The Island Horse by Susan Hughes Read Free Book Online

picked up.
    How will I find my way?
she wondered.
    Ellie felt a flash of fear. She stood uncertainly. She tried to remember what her father had told her, just that morning.
If you get lost
… but her thoughts were skittery, scattering. She had that underwater feeling, like she could not see, could not breathe.
    Just then, it seemed to her that suddenly something was near. Not the horse. Something else. A fairy perhaps?
    No, something much larger. And there it was. A huge, dark shape, moving in the fog, quite close, uttering a reedy “Hullo.” But what could be so big and have such a high, sweet voice?
    â€œHello,” Ellie replied, startled.
    The shape came closer, and then the bridled head of a horse emerged from the fog. A hand reached down, a person —
of course!
— atop.
    â€œCome on. I’ll take you home. Here, use my stirrup.” Scrambling up onto the back of the horse, she knew it was Sarah. The girl’s hair was braided, and she wore a blue dress, and that was all Ellie could see through the fog, even though they were now front to back on the horse. “Right. Here we go.”
    They moved through the fog, traveling along the shore, only seeing where they were just as they got there. Ellie caught another glimpse of Sarah and discovered that she wasn’t wearing a blue dress, but rather a blue shirt and brown breeches, and she sighed aloud, longingly, “Oh, breeches. You’re lucky.”
    â€œI guess,” Sarah agreed, then gave a delighted laugh, as if just realizing that other girls might not be allowed this freedom.
    Riding in the fog felt like floating. Like bobbing along on a boat at night. Like swaying amid a cloud, out of time. Like living on this island.
    Sarah tipped her head back toward her. Ellie saw a flash of her pixie-sharp chin. “My horse’s name is Shannon,” she said.
    The fog began to lift from below, so that beneath their thighs the island was reappearing. Ellie saw Sarah’s feet, bare in the stirrups. She saw the horse’s hooves. A chain of wildflowers around Shannon’s right front fetlock. Tiny petals, glistening with fog droplets.
    â€œHow did you happen to come upon me? In all that fog?” Ellie asked.
    â€œI was coming to visit you,” Sarah replied easily. “I came yesterday morning, but you weren’t at the house. So I rode up the beach, but by the time I spotted you by the dunes, the sun was high and Ma needed me back home to help out. And to work on my lessons. Today I came again. I rode up the coast for a while and looked for seals. Saw lots on the beach!” she said enthusiastically. “I was coming to visit you when the fog came in. I thought you might be there again, by the dunes, and not find your way back. I wasn’t far away, so I came.”
    Sarah came yesterday and was watching me? And again today?
Ellie gasped.
Oh, no! Did she see my horse? My secret island horse?
    â€œYou’ve been spying on me!” Ellie burst out angrily. “Spying!”
    Sarah’s back stiffened. Her chin rose. She didn’t speak.
    The girls rode on in silence.
    When they got to the station, Ellie slid down until her feet touched the ground. She knew she must say thank-you. She thought she could manage it once there was more space between her and the wild spying girl. But once Ellie was off the horse, Sarah and Shannon were gone, vanished into the fog, into the wind, into the air.
    Chapter Eleven
    The next day, the morning sky was dark and cloudy. The wind was high.
    Ellie was slow getting up. It seemed like night. She yawned, stretched and dozed.
    Her father knocked gently on her bedroom door. He poked his head in. “It’s a fierce day,” he warned her. “Stay inside.”
    She wanted to roll over. She wanted to pull up the bedcovers and go back to sleep where everything could be as she wished. But something pulled at her. Something would not let her fall back into that deep