What is this? Across the field comes a figure, stepping starchily in the frozen grass. Across the fields she comes walking, gray hair a straggle, old brown skirt awry, old blue tennis shoes scrunching in the frozen stubble. Blue eyes sparkling, nose pink from the cold, she covers the fields with the stride of a girl, swinging her satchel and looking up at the crow, who caws at her, telling her she is trespassing.
“Hush, you crow!” says Sarah Paddyfoot. “I have come to stay. You’d better get used to me, sir! I haven’t found a place yet, but I will, and you’d better treat me kindly!”
No one will ever know why Sarah Paddyfoot turned and crossed the fields to the old barn. Nothing could have been more unlikely, for someone wanting work. There were nice houses in the village farther north, and certainly she could see their roofs tucked among the hills, and the inviting whiffs of smoke from their chimneys. But across the fields to the barn she went.
One might go there to steal a little firewood, or to look for relics, or to offer charity if one saw a sign of life. Or one might go looking for a lost dog, or a stray cow. But to go there for a job? No, never.
But Sarah Paddyfoot came, moving jauntily across the fields, arguing with the crow. Jana and Lisa watched her come, two small faces peering from the loft of the barn. Bo watched her come, growling softly and wagging his tail. John watched her come, from where he was washing by the stream, and Mr. Tillman watched her come from where he was planing boards inside the barn.
There are four Tillmans—five, counting Bo—and every one watched Sarah Paddyfoot come across the fields and set her satchel down by the barn door and look around her, at the old barn, at the little pile of new lumber inside, at the Tillmans, and at old Bo and the crow.
She never went away again; a motherless house needs someone, and Sarah Paddyfoot had come to stay. One more plate for supper; one more bed in the barn.
And now, led home like stray calves, a grubby twin guiding each, come Karen and Tom.
Two more plates for supper; two more beds in the barn.
Sarah Paddyfoot gives them milk and ginger cakes and sends the dirty twins to wash themselves. “Together, we call them J.L.,” says Sarah Paddyfoot. “Separate, they are Jana and Lisa, but together they are J.L. Together,” continues Sarah Paddyfoot, “they are something more than two little girls; something like a swarm. Or a plague.” She pours more milk for the children.
CHAPTER 10
It is a tall barn, with a loft above, full height, and there is a proper stairway leading up, and a railing around the loft where it looks down into the barn below.
In five of the stalls below there are five cots made of hay, and in one huge stall, near the open barn door, where the ginger-cookie smell is heaviest, there is the skeleton of a kitchen: rough walls, little old stove standing alone, sink set into a cabinet of many colors as if it were put together from many bits and pieces—but well put together, Tom notices, straight and true. There are apple boxes for cupboards, but also a light frame of new lumber where someone has started to make cabinets, and this, too, is no amateur job. Tom looks questioningly at Sarah Paddyfoot, taking more cookies from the oven. “Not me,” she says. “I’m no carpenter. Mr. Tillman did that.”
The window is still just a square hole, hut big, letting in the morning and a branch or two of the willow tree as well.
“John and Mr. Tillman are in town,” says Sarah, “taking apart an old house for lumber and such.
Plumbing, too! Have us a real bathroom soon, good hot shower. Water pipes already in,” she says, indicating the sink. “Could use some help, that man could,” she says, looking at Tom. “John’s mighty fine help, all right, learning real good, but the more hands the better, for this work.” She lifts the last cookies off the tin and sets them to cool in a cupboard, closing the door securely and glancing out the window at the crow, who is sitting in the willow tree peering at her. “Old robber!” she mutters. “Come on, kids, you can pick out your rooms.” She chuckles. “Have a bucket to wash in if you like, then come on with J.L. and me to get some clams for supper.”
The shore can be seen from the barn door, white dunes sloping gently down to it, patches of tall russet grass making patterns in the wind. The beach itself is wide and wet, for the tide is out, and the clams, dug deep and fast or lost, are plentiful and good sized. In the distance a dark, heavy rain cloud lies over the sea. The sand is bare of footprints, save their own and the little forked ones of the shore birds. Bo goes to play in the water, frolicking like a pup, and far out beyond the breakers a seal watches them, watches Bo playing there. Gulls cry overhead, the surf pounds and foams, and the crow comes out of the sky to scold them.
“There is every kind of bird track,” Karen says, “but no animal prints.”
“You’ll see animals one morning, see coon and possum,” says Sarah Paddyfoot, plopping a big clam into her bucket. “Be Sand Ponies looking in your window one morning if you’re good to them.”
Karen looks startled, then laughs.
“Think not?” says Sarah Paddyfoot. “Wild they are, but you put grain out, don’t scare ‘em, you’ll see!”
“That’s true,” shouts Jana. “That’s really true. They come to the door at night, sometimes, look right in. Only for the grain, though,” she adds. “Must be very still when they come. They’re really fairy ponies.”
Sarah smiles.
“Where did they come from, Sarah?” Karen asks.
“Well, some say they are the ghosts of children who would not leave the seashore,” Sarah says, grinning. “Some say they’re wards of the devil, sent to plague us. Some think they’re fairies,” she says, glancing at J.L. “That you can wish on them. Who knows, for sure? Not I,” she says with a twinkle in her eye. “Were here when I came, here when the Tillmans came before me. Be here when we’re all gone, dare say.”
“It seems strange,” Karen says, “that they could live like that with so many people around. Folks must catch a good many.”
“Pretty strong feeling around here,” Sarah says. “Keeps them safe. People say, you hurt those ponies, bother them, they’ll bring the worst kind of luck.
Wouldn’t want to try it. Hear some weird stories, that’s sure.”
“Then we know someone who will have bad luck, the more the better,” Tom says.
“Who’s that?” asks Jana, wide-eyed, imagining the suffering of some deserving soul.
As they settle down in the grass to rest, the clams covered with wet sacks to keep them cool, the children tell Sarah and J.L. about the strange ranch and the starving ponies, and about the man and woman from the Black Turtle. Sarah Paddyfoot looks thoughtful at this, but she says nothing and the children go on to tell about all that happened before that, and after, even about Karen’s dream of the path by the sea and the black rock, and something waiting there. “That was us, waiting,” says Lisa. “Us!”
“In a dream, imagine!” says Jana.
If you can come out of a dream, Karen thinks, why can’t Kippy, too? She looks out across the rolling dunes and the blowing grass at the swelling sea, and she imagines the little horse coming across the sand toward her, ears up, black mane flying. Why can’t Kippy, too?
When the horses lag Kippy drives them on. They all have bite marks on necks and withers and rumps. They don’t kick back or nip any more; he is wild to travel faster. They are becoming a disciplined little band; they drive well and graze only when Kippy lets them. Tolly is growing slower as the days pass and needs to graze more than the others, but even she is beginning to sniff the air and dream of home.
They have not only to go north, but to cross the mountains and move west to the sea. They travel first in that direction, moving at night and laying up in the daytime, hidden by trees or boulders. Where Kippy has gotten his knowledge no one can say. Perhaps his wiliness comes from his mountain ancestors, or perhaps from need. He does well on little grass, far better than the other horses, who are growing thinner.