I canter across the field, legs pumping, the awkward rhythm extending and extending, my calves burning, throat catching, until the rush floods in and it is her running. Lilja’s ears, perked back and blustered by the wind, are all I can see of her. And yet we are aligned. As I finally slow, I hear the other girls whoop in the distance. I turn around and lift her higher so she stands victorious as I am, and I slap the side of her neck gently, encouraging her to cool down. We turn in a long arc and rejoin the others. Most of them sit in the tall grass, their hobbyhorses carefully tethered to the camp’s hitching posts. Kaarina never sits. She stands beside Keiju, solemn, a hint of a smile and straight backed, blonde hair blowing free across her face, showing me her pride.
Keiju is the only boy horse at camp. I didn’t know it was strange at first, since he was the first hobbyhorse I’d ever met.
Ten days after I turned eleven in May, I was walking alone to school, mist and dust mixing on the dirt road flanked by white aspen trunks and their black shadows. I heard them first, heavy breaths and feet. As I came around the bend I saw them, enclosed in a wooden circle of broken down fencing. Kaarina was taller than me but not much older, pin-thin and bone-blonde, and she was wielding a hobbyhorse, its felt dull silver in the morning light. As she ran she kept the hobbyhorse’s stick angled precisely and her long fingers clutched the horse’s leather reins. She approached a crossrails, made of plastic PVC pipes, rocking onto the front of her feet as she neared it, each skip savage. With a lunge she jumped it, front leg cocked at a strange angle, back foot flying behind like a ballerina. Then with a grunt she landed, sprinting, mouth open, eyes with visible whites all around. She’s like a ghost. She looked vengeful. I scanned behind me, afraid someone might pass by and that they would notice and laugh, and that she might kill them for doing it.
I stayed, knowing each moment I was later for school. Kaarina’s movements were mesmerizing and odd, and dark veins of dirt crisscrossed her throat. She looked like her muscles were just slightly wrong for her body, like she was a horse pretending to be a human, the way some butterflies mimic birds or snakes.
I spotted her bag lying on the ground to the side of the makeshift paddock. It was cream-colored leather and it looked expensive. It was plopped carefully on a rock so it wouldn’t get dirty. I could see stuff sticking out of it, and when I crept closer, I could see it was all miniature versions of horse gear—a halter, bridle, combs, lead ropes and bowls.
“What are you doing?”
I swung my head up to her. I looked dumb, half crouched, fingers poised to ruffle around in her stuff.
“Sorry!” I said, too loudly. “Sorry. I was just looking.”
She stood above me, the hobbyhorse’s large glass eyes glaring at me disapprovingly. Hers were more dispassionate—like a soldier, and I’m a civilian, not an enemy. I waited, frozen.
“This is Keiju,” she said. “I’m Kaarina. We were training. I didn’t do as well today as I wanted to.”
“It looked good.”
“Thank you. I have to train everyday, camp is coming soon.” She gracefully swung her leg around to dismount. She was wearing riding boots and jodhpurs and strands of her hair clung to her eyelashes and lipgloss. I brushed aside my bangs.
I’d heard of hobbyhorse girls before. It’s sort of a trend for weird girls who hate boys, and I’d laughed at it during recess months ago when someone told me. Mom said that I’m still finding my “place” at school, which I guess means laughing at everything until I find somebody who is funny.
“There’s a summer camp for hobbyhorses?” I said. “Why?”
“To improve. If you come to camp, I’ll buy you your own horse,” she said. “It’s my job to bring in new people, and I always help them get set up. It’s in Vörå, a hundred and fifty euros per two weeks. It’s very affordable.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll let you know.”
She turned and was back to it.
“I’m Anna,” I said to the back of her head. She nodded, not turning back.
