I will find something to keep the Black Horse far, far away from this protected place.
I trudge back to the hospital with feet that feel numb but a heart that feels alive.
All the lights are on in the windows. Thomas isn’t sitting on the steps anymore. There is no sign of Bog. When I push open the kitchen door, no one is sitting at the table, though the clock says it’s past suppertime.
I hold my hands over the woodstove until I can feel them again, and take down one of the big towels from the linen closet and wrap myself in it. I’ve started shivering, now that feeling is coming back into my body. Deep shivering that cuts to the bone. My legs are so weak that walking is getting hard. Each step up the stairs burns. I wipe my dripping nose.
The hallway is lined with children, all sitting quietly. They seem like they have been there for some time. Jack looks up. He isn’t crying. Benny looks up too. He is.
The door to Anna’s room opens, and Sister Mary Grace stands in the doorway. Her shoulders are stooped—it doesn’t look right on a woman of her young age. The sleeves of her habit are pushed back as she wipes her hands with a towel.
Her eyes are red.
“Oh, Emmaline,” she says softly when she sees me.
And I know. I know. She doesn’t have to say it. I don’t want her to. I want to exist in this moment alone. The moment when I have saved Foxfire, even if just for one day, and this moment when Anna is still alive and tomorrow I will draw her a picture and she will tell me a story about the floating gods on the ceiling.
“Emmaline, I’m sorry.”
The horses are gone from the mirrors. I do not know where they go, when they leave.
She pushes the door open farther as she comes out into the hall, and I see Thomas, sitting on a chair next to Anna’s bed.
He looks at me.
And then, he sees something in the mirror across the hall and turns. I follow his gaze. There is one winged horse. One winged horse that we both see. It bows its beautiful brown head, and stretches its brown wings.
Deep in my chest, the stillwaters are rising.
“Anna is gone,” Sister Mary Grace says.
There is a comfort in sheep.
THERE IS A COMFORT IN SHEEP.
It isn’t just that they are soft and warm (though sometimes a bit dirty). It isn’t their bleating, or the way the little lambs climb all over each other. It is not their sheep-smell, which the other children dislike but I don’t mind. It isn’t their pink tongues. It is the way you can say not a single word, but not feel alone.
The barn door opens.
Thomas comes in, wiping his nose against the cold, and takes the shovel from its hook on the wall. The sheep bleat for food, and he sees me sitting in their midst. He stops.
“Did you fall asleep here?”
I nod.
“A priest has come, and Anna’s family. You’ll miss the funeral.”
In my hands, I hold a small box wrapped in newspaper and tied with a bit of twine that Sister Mary Grace gave me. “I know.”
He doesn’t say any more. Thomas’s quiet ways used to scare me, but now, I am thankful for them. I’m tired of Sister Constance and Sister Mary Grace and Dr. Turner and the other children talking. I just want to be with sheep. Alone, but not lonely.
Something ugly stirs in my chest, and I cough into the straw and wipe my mouth. My face feels warm. Too warm. Burning.
“The altar cloth…,” he starts, a bit hesitantly. “I thought you might want to know that Sister Constance decided to use the black one in the chapel, to mourn Anna. They’ll leave it up for at least another week. Longer, maybe.” He bends down to right Bog’s ear, which is always flopping over.
And I can tell, in the way that he doesn’t quite meet my eyes, that he knows that I stole the purple Advent cloth. He must have seen me sneaking across the grounds with it stuffed in my coat. And now he is telling me that I won’t be caught. At least, not today.
Anna has helped me again. I am glad for Foxfire’s sake, but I would rather be caught and punished by Sister Constance every day for a year and have Anna back.
I nod.
Thomas touches his cap and leaves.
I know that Anna’s service is unfolding in the chapel. In the six months I have been here, one other child has died, a boy who came in the middle of the night, so ill that he was gone by the next morning. His service was small and short, and I know Anna’s will be the same. Sister Constance is nothing if not practical. There are bills to be paid. Living children to be fed. A leaking faucet that needs repair.
A sheep lets out a long sheep-sigh, and rests its chin on my leg. I scratch its bony head, and its eyes half close. I rub my other thumb over the package’s twine, tied in such a prim little bow.