The Scorpio Races
Page 16

I can’t see, and then I can.
Fundamental’s eye is wide open, white all around it, but he can’t see me. A slick, dark capall uisce holds Fundamental’s throatlatch in its jaws. Blood floats from a ragged tear like steam. The uisce horse’s legs slice through the salt water, smooth and purposeful. It spares no attention for me. The capall uisce has the colt in a steel grasp and I, a small, vulnerable stranger in this world, am no threat.
I need a breath. I need more than a breath. I need a long gasp and another one and another one. But in front of me I see the capall’s nostrils, long and thin. The berries are hard and deadly in my hand. I could watch it drown.
But next to their two heads, I see the edge of Fundamental’s wound. The colt’s great, brave heart pumps his life out in time with my hammering pulse.
There’s no saving him from this.
I watched him being born. Fundamental, rare colt, so close to the water horses that he loves the ocean like I do.
Colors without any name flicker at the corner of my vision.
I have to leave him behind.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
PUCK
Finn and I both wait up for Gabe that night. I boil beans — infernal beans, it feels like that’s all we eat — and simmer inside my skin, planning what I will say to him when he gets here. Finn messes over the windows while I cook, and when I ask him what he’s doing, he says something about a storm. Outside the window, the night-darkening sky is clear except for some high, wispy clouds thin enough to see through, far out at the horizon. There’s no sign of foul weather. Who knows why Finn does any of the things he does. I don’t even try to talk him out of his fiddling.
We wait and wait for Gabe, my sense of betrayal simmering and then boiling and then simmering again. It’s impossible to be angry for so long. I wish I could tell Finn what it is that’s eating me, but I can’t tell him about Malvern. It’ll just make him start picking at his arms and obsessing over his morning rituals even longer than usual.
“What do you think,” I ask casually, turning the little butter bowl around and around again, so that the owl painted on the side looks at me and then Finn and then me again, “about selling the Morris — why are you laughing?”
He rattles at one of the windowpanes experimentally. “It’s not even running.”
“If it was running?”
“I might fix it tomorrow,” Finn says vaguely. I think, now, that he is using the windows as an excuse to stare outside for signs of Gabe. “I don’t want it to be out there when the storm gets bad.”
“Rain, yes, sure,” I say. “Selling it. What do you think?”
“Well, I guess that depends on why we’re selling it.”
“To get Dove better food during training.”
There is an agonizingly long pause before Finn responds. During the pause, he taps his finger all along the edge of a pane of glass before leaning in to peer at the join between glass and wood from an inch away. He seems quite content to finish experimenting with his weatherproofing before continuing the conversation.
Finally, he says, “Is better food that expensive?”
“Do you see alfalfa growing on this island?”
“It depends,” Finn says. “I don’t know what alfalfa looks like.”
“Like the inside of your dusty head. Yes, it’s expensive. It comes from the mainland.” I feel slightly bad about snapping at him. It’s not his fault that I’m cross — it’s Gabe’s. I can’t believe that I might not get to confront him tonight about Malvern’s appearance at the house. I can’t stay up for him. I have to be up early tomorrow if I’m going back to the beach again.
Finn looks mournful. I feel terrible. Maybe there’s something else we can sell, like the useless chickens that spend most of their time dying before we can kill them for dinner. The whole lot of them would buy one bale of hay and not a bite of good grain.
“Will it make her faster?” Finn asks.
“Racehorses should eat racehorse food.”
Finn casts a glance toward our dinner, beans with a lump of bacon donated by Dory Maud. “If that’s what it takes.”
He sounds like I’ve asked him to saw off his left leg. But I know how he feels. He loves the Morris like I love Dove, and what will he have left if he doesn’t have the car to putter over? Just the windows, and we only have five of them in the house.
“If I win,” I tell him, “we’ll have enough money to buy it back.” He still looks glum, so I go on. “We’ll have enough to buy two of them. A car to pull the other car when the engine stops on the first one.”
Now he has the ghost of a smile. We sit down and eat our beans with the lump of bacon. Without saying anything about it, we eat the rest of the apple cake, not leaving any for Gabe. Two people at a table meant for five. I don’t see how I’ll be able to sleep with this knot of anger inside me. Where is he?
I think about that decapitated sheep that Finn and I found on the way to Skarmouth. How are we supposed to know if Gabe’s working late or if he’s dead by the side of the road? How is he supposed to know if we’re home safely or dead by the side of the road, for that matter?
Finn is the one who says it finally. “It’s like he’s already gone.”
CHAPTER TWENTY
SEAN
That night, instead of dreaming, I lie in my bed and stare at the small square of black sky that I can see out the window of my flat. Though I’m dry now, I feel cold to my bones, as if I’ve swallowed the sea and it lives inside me. My arms ache. I’m holding up the cliffs.
