Wonder Light by R. R. Russell Read Free Book Online Page B

down. She tucked her chin in and worry lines creased above her eyes. The still of the night, the thick of the tension, were broken by a high, thin creak.
    Mrs. Murley’s eyes got wide. “That was the gate.”
    The whites of Mystery’s eyes showed, and she let out a desperate whinny, then a pleading, fear-filled scream. The ponies erupted with their own wild, nervous chorus.
    â€œStay here, Twig. And keep your distance, no matter what. She won’t hesitate to hurt you if she thinks she’s protecting her foal,” she called over her shoulder as she hurried out of the stable, leaving the door open behind her in her haste.
    The wind had picked up, thinning out the fog, and it blew into the stable, damp and chill.
    Was she going to get Mr. Murley and his gun? What if that was the wild boy coming through the gate? What if Mr. Murley shot him? But why would he bother with the gate? He’d only opened it last time for Mystery, probably because she was too heavy with her foal to jump the fence like his stallion. What if it was someone else? Surely the wild boy wasn’t alone on the island.
    Twig turned her attention from the dark square of night at the end of the stable aisle to Mystery. Twig didn’t move; she tried to become a part of the wall. Mystery let out a long breath, and a pair of pale forelegs emerged from her body. A head, then the foal’s entire body slipped out, just like that.
    Twig’s hands trembled. It is a miracle! she wanted to shout to Mrs. Murley when she saw the foal raise its head. It is!
    Mystery licked the foal clean, though it seemed to take all her energy to do so. There was a growing sort of hollow darkness in the pools of Mystery’s eyes that made Twig’s throat ache. But the foal turned its head toward Twig. Its mane was more a pale silver than its mother’s white, and its forelock curled around a strange, white nub. Something left from the birth? A deformity? Twig leaned closer—too close for Mystery’s comfort.
    Mystery snorted at her, and Twig jumped back and met those quicksilver eyes, and that was when she saw it: the horn emerging from Mystery’s head. It slid out slowly, bit by bit, parting her forelock. Twig’s mind stumbled over the word just as her feet stumbled back another step— unicorn . What other word was there for it? For a horse, white as moonlight, with mysterious pools for eyes, with the nimble cloven hooves of a deer—and now, with a lone, spiraling silvery-white horn? Could the foal’s little nub be the brand-new baby beginnings of its own horn?
    A quiet footfall in the silence, behind Twig. Too intentionally quiet to be one of the Murleys. Slowly, breath held, Twig turned away from Mystery and her foal.
    There, with the night wind whipping his cloak out around him so that his slight frame seemed to fill the entire aisle, was the wild boy.

Chapter 13
    There was no mistiness to the wild boy. It had been mere fog, not ghostliness, in those glimpses Twig had caught before; it had belonged to the forest and to the night, not to him. The only wisping about the boy himself was his swiftness, his stealth. That was all his.
    He was just a boy, not much older than Twig, but with his light brown hair and eyes that nearly matched, he looked as though he could have come right out of the earth; he was so alive and so solid, smelling of sweat and cedar and rain. How could she have ever mistaken him for a phantom?
    He noticed Twig and his eyes widened in surprise, then narrowed in confusion. He hesitated a split second, like he knew he ought to run, and she realized he’d made the noise with the gate on purpose, to draw whoever was in the stable out; he hadn’t counted on her being in here.
    He gave Twig a fearful but determined look and brushed right past her as though he owned the place. Twig noted a bundle of sticks strapped to the boy’s back, with white feathers secured to the ends. A bow slung next