A Hundred Horses by Sarah Lean Page A

instead.”
    Mrs. Barker’s brow was furrowed, her nostrils wide. My shoulders sagged. This wasn’t helping either. But then I saw that Mrs. Barker was distracted from asking any more about Angel. I squeezed Gem’s hand.
    “What nonsense!” Mrs. Barker said. “That old tale is about one bad horse spoiling the whole herd,” she said, huffing and walking away. Then she called over her shoulder, “And if anyone is going to spoil things around here, it would be Angel Weston.”
     
    When we got back, I was desperate to tell Angel what Mrs. Barker had said, mainly because I wanted her to know that I hadn’t actually told her that Angel was here. I felt sick again, hoping I hadn’t said too much.
    I looked in the yard and went into the stable where I’d left the carousel all over the floor. The metal pieces were like the bones of a helpless creature. I knew my hands wanted to put them back together. And I stopped thinking about everything else and sat down.
    I organized the pieces by size, collecting all the bits that looked similar into piles. I started to lay them out, like a skeleton of the whole thing. When I touched the metal pieces, I could tell where to begin with the drum-shaped base, the spinning part in the middle, and the black battery cylinder on top. I could see how the silver strips connected all the side pieces together. I could feel how it should look. But there was a tiny part of me that didn’t want to see the carousel without that one special piece missing from the top.
    I heard shuffling coming from the stable next door. I crawled over and put my ear to the wall. I heard something shift against the other side of the wooden panel. A snort, the purring breath of a horse.
    I went outside and saw the string was hanging loose from the door. I opened the top half of the stable. Goose bumps fizzed up my arms and prickled my neck.
    Belle was in there. So was Angel. She was asleep, leaning against the wooden panel. A dark gray foal lay next to her.
    Did this mean there were a hundred horses?

Twenty-Seven
    I wanted to touch the foal.
    “Can I see him?” I said.
    Angel’s eyes startled me, how bright they were against the dark skin under her eyes. She didn’t tell me to go away.
    The foal raised his head, rocked onto his side, swiveled his ears toward me.
    “His name’s Lunar. Like the moon,” she barely whispered.
    “Hello, Lunar,” I said.
    I thought my hand might sink right through his rabbit-soft coat. Lunar was the color of the deepest storm, a white stripe down the middle of his face, white legs, a pale, fuzzy mane. He was wearing a blue cardigan with the arms chopped off, wrapped around him, and buttoned along his back like a back-to-front waistcoat. Rita’s missing cardigan!
    “Is he Belle’s foal?” I said.
    Angel nodded.
    “Was he just born?”
    “No, Saturday at Old Chambers’s farm. But I brought him here.”
    Belle blew through her nose and nudged the foal. He staggered to his feet. I took a sharp breath. Something didn’t look right. His front legs stuck out at funny angles. He looked like a giraffe does when it bends down to drink water.
    “Sometimes they get born a bit wonky,” Angel whispered, seeing me look shocked as Lunar staggered to his mom and suckled. “He’s got to stay in the stable to help his legs straighten up.”
    Angel watched me, blinking slowly, but didn’t say anything more.
    I watched Lunar sway as he came to me and nuzzled at my clothes. I saw the dark glass of his eyes, the curve of his jaw, the peachy skin of his nostrils, the wrinkles in his soft lip speckled with whiskers. Longer feathery hair grew from the back of his awkward knees and around his hooves. I felt down his strange legs.
    “Will he be all right?”
    Angel didn’t answer. She was asleep.
    I ran into the farmhouse. I had to tell Rita. Angel’s eyes had told me that it was all too much for her.
    “Rita, there’s a foal in your stables! He’s wearing your cardigan. And Angel found