The Scorpio Races
Page 21

I study her. It’s a question that’s been plaguing me since I first saw her on the beach. “Because she’d be a capall uisce in a race made for capaill uisce.”
She looks past me at the cliff’s edge then, her eyebrows drawn close together, her mouth set. There’s something uncompromising about her, a fury that I associate with youth.
“I don’t want to consider this unless I’m sure she’s going to be a better bet than Dove,” she says. It’s not until she’s been quiet for a long moment that I realize that she’s looking at me, waiting for me to agree or disagree.
I’m not certain what she expects me to say. She must know all this, but still I say, “There is nothing faster than a capall uisce. Period. I don’t care what sort of training regimen you’re doing, circles in the surf, or whatever. They have strength on your mare, they have height on her, and your mare runs on grass. The capaill uisce run on blood, Kate Connolly. You don’t stand a chance.”
This seems to solidify her opinions, because she nods, once, sharply. “Okay, then. So, you’ll race me, then, won’t you?”
It’s a curious way that she phrases it. The “won’t you?” means that I’ll have to disagree with her just to keep things as normal.
“Race? Me on the mare, you on Dove?”
Kate nods.
The wind buffets us again, finally stilling Corr as he stops to scent it. I can smell rain on it, far away. “I don’t understand the purpose.”
She just stares at me.
Back at the yard, I have two lots of horses to take out to the gallops yet. I have George Holly and at least two other buyers poking around the barns, looking for the horse that will make their mainland yards famous, or at least famous for the year. I have too much to do in too few hours before the October night comes early. I don’t have time for a fool’s race, a capall uisce against a pony that couldn’t begin to look Corr in the eye.
“It’s no more time than it would take for me to try her,” Kate says. “So if you say no, it’s just because the idea insults you.”
Which is how we end up racing.
I retrieve the bay mare, leaving Corr in her place with a lump of beef heart from my satchel, and find Kate adjusting her stirrups from the back of her pony, one leg crossed over the saddle as she does. It’s something you can’t do on a horse you don’t trust, something I don’t know that I’d ever do on one of the capaill uisce.
Beneath me, the bay mare is twisting and anxious. She’s as hard to hold as the piebald, but less malevolent. She would sooner drown you than eat you.
“Are you ready?” Kate asks me, though I think it’s a question I should’ve been asking instead. I don’t think there’s even a ghost of a chance she wants this horse I’m on. “To the big outcropping over there?”
I nod.
I reason with myself: This doesn’t have to be an entirely wasted exercise. If I can get this bay mare running straight and true for these five minutes, then I’ll reconsider what I told Malvern. I hate releasing a horse after I’ve invested time in it, and she’s had plenty of time sunk into her. Maybe I was wrong and she will shape up for next year. Corr took years to settle.
“Are we waiting for a sign?” Kate says, springing off across the field. The bay mare’s after her like a shot, all predator, and I let her have her head until we’ve caught up. Kate has a big handful of Dove’s mane, which I think is for grip until I realize it’s to keep the strands from slapping the girl’s hands and face with their length. I don’t have to worry about that with the bay mare; she’s rubbed most of hers off on the door frame of her stall, longing for the sea.
The two horses gallop through the cliff grass, both of them nimble over the uneven surface.
The bay mare’s not even really trying. I nudge her to get a bit more speed out of her, to pull away from Dove and end this. But the mare curves her body around my leg instead of away from it. She tugs toward the cliff edge, moving more to the side than forward.
And of course that island pony tracks straight and true ahead of us.
It takes me several long seconds to sort my bay mare out again, but when she decides to run, she catches up easily. Kate’s dun pony gallops along — joyfully. Her ears are pricked with the glee of the run, her tail cracking every so often as she bucks playfully with excitement. If my mare is not focused, neither is she.
Kate glances at me, and I urge the bay mare on. I whisper to her for speed and she surges forward, listening. The dun mare doesn’t stand a chance.
I hear a crack over the sound of the wind in my ears and turn just in time to see that Kate has reached behind her and, with her open palm, slapped her mare on the haunches, hard. It’s gotten her pony’s attention and Dove charges forward, giving it everything.
It’s no good, though. My capall uisce has more speed than any island pony has dreamt of, and we’re pulling away, fast. We’ll have thirty lengths between us by the time we make it to the outcropping.
The bay mare stumbles but doesn’t lose her footing. My arms are sprayed with bits of mud. I steal a glance under my arm to see where Kate is. She and her pony are far, far behind. There’s no thrill to this race. No pleasure in such an easy victory. Above all, no joy in a win that the horse has no interest in.
And that’s when the wind throws the scent of the sea at us. The bay mare flags and then twists, throwing her head up, her nostrils flared. I whisper to her and trace letters on her shoulder, but she won’t settle.
She wants that cliff edge. The ocean is thick in the wind and she cannot think for it. I shuffle my iron out of my pocket, trace it along her veins, but — nothing. She rears, clawing at the air, and when that doesn’t unseat me, she decides to take me with her. Her skin’s hot and charged where my leg touches her. Nothing I do to her will turn her head.
