This can’t be my winged horse.
My winged horse is chicken feathers and a soft gray muzzle. My winged horse is a blaze the shape of a spark.
Clomp. Clomp. Clomp.
Thunder comes again, and something cracks in the roof, as though whatever is on the other side is trying to tear its way in. I back up against the bed and trip over the fallen candle.
Forget it!
I grab my coat, throw open the door, and gallop down the stairs and straight into Anna’s room. She jerks upright at the sound, sweaty hair plastered to the side of her face, eyes squinting. I jump on the bed next to her and burrow
under the covers.
“Emmaline! What’s the matter? Why are you wet?” She pushes the hair out of her face. “Have you been outside, you mad child?”
Her bed is warm. Her bed is safe. The attic is far away, and the roof with the shaking rafters and the stomping horse is even farther. I take a long, deep breath. Icy rain and wind push at her bedroom window, but muffled by the wool blanket, it seems like only a storm. “The wind blew my window open.”
“I’ve a towel on the—”
“There was something out there, Anna. On the roof. I think another one of the winged horses has crossed over from the mirror-world. A bad one.”
In the darkness, I cannot see her face. She switches on her light, and then studies me with frowning eyes. She glances at the small oval hand mirror on her bedside table. It reflects a small sliver of the window that the wool blanket hasn’t quite covered; a slice of the outside, which is dark now.
“I thought it was the one from the garden,” I continue, “but it can’t be because her wing is hurt and she can’t fly. It was so loud, pawing and pawing like it was angry. Didn’t you hear it?” She is still looking at the mirror, oddly, as though her thoughts are elsewhere. “Anna, didn’t you hear it?” I shake her by the sleeve.
She blinks. “No. But…I’m all the way down here on the second floor, and your room is right beneath the roof. Are you certain it wasn’t branches falling?”
“I need to check on the horse in the garden. Something awful might have happened to her.” When I start to roll out of bed, Anna snaps upright and grabs me.
“You can’t! You’ll freeze out there.”
“She’s all alone!”
She holds me firmly. “Well, you can check on her in the morning. You won’t be able to help her if you catch fever. Now fetch that towel from the banister, and put on these socks. You’re shaking.”
She dries my hair with the towel, and wipes the ice off my eyelashes. I keep looking at that sliver of night reflected in the mirror. Waiting to see a flash of wings and kicking hooves. But there is nothing.
Nothing.
Nothing.
Anna switches off the lamp and turns her back to me, but then after a few moments rolls over and interlaces her fingers with my own. She gives my hand a squeeze. Once she falls asleep, I can feel her temperature rise, night sweat soaking into the sheets. I drift off to the sound of twenty children coughing in their sleep, and I think about the white winged mare, of lightning, and of rat-a-tat hooves.
SOMETIME IN THE NIGHT, the rain turns to snow. At first light, Anna and I push our faces against the bedroom window, watching it come down in quiet flakes. It is thicker here than I ever saw in Nottingham, where city snow quickly turns slushy and brown. The whole world outside is still, except for Thomas trudging through the snow to bring the sheep into the barn, and Bog, who nips at the sheep’s backsides.
“Can I borrow your mittens?” I ask Anna.
“You’re still going there, even though you know you shouldn’t?”
“I have to.”
She squints into the bright world outside. Thomas and Bog are rescuing one of the lambs, which has managed to wedge itself between two fence posts. Thomas’s cheeks are red, and his breath puffs in the air, but then he manages to free the sheep, scooping it up with just his one arm, and tossing it over the fence, where it goes stumbling through the snow to its mama sheep.
“Then I’m coming too,” Anna says.
“You mustn’t! You’re sick.”
“So are you, you naughty goose. I’m tired of this bed, and I’m not a complete invalid, no matter what Dr. Turner says. I want to walk in the snow.” Slowly, frailly, she makes her way over to the cedar chest at the foot of the bed. Just that effort puts her out of breath, though she tries to hide it. Out come woolen mittens and hats and scarves that are all a dull shade of gray. She starts to wind a scarf around my neck.