A Hundred Horses (11 page)

Thirty-Seven

T
he 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.

Alfie and Gem wore their green socks and tights and hats. They had paper flowers stuck all over their padded, round green pea costumes.

“Ready?” said Aunt Liv.

My cousins each picked up a handle on their cart. Aunt Liv flicked the switch on the batteries. The flashing bulbs lit up the cart, the bamboo wigwams, and their faces.

“All the way down to the end of the village, around the green, and finish over by the fair,” Aunt Liv said. “Rita and I will meet you there after.”

We could see a stream of people dressed as folk dancers, scarecrows, milkmaids, mimes, their faces bright with face paints, going into the village; tractors rumbled and towed trailers with children in them, children dressed as witches and elves and other made-up things.

We were about to join the parade when I saw headlights splashing across the hedgerows as a car came up the lane behind us. Not the police, not yet!

I saw Angel about to run.

“Angel, love,” Rita said, calling her, asking her to stop. “I know you want to be with Belle and Lunar, but I’ll make sure Mrs. Barker looks after them. I’ll find a way for you to visit them.”

“You don’t understand,” Angel said through her teeth. “She’s sending them away. They’re going abroad.”

Rita went to her, caught hold of her.

“You have to let them go, Angel.”

Angel wriggled and slipped from Rita’s hands. She struggled to speak, her wild eyes looking between Lunar and me. Belle’s anxious hooves clattered against the road; her mane swayed wide as she tossed her head.

“Nell, I wasn’t lying,” Angel said. “He said the hundredth horse was coming for me. For me!”

We heard the car pull up nearby and the door open. I could see the blue of Angel’s eyes, truer than summer sky. I didn’t want her to leave, but I let her slip the rope from my hands.

She leaped onto Belle and took off, Lunar at Belle’s heels. But what did she mean the hundredth horse was coming for her? I remembered what Aunt Liv had said about stories being about us, about what it’s like to be us. I stared at Rita, my mouth open. Suddenly it all made sense.

“The story, Rita!” I gasped. “The story about the hundredth horse is true!”

I didn’t have time to explain. I ran as fast as I could, following Angel and Belle as they took off across the fields, Lunar behind them trying to keep up. The wind was in my ears, but I heard the car engine start up, and I guessed the police would be coming around the lanes. I had to get to Angel first.

Thirty-Eight

I
saw the open gate at Old Chambers’s fields, but at first I couldn’t see Angel or Lunar. Belle’s head was raised high as she thundered across the field, the white of her skin etched in silver under the half-moon. She tossed her head and called the herd, the anxious sound prickling my scalp. I felt the rumble through the earth under my feet, I heard the thump of their hooves get louder, saw the flashes of white from their skins, as all ninety-nine horses gathered and rushed from the far side of the fields.

Then I saw Angel with Lunar, Belle leading all the horses and galloping toward them. They pulled up and surrounded them.

I ran, calling to Angel. She didn’t answer. I circled the wall of horses around her. But I wasn’t afraid of the horses anymore. I touched them, and they moved aside and let me through.

Inside them all Belle stood facing me. She breathed me in. I touched her; she knew me; she trusted me. I could see half of the moon above us, half of it hidden in the deep night sky.

Angel was crouched beside Lunar. He walked over to me; his nostrils twitched as he breathed the air, his dark eyes shone.

“I know the whole truth now, Angel.”

She reached up, her hands smoothing Lunar’s shoulders. She shook her head.

“I do. The story you told me about the hundredth horse. You’re the princess who —’’ I couldn’t say she was the one nobody looked after. I realized how terrible that part of the story was for her. “You’re the girl who climbed out of the window and rode the horses.”

Angel trembled.

“There wasn’t a big old angel; it was Mr. Hemsworth, and they were his horses. You told him about what was happening to you, and he wanted to help you, but he died, and I’m sorry.”

Angel folded her arms and buried her face.

“Mr. Hemsworth wanted you to have Lunar because he knew the horses made you feel safe,” I said. “He didn’t have a chance to do it himself.”

She looked up. The trembling made her watery eyes spill.

“He was the only one who knew Belle was going to have a foal,” she said, standing up. “But you’re wrong about Mr. Hemsworth. He must have been an angel.”

She caught my hand, before I could speak, as she unbuttoned the blue cardigan and slipped it from Lunar’s back. I saw the half-moon reflected in her eyes.

“You thought I was an angel. You kept wondering and staring at my coat, like I was hiding something under there, asking me about things, wondering if what Gem told you was true.”

“You’re not a real angel, I know that.” I felt stupid again because she knew I’d been thinking ridiculous things.

“Not me,” she whispered.

She put her hand over mine, put my hand where hers had been, at the top of the foal’s shoulders, at the base of his mane. The hair pricked on the back of my neck, the blood drained from my face, and I thought I was going to fall.

I lifted my hand and looked at what I had felt there: the folded stumps of bones, the softness of new feathers growing on Lunar’s shoulders.

Thirty-Nine

I
heard a car pull up at the gate, doors opening and closing, lots of footsteps running across the field toward us. A voice called across the horses. It wasn’t the police.

“Nell? Please come out.”

“It’s my mom, Angel!”

I went to go, but Angel caught my arm.

“Just let me speak to her. I’ll come back.”

“Will you?”

Two weeks away from home, from everything I used to know, and I suddenly remembered what life had been like. Waiting, hiding. Hiding myself.

