A Hundred Horses

by Sarah Lean

  “Some kind of magnetic force is drawing the animals back to Keldacombe Farm,” said Aunt Liv. She put her hand on Rita’s arm, and they held each other’s eyes for a moment. “Are you sure you can leave all this behind?”

  Thirty-Five

  While Lunar was sleeping, Aunt Liv, my cousins, and I walked up to the village. Tents were being raised on the green, big buses unloading, metal barriers being stacked to go along the street, strings of lightbulbs going up between lampposts ready for the parade and fair on Friday night. I saw a police car drive through the village, a policeman and policewoman scanning the streets. They slowed and looked at us, then moved on.

  We were there for a few things. I helped Alfie choose some green socks and Gem some green tights for their pea costumes for the parade.

  When I got back to Rita’s farm, the police car was parked in the yard. Rita was talking to the policewoman and policeman on her doorstep. I saw Rita nodding. They were still looking for Angel. My mind raced, as if I could find her just by thinking about her.

  I stood by Rita’s side, and she told them Angel had been to the farm, but that we hadn’t seen her since and we didn’t know where she was. Rita said neither of us had known that she’d run away from the foster home. But the police didn’t look convinced. They said we both could be in serious trouble if they found out we were hiding her.

  They looked all around the farmhouse and in the stables, but I knew as well as Rita that it wouldn’t be easy finding her if she didn’t want to be found.

  While Lunar lay in the straw beside me, I continued building the carousel. I fixed the struts across the roof to make it stronger, strung the lights all around, pushed the horses onto their poles and into the roof. Everything was in its place then the final metal disk went in the center at the top. I flicked the switch. The lights came on, but the horses stayed frozen still in midair, mid-dance. Nothing moved. No spinning or whirling or turning.

  Again I looked in the corners of the suitcase, shook it, peeled back the leather, tore the lining away from the sides, and reached in. I pushed all the spare pieces around, spread them over the floor. The tin girl wasn’t there. And then I remembered why she was so important. She had a magnet in her. She had to be on the top! It wouldn’t work without her.

  I touched Lunar’s soft, warm neck. I wanted to forget all the unfinished things, but I couldn’t. Lunar slept, his breath soft as shadows, his blue cardigan and extra blankets keeping him warm.

  “Where is she?” I said.

  I picked up the spare pieces and threw them out of the stable. Angry at losing Angel, at the missing tin girl, at him for taking her.

  Dorothy tottered out behind me. Her pale golden eyes stared up at me. “Go away,” I whispered through my teeth.

  Rita came across the yard. She saw what I’d done but didn’t say anything. She shooed Dorothy back into the stable with the foal and closed the door.

  “The chicken and geese need putting to bed,” she said softly. “Come on.”

  We held our arms wide. The geese were always much quieter in the evening. They moved like water as we guided them into the stables. The chicken went up the plank to a higher shelf. The six growing goslings scrabbled after her. They ducked under her. Bits of their downy bodies poked out here and there. They peeped softly, jostling for a warm spot. The hen twitched her eyes and shimmied her feathers to tuck them all under her wings. The lines in Rita’s face curved into a smile.

  “Why are you leaving?” I said. “You like it here, don’t you?”

  She sighed.

  “I was born and raised here. It’s been my life. My parents left the farm to me and Mr. Hemsworth. We had no children, of course, but then we had our animals. But that’s all gone now. I can’t do it on my own.”

  I remembered Aunt Liv asking her how she could leave all this behind, and I knew we both were thinking about the people and the animals that were missing, when Mrs. Barker’s Land Rover rattled into the yard. My heart rumbled with the sound of Belle as she whinnied from the horse box.

  “I asked her to bring Belle down,” Rita said, standing up straight and pushing her shoulders back as if she was making herself stronger.

  Rita invited Mrs. Barker in and asked me to make a cup of tea. I listened to them talking as I hid behind the door in the hallway.

  “Could be anyone bidding in that auction on Saturday and who knows where she’ll end up,” Mrs. Barker said. “I’m prepared to pay for her now, before she goes to auction.”

