A Hundred Horses Read Online Free PDF Page B

knew what that meant.
    “That’s sky,” I said. “It’s where you fly.”
    I opened my hands, and the chicken ran back into the barn.
    Mrs. Barker closed the gate behind me, dragged her sleeve over her flustered face, and thanked Aunt Liv for helping.
    “This is my niece, Nell,” Aunt Liv said. “She’s visiting us for the first time.”
    Mrs. Barker glanced at me but was too agitated to smile back. She looked into the field.
    “What happened?” Aunt Liv said.
    “One of the barn doors was opened,” she said. “And the main gate.” Mrs. Barker closed her mouth tight, her face and neck as red as the chickens’ wobbly chins. “I’ve been keeping Dorothy, my goat, in this field. And she’s gone missing,” she said, picking up the long rope from the grass. “If I hadn’t heard she’d moved away, I’d know who to point the finger at.”
    “Who?” said Aunt Liv.
    Mrs. Barker looked at me.
    “School vacation?”
    I nodded. And then she said, “Well, keep your eyes open. If you should come across a girl called Angel Weston, you should steer well clear.”
    Which made my mouth clamp shut.
     
    “Is it always like this here?” I asked on the way home.
    Aunt Liv laughed. “What, you mean, escaped chickens? No. But it’s all rather strange. A horse and chickens on the loose and a missing goat.”
    “Maybe it’s because of the fairy’s tail?” said Gem, suddenly skipping along.
    “She means fairy tale,” said Alfie.
    “That’s what I said.” Gem put on her spooky voice. “Maybe there are a hundred horses now and the hundredth one is magic and it’s trying to set all the animals free.”
    “You can’t even remember the story properly,” Alfie said, huffing.
    “Yes, I know, but it could be, couldn’t it?” Gem skipped over and clung to my arm. “Do you think it is, Nell?”
    “Are you talking about that hundredth horse story again? I don’t even know it.”
    “Yes, but stories can be true.” She was pleading now. “Can’t they, Mom?”
    Aunt Liv rolled her eyes and sighed.
    “Well, stories are about us, about people really, about what it’s like to be us. But that doesn’t mean everything about them is true.”
    “Maybe the hundredth horse is here, and we don’t even know it,” Gem whispered, peering through the hedgerow as if there might be something hidden behind it.
    I remembered looking in the box in the attic and finding the strange creatures I’d made and believed in when I was four.
    “It’s because you’re only five, Gem,” I said. “When you get older, you’ll realize there are no such things.”

Thirteen
    I phoned Mom and told her about the escaped chickens. She said, “You held a chicken!” and I said it was warm and soft and quite special. I told her what I said to it, and she said, “I expect it listened to you,” which made me feel nice. I said that I’d put it back, like I was asked, and she said, “I expect that chicken is looking out of the window right now, wondering about the girl who showed it the sky.”
    I listened to her soft breathing for a minute. I knew she was wondering the same thing too.
    Afterward me, Gem, and Alfie put away the dinner things. Gem made up a new word. She said because a shepherd is someone who rounds up sheep, we must be chickherds. You couldn’t tell her any different.
    “We’re going to build our own farm,” she said.
    “She means a toy one,” said Alfie.
    “And it’s going to have pigs, chickens, some magic horses and angels, and everything. Come and do some too, Nell,” she said, holding my arms and bouncing up and down.
    I knew how she felt. It was what my insides did when I thought about building the carousel. I didn’t want to see Angel again, but I knew if I wanted the carousel back, I was going to have to find her. I asked Gem and Alfie if they knew where she lived.
    “She doesn’t live here anymore,” Alfie said. “Mom said her family moved away.”
    Gem whispered in Alfie’s ear; then Alfie