A Hundred Horses

by Sarah Lean

  The ground was soft and lumpy with sticky mud and ruining my shoes. Maggie followed me over, waddling behind me with her barrel belly and rolled ears and wrinkled piggy eyes. She nudged my leg with her flat piggy nose.

  “What’s she doing, Aunt Liv?” I said.

  “Don’t worry, Nell, she’s just wondering who you are.”

  Well, I wished she wouldn’t. I wished she would stop following me.

  “Nice Maggie piggy,” I said, and held my hands up because she probably couldn’t understand English. “Wait there.”

  Maggie’s ears twitched toward me. She seemed to be listening. But she nudged me again.

  She turned her back and flicked her tail against my legs. I supposed she wanted me to pat her. But there I was again, doing something I didn’t want to do. I saw Aunt Liv look over, so I thought I’d better do it. Maggie took a step away from me as I reached out. I felt my shoes sinking. I heard the sucking noise as I tried to free them, as Maggie moved away. Too late. I fell down in the mud.

  Maggie squealed and trotted back to her shed.

  “Maggie can be a bit naughty if she thinks you don’t like her,” Aunt Liv said, running over, holding her hand out to help me up.

  A clever pig then.

  I didn’t want my mucky fingers to touch one another, so I stood with my hands spread and my arms away from my clothes until Aunt Liv said to swill my hands in the trough. Then she wiped them on her apron, and I didn’t want to say anything about that. I stared at the dirt stuck in the lines of my hands, like somebody had drawn them with a dark brown pencil.

  We cleaned and filled the food and water bowls for the geese and chickens, and after lunch Aunt Liv told us to go play in the garden. I didn’t mind my cousins too much, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to dig a tunnel to China with them. So I asked Aunt Liv if I could stay with her.

  She nodded to Gem and Alfie, told them to get digging if they wanted to reach China before dinnertime.

  “I’ve got some weeding to do,” Aunt Liv said. “You could help me, if you like.”

  I think she could tell I hadn’t done any weeding before.

  “Otherwise there’s a fence to repair and some herbs to plant.”

  I was definitely staying in the house today. I pulled at my muddy clothes. Mom would have said to get changed, immediately, but Aunt Liv didn’t seem to notice dirt.

  “Can I call Mom?” I said.

  “You could, only I think she’s going to be busy preparing for the conference right now. Wait until this evening; then you can have a proper chat.”

  She tilted her head and tucked her hair behind her ear.

  “How about you take some things over to Rita at Keldacombe Farm? Rita’s not been herself since Mr. Hemsworth passed away last June. She’s felt rather down.”

  She pushed the hair away from my face and smiled. “But I’m sure a visitor would cheer her up.”

  My brain woke up. Rita might know something about the horse and also, even more important, the girl who had stolen the carousel suitcase!

  “You mean go on my own?” I said.

  Aunt Liv looked at me for a long time before she answered. It was the most normal thing for me to say, but obviously not the most normal thing for her to hear.

  “Of course. You’ll be fine.”

  Aunt Liv gave me a box of eggs and a thermos of tea. She explained how to get to the farm next door, which didn’t really mean next door like at our house. You had to go down the track a bit, then cut across a field and through a yard.

  “Should I ask Rita about that horse?”

  “Good idea, Nell. And later we’ll see about finding you some more suitable clothes.”

  Eleven

  Keldacombe Farm looked like a giant quiet grave; the windows had that way of looking at you as though they dared you to find out what was behind the walls. Not creepy, sort of unknown. Like when you read someone’s name on a gravestone and you know someone’s under there, but also that he’s not.

  Nothing moved or made a sound except the black crows croaking as they swept away from the roof.

  I walked toward the house. Grass and weeds grew through cracks in the yard between the stables, except near one door, where the grass was flattened, as if somebody had walked over it.

  The porch door was open. I thought I heard voices.

  I know you’re not supposed to listen to other people talking when they’re in another room. I wasn’t sure if I should go inside if Rita had someone else with her.

  I called, “Hello?”

