The Secret Horses of Briar Hill

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.