She continues to slow until she switches to a trot that has me bouncing on the hard bones of her back. The gray sky is bare now. A few clouds, but no Black Horse.
We have escaped him—really escaped him—for one more day.
Foxfire slows to a walk, and I press my left leg into her side. She is a wild horse, so she does not know the signals, but she seems to understand. She circles around and heads back to the open garden gate.
We return to the fountain and the tarnished sundial. I slide off her back, feet catching on the fountain’s rim, and then hop off onto the ground.
She bows her head to me, and I press my hands to the sides of her face. I touch my forehead to the swirl of her horse-hair that is the shape of a spark, right between her eyes.
“I won’t let him get you. I made a promise, and I’ll keep it.”
Foxfire tosses her head again. She is breathing hard, and turns to take a long drink from the fountain.
Tomorrow I will find the last colors.
I will find something blue.
I will find something orange.
I will find something to keep the Black Horse far, far away from this protected place.
I trudge back to the hospital with feet that feel numb but a heart that feels alive.
All the lights are on in the windows. Thomas isn’t sitting on the steps anymore. There is no sign of Bog. When I push open the kitchen door, no one is sitting at the table, though the clock says it’s past suppertime.
I hold my hands over the woodstove until I can feel them again, and take down one of the big towels from the linen closet and wrap myself in it. I’ve started shivering, now that feeling is coming back into my body. Deep shivering that cuts to the bone. My legs are so weak that walking is getting hard. Each step up the stairs burns. I wipe my dripping nose.
The hallway is lined with children, all sitting quietly. They seem like they have been there for some time. Jack looks up. He isn’t crying. Benny looks up too. He is.
The door to Anna’s room opens, and Sister Mary Grace stands in the doorway. Her shoulders are stooped—it doesn’t look right on a woman of her young age. The sleeves of her habit are pushed back as she wipes her hands with a towel.
Her eyes are red.
“Oh, Emmaline,” she says softly when she sees me.
And I know. I know. She doesn’t have to say it. I don’t want her to. I want to exist in this moment alone. The moment when I have saved Foxfire, even if just for one day, and this moment when Anna is still alive and tomorrow I will draw her a picture and she will tell me a story about the floating gods on the ceiling.
“Emmaline, I’m sorry.”
The horses are gone from the mirrors. I do not know where they go, when they leave.
She pushes the door open farther as she comes out into the hall, and I see Thomas, sitting on a chair next to Anna’s bed.
He looks at me.
And then, he sees something in the mirror across the hall and turns. I follow his gaze. There is one winged horse. One winged horse that we both see. It bows its beautiful brown head, and stretches its brown wings.
Deep in my chest, the stillwaters are rising.
“Anna is gone,” Sister Mary Grace says.
There is a comfort in sheep.
THERE IS A COMFORT IN SHEEP.
It isn’t just that they are soft and warm (though sometimes a bit dirty). It isn’t their bleating, or the way the little lambs climb all over each other. It is not their sheep-smell, which the other children dislike but I don’t mind. It isn’t their pink tongues. It is the way you can say not a single word, but not feel alone.
The barn door opens.
Thomas comes in, wiping his nose against the cold, and takes the shovel from its hook on the wall. The sheep bleat for food, and he sees me sitting in their midst. He stops.
“Did you fall asleep here?”
I nod.
“A priest has come, and Anna’s family. You’ll miss the funeral.”
In my hands, I hold a small box wrapped in newspaper and tied with a bit of twine that Sister Mary Grace gave me. “I know.”
He doesn’t say any more. Thomas’s quiet ways used to scare me, but now, I am thankful for them. I’m tired of Sister Constance and Sister Mary Grace and Dr. Turner and the other children talking. I just want to be with sheep. Alone, but not lonely.
Something ugly stirs in my chest, and I cough into the straw and wipe my mouth. My face feels warm. Too warm. Burning.
