Uchenna's Apples (16 page)

They all stood there a while and watched the horses eat. Though it was satisfying, it didn’t reverse Uchenna’s feelings about some of the things that had happened that afternoon. “Hey,” she said to Jimmy.

He looked at her, his hands in his pockets, his head a little down again.

“She was an idiot,” Uchenna said. “I’m really sorry.”

Jimmy shook his head. “Happens every day,” he said wearily. “Better hope we got enough grass today to last till tomorrow or so… ‘cause you’re going to get a lot more of Mrs. Housecoat tomorrow after school, and I don’t think you’re going to mow five more lawns while I’m around.”

Emer was looking at him sadly. Then she caught herself, and her face went neutral again. “If nobody comes and feeds these guys tomorrow,” she said, “or nobody besides us, I think we’d better call somebody. The ISPCA or something. They can’t just be out by themselves, especially when she’s like she is…”

She nodded at the Mammy Horse, who was eating her way steadily through one of the spilled-out piles of grass. “Yeah,” Jimmy said. “It’s got to be real soon for her…”

A few more moments of silence passed, broken only by the steady munching of horses. “Oh feck,” Uchenna said, “I forgot to bring them more apples.”

“We’ll go see Mr. Mallon tomorrow,” Emer said. “He’ll know who to call.”

Uchenna nodded. “That sound right to you?” she said to Jimmy.

He looked at her in surprise.

“You were smart to think of the money,” Uchenna said. “You’ve been a good part of this plot. You get a say.”

Jimmy nodded almost as if this was something he’d expected. “Yeah,” he said. “Okay.” And then he snickered. “Be funny to go see the Old Man without getting in trouble first.”

They watched the horses a while more, then turned and headed back through the hedge and across the Condom Ditch. “It’ll be a shame,” Emer said, “when the ISPCA or whoever owns them comes and takes them away. This has been kind of fun.”

“Yeah,” Uchenna said. “Oh, here—” She reached into her pocket while they were still well out of the view of any house and pulled the money out, divided it up amongst them. “We got something out of it, anyway.” She glanced back over her shoulder and thought she caught just a glimpse of something pale: the Mammy Horse’s head, maybe? And the thought,
She might be gone tomorrow, and I won’t know what happened with her and her baby…
actually hurt when it occurred to her.

“We could keep doing the mowing thing, though…” Emer said.

“Too much work!” Jimmy said.

“You’re just a skiver,” Emer said.

Uchenna slowed down, looking over her shoulder again, as the other two went ahead, slagging each other off.
Why am I sad? It’s just some horses.
But they had become more than that somehow, and Uchenna couldn’t understand just what, or how.

She turned again. Emer and Jimmy hadn’t even noticed that she wasn’t behind them: they were halfway down the field already. Uchenna let out a long breath and ran after them.

*

Uchenna was up late that night, finishing the homework that she hadn’t done earlier in the weekend. Fortunately it was mostly reading, and a lot of the material was online. She started wishing, though, that she hadn’t left it until dark: for some of the details about the old holiday of Samhain were kind of creepy.

It was a harvest feast, but also a feast of the dead and the spirits of death. Meals were set out for the dead souls, grain was locked up so that the more malicious ghosts couldn’t hurt it, and there were sacrifices. Some of them were of horses. In fact, horses came into the Samhain stories in a number of places. One website full of the history of the feast said that horses were supposed to be messengers between the world of the living and the world of the dead, bearers of gifts to the good or revenge on the bad: and these horses, Uchenna noted a little uneasily, were usually white. The Celtic goddess of horses, Epona, had also been one of those who also went back and forth between the worlds, and Samhain was one of those times when, for her and other strange beings, the passage was supposed to be easier than usual. Things slipped through the cracks in the world, demons and imps and mean-tempered sprites: and before the pumpkin came along, people carved turnips into little weird-faced lanterns to try to frighten the nastier spirits away. The Irish Hallowe’en was not the jolly trick-or-treat kind that had been gradually arriving from America, full of cackling humorous witches on broomsticks and goofy carved jack-o-lanterns. It was much older, much darker, more haunted.

