Archive of Our Own

By the time Jess noticed the thing beside the wall, Christmas had already become too large to understand all at once. There was paper under the coffee table and paper behind the sofa and one red ribbon stuck to Amy's sock. Somebody had opened a box of chocolates before breakfast had properly stopped being breakfast, and the warm room smelled of coffee, cinnamon, fir needles and the faint dusty heat that came off the vents. Jess had been sitting on the carpet with a small wooden puzzle in her lap, trying to persuade the blue piece into a place meant for the green one, when Glenda stepped around a heap of wrapping paper and said, "Jess, there's one more for you." Jess looked up at once. She knew the shape of those words. One more meant something had not yet happened.

Glenda was standing beside a bulky shape that had been tucked near the wall beneath an old quilt. It was too large to have been hidden under the tree, and the quilt made it look less like a present than a piece of furniture that had decided to become mysterious. Jess set the puzzle down without bothering to put the pieces back in its tray and crossed the carpet in a quick, determined toddle. Toyah noticed the movement and came after her, but only as far as the edge of the wrapping-paper field, where Addison caught her gently around the waist before she stepped on a box lid. "Easy," Addison said. "That one's Jess's." Toyah accepted this with the serious fairness of another small child who had already had things of her own to open and leaned forward instead, hands on her knees, to see. Jess put both palms against the quilt. There was something hard under it. She pushed. Nothing moved. She looked at Glenda. "Big pwesent?" "Very big present," Glenda said. She crouched and took hold of one corner of the quilt. "From Aunt Jennifer."

That changed Jess's face immediately. Aunt Jennifer belonged in the same part of Jess's world as Snowball the rabbit, the little house in Ohio, the voice that spoke to children as though their answers were worth waiting for, and the compact body Jess could actually look toward without craning back until her neck hurt. Jennifer was not an idea or a story from before Jess was born. Jennifer was someone Jess had climbed around, followed, interrupted and tried to show things to. "Aunt Jenn'fer got Jess pwesent?" she asked, pressing one hand against her own chest so there could be no doubt which Jess she meant. "She did. She sent it down for you." Jess grabbed the quilt with both hands. "I open." "Go ahead, sugar."

The quilt came away too easily to count as opening, revealing brown paper underneath, folded and taped around a shape that refused to become square. Glenda had wrapped it again after it arrived, partly because the original covering had been built for travel rather than Christmas and partly because she had wanted Jess to have something to tear. Jess found a loose edge and pulled. The paper stretched, resisted and then ripped with a satisfying bark. She laughed, looked over her shoulder as though checking that everyone had heard, and attacked the new tear with greater confidence. A strip came away in both fists. Underneath was wood.

Jess stopped. The noise of the room went on without her. Dana was saying something from the sofa. Amy and Tracey were disputing the ownership of a bow neither of them actually wanted. Veronika had a mug cupped in both hands. Mason was sitting forward in his chair, elbows on his knees, watching Jess with the patient expression he wore when he was fairly sure she was about to discover something for herself. None of that mattered once Jess saw the curve of polished wood beneath the paper. She touched it with one finger. "What dat?"

"Keep going," Glenda said. Jess tore downward. Another brown panel fell aside and a rounded wooden leg appeared. Her mouth opened. She looked at the leg, then at the hidden shape above it, and tore so quickly that the next piece came off crooked. Holly, kneeling nearby among her own opened presents, caught the paper before Jess tripped over it. Jess barely noticed. There was another leg. A dark wooden body. Then, when Glenda slit a stubborn band of tape and folded the last section away, a head with carved ears and a smooth muzzle emerged into the room. "HORSIE!" Jess shouted.

The word punched through every other conversation. Somebody laughed, but Jess did not turn to see who. She had both hands on the horse now, one on its muzzle and one on the side of its neck, and she was talking before anyone could tell her anything about it. "Horsie, horsie, horsie. Mama, horsie. Ho-Ho, look. Toyah, lookit. Daddy, horsie." She crouched abruptly to inspect the long curved runners, then stood and touched one ear, then crouched again because the runners were perhaps even more interesting. The horse remained what it had been for decades: solid wood, darkened by age, carefully kept but not made to look new. The handles were worn smooth. There were little marks along one flank and a shallow nick near the base of the neck. The rockers bore pale lines where floors had rubbed against them over the years. Jess put her face close to the horse's face. "Hi." Holly laughed softly. "Think it heard you." Jess stroked the wooden muzzle. "Misty horsie."

