The Island Horse (5 page)

Chapter Eight

Ellie and her father unpacked. They made up the beds in each bedroom. They put rough towels on the pegs, and bars of soap on their washstands. Ellie brought in water from the rain barrel beside the house. Some for the kitchen, some for the bedroom basins. As they worked, her father kept glancing out the window, looking at the sky. For a long time, the clouds simply hung over the ocean, angry and dark.

They unloaded the flour, raisins, butter and tea. They found canisters for salt, soda, dried berries and sugar. They put by the fresh cod and mackerel, the tough vegetables and tiny potatoes of last autumn's harvest. Just before evening the rain came hard. Ellie and her father hurried to shutter the windows. The raindrops drove against the walls of the house. The wind rattled the shutters noisily.

Ellie's father made a fire and then cooked a simple meal. After they ate, they went to sleep early, again exhausted.

Next morning the sun rose, and the day was clear. Ellie padded into the drafty kitchen. Her father was finishing a stand-up breakfast. “Morning, sweetpea. Did you sleep all right?”

Ellie sat down at the table, rubbing her eyes. “Morning,” she yawned.

“So, I need to tell you. I'll be away the whole day,” her father said. He had cut her some slices of bread. There was jam on the table, and a pot of tea. A jar of cranberries. “I'm riding the north beach with another patroller for the first few days. We'll keep an eye out for wrecks.”

Ellie watched her father's pale blue eyes sparkle in a dawn sunbeam.

“Some days I'll practice with the surfboats, practice launching them off the shore and rowing them. Other days I'll be on wrecking duty. We go aboard the wrecked ships and try to salvage any goods — barrels of salt meat, tobacco, dried cod, lemons. We have to strip the ship of its anchors and chains. Split the timbers and bring the wood ashore. We try to salvage as much as we can and store it, and then ship it to the mainland when the schooner comes. The government pays for that. It helps keep the lifesaving work here going.”

He took his last bite of toast. He washed his cup and plate and set them on the towel to dry. “Sorry. I know I'm running on a bit. I know I don't quite know what I'm doing yet, or how it will really be here for us. It's just … Ellie, I think this is a good start for us. A new beginning.” She looked away.

“You'll get used to it, sweetpea,” her father promised. “You'll get used to it here.”

He kissed the top of her head. He told her to eat. He reminded her to do her chores. Sweep the floors, tidy the rooms. Pump water, feed the chickens, check for eggs. Milk the cow and take it out to pasture.

“And don't wander far. You don't know this place yet. I'll draw you a map, in time.”

Ellie hugged her knees and couldn't answer.

Long after her father left, she stared out the window. Her thoughts were a storm inside her head.

She went to her room, got dressed and made her bed. She drank a few sips of cold tea. She looked at the bread her father had cut for her, the wooden table, the milk jug. The orchids.

She went outside. She might almost be interested in exploring, except that she didn't want to be here. There was nothing but grass and sand.

Remembering her chores, she pumped water and carried the buckets indoors. She scattered some feed for the chickens and checked for eggs. None. She milked the cow and left the bucket in the cool of the barn, putting a towel over it to keep the flies off. She led the cow outside to its patch of grass.

The wind blew. It swept through the yard, swirling sand into Ellie's eyes.

Grass and sand. No trees. Not one.
It's obviously not an island made for people,
Ellie grumbled to herself, rubbing her eyes.
Look at this house!
She thought it must have been made on the mainland, nailed together into sections, then loaded up and brought over, piece by piece.

And the barn.
She stared at it, folding her arms.
It looks as if it's been made with timbers from wrecked ships.

A few gulls wheeled, making dipping shadows in the yard. Ellie's shadow angled out in front of her. Tall. Alone.

She stretched out her arms. Turned them this way and that, making dipping shadows, too. And then, without deciding to, she began walking. She walked so she wouldn't have to stay in any one place. So she would not have to be here.

She turned her back on the house and the sea and walked inland, scrambling through grasses and wild hay. She lifted her feet up and away from this thin slice of accidental land. The seagulls floated overhead. The sparrows darted here and there. The wind was always behind her, around her.

Ellie walked into nothingness. She didn't recall her father's warning about wandering. There was emptiness all around her and inside her.

Nothing matters,
she thought.
It doesn't matter if the sand shifts. It doesn't matter if the whole island dissolves away into the sea.
This was not her home. She was not here.

Tiring, she headed back to the beach, her shadow on one side, the sun on the other.

Ellie walked beside the sea until her legs grew weary. She had reached a stretch of dunes that rose abruptly right near the edge of the beach, high beyond the water's reach. She sat down in the long marram grass at the foot of the dunes. And then, exhausted, she lay back and fell asleep.

Waking, she had sand in her eyes, and the straps of her bonnet were twisted under her chin. She pulled at them, cranky, loosening the knot. Her skirt had ridden up from her boots. Her shins were hot in the spring sunshine.

Ellie lay, looking at the sky, and suddenly, she saw the horse.

She gasped and almost cried out in surprise.

He was there. It was the same stallion she had seen yesterday. She was certain of it. The horse was only several arm-lengths away, grazing. He was above her, near the top of the dune, silhouetted against the blue sky, and she gazed up at him from where she lay.

The horse was stocky with a shaggy coat. Ellie felt him close, his body real and sudden. Would he hurt her? Was he dangerous?