“The altar cloth…,” he starts, a bit hesitantly. “I thought you might want to know that Sister Constance decided to use the black one in the chapel, to mourn Anna. They’ll leave it up for at least another week. Longer, maybe.” He bends down to right Bog’s ear, which is always flopping over.
And I can tell, in the way that he doesn’t quite meet my eyes, that he knows that I stole the purple Advent cloth. He must have seen me sneaking across the grounds with it stuffed in my coat. And now he is telling me that I won’t be caught. At least, not today.
Anna has helped me again. I am glad for Foxfire’s sake, but I would rather be caught and punished by Sister Constance every day for a year and have Anna back.
I nod.
Thomas touches his cap and leaves.
I know that Anna’s service is unfolding in the chapel. In the six months I have been here, one other child has died, a boy who came in the middle of the night, so ill that he was gone by the next morning. His service was small and short, and I know Anna’s will be the same. Sister Constance is nothing if not practical. There are bills to be paid. Living children to be fed. A leaking faucet that needs repair.
A sheep lets out a long sheep-sigh, and rests its chin on my leg. I scratch its bony head, and its eyes half close. I rub my other thumb over the package’s twine, tied in such a prim little bow.
Sister Mary Grace came all the way up to my attic last night after supper. She brought me a dusty old bar of chocolate on a tray—I don’t know where she’d had it hidden away—and this package, too.
“Christmas isn’t for a few days,” she said. “But I want you to have an early present. Well, Anna wanted you to have it. Sometimes people die when they get too sick, and there is nothing we can do but let them return to the Lord.”
In the barn, I run my thumb along the corners of the package, its paper worn from me handling it all morning, afraid to open it. I know this shape. I know this size. I know exactly what I will find when I pull loose that twine and strip off the paper.
The bell tolls outside. Thomas will come back soon with the shovel, clods of dirt from the southern slope on his boots.
I open the brown paper and brown twine. Beneath it lie all the colors of the rainbow. I open the top flap of the colored pencil box and breathe in the smell of wood and paint.
The little sheep with its chin on my leg starts to snore. I curl up next to it, hugging Anna’s box of colored pencils.
I DON’T SEE FOXFIRE for days. I can’t. I am so sad about Anna that my limbs don’t want to move. I am so sad and angry with God that I just want to hide and cry. Sister Mary Grace frowns when she takes my temperature, and takes pity on me and lets me skip classes to draw quietly in my bedroom instead. But then a swollen half-moon comes and casts a dangerous glow over the world beyond my attic window.
And I know: I must be strong for Foxfire, even now. The Horse Lord is depending on me.
I wait until Sister Constance is in her office and the other children are in the classroom working on letters home to their families, and sneak out through the library window. I won’t be missed. They think I’m in the attic.
My legs are so weak that the walk to the sundial garden feels longer than ever before. The climb over the wall feels like a mountain. But when I drop down, Foxfire is there.
She looks up at me.
And oh, how I have missed her.
I had forgotten her apple smell. I had forgotten her silken hair. I had forgotten how alive I felt with her soft dark eyes o
n me, the small nod of her head that says she missed me, just as I missed her.
And yet, strangely, there is no letter from the Horse Lord. Days have passed. I expected an entire stack of letters, especially as the full moon is only a week away, but there is nothing.
An uneasy feeling makes my hand tremble, but I manage to write a new note on a scrap of paper I brought with me, and tuck it under the sundial:
Dear Horse Lord,
Why haven’t you written? Are you all right? I do not know if you know this, but the Black Horse tried to attack. He is so wicked, so mean, that I truly hate him! But Foxfire is safe, and I am surrounding her with every colorful object I can find, though I do not know if it will be enough. Sometimes horses die when they get too sick. I do not want her to die. Please tell me what to do.
Truly,
Emmaline May
And then, it’s Christmas Eve. I don’t know how Christmas can arrive without Anna, but it does, and Sister Mary Grace tells me I must not keep to myself anymore.
