She raises an eyebrow. “With your coat on?”
I swallow hard, thinking. “I couldn’t find my sweater and I was cold.”
“Well.” She seems a bit uncertain, but the pail is getting heavy in her hand. “Praying is…good. But you should do so in your room. You don’t want Sister Constance to catch you out and about.”
She goes down the hallway, casting one last look over her shoulder. Once she turns the corner, I scramble through the library window and then take off across the field to the gardens. Bog barks from the barn, but I shush him and keep running, and then scale up the ivy. It’s hard to climb with just one arm, the other one holding the cloth so it doesn’t get snagged. But I manage, and drop down on the other side.
Foxfire swivels her head at me.
“I hope you’re grateful for this,” I say. “I was nearly caught.” But looking at her, I know it was worth it.
I shake out the beautiful purple cloth. In the sunlight, it shines even brighter. Foxfire seems taken with it, and she comes closer through the mud to inspect it. I take off my mittens and tie the cloth’s corners carefully to the ivy, making sure it doesn’t drape in the mud. Next to the red ribbon and the yellow bottle, I string up the turquoise necklace and the green toy train and, blushing, the ladies’ nightgown. This has officially become the most colorful corner of the hospital grounds.
I reach out and pat Foxfire on the nose, then nuzzle my own nose into her neck and breathe in her horse smell. “See? Your wing looks better already. It’ll be healed in plenty of time for me to get this cloth back by next Sunday.”
I write the Horse Lord another note.
Dear Horse Lord,
It worked! At this rate, Foxfire is going to be safe until she is a creaky old knock-kneed mare—how long do winged horses live, anyway? I am only missing two colors now, blue and orange. I’ve hung up all the other objects, even the pink ladies’ nightgown. (Which was embarrassing!)
Truly,
Emmaline May
Post script: Your handwriting was shaky in your letter. I hope nothing is the matter. Please write back.
I start to climb back up the ivy, but something tugs at my coat. Foxfire, nipping at the hem. I drop back down. She stamps her hoof, impatiently.
“I don’t have any more apples. I’m sorry.”
She stamps her hoof again, and then noses at my shoulder, hard enough to push me back against the ivy. The air whooshes out of me.
“Hey, watch it, I—”
She noses me again, harder. It truly hurts this time. The Horse Lord needs to teach his horse some manners! I’m about to give her a good shove, when a shadow passes over the garden. Whoosh. At first I think it’s just another cloud crossing the sun’s path. But it flickers. It has wings stretched far like an airplane, but then the wings pull in, and draw out again.
I tilt my head toward the sky, filled with dread. The shadow is gone now, but Foxfire and I both know what it was.
THE BLACK HORSE.
I turn to Foxfire with a gasp. “You were trying to warn me, weren’t you?”
She noses me again toward the wall of ivy. She is a smart horse. She knows that is how I can get to safety—but I shake my head.
“I’m not going to leave you.” I pull her closer against the wall, and raise the corner of the altar cloth to hide us both under. I know the Black Horse can’t see us because it is daylight, but he can still smell. The altar cloth holds the church’s scent of incense, and, with luck, it is enough to mask our own. I wrap my arms midway around Foxfire’s neck and close my eyes. Our warm breaths mix together beneath the tent of the altar cloth.
Is he there, flying overhead?
But then, footsteps sound on the other side of the garden wall. Maybe it is Thomas, walking through the fallen leaves. But no, it is Thomas’s day off, and after church he goes to Wick.
“Bog?” I whisper desperately. “Is that you?”
There is no answer at first.
Then: Clomp. Clomp.
My heart thunders once, twice, three times. It’s the Black Horse! He’s on the ground! I did not think he would come for us in the day. I thought we still had time—last night’s moon wasn’t even half full. Foxfire presses her chin to my shoulder, nosing me under the shelter of her chest and neck. I can feel her heart beating as fast as mine beneath her warm hair.
“Shh,” I whisper again.
On the other side of the garden wall, a horse snorts. Low and calculating. Trying to take in certain smells. Does he smell her scent, apple and snow? Does he smell her wounded wing?
