A Hundred Horses

by Sarah Lean

  “Your suitcase isn’t in the stables. Do something for me, and I promise I’ll give it back.”

  She took her hand away, and I realized then she wasn’t holding me there, not with her hands anyway. My heart was thumping and not just because I’d been running. I was wide awake, alive; the tin girl was spinning in my head.

  “Do what?” I said.

  “Think of something. You mustn’t let her go in the stable.”

  Just like that, the answer clunked in my head: Angel was hiding Mrs. Barker’s stolen goat in the stables. I don’t know what made me do what I did next. I didn’t stop to think why. I just wanted the carousel.

  “I saw your goat!” I shouted, running into the yard. “She’s up the hill by the oaks. I saw it.”

  Eighteen

  Mrs. Barker tipped her head to tell Kip to get back in the Land Rover, and then she left to go find her goat.

  Rita beckoned me over. Her hands were rough but warm as she held my chin up.

  “Up on the hill, you say?” she said. “Is that right, Angel?”

  Angel appeared from behind the wall. Rita looked at her, but Angel stared at the ground.

  I had lied, but I thought Rita would understand when I told her the truth as soon as Angel gave the suitcase back. Which was going to be any minute now.

  “Well, this is a first,” Rita said. “Now come on inside and put the kettle on, love. Three cups.”

  Angel didn’t come. She must have gone to get my suitcase at last because I’d helped her just like she asked me to.

  I got the tea things from the kitchen and took in what we needed on a tray. Rita was sitting on the side of her bed.

  “Why did you say this is a first?” I said. “Did you mean people can’t normally find Angel?”

  Rita put her cup back on the saucer. She was looking at me in that way people do when they’re wondering about you.

  “I meant that when they do find her, they don’t usually stick around very long.” Her eyebrows were up as if she’d said enough. I saw her point. But then Rita said, “She doesn’t usually let them.”

  And that was the moment when something inside me changed. Everything stopped in my head, all the wondering about what Angel might have done. A stronger feeling swept over me, one that made my insides ache. I realized I knew what it meant when you don’t let people stick around. You’re scared that they don’t really want to know you, that when they do, they’ll leave you anyway. So you make yourself not care about them first. Maybe Angel and I were more alike than I had imagined. It was as if Angel had walked right inside me and I knew something about her, and myself, something more fragile than broken eggshells. It was as if those fragments were in my hands and I could crush them.

  I realized then that Angel had come into the house and was listening, half hiding behind the door.

  I poured some tea for her.

  “Three sugars,” said Rita. “Same as Mr. Hemsworth used to have.”

  I stirred the sugar and carried the rattling cup and saucer over to Angel, as if it were the eggshells. And I could tell by her face that she was just as surprised as I was at what Rita had said. It was like going off the edge of the map. Who knew where we were now?

  Angel took the cup without saying thanks and left me standing there with the saucer. She didn’t have my suitcase.

  “Now sit down, Angel,” Rita said. “And tell me what’s going on.”

  Angel didn’t sit, and she started to say, “Old Chambers said—” but Rita was having none of it.

  “I don’t want to hear that Old Chambers is letting you look after Belle. According to Mrs. Barker, Old Chambers says the horse has gone missing and she’s helping him look for her.”

  Rita took a breath, and her voice softened.

  “You didn’t ask him, did you?”

  Angel curled up on the window seat and raked her hands through her hair, messing it up even more than it already was. And that seemed to be a message to Rita.

  “All right, all right,” she said gently.

  Rita took a step toward Angel but then seemed to change her mind. And I knew too that Angel wouldn’t be able to let her near.

  “Angel, love,” Rita said. “You know I have no choice but to sell Belle at the auction. Where is she? Did you take Mrs. Barker’s goat?”

  Angel buried her eyes in her hands, under her wild hair.

  “I can’t find Belle,” she said. “Don’t tell Mrs. Barker I’m here. You know she doesn’t like me.”