It was not silver, and it did not resemble the television horse in any exact way, but this did not trouble Jess. Misty had become larger than a single animal in her mind. Misty meant the beautiful seriousness of horses, the way they ran, the way somebody could hold a mane or reins and go somewhere that mattered. Jess watched the programme with an attention unusual even for her, humming bits of its music afterward and carrying pieces of its stories into the yard, the hallway, the back seat of the car. A wooden horse beneath her hands could therefore be a Misty horse without being Misty at all.

"Aunt Jennifer knows you like Misty," Glenda said. Jess turned around so fast she nearly sat on the runner. "Aunt Jenn'fer know Misty?" "She knows you like Misty." That distinction required thought. Jess looked back at the horse and then at Glenda. "She watch it?" "I don't know if she watches it." Glenda smiled. "You'll have to ask her." Jess accepted the answer and returned to her inspection. There was a narrow leather pad fixed over the horse's back, old enough that its edges had softened. She rubbed it twice with the flat of her hand. "Dis dirty?"

"No, sweetheart. Old." Jess's hand stopped. Old was a word she understood mainly through people, dogs, clothes that no longer fit and food she was warned not to eat. She looked suspiciously at the perfectly functional horse. "Why old?" Glenda lowered herself to the carpet beside her. She had a small card in her hand now, one that had been tied beneath the wrapping where Jess had not seen it. "Because this wasn't bought new for Christmas. This used to be Aunt Jennifer's." Jess looked at her mother, then back at the horse. Nothing about the answer fit together yet. "Aunt Jenn'fer horsie?"

"It was her horse." "At her house?" "A long time ago, yes." Jess touched the worn handle. Her fingers curled around it naturally, falling into the shallow polish made by hands much older than hers and, much earlier, just as small. "She ride it?" "She did. When she was little. About your age." Jess stared. For several seconds she said nothing at all. Aunt Jennifer existed in her mind as a complete person, already furnished with silvering hair, small clever hands, stories, rabbits, songs and the comfortable authority to tell two excited children that a rabbit had rules. The possibility that Aunt Jennifer had once been no taller than Jess herself seemed stranger than the possibility of the horse crossing a river under its own power.

"Aunt Jenn'fer was little?" "Very little." Jess narrowed her eyes, looking for the joke. "Like Jess?" "Like Jess." "She talk little?" "I'm sure she did." "She say wabbit?" Glenda's smile widened. "I don't know what she called rabbits when she was two." "Ask her." "We can." The answer satisfied Jess because it preserved the possibility. She went back to the horse and ran her thumb over a darker patch along the handle. "She make dis?" "The smooth part? Maybe. She held on there when she rode it." Jess pointed at the nick near the neck. "She make dat?"

Glenda looked at it. "I don't know. That might have happened before or after she rode it." Jess considered this honesty without disappointment. It simply left the mark unsolved. She pressed a fingertip into the tiny hollow and said, "Aunt Jenn'fer horsie got bump." Mason had risen from his chair while they talked. He moved more carefully than some of the children were used to noticing, but Jess always noticed when he came into her immediate space. He crouched beside the horse, one hand resting against a runner. "Before anybody rides Aunt Jennifer's horse," he said, "Daddy's going to make sure Aunt Jennifer's horse isn't planning to throw anybody."

Jess straightened sharply. "No throw Jess." "Good. We'll make sure it agrees." Mason tipped the horse a fraction to inspect underneath. Jess moved with him, trying to see exactly what he could see. He ran his fingertips over the joints where the legs met the rockers and pressed gently against the handles. He checked the old fastenings and the leather seat, then set the horse square again and rocked it forward once. The runners moved cleanly over the carpeted floor, slow and even. Jess hovered so close that her hair brushed his arm. "Daddy fixin'?"

"Checking." "It not broke." "I know." "Den no fix." "That's why I'm checking instead of fixing." She frowned. The difference appeared unnecessarily technical. "Jess ride now." "In one minute." Jess exhaled through her nose in a way that made Mason glance at Glenda. Glenda did not rescue either of them. Mason checked the other side. Jess placed both hands on her hips, an imitation whose source could have been any number of women in her life, and announced, "Horsie okay." "That so?" "Yep." "Well, my assistant says it's okay." He gave the horse one final controlled rock and nodded. "I think she's right."