  I heard the tea being poured.

  “I’ve never known you to take an interest in horses before, Elizabeth. Your family has been rearing chickens for as long as I can remember. Why the sudden interest?”

  “Look, Rita,” Mrs. Barker said, laughing a little, “I know Belle’s from a good line, and I’m prepared to pay more for her. I’ll make sure she’s well looked after. What do you say? Take the check, and we’ll say it’s done.”

  A moment passed. “What about her foal?” Rita said.

  I heard a cup being put down on the saucer.

  “Old Chambers didn’t think we should bother with the foal. But I’ll make sure he’s taken care of.”

  “So you don’t believe in the hundredth horse myth?” Rita said.

  “Nonsense,” said Mrs. Barker. “You don’t believe it either.”

  “No, of course not. But I didn’t know whether you did.”

  “This place is full of old wives’ tales and other nonsense.” Mrs. Barker laughed. “Why would one more horse spoil the rest of the herd?”

  Why were they talking about the hundredth horse as something bad again? That wasn’t what Angel had said at all. The hundredth horse was supposed to be the one to come for the princess. I shook my head. Both of them were made-up stories anyway!

  “Not before Saturday,” I heard Rita say. “And I want Belle left here until then.”

  Mrs. Barker didn’t finish her tea. She led Belle from the horse box, telling Rita she’d be back on Saturday morning before the auction.

  Belle walked into the yard like she was queen of the place. She made the bricks and air and fields of the farm seem alive. She filled the yard with her call. But not until Mrs. Barker left did Rita let Lunar come out of the stable.

  We watched them for a minute, and then I asked her, “Do you believe Mrs. Barker that she’ll look after Lunar?”

  “I’ve no reason not to,” Rita said. “Only I’d like you to tell me the story about the hundredth horse, the one that Angel told you.”

  “Why?” I said.

  “I don’t know,” Rita said slowly. “I know it’s only an old wives’ tale, but the story everyone around here knows has to do with a wild horse and how that one wild horse turned the rest of the herd wild. You’ve heard the saying one bad apple spoils the barrel?”

  I shook my head.

  “It means that one bad person can affect everyone. And I’m beginning to wonder that if Angel told you a different story, then she might mean something else by it.”

  Thirty-Six

  Alfie and Gem painted flowers and rainbow stripes on the cart to make it look nice. Aunt Liv went up into the attic and came down with a box of string lights, and I used some battery packs from their camping lanterns and wired it all to the cart.

  “Are you going to look after Lunar now?” Gem said as I left them with paint on their faces and hands.

  I nodded.

  “Good,” she said. “He needs somebody like you.”

  And that made me go back and kiss her, and Alfie blushed when I hugged him too.

  Rita was at her sewing machine. I took Lunar in to see her. She was helping Aunt Liv make Alfie’s and Gem’s pea costumes for the Spring Parade.

  “Would you like to see what I’ve got for you as well?” Rita said.

  “For me?”

  Rita beckoned me over.

  “Angel asked me to make something for you.”

  “She did?”

  Rita chuckled, but sadness reddened
her eyes for a moment. Maybe she was thinking what I was thinking. I’d be here for only a few more days. We didn’t know if we were going to see Angel ever again.

  “Under the bed.” Rita pointed.

  There were frames made from coat hangers shaped into long, thin ovals. Rita had stretched white material over the frames, then sewn feathers on the top, just like real wings—made from black-and-white and gray goose feathers, the feathers that Angel had collected from Aunt Liv’s lawn!

  I held the wings, and Lunar came right over to look at them. He raised his head and snickered, his eyes wide and shining, but I didn’t really understand what they were for.

  I looked at Rita. All the words disappeared, and neither of us could speak. Angel wasn’t who people said she was. Rita and I knew that.

  And then Belle whinnied from outside. We heard her hooves clatter on the porch and went out to see. We took Lunar back to her, but she was unsettled, lifting her head high, her nostrils breathing in big bellyfuls of air. She paced around the yard, Lunar pressed to her side.