  Rita tapped her lip. Her puzzled eyes tightened. She stared and stared at Angel. Angel wouldn’t budge. Whatever secrets she was hiding, she wasn’t going to tell.

  “Drink your tea,” Rita said. “I expect you’re hungry too.”

  She went out to the kitchen and left us there, giving Angel a knowing nod, as if she was giving her the opportunity to say something to me. It was silent except for Angel sucking her tea up with her breath. So I slurped too. It’s not the sort of thing I would normally do, but somehow it seemed just right. I saw her dazzling eyes turn up.

  I heard plates being put out in the kitchen, the rumble of the microwave.

  And what I was thinking just then was that I did care about the eggshells in my hands and I could choose what happened next.

  Angel uncurled in the window seat, her fingers smoothing the corner of the green velvet curtains, shaking her hair away from her face as if she had been pretending how much she was bothered by what Rita had said. I knew I was in the corner of her eye. I guessed maybe it hadn’t been an act. But I couldn’t really be sure about anything to do with her.

  Then she muttered, “Why are you still here?”

  I ignored how that made me feel. The door between us had opened, and I didn’t want it to slam shut again.

  “Because you’ve got something of mine,” I said. “And because you want me here.”

  She only looked at me for half a second, then closed her eyes and shook her head. My turn to play her game.

  “That’s why you took my suitcase, so I’d have to come and find you,” I said, glad I was getting a reaction from her. “And I’m here for two weeks, and I’ve got nothing better to do.”

  I watched her eyes darting about under a frown.

  “I wish you’d just go away,” she muttered.

  “But you tell lies. And,” I said, realizing I was getting her riled, “I want to help. I could take the goat back to Mrs. Barker; then she won’t have to know you’re here.”

  I didn’t know I was going to say that, but right then I knew I meant it. Then the frown and scowl were gone, and Angel smiled.

  Rita was in the doorway, hands on hips, interested in this bit of our conversation. But it was just for Angel and me. I held my ground and waited. Rita nodded to herself and returned to the kitchen. Cutlery clattered.

  Angel left her cup on the windowsill and wandered around the room, running her hand over things, not looking at me. She came up behind where I was sitting on a stool. I thought I’d started to figure out what Angel was like. She was probably making faces at me behind my back. But before I could put my cup and saucer down to turn around, I felt Angel’s fingers combing through my hair. She started braiding, turning my hair gently.

  “If you really want to help,” Angel said, with a smirk in her voice, “you’re going to have to help me catch the goat first.”

  I felt the tug at the back of my neck when she pulled the braid taut and tied it.

  “I thought that’s what was in the stables!” I said.

  She laughed.

  “You guessed wrong.”

  I felt the braid fall against my shoulder, heard the soft patter of feet as she ran out, snatching a plate of food and chips from Rita in the doorway as she went.

  Rita snuffed a soft laugh. She seemed to know Angel well, but it felt like I had joined in a story in the middle of the book. And now I felt like an idiot again. I’d got it all wrong, and she still hadn’t given back what belonged to me.

  Then I
realized that even if she wasn’t hiding Mrs. Barker’s goat in the stables, she was hiding something in there. She’d lied again, but I’d guessed what it was: Belle, the black-and-white horse. But I had no idea why, or what was really going on.

  Nineteen

  That evening Mom telephoned and told me she was tired and had only a few days left to prepare before the conference. I told her I was wide-awake and she said it must be the fresh country air and I said or maybe the big sky and I could tell she was smiling. Afterward I asked Aunt Liv if I could go out again, and she said yes, but not for long.

  I couldn’t stay away from Angel, and not just because I didn’t have the suitcase back.

  The trailer door was open. I could see Angel sitting across the armchair. She didn’t say anything when I went in, and she didn’t seem surprised either, as if she had been waiting for me. She moved her legs, and I sat on the warm arm of the chair where they had been.

  “You promised you would give my suitcase back,” I said.

  Her eyes narrowed. It made me want to take up less space on the chair.

  “Tell me why you want it first,” she said.

