A Hundred Horses (9 page)

Thirty

R
ita had a message for me. Angel said to meet her at the oaks. As if we’d done it a hundred times before.

She was there with Belle. She held my arm and helped me up behind her.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

“To see my family.”

Belle carried us down the other side of the valley, along narrow lanes where the hedges burst with bright new leaves and bobbles of buds. Our legs swayed against Belle’s sides.

I’d really thought we were going to see her family and the people she was staying with. But she hadn’t meant that at all. She took me to where a herd of black-and-white horses grazed by a river in wide, open fields. They were just like Belle. Some more black, some more white, with long manes and long hair around their legs like feathery cuffs. We were near Old Chambers’s farm.

Angel slid off Belle’s back, opened the gate, and went in.

“Yeeyeye,” she called.

I saw their heads rise, their curious eyes and ears turning to her. I saw the horses come, slowly at first. They gathered and moved. I felt fear trembling in me as their hooves quickened. They came to Belle as she whinnied. My skin shivered with the sound and the rumble of their hooves. They came and surrounded us. I held tight to Belle’s mane.

“What are you scared of?” Angel said.

I looked into the sky, then into Angel’s eyes. I saw the vastness there, the same wide-open space, electric blue. I didn’t know what I was scared of.

The horses came to Belle; they blew on me. Belle walked through the herd, taking me with her.

“Belle’s their leader; they follow her,” Angel said as the horses came to her too.

“When I speak to them, I don’t talk and they don’t talk. You can just trust them because they understand that.”

She walked among them as if she was one of them; she touched them all. She passed the young horses, and they didn’t run or shy.

“People are mostly scared of themselves,” Angel said. “They get scared of their own brilliance.”

People didn’t know Angel at all. But the horses did. They trusted her, even if she was a liar and a thief. They knew her in a different way.

“We have to get Belle back now,” she said, climbing up. “We can’t leave Lunar for long.”

We moved out of the field. The horses followed us to the gate, watched us leave. Angel’s huge family. Maybe because of what she showed me, I wanted to tell Angel everything.

“I live with my mom. Just us two,” I said.

Angel kept looking ahead, at where we were going.

“I don’t see my dad. He used to travel a lot because he worked on shows doing the lighting.” I continued, knowing she wouldn’t be mean this time. “I think he was clever and imaginative, but then he went away and didn’t come back.

“He made the carousel, but I don’t want Mom to know I’ve got it. I don’t know why he left it behind, why it was still there. It’s the only thing I’ve got of his—well, most of it. There’s a piece missing.”

“How do you know it’s missing?”

She turned around. She seemed to really want to know.

“Because I know it was there before,” I said. “And I think he took it.”

“Like the moon?”

“The moon?”

“You thought a bit of the moon was missing. But it’s not.”

Angel turned away, and Belle gently clipped along the lane.

And I wondered then if I’d looked properly. Had I looked in all the corners, under all the lining? Was it there and I just couldn’t see it?

“Do you think I might be like him? Like my dad, I mean.”

“Do you want to be?”

“He was . . .”

What was I supposed to say? He didn’t care about us; he betrayed us and left us. That’s why none of his things, none of him, or the bits of me that were like him, were allowed in our house anymore.

“No,” I said.

Belle stopped walking. Angel turned around and smiled.

“Mostly you’re like you. Sometimes you’re not, though. Sometimes you pretend you’re nobody, just in case you are like him.”

Then I heard her breath catch at the rattle and rumble of a car coming toward us. I could see the top of a Land Rover with a horse box attached driving down the lane. In a moment Angel slipped to the ground, vaulted a gate, and ran.

Thirty-One

M
rs. Barker stopped her Land Rover in the middle of the lane. She stared through the windshield for a long while before she got out and came over.

Belle lifted her head away from Mrs. Barker’s hand as she tried to stroke her nose. Angel had told me not to do that, that horses like to come to you first and then you’ll know whether they want you to touch them or not.

“Liv’s niece, isn’t it?” Mrs. Barker said. “What are you doing with this horse?”

Before I could even think what I was saying, I said, “I found her.”

I was turning into a liar like Angel! Mrs. Barker hadn’t seen Angel, though, and somehow that was the most important thing.

She was smiling now, her voice gentle.

“I’ll take her back to Old Chambers’s farm. That’s where she’s meant to be, ready for the auction on Saturday.”