  It went quiet for a moment. I stepped inside the hallway. There was a coat with dusty shoulders hanging there, two pairs of old boots. A grandfather clock looked down at me. Its silent ivory face had stopped at six o’clock.

  “Anybody there?” I said.

  A lady’s voice. “Come on in, whoever you are.”

  Rita was sitting up against some pillows on top of a bed in her sitting room. Another house where everything seemed to have tumbled into one room. It was gloomy and smelled old, filled with dark wooden furniture and tarnished brass handles. There were cardboard boxes along one wall, half filled with things wrapped in newspaper. The green velvet curtains were partly open, but the rest of the room was dim, and I couldn’t see anyone else there. I wondered who Rita had been talking to.

  “My name’s Nell,” I said. “I’m staying at Lemon Cottage with my aunt Liv. She asked me to bring you some things.”

  Rita didn’t speak again right away but then said, “I don’t get many visitors these days.”

  She had gray hair, with brownish-reddish waves grown out long ago.

  “So you’re Liv’s niece. She mentioned you were coming to stay.” She patted the spot next to her on the bed. “Sit, sit. Tell me all about yourself.”

  I sat on the end of the bed, but there was nothing to say. So I gave her the thermos and said, “Would you like some tea? Aunt Liv made it for you.”

  A tired smile carved into her cheeks.

  “How do you like it here?” she said, pouring greenish tea into a cup.

  “I just got here yesterday,” I said. “I don’t know much about animals and plants and things.”

  She looked at my dirty clothes.

  “It’s not something you can read about in schoolbooks,” she said. She gave me the cup, held her hands out, turned her palms over and back.

  “See these hands?”

  They were wide and freckled, with knotted knuckles, and they reached toward me.

  “That’s how you know, with your hands.”

  The cup was getting hot, and I tried to give it back.

  “Drink,” she said. “It’ll make your hair curl like mine.”

  She smiled, but I didn’t get it.

  “Take no notice. Just a saying. And brussels sprouts won’t put hairs on your chest either.”

  She laughed, but I still didn’t know what she was on about.

  “Go on, try it.”

  I tasted the tea, and it was horrible. Like watery grass.

  Rita chuckled again and took it away, then sipped from the same cup.

  “Well, you can tell Liv I think it’s delicious.”

  Then she put the cup down and knitted her fingers together.

  “So what is it you wanted to tell me?”

  Well, I didn’t know what she meant by that either, but I was waiting for my chance to ask her about the horse.

  “Aunt Liv said you used to have a hundred black-and-white horses,” I said. “I saw one yesterday, and my mom thinks it might be dangerous.”

  Before she could answer, there was movement from the alcove in the far wall. Out of the shadows stepped a girl, with long, dark, unbrushed hair, a big coat, and a mean scowl. She stepped into the light, and her eyes flashed sky blue.

  “You’re the dangerous one,” the girl hissed. “It’s all your fault, jumping out and scaring her!”

  “Now, now, Nell’s just telling it like she saw it,” Rita snapped. “Don’t you mind her, Nell. Ang
el doesn’t care much for people and being pleasant.”

  So this was Angel—the angel. And what I’d told Alfie was true: just because you’re called something doesn’t mean anything. This girl looked more like a mean pixie than an angel.

  Rita reached for Angel’s hand.

  “Is it Belle we’re talking about? What are you doing with her? She should be with the others at Old Chambers’s farm; the auction is coming up soon.”

  Angel didn’t take her piercing eyes off me.

  “Old Chambers said I could look after her for a couple of weeks.”

  “Oh, he did, did he?”

  “Yes, he did!” Angel shouted. “But now she’s spooked her and Belle’s got lost—”

  Rita held on to Angel’s arm, stopped her from flying across the room at me, pulled her back.

  “That horse knows this place even better than you. She won’t have gone far.”

  Rita tried to look into Angel’s face, but Angel wasn’t having any of it. She shook Rita’s hand away, came around the bed. I saw her feet. She was wearing black flats.

  “It was you!” I gasped.

