Jack grimaced. “Yeah. Much easier.” He sighed, then lifted the sheets and spades from his wheelbarrow and deposited them into Hazel’s cart. And then he took a ginger step toward the massive black stallion. “Let’s get this over with, mate,” he muttered. He said a quick prayer, latched his foot into the stirrup, and pulled himself onto the horse with all the force he could muster. “Not so bad!” It was the first time Jack had ever ridden a horse. He felt strong, secure, as though he and the horse were connected, that they could ford rivers and leap fences.
He gave Betelgeuse a gentle nudge with his heels to get him to move forward. Instead of walking, the horse responded with a malicious little lurch that forced Jack flat onto his stomach. His knuckles turned white from the effort of gripping the reins, and his thighs shook. Hazel and Miss Rosalind were already several yards up the drive. With his teeth clenched and another prayer （he had done more praying in the last forty seconds than he had in his entire life）， Jack lifted himself back into a seated position and tapped his heel against the horse’s side in the hopes of getting him to actually move.
Betelgeuse obeyed. As soon as the horse realized he was freed from his tether to the post, he not only moved but whipped forward at a full gallop, peeling past Hazel on her mount and racing toward the distant blackness between the towering pines that lined the drive.
Hazel shouted something after him, but Jack could hear only the wind and his heartbeat pounding loudly in his frozen ears. There was another sound, a high-pitched whine like a teakettle, and it took Jack several seconds to realize it was his own screaming.
His terrifying ride didn’t last long. There was something dark on the road ahead, something impossible to make out, a black mass of something horizontal, blocking the way. But the horse’s speed meant that whatever they fast approached was right in front of Jack before he could react to it: a felled log, teeming with rot and crawling with insects.
Betelgeuse leapt, and Jack tumbled from the saddle and onto the hard dirt below. He flipped over once in a somersault and then landed feet-over-head against the rotting log. The sound of the monstrous horse’s hooves diminished into the distance. Jack moaned. He felt a cold dampness seeping from the mire through the fabric of his jacket.
Hazel and her horse approached. “I thought you said you could ride!” she shouted as she dismounted.
Jack groaned again. “I thought I would be able to.”
With gentle hands, Hazel helped Jack into a sitting position.
He rubbed the bruised back of his head. “It just looked like it would just be, I dunno, sitting.”
“There’s a bit more to it than that,” she said. “I’m sorry, Jack, I really am.”
“Nah, it’s not your fault.” Betelgeuse trotted close to where Jack and Hazel were seated. The horse flared his nostrils with satisfaction. “It’s his fault.”
“Does anything seem broken? Any bones? Jack, are you dizzy?”
Jack blinked away the fuzziness from his vision and saw the shadowy topography of Hazel’s face, just a few finger-widths away. She was so close that Jack could feel her breath on his forehead while she examined his skull for bumps. The only injury was to his pride. He would have a bruise in the morning, but that wasn’t a new experience for a boy who had lived on the streets alone since he was eleven. “I’m fine, really,” he said. “It’s that beast you should be worried about. A maniac, he is. I’m telling you.”
And so, they rode to Saint Dwynwen’s on one horse, Jack sitting behind Hazel on Miss Rosalind, with his arms wrapped around Hazel’s narrow waist. Hazel had tied Betelgeuse’s reins to Miss Rosalind’s saddle, and so he walked obediently beside them as they followed a dark forest trail that wove through acres of farmland on one side and the stream on the other. Jack threw Betelgeuse a dirty look. Betelgeuse paid him no mind.
With the exception of Bernard’s terrible kiss, Hazel had never been this close to a boy in her life. Most of the time she spent with Bernard had been at teas, where they sat opposite each other on brocade furniture while a handful of servants brought out dishes of fresh biscuits, or else insufferable balls, where they danced with their elbows out, perfectly rigid frames that spun around brightly illuminated rooms like the figurines on mechanical clocks. This was intimate and strange. Hazel could feel Jack’s warmth against her back.
With the gentle bouncing of the horse, and his arms around her waist, Jack couldn’t help but admit it felt nice, being pressed up against Hazel, smelling her hair and the subtle musk of her sweat.