I couldn’t think what to do. Mrs. Barker held my arm as I slid off Belle’s back. She slipped a halter over Belle’s head, led her into the horse box. She told me to get in the Land Rover, that she’d take me home afterward.

Mrs. Barker drove to Old Chambers’s farm. She left me in the car and talked to a man in a mucky overall, and he nodded toward the stable where she had put Belle. They argued, but I couldn’t hear what they were saying. Mrs. Barker glanced at me, then came over.

“Do you know where this horse’s foal is? Is it at Rita’s farm?”

Mrs. Barker tapped her lip when I didn’t answer.

“The horses are going to auction on Saturday.” She hesitated. “Belle’s foal didn’t look too good when he was born, but I persuaded Old Chambers here to keep him and I’d take them both on when they come up in the auction. So you see, if you could tell me where the foal is, then I’ll make sure he gets looked after and stays with his mother.”

That’s not what Angel had told me. But people said Angel was a liar, and I knew she was too. Was it true what she had told me, that Mrs. Barker wanted the foal put down? I was so confused. Something was bothering my stomach and my head and all my insides. And I couldn’t think which secrets I was supposed to be keeping, and then I remembered how Angel looked when I said if Lunar was healed, then somebody would want him. I didn’t know what it all meant. But then I remembered those eggshells in my hands.

I looked everywhere but at Mrs. Barker. As if I could find an answer somewhere, anywhere, in the sky, in the trees.

“Can I say good-bye to Belle?” I said, stalling.

I got out of the Land Rover and went into the stables. Belle hung her head and pushed her nose into my shoulder. I ran my hand along her neck. Lunar needed his mother. What should I say? What should I do? I looked into the dark glass of Belle’s eye, and I saw me. Scruffy, my hair unbrushed, but I was still shining there in Belle’s eye. I knew the most important thing was to protect Angel.

“Mrs. Barker . . . I’m not saying anything.”

Thirty-Two

T
he next morning Mrs. Barker telephoned Aunt Liv.

She told Aunt Liv that her goat had gone missing again, and she seemed to think it might have something to do with me. I hated being blamed for something I hadn’t done. I hugged my elbows in, feeling like I was shriveling to nothing.

I guessed Angel must have stolen the goat again because Lunar needed the milk now that Belle was back at Old Chambers’s farm. It was too complicated inside me. I didn’t want to tell on Angel. I had promised I wouldn’t tell anyone else she was here. Because she asked me. And because I wanted to. But it was so hard not to tell.

Aunt Liv sat beside me on the sofa in the kitchen, so I didn’t have to look her in the eyes. The soft middle of the sofa tipped us together. She asked me if I had anything to do with the missing goat.

“What if it’s really important and I can’t tell you?” I said. “What if it’s a matter of life and death?”

“Life and death?” she said, lowering her head so she could look at my face.

“What if,” I said, “you trusted me?”

Aunt Liv was as startled as me that I asked that.

“I mean, if I promise you I’m doing something for the right reason, and I promise by Saturday it will all get sorted out, would you?”

I found Angel in the stable with Lunar and the goat. She spun around as I went in.

“You let her take Belle! What about Lunar? What do you expect him to do without his mother?” Her lips trembled.

“What was I supposed to do?”

Angel gritted her teeth and glared. “You could have—”

“No, I couldn’t! I couldn’t do anything!” I yelled. “And I’m in trouble and I’ve made my aunt Liv trust me and I don’t really know why. But I didn’t tell anyone you’re here with Lunar and Dorothy. So you’re going to have to trust me as well!”

Angel smiled. Not the sort of smirky smile she usually had. Her eyes were watery and sad. She slid down the wall and crouched in the straw. She knew I was right. For once.

I undid the braces on the foal’s legs so he could lie down and sleep. Already his legs looked straighter. Dorothy nestled next to him, chewing the hay. I looked at Angel crouched beside them, her arms wrapped tightly around her knees, the shoulders on the big coat sloping halfway down her arms. It was someone else’s coat, someone much bigger than her. She’d probably stolen it anyway. And it didn’t fit, just like nothing fitted for her.

Angel’s eyes were vivid. She moved away from me, climbed on the straw bales, and sat at the top. She could see what was coming.

“Tell me the truth about Lunar,” I said. “Tell me why I can’t tell anyone else you’re here.”

She picked at some loose cement between the bricks, not looking at me, studying each bit as if it was important. Stalling. Thinking of another lie?

“If I tell you,” she said, “then you have to do what I say.”

“Like what?” I snapped.

“Forget it.”

