Marked

fidgeted guiltily and Lenobia skewered them with her gray eyes.
    "Horses are work. Horses take dedication, intelligence, and time. We'll begin with the work part. In the tack room down this hall you'll find mucking boots. Choose a pair quickly, while we all get gloves. Then each of you take your own stall and get busy.”
    "Professor Lenobia?" said a chubby girl with a cute face, who raised her hand nervously.
    "Lenobia will do. The name I chose in honor of the ancient vampyre queen needs no other title.”
    I didn't have a clue who Lenobia was, and made a mental note to look it up.
    "Go on. You have a question, Amanda?”
    "Yeah, uh, yes.”
    Lenobia raised one brow at the girl.
    Amanda swallowed noisily. "Get busy doing what, Profes―, I mean, Lenobia, ma'am?”
    "Cleaning out stalls, of course. The manure goes in the wheelbarrows. When your barrow is full you can dump it in the compost area on the wall side of the stables. There is fresh sawdust in the storage room beside the tack room. You have fifty minutes. I'll be back in forty-five to inspect your stalls!’
    We all blinked at her.
    "You may commence. Now.”
    We commenced.
    Okay. Really. I know it's going to sound weird, but I didn't mind cleaning out my stall. I mean, horse poopie just isn't that gross. Especially because it was obvious that these stalls were cleaned out like every other instant of the day. I grabbed the mucking boots (which were big rubber galoshes―totally ugly, but they did cover my jeans all the way up to my knees) and a pair of gloves and got to work. There was music playing through excellent loudspeakers― something that I was pretty sure was Enya's latest CD (my mom used to listen to Enya before she married John, but then he decided that it might be witch music so she quit, which is why I'll always like Enya). So I listened to the haunting Gaelic lyrics and pitch- forked up poopie. It didn't seem that hardly any time had passed when I was dumping the wheelbarrow and then filling it with clean sawdust. I was just smoothing it around the stall when I got that prickly feeling that someone was watching me.
    "Good job, Zoey.”
    I jumped and whirled around to see Lenobia standing just outside my stall. In one hand she was holding a big, soft curry brush. In the other she was holding the lead rope of a doe-eyed roan mare.
    "You've done this before," Lenobia said.
    "My grandma used to have a really sweet gray gelding I named Bunny," I said before I realized how stupid I sounded. Cheeks hot, I hurried on, "Well, I was ten, and his color reminded me of Bugs Bunny, so I started calling him that and it stuck.”
    Lenobia's lips tilted up in the barest hint of a smile. "It was Bunny's stall you cleaned?”
    "Yeah. I liked to ride him, and Grandma said that no one should ride a horse unless they clean up after one." I shrugged. "So I cleaned up after him.”
    "Your grandmother is a wise woman.”
    I nodded.
    "And did you mind cleaning up after Bunny?”
    "No, not really.”
    "Good. Meet Persephone," Lenobia nodded her head at the mare beside her. "You've just cleaned her stall.”
    The mare came into the stall and walked straight up to me, sticking her muzzle in my face and blowing gently, which tickled and made me giggle. I rubbed her nose and automatically kissed the warm velvet of her muzzle.
    "Hi there, Persephone, you pretty girl.”
    Lenobia nodded in approval as the mare and I got to know each other.
    "There are only about five minutes left before the bell rings for school to end, so it is not necessary that you stay as part of today's class, but if you'd like, I believe you have earned the privilege of brushing Persephone.”
    Surprised, I looked up from patting the horse's neck. "No problem, I'll stay," I heard myself saying.
    "Excellent. You can return the brush to the tack room when you've finished. I'll see you tomorrow, Zoey." Lenobia handed me the brush, patted the mare, and left us alone in the stall.
    Persephone stuck her head in the metal rack that held fresh hay, and got to work chewing, while I got to work brushing. I'd forgotten how relaxing it was to groom a horse. Bunny had died of a sudden and very scary heart attack two years ago, and Grandma had been too upset to get another horse. She'd said that "the rabbit" (which is what she used to call him) couldn't be replaced. So it had been two years since I'd been around a horse, but it came back to me instantly―all of it. The smells, the warm, soothing sound of a horse