The Secret Horses of Briar Hill

The Black Horse.

I flip over the Horse Lord’s letter and take out my chalk, still in my pocket from last night. It makes fat lines, but I don’t need to say much.

I accept.—Emmaline May

I STAND OUTSIDE of the barn with my arms hugged tightly around my chest. Inside, someone is pounding a hammer. Thwack. Thwack. Thwack. I take a deep breath and push open the door.

Thomas sees me and stops repairing the broken kitchen bench, which he has already repaired three times before. He’s sweating with the effort and his dark hair is smeared across his face and I suddenly don’t want to be here, but I promised the Horse Lord.

“Did you need something, Emmaline?”

His voice isn’t as angry as the tight set of his face. I point to the bucket of old apples Thomas gives the sheep. “May I have one of those?”

His eyebrows knit together, but then he sets down the hammer and digs around in the bucket until he finds a good one. He starts to hand it to me, but at the last minute gives me a suspicious look. “This wouldn’t be for the winged horse in the sundial garden, would it?”

I eye him warily. He said that he’d seen the winged horses too, but Thomas is practically an adult. If Benny and the three little mice won’t even believe me, why would he? But Thomas’s face is very serious. It’s a plain kind of face. His chin is rather weak, and his forehead stretches for miles when he brushes his sweaty hair back like that. But he has nice eyes. They are green, like mine.

I take the apple. “Have you really seen the winged horses?”

He picks his hammer up again. “Yes.”

“In the mirrors?”

“In the frozen lake on the Mason farm, just beyond the back fields. When the sun shines, the ice is like a mirror, and you can see them plain as day.”

I run my finger along the dusty edge of his workbench. “I know what caused the hoofprints on the roof after the snowstorm,” I tell him. “There’s another horse that’s crossed through the mirror. A black one. I got a special letter about it. Have you seen him?”

Thomas wipes the sweat from his forehead again. “Not yet, no.”

“Well, be careful. He is a dark and sinister force.”

Thomas raises an eyebrow. Then he nods toward Bog, who is asleep, dreaming dog dreams, by a stack of pine boxes. “I wouldn’t worry too much about the Black Horse. If he gets close, Bog will bark like mad. He scares away the foxes. He can scare away anything.”

I like Bog. He’s a smart dog, and he’ll chase after a stick if you throw it, but I don’t think all the barking in the world could scare away the Black Horse.

“Thank you,” I say. “For the apple.”

“Give my regards to the winged horse in the sundial garden. I haven’t seen him, but I think I’ve heard him moving around. Tell him I hope his wing heals soon.”

“It’s a girl,” I say. “Her name is Foxfire.”

He pauses the hammer. “My mistake.” And then, “A good name, for a good horse.”

I stand up, hugging my arms against the cold, and then I think of something. “How did you know about her broken wing?”

Thomas swings the hammer with his one arm. “Well.” He swings the hammer again. Thwack. “If she didn’t have a broken wing, she would have flown away.”

I reach into my pocket and rub the Horse Lord’s ribbon between my fingers.

Maybe Thomas sees the winged horses because he didn’t go off to war like the other young men in the village. Maybe missing the war means he hasn’t entirely grown up. And yet, as he swings that hammer, there is something about him that is like the twisting old oaks on the front lawn—ancient and knowing.

DR. TURNER CANNOT COME to the hospital on account of the snow. Sister C

onstance rings up the chemist in Wick who delivers our medications once a week, but he can’t make it either, so Sister Constance has to borrow the donkey that lives on the Mason farm, and the cart, and ride into Wick on her own. It’s funny to see her in her black nun’s habit, under a thick coat and four layers of blankets, steering a rickety old donkey through the snow. I laugh, but Anna chides me.

“Hush, Em. Would you rather make the trip to Wick?”

I sigh. Then Anna starts coughing into her handkerchief and I feel awful, because out of all of us, Anna is the one who needs the medicine most.