“Sister Mary Grace,” Sister Constance chides. “It is our place to care for the children, not to indulge their feverish delusions.” There are more hands around me, fluffing the pillow, and then Sister Constance adds softer, “Though part of me hopes that she does.”
Sister Mary Grace still shuffles through my drawings. “If only there were someone to send them to. It’s awful, isn’t it? The reports of that bakery during the Nottingham blitz. The bombs, and then the fires. To lose your mother and sister like that—I can’t imagine, and her father the same week in the siege of Tobruk.” Her voice drops. “They were trapped, you know. Her mother and her sister. Dr. Turner heard it from the driver who brought her here. Emmaline was asleep in a different part of the bakery in the middle of the night—you know how she wanders off—when the bombs hit. She must have heard her family banging on the doors, but couldn’t get to them in the rubble. She was burned badly.”
My heart is flit-flit-flitting.
No, I want to tell them. They’re wrong. It wasn’t my father. It wasn’t my mother. It wasn’t Marjorie—Marjorie was even here just yesterday, in her yellow raincoat! It was the horses, kicking at their stalls. The big bay gelding and two smaller mares. Spice. Ginger and Nutmeg.
Paper rustles again. “I suppose all the horses died too.”
“Horses?” Sister Constance opens the door and shuts it behind them, but her voice still carries from the other side. “What horses? Her family worked at a bakery in the middle of Nottingham, far from the nearest pastures. She never had any horses.”
The stillwaters are rising. They are rising and rising, drowning everything they touch. I can hear the horses kicking at their stalls. Their frightened yells sound almost like a person screaming. The stable door is shaking and shaking, but I can’t get to it to let them out.
I can’t help them.
I can’t do anything at all.
—
When I open my eyes, I am alone, and the tea is long cold.
I release a fit of sobbing coughs. The stillwaters are rising fast now.
My head falls to the side. My reflection in Thomas’s small hand mirror shows fever-red cheeks and damp tufts of hair. I snatch it up. Where are the winged horses? Why aren’t they nosing through my tea on my bedside table? Why aren’t they clomping against the wall behind me?
For Emmaline May, from your friend Thomas.
The handwriting is blocky and careful and somehow familiar. But…no, it can’t be Thomas’s. Thomas can’t write. It’s tied to the mirror with…
I sit abruptly.
No, no, no.
…It is tied with a silky red ribbon.
Outside, in the dark, there is a rumble of tires. Headlights flash in the window. It must be Thomas’s aunt come to take him away to London.
“No!” I throw back the sheets. No, the stillwaters haven’t drowned me yet. No, Thomas hasn’t left yet. No, no, no.
Benny can’t be right.
The Horse Lord is real. He lives beyond the mirrors and he was friends with the old princess and he sent Foxfire to our world to protect her.
Thomas can’t have written those letters.
THE HALLWAY CLOCK CHIMES. I lose count of the tolls but they go on for a while—it’s getting late. I make my way slowly down the residence hallway, leaning against the wall for support. All the doors are closed. The soft sounds of sleeping children seep through the cracks in the doors. On the walls, the mirrors are empty. No winged horses watch my journey.
I pass a window and push back the wool blanket. Outside, in the lights of a car, a woman in a brown coat is talking to Sister Constance. It is snowing harder now, and the car’s windshield wipers are fighting a losing battle. I can no longer see the moon overhead, but it is there, shining full silver light over everything. Sister Mary Grace holds a piece of rope attached to Bog’s collar so that he won’t run off after his master when the car leaves.
Thomas emerges from his cottage with a small, plain suitcase.
I press a hand against the frosted glass. “Not yet!” I cry. But my voice doesn’t carry. I lurch down the hall, into the library with Mr. Mason’s Christmas tree still in the corner. I fumble with the latch on the window until it pushes open. Wind and snow howl at me, but I howl right back. Fingers clawing at the window frame, I manage to get one leg through.
“Thomas!”
He doesn’t hear over the wind.
“Thomas, don’t go!”
My other foot catches on the icy windowsill; I slip and tumble into the bush. Bog jumps up and starts barking, and I hear someone cry out, and then the car’s headlights are pointing toward me and I shield my eyes, the snow blowing harder, and squint into the light.
Bog runs up, the rope dangling from his collar, and licks my face. A second later a shadow looms over me. Thomas. He wraps his coat around my shoulders, then picks me up with his one arm, just like he did the lamb that day. His arm doesn’t shake at all.