Uchenna's Apples Read Online Free PDF

developed part of Adamstown pinched in a little and then bubbled out again in another set of circles. These were smaller than Uchenna’s, as were the houses in them: in the second phase of building, the construction company had probably decided it could make more money by packing more houses onto the same amount of land. Behind them, on the field side of the wall, there were also more houses that weren’t part of the development. Here little dirt or gravel roads, or tiny rubble-paved driveways, ran from small isolated cottages or old farmhouses to the narrow road that ran behind Adamstown and up to the wider county road north of the development and the school: and many more scraggly hedgerows divided the houses and their little fields from one another.
    Emer paused again before they took the path that headed off to their left. She glanced behind them to see if anyone had followed them: but there was no one in sight. “Great. See them, there they are—!”
    She trotted ahead on the path, Uchenna following. Another hedgerow lay across the path ahead of them, but at an angle: it was met by yet another hedge near the development wall, not far from where Emer’s house was—in fact Uchenna could see Emer’s upstairs bedroom window from here. The two of them angled rightwards around the place where the hedges met.
    And there, inside the hedge, grazing, were the horses.
    It seemed quiet, all of a sudden, as the two of them stood there and looked into the field. Five horses were there, as Emer had said. All of them were black and white, in various patterns, except for one that was almost all dirty white. Uchenna stared at them: and one after another, the horses’ heads came up, and they stared back. Even the smallest of them was as tall at the shoulder as she was. They’re really big! she thought. Even the little one. I don’t want to go in there, I don’t care what Emer says!
    But Emer was already working her way down toward where there was a gap in the old hedge that faced the development. Someone had banged an old wooden post into the ground there, maybe a chunk of a broken telephone pole, and had tied an ancient salvaged tubular metal yard gate to it. The other side of the gate was simply tied with more frayed moss-green rope to the thick branches of the hawthorn bush on the far side of the gap in the hedge. “Come on!” Emer said, and got up on the first rung of the yard gate, starting to climb over it.
    “You’re gonna fall right on your head,” Uchenna said under her breath, hurrying forward to hold the gate so that it wouldn’t wobble while Emer was on it. “Will you just wait?”
    “Thanks,” Emer said, getting one foot up onto the second-from-the-top rung of the gate. She swung herself around so that she was on the inside facing out, and started climbing down again.
    As she came down inside, Uchenna looked at where Emer was standing. “My dad was right,” she said. “There’s the mud.”
    Emer looked at it and sniffed. “It’s hardly wet,” she said. “Just soft where they’ve been stepping on it a lot. Come on.” She put the bag down and held the gate.
    The horses, one by one, were lowering their heads to graze again. Once they were all grazing, Uchenna went up the gate. She did it more slowly than Emer, partly because she suddenly really did not want to be doing this. “If they start looking at me or anything—” she said as she climbed.
    Emer didn’t say a word, but her smile was both understanding and scornful. Uchenna swallowed and then set her face in what was meant to look like an I-don’t-care expression: but whether it would fool Emer was another story. And whether it’ll fool them—! Uchenna swung herself around with her back to the field, as Emer had, and burst into a sweat. Suddenly the breeze which would have been a comfort right now had dropped away to nothing: and everything had gone very quiet—she could actually hear the soft tearing sound of the horses pulling up their