That was all the permission Jess needed. She seized the nearer handle and tried to climb. Her right knee came up, found the horse's wooden flank, slipped, and landed back on the carpet. She tried again from farther forward. This time she managed to hook part of one leg over the runner and found herself folded against the horse's side with nowhere useful to go. She backed down, scowled at the horse as though it had changed the rules, and attempted a third route from near the tail. Holly had been watching the whole effort. She did not reach in immediately. She knew Jess well enough to understand that help offered before Jess requested it often became an obstacle rather than help. Jess tried once more, made it halfway into an awkward hug around the horse's middle, and then finally turned her head.

"Ho-Ho." "Yeah?" Jess lifted both arms. "Up." Holly came over at once. She had only just turned eleven, but in Jess's eyes she possessed the competence of somebody who could reach shelves, open difficult wrappers and make drawings look like the things they were supposed to be. Jess trusted her body to Holly without hesitation. Holly put her hands under Jess's arms and lifted her, careful of the wooden handles. "Leg over," she said, guiding one pajama-clad leg across the saddle. "There. Sit your butt down." Jess landed astride the horse and went completely still.

From the floor it had been a toy. From the saddle it became height. Her feet no longer belonged to the carpet. The horse's wooden head rose in front of her, its ears visible above the line of its neck, and the room had shifted just enough that she seemed to occupy a new layer of it. Holly kept one arm around her middle until Jess found her balance. Jess put both hands flat on the neck. "Hold here," Holly told her, moving Jess's left hand to the handle. She placed the right one to match. "Both hands."

Jess gripped hard. "I ridin'." "You're sitting. Riding comes next." Jess bounced her bottom against the saddle. The horse gave the smallest knock against the carpet and settled again. She bounced harder. "Go." Holly bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing too much. "Not like that. Look." She put one hand lightly over Jess's left hand and the other against the wooden neck. "You go forward, then back. Nice and easy." She guided the first movement. The runners rolled forward. Jess inhaled audibly. Holly guided them back. The room moved with them. Forward again, then back, no wheels and no feet, the horse travelling without going anywhere.

"Whoa," Jess whispered. "See?" Holly did it again, slower this time. Jess's shoulders moved with the rhythm. The third time Holly reduced the pressure of her hand. The fourth she hardly pushed at all. Jess leaned forward because Holly had leaned her forward, then drew herself back. The horse rocked. Jess blinked. She tried it again. The runner rolled beneath her and returned. She turned so quickly toward Holly that the motion nearly broke her balance. "Ho-Ho! I did it!" Holly's hand caught her waist. "You did. Eyes front, cowgirl." "I do 'gain." "Go on."

Jess did it again. Forward, back. Forward, back. The first few movements were small and careful, her mouth slightly open with concentration. She watched her hands as if they might be responsible. Then she watched the horse's head. Then she looked down at the runner as it appeared and disappeared beneath her knee. Something in the repetition clicked, and the caution in her face gave way to delight. "Ho-Ho! Look!" "I'm looking." "Daddy!" "I'm looking too." "Mama!" Glenda, still sitting on the carpet with Jennifer's card in her hand, raised both eyebrows in solemn acknowledgment. "Best rider in the room."

Jess accepted this as fact. She leaned harder and the horse rolled farther forward. "Go, horsie. Go!" Her imagination arrived not as a deliberate game but as the natural next stage of motion. The rug in front of the horse ceased to be merely a rug. There was somewhere beyond it. Jess's eyes fixed on a point near the base of the Christmas tree. "Wivver," she announced. Holly followed her gaze. "River?" Jess nodded urgently. "Big wivver. Misty go." "Can this horse cross it?" Jess looked almost offended. "Yeah." "Okay, then." Jess rocked forward with renewed purpose. "Go. Go. Go. Don't fall in." She drew back, rocked again and made a small clicking noise with her tongue, something she had heard people use around horses and filed away for later. "C'mon. Good horsie."

