The Secret Horses of Briar Hill

There is no one left to save her but me.

I wrap Anna’s coat around me and put on her slippers with shaking hands. I shove the comic book in the large inside breast pocket and hug it to my chest. And I think of Foxfire out there alone. She must be so scared.

What if I’m already too late?

My hand slides off the doorknob. I’m sweating too much, but I eventually get out and down the hall and through the front door. Snow stings my face all the way down to my scalp. I draw the coat tighter and slip out in the snow. It’s gotten deeper in just a few hours.

The night is so dark, I can see only a few feet from the hospital: snow, and night, and my own blowing tufts of hair. The sundial garden might as well be in Berlin.

I crawl through snow that soaks into my nightgown. My socks, my shirt, Anna’s coat are all cold and wet, and I can’t keep from shivering. I crawl. My fingers are red at the tips. I didn’t know cold could burn before now. I keep crawling through the trenches of snow. My face feels too tight in the cold, and I’ve lost feeling in my nose. Bullets of ice assault me. But I keep crawling, until a wall of ivy looms in the darkness. With aching bare fingers I take hold of the twisting vines. I pull myself up. I climb. And climb. The wind tries to push me back down. The ivy wraps around my bare ankles, but I kick it away, and throw a leg over the top. And then my legs give out, and the stillwaters come and I am falling, and falling, and falling.

SOMETHING WARM NUZZLES MY NOSE.

I blink. The sky is filled with thousands of shooting stars, moving back and forth like will-o’-the-wisps, like the tiny glowing creatures Anna told me about, too many to wish on at once. I’m asleep in a cloud that is soft, so soft, that I could lie here forever.

And then a warm gray muzzle and deep brown eyes and a blaze in the shape of a spark push themselves into my vision.

“Foxfire!”

I sit up in a snowdrift, amid the churning flakes that aren’t shooting stars at all, and throw my arms around her neck. She smells of apples. I stroke her with shaking fingers, crying because she is still here.

“I was so afraid.” I pull back, searching her eyes. “I—”

A shadow passes overhead, and we both look up.

A dark stain moves across the clouds, impossibly high, in precise circles. I catch my breath, holding it tight. My fingers knit against Foxfire’s muzzle as both our eyes follow the shadow.

Volkrig’s black wings beat once, and then he veers sharply toward us. His circles spiral tighter and tighter, until he is just over the sundial garden.

“He’s seen us!”

I grapple for the comic book and collapse to my knees. Foxfire noses me around the neck, around my back, as though searching for a wound, but she’ll never find it in any of those places. My wounds run deeper.

Volkrig’s shadow passes over us.

And then, Foxfire lets out a snort. For a painful second, I think one of Volkrig’s sharp black feathers has sliced her just like in my dream about Papa. But no. Her eyes are alert, her ears swiveled forward. Her head lowers first and then one knobby knee, and then the other, and then her rump rolls down to the snow too. She looks over her shoulder at me.

I gasp.

If I cannot walk, then she will carry me.

With numb fingers I grab ahold of the base of her mane. I use my last bit of strength to pull myself up until I’m lying half on her back. She stands slowly, one jerky movement at a time.

“To the far wall,” I whisper. “To the spectral shield.”

She moves in quick steps, as aware as I am of Volkrig circling above. A sudden shriek tears the night. No hawk is that loud. No owl is that full of rage. And then the pressure in the air changes. The snow is suddenly blowing in the wrong direction, away from us. In its place, black feathers rain down. Dozens of them, the length of my arm and sharp as blades. I cry out as one slices against my skin.

When I look up, Volkrig is ten feet above us.

“No!”

I am so close. The protective shield is almost complete. As Foxfire nears the wall I stretch out as far as I can, the comic book clutched in my hand. Almost. I am five inches away. Three. So close—

Foxfire lets out a cry as a black feather slices her. Her haunches bunch, and I know that any moment she is going to bolt. But the gate is closed. There is no place to run this time.

I stretch farther. One inch away!

But then the shadow lowers. The sound of his wings is deafening. One midnight-black hoof the size of my head kicks at my arm and I scream. The comic book falls facedown. Orange side down.