“Is it something else bad? Stealing or something like that?”

“I said forget it.” Her voice was quiet and heavy.

And I don’t know why, but I said, “Okay! Just tell me!”

Angel tied a piece of straw in knots. And I waited.

“What do you want me to do?” I said.

“Nothing,” she said. “I just wanted to see if you would.”

“I said I would!” I snapped. “And I will.”

And I was startled because I meant it and I didn’t care about all her lying and games and what was hurting.

Angel slid off the bales and walked right up to me, just like she had before. Her shoulders leaned in until her nose almost touched mine. She burned me with her eyes.

“They’re . . . all I’ve got.”

“Who? Belle and Lunar? What do you mean they’re all you’ve got? What about your family and the people you’re visiting?”

She stayed frozen, breathing loudly through her nose, her eyes blazing, my question hanging in the air like ice. I knew I couldn’t give up. If she saw me back down at all, I’d never find out.

Car tires tumbled over the gravel in the lane, rumbled into the yard. The engine stopped. Two doors opened, closed.

“Mrs. Hemsworth?” a voice called. “It’s the police.”

I saw the fear in Angel’s eyes as she stared at me, and I knew they had come for her.

“Why are they here?” I whispered.

She tried to listen to what was going on out in the yard, to the distant voices.

“I ran away.” Her tiny voice was empty and cold. “They put me in a foster home, and I ran away.”

I could hardly breathe. No matter what I had already thought, I wasn’t expecting that. I put my hand over my mouth so I didn’t cry out.

“If you tell anyone, they’ll find me and take me back. I don’t want to go back, not yet.”

Angel was still looking at me, pleading. We both turned toward the foal. The glass in his eyes was dark, almost black. Angel wasn’t asking me to lie for her again. Now she was asking me to look after Lunar.

My heart ached. I nodded. She turned her back, and I could hear the tears in her voice.

“Ask your aunt to bring Rita’s geese back.”

Then she ran. Out of the stable door, through the yard. Heavy thuds stamped after her. A woman shouted, “That’s her! Angel Weston, stop! Come back!”

I looked through the crack in the door, saw Angel running up the lane, springing over a gate as a policeman and policewoman chased after her. Leaving Rita on the porch, her face buried in her hands. Leaving me holding Lunar, who was trying to stumble after Angel.

Thirty-Three

R
ita and I lay side by side against the pillows on her bed. Angel was a runaway. She had no family, no mother who looked after her. I knew what it was like to have my dad leave and not come back, but what was it like to be taken away from your family? It seemed a hundred times worse. A million.

I missed my mom just then more than anything in the world.

“They’ll take her back, won’t they?” I said.

Rita squeezed my hand.

“I should have known why she’d come here.” Her voice stirred the emptiness in the room. “That poor child.”

Nobody had called Angel that—a poor child. It was only because now we both knew why she had been hiding that everything started to fall into place. No matter what she had done, it wasn’t her fault that her mother didn’t look after her. That’s why she wanted to be with Belle. She needed someone. Who else did she have?

Rita walked over to the window seat. She wiped the back of her hand over the dust on the window, staring at the gray mark it left on her knuckles. I saw how she tried to wipe it away, how the dust stuck in the wrinkles. She sighed many times. I couldn’t help thinking how Angel had also turned to Rita when she had nobody left.

“Angel wants me to look after Lunar,” I said.

I told her that Angel had said Mrs. Barker wanted the foal put down and that Mrs. Barker had said the opposite. I told Rita I didn’t know which story was true.

Rita closed her eyes.

“Maybe it would have been better . . .’’

I knew what she meant to say. Maybe it would all be so much easier if the foal had been put down. My stomach tightened.

“How can you say that?” I said. “Lunar didn’t do anything wrong. And he’s getting better; you said so yourself.”

“There’s an old wives’ tale,” Rita said, “about the hundredth horse—”

“I know Lunar is your hundredth horse”— I interrupted—“but it’s just a stupid story. It doesn’t mean anything!”

She held my eyes for a moment.

“Did Angel tell you that story?”

I nodded; my shoulders curled in.

“The one about the wild hundredth horse spoiling the herd?”

“No,” I said, frowning. “Nothing like that. Angel told me a completely different story about a big old angel and the hundredth horse coming for the princess.”

But all I could think about was what I had to do. Tears welled. I flopped in a chair and rubbed my eyes. I didn’t know anything about foals or horses; I didn’t want the responsibility of looking after Lunar. What if I got it wrong? What if I couldn’t do it?