Uchenna was glad to finish the homework and put it away, shut the computer off and curl up under the covers in bed with a book, trying to read herself to sleep. But it took a while, and the thought of the horse sacrifices she was finding particularly creepy now. Once upon a time, last week maybe, she wouldn’t have cared one way or another: it was a long time ago. But now she once again felt those bristly lips touch her hand as the Mammy Horse took the apple from her, and she saw the big brown eye look at her, placid, interested, and somehow alien, but not scary. The thought of somebody taking a knife and—

Uchenna shook her head and pushed the thought away from her. Creepy.
Well, at least whatever happens to the Mammy, nobody’s going to do
that
to her!

Yet the thought and the image troubled her sleep. She woke much earlier than she had to, long before the alarm, and decided not to try to get to sleep, but to go out with apples one last time. She dressed hurriedly and went downstairs to the kitchen for a bowl of cereal, turning over in her mind as she ate just what she and the others would want to say to the Headmaster when they went to see him. Despite what Jimmy had said, Mr. Mallon wasn’t really one of those hide-in-the-office types who never let you see him except when you were in trouble. He was always willing to listen to kids who had a problem: this was the time to make use of him—

Her Mam came down the stairs in her white coat. She was usually away early on Monday mornings: Dad didn’t have to go into the office at all on Mondays—it was a work at home day for him. Uchenna’s Mam went straight into the kitchen, poured coffee, poured it half full of milk as usual, and drank half of it. Then she sighed and put the mug down. “Uchenna…” she said.

Uh oh,
Uchenna thought, for she knew that tone of voice. She finished the last bite of cereal, put the spoon down. “What, Mam?”

“I had some phone calls last night…” she said.

Here it comes…

“A couple of the neighbors were telling me something about your… friend. Jimmy.”

“He’s a Traveller,” Uchenna said, “is that the problem? Mam, it’s not fair, he doesn’t even want to be one. He’s a good kid.” At least she thought he was: she knew that for Emer the jury was still out.

“All the same,” her Mam said, “I don’t think you should really make a habit of hanging around with him. All right? Some people around here… they get nervous. It’s not your fault, or his, it’s just that—”

That
we
have to change who our friends are because
they’re
bigoted,
Uchenna thought. But this was not a safe thing to say to her Mam right this minute.

“—so promise me that you won’t get any more friendly with him, all right?” her Mam was saying. “I mean, you can talk to him, there’s nothing wrong with that, but—”

Like it matters,
one part of Uchenna’s mind said.
You’ve known him for about three days. Dump him! It’s not worth making a big deal about.
But another part of her mind said in an annoyed tone,
He came right in on our plan because it was to help the Mammy. There’s nothing wrong with him! And dumping him now would tell him that we’re just as bigoted as everybody else.

“—and so you understand how it is around here, these people—”

The phone rang. “Oh, damnation,” her Mam said under her breath, picking the phone up off the counter and glancing at the display. She punched a button on the phone, frowning. “This is Doctor Debe-McConnor—”

A pause. Her mother’s frown turned alarmed. “He
what
?” Another pause. “When did this happen?”

This pause was much longer. As it went along, Uchenna’s Mam moved around the kitchen, slipping hurriedly into her overcoat, changing phone hands to do so, and picking up her purse and her work bag. “No,” her Mam said. “Don’t do anything further, if he’s stable he’ll hold until I can get in. Get those blood enzymes for me, though: I want them as soon as I arrive. Right? Good. Thanks. Bye —”

She hung up and headed for the door, though she paused to hug Uchenna. “Tell your Dad they just readmitted one of my patients who had a relapse, and I had to go early,” her Mam said. “And thanks for being a dear and understanding…”

“Love you, Mam,” Uchenna said as her mam went out the door in a rush.
Because you talk yourself right into what you want to hear!

“Thank you sweet—” The door closed. A moment later the SUV’s engine started up, and the sound of it receded down the driveway and out of the circle.

Uchenna sat there staring at her cereal bowl, then fished out her phone and texted her Dad with her Mam’s message: he’d see it first thing when he got up. After that she went upstairs to change for school, and then hurriedly went out.