I think of Fundamental swimming so purposefully behind the boat. No, that’s not what I think of. I think of Fundamental’s head thrown back, the whites of his eyes, the vanishing beneath the water churned to mist around me.
Again and again I dive into the water. Again and again it is too dark, too cold, too fast, too late.
Again and again I see Mutt Malvern standing on the point of the cove, watching.
I haven’t heard from Benjamin Malvern yet, but I will. It’s just a matter of time.
Kendrick! Daly’s voice, warning me, too late.
I can’t stay in bed any longer. I roll to my feet. My jacket is still wet and gritty where I hung it over the iron curl of the radiator. Without turning on the light, I find my pants and my wool sweater and make my way down the narrow stairs to the stables.
The three lightbulbs that have been installed in the main aisle illuminate circles just below them. Everything else is in shadow; the way the sound of my breath disappears makes the darkness feel vast. As the thoroughbreds and the draft horses hear my footsteps down the aisle, they nicker hopefully. After what happened this afternoon, I can’t look at them. I watched them all being born, just as I watched Fundamental being born.
I can’t block out their sounds as I pass, though. They slowly chew hay and stomp their hooves as an itch tickles their legs. Straw whispers against straw. Comfortable horse sounds.
I walk past all of them to the stall at the end of the aisle, and there is Corr. Just out of the reach of the light, he is the color of old, dried blood. I lean on the edge of the stall, looking in. Unlike the land horses, Corr doesn’t loiter over hay all night or sigh through his lips. Instead, he stands in the center of his stall, utterly still, his ears pricked. There is something in his eyes that the thoroughbreds will never have: something intense and predatory.
He looks at me with his left eye and then looks past me, listening. There is no way for him to relax; with the sound of this rising sea, with the smell of horse blood on my hands, with me restless before him.
I don’t know why Mutt Malvern was in Daly’s place, and I don’t know how he thinks it will escape his canny father that Mutt was on the point when the capall uisce entered the cove. I think of Fundamental again, of his wide, rolling eyes. Mutt was willing to sacrifice him for the possibility that it would hurt me. For the possibility of getting what he wanted.
What am I willing to risk for the possibility of getting what I want?
“Corr,” I whisper.
Instantly the red stallion’s ears turn to me. His eyes are black and mysterious, pieces of the ocean. He is more dangerous every day. We are more dangerous every day.
I can’t bear the idea that Mutt Malvern would ride him if I left.
Mutt thinks Benjamin Malvern will have my job for what happened today. I could just quit, instead. I think of the satisfaction of that possibility, of taking the money I’ve saved and leaving the Malverns and everything they own behind.
Corr makes a night noise — a barely audible, descending wail. It’s the sound of a scream underwater. But from Corr, it’s a homing beacon. A confirmation that waits for an answer.
I cluck my tongue, once, and he immediately falls quiet. Neither of us moves toward the other, but we both ease our weight off one foot at the same time. I sigh, and he sighs as well.
I can’t go without Corr.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
PUCK
Based upon my experience on the beach the day before, I form a new plan. Brave high tide, with its possibility of water horses swimming up from the ocean, instead of riding later, at low tide, with its certainty of water horses menacing me on the beach. So I set my alarm clock for five o’clock and saddle Dove before she’s properly awake.
Gabe is already gone. I’m not even sure if he came home. I’m a little glad for the treacherous dark slope, because it doesn’t let my thoughts linger on what his absence means for us.
Once we’ve gotten to the base of the cliffs, I have to move slowly, trying not to lead Dove into any of the boulders that scatter above the high waterline. What little light there is reflects off Dove’s breath, turning it white and solid. It’s so dark that I can hear the sea better than I can see it. Shhhhh, shhhhhh, it says, like I’m a fretful child and it’s my mother, though if the sea were my mother, I’d rather have been an orphan.
Dove is alert, her eyes pricked to the tide, which is still a bit too high for proper training. When dawn finally arrives good and proper, the sea will grudgingly give up several dozen yards of packed sand for the riders to train on, giving them more room to get away from the ocean. But now, the surf is still wild and close, cramping me to the cliff walls.
I don’t feel brave.
High tide, full dark, under a nearly November sky — the ocean near Thisby holds so many capaill uisce right now. I know that Dove and I are vulnerable on this dark beach. There could be a water horse in the surf right now.
My heart’s a low throb in my ears. Shhhhhh, shhhhhh, says the sea, but I don’t believe her. I adjust my stirrups. Dove doesn’t take her ears from the surf. I don’t mount up. I strain my ears for any sounds of life. There’s just the ocean. The sea glints suddenly, like a crafty smile. That could be a reflection off a capall uisce’s sinuous spine.
Dove would know. I have to trust her. Her ears are still pricked. She’s watchful but not wary. I kiss her dusty shoulder for luck and mount up. I steer her as far away from the tide as I can. Too far up and the sand gives way to pebbles and rocks, impossible to ride on. Too far down and shhhhhhhh, shhhhhh.