I named my horse Lilja. Lilja is made by a mid-tier brand, so it’s a little difficult to tell her breed, but on the third day of camp we gathered around the campfire and carefully inspected her mane, her dark, warm-brown patterning, and her musculature. We speculate that she’s most likely a Dutch Warmblood, which means she would be talented at jumping sports naturally, but I think she’s an outlier. Like me, I think she is curious and careful, and jumping feels too showy. As we sat in a circle and I listened to Jen, Tuuli, Aurora and Kaarina clamor over each other and laugh from their guts, I giggled and Lilja looks back at me, her dark deep eyes telling me. We see it all, she says. We don’t need to jump in every time.
Kaarina isn’t always standoffish, but she is always in charge. Even the instructors know it, and they act like she is a younger version of one of them. Tuuli whispered once that it was because Kaarina’s parents were rich, but even Tuuli didn’t mean it. It was something more about Kaarina that was deeper and darker and richer than money. It lived in her eyelashes, like little fairy’s wings, and in the cupid bow of her lips, so light they might be gray.
At camp we wake up at 7am, take care of our hobbyhorses (brush, feed, saddle), and then eat our own breakfast in long tables in the mess hall. We take care not to waste food, and take turns helping the kitchen staff (Reggie runs the kitchen, and he’s not friendly) scrape out the extra and take out the trash. Then we enter warm ups, active walks on rein, stretching, and then slow endurance training before lunch. After lunch we do trail rides (my favorite part), and end with enrichment, where we and the horses usually have snacks and find grain in the tall grass. After supper, the time is our own.
I like doing things with everyone else. It feels good and warm, and I like watching each of my new friends’ bobbing heads around me as we hike, kicking pebbles at each other when the instructor isn’t watching. I like shuffling under the same towels in our bathing suits after swimming, and toasting marshmallows for Kaarina, since she says I do it best. Before bed every night I follow the others and put Lilja in the stables, a little four-foot-tall barn painted white with water troughs and hay replaced every day. I remove Lilja’s harness and tie her with the rest of the horses, in the spot on the far right with the dandelion sticker. I pet her gently, and then leave with the rest of the girls to brush our teeth in the communal toilets, the chill of the night air eating at our socked feet on the cold tiles. Then, when everyone else is asleep, I go back and take Lilja out, bring her back to my cabin, tuck her under my sleeping bag, and fall asleep nestled against her mane. The next morning I wake early before everyone else, sneak out, and put her back in the stables again.
Kaarina holds me underneath my ribcage, and the pressure leaves an impression of the waistline of her pajama pants on my side. My feet are a little bigger than hers, so when we step together we leave slightly different footprints, our bare soles sinking deep into the wet grass. Our horses graze nearby, watching us curiously. She shows me the movements of dressage in a way that gets under my skin, until it feels automatic. We stand so close I can feel her tense before she moves. A strand of Kaarina’s hair is in my mouth. It’s so dark at night out here I can’t see the reflection of her eyes. I imagine they’re ghostly, the pale blue iris melting into her face until she’s all cloud, mist and snow.
The water was halfway up my calves. We were water training, a way to strengthen our horses’ legs, and by extension, ours, by trotting through the pond. The main teacher and adult, Jamie, was in her early thirties. She had won hobbyhorsing competitions when she was a teen, and once she graduated from competing she went right into training and helped to found the camp. Kaarina loves her. I think she’s fine. Any adult feels a bit like an invasion. I think the forest around our camp might not be made for them at all.
The water hasn’t had a lot of time to warm up, so me and four other campers send shivers through the water while the instructors leave to supervise some others. I pet Lilja’s ears, keeping her halfway submerged, and wondering how long it will take her to dry. Kaarina was on the edge of the water, water only reaching her bony ankles, her mouth a tight line.
“Come on in,” I said. She looked at me, her brow furrowed. She stepped in another inch.
“It’s better all at once, you’re torturing yourself.” I felt Lilja’s shoulders flex as we moved into thigh-high waters. Kaarina is transparent, and I am substantial. Usually this made me feel slow and gawkish, but right now I felt all the potency of Lilja within me. Holding Lilja by her mane, my face only inches above hers, I angled us carefully and dove.