And then, it’s Christmas Eve.
Our families are not allowed to visit, but Mr. Mason from the farm next door comes in the afternoon, when the shadows are long, with a Christmas tree. He pulls it in his donkey cart and stands outside, talking to the Sisters, who rub their bare hands in the cold. We all watch with our faces pressed against the glass.
“We’ve never had a tree before,” Peter says. He and Jack have been here the longest now, and have seen two Christmases at the hospital. “Sister Constance says Christmas is about Christ’s birth, not Saint Nicholas.”
“The Americans sent presents last year,” Jack says wistfully, nose pressed to the glass. “Enough to fill the whole chapel, but the Sisters only let us keep one each. I got my steam engine train. And now it’s gone missing.” He is silent, and I turn away, and hope my cheeks are not burning too red.
After a few tense moments of argument outside, when the donkey starts hee-hawing from the cold, Sister Constance throws up her hands. The farmer grins, and lifts the tree to his shoulder.
The other children cheer.
I watch the snow falling, standing apart from them all. It doesn’t feel right. Not without Anna. And now without the Horse Lord, too.
Then a tree is coming straight through the front door and into the library, filling the room with forest smells, and leaving a trail of sap and needles in its wake. “Benny, go find Thomas,” Sister Mary Grace says, “and have him fetch a bucket and some screws.”
Benny darts off down the hall.
“Emmaline, get a pot of water.”
I rub at my eyes, feeling too exhausted even to move. But then my eye catches on a flash of color. It’s a crumpled old handkerchief Mr. Mason is using to wipe the sap off his hands. He starts to stuff it back in his pocket but frowns at the sap, and tosses the worn hankie into our scrap bin instead, and my heart starts to thump, thump, thump in a way it hasn’t since Anna died. The handkerchief is a little frayed, but the color is unmistakable. 868-LAPIS BLUE.
Sister Mary Grace is looking at me curiously, as though she is tempted to take my temperature again.
I force myself to stand on shaky legs. “Yes, Sister. I’ll get the water.” I make my way to the kitchen, winded after just a few steps, where I take down a copper pot and set it in the sink. As I wait for it to fill, I look at my reflection in the pot’s side: Sunken eyes. Pale skin. There are two winged horses standing behind me, their wings outstretched, almost as though to shelter me from rain, though there is no rain indoors.
I carry the pot back to the library and stand close to the farmer. He and Thomas act like they’re building a war machine, with all the engineering that goes into getting that tree to stand up straight in the bucket. I lean in, pretending to watch, and very quietly reach down and draw the handkerchief out of the scrap paper bin. I cough as I stuff it into my boot.
He won’t miss it, surely. To him, it is just an old, worn-out scrap he threw away. To me—to Foxfire—it is hope.
They finish, though the tree still slopes a little at the top. Mr. Mason tells us we must water it every day. He tells us we must be very careful, when we tie candles to the branches, that it not catch fire.
“And best set out cookies for Saint Nick,” he says with a wink.
Sister Constance’s mouth goes grim.
We watch through the windows as he lights his cart’s lantern, and leads the poor frozen donkey back home.
“Let’s make decorations!” Kitty squeaks. “We can make a paste out of lye. It’ll look just like snow on the tree.”
The children jump up. They start tearing through the scraps of fabric and ribbon that Sister Mary Grace brings out in her sewing kit. Others drag down dusty boxes from the attic, where Arthur finds shiny red metal Christmas balls that he gazes at with delight. Two of the three little mice run outside to gather pinecones, and Sister Constance doesn’t even say anything about the no-going-beyond-the-kitchen-terrace rule.
I glance out the open door, wondering when I can slip away to the garden to string up the handkerchief. Thomas, at some point, must have slipped away himself. I wonder if he is back in the barn, with Bog and the sheep. I wonder if he likes to be alone but not lonely too.