Mom called out again. “Nell, it’s Mom. I’m here with Liv, Rita, Gem, and Alfie.” Her voice cracked. “Nell, please. I need to see you.”

I helped Angel put the cardigan back on Lunar. My fingers trembled as I touched the feathers. I could barely believe what my eyes saw and what my hands felt. But I knew what I wanted now. I saw the tin girl in my mind. “I’m here,” she said.

“I’m scared I won’t come back too, Angel. And that I won’t ever see you again.”

“You’ll go back to being nobody.”

I felt the sting of her words.

“Don’t say that,” I said. “I’m your friend, and I do care. I am somebody. You told me that. And you have to trust me.”

It was there in the small curve of her mouth. How she told the truth, how it made me tell the truth.

“Don’t tell them about Lunar,” she whispered.

“Nell, please!” Mom called. “You’re scaring me.”

I had to ignore Mom, just this once.

“I didn’t betray you before, Angel, and I won’t now.”

“Nell! If you won’t come out, I’m coming in!” Mom called.

I heard the horses jostling one another, Mom still calling me, her anxious voice. Angel suddenly pushed between the horses. She made a path between them. She came face-to-face with my mom. Mom took a sharp breath.

“For a moment I thought—I thought you were my daughter.”

I ran between the horses, hugged myself right into her.

“Aunt Liv called me at the conference and told me to come. She said I should be here. Are you all right?”

I looked at Mom. It was as though I’d never seen her before. Angel and I seemed to have swapped all sorts of things: our clothes and something inside. I looked at my mom as if I knew all the things about her that Angel knew about Belle. And nothing that had happened mattered, only what would happen next.

“This is Angel, Mom,” I said. “We have to help her.”

I didn’t know why I’d said it. It suddenly all seemed impossible. What did I think we were going to do? Hide Angel and Lunar forever? Mom didn’t know anything about Angel. She only knew about me. For her I was the same as when I’d last seen her.

“Tell her about the carousel,” Angel whispered.

And it poured out of me like a tap turned on full, about the clubs and all the things that I didn’t like. About finding the carousel. Why I wanted to build it again.

“I can’t help it that some of me is like Dad.”

Exhausted by everything that had happened, I had nothing left to hold it back.

“But not all of me is like him. I would never do those horrible things he did to us. Would I, Angel?”

Angel shook her head.

“Mom, I’m nobody if I can’t do the things my hands want to do. And I’m sorry I found the carousel Dad left behind and that I hid it from you, but—”

“He didn’t.” Mom’s voice was flat and clear.

“He didn’t what?”

“He didn’t leave it behind.”

The stillness then in the midst of a hundred horses was enormous, as I realized what she was saying before she said it.

“I kept it, Nell.”

“But why?”

Mom turned her shoulder away. I needed to hear. But she wouldn’t speak.

“It’s like the moon,” Angel said. “Because you know something’s there even if you try to hide it.”

Mom nodded to Angel. “You know something about this?”

“She does, Mom. And so do I. I know you’re trying to protect us, to protect me. But Rita, she’s the lady in the farm next to Aunt Liv—”

“I know who she is. I’ve spoken to Aunt Liv about what has been going on.”

“You have?”

“You don’t think I wouldn’t want to know when I needed to be here for you? I’ve spoken to your aunt Liv a hundred times these last two weeks, and she’s helped me realize that you needed to grow, you needed to figure out things for yourself.”

She wasn’t angry. She wasn’t deciding, telling me. Nothing.

“Rita told me that sometimes, when you keep the bad things hidden, you end up keeping the good things hidden too,” I said.

Mom nodded. I wondered who she was, really. What we both thought about each other wasn’t the same anymore. In between school and clubs and everything else, Mom was always there. In the waiting and the driving, the bits in between everything. But in the middle of all those horses, we were someone else. We were . . . who we truly were.

“Do you know what I’m saying, Mom?”

“I do.”

And then she said, “Hello. You must be Nell. What a mess, though.” Mom laughed then. “No, it’s not a mess; it’s just something that needs organizing. And that’s what I do best.”

Just then Lunar walked past us. His gangly legs trotted through the horses, and we watched him go out of the circle of the herd to where Aunt Liv was standing with her arms around Alfie and Gem. He passed them, breathed them in, and went to Rita. He nudged her back and made her walk forward. He pushed her until she walked through the horses. He brought her into the circle, over to Belle, over to Angel.

“I know, my lovely,” Rita said, touching Belle. “You want your family back.”

She reached her arms around Angel, and Angel let her hold on tight.

“I have a question for you, Nell,” Mom said. “You too, Angel. In fact all of you. What is it you want to happen now?”

Belle turned and stepped toward Mom. I looked into the dark glass of Belle’s eyes. Saw my mother there. Belle blew on her, and I knew why she wanted to know her. Mom was the one most like her.

I looked at Angel, and we knew what we wanted without speaking.

“To take the horses back to the farm,” Angel said.

“We want to put everything back together again,” I said.

Rita held Angel at arm’s length and looked into her eyes.

“Bring them back,” she said.

And as we were about to do that, Gem ran over to Angel. Gem looked afraid for a moment and clenched her hands into little fists in front of her mouth.

“Hello,” Angel said.

“Hello,” Gem replied. “Lunar’s the hundredth horse, isn’t he? You told us a story in the playground, and I remember it now.”

Angel nodded.

“Lunar told me it was true,” she said. “He told me he was coming to make you safe.”