Clomp.
Clomp.
He’s just outside the gate.
The gate!
It’s open a crack—Bog must have nosed it open when he was going after that rabbit.
I duck out from the altar cloth and lunge for it, hoping to get to it before the Black Horse can. My feet kick up snow as I push myself against it, trying to be quiet, and slide the willow branch through the metalwork to keep it closed. I force myself as still as the door itself, and close my eyes.
Has he heard me? Does he know?
He could fly over the gate, but he doesn’t. Maybe he prefers to stalk us like foxes stalk their prey. The light through the cracks in the old gate mottles. There are footsteps. More of those investigating, low snorts. When I force my eyes open, I can just make out a shadow through the cracks. A tail. It is black and tangled into knots like the brambles that surround it.
There is a sudden kick at the gate. The wood buckles, and I shriek, and I push myself against it. Foxfire whinnies, peeking out from beneath the cloth. The gate buckles. He’s going to get in!
“Go away!” I yell. “She isn’t here! It’s me you smell. It’s the apple on my breath. It’s the snow on my dress. It’s my sickness you smell, not hers, so go away!”
And then a growl cuts through the air. Vicious barks come from the other side of the gate. Bog! But what is one old border collie against a winged monster?
And then a sudden whoosh, and a gust of air blows through the cracks in the gate strong enough to push me backward. A shadow rises high into the clouds, and the air shakes like thunder.
I throw the gate open.
“Bog!”
I’m afraid I’ll see a little broken body torn apart just like my neighbor’s cat did to that tiny little bird. But a white and black flash of movement comes from under a bench, and Bog trots through the gate, wagging his tail. I close the gate behind him, lock it with the willow stick, drop to my knees, and pull him close. His body is the same fur and bones and big wet nose that it always is.
“Thank you,” I whisper into his big black eyes, and he licks my nose. Foxfire is peeking out from the cloth, ears pointed toward Bog and me. I go to her, pull the cloth back over her head, and rest my hand on her cheek. She doesn’t shy away. She stretches out her left wing, flapping it until I come around to her side, and she can wrap her wing around me.
“And thank you, too,” I say. “I promised to protect you, but you were the one who protected me. You warned me he was coming.”
She shakes out her mane, almost like she is nodding.
I rest a hand on her withers. “You and me, we look out for each other. But I will take care of you a little extra, because I am your person, and you will always be my special horse.”
I look back up at the sky.
Today, she is safe.
WHEN I RETURN TO the house, Dr. Turner’s car is parked in the front.
It is strange—he usually parks neatly by the barn, but today the car is at an angle. When I climb in through the library window, I hear a commotion, which is also strange. Sunday afternoons are quiet. Sunday afternoons are plain bread and reading alone.
But a door slams, and someone starts coughing.
I am about to slip up the attic steps back to my room, but I get an odd feeling, like something isn’t quite right. Someone is banging around downstairs in the kitchen. Sister Constance? But she leaves on Sunday afternoons to help
the priest in Wick administer last rites to the townspeople who are dying of illness or old age. Then there are quick footsteps, and it’s all I can do to jump into the linen closet and hide before both Sisters come striding down the hall.
“It started an hour ago,” Sister Mary Grace says. “She’s burning up.”
I peek through the closet keyhole. Sister Constance is lugging a steaming copper pot with the handle wrapped in a towel. They open the door to Anna’s room. The red ticket flutters in the gust and then falls down slowly, like a feather, and settles in the middle of the hallway.
I close my eyes.
I want to tell myself that I saw wrong. That it wasn’t Anna’s room, but Benny’s, or anyone else’s. But when I open my eyes, the door to Anna’s room is still ajar.
I push my way out of the closet and walk toward the door with heavy steps. Clomp, clomp, like the clodding of a horse, except my boots make little noise on the hard floors. Dr. Turner’s voice comes through the crack. He is giving Sister Constance orders. More coughing comes, but that can’t be from Anna. Anna’s coughs are quiet and ladylike, even when she is doubled over. This sounds like a soul being ripped apart.
