The red ticket is gone.
I spin toward Arthur. “What happened?” From the way my body aches, I must have fallen off of Foxfire and tumbled down to earth. “Did the Sisters find me in a snowdrift?”
But Arthur never speaks, and he does not speak now.
A strange worry creeps into my stomach and I whirl toward the side mirror. It is empty. I pick up the hand mirror that Thomas gave me—empty too. And so is the one above the dresser. I grab up the teaspoon and stare into it at my misshapen reflection.
Nothing.
Where are the winged horses?
Where have they gone?
I roll over and paper rumples. I pull out a wad of messy pages that someone has left beside me. The Popeye comic book! The last I saw, it had fallen in the snow. It is warped and dirty, but someone must have found it and tried to smooth out the pages. There is a note attached in Benny’s writing.
I’m sorry I broke your pencils. I’m glad you’re getting well. I forgive you for stealing my comic book. You may borrow it, if you like.
Sincerely,
Benny
(P.S.—but only until you feel better!)
I stare at the inscription.
Benny has shared his dearest object with me.
Have I floated into a different world, a gentler one? I look around in a daze, but the same gods still float on the ceiling, the same wool blanket is pinned back by the window.
And then Arthur sighs at the broken blue pencil that won’t draw, and I realize that I have done something magical. I have been to the heavens on the back of a winged horse—I am a real explorer, just like Anna said I was.
An idea strikes me. I take out Anna’s sewing knife from the secret drawer, and the closest pencil, the orange one. It is snapped in two, the point broken. I press the blade against one of the halves and shave. I shave until it is sharpened into a point as fine as Anna kept them, and then I sharpen the other half, too.
Now there are two orange pencils.
I hand one to Arthur.
“You may borrow this, if you like,” I say.
Arthur blinks a few times, and then takes it and dives back into his pages, drawing faster now. In a flurry, I snatch up the other broken pieces of pencils. I sharpen the point of 868-LAPIS BLUE, and the broken shards of 876-HELIOTROPE PURPLE, until all the broken pencils are whole again. Now there are enough for Arthur and me and all the children in the hospital to have their own pieces of color.
And then I look closer at Arthur’s drawing. It is rough and childlike. The back legs are bent the wrong way, but the wings…
“Can I see that, Arthur?”
He hands me the paper, and glances at the mirror on Anna’s wall, and then immediately starts in on another. There is a flicker of movement to my left, where I have placed the mirror that Thomas gave me.
I whip my head in its direction, and she is there.
Foxfire.
She stands quietly to the side of the mirror-bed, gazing a little wistfully out the mirror-window, where the blanket is pinned back to let in light. There are traces of my tea on her muzzle.
“Foxfire!”
She turns. She has heard me. For once, my voice has carried through the mirror, and she blinks her soft brown eyes at me.
Another horse joins her. It is brown and delicate and smells like lavender. I can just tell. And next to her—next to her are a gelding and two mares. Sandy with dark manes.
“I knew you’d come back,” I tell them.
Arthur has turned to face the mirror too. I peer closer at the paper in my hand. The horse in his drawing is white with a gray muzzle. Between her eyes is a blaze in the shape of a spark.
My heart goes rat-a-tat, rat-a-tat.
I think of how Arthur is always gazing at reflective things—the kitchen ladle, the tin washtub, the Christmas ornaments—and realize maybe it isn’t just Thomas and me who see the horses.
“Arthur,” I say slowly, “do you see those horses in the mirror?”
“Arthur,” I say slowly, “do you see those horses in the mirror?”
But Arthur says nothing.
“You see them, don’t you?”
And again, Arthur says nothing.
But slowly, a smile spreads between his pink, pink cheeks.