Mending Horses by M. P. Barker Page B

and his body softened. As Jonathan blew out the candle, Daniel’s cheeks glimmered with moisture.
    Daniel was in the secret place he’d created inside himself after the fire had taken his home and family, when waking had meant fierce pain outside and worse pain inside; when fevered nightmares had alternated with the blistering sensation that phantom claws peeled the skin from his
arms and shoulders and shredded the muscles beneath. Then he’d drifted in a green mist. The mist had set him down as gently as one might set an egg in a bed of straw, then faded away. He saw grass, hills, trees so green he could taste their cool freshness like spring water on his tongue, could feel the green softness between his bare toes. The green sparkled in golden sunlight, and the fire along his skin was only the wind or the sun, and there was no more pain inside, for Ma and Da and Michael were right there with him
.
    The first time he’d woken from his green secret place, he’d screamed at Mrs. Nye and Dr. Corey for dragging him back, for though the pain on the outside might leave him, the pain on the inside never would
.
    As he’d healed, he’d taught himself to summon the place at will, finding with each visit a new facet to explore. Sometimes he’d meet heroes like Cúchulainn and Brian Boru, or faeries and silkies and such, come to life from Da’s stories. After Daniel tamed Ivy—or rather, Ivy tamed him—she was there too, always waiting for him, always his
.
    His mother was singing. Her copper hair cascaded loose about her shoulders, her eyes bright and unshadowed. Da was there, too, whistling the same tune as Ma, though her voice and his whistling had never been so melodious before
.
    Then Daniel was riding Ivy, and though they galloped far and away across the soft green grass, the song never faded from his ears
.
    For a long time Daniel drifted between the green place and the black, trying not to get trapped in the tunnel of bright white pain that connected the two. Eventually, the tunnel fell away, resolving into walls and floor.
    â€œDan’l? Dan’l? Son?” A calloused hand tested his forehead.
    Staring back at him was a pair of green eyes, heavy-lidded like a wise old turtle’s, in a jowly round face—exactly the face he’d been seeking. He’d found them, then: the peddler and his boy, for wasn’t that the yellow-haired lad peering over the peddler’s shoulder? But what had come between the seeking and the finding? “Sir?” He rubbed his eyes and started to sit up. “I’ve had such a dream.” A torch-lit clearing, men shouting, horses churning up the ground. His own stomach turning inside out until it couldturn no more. And . . . snow? He ran a hand across his throat, felt the raw skin there, saw the bruises on his wrists. “Oh, God. ’Tweren’t a dream, then.”
    â€œâ€™Fraid not,” the peddler said. Daniel heard the clink and slosh of liquid being poured. Something nudged his elbow. “Here, son, this’ll settle you some.”
    Daniel took a sip. He coughed as the rum burned his throat, and he shivered at the pictures forming in his mind. The same calloused hands offering a flask. The smell of melting tar thick and heavy in the air. Feathers swirling around him like drifting snow. He clutched the glass with white knuckles. “I—I fancy I’m in your debt, sir.” Each word felt like a throat full of brambles.
    The peddler shook his head. “I’ve only put your trouble off a while, not sent it packing. Do you understand what all this is about? Who that is?” He nodded over his shoulder at a man with dark hair, weary eyes, and bandaged hands.
    Daniel nodded. A great lump gathered in his throat, and a greater one in his chest. He rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hands, sucked in a noisy breath, and sat up straighter, facing the peddler and the constable. A