Read Online A Hundred Horses by Sarah Lean - Free Book Online Page B

many questions.” She sighed. “Sometimes you just have to find things out for yourself.” She gripped my wrist. “Hold on,” she said.
    I held on to her. And she pulled me up.

Twenty-Three
    B elle carried us through the trees, her steady walk rocking us as if we were babies held by our mother. She took us out into the fields. She followed a path along the top of the hillside, a path like the spine of a great big humped creature. The birds were asleep, like we should have been. I felt like we were walking through their dreams. I didn’t know it would feel like that. Safe. All three of us moving together like one whole creature.
    Belle stopped at the top of the hill. We looked up at the chipped milky moon. We were in the sky with it.
    “The moon’s got a little bit missing,” I said.
    “That’s just a shadow,” Angel said. “The whole moon’s there, even though it doesn’t look that way. You have to use your imagination, see it differently.”
    And I thought of that moon. How the whole thing is always up there, every night.
    “Sometimes I wake up in the night,” Angel whispered, “and I just look at it so I remember that.”
    Bluish black, the sky seemed closer, as if it had come down to wrap itself around us. Our feet dangled in the air; the stars were in our hair; the milky moon was right there, and I could have touched it if I’d wanted to. I raised my arms, and I wanted to laugh or sing or shout, so I called out: “Look at me. I’m up here too!” which made Angel giggle.
    Angel clicked her tongue and Belle moved on and we leaned back as she headed down the valley. I put my hands behind me. Belle’s hips swayed as she shifted her weight to steady us on the steep hillside. I looked back at the moon. But no matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t see the part of the moon that was hidden. It made me want to know more.
    The field leveled out. Belle was warm, and the rocking made me feel sleepy. I yawned, and the moon blurred.
    I leaned my head on Angel’s shoulder, still wondering, half dreaming, about her.
    “Gem said you must be an angel because of your name. She thinks angels hide their wings under their clothes.”
    Angel laughed but didn’t say anything.
    “Tell me a story,” I said. “The one about the hundredth horse.”
    Angel was quiet for a moment.
    “It’s just a fairy tale,” she said.
    I remembered being small and tucked tightly in bed, Mom lying beside me with a new book, the crackle of the pages as she turned them. I remembered that sleepy feeling when all the invented creatures and magic in a story seemed as real as they do when you are dreaming.
    “I don’t mind,” I said. “Tell me anyway.”
    Angel looked up at the moon.
    “A long, long time ago,” she began, “there were ninety-nine horses that were looked after by a big old angel who was stuck on Earth because he had lost his wings.”
    She shrugged to move my head along her shoulder.
    “Far away there was a little girl . . . no, a princess, who was locked in a—in a castle with nobody to look after her because there was a big battle going on outside. Sometimes the queen came and let her out and gave her some food, but she was scared and lonely. One day the princess opened the window and heard horses far away, and they sounded so beautiful that she wanted to go see them.
    “She was very small, and it was a long way down from the castle window, but one night, when the battle was really bad, she climbed out of the window because she thought the horses were calling her and telling her to come to them. She ran through an enchanted forest and crossed a dangerous river and found the horses she had heard. One of the horses came and greeted her and took her into the herd. The girl—I mean princess—thought there was something magic about the horses, because they seemed to understand her language and she understood them. That special horse looked after her.”
    “What color were the horses?” I said.
    “Mmm . . .