’ ” She smiles. “Maybe you’ll discover a new species, and name it Mycena emmaline, or Mycena marjorie. Wouldn’t your sister be tickled to have a fungus named after her?”
I push off from the bed. The mirror over Anna’s dresser is quiet. The winged horses are gone now, and it seems so empty over there, with just the mirror-me and the mirror-her.
“Emmaline?”
I walk out the door silently and wander down the long hallway. All the rooms are quiet, except for the last one, where little Arthur is snoring on his bed. There is a curio cabinet in an alcove filled with simple things that the old princess didn’t bother to take with her: Bird nests. Snake skins. A carved rock. Things someone probably found on the grounds. I open the glass cabinet and pick up a stack of yellowing old calling cards in a chipped fruit dish. Professor H. K. Hopper, Egyptologist. Lord Barchester. Miss A. Rodan, Aviatrix.
These must be all the famous people who came to visit the old princess, whose treasures, gifts for Her Highness, are stored in the attic. I wonder if Thomas’s father ever came.
I glance back in the direction of Anna’s room.
She told me I could be an explorer—someone famous, just like the people on these cards. She told me I already am.
I wonder sometimes if Anna understands me better than anyone else in the world.
I smile. Just a little, just to myself.
WHISPERS COME FROM DOWN THE HALL.
I stuff the cards back into the fruit dish and hurry to close the curio case. Following the voices, I come upon the library. Rodger, the boy with the port-wine birthmark, and Susan are working on sums for Sister Constance’s maths class at the study table. Their backs are to me. Jack is asleep on the sofa not far from them. On the rug beside him, three inches from his hand, is his Lionel steam engine.
I dare a glance down the hall; it’s empty. I could take the train. A famous explorer wouldn’t shy away from an important mission, and neither will I.
Now.
I drop to hands and knees, keeping low so the other children don’t see me. Elbow over elbow, knee over knee, I crawl through the no-man’s-land of the library floor. Jack mumbles in his sleep and tosses his hand down.
His fingers graze the train and I go rigid. The other children stop whispering for a moment. My heart goes rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat, and I dare a glance up at enemy territory. Still facing away from me.
The train is close, but his crumb-covered fingers are on it.
Drawing in a sharp breath, I crawl forward with all the silence of the best of Britain’s spies. I delicately take hold of the end of the train—being careful not to touch the real working whistle—and pull it away. Inch by inch. The wheels roll silently across the rug, until Jack’s fingers slip off of it.
I go still, heart pounding.
But he doesn’t wake.
And then I’m fleeing the battlefield, train tucked under one arm, into the safety of the hall. Footsteps are coming—trapped! I spy the curio cabinet across from me and hide the train far back on the bottom shelf, behind a soft fox’s pelt, just as Sister Constance turns the corner.
I freeze.
Her lips press together firmly—it was only yesterday that I promised Sister Constance not to sneak around. “Emmaline!” She darts forward and grabs my ear. “You are supposed to be in quiet study in the library, young lady.”
“Ow, ow, ow,” I plead, but she pulls me a few feet down the hall, then lets me go.
“Go to your room for the remainder of the day, and ask God for forgiveness for your disobedience. If I see the slightest glimpse of you before breakfast tomorrow, I’ll put a bell around your neck like a cat.”
I head for the stairs, head hung low, but heart still secretly thrilled as I think of the hidden train. The chapel door is near the stairs, and I pause, because candles are glowing from within, even though it isn’t Sunday. The altar is draped in heavy liturgical cloth, presiding over three rows of wooden benches. Someone is sitting on the first bench, mouth moving in quiet prayer.
Thomas.
He reaches out and touches the altar cloth. It is a rich, royal purple reserved for Advent and Lent. The same shade as Anna’s colored pencil. 876-HELIOTROPE PURPLE.
Thomas lets his hand fall away from the cloth. He’s still whispering, though the words are too quiet to make out.
From somewhere deep in my chest, the stillwaters stir. They swell, prickling at the inside of my lungs, until I feel heavy and drowned, like I’ve fallen off Darwin’s ship into the sea of sparkling little creatures.
“Emmaline,” Sister Constance calls sternly. She points toward the attic stairs. “Now.”
I climb, thoughts jumping between Thomas and his father, the toy train and the purple altar cloth and Sister Constance, but at the top of the stairs, my eyes settle on my door, and I go still.
A sudden burst of anger surges inside of me.
A yellow ticket! Someone has replaced the one I tore up! I leap up to rip it off, but then I remember Dr. Turner has a whole stack of them. If I take it down, he will only replace it with another.
I throw myself on top of my bed, not touching my books or my schoolwork.
There is no point. There will always be Sister Constance watching. There will always be a yellow ticket. I will never be a proper explorer. I will never see the pyramids of Egypt. I will never watch the wild horses running free on the plains of America. I will never discover anything at all, except dust.
But no.
I sit up.
Anna believes in me, and Anna is the smartest person I know.
I snatch up some chalk and write on the back of one of my old drawings:
Dear Horse Lord,
I do not know if this letter will reach you, but I need you to know that I won’t give up, not ever. I have already found five colorful objects to protect Foxfire: a red one, a yellow one, a turquoise one, a pink one, and now a green one. I am working as fast as I can before the full moon comes to find the rest, but I have an important question: Do you think God will be angry with me if I steal the purple liturgical cloth from the chapel?