Something crunches under my foot. The red ticket. The glue is still tacky, and it sticks to the sole of my boot and I start to panic, trying uselessly to kick it away.
“Emmaline.” A voice whispers harshly at me from the stairs. Benny sticks out his pinched face, shadows cast over his eyes. “Get back to your room.”
“You don’t tell me what to do,” I say. He acts like Anna belongs to him as much as she does to me, just because she is kind to him, but she can’t possibly matter to him the same way. Anna and I, we are like sisters.
Through the crack in Anna’s door, I can see the back of Dr. Turner’s white coat. Sister Mary Grace, dropping cloths in the steaming copper pot. More coughs, and I flinch.
I push open the door just a tiny, unnoticeable inch. Dr. Turner moves aside to gather his stethoscope, and I get a clear view. It is Anna. Her nightgown. Her light brown curls so like Marjorie’s, though they are now soaked with sweat. Her face, though it is missing something. Her eyes are too dull.
All the sheets around her are soaked in blood.
“The morphine, Sister,” Dr. Turner says. She passes him a needle, and he sticks it into a bare patch of Anna’s skin, and then presses his stethoscope to her chest.
“It’s too late. The lung has collapsed,” he says.
Sister Mary Grace makes the sign of the cross.
I can see Anna’s dresser mirror from here. There are winged horses in the reflection of her window. Their muzzles are pressed against the glass. They are watching. They are waiting.
I push the door open wider, and it catches Dr. Turner’s attention. He sees my reflection in the mirror and spins. The Sisters look up as well.
“Emmaline! You aren’t to be here!” Sister Constance says.
I clutch the brass doorknob, hard. “What’s going to happen to Anna?”
Sister Constance comes striding toward me. “To your room, young lady.”
But as she reaches for me, I dart under her arm and sprint for the bed. Anna’s room isn’t big, even though it was once fit for a princess, and I’m able to grab the bedpost and jump on the mattress before they can stop me.
“Anna!” I cry.
I’ve never seen her face so pale. She reaches out an arm that is more bone than girl, and ruffles my tufts of hair.
“Emmaline.”
Her voice is so weak that it breaks on the sound of my name. A sob comes out of my throat, and I crawl closer, until I can wrap my arms around her. “Anna, you’ll get better. You’ll be fine.”
She is warm. Too warm. There is something inside her moving too fast, burning through everything she has.
“Em, I’m sorry I never saw your winged horses. I wanted to see them so badly. I kept looking at the mirrors. I did. But I never saw them….”
She presses her cheek against mine.
She is fire. She is life. She is sickness.
Two hands grab me under the armpits. Sister Constance pulls me away with fingers like iron. “Emmaline, you can’t be here!”
I tear at Sister Constance’s hands. The black sleeves of her habit are rolled back, and my fingers rip her skin. “Let me go!”
But she doesn’t. She pushes me through the open door. I try to scramble back inside, but Sister Mary Grace closes it and locks it. I claw at the wood. Pound on it. Tears are falling down my cheeks, and my middle finger is bleeding from where I clawed too hard.
“Anna!” I cry. “Anna, keep looking! They’re there! They’re right there! Do you see them?”
There is no answer. Only more coughing. Only Dr. Turner’s low voice.
“Anna! Do you see them?”
Nothing.
I kick at the door. I look through the keyhole, but the key blocks my view. They must hear me pounding. How can they leave me out here? How can they tear me away from her, when she is my only friend? She is the only one who shares her colored pencils with me, and tells me stories of the floating gods, and whose stomach gurgles just like Mama’s.
“Stop it!” Benny grabs my wrist. He is wearing a muddy-red sweater that matches his muddy-red hair and I hate him, I hate him, I hate him. “You’re acting like a child.”
“They won’t let me see her!”
“Dr. Turner needs to give her medicine without you crawling all over her and getting in the way. You’re only thinking of yourself. You’re a selfish little girl, and you have to grow up!”
My vision scatters into angry little dots. I twist out of Benny’s hold and shove him, hard, so that he crashes to the floor.
“I hate you!”
