The Secret Horses of Briar Hill

Her ears perk up when my hand goes into my pocket, but her eyes are still wary. She is used to the wind and the sun, not to little girls.

“The Horse Lord wrote me that you liked these.” I take out the shiny red apple I got from Thomas. Her ears swivel forward, curious. She raises her right hoof, but then lowers it again. I take a slow step forward, with the apple resting in my flat palm. “It’s all right. I’m not going to hurt you. I just want to give you this apple.”

When I reach the fountain, my bulky coat knocks off the willow stick, and she jerks at the whip of movement. Her eyes flash their whites.

“Easy, Foxfire.”

But the next step I take is too far. She snorts and paws the snow with muddy hooves. Her thick mane flies as she tosses her head, warning me back.

I stop.

Slowly, I crouch to the earth and roll the apple to her corner of the garden. She stops thrashing. Her eyes never leave me, but she lowers her head. Sniffing. Snorting. Her inquisitive lips grope until they feel the shape of the apple.

She jerks her head up, and munches on it contentedly.

I back up slowly, until I reach the sundial, where there is a new letter tucked under the golden arm, tied in ribbon. I unroll it while Foxfire finishes the apple.

Dear Emmaline May,

I must once again ask you for assistance. Though I thought it impossible, the Black Horse has crossed over into your world and is, at this very moment, in pursuit of Foxfire.

The Black Horse is strong and relentless, but he has one weakness, and it is this: color. Color burns his eyes. The only light he can see by is colorless moonlight—the brighter the moon, the clearer he sees. Tonight, there is a new moon, which means the sky will be dark and he will have to hunt by smell alone. But as the moon grows brighter each night, you must surround Foxfire with colorful objects large enough to be seen from a distance—one for each color of the rainbow—to create a spectral shield that will hide her from his vision even during the brightest full moon.

I beg you to accept this mission of utmost importance.

Ride true,

The Horse Lord

I stare at the letter with wide eyes.

I am to protect Foxfire?

I am to undergo a mission of utmost importance, all on my own? No, no, I can’t possibly. Feeding her and caring for her is one thing, but this is quite another. My heart starts to swell with that rat-a-tat fear, and I want to

crawl over the wall and run, run away from the letter.

But the Horse Lord is depending on me.

I hold the ribbon up to the light. If I’m to find colorful objects, then could this be the first? It is thick and long, surely long enough to be seen from a distance. It is red, but looking closer, it is more than that. Sometimes when it catches the light it is cherry red, other times the same red as the emblems painted on the army trucks that rumble by.

Foxfire is still munching on the apple, but her eyes are fastened to the ribbon. I glance at the ivy covering the garden wall. The vines twist around themselves to form little nooks and pockets, like a fairy shelf. I find a sturdy vine and tie the red ribbon around it so that it flickers in the wind. It is bright and shiny against the dull dark green. I take a step back, and then another, and it still shines brightly.

Yes, I think. Yes, maybe I can do this.

But a cloud covers the sun, and I squint up at the sky.

One red ribbon will not be enough.

I must find something blue, and green, and yellow, and all the other rainbow colors in shades bright enough to blind the Black Horse when he comes for Foxfire. And he will come. I know this. Even now I can feel him circling just beyond the clouds. His black hooves tear up wisps of white-gray as he circles and circles, pulling the winds with him, stirring thunder in his wake.

But where to find blues and greens and yellows? The only colors at the hospital are on little paper tickets attached to our doors that would dissolve in the rain. There are no flowers now. No rainbows arching in the sky after an April rain shower.

The last time I saw a rainbow, I was running home with Marjorie after school, darting from doorway to doorway to escape the spring rain. She made it into a game. Water was poison gas; each drip was one day off your life, so we had to run and run and run, before we had no days left. The rain came harder, and she pulled me into the doorway of a theater. “If we don’t hide,” she said, “We’ll have no days left.” She hugged me close and pointed above the church, where a double rainbow spanned the steeple. “Look!”

Everything at Briar Hill is white snow and gray stone. It is the dull browns and greens of soldiers’ uniforms, and the black of nuns’ habits. No wonder we have drawn the Black Horse straight to us. Our world is colorless midwinter.

I close my eyes and think of that day in the rain. Marjorie’s bright yellow raincoat. My blue socks. The lively pink in our cheeks, not the burn of fever in Anna’s. I take off my mittens and press my cold hands to my face. I miss Marjorie so much, I could cry. I don’t know what to do without her singing me to sleep, making games of rainstorms, sneaking me slices of apple pie. It has been so long since I’ve seen so many colors all together that I’m afraid I might have forgotten them. The only blue I can picture now is a watery sky. The only yellow the murky medicine Dr. Turner gives us. But there must be more out there. There must be brighter things.