“And for me, if I die from the stillwaters.”
His hand, patting my short hair, stops. Bog looks up from gnawing on the bone, and cocks his head. Thomas takes a deep breath. The Sisters get upset whenever we talk like this. Asking about what happens if we die. They say it is our duty to think about life, not death, and to eat our bread and leave such matters to God. Dr. Turner gets upset too. He says many children survive the stillwaters. He tells us we could very well go on to live long lives, and become wives and mothers and husbands and doctors.
Thomas gives a soft sort of smile. “If that happens,” he says, “then you’ll fly the fastest of all the horses, I know it.”
THE NEXT DAY, the snow turns to stinging little pellets. Sister Constance’s strained voice carries from the classroom; she is teaching the little ones how to do basic sums. In the residence hall, all the older children’s doors are halfway open as they study from dog-eared textbooks with small print and no pictures.
I make for the attic stairs. Maybe there is a trunk I missed in one of the storerooms. Some long-forgotten package, filled with dusty paper that I’ll lift with care, to find a vase gleaming the color of tangerine orange. There used to be orange all over the world, I remember. At Christmas, oranges in our stockings. The oak tree’s leaves in autumn. Marigolds in spring.
But it is not spring.
It is not autumn.
It is winter, and there are no tangerines this year, not even with ration booklets. And without the color orange, the spectral shield is not complete. It is not strong enough to keep the Black Horse away.
I turn the corner, and stop.
The weight of eyes is on my back. I spin.
The hall is empty.
The only sound is snoring coming from Rodger’s bedroom. But when I turn back toward the attic stairs, the sensation returns, and I spin around again, and then again, in a full circle. The hair on the back of my neck tingles and—and is that the smell of apples? Movement in the hall mirror catches my eye. One of the winged horses steps into view in the gilded frame. He has a gray snip on his nose. He presses his muzzle against his side of the glass so that it fogs with each breath from his nostrils.
He is looking right at me.
“Um…hello.” I take a slow step closer. I reach up toward the mirror, but he pulls away, and my first two fingers brush only cold glass.
He tosses his head, and then snorts once, twice, and prances away. The mirror is once again just my own plain face looking back, short tufts of hair and green eyes and two sticky fingerprints.
But then—there. Movement from the next mirror down the hall, back the way I’ve just come. The same winged horse with the gray snip on his nose is there now, shaking his head so the ropes of his mane fall in his eyes. I reach for him, but he tosses his head again and disappears. Just like the bakery horses used to do with my sister, Marjorie. Letting her come close, close, close…and then prancing away. It was a game they played.
I rest my hands on my hips.
“I don’t have time for games.”
But he tosses his head again and prances off. In another moment he appears in the next mirror down the hall. He taps his nose against the glass. When I don’t come closer, he taps it again, more insistently this time, and rubs so hard against the glass that I’m afraid it will break.
“You aren’t playing a game, are you?” I whisper. “You’re trying to tell me something.”
He disappears out of that mirror as well, and I can almost feel the brush of his wings in the air as he passes down the same hall, only in a different world. And then he’s at the last mirror. Almost as though he is beckoning me to follow. When I reach the mirror, he doesn’t leave this time. He tosses his head. Steam frosts his side of the mirror.
He nudges the glass. Again and again, as if trying to nuzzle me, though his black eyes are on something behind me. I turn around. Benny’s room is across the hall. The door is open halfway. There is no sign of Benny or the other boys. Probably sneaked off to smoke another cigarette.
“What do you see?” I whisper.
And then my eyes fall on Benny’s bed, and my heart forgets to beat, just once, just for a second. Right there on the gray wool blanket is Benny’s precious Popeye comic book. The cover is an explosion of bright orange ink.
849-TANGERINE ORANGE.
I tiptoe in for a closer look. Yes. This is exactly what I have been looking for! I pick it up and flip open the cover, hardly daring to believe my good luck, and find a note written in the margins of the first page.
Benny,
Found this at Blakeway Books—a Popeye we haven’t read yet!
Love,
Dad