  “What is it, Belle?” Rita asked.

  Belle called again, flicking her tail, tossing her mane. She looked to the sky, to the trees behind the farmhouse. I ran my hands over her, felt the stirring huge life in her, saw the black and the white of her skin.

  I remembered the moon. I remembered how Angel had said that although part of the moon might be hidden in shadows, and you couldn’t see it all, the whole of it was still there. You just had to use your imagination to see it differently. I looked around the yard. I didn’t see what was missing. I saw what was actually there.

  “Nothing’s missing, Rita,” I said, suddenly bursting with what I knew Angel had meant. “It’s all still here!”

  “What’s all here?” Rita said.

  “All the things that belong to the farm. They’re all still here somewhere, even if you can’t see them.”

  Rita chuckled. “You’re starting to sound like someone else we know.”

  I grabbed her arms to make her face me, so sure I had to be heard, to try to make sense of what was whirling in my mind.

  “Angel was right, Rita! Look!”

  “I’m looking,” she said.

  “The chickens and the geese. Belle and the foal and the goat, and I know the goat’s not yours, but that doesn’t matter.”

  I had to wave my arms because what was inside me was fighting to get out.

  “And all your horses, Rita. They’re not sold yet!”

  I dragged her back into the hallway.

  “The clock’s ticking again, like a heart beating, like it’s alive, and it makes you think about Mr. Hemsworth, as if he’s here. That’s what angels do, Rita! They bring things back to life. And she did it for you!”

  Rita’s hand held her mouth, her other arm tightly folded around her.

  I thought of the carousel.

  “Don’t you see? It’s like all the pieces of my carousel. They are just bits and pieces until they all come together. Then they make something extra-ordinary, something alive. Angel’s been trying to put your farm back together again because it was so special to her too!”

  The tin girl was there in my mind.

  “Where am I?” she whispered.

  I could hardly catch my breath, overwhelmed by what I suddenly knew. That one special piece that made everything else work.

  “Angel’s here, Rita! I know she is and Belle knows too!”

  I ran. I knew exactly where she was.

  The trailer was in shadow. The big coat was in a heap on the floor inside.

  I went around the back and saw how Angel had been able to climb up and down: a plastic garden chair, a rainwater tank on bricks, a piece of rope tied to a branch. I climbed up. It wasn’t as easy as I thought it would be, but I could see why Angel had gone up there. From the top you could see if anyone was coming down the lane, or into the yard, or across the farm’s empty fields. It was a good place for a lookout.

  I looked up, stared and stared into the branches until my eyes were sure what they could see in the dark shadows and between the big hand-shaped leaves.

  My scalp tingled. Angel was crouched on a branch high up in the tree.

  “Come down,” I said.

  She didn’t move for a moment.

  “Nobody knows you’re here. Just me and Rita.”

  It was harder going backward to get down off the trailer roof. I didn’t know how Angel had jumped down before. She still got to the ground before me.

  I’d never seen her without the coat before. She was just a skinny girl, wearing the same scruffy clothes, who needed a bath and a hairbrush. She was just a girl nobody looked after.

  “Belle’s here,” I said. “Come and see.”

  We ran hand in hand back to the farmyard. I was just as fast as Angel until I let her go ahead. Belle didn’t care what she looked like or anything bad she might have done. Belle knew the inside of her, and so did I.

  They lowered their heads. Angel leaned against Belle, as if there was nothing left of Angel. And Belle just stood steady, like an immovable mountain, with Lunar nuzzling at Angel’s side.

  I waited in the bathroom. Waited while Rita talked to Angel about how the police had been here. I sat on the floor of the bathroom against the bath and turned the taps on full, so they whistled with the pressure from the water. So I couldn’t hear the things I didn’t want to hear.

  Rita opened the door, led Angel in, and we left her to have a bath.

