Free A Hundred Horses by Sarah Lean Page B

I was bored—because I wasn’t. I was just tired from being awake most of the night. It was like having another bedtime story, though, and I fell asleep.
    “All this fresh air tiring you out?” Rita chuckled when I woke. She had been sewing. Scraps of material and worms of thread were scattered on the floor near the alcove.
    “I didn’t mean to fall asleep.”
    Rita nodded toward me. “Somebody left something for you.”
    The brown leather suitcase was right there, by the bed! And seeing it at that moment was a million times better than when I first found it.
    Rita smiled and handed me a cup of brownish tea.
    “Try some. I don’t know what Liv is putting in that tea she grows, but I’m feeling a lot more like myself today.”
    Which was funny, because who else can you feel like? The tea tasted sweet but like mud. It was strange on my tongue.
    “Angel stole the suitcase from me,” I said.
    I wasn’t angry with Angel anymore. And it made my heart laugh to think I would never have met her if she hadn’t stolen it.
    “She gave it back, though.”
    Rita seemed to like that I said that. I could tell Rita was smiling right through to her heart because her eyes filled with sunlight. I think right then we were the same. Exactly the same inside. Surprised by the things Angel did.
    “What’s inside the suitcase?” Rita said.
    “A toy carousel, with lights and music and everything,” I said. “Well, that’s what it used to be, but I won’t know until I put it back together again.”
    And that made me laugh, because somehow it was a completely new thing now.
    “Maybe you’re starting to feel a little more like yourself too,” she said. “I don’t think I’ve seen you smile until now.”
    My cheeks warmed. Maybe she was right.
    “You won’t tell anyone about this suitcase, though, except Angel?”
    “Who else is there to tell?” She winked.
    “Can I go in the stables?” I asked. “I need some room to put it together.”
    Rita glanced up from threading her sewing machine.
    “Use the one at the bottom on the right. It’s dry and clean in there,” she said.
    “Oh, and do you know where Angel is?”
    She’d kept her part of the bargain by giving me back the carousel suitcase—eventually—and now I thought I ought to keep mine and tell her about what was inside it.
    “She might be out in the yard,” Rita murmured, squinting at the tiny eye of the needle. “She might not. You know how it is.”
    Just then a clock chimed: a brassy, familiar tune.
    Rita swiveled around on her stool.
    “Well, well,” she said. “I haven’t heard that for a while.”
    I followed her out into the hallway and saw the question in her eyes as we stared at the ivory face, at the second hand ticking away.
    “Was it broken before?” I asked.
    “It was Mr. Hemsworth’s clock. He used to wind it up every day after work.”
    She reached up and unhooked a small brass key hanging on a piece of string from one of the coat pegs. It definitely hadn’t been there before; I would have remembered. There had been two pairs of boots and a coat hanging there, but no key.
    Rita ran her hand across my shoulder and rested her arm there as we gazed up at the face. I could tell she needed someone to hold on to for a minute.
    “That’s the key to wind it up,” she said. “Mr. Hemsworth used to carry it in his pocket.”
     
    Angel wasn’t in the yard. All the stable doors were shut. As I passed the flattened grass, I wondered if Dorothy, the goat, and Belle were in there. I wondered if they minded being together, seeing as they weren’t even the same animal. But there was only one thing I really wanted to do. I hurried to open the suitcase in the last stable on the right.
    I pushed back the straw, and tipped all the pieces out onto the floor. I touched them all. I recognized lots of the shapes, where they went on the carousel, what they made. I thought about where to start, what had to be made first, and what was made last. I