As I dove towards the center of the pond, I opened my eyes. Lilja and my body made one line arcing away from the surface. The water was very green, and little fish flitted in and out of the sludgy bottom. The summer sun struck beams down, and I could see almost to the pond’s deep center. I had never felt more safe. Powered by her lungs, I was arrow, muscle, tree root, bone.
By my third week I am a special part of the introduction process. The instructors give tours, but the real welcome to camp is with me. Me and the new camper girls leave while it is still bright after supper and walk barefoot through the forest. I am careful to walk on moss, and I’ve never felt as aware of my feet as when Lilja and I are guiding the others. I am sure, I told the new girls, that there’s something inside our horses that connects us to so much more. In normal life they would’ve laughed at me, but here, amid the quiet birdsong at the edge of the world, their eyes widen. They steal glances down towards their own horses as I ask them if they can feel their breaths get bigger. We walk until we are tired and then flop down by a stream and plunge our hands in, clinging to water and slurping it down before it slips away from us back into the rush. Each time we begin again I can see them riding their own horses with greater confidence, and when I ask them to look into Lilja’s eyes, one girl sheds a tear and strokes Lilja’s cheek gently. And in my mind it’s real. And in their mind it’s real.
Lilja and I were doing slow laps around the paddock while Kaarina watched. At the end of the summer Kaarina would be competing in hobbyhorse competitions in Seinäjoki, and she was mostly telling me about what that would be like, how she wasn’t sure what song she should pick for her exhibition number. The noon sun was hot on my bare neck.
“Where is Keiju?” I asked.
“Keiju is retired,” said Kaarina. She ran back to the stable, unleashing a knot inside with a single tug.
“This is Jäkel. He’s new.”
Jäkel sprung forward, and his eyes rolled.
I guess I knew that Keiju was older and not in good shape for competition. He had bits of unfurling thread along his neck, and as I stood frozen in the middle of the ring Kaarina was quickly explaining to me that Jäkel is a Friesian, from Humma, and should be good at both English jumper and dressage, and he’s especially well balanced between his stick and body.
“But where is Keiju?” I asked again. Kaarina came close to me, and I could see something big in her eyes. She wanted me to be onboard. She bent a few inches to be on eye level with me.
“I don’t feel good,” I said. I went to lie down.
That was the first night I left Lilja in the stables with the rest of the horses. Every time I touched her ears, every time I felt her hot breath on my hands, I felt a pang of hurt deep in my gut. I felt like my stomach was rubber, and it was going to slop over and hang folded down to my knees. I put Lilja away quickly, washed up before everyone else and went to bed. That night I dreamed of being inside a landfill, with the weight of all that was thrown away pressing down on my long nose. I’m claustrophobic, but that wasn’t what frightened me. What was scary was that I was never going to get out, ever. What gets thrown away you can’t get back, even if you run after the trash truck, screaming and reaching your arms out for it until it’s out of sight and you’ve lost it forever. That’s what I dreamed about next.
The next morning I knew something was wrong before I even saw her. When I walked into the stable I looked at her out of the corner of my eye and I felt my arms prickle. Her eyes were all wrong. They were glassy, filmed over, and when I picked her up she was heavy in my arms.
I kept it secret from the others. It was a dirty secret. I carried Lilja’s body around in my arms, pretending to play and exercise and run. She was cold, and it was so hard to do all this with her weight dragging me towards the earth. When we were on the trail I tripped and tore my leg against a sharp rock. It ripped so long that I felt the pain before it was done tearing. The day before I would’ve yelled and sat down hard, putting Lilja carefully beside me while everyone else came over to tell me whether or not they thought it might need stitches and who should get a bandaid while the other person rubbed a leaf into it (their dad had said it was a natural pain reliever). Now, my lips fluttered hard as I sucked in my teeth, and then I gritted hard. I snuck away from the group, each footprint mashed flat into the ground as I swung my body and Lilja’s back and forth in an awkward half-walk until I was back to the cabins and mess hall. There I hid behind a bush, holding her in my lap. Dead leaves rustled under my shorts. I breathed shallow and tight, and behind my eyes prickled dread. My cut was running freely down my leg, and I ran a finger through the blood and then down the side of Lilja’s nose.