Susan holds up a string of white paper chains. “It’s so plain.” She suddenly spins on me. “Fetch the colored pencils Anna gave you! We can color the links green and red!”
The other children look up at me, their sticky fingers covered in paste.
Dread darkens me like a shadow. The pencils? Anna’s pencils? But she gave them to me.
I shake my head.
Benny huffs and looks at Sister Constance. “Tell her she must share!”
“Anna gave them to her,” Sister Constance says. “She can do what she wishes with them. If she chooses the path of generosity, as Anna so often did, then she will bring out the colored pencils. If she chooses to be selfish, well, then that is her choice.”
“But she’s being a baby!” Benny folds his arms, glaring. There is a wooden cross of Christ strung up behind him. If Jesus’s hands weren’t nailed to the cross, I think he’d be folding them at me too.
I fold my arms and glare right back.
If they want color—real color—then they are looking in the wrong places.
Benny glowers at me, then scoops up a handful of the snow paste on impulse.
“We all miss her!”
He throws the paste at my face.
It fills my mouth with the sudsy taste of lye. I sputter and cough, and Sister Constance grabs Benny by the ear.
“That wasn’t called for,” she admonishes.
“She’s a selfish little monster,” Benny spits out, while his ear is rapidly turning red. “She can’t just…She isn’t the only one…”
He disappears as Sister Constance drags him away, muttering something about staying in his room until the isolation makes his brain work properly.
I glance in the window’s reflection. The paste has turned my skin into a clumpy mess.
The other children are fighting the urge to snicker.
A monster.
The others won’t say it aloud, not with Sister Mary Grace’s watchful gaze right there, but I know they are thinking it.
Thomas is a monster because he is missing something.
I am a monster because I have too much of something. Too much hurt. Too much rage.
I do not care.
Only monsters, it seems, know that there are worlds and worlds and worlds, and ours is only one.
FOR DAYS, I CANNOT sneak out of the house. The Sisters stay up late during the holidays, writing cards to the village boys at war, in the library beside the window with the broken lock. I wait in the dark of the stairs, alone, rubbing my tired eyes, until at last they leave and I can dart outside to knot the farmer’s blue handkerchief into the ivy wall. There is still no letter from the Horse Lord, only my last one soggy and stained, and it leaves me feeling sick, as though I’ve eaten spoiled ham.
Ba
ck in my attic room, I cannot sleep.
The wind is knocking at the window. Thump. Thump. It is the same sound as horses kicking at a stall to be set free. I am sweating, even though the wind slipping through the cracks is frigid. No matter how much I ball up the blankets, the cold still gets in. I start to call to Papa to put more coal on the fire, but then I remember.
Papa isn’t here.
The day he left for the war, Mama and Marjorie and I dressed in our Sunday clothes. Marjorie combed my hair back into a ribbon, and she held my hand while we stood on the curb, watching the men parade down Waverley Street toward Castle Green, eating plump cherries Mama had brought, cheering, pointing out the men we knew from church and school, snickering at how serious the bakery delivery boys looked in uniform.
And Papa. Papa, with his wide shoulders strong as a workhorse, with his chocolate-colored hair, and that moment—a moment anyone else would have missed—when he saw us cheering for him and had to hold back a proud smile. It wasn’t until that night at supper, when I saw his empty chair at the head of the table, that the echo of the trumpets in my ears started to feel hollow.
I stare at the attic rafters. There are no spiderwebs. There are no swirls of dust. Sister Mary Grace can do one true thing to fight the stillwaters, and that is keep everything very clean, and so that is what she does.
I start coughing and double over, and something falls off my quilt and rolls across the floor. I collapse back on my pillow, feeling shaky and both cold and hot at the same time, and it is then that I recognize that rolling sound of the fallen object.
A pencil.
I strike a match and light a candle, then lean over to peer at the floor.
868-LAPIS BLUE.