A Hundred Horses

by Sarah Lean

  Ruts jiggled us down a lane only just wider than the car. We passed mostly green and brown things: trees and hedges, empty fields, and gates. The GPS showed we were off the map, the car on the screen floating in nowhere. The only thing that seemed the same was the sky, the same as it was in the city, high and out of reach.

  We dipped farther into the valley, around a corner past a place called Keldacombe Farm, and then Mom parked by a stone wall.

  There were two small children sitting on the wall chewing red licorice laces. Gemma, the younger, had fair hair; Alfie had dark hair and flushed cheeks, like me. They wore muddy rubber boots, jeans with holes in the knees, and baggy homemade sweaters.

  Before Mom got out, she reached across and held my hand. I noticed how warm her hand was, how it changed the temperature of mine.

  “Hello, Auntie Cathy,” my cousins said together as Mom stepped out of the car.

  “You’re Nell, aren’t you?” said Gemma, holding the licorice in her teeth. “Everyone calls me Gem.”

  “’Cause Mom says she is one,” said Alfie.

  “Is Nell short for Nelly?” said Gem. “It rhymes with smelly jelly belly,” and she giggled.

  “No,” I said, thinking it wasn’t a very nice thing to say.

  Alfie elbowed her.

  “What? I don’t mean she’s a smelly jelly belly, ’cause she doesn’t look like one,” Gem said, swinging her legs and shrugging away from Alfie. “Is it short for Nellina then? Or Nellanie?”

  “It’s not short for anything,” I said. “I’m just Nell.”

  Gem jumped off the wall and said, “You’re going to sleep in our room, Just Nell.”

  Which made my eyes open wide and my heart sink.

  Gem said, “Come on. We’ve been waiting.”

  Her hand was warm and sticky as she pulled me through the gate.

  We followed my cousins through another gate; between chicken-wire fences, sheds, and coops; past a blue greenhouse; along a crazy path toward Lemon Cottage and its open door. There were ducks and geese wandering around the wide garden. The lawn and pond were speckled with feathers.

  “They’re here!” Gem called.

  The geese swayed and raised their heads, honking at us like we’d caused a traffic jam. Their beaks looked hard, their eyes sharp, as if they knew something just by looking at me.

  Aunt Liv came out of the door. She wiped her hands on a tea towel and flicked it over her shoulder. She didn’t seem to mind the birds as she waded through them. Her flowery dress swished over her knees and across the top of her rubber boots as she hurried to meet us.

  She tucked her short dark hair behind her ear. Mom hugged Aunt Liv as if she was in a hurry, gabbling on about how kind she was to have me at short notice.

  “I tried everyone I could think of,” Mom said. “You were our last resort.”

  Mom has a way of saying what she thinks without thinking about what she’s saying. Then she listed foods I didn’t like (fish, peanut butter, and salad dressing—embarrassing) and how she expected me to behave (polite, kind, helpful) and said I would be no trouble.

  Aunt Liv smiled, put an arm around Mom and me.

  “Come on in. Gem’s made cakes.”

  Six

  Most of their jumbled home was in the big kitchen. There was a long wooden table half set for lunch, half covered in toys and papers. Cabinets with no doors spilled out books and pots and plates, all mixed together. Bunches of dried herbs hung from a clothesline, and a basket of ironing and a pile of folded clothes were heaped on a crumpled sofa.

  Mom dropped her big black handbag on the sofa, and all the other things tipped toward the dip it made. A duck waddled out from under the table and dashed outside, but nobody said anything. It wasn’t like our house with its shiny surfaces and everything tidied away and organized.

  We sat at the table. All the chairs were different. Mine wobbled on the stone floor, and Mom brushed crumbs off hers before she sat down and hung her jacket over the back.

  “This one’s yours,” said Gem, reaching across the table to me with a cupcake in her hand.

  “Have a sandwich first,” said Mom, holding out a plate of egg sandwiches before I could say anything. She always spoke like that, cutting corners.

