The Secret Horses of Briar Hill

“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.