  But before I could say any more, Angel’s eyes narrowed. She stared into me without speaking, right into me, mean and angry, as if she were trying to make me not say what she’d done. I backed away as she stalked toward me.

  “Angel, this has nothing to do with Nell—leave her be,” Rita snapped again.

  But Angel wasn’t listening.

  “You tell anyone else you saw me,” she whispered through her teeth as she ran past, “and you’ll never get it back.”

  Twelve

  I didn’t dare tell anyone about Angel, not yet. Not now that there was a chance of getting the carousel back. But why didn’t she want me to say I’d seen her? I remembered Gem had said she’d stolen ninety-nine horses. Did it have something to do with that? I hadn’t even been in the countryside a whole day and already I’d decided I never, ever wanted to come again. But while I was here, I was going to get that carousel back, and I was going to build it.

  Later Aunt Liv took me into a secondhand shop in the village and made me try on things that smelled musty and old. She bought me someone else’s jeans and T-shirts and sweaters and a pair of blue rubber boots. It wasn’t like a costume or anything, but I definitely didn’t look like me anymore. Or anyone I knew.

  And then, just as we stepped out of the shop, some chickens almost flew into our faces. There were thousands of them, scattered in the street and along the sidewalk. They ran into open shop doors, fluttered up onto walls and windowsills, bok-bok-bokkahing and flapping. People shooed them out of doorways and tried to collect them in their arms and herd them all together.

  “Electric chickens!” shouted Gem. “You plug them in and out pops an egg.”

  “She means battery chickens,” said Alfie, rolling his eyes.

  “What?” said Gem. “You’d lay an egg if I plugged you in.”

  “And they’re barn chickens, dopey,” said Alfie.

  “Liv, give us a hand!” someone shouted.

  “Come on, children,” she said. “Mrs. Barker needs some help.”

  Soon loads of people had joined hands, trying to collect the escaped chickens into a big horseshoe shape between them.

  “Nell!” called Gem, breaking the circle and holding her hand out. It was her face that made me join in, her happy eyes and tinkling laugh.

  Nobody else seemed to find it funny, and I don’t think Gem was laughing because of the chickens. I think it was that giddy feeling of everyone swooping and tugging one another around.

  We all shuffled together, toward the other end of the street where chickens spilled in and out of a field.

  A lady with gray, curly hair, wearing a hounds-tooth coat and rubber boots, was by the open gate, waving a long stick to guide the chickens back into the field. A collie dog lay pressed to the ground beside her.

  There were long wooden barns down the end of her field, and one of them was wide open. The chickens fluttered like bonfire sparks, ran into a barn and back out again, as if they didn’t know what to do.

  And then some of the chickens made a dash for the road again. One headed straight for me. It flapped into the air. And I caught it!

  I could feel the spiny tubes in its wings and a warm bare patch of skin underneath, prickled with tiny new feathers. The chicken didn’t wriggle, but now that I had it, I didn’t know what to do with it.

  “In here.” Mrs. Barker pointed, reaching her stick around me to guide me into the field too.

  Her dog thought she meant him.

  “Down, Kip!” she shouted as he darted forward. He dropped instantly, although you could see in his shiny eyes he was desperate to scatter the chickens.

  I crouched and held the chicken away from me as more chickens flapped past. I lowered its feet until they touched the ground. The chicken jerked its head and looked at a long piece of rope lying on the ground, tied to a metal pole.

  “That’s not a worm,” I whispered.

  It twitched its head and looked up. And I don’t know why, but I couldn’t let it go. Maybe it was because of its cross little eyes and the way its head was on one side, like it wanted to ask me a question.

  I realized the chicken lived in a barn and maybe it didn’t get to look out of the window very often. And then the tin girl was there, in my mind’s eye, looking up. So I did too, and I saw the sky was as blue as forever. And somehow I knew what that meant.

  “That’s sky,” I said. “It’s where you fly.”

  I opened my hands, and the chicken ran back into the barn.

  Mrs. Barker closed the gate behind me, dragged her sleeve over her flustered face, and thanked Aunt Liv for helping.

  “This is my niece, Nell,” Aunt Liv said. “She’s visiting us for the first time.”