The tree lights blinked in and out of the edge of her vision. The room tipped gently with each movement. Wrapping paper became water, a box became a rock that had to be avoided, the leg of the coffee table something tall and dangerous along the bank. Jess was not performing for anyone now. She was busy. Dana reached down and pulled a flattened sheet of paper away from the front of the runner before it could bunch underneath. Jess saw the motion and interpreted it immediately. "Move dat. Horsie go dere." "Already moved," Dana said.

"Good." Amy laughed from somewhere behind her. "Glad she approves." Jess did not know what needed approval. She had a crossing to make. "Everybody move. Wivver." Tracey shifted her feet theatrically out of the imaginary current. "Sorry. Didn't see the river." "It BIG," Jess told her. "My mistake." Veronika, sitting against the sofa, raised her mug out of Jess's imagined path. Jess rocked twice more, then pointed at her. "You stuck." "Am I?" "Yep. Horsie get you." Veronika lowered the mug. "Thank goodness." Jess rode to the rescue without actually advancing an inch. She leaned forward, pulled back, leaned forward again. The horse creaked faintly in a way no one but Mason seemed to notice. He watched the joints, satisfied rather than alarmed. Whatever decades had done to the wood, the old toy was still built to move.

Toyah had edged closer during the adventure. She stood beside Addison's knee, looking from Jess to the runners. "Jess go fast." "Jess go river," Jess corrected. "Misty river?" "Yeah." "I see?" "You see." Jess rocked faster to demonstrate. The motion grew broader. Her hair lifted from her forehead and fell back. The horse came forward far enough that the nose dipped and then swept upward as the runners returned. Jess squealed and pushed again, using enthusiasm instead of rhythm now. Mason's hand closed around the horse's neck before the next swing could grow any larger. The motion shortened at once. Jess looked down at his hand in betrayal. "Daddy!"

"Easy." "I go fast." "I noticed." "Horsie fast." "Horse can be fast. Rocking horse needs to be smooth." Jess tried to push through his restraint. Mason held steady without turning it into a contest. "Watch," he said. He waited until she stopped fighting the motion. "You don't have to throw yourself at it. Let the runners do it." He put one hand against the side of the horse and gave it a measured push. The rocker went forward, slower than Jess had been forcing it but farther than she expected. It returned under its own weight. Mason gave another small push at exactly the right moment. Forward. Back. Forward. Back. The movement lengthened without becoming violent.

Jess's irritation vanished beneath curiosity. She looked down at the runner. "It do it." "It does most of it," Mason said. "You just help." "Jess help horsie." "That's right." He stepped back but kept one hand ready. Jess tried to reproduce what he had shown her. The first attempt was too abrupt. The second was smaller. By the third she had stopped bouncing and started moving with the curve beneath her. The horse rolled forward and returned almost lazily. Jess looked at Mason. "Daddy, watch." "Watching." She did it again, eyes on him rather than the horse. "See?" "I see." "I do smooth." "You do." She smiled at him with complete satisfaction, then turned forward again because the river had apparently not waited for the technical lesson to end. "Okay, horsie. Go now."

Glenda had shifted back against the sofa. Jennifer's card remained between her fingers. She had read it once before Christmas morning, when the horse arrived, and again while Jess tore the paper away. The note itself was characteristically spare. Jennifer had written that the horse had been made for her when she was very small, that she had ridden it hard enough to travel several imaginary continents without leaving the front room, and that Glenda's reports about Misty had convinced her the horse ought to have a new rider instead of spending another decade standing still. There was no grand language about inheritance. Jennifer rarely needed it. Glenda knew enough about the narrow Geneva house, about April and Brandon and the economy of Jennifer's childhood, to understand what it meant that the horse had survived at all.

Mason sat beside her again. Glenda handed him the card without speaking. He read it while Jess muttered instructions to the horse. His thumb brushed once over the edge of the paper. "She kept this since the thirties," he said quietly. "Apparently." "Still solid." "You'd be the one to say that." He glanced at the horse. "If she meant it as a museum piece, she picked the wrong house." Glenda smiled. "Jennifer knows exactly which house she picked." Jess caught her mother's voice but not the words. She turned. "Mama." "Yes?" "Aunt Jenn'fer ride wivver too?"