  Mom told Aunt Liv about the important conference that she had to go to the week after and how hard she’d been working to help organize it. I watched the butter cream squelch up on Gem’s cupcake for me and the cherry plop off. Gem clambered down, picked up the cherry from the floor, and stared at the ball of dust stuck to it. She looked at me, then at the cake.

  Head down, she ran toward her mom and buried her face in Aunt Liv’s dress, holding the cake up high so she wouldn’t ruin it any more.

  “Never mind,” Aunt Liv said softly. “Nell’s here for two weeks. Plenty of opportunity to make her more cakes.”

  “Yes, but I wanted her to have this one.”

  “I know, love,” whispered Aunt Liv. “It was a special one.”

  The cupcake reminded me of the things I had found in the attic. Even when they’re smooshed or broken or pieces are missing and they look grungy, they’re still important. And right from that moment I thought my aunt Liv was nice.

  The teakettle whistled from the old-fashioned iron stove. Aunt Liv got up and steered Gem back to her own chair. She told us she was growing plants in her fields to make tea.

  Mom said, “Tea?” like that, like a question. “You can’t grow tea in England.”

  But Aunt Liv told her they had their own microclimate in the valley and things just needed the right conditions.

  Aunt Liv and Mom were only alike in their faces and their skin. They both had a way of shaking their bangs away from their eyes when they looked up. But that was about it.

  Mom chatted about her recruitment agency and everything else that was keeping us busy and therefore unable to visit relatives.

  “And I need to get back soon, Liv,” Mom said. “I’ll fetch Nell’s suitcase from the car; then I ought to go.”

  She got up, rummaged in her bag to find the car keys. But I couldn’t let her get my suitcase.

  “I’ll get it!” I said, snatching the keys from her hand.

  I ran out, with everyone watching me dodge the flapping geese and ducks. I couldn’t let her get that suitcase. I didn’t want her to find what else I’d hidden in the trunk.

  Seven

  I ran back to the car and lifted the brown leather suitcase out of the trunk.

  I just wanted to see the carousel built again. That’s all. And I wanted to build it myself this time. I’d hidden it in the trunk when Mom wasn’t looking. She wouldn’t know, and then it would only matter to me. But I hadn’t thought about how to get it into Aunt Liv’s house without anyone’s seeing. I couldn’t think how to do it without getting found out, and I was about to put it back in the trunk, cover it with the picnic blanket, and forget the whole stupid idea, because now that it was actually happening, it wasn’t easy or like I had imagined. And then I heard something: the thunder of thumping hooves.

  I spun around. Galloping around the corner, pounding straight toward me, was a black-and-white horse, a dark rider hidden behind its flying mane. They hadn’t seen me.

  I dropped the suitcase. All the metal pieces inside clanked as it slammed to the ground. The horse swung its side around toward me, skidding on the gravel. I leaped back to flatten myself against the car but missed and fell. The horse screamed, reared up, its long mane billowing around it like a storm. I covered my head, curled up, held my breath.

  And when you believe you’re going to die because flying hooves are going to crush you, you can’t help what you think. And what I thought in that moment was that I’d be dead and Mom was going to find the carousel next to me and then I wouldn’t be able to explain and she wouldn’t understand. She’d think I’d been hiding it all along. She’d be unhappy forever, thinking I had betrayed her too. And then the tin girl was there in my mind and she whooshed around and turn
ed her back and I shouted, “No!” because I thought she was going to leave me and somehow it mattered more than anything.

  Instead, there was a cry, a thud, as the rider hit the ground. The horse stamped down beside me, brushing my arm with the long, feathery hair on its legs as it kicked away from me.

  For a moment the horse stood over me, throwing its head, its startled skin quivering. I could see me in its wide dark eye, a tiny me lying there on the ground. It snorted, its nostrils flaring. Then it turned and galloped away, its white tail streaming behind it.

  From the side of the road behind the car I heard the footsteps of the rider.

  “Help,” I said.

  Nobody came. But from where I was lying, I saw a pair of small feet in black flats tiptoeing past the other side of the car. I saw a hand reach out to the brown leather suitcase and drag it away.

  “Hey!” I said.

  But the feet were running, running away with the suitcase and the carousel.