  We sat in silence until Angel came out, wearing Mr. Hemsworth’s bathrobe. It dragged on the floor behind her; it swamped her. That’s when I knew the coat she’d been wearing was Mr. Hemsworth’s. A part of the farm as it used to be. She wore it so that Rita wasn’t alone, so she wasn’t alone either. She’d found the grandfather clock key in his pocket.

  “Mr. Hemsworth would have given the shirt off his back to see you were all right,” Rita said. “I wonder what he’d be thinking now.”

  Angel chewed her top lip but couldn’t look at us.

  Rita made a fire, and we sat together, listening to the crackling wood. I brushed Angel’s hair, untangled the knots. I braided it. Rita made some sweet tea. What else could we have done for her?

  “You know I have to tell the police you’re here,” Rita said. I heard in her voice that she didn’t want to say what had to be said. I saw concern in her eyes.

  Angel nodded.

  I felt the panic in my stomach, in my throat. Why did this all have to be over? It felt unfinished, like the carousel without the tin girl. Like something was still missing.

  “Not yet . . . please,” I said. “Not until I go too.”

  Rita’s mouth smiled, and she nodded. Angel’s eyes hung on to me just as I was trying to hang on to her.

  “You look like you need a good meal inside you, girl. I’ll make you something to eat.”

  Rita went out to the kitchen.

  Angel went under the bed and brought out the wings that she’d asked Rita to make. She smoothed the goose feathers and then gave them to me.

  “I don’t understand,” I said. “What are they for?”

  We stared into the fire at the flickering life.

  “You know when I came and helped with the piglet,” Angel said, “and then the next day you asked me if I was an angel?”

  I nodded. I remembered. I felt all the miracles she’d shown me since then.

  “I’d already thought that’s why you were here,” she said, “why you came and found me at the trailer that day. I know I kept telling you to go away, but you didn’t. I thought that meant you must be an angel. Only you’d lost your wings, so you’d forgotten you could fly.”

  Thirty-Seven

  The moon was exactly half milky white, half hidden in the night, when Angel and I arrived with Belle and Lunar for the Spring Parade.

  That afternoon I had made some lights and wound them around Belle’s halter. Angel and I had brushed her tail and washed the long, feathery hair around her legs. We’
d brushed her until she gleamed, the black shining, the white bright. We’d braided her long mane, and she looked beautiful.

  Angel said Lunar had to keep wearing Rita’s blue cardigan; she didn’t want him getting cold. Rita had given us some colored ribbons, and we looped them through the edges and made bows and braids and took off his leg braces. He seemed much taller than before and so proud of his straighter legs.

  I wore black clothes, like a puppeteer on the stage, so I wouldn’t show up against Belle and the foal and they would look as if they were walking on their own.

  “You look like me,” Angel said.

  I scowled. “Now I do,” I said, trying not to laugh. But it was impossible because Angel giggled.

  She messed up my hair some more, and I practiced smirking like her until she said to stop, her ribs hurt from laughing.

  I had tried to tell her that someone would recognize her, but she wanted to come to the parade, to watch. She had no other clothes, so I’d given her some of mine: my clean white sweater and red skirt. She looked like someone new too.

  Angel put the wings on me that she’d asked Rita to make.

  We stood in front of Rita’s long mirror for a while, just looking at our reflections and wondering about ourselves and each other.

  “Maybe we are two halves of one person,” Angel said.

  I realized then that I had been lonely for a long time. And I only knew that because I didn’t feel like that anymore. Because of Angel. Because we’d found the things about us that weren’t different.

  “Maybe inside we’re exactly the same,” I said.

  And I knew because I felt like her that I would be able to walk through the street with Belle and Lunar at the Spring Parade and not hide from everyone.

  I smelled the night air. Silvery metallic mist and dew, rich with toffee apples, hot dogs, and onions. Lightbulbs haloed. Music rang from the fair. We heard voices from the village murmuring, talking, laughing, waiting for the parade to begin. Angel hung back in the shadows as I went over to Aunt Liv, Rita, and my cousins, who were waiting for me at the end of the village.