The question took Glenda a second. "On the horse?" "Yeah. When little." Glenda looked at the card, then at Jess. "Probably. She says she went lots of places on it." "Where?" "She didn't say all of them." Jess frowned. "Why?" "Maybe she forgot some. That was a long time ago." Jess considered the unacceptable possibility that a good imaginary destination could be lost. "I tell her mine." "I think she'd like that." "Wivver. An' woods. An'..." Jess looked around, searching the room for another landscape. Her gaze landed on the staircase. "Mountain." "That's a pretty good trip before lunch."

Jess nodded. "Big mountain." The horse carried her toward it. This time she used Mason's smoother motion, not perfectly but with growing control. Holly had settled on the floor close by with one of her own gifts in her lap, peeling a bit of tape from its packaging. She was no longer actively supervising Jess, which pleased Jess nearly as much as the riding itself. Every few rocks Jess glanced sideways to check that Ho-Ho remained there. Each time Holly was. After several minutes, Jess slowed and bent forward until her chest rested briefly along the wooden neck. Riding, even imaginary riding, had begun to tire muscles she had not expected to use. She did not want anyone to interpret the posture correctly. When Holly asked, "You want down for a minute?" Jess tightened her hands around the handles.

"No." "Okay." "I ridin'." "I know." Jess sat upright and forced three determined rocks to prove it. The third was smaller than the first. Holly waited. She had learned with Jess that patience often worked faster than persuasion. Toyah came nearer again, this time from the other side. Addison rose with her and put a hand lightly on her shoulder when Toyah's toes crept close to the moving runner. "Not there, baby. It'll find your foot before you find it." Toyah moved back obediently. "I ride after Jess?" Jess heard this. Her rocking stopped. Toyah looked at her. "I ride horsie?"

For a moment Jess's face became guarded. She put one palm flat against the horse's neck. "Aunt Jenn'fer give Jess." "She did," Glenda said, neither correcting nor pushing. "It's yours." Jess looked at Toyah again. Toyah did not reach for it. She simply waited with the hopeful patience of someone who knew the answer might be no. Jess's fingers stroked the horse's neck twice. Ownership settled more securely inside her once it had been confirmed aloud. "Toyah can ride," she said finally. Then, with conditions already forming, "Lil bit." "Lil bit," Toyah agreed. Holly stood. "Then we've got to get you down first."

Jess lifted both arms toward her. The movement was so immediate that Holly smiled before she could help it. "All right, come here." She slid her hands beneath Jess's arms and lifted her over the handle. Jess's feet met the carpet, and she took one short, uncertain step as her legs adjusted to being still. Then she turned at once to supervise Toyah. "Ho-Ho put her up," Jess ordered. "I was planning to." "Hands dere." Jess pointed. "No. Dere." Toyah had not yet touched anything. "I know." "You gotta hold." "Jess," Addison said, amusement tugging at her voice, "give her a chance to get on the horse before the lesson starts."

Jess ignored the procedural complaint. Holly picked Toyah up and settled her astride the saddle. Addison came to one side, her palm lightly against Toyah's back. Jess moved to the horse's head, standing just beyond the arc of the runner where Mason quietly nudged her with two fingers until she was safely clear. "Hands," Jess repeated. Toyah gripped the handles. "Now go back. Den front. Lil bit. Ho-Ho show." Holly looked at Jess. "Should I show, instructor?" Jess nodded seriously. "Show her." Holly placed her hand over Toyah's and demonstrated the same small rocking motion she had shown Jess. Toyah caught it more quickly, partly because she had been watching. The horse moved. Toyah laughed. Jess's face lit up in reflex before she remembered she was supposed to be supervising.

"See?" Jess said. "It go." "I go!" Toyah rocked again. "No big," Jess warned, borrowing Mason's authority now. "Smooth. Daddy say smooth." Mason coughed into his hand to hide a laugh. Jess heard him anyway and turned. "Daddy say it." "I did." "See?" "She's right," Mason told Toyah. "Smooth." Toyah attempted smoothness with mixed results. The horse lurched once, then settled. Jess followed every movement. A possessive crease appeared between her brows when Toyah patted the horse's mane, but it vanished when Toyah announced, "Misty horsie," because this was obviously evidence of correct understanding. "Yeah," Jess said. "Misty horsie. Aunt Jenn'fer horsie. Jess horsie."

