Instead, I start to burrow down into the hay blanket I’ve made; slowly, to keep the pieces from making noise. Finn immediately follows my lead. Dove’s ears swivel to follow an invisible signal on the other side of the wall. If I strain my ears, I can hear the sound of a hoof hitting the ground, then another. Another exhale of breath, no louder than the rain on the roof.
I don’t know what the capall uisce is doing. Maybe it’ll lose interest. Maybe it’ll be discouraged by the fence between it and us. In my head, I trace the steps we’d have to take to get back to the house: around the other side of the lean-to, down two sections of fence, over the metal-tube gate, then fifteen feet to the door.
Maybe one of us would get over the gate in time. That’s not enough.
The night is dark and silent. I strain my ears for another hoofstep. Dove’s attention remains fixed on the last point where the sound came from. Finn, mostly covered in hay, meets my gaze. His jaw’s clenched.
The mist hisses over the roof. Water drips down off the edge of the metal, one drop, two drops at a time, making a soft, barely audible sound when it lands on the ground. Somewhere far away, I hear what sounds like a car engine, maybe. The wind teases the hay. There’s nothing from the other side of the wall.
Dove jerks to attention.
Looking in the side of the lean-to is a long black face.
It is the devil.
It takes everything in me not to whimper. The creature is black as peat at midnight, and its lips are pulled back into a fearsome grin. The ears are long and wickedly pointed toward each other, less like a horse and more like a demon. They remind me of shark egg pouches. The nostrils are long and thin to keep the sea out. Eyes black and slick: a fish’s eyes.
It still stinks like the ocean. Like low tide and things caught on rocks. It’s barely a horse.
It’s hungry.
The capall uisce has hooked its head around the side of the lean-to, over the fence. All that stands between us and its strangely light grin is three boards that I nailed up myself while Mum watched. Three nails, not two, into each, because ponies, she said, will test everything.
And now this night-black horse presses its chest against them. Not hard. Only as hard as it had pushed against the lean-to wall.
The nails creak.
I can hear my heart or Finn’s heart or maybe the both of them, and it’s going so fast and loud that I can’t breathe. My hands are fisted over the hay, the nails biting into my palms.
We’re hidden, you can’t see us, go away.
Dove is utterly still.
The capall uisce looks at her and opens its jaw, and then it makes a sound that turns my blood into ice. It’s a hissed exhalation with low clucks behind it, clicking from somewhere deep in its throat: kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaw.
Dove flattens her ears back to her head but doesn’t move. How many times had we been told that the capaill uisce want a moving target? That to move is to die?
Dove is a statue.
The capall uisce pushes again. The boards creak again.
I hear Finn sigh. It’s so quiet that I know no one but me could’ve heard it, and only me because I’ve spent my whole life listening to every sound that my brothers could possibly make. It’s a soft, scared little noise that I haven’t heard him make in a long time.
Then I hear a wail.
It’s coming from out in the pasture. Both Dove and the capall uisce flick an ear toward it.
It comes again, and my stomach is an endless pit. It’s another one, I think, that’s pushed down the fence on the other side, that’s in the pasture with us, not even three nails a board to keep us alive.
The black monster swivels its strange long ears again.
The wail, again. It sounds a little like a baby crying, and then I see Finn’s mouth moving. It’s about all I can see of him.
He mouths at me with exaggerated syllables: Puffin.
The sound, again, and this time, I recognize it immediately. Puffin the barn cat, always in search of Finn, back from her travels and drawn by our light. She wails again, her baby-cry meow that she uses to call him. When he’s feeling indulgent, he’ll repeat it back to her and she’ll use the sound as a homing beacon.
Now she cries again, closer, and the capall uisce shifts its weight away from the fence.
In the gray light of the mist that the rain drives up from the ground, I see Puffin’s form, trotting toward us, her tail a question mark. Wow? she asks.
The capall uisce’s grin closes.
Puffin sees the capall uisce only when it moves. The fence tears like paper, the boards exploding off with a sound like the world being destroyed.
She bolts and the capall uisce charges after her, made hungrier by the chase. They both vanish into the mist, and the last thing I hear is hooves scrabbling, frenzied, and then Puffin wailing.
Finn covers his face, the hay falling from his hands, and I see his shoulders shake.
I can’t think about that, though. I think about this: the capall uisce coming back and killing my brother.
I grab his shoulder. “Come on.”
I don’t have a plan yet, but I know we can’t stay.
From behind me, I hear a sound, and I jerk so hard my muscles hurt. It takes a full second for me to realize it’s a voice, saying my name.
“Puck!”
It’s Gabe, stepping through the ruined bit of fence the horse has just plunged through. His voice is a hiss as he takes my arm. “Hurry up. It’ll come back.”
I’m so shocked to see him — now, now of all times — that at first I can’t get the words out. “Dove. What about Dove?”
“Bring her,” snaps Gabriel, just audible. “Finn. Wake up. Come on.”
I snatch up Dove’s halter; she tosses her head in the air and jerks my arm at the shoulder. She’s trembling like she was on the cliff top. “Puffin,” I tell Gabe.
“She’s a cat. I’m sorry, but come on.” Gabe pulls at Finn. “There’s two others. They’re coming.”
Gabe leads the way back through the ruined fence. When I get Dove to the fence, she pulls back, held by the memory of it being a barrier, and for a brief, terrible moment, I think I’ll have to leave her behind. I cluck, softly, and she finally steps over the broken boards. In front of the house, I see headlights, and now there’s Tommy Falk with half his face illuminated. He jerks open the car door and gestures hurriedly for Finn to get in.
Gabe appears beside me with a lead rope. “Hold it out the window.”
“But —”
“Now.”
And just as he says that, I hear the same cluck that I heard earlier, only now it comes from somewhere in the paddock where we just were. Distantly, I hear it echo back through the mist, an answering sound. I clip the lead onto Dove’s halter and scramble into the car. Tommy Falk’s already behind the wheel, and Gabe slams the door after himself.