“Wake up,” I pleaded. She couldn’t hear me. All the air in my nose ran cold.
The rest of camp was non-days. Skidmarks of color and my bright, hot cheeks as I carried Lilja’s body around, going through the motions. I called my parents two days before the end of camp and told them I was sick and needed to come home. I snuck out and didn’t say goodbye to anyone. I think Tuuli saw me leave, and her confused face stained my eyes before I was in the backseat of the car and all I could look at were my hands.
Mom and Dad didn’t ask many questions about camp. I told them all the details and none of the meaning. Almost six weeks, I said, I was tired. I told them what they’d like, the exercise, the team building, the discipline. I don’t tell them anything about death. I’m a good liar.
I put all my clothing under my bed, and I make a stable for Lilja in my closet. I put down a bowl of water, and I brought new grass from the yard every day. I brush out her mane, carefully separating each tangle in the yarn. My face is slack, and nobody notices.
It’s been weeks. We’re back in school. I scrawl her name in my notebook in cursive, over and over again. I don’t do well in cursive, and so it’s always ugly and my hand hurts doing it.
I pass Kaarina in the hall. She won second place at the competition. I congratulate her, and she says thank you. She seems like she wants to talk, but she looks different than I remember her. I leave quickly. I see some of the girls from camp sometimes, but I turn my head. I think sometimes they say hello. One of them said they missed Lilja. I spent a long time in the bathroom during art class that day.
The week after our first snow day I decided I needed to give Lilja a funeral. I had nightmares that I would open the closet one day and she would be rotting, worms crawling out of her stuffing. At night, after mom and dad were asleep, I unpacked my heavy winter clothes from the attic. I tried very hard to be quiet, even when I accidentally breathed in a spider. I felt its legs move on my tongue—but now I was pretty good at feeling something bad and not making sound.
My arms itch with pinprick sweat as soon as I pick her up, and I take off my gloves. I cradle her head into my chest, and try not to hit her stick on the door as I leave. The door creaks, and the cold smacks my chin like rebar. My feet crunch on brittle frozen leaves. The frost overnight crystallized and everything is covered in an inch of white glitter crust. The back of our house leads into the woods, so I take the harder way up, scrambling up the side of the hill instead of taking the path. I try and step only on snow that’s already been stepped on by an animal or a person before, so I don’t mess up the clean white. I knot my hands in Lilja’s mane, and somehow, it’s a little warm. I start to cry a little bit, for the first time, and once I started I couldn’t stop.
Once I got to the top of the hill, a long way away from any lights or houses, I talked to her. I’m so sorry I did this to you, Lilja. I don’t know what I did. Was it because I told them about you? Was it because I wasn’t careful enough with you? Did I hurt you, Lilja? I’m so sorry, Lilja. Lilja you were so…you were so, so good, you didn’t deserve to die. This isn’t fair. It’s not fair, I’m sorry Lilja. I’m sorry. I’m sorry Lilja. I’m sorry Lilja.
Once my eyes were empty, I brought Lilja tight under my chin and looked around at the forest. I could hear a stream somewhere close, and a train far away. There were both moving North.
A mouse scampered through a snowbank. A bird noticed.
The moon was half full, and lit only the outsides of trees, their trunks mottled figures.
Lilja breathed in my arms, and I found more tears.
She said she didn’t know how long she could be back. Maybe tonight, maybe forever. We ran with her eyes and her legs. I pressed my nose into her mane and thanked her over and over again.