All three truths seemed able to coexist. Toyah rode through a brief landscape of her own invention, one that involved a chicken and something on fire that Addison chose not to inquire into too closely. Jess kept correcting the mechanics but not the story. When Toyah rocked too enthusiastically, Jess said, "No, no, do lil," and demonstrated by moving her own body forward and back on the carpet. When Toyah got it right, Jess praised her with a brisk "Yeah, like dat," in an uncanny little echo of Holly. Glenda watched Holly notice it too. Holly's mouth twitched. She looked down at Jess, who remained entirely unaware that she had become a miniature version of everyone who had just taught her something.

After a few minutes Toyah announced that she was done. This surprised Jess, who could not imagine voluntary separation from the horse. Holly lifted Toyah down and Addison drew her into her side. Jess was already stepping forward. "Jess turn." "Thought it might be," Holly said. This time Jess did not attempt to climb by herself. She simply raised her arms to Holly, absolute in the knowledge of how this system worked. Holly lifted her and set her down on the saddle. Jess's hands found the handles without being placed there. One foot swung into a comfortable position. Holly kept a hand at Jess's waist for only a second before withdrawing it.

Jess noticed. She looked down at herself, then at Holly. "I got it." "You got it." The first rock was small. The second was smooth. On the third Jess leaned exactly enough to let the curve carry her forward and back. She looked toward Mason. "Daddy." "Still watching." "Smooth." "Very." Then she looked at Glenda. "Mama, mine?" Glenda knew what she meant now. "Yours." Jess rocked once more. "Aunt Jenn'fer get it back?" "No. She gave it to you." Jess stopped. "Forever?" The room did not stop with her. Amy had moved on to something at the table. Dana was gathering loose paper into a bag. Tracey and Veronika were talking over each other in low voices. Toyah had found something else to show Addison. Christmas remained busy and ordinary around the question.

Glenda reached out and rested her hand on Jess's shin. "Aunt Jennifer wants you to keep it." Jess looked down at the horse. She did not ask whether Jennifer might miss it. She did not yet have the adult instinct to make a gift complicated by imagining the giver's loss. She understood something simpler and, in its way, more complete: Aunt Jennifer had had this horse when she was little. Aunt Jennifer knew Jess loved horses. Aunt Jennifer had sent the horse to Jess. It stayed. "Mine," she said, but softly now. "Yours." Jess bent forward and wrapped both arms around the wooden neck. It was not easy to hug. The handles pressed into her forearms and her cheek met polished wood rather than warmth, but she stayed there for a moment anyway. "Good horsie," she murmured.

Nobody interrupted the hug. Holly sat down beside the runner again. Mason leaned back in his chair. Glenda tucked Jennifer's card beneath the edge of a book on the coffee table so it would not be lost among the discarded paper. Jess lifted her head. "Aunt Jenn'fer little on dis." "Yep," Holly said. "She fit?" Holly looked at the compact horse, then at Jess. "Probably better than you think. She's not exactly giant now." Jess giggled. Jennifer's height was one of the few adult dimensions that made sense to a child; Jennifer was grown but remained conveniently near. Jess stretched one hand above her own head as though measuring an invisible little Jennifer. "She this big?"

"Maybe around there." "No," Glenda said from behind them, amused. "Don't start inventing measurements you don't know." Holly grinned. "Fine. She was somewhere between tiny and Aunt Jennifer." Jess accepted this excellent range without difficulty. "She have Ho-Ho?" The question caught Holly off guard. "Did she have me?" "No. Her Ho-Ho." Glenda understood first. "Somebody to help her get on?" Jess nodded. For a moment Glenda's expression shifted, not quite sadness and not quite amusement. "I'm sure somebody helped her when she needed it." Jess seemed pleased by that. The universe should contain a Ho-Ho function even if it did not always contain Holly specifically.

She rocked again. The horse was no longer a startling object in the room. It had acquired rules, history and a place. Jess knew how to mount it, how to hold it, how hard to rock, who had owned it, who had given it away and where to look when she wanted someone to see what she could do. That was enough knowledge for one morning. Her next journey began quietly. "Woods now," she told the horse. Holly leaned one elbow on the sofa cushion behind her. "What happened to the mountain?" "We did mountain."

"Oh. I missed it." Jess gave her a pitying look. "Ho-Ho, you here." "Apparently I wasn't paying attention." "Pay 'tention." "Yes, ma'am." Jess rocked into the woods. These woods were less urgent than the river. She did not need to save Veronika or order Dana to move wrapping paper. She murmured pieces of directions under her breath. "Dis way. No, dat way. C'mon. We go home." The room swayed. Tree lights slid a little left and right. The wooden horse creaked at the same point in each return, a tiny sound buried beneath voices and paper and the clink of a spoon against a mug.

