A Hundred Horses by Sarah Lean Page B

angel. Maybe we don’t even know what one is.
    She was in the yard. And she had become someone else to me now, now that I’d seen what she’d done. But she looked like she was going to run away from me.
    “Aunt Liv let me name the piglet,” I said, following her across the yard.
    She went to a stable door and closed it without looking at me.
    “I called her Gabriel, after the angel,” I said. “Like you?”
    I saw her startled eyes. I saw her jaw go tight, her cheeks blush, as she turned away and tied some string around the latch to keep it shut.
    “I’m just saying thanks,” I said. “How did you do it?”
    Angel looked at me for just a second and then walked away.
    “Really, I want to know,” I said.
    She went on as if she was heading for the lane. I was almost shouting now, watching her back, staring at the big coat that covered her. Was she hiding something under there too, like Gem had said? Maybe the feathers that she’d been collecting. What did she want them for, anyway? I shook my head to clear the wild ideas that sparkled in my head like glitter in a snow globe. I wasn’t used to feeling like this. I just wanted her to stay.
    “I didn’t tell anyone it was you who saved Gabriel!” I said, staying put outside the stables where the grass was flattened. “I think I know what’s in the stables. If you tell me, I’ll tell you about my suitcase.”
    It was all I had to bargain with. She stopped and turned back. There was a curve in the corner of her mouth. I saw the sky in her eyes.
    “Help me catch Mrs. Barker’s goat,” she said.

Twenty-One
    “S hhh!” she said, turning around and pulling me down into a crouch. She clamped a warm hand over my mouth.
    I was just trying to tell her that Gabriel was so sweet that when I put her back down with Maggie, I just wanted to pick her right back up again. And I could see Angel was getting fed up with me going on and on, but that she was also trying not to smile.
    “I get it. You love her,” she said as if it happened every day of her life. “Now shush. What do you know about goats?”
    “Nothing,” I mumbled through her fingers, “so don’t go making me look stupid or anything.”
    Angel bit her lip to hide her smile and took her hand away.
    “At first I really thought you had the goat in the stable,” I whispered.
    She glanced, her eyes narrow, but she ignored what I’d just said.
    “Goats can be stubborn, and Dorothy won’t like it if you make a loud noise. When I took her—”
    “You did steal the goat!”
    “Shhh,” she said. “I never said I didn’t.”
    At least she admitted it. She told me what had happened the day the chickens escaped, just like that, even though I didn’t ask. She said she was stealing the goat from Mrs. Barker and somebody went past, so she hid it in a chicken barn. But then the goat got scared of all the chickens squawking and flapping, so Angel opened the door and then had to run because somebody was coming. She didn’t have time to close the barn door and gate behind her.
    “The chickens wanted to see the sky anyway.” She smirked.
    My mouth hung open.
    “I knew that too,” I said, but she had already moved on.
    “The goat keeps getting away. She was in the stables—” She smirked because my mouth fell open again and I breathed in sharply. “But not when you thought she was.” I closed my mouth again. How was I supposed to know what was true? She continued, “I have to let Dorothy out, but she goes off into your aunt Liv’s fields because she likes to eat the herbs, and I have to keep finding her,” she said, like it was just ordinary, everyday stuff to her. “So if we move slowly and show her something even nicer to eat, she’ll follow us.” Her eyes flashed. “Try not to spook her as well.”
    Which wasn’t fair, but anyway, I said, “Okay. Where is she?”
    She pointed ahead of us. “Just there.”
    The goat’s head was pushed through the bushes, her chin and beard going around and