  Eight

  Mom leaped up from her chair as I stumbled into the cottage, dragging the gray suitcase behind me.

  “What happened?” she said.

  I held out my hand so she could see the scrape and the blood and the dirt.

  My throat ached from not crying, from holding in the things I wouldn’t be able to say. Mom brushed me down, got some tissues and antiseptic cream from her bag.

  “There was a horse—”

  “A horse hurt you!” Mom said, which wasn’t what I said at all. “What were you doing going in a field with horses? They’re unpredictable, dangerous if you don’t know what you’re doing. You’re far more sensible than that. Really, what has got into you, Nell?”

  “I wasn’t in a field,” I said. “The horse came down the lane and nearly crashed into me.”

  “What sort of horse was it?” said Aunt Liv, taking the gray suitcase from me.

  “Black and white,” I said, “and very hairy.”

  “It might be one of Rita’s horses,” said Alfie.

  “I don’t think so,” said Aunt Liv, looking puzzled. She turned to Mom. “There used to be about a hundred of those horses next door at Keldacombe Farm, but they’ve been gone for about five months now. They’re due to be sold soon.”

  Gem gasped. “Is there a hundred now?” Then she said in a spooky kind of voice, “Like the story about the hundredth horse.”

  “What story?” asked Aunt Liv.

  “It’s like . . . I think it’s if there’s a hundred horses, then something special happens.”

  “There were only ninety-nine at Rita’s, though,” Alfie said.

  “No, but I mean if there are, then the hundredth horse is magic or something . . . but I can’t remember exactly now.”

  “Gem,” Aunt Liv interrupted, “where did you hear that nonsense?”

  But Gem was looking at Alfie, who was making a face as if he was trying to make her be quiet.

  “Somebody told me at the playground, ages ago,” Gem said, sulking.

  Aunt Liv shook her head. She turned to Mom. “It’s just some silly old wives’ tale.”

  Gem mouthed, No, it’s not, and folded her arms.

  Aunt Liv rolled her eyes and turned back to Mom, who had her hands on her hips, waiting for a proper explanation.

  “I’ll have a chat with Rita at the farm,” Aunt Liv said. “See if she knows anything about the horse. Really, it’s nothing to worry about.”

  “I think there was a girl on the horse,” I said, careful not to say anything about the carousel suitcase. “But I didn’t really see.”

  My cousins looked at each other, their eyes wide. Aunt Liv sighed, like you do when you’ve just figured something out and wish you hadn’t.

  “Oh,” she said. “Perhaps that means Angel’s back.”

  I noticed Gem nudge Alfie, and he shushed and glared at her.

  “And what’s that supposed to mean?” said Mom.

  “Oh, nothing,” Aunt Liv said. “There was a girl who used to hang around the horses on Rita’s farm. There was some trouble. I think she was caught stealing at the supermarket.”

  Mom had a look on her face now that said, “Did I really agree to this?”

  “Anyway,” Aunt Liv said, as if she wished she hadn’t mentioned it, “I heard her family moved away, about the same time as the horses were taken to Old Chambers’s farm over the other side of the valley, so nothing to worry about.”

  There was a heavy silence as Mom put on her jacket and tugged her sleeves straight. Oh, good, I thought. She’s taking me home again.

  “Well, as long as you’re sure you’re okay, Nell, because I have to get back now. I need to finish preparing for the conference.”

  I held on to her. Because I wasn’t okay and I had nothing I wanted to stay for. Not now that the carousel was gone.

  “Don’t worry, Cathy,” Aunt Liv said. “We’ll take very good care of Nell.”

  Mom and Aunt Liv had a private chat outside the door before Mom kissed me about fourteen times and squeezed me in a hug. I linked my fingers around her waist so she couldn’t pull away. But she did.

  Nine

  “Have you two been playing with the cart?” Aunt Liv said, picking up the clothes on the bedroom floor. “I thought I left it behind the greenhouse, but it’s not there.”

  “No, Mom,” Alfie said.

  “Not me,” said Gem, wriggling into her pajamas.

  “Oh, well,” Aunt Liv muttered. “Perhaps I put it somewhere else.”