There were only a few apples left on the ground in the back yard now: she picked them up and stuffed them into the plastic bag she’d brought with her, then went out to the field by the Hole in the Wall path. It was gray and misty again this morning, that strange mild end-of-summer weather that often hung on for several weeks before the real cool of the autumn set in. But Uchenna shivered as she hurried through the field in that thick gloomy fog. She kept thinking of a time very long ago when some of the first Irish people would have been leading horses out into this mist to some stone ring or under the shadow of some menhir. Usually the horses would have been mares, which were sacred to Epona. But sometimes they would have been mares “in foal”: getting ready to have their babies. And in the mist, dull golden, a bronze knife would rise and fall—

She gulped as she came to the hedge by the Condom Ditch. The gap in the hedge had been pushed wider by the going and coming of the last couple of days: Uchenna was able to slip through it without her school uniform getting snagged on anything. But as she came out on the far side and stood up, her mouth dropped open. All the grass was gone. But so were all the horses.

“Oh no…” she whispered.
“Where did you go?”
But there was no way to tell. At first Uchenna thought she’d go down to the far end of the field and look for tire tracks—but she’d get her school shoes muddy, and there would now be no time to get home and clean them and then still get to school on time.

“Feck,” she said softly, and turned away. The bag of apples weighed in her hand. Miserably, Uchenna dumped them out on the ground and went back through the hedge, across the board, and back home.

She had just time enough to pick up her books and head out again, locking up behind her. That morning was a grim one for her, and Uchenna had less taste than usual for the morning prayers and the Bible reading for the day. No one noticed, of course: half the kids paid no attention to the religious instruction part of the morning anyway, treating it as something to get through before the real business of the school day, and concentrating on it only when there was about to be a test. “In the name of God the Father, and God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit…” the morning teacher said, looking down at her desk like someone lost in prayer: but Uchenna could see that Mrs. Maginnis was already copping a look at the lesson plan for the next class.

Uchenna looked up at the crucifix at the front of the classroom, feeling depressed.
And what about You, GTS?
Uchenna thought unhappily.
Did you finally do something about the Mammy? I wish I could know what it was
. There was no point in going to see Mr. Mallon now, either: there was nothing to tell him about.

Across the room, Emer was looking at her, making
What’s the matter?
faces at Uchenna when the teacher wasn’t looking. Uchenna just shook her head: she didn’t feel like texting or even writing a note. It wasn’t until the break after English Lit that they had a chance to talk out in the hall, and Uchenna told Emer everything that had happened, first with her Mam and then with the horses.

Emer sighed. “Are you okay?”

“No,” Uchenna said. “Not until I find out if the Mammy’s okay! This is awful.”

Emer sighed. “I guess we’re not going to the Headmaster, then.”

“Don’t see why we should,” Uchenna said. “And I get this idea that Jimmy’d rather not, really. No matter what he says.”

“Yeah,” Emer said, “he’s a strange one. Don’t know how to figure him, sometimes.”

“How’d you mean?”

Emer shrugged. “Just something weird about the way he looks at you. Those narrow little eyes. He’s all the time squinting.”

“Maybe he needs glasses,” Uchenna said. “Come on, Eames, you can’t be not trusting somebody just because of how they look. You wouldn’t do that with what’s his name. You know who I mean.”

“No, I don’t.”

“The smart Czech kid with the spine problem.”

“Oh, Szoltan,” Emer said. “Well, yeah, but a lot of the kids would.”

“You’re not a lot of kids,” Uchenna said. “Come on, you didn’t do it with me!”

Emer shrugged. “Chen, it’s not the same thing. I knew you for a while. I don’t know this guy, he came out of nowhere…” Nonetheless, she looked thoughtful.

They went back into class a few minutes later, and Uchenna tried to pay attention to her lessons and concentrate on getting through the morning: but it felt like it took forever. When lunch time finally rolled around, she was glad to go, though she had no appetite for it. What surprised her, when she walked into the lunchroom, was the sight of Belle, over at her table with her usual group, waving Uchenna over energetically.

Emer had just come in behind Uchenna: Uchenna caught her eye and gestured her over. They sat down. “What?” Uchenna said.

Belle gave her a wide-eyed look. “You have to be the only ones who haven’t heard,” she said in a hushed excited whisper. “The mythical mystery horses have appeared!”