He's wild! A wild horse!
she told herself, unbelieving.

Chewing, the horse swung his head round. He looked down at Ellie. His brown coat was the color of milk chocolate. His mane was black and very long. It lay along his neck in waves. His forelock fell between two watchful brown-black eyes. A sweep of the wind lifted the forelock to one side of his face, revealing a patch of white on his forehead. A thin white stripe ran down his nose.

He blinked, and his long black eyelashes waved. Ellie held her breath. She was awestruck, captivated.

For a long moment, Ellie stared into the horse's soft, curious eyes. Then she thought,
He's so close, I could touch him. He would feel warm, soft. As velvety as orchid petals. He seems so calm, so tame. He wouldn't hurt me. Should I? Should I reach out and …

Ellie lifted her hand. She was still only thinking about touching the horse. But he understood her instantly, before she even knew her own mind.

The wild horse jerked his head up and whirled. He would
not
be touched!

He was so close to her that she felt the stir of the air as he pirouetted. She felt the sand from his hooves spray her bare shins.

The stallion pounded away over the dune, knees high and sand flying. Then he was gone.

Chapter Nine

The next morning while they ate, Ellie's father described Cora to her. “Our horse is very gentle and sweet, Ellie. She's also very patient. She's a fine little horse” — he chuckled — “which is lucky because it's up to her to teach
me
how to ride! I bet she could teach you, too.” He looked at her tentatively. “If you'd like to try her sometime, on one of my days off maybe …?”

Ellie shook her head. “No.” She could not imagine it. “No, thank you, Pa.”

“Ellie, she's from here, the island. She was once wild.”

She shook her head again.

Ellie knew wild. She had seen wild yesterday, the horse on the dunes. What was “once wild” compared to that?

When they were finished eating, her father drew her a map on her slate.

“This is Sable Island,” he said, drawing a crescent moon, thin at the ends, slightly thicker in the middle. “It's about twenty-five miles from tip to tip, and only one mile wide at its widest point.” He made an N above the middle of the moon's smile. “That's north, and here we are.” He put an X between the middle of the moon and the western end.

“And here,” he marked an X on the north shore at the western end, “is the Main Station, where we landed and slept on our first night.” He moved his finger back to the X that was their station. He ran it a little farther along the coast and then down, inland. “The salty lake, Lake Wallace, stretches from here,” he ran his finger eastward, “to here. It's long and skinny like the island itself.”

Ellie was interested, trying to calculate the place on this map where she had seen the horse.

“Ellie.” Her father spoke sternly, waiting to get her attention. “It's a small island, but in a fog or a storm you could get lost. If you ever do,” he said firmly, “stay in one place. Don't move, and I'll come and find you.”

He waited.

“All right, Pa,” Ellie agreed.

And suddenly sadness swept over her, because she felt lost now, here. In this new place.

Her father left for his beach patrol, and Ellie remained at the kitchen table, still feeling adrift and alone.

Then into her imagination, behind her closed eyes, came the wild horses. They found her!

Ellie erased the map on her slate and drew them: the stallion standing on a dune, its mane long and flowing. Then one mare pawing in the sand for water. Then the little ones. Then, after one more erasing, the rest of the herd so close they were overlapping, no space between them.

A ray of sunlight slanted across the wooden tabletop, rested on the orchid petals. Ellie put more water into the jug. Gently, she touched her fingertip to the pink and white blooms, to the magenta.

She thought of the stallion, real and wild. He might be there! And she hurried to get dressed.

Just as she was leaving, she remembered her chores. Quickly, Ellie washed the dishes and dried them. She laced up her boots, hurried to the barn, milked the cow and took it out to pasture. She threw handfuls of grain to the fowl. She ducked into the hutch, ignoring the clucking and the ruffling of indignant feathers. One egg. No, two, three. She cradled them in her skirt, grabbed the pailful of milk and returned to the house. She placed the eggs in a bowl on the wooden table and covered them with a wet cloth. The milk, too.

Now Ellie was ready. She grabbed up her bonnet and walked out. She moved quickly eastward across the sand. The wind was whooshing, pushing the waves into frothy tips, dashing them against the beach, as regular as breathing. In and out, in and out.

Sandpipers scurried along before her. Plovers with a band of black feathers around their necks fished in the shallows. Ellie found part of an oar washed up on the shore and, farther along, a coconut, bald and foreign. She walked around them, warily.

Just as her legs were getting weary, Ellie reached the dunes. There was no sign of the horse. So she sat and waited.

Ellie looked out at the blue ocean, the diving terns. She waited there, and the wind blew gently. The sand wafted between the grass, over her, about her, into her hair, her eyes. She could taste it on her lips. Sand and the saltiness of the sea that the wind shared as well.

She gazed sleepily at the sand at the base of the dunes. There were tiny circles in the sand, perfect circles, millions of them.

The fairies have come
, she thought.
The fairies have danced here in tiny circles.
The idea slipped in and out of her imagination. So did the memory of Sarah, pirouetting, twirling. Suddenly Ellie longed to tell someone about the fairy circles, but there was no one to tell.

A sparrow flitted through the grasses, then took flight. The sun was high now. The clouds that had been far off were closer. Ellie tilted the brow of her bonnet to keep the heat from her face. She took out an apple from her pocket.