Holly had begun examining a book she had been given, turning a page now and then while keeping her legs clear of the runner. Jess checked on her periodically. Once, without explanation, Jess reached down and patted the top of Holly's head. Holly looked up. "What was that for?" Jess returned both hands to the handles. "Ho-Ho." That was apparently the entire reason. Holly smiled and went back to her book. Mason watched Jess manage another long, easy rock. "She's got your timing now," Glenda murmured. "She'll improve it," he said. "Naturally." Jess heard her name in the cadence if not the sentence. "What?"

"Nothing," Glenda said. "Ride your horse." "I am." A little later, when Toyah passed carrying a new toy under one arm, Jess called, "Toyah!" and waited until Toyah turned. Then Jess performed three especially smooth rocks. "See?" Toyah nodded with the solemn approval of a peer. "You good." Jess glowed. "Yeah." Toyah disappeared toward Addison. Jess did not call her back. The need to exhibit the horse had begun to fade into the pleasure of simply having it. She returned to the woods. There was rain there now, because she said, "Oh no, rain," and bent closer to the horse's neck. She told it not to be scared. She told it they had to get home. When the rocker came forward she whispered, "Good girl," though no one had established whether the horse was a girl, and when it rolled back she made the soft clicking sound again.

Glenda watched from the sofa. She had known Jennifer for most of her own life. She could picture Jennifer as a young woman easily, as a middle-aged woman, as the tiny stubborn figure who had walked through Glenda's childhood with the peculiar steadiness of someone who never demanded the title of family in order to earn it. Jennifer at two was harder. The horse made that earlier child suddenly possible without making her visible. Somewhere in the wear beneath Jess's hands were mornings that had disappeared before Glenda herself existed. Yet the thought did not make the room solemn. That would have been the wrong use of the gift. Jess was currently telling the horse not to step on a frog.

"No, no, froggie," she said. "Move. Horsie comin'." Mason heard and looked at Glenda. She pressed her lips together to keep from laughing loudly enough to break the rescue. Jess guided the horse around the invisible frog, which required three highly controlled rocks and a lean to the left that did nothing to alter their direction. "Okay," she whispered. "He safe." "Good work," Holly said without looking up from her book. Jess beamed at the back of Holly's head as though the praise had been a medal. Eventually her rocking slowed again, this time not from instruction but from fatigue. Her motions became smaller. The horse still answered them. Forward, back. Forward, back. Her grip relaxed around the worn handles. One thumb rubbed unconsciously along the smooth patch where Jennifer's hands had once done the same thing.

"Ho-Ho?" "Mm-hm?" "Aunt Jenn'fer gonna know I ride it?" Holly closed the book over one finger. "We'll tell her." Jess thought about that. "I tell." "Okay. You tell her." "Tell wivver." "Definitely tell her about the river." "An' frog." "Especially the frog." Jess nodded, satisfied that the important report had been planned. She rocked once more, then another time, very gently. She could feel the horse return to her without having to force it now. Glenda got up to rescue a plate from the edge of the coffee table. Mason reached for his mug. Somewhere near the kitchen Dana asked who had seen the tape, and Amy answered that nobody should need tape anymore because Christmas was already open. Tracey contradicted her. Veronika laughed. Addison was trying to persuade Toyah that chocolates did not become breakfast merely because breakfast had happened near them. The room loosened back into the rest of the day.

Jess remained on the horse. For her, there was still distance left. She did not know that the smooth handle beneath her palm had been held by another little girl in a different house nearly sixty years earlier. She knew only the part that mattered at her size: Aunt Jennifer had been little. Aunt Jennifer had ridden this horse. Aunt Jennifer knew about Misty. Aunt Jennifer had sent it to Jess, and Mama said it stayed. Daddy had shown her how not to fight the runners. Ho-Ho had lifted her up and put her hands where they belonged. The horse tipped forward under her weight and came back. Jess looked toward Holly once more. Holly was still there. "C'mon, horsie," Jess murmured. "We go now." She leaned forward, let the runners take her, and rode on.