  I looked around the room. The walls were half straight and half sloping in Alfie and Gem’s bedroom, like we were in the roof. There was a small low window and a big, colorful mess under the bunk beds. There was also a mattress made up into a bed on the floor. I could tell which bed was mine, even though Gem pointed and said, “This is mine, this is Alfie’s, and that’s yours.”

  My cousins squabbled about where they were sleeping because they both wanted to be on the bottom bunk nearest to me. In the end, Aunt Liv put a pillow at either end of the bottom bed and said, “Just for tonight, then back into your own beds.”

  It’s funny, but when you’re little like them, anybody new is really interesting.

  When Aunt Liv had gone, Alfie crawled under the covers and came up next to Gem. They lay on their fronts with their chins in their hands and stared at me.

  “Have you got a horse?” asked Alfie.

  “No,” I said.

  “Have you got a pig?” asked Gem.

  “No,” I said, realizing this game could go on for a long time.

  “Have you got a monkey?” Gem said.

  So I said, “I haven’t got any animals.”

  Gem made a sad face. They whispered to each other.

  “We’ve got a pig,” said Alfie. “Her name’s Maggie.”

  “She’s a kunekune pig, and she’s going to have some babies,” said Gem.

  “Any day now,” said Alfie.

  They were quiet for a bit, just staring at me.

  I couldn’t stop thinking about the carousel. I’d found something unexpected, something that made me feel brilliant inside. Now it was gone, and it left my stomach churning. I shouldn’t have taken it in the first place. Isn’t that what Mom wanted, what we both had wanted, though? Everything of his to be gone.

  I suddenly felt far away from home, far away from everything.

  “Do you want your mom?” said Gem.

  She was right. I wanted my bed, my room, and my mom.

  “Lights out,” said Aunt Liv, coming back and flicking the light switch.

  She knelt down, tucked the duvet tight around me, held my hand to look at the scrape.

  “I feel sick,” I said. “I want to go home.”

  She kissed me softly on the cheek. Her hair smelled like summer.

  “I know,” she said. “It always feels like this when you’re away from your mom and you don’t know anybody and you’re not sure what to expect. That’s exactly how you’re supposed to feel.”

 
I liked that she made it all right to feel that way; it made my eyes follow her as she went out and closed the door. But soon it was unearthly quiet. So quiet you feel you have to fill the silence up with some words.

  “Who’s that girl your mom was talking about earlier? The one who used to live here,” I said.

  I heard the shuffle of the quilt on the bottom bunk.

  In the dark Alfie whispered, “She’s called Angel.”

  “So that means she must be,” whispered Gem. “She stole ninety-nine horses.”

  I thought about when Gem said her name meant something precious. My name doesn’t even mean anything. And it does rhyme with hell and smell.

  “It doesn’t mean you’re it just because of a name,” I said.

  “How do you know?” whispered Alfie.

  “It’s obvious,” I whispered. “Angels don’t steal. Everyone knows that.”

  I could hear Alfie’s and Gem’s wide-awake breaths.

  “They’d be an angel if they had wings, though,” Gem whispered. “They might hide them under their clothes.”

  I turned on my side, curled my knees up, and closed my eyes.

  “Nobody’s got wings,” I said. “And anyway, nobody could steal that many horses. Not even an angel.”

  “Nell,” whispered Alfie, “if you do see her, don’t tell nobody.”

  “Why not?”

  “She’ll probably kill you.”

  Ten

  Maggie, the pig, didn’t have a curly tail. It was straight, and she wagged it, just like a dog. She lived in a brick house with a tin roof in a fenced-off area of a big field.

  Aunt Liv had a few fields. She said Lemon Cottage was a smallholding, not a farm. She had three chickens, ducks, and one pig, but all the rest of her land was for growing things. The geese belonged to Rita at the farm next door. Aunt Liv was looking after them for now until Rita decided what to do with them because she was going to be moving soon.

  “Gem, Alfie, you can help clean out the pen,” Aunt Liv said. “Nell . . .” She looked at my red skirt and white sweater. “Perhaps you could check the water trough, see if it’s full.”