Before us, I see cliff grass, and more cliff grass, and then, beyond it, nothing but sky. I pop one rein up, a dangerous way to stop a normal horse as you could pull it onto yourself, but it makes no difference to the bay mare. She has the bit solidly in her teeth and the sea in her lungs.
Twenty feet to the edge.
I have half a heartbeat to make a decision.
I throw myself off her, slamming my shoulder hard into the ground and rolling to diffuse the blow. I see chestnut-colored grass, then blue sky, then chestnut-colored grass again. Pushing myself up on my elbow, I catch sight of the mare just in time to watch her bunch her muscles and leap.
I scramble as close to the cliff’s edge as I dare. I’m not sure if I can stand to see her dash herself on the rocks below, but I can’t not look, either.
The bay mare looks fearless as she sails through the air, as if it’s no more than a casual leap over a hurdle. Already she looks less horselike, her body streamlined.
I can’t look.
I hear a terrific crash. She has disappeared into the surf, her tail the last thing I see.
I sigh and put my hands in my pockets. I can’t tell if she’s survived the dive or not. My saddle’s gone, either way. I’m glad it wasn’t my father’s, back at the barn, though it was still dear; I’d had it made for me two years ago, a rare indulgence. I don’t swear, but I consider the shape of the word in my mouth.
Hot breath whuffs out on my shoulder. It’s Dove, and Kate standing on the other side of her, her ginger hair all pulled out of its ponytail. Dove is out of breath, but not as much as I’d expect.
Kate looks over the cliff and frowns for a moment, and then she points.
I follow her gaze to a glistening dark back swimming out to sea. My mouth quirks. “It looks like you won, Kate Connolly.”
She pats Dove’s shoulder and says, “Call me Puck.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
SEAN
I get back to the yard and find it in disarray. Half the horses didn’t make it out for their exercise on time. Mettle is up in the paddock by the stable, chewing and sucking steadily on the top board of the fence. Edana hasn’t been taken out at all, and there’s no sign of Mutt. If he’s thinking that he means to challenge me and Corr at the races this year, he’s going about it the wrong way.
I keep feeling I’ve forgotten to do something, until I realize that I’m disconcerted by leaving with two horses and returning with one. I’ve no horse to un-tack, no saddle to put away.
George Holly finds me just as I’m walking back into the yard, a blood-streaked bucket in my hand from feeding the capaill uisce. He’s found a brilliant red flat cap to hold his hair down and a smile to hold his face on. “Hullo, Mr. Kendrick,” he greets me brightly, falling into step with me across the cobbles of the yard. “You look in fine spirits.” “Do I?”
“Well, your face looks like it remembers a smile,” Holly says. He looks down at my clothing; I’m wearing the island all over my left side.
I kick on the hose pump with my knee and begin to rinse the bucket over the top of the drain. “I lost a horse today.”
“That sounds careless. What happened?”
“She jumped off a cliff.”
“A cliff! Is that normal?”
In the barn, Edana lets out a keening, impatient wail, hungry for the sea. This time last year, Mutt was already pounding the hell out of his chosen mount on the beach. Right now, the yard seems quiet without him: the blue sky before a storm. I think about the Scorpio Festival tomorrow, how the riders’ parade this year will be me and Mutt and insane Kate Connolly.
I shut off the water pump and regard him. “Mr. Holly, nothing about this month is turning out to be normal.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
PUCK
So tonight is the night of the great Scorpio Festival.
I’ve only been to the Scorpio Festival once; Mum took us one year while Dad was out on the boat. Dad didn’t approve of the festival or the races in general. He said that one bred hooligans and that the other gave those hooligans two more legs than they could steer. We’d always thought Mum didn’t approve, either. But still, that year, when it became clear that Dad wasn’t going to be back that evening, Mum told us to fetch our hats and coats and told Gabe to kick the Morris into life (it was dodgy, even back then). With illicit fervor, we piled in: Gabe took the coveted passenger seat while Finn and I fought and slapped each other in the backseat. Mum shouted at us and tore along the little road to Skarmouth, bent over the steering wheel like it was a troublesome horse.
And then, Skarmouth! Everywhere there were costumes and the Scorpio drummers and the wail of the singers. Mum bought us bells and ribbons and November cakes, which made my hands sticky for days. Everywhere, noise, noise, noise, until Finn, who was just a little urchin then, had started to cry from it. Dory Maud whirled over from nowhere with one of the terrifying curse masks and put it on Finn. Hidden behind the flat-toothed monster mask, he became as fierce as my mother.
Over the years that I knew Mum, I more often saw her mucking Dove’s lean-to or cleaning pots or painting pottery or leaning up against the roof to smack a shingle back on with a hammer. But for some reason, now, when I call up thoughts of Mum, I remember that night at the festival, her dancing wildly in a circle with us, a mouth full of glinting teeth, face strange in the firelight, singing the November songs.