The Island Horse by Susan Hughes Read Free Book Online Page A

place.
    Ellie got up. She dressed and ate, listening to the wind rattle the windows. She did her chores. Found four eggs. Swept the kitchen floor. Made the beds. Even baked a simple cake for supper, remembering to keep the fire low and even, like her father had shown her. Then, the kitchen warm with the smell of cooked apples, she knew she should sit and draw, or talk to the cow in the barn, or look out to sea from her bedroom window. After all, her father had told her to stay indoors. But it was also her father who had brought her to this nowhere island in the first place. Her thoughts kept returning to the dunes. Orchid might be there!
    She remembered to close the shutters. She put on her sweater, her waterproof slicker over top and her boots. Then she set out along the beach.
    The ocean waves were high and rolling. They broke on the shore wildly. Her hair whipped her face. She was nervous.
    She kept walking. Once she turned, feeling as if perhaps she was being followed. But there was nothing behind her. No one.
    She thought about Sarah. Ellie had been so upset imagining that Sarah was spying on her. She wanted Orchid to be her secret, her one good thing in this empty place.
But maybe I was too harsh,
she thought.
If Sarah did see me with Orchid, maybe she didn’t tell anyone. Maybe she understands. Maybe she just wants to be friends, after all.
    Ellie reached the place where the dunes came right to the edge of the beach. Orchid was not there.
    She waited, crouching, then sitting. Knees pulled up to her chin. The grass bent around her. The sand was damp. The sky was threatening. The horse was not there.
    An island of sand. What if the wind blew it all away? What if we’re left without anything?
Ellie wondered.
    The storm hit. The rain came suddenly, and the wind drowned out all other sounds.
    Ellie sprang up, covering her head with her hood. Discouraged and disappointed, she peered into the distance, inland. No horses were there. She looked along the shore. No horses here either, although there were seals. They had hauled out along the beach. Gray seals. Dozens of them. They lay on the sand as if they had always been there and would never move. As gray as the air, as the rain-filled skies.
    Hunched, holding her elbows, Ellie turned quickly back toward the station. She walked briskly along the dunes, drenched. She kept her head down, the rain blowing at her from the ocean side. She thought about her father’s warning with a flush of shame. Thunder made her jump. Her heart was pounding.
    The wind picked up even more, and the rain fell harder, pocking the sand. She felt the whole island shudder, as if it might simply dissolve into grains and vanish.
    There were no trees, nothing to protect her from the opening skies. And then a lightning bolt lit up the horizon. Instantly she saw it, in the sea, as she turned to sweep the wet hair from her face. A ship! It was offshore and tilting at an impossible angle. Its sails flapped uselessly.
    It wasn’t moving. It had hit ground, slammed into a sandbar. Ellie imagined the sailor with the snaking fingers, remembered his frightening words.
    She heard cries carried in the wind.
Is it the crew?
she wondered.
The passengers? How many are on board?
She watched in horror as the waves crashed up and onto the ship’s deck.
    Ellie saw two figures on horseback. They were riding along the shore, galloping from the west toward the ship. They skidded to a halt and gestured to one another. She could hear them shouting.
Is one my pa?
she wondered, but they were too far away to see, and the rain was like a curtain.
    One rider lit his lantern, waving it toward the ship. It would tell the passengers that help was on its way. It would bring hope to the shipwrecked.
    The other rider had spun about, galloping along the beach and then turning, veering inland. He must be going to get the others, Ellie decided, heart pounding. The rider bent forward, low over the horse’s neck, lifting