I run down the hall. The mirrors lining the walls flash by. Winged horses stand in each one of them. Peering at me curiously as I run, their heads swiveling to follow my progress. I have never seen so many of them. They are everywhere.
And yet the hall is empty.
I run to the kitchen and shove open the back door, and I can’t stop the coughs. They mix with sobs and I feel so shaky. Thomas is sitting on the stone steps with Bog at his side. They both jump up at the sound.
“Emmaline.” He blinks like he wasn’t expecting me. He swallows. “I heard Dr. Turner’s car. Is it…is it Anna?” He wipes his hand on his trousers.
What do I say?
How can I tell him what is happening, when I don’t even know myself ?
I sink onto the highest step. I can’t seem to draw in enough air.
And then a shadow passes over us. It ripples like water, but it is the shape of an airplane, only the wings move. They pull in. And extend again. A sound like thunder rolls through the air. Thomas’s head pitches up, and he squints into the sky as a dark worry fills me.
“What is that?” he asks.
The shape is moving on the other side of the trees. Only a shadow, but I know what it is. Oh, I know. A creature that hunts by smell. A creature that I thought had left us alone, at least for today. A creature that is headed straight for the sundial garden.
“OH NO, HE’S BACK!”
Thomas calls after me as I race to the garden, but I don’t respond. Winter chill nips through the layers of my clothing, and briars tear at my skin as I climb. Foxfire is pacing the wall, running in the tight space, back and forth. She too has seen the Black Horse’s shadow, and I can tell we are thinking the same thing: It was only a trick, before. He never intended to leave us alone at all!
“Come on!” I yell to Foxfire. I rip out the stick holding the gate closed. My middle finger is bleeding all over everything, but I don’t care. I turn to Foxfire. She can’t fly, but she can still run.
“You have to leave! Run away as fast as you can!”
She’s pacing wildly, rearing and pawing the air. She doesn’t know where to go. This is my world, not hers. I reach up and push her toward the open gate. Beyond are fields frosted and dead with winter. She is the same color as the frost. The
Black Horse, with his poor vision, might not see her.
“Go!”
She tosses her head, throwing my hand away. She starts for the gate, but stops. Snorts. And then looks at me.
I know horses cannot talk. Even magic horses. But when I look into her eyes, I know what she is trying to say. Something eases deep in my chest. For a moment, as I find the strength to climb up the ivy, I don’t feel the ache in my bones. From my height, I’m able to slide a hand over her shoulders. She doesn’t buck. Doesn’t snort a protest. I pull myself up by her withers, avoiding her hurt wing, and wrap my legs around either side of her.
I weave my fingers into her mane.
I have never ridden like this. No saddle. No reins. Wings on either side of my legs.
There is only the wind and Foxfire and me. We are one.
“Go!”
She tears through the gate. Her muscles are rippling beneath my legs, her quicksilver hooves pounding the frozen ground. I gasp with the thrill of it. The fields streak around us, and I lean into the bitter cold wind. If she is this fast running, what must she be like flying? I think she could outfly the Germans, if she wanted. She could certainly outfly a Black Horse.
I clutch her mane harder and look over my shoulder. We are jostling, jostling, jostling, and the hospital disappears from view as we plunge down Briar Hill into empty fields. I’ve never seen the hospital from a distance. It looks so grand. Lights are shining in all of the windows. The two oaks in the front lawn rise like sentries.
A dark shadow ripples beside us, matching us in time.
“Faster, faster!”
And she does. She goes faster. She goes faster than I thought a horse could go. Some other part of me takes over. Presses my legs closer to her. Leans in. The wind cuts right through me, but I don’t feel it. I don’t hear Anna coughing. I don’t feel Benny’s thin hand on my wrist. There is only the wind and Foxfire and me. We are one.
“Don’t stop!”
Tears are coming faster down my face. The wind freezes them before they can fall. I hug my arms around Foxfire’s neck and want never to let her go. We reach the end of the field, and Foxfire leans hard to the left, circling the line of willows that skirt the stream. She slows, just a little. It isn’t until she has circled the field three times that I realize I haven’t seen the black shadow in some time.