Truly,
Emmaline May
I think of the calling card in the curio cabinet belonging to Miss A. Rodan, Aviatrix, and I fold the drawing in half, and in half again, and then fold down the corners.
An airplane.
I push open the window and lean into the wind.
I cast out the paper airplane, whispering prayers as it flies, flies, flies toward the gardens, hoping that it lands true.
THE NEXT DAY IS SUNDAY.
Sunday is the day we eat leftover bread for breakfast, both to remember Christ’s fasting and because it is Thomas’s day off and the Sisters have to tend to the sheep after they tend to us at Mass. Though there are three benches, Sister Constance says we must crowd into the front two to be closer to God and his healing powers.
Benny sits in the row behind me and kicks me in the backside.
I ignore him and look at the ceiling. It is covered with black cloths. Anna told me that when she first arrived, the ceiling was decorated with a beautiful Greek painting like the one in her bedroom. The old princess had brought over real Greek painters and everything, but the Sisters of Mercy forbade pagan idolatry in a chapel, even if it did used to be a ballroom.
As Sister Constance reads from the Bible, I imagine all the beautiful couples who once danced here. I bet the ladies wore dresses that were all the colors of the rainbow, and the men had top hats and dashing mustaches. They would twirl and twirl in the candlelight, beneath the ancient floating gods who drink wine and ride wild stallions. I wonder if the horses lived in the mirrors even back then. Maybe that is why the princess stayed here for so long, by herself. Maybe she liked waking up each morning and seeing a winged horse in her bedroom mirror. Maybe she found a way to talk to them. Maybe—just maybe—she met the Horse Lord.
Sister Constance ends the prayer, and we stand, and someone taps my shoulder.
I turn around to find Thomas.
He clears his throat and reaches into his pocket. “Bog chased a rabbit into the old gardens this morning,” he says. “There’s a hole in the rear gate. When he came back he had this tangled in his fur, along with a mess of briars. You’re the only one who ever goes in those gardens, so I thought it must be meant for you.”
He takes out a slightly crumpled, damp letter tied in red ribbon.
I silence a gasp as I cram the letter into my sleeve, looking left and right to make sure the other children haven’t seen.
“It is for me,” I whisper quickly.
I eye him closely, wondering if he sneaked a peek at the Horse Lord’s letter, but the knot is tied firmly, the red ribbon only slightly torn. The Horse Lord must have left this for me in the sundial, where last night’s wind blew it into the briars.
I give him a solemn nod. “Thank you.”
He nods solemnly back.
After the service, the other children go to their rooms to quietly read the Bible and pray, but I tiptoe back up the stairs and past the shut doors on the residence hall to a closet where I can read the Horse Lord’s letter. I can hardly believe that my airplane reached him. The paper is damp, and the handwriting is strangely shaky, as though he was very tired while writing.
Dear Emmaline May,
I found your note in a rosebush near the sundial, folded curiously. To answer your question, I would never condone stealing, not even in the name of a higher deed. I suggest that you only borrow the liturgical cloth. Perhaps after church services conclude, so it will not be missed for a full week. By then, with luck, Foxfire’s wing will have healed and you can return it safe and sound without anyone else’s knowledge. That God will see you, I have no doubt. But that God will know what is deeper within your heart, I am also certain.
Ride true,
The Horse Lord
I stash the letter back in my sleeve.
The Horse Lord is so wise—now is the time to borrow the cloth, long before it’ll be used again. But can I really steal it from God? I suppose I don’t have a choice. I’ve scoured the hospital, and this is the only purple object, except for the stained glass in the windows, and that isn’t coming out.
&nbs
p; I exhale slowly. I can do this.
I tiptoe out of the closet and into the hallway. Voices come from the room Benny and Jack and Peter share, and I pause. I’ve always wondered if Benny really prays on Sunday afternoons. When I peek through the keyhole, all three boys are sitting cross-legged on Peter’s bed, Peter and Jack staring in rapt attention as Benny reads to them.
“ ‘Unhand me, you brute! Popeye! Popeye, save me!’ ”
Not the Bible.
I sneak upstairs to grab my coat and the other colorful objects I’ve found, and then tiptoe back down the stairs and hold my breath when I pass Sister Constance’s office, where she is digging through stacks of newspapers with loud headlines.
I continue down the hall to the empty chapel and close the door behind me. The air is still warm from the twenty bodies that were here earlier. The altar is bare. Sister Mary Grace must have already pressed and folded the liturgical cloth to use next week. I tiptoe to the closet where they lock up the cloth, along with the sacred wine and gold cross, but I’ve seen them hang the key on a hook in the back. I stand on my tiptoes to reach it.
Inside the closet, I find the Advent cloth. I run my hand over the purple fabric.
I wonder: Is this a sin?
And then I think: This is most definitely a sin.
My lungs are feeling heavy. It is difficult to draw anything but a shallow breath. But I fight past the feeling, and snatch the altar cloth. It slips like silk beneath my fingers as I ball it up and stash it under my coat, and then slam the closet door. The rest of the objects—the nightgown, engine, and beads—weigh down my pockets.
“Emmaline?”
Sister Mary Grace, in the chapel doorway, peers at me curiously. She is wearing heavy men’s boots that are caked in dried mud, and there is a bucket of sheep’s milk in one hand. “What are you doing in here?”
I know now why foxes sometimes freeze when the hunting dogs chase them. It is because any direction they run might be the wrong one. “I just…” I gape. “I was just…praying.”