The War that Saved My Life by Kimberly Brubaker Bradley

It happened like this. I was walking Butter in circles, practicing making him
turn. I heard a sound like hoof beats coming from the road, and I stopped to
look, but couldn’t yet see anything through the trees. A plane took off from
the airfield and screamed straight over our heads just as a horse and rider
came into view. Butter didn’t mind the plane—he saw dozens of planes take
off every day now—but the other horse, a big brown one, wheeled in fright.
His rider pulled the reins sharply to keep him from bolting, but he wheeled
again, and then jumped forward, off the road and onto the verge, nearly
chesting the stone wall into our field. The rider bounced loose in the saddle,
and the horse, frantic, made a sudden leap up and over the wall. The rider
tumbled sideways and disappeared.
The strange horse galloped straight for Butter, reins flying, loose stirrups
walloping his sides. Butter spooked and spun, tossing me, and together both
horses ran to the far side of the field. They galloped about for a bit, the idiots,
but I wasn’t paying attention to them. I ran for the fallen rider as fast as my
bad foot would let me. I’d recognized her: the little iron-faced girl. The one
who’d called me out.
She lay facedown in the muddy weeds on the verge. I scrambled over the
wall just as she, blinking, rolled herself over. She opened her eyes and let out
a string of curses that would have been at home in my lane, let alone the
dockyards. She ended with, “I hate that stupid bloody horse.”
Bloody is not something Miss Smith let Jamie or me say. It was a swear
word, a bad one.
“I hate him,” she repeated, looking at me.
“Are you much hurt?”
She started to sit up, then fell back, nodding. “Dizzy,” she said. “And my
shoulder hurts something awful. Bet I broke my collarbone.” She touched a
place below her neck, and winced. “My mother broke hers last year, hunting.
Easy to do. Where’s the wretched horse?”
I looked over the wall. “Grazing next to the pony. Acts like nothing’s
wrong.”
She pulled herself slowly to a sitting position. “He would. I hate him. He
belongs to my brother.” She started to stand, gave a small cry, and sat back