“I wish I’d never come here,” I said, trying to stop the quake in my voice. “I wish I’d never met Angel.”

Rita pulled up the stool and sat beside me.

“People think the worst of Angel. But there’s another side to her not many people get to see.

“We had lambs one year,” she continued. “Three of them from the same mother, but she rejected them. They were tiny, too small and weak. They should have died by all accounts. Angel took them from Mr. Hemsworth. He had a soft spot for that girl, not that he’d ever admit it. She was always at his heels, hanging around here. Angel nursed the lambs, kept them alive.” She chuckled softly. “She dressed them in baby sweaters to keep them warm.”

“Baby sweaters?”

Rita laughed. “Knitted woolly sweaters.”

I supposed there were two sides to everyone. Sometimes people kept the bad things hidden. Angel seemed to keep what was good about her hidden.

“One thing Angel has never done is give up on what she thinks is right,” Rita said, more serious now.

I leaned against Rita, hid my face behind her arm.

“I thought I was just going to have a boring, ordinary vacation,” I said, my voice muffled against her sweater.

“Perhaps you should just leave this to me,” Rita said. “I’ll keep an eye on the foal. I’ll get him back with Belle. Don’t worry—I’ll be sure to see they are sold together.”

“Mrs. Barker’s going to buy them.”

“She is?”

A question was bothering me too. When I said somebody would want Lunar if he was healed, why hadn’t Angel seemed happy?

“Well, that’s good news,” Rita said. “Now you go on back to the cottage and enjoy the rest of your time here. Leave everything to me.”

I could have gone. I knew that Rita would take care of things, just like Mom had done when Dad left. But how could I leave knowing that Angel trusted me? None of this was Lunar’s fault. And then what happened was I told Rita the truth.

“I’m scared, Rita, because I’m here without my mom and she always does everything for me. And she makes everything all right, but it means I don’t have to do anything and I don’t have to care about anyone. But I do care. I’m Angel’s friend, and I’ve got a mom, but Angel and Lunar haven’t.”

I felt the warmth and the roughness of Rita’s hand wrap around mine.

“When you really know someone, they get in here.” She tapped at her heart. “Right inside.” She looked at the wedding photo on the mantelpiece. “Then, when they’re gone, you do what you can to protect yourself. You get angry, withdrawn, take it out on other people. But then what?” She smiled through watery eyes. “That shell you make around your heart, to protect yourself, stops others from getting in.”

She raised my chin.

“It seems to stop the goodness getting out too. You and Angel and me, we’re not that different.”

Her warm, strong arm pulled me to her.

“We know why Angel was hiding now. But what about you?”

As soon as she said it, I thought of the carousel. The one thing I had wanted to do was to put it back together again. I was good at doing the same things Dad did, but I hid the carousel because I didn’t want Mom to know that I was like him or to see me in the same way she thought of him. But was I also hiding another part of me? I thought of the tin girl about to fly, and I remembered when Angel had said that people were mostly scared of their own brilliance. Maybe that’s the part I was hiding. And right then I knew I didn’t have to be like him; I could be what I wanted. I would look after Lunar, and I would never betray Angel.

“It’s not Lunar’s fault,” I said, getting up. “What’s he ever done?”

I fetched Rita’s dusty coat and boots from the hallway.

“Come on,” I said. “We’re all he’s got.”

I went back to talk to Aunt Liv and told her Rita was looking after a foal and that I would need to be there a lot and asked if that was all right. Even though Alfie and Gem moaned and complained and Mom wanted me to call her, Aunt Liv still said yes.

“I won’t ask any more because . . . because I know you have your reasons,” she said. Her mouth twitched. “I don’t know if you remember me talking about a girl who used to live around here, Angel Weston.”

My stomach turned. If only she knew.

“I’ve got a funny feeling she might have something to do with all this.”

Then I remembered what Angel had said when the police came. Even though she wasn’t here, I wouldn’t let her down.

“Can Rita have her geese back?” I asked.

Aunt Liv laughed softly. She didn’t ask why. She touched my cheek and said, “I’ll take them over tomorrow.”

I went straight to bed, quickly falling into uncomfortable dreams. I heard the phone ring downstairs. I felt Gem kiss my cheek, smelled her sugary breath as she whispered, “Please can I see the foal? I love you.”

I heard the shift of the covers as she and Alfie climbed into bed without turning on the light. I heard the phone ring again. Then nothing.