  I wanted to be able to tell someone about the carousel, about how I needed to put it back together again and find the tin girl. I didn’t want to be a liar, not like her. It’s so hard to hide things. I wanted to tell someone. Should I tell her?

  The longer it took me to answer, the fiercer Angel’s eyes pierced mine. I could see her mouth changing, not smirking anymore but smiling. And I knew I wanted to tell her; I wanted to share more with her. Then we heard footsteps running toward the trailer.

  “Don’t let them in,” Angel whispered, slipping to the floor.

  I closed the door behind me and hurried down the steps toward the widening halo of a flashlight.

  “Nell! Mom says you’ve got to come see,” Alfie said. “Maggie’s having her babies. Now!”

  Maggie, the pig, was lying on her side on a thick bed of straw, grunting and panting. She’d already had two babies, mini pink and gold and black piglets wriggling in the straw.

  “I’m glad they found you,” Aunt Liv said. “I thought you might like to see this.”

  Well, I did. And I didn’t.

  I decided I felt happier staying at the head end and watched Aunt Liv as she rubbed with a towel each piglet that was born. Then she passed them to Alfie and Alfie passed them to Gem and Gem held them out to me. And I thought about holding them, but I was too scared I might do something wrong, so she laid them with Maggie, telling her what she had named each of them—Grunty and Bunty and Humpty, all their names rhyming. Aunt Liv spoke to Maggie gently each time she grunted, called her a good old girl.

  We were there for ages. It was dark except for the lantern that Alfie hung on a hook above us. It made a warm yellow circle around Maggie and her staggering piglets. And then I started to see that they were actually beautiful but tiny and helpless until they lay with their mother. And you could just watch them all together, and everything got more and more beautiful, right there in the golden straw.

  I sensed something before I realized what was happening. In Aunt Liv’s anxious hands. The way she moved away from us, out of the light, turning her body to hide what she held.

  “Oh, no,” she said softly.

  Maggie had suddenly gone quiet, panting hard.

  “Alfie, you and Gem run up to the house and call the vet. Take the flashlight. Now, please,” Aunt Liv urged. “Nell, would you take this from me?”

  The straw rustled under my knees as I knelt down and Aunt Liv handed me a bundle.

  “I’m sorry to do this to you, Nell, but I need to help Maggie out right now,” Aunt Liv said, and turned away. “I think it’s too late, but try rubbing it.”

  She felt around Maggie, talked quietly to her, saying, “Come on, there’s a good girl. Don’t give up now.”

  I couldn’t move, terrified of the tiny weight in my hands, of the loose little body wrapped in the towel.

  “Nell,” Aunt Liv said, “just try.”

  I rubbed, scared and trembling. The piglet rolled silently between my palms. There was a piece of straw stuck to its glistening skin. It shouldn’t have been there, but I couldn’t touch it, and I couldn’t make it go away.

  Suddenly I felt someone kneeling beside me in the shadows. Angel! She took the piglet and swung it headfirst toward the ground. I reached out, thinking she was hurting it when it was already dead. She put her hand out, pushed me away. She stepped back from me, laid the piglet along her leg, and scooped her fingers in its mouth. Silently and quickly her hands moved. She swung it again, blew into its nose, turned it over, and rubbed.

  She wrapped the towel back around it, laid it on my lap, and vanished into the dark.

  Alfie and Gem ran back in. “Mr. Thomas is coming,” Alfie puffed. “He’ll be here in a minute.”

  “Thank you, Alfie. But I think Maggie’s going to be all right, aren’t you, girl? Look, the next one’s on its way.”

  Aunt Liv looked over her shoulder at me, shook her hair away from her face.

  “Nell?”

  She reached out to take the piglet back from me. I unwrapped the towel and held it out to her. The piglet quivered; tiny black eyes looked up.

  “Look,” I whispered. “It’s alive.”

  “Oh, well done, Nell,” Aunt Liv breathed.

  Gem hugged me and kissed the piglet.

