The Secret Horses of Briar Hill

“And that dog. Do you know why he’s called Bog? Because he’s the one who finds the children, and herds them to the bog to drown them after Thomas fattens them up for the witches.”

“Enough!” Anna stands shakily. She pulls off her gas mask. Her curls are wild now, and her face is red from the rubber seals. “Enough, Benny. Not a word of that is true, you’re making it up like something out of your comic book, and I’m tired of your stories and—”

A click comes from the basement door. Sister Constance holds the timer clock, its popped button showing that the half hour has passed. Her gas mask is off, and she gives Anna a long look.

Anna quickly sits down in the chair.

“Back upstairs, children,” Sister Constance orders.

We file out into the rear lawn with heads hung low, masks dangling from our hands, as we walk back to the kitchen terrace. I toss a look at the garden wall. As soon as I can, I will visit the white horse once more.

And then my eyes settle on Thomas’s cottage.

Benny’s story isn’t true, of course.

It isn’t.

Inside, we learn that Jack is right. The tea has gone cold.

I SHOULDN’T TELL ANYONE about the horse in the garden.

I shouldn’t.

But I’ve kept the secret all afternoon, and it is gobbling me up like worms on a dead bird. I burst into Anna’s room as soon as Sister Constance dismisses class, and find her quietly reading. I jump on the bed and press my lips to her ear.

“There is a white winged horse in the sundial garden,” I whisper.

She laughs warmly as my breath tickles her curls, and marks the place in her book with the pink colored pencil and pulls me in close. “My goodness. I thought they were only in the mirrors.”

“I thought so too!” I glance at the door. “But one has gotten out. I don’t dare tell anyone but you, because they might take her away. And besides, her wing is hurt.”

There is a white winged horse in the sundial garden.

Anna nods slowly, deep in thought. “I suppose she needs you to look after her, then. You took care of your horses back in Nottingham, didn’t you? They were bakery horses, you said?” She runs her hand lightly over my hair. “It’s rare to see horses in a city these days.”

I press my ear against her chest, because I like to hear her heart beating. When I slide lower, her stomach goes gurgle, gurgle, gurgle, just like Mama’s does.

“Papa looked after them, mostly.”

She’s stroking my hair softly, looking wistfully out the window. I’ve never really noticed before that Anna’s window looks out onto Thomas’s cottage and the turnip patch, so she must spend all day watching him work.

“I’ll tell you a secret of my own,” she says conspiratorially, “if you promise to keep it to yourself.”

I sit up and nod enthusiastically.

“I’ve never been kissed,” she whispers, as her cheeks go as pink as the colored pencil in her book. “Can you believe it? By the time my older sister was sixteen, she was engaged.”

She looks back out the window, then her eyes dart, just for a moment, to the red ticket affixed to her open door. I wonder if she is thinking that no one will ever kiss her now, not with the stillwaters. Even the Sisters scrub their hands after touching us.

She gives a sort of a sad laugh that becomes a cough that she muffles in her sleeve. I pat her shoulder gently.

“You’ll get better, Anna,” I say. “You’ll be kissed, I know it. After the war is over, you’ll go home and marry a handsome man and have lots of little babies.”

Anna takes my hand in hers and gives it a squeeze. Then she looks down at the naturalist book in her lap, and runs her fingers softly down the cover. “And you?” she asks. “What are you going to do when you are better?”

I shrug. “I don’t know.”

My sister, Marjorie, wants to study the natural world, like Anna, only she’d rather collect stray animals than read about them. In Nottingham she feeds an endless stream of cats. Mama puts up with it only because they kill the mice that gnaw through flour sacks. (Mama doesn’t know that Marjorie feeds the mice, too.) Marjorie would probably like to work here at the hospital, tending to us as though we were helpless cats too.