  Mrs. Barker glanced at me but was too agitated to smile back. She looked into the field.

  “What happened?” Aunt Liv said.

  “One of the barn doors was opened,” she said. “And the main gate.” Mrs. Barker closed her mouth tight, her face and neck as red as the chickens’ wobbly chins. “I’ve been keeping Dorothy, my goat, in this field. And she’s gone missing,” she said, picking up the long rope from the grass. “If I hadn’t heard she’d moved away, I’d know who to point the finger at.”

  “Who?” said Aunt Liv.

  Mrs. Barker looked at me.

  “School vacation?”

  I nodded. And then she said, “Well, keep your eyes open. If you should come across a girl called Angel Weston, you should steer well clear.”

  Which made my mouth clamp shut.

  “Is it always like this here?” I asked on the way home.

  Aunt Liv laughed. “What, you mean, escaped chickens? No. But it’s all rather strange. A horse and chickens on the loose and a missing goat.”

  “Maybe it’s because of the fairy’s tail?” said Gem, suddenly skipping along.

  “She means fairy tale,” said Alfie.

  “That’s what I said.” Gem put on her spooky voice. “Maybe there are a hundred horses now and the hundredth one is magic and it’s trying to set all the animals free.”

  “You can’t even remember the story properly,” Alfie said, huffing.

  “Yes, I know, but it could be, couldn’t it?” Gem skipped over and clung to my arm. “Do you think it is, Nell?”

  “Are you talking about that hundredth horse story again? I don’t even know it.”

  “Yes, but stories can be true.” She was pleading now. “Can’t they, Mom?”

  Aunt Liv rolled her eyes and sighed.

  “Well, stories are about us, about people really, about what it’s like to be us. But that doesn’t mean everything about them is true.”

  “Maybe the hundredth horse is here, and we don’t even know it,” Gem whispered, peering through the hedgerow as if there might be something hidden behind it.

  I remembered looking in the box in the attic and finding the stran
ge creatures I’d made and believed in when I was four.

  “It’s because you’re only five, Gem,” I said. “When you get older, you’ll realize there are no such things.”

  Thirteen

  I phoned Mom and told her about the escaped chickens. She said, “You held a chicken!” and I said it was warm and soft and quite special. I told her what I said to it, and she said, “I expect it listened to you,” which made me feel nice. I said that I’d put it back, like I was asked, and she said, “I expect that chicken is looking out of the window right now, wondering about the girl who showed it the sky.”

  I listened to her soft breathing for a minute. I knew she was wondering the same thing too.

  Afterward me, Gem, and Alfie put away the dinner things. Gem made up a new word. She said because a shepherd is someone who rounds up sheep, we must be chickherds. You couldn’t tell her any different.

  “We’re going to build our own farm,” she said.

  “She means a toy one,” said Alfie.

  “And it’s going to have pigs, chickens, some magic horses and angels, and everything. Come and do some too, Nell,” she said, holding my arms and bouncing up and down.

  I knew how she felt. It was what my insides did when I thought about building the carousel. I didn’t want to see Angel again, but I knew if I wanted the carousel back, I was going to have to find her. I asked Gem and Alfie if they knew where she lived.

  “She doesn’t live here anymore,” Alfie said. “Mom said her family moved away.”

  Gem whispered in Alfie’s ear; then Alfie whispered in mine.

  “Sometimes she used to sleep in a trailer, back behind the farm,” he said.

  “Sometimes?” I asked.

  “Sometimes she disappeared,” whispered Gem.

  I rolled my eyes: when you’re five and seven, you believe anything.

  “Why are you whispering?” I said.

  Gem bit her lip. “’Cause she never liked people going to the trailer.”

  I asked Aunt Liv if I could go out for a while, and she said yes. I waited for her to ask what I was going to be doing, but she didn’t. Gem said, “What about making our magic farm?” and I said, “Maybe later.” Then she pulled my arm to bend me down so she could talk into my ear. “Angel knows the fairy’s tail about the hundredth horse,” she whispered.