  “It’s the magic, Nell,” she whispered. “It’s the hundredth horse magic. It’s here, and it’s making you magic too!”

  My mouth opened, but I couldn’t say what had happened. Angel had come and made a miracle, and nobody had seen it except me.

  I suddenly had a strange feeling. Isn’t that what real angels did? Watched over and protected us just at the time between life and death.

  Twenty

  Early morning I raced around to the farm to see Angel. Maybe she really was an angel. Maybe we don’t even know what one is.

  She was in the yard. And she had become someone else to me now, now that I’d seen what she’d done. But she looked like she was going to run away from me.

  “Aunt Liv let me name the piglet,” I said, following her across the yard.

  She went to a stable door and closed it without looking at me.

  “I called her Gabriel, after the angel,” I said. “Like you?”

  I saw her startled eyes. I saw her jaw go tight, her cheeks blush, as she turned away and tied some string around the latch to keep it shut.

  “I’m just saying thanks,” I said. “How did you do it?”

  Angel looked at me for just a second and then walked away.

  “Really, I want to know,” I said.

  She went on as if she was heading for the lane. I was almost shouting now, watching her back, staring at the big coat that covered her. Was she hiding something under there too, like Gem had said? Maybe the feathers that she’d been collecting. What did she want them for, anyway? I shook my head to clear the wild ideas that sparkled in my head like glitter in a snow globe. I wasn’t used to feeling like this. I just wanted her to stay.

  “I didn’t tell anyone it was you who saved Gabriel!” I said, staying put outside the stables where the grass was flattened. “I think I know what’s in the stables. If you tell me, I’ll tell you about my suitcase.”

  It was all I had to bargain with. She stopped and turned back. There was a curve in the corner of her mouth. I saw the sky in her eyes.

  “Help me catch Mrs. Barker’s goat,” she said.

  Twenty-One

  “Shhh!” she said, turning around and pulling me down into a crouch. She clamped a warm hand over my mouth.

  I was just trying to tell her that Gabriel was so sweet that when I put her back down with Maggie, I just wanted to pick her right back up again. And I could see Angel was getting fed up with me going on and on, but that she was also trying not to smile.

  “I get it. You love her,” she said as if it happened every day of her life
. “Now shush. What do you know about goats?”

  “Nothing,” I mumbled through her fingers, “so don’t go making me look stupid or anything.”

  Angel bit her lip to hide her smile and took her hand away.

  “At first I really thought you had the goat in the stable,” I whispered.

  She glanced, her eyes narrow, but she ignored what I’d just said.

  “Goats can be stubborn, and Dorothy won’t like it if you make a loud noise. When I took her—”

  “You did steal the goat!”

  “Shhh,” she said. “I never said I didn’t.”

  At least she admitted it. She told me what had happened the day the chickens escaped, just like that, even though I didn’t ask. She said she was stealing the goat from Mrs. Barker and somebody went past, so she hid it in a chicken barn. But then the goat got scared of all the chickens squawking and flapping, so Angel opened the door and then had to run because somebody was coming. She didn’t have time to close the barn door and gate behind her.

  “The chickens wanted to see the sky anyway.” She smirked.

  My mouth hung open.

  “I knew that too,” I said, but she had already moved on.

  “The goat keeps getting away. She was in the stables—” She smirked because my mouth fell open again and I breathed in sharply. “But not when you thought she was.” I closed my mouth again. How was I supposed to know what was true? She continued, “I have to let Dorothy out, but she goes off into your aunt Liv’s fields because she likes to eat the herbs, and I have to keep finding her,” she said, like it was just ordinary, everyday stuff to her. “So if we move slowly and show her something even nicer to eat, she’ll follow us.” Her eyes flashed. “Try not to spook her as well.”

  Which wasn’t fair, but anyway, I said, “Okay. Where is she?”

  She pointed ahead of us. “Just there.”

  The goat’s head was pushed through the bushes, her chin and beard going around and around as she chewed.