A Hundred Horses (12 page)

Forty

A
ngel and me, we rode Belle with Lunar at her heels. We led a hundred horses back to Keldacombe Farm, thundering across the field, clattering along the lane, their breath spilling the mist around them. Mom drove everyone else back there in her car. We let the horses into the fields once more, saw the farm as it used to be.

Mom, Aunt Liv, and Rita went inside the house. The lights from the window without curtains glowed yellow in the dark yard.

Angel and I climbed on the gate to the field. We could hear the sigh of the horses’ breaths; we saw the white of their skins under the light of the moon, the dark of their skins hidden in the night. Lunar rippled among the other horses like a flash of magic. It was way past midnight. It was Saturday. The day of the auction. I would not sleep; I would not have missed a moment because that was all we had left.

Rita called from the yard. “Angel?”

And that’s just what she looked like. An angel. Not because her hair was brushed and braided or because she had my clothes on. But because we knew her. We knew everything she’d done was to keep the animals and the farm together. To watch over them like an angel would. It’s what the horses and Mr. Hemsworth had taught her. It’s what Mr. Hemsworth would have done if he could. Maybe Mr. Hemsworth was an angel after all, and maybe it was because of him that Lunar was who he was.

I saw the life in Rita as she came toward us, the life that Angel had brought back to her.

“Tell Rita about Lunar, about who he is,” I whispered to Angel as Rita came closer. “Tell her what Mr. Hemsworth said.”

“I think there’s a story you need to tell me,” Rita said.

Angel took a deep breath and jumped over the gate. She fetched Lunar, and he followed her back to Rita.

Angel held out her hand and took Rita’s. I saw the blue cardigan slipping from Lunar’s shoulders, I heard Rita gasp as Angel began to tell her the story of the hundredth horse.

I left them and went to the stables. I heard the music spring to life before I got there, the lights making a bright path to the open door.

The tin girl turned on the top of the carousel, looking at the sky, looking at me, her arms raised as if she knew she could fly. I thought I heard her laughing. I thought I heard her say, “Here I am.”

And then I saw Mom sitting in the shadows, in the straw, leaning against the panels.

“You found the tin girl!” I said. “Where was she? I looked for her everywhere.”

“She was with me all along,” Mom whispered. “I’ve carried her around in my handbag for seven years.”

Forty-One

T
omorrow the summer vacation will start. Mom and I are going to Keldacombe to stay with Aunt Liv and Alfie and Gem. Rita said she wanted to finish what Mr. Hemsworth had never been able to: to make Angel safe. She is Angel’s foster mother now, and they live together at Keldacombe Farm with a hundred horses.

Mom helped Rita organize some people to go work there and run the stables and a riding school.

Rita gave Lunar to Angel. She said that just in case the old wives’ tale about the hundredth horse is true, just in case it spoils the rest of the herd, then Rita would keep her ninety-nine horses and Angel could have the hundredth horse. Which makes Lunar number one.

Angel had made up her own story about the hundredth horse, but all along the story was about her, only it was hidden inside the fairy tale. Rita said Lunar’s story was in Angel’s hands. They both believe that because of who he is, he has to stay hidden. As he always was from the beginning.

But Angel and I both know that one day Lunar will want to kick; he will want to live and be what he is supposed to be.

About the Author

SARAH LEAN
lives in England with her husband, son, and dog. She is the author of
A Dog Called Homeless
and has worked as a page planner for a newspaper, a stencil maker, a gardener, and a primary school teacher, among various other things.

 

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Books by Sarah Lean

A Dog Called Homeless

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Credits

Cover art © 2014 by Benjamin Plouffe

Cover design by Erin Fitzsimmons

Copyright

Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.

A Hundred Horses

Copyright © 2013 by Sarah Lean

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Lean, Sarah.

   A hundred horses / Sarah Lean. — First U.S. edition

      pages cm

      “First published by HarperCollins in the U.K. in 2013 under the title A Horse for Angel.”

      Summary: Eleven-year-old Nell must spend spring break in the country with an aunt and cousins she has never met, but while there she meets a mysterious, wild girl with a strange connection to horses and an uncanny understanding of Nell.

      ISBN 978-0-06-212229-2 (hardcover bdg.)

      [1. Runaways—Fiction. 2. Conduct of life—Fiction. 3. Horses—Fiction. 4. Farm life—England—Fiction. 5. Family life—England—Fiction. 6. England—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.L46333 Hun 2014 

2013008060

[Fic]—dc23  CIP

AC

EPUB Edition © DECEMBER 2013 ISBN 9780062122377

13   14   15   16   17   CG/RRDH   10   9   8   7   6   5   4   3   2   1

First U.S. edition, 2014

First published by HarperCollins in the U.K. in 2013 under the title
A Horse for Angel
.