The Scorpio Races (33 page)

The way he says it makes me realize just how much he’s risking right now, putting me on his horse, giving me the reins.

“Could others hold him?”

His face remains the same. “There are no others. You’re the only one.”

I swallow. “I can hold him.”

Sean drags his foot in a semicircle before Corr and spits in it. Then he quickly loops the reins over Corr’s head and hands them to me. If I had never seen or touched Corr, this would be the moment when I realize just how large he is, how unlike Dove. Through the reins, I can somehow feel how powerful he is. They’re spiderwebs anchoring a ship. He tries my hold and I try him back. I don’t want him to try harder.

Sean settles swiftly behind me, and I’m startled by the sudden closeness of him, my back suddenly warm against his chest, the press of his hips against me.

I turn to ask him a question, and he jerks his face away from the proximity to mine. I say, “Oh. Sorry.”

“Are you all right with the reins?” He’s all black and white in this light, his eyes hidden in shadow beneath his eyebrows.

I nod. But Corr won’t go forward; he only backs, shaking his head. When pushed, he lifts his front feet a little off the ground. Not rearing, but warning me. Sean says something that’s lost to the wind.

“What?”

“My circle,” Sean says, right into my ear, his breath warm. I shiver, hard, although the wind is no colder than before. “He won’t want to cross it. Go around.”

As soon as we’re free of the circle, Corr is like a bird in a gale. I can’t tell if he’s walking or trotting, only that we’re moving, and that all directions feel possible. When Corr jerks to the side, I press my legs into his sides to straighten him and Sean’s arms go around me to grab his mane.

I know that Sean only did it to steady himself, not me, but suddenly, I feel more grounded. I turn my face, and again, he moves his head to give me room. But I don’t know what I was going to say.

“What?” His mouth makes the shape of the word although I don’t properly hear it. “Is it —?” He starts to withdraw his arms, and I shake my head. My hair whips across my forehead, and he winces as it lashes him, too. He says something again, and once more, the wind steals his voice.

When Sean sees that I didn’t hear him, he leans forward to my ear again. I can’t think of the last time I was so close to another person. I can feel the rise and fall of his chest when he breathes. His words are warm in my ear: “Are you afraid?”

I don’t know what I am right now, but it’s not afraid.

I shake my head.

Sean takes my ponytail in his hand, his fingers touching my neck, and then he tucks my hair into my collar, out of the reach of the wind. He avoids my gaze. Then he links his arms back around me and pushes his calf into Corr’s side.

Corr springs into the air.

When Dove moves up from a canter to a gallop, sometimes the only way I can tell the difference is because her hooves pound a four-time rhythm instead of a three.

But when Corr moves into a gallop, it’s as if it’s a gait that’s just been invented, something so much faster than all the others that it should be called something else. The wind roars savagely across my ears. There are uneven stones standing watch in the field, but they’re nothing to Corr. He barely lifts his knees and they’re behind us. Each stride feels like it takes us a mile. We’ll run out of island before he runs out of speed.

We’re giants, on his back.

Sean says into my ear, “Ask him for more.”

And when I squeeze my legs around him, Corr bounds forward again, as if we’d been merely straggling before. I can’t believe that any of the horses on the beach are faster than this. I can’t believe there’s a horse in the world faster than this. And this is with two people on him. With only Sean during the race, how can he lose?

We are flying.

Corr’s skin is hot against my legs — clingy, somehow, like when the current pushes your toes deeper into the sand. I feel his pulse in my pulse, his energy in mine, and I know this is the mysterious, terrifying power of the
capaill uisce.
We all know it, how it seizes you and confuses you and then you are in the water before you know it. But Sean leans forward, hard, against me, in order to reach Corr’s mane, and ties knots in it. Three. Then seven. Then three again. I try to focus on what he’s doing instead of his body pressed against mine, his cheek against my hair.

I lay the rein against Corr’s neck and he gallops to the left, away from the line of the cliffs. Sean is still tightly against me, the fingers of one hand pressing into one of Corr’s veins while the other grips his mane. The magic becomes a dull hum through me. My body warns me of the danger of this
capall uisce
beneath me, but at the same time it screams that it’s alive, alive, alive.

We wheel back the way we came. I keep waiting for Corr to flag, to show some signs of tiring, but there’s nothing but the pounding of his hooves across the turf, the snort of his breath around the bit, the wind blowing across my ears.

The island spools out beneath the moonlight. We gallop parallel to the cliff edge, and beyond it I see a flock of white birds keeping pace with us. Gulls, perhaps, soaring and gliding on air currents that send them violently upward as they get close to the rocks.
This is Thisby,
I think.
This is the island I love.
I suddenly feel I know everything about the island and everything about me all at the same time, only I know that it will go away as soon as we stop.

We are back to where we began, and reluctantly I slow Corr. My heart is crashing in my ears, galloping even though Corr has stopped.

I slide off and step a few feet away, turning to watch Sean dismount as well. He reaches into his pocket and gets a handful of salt or sand from it, then drops it in a circle around Corr and spits in it while I watch. Once this is done, he walks over to me, dark and silent. He’s looking at me like he looked at me at the festival, and I know I’m looking back. Something wild and old spins inside me, but I don’t have any words.

Sean reaches out between us and takes my wrist. He presses his thumb on my pulse. My heartbeat trips and surges against his skin. I’m pinned by his touch, a sort of fearful magic.

We stand and stand, and I wait for my pulse against his finger to slow, but it doesn’t.

Finally, he releases my wrist and says, “I’ll see you on the cliffs tomorrow.”

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

PUCK

When I get home, the house is neat as a pin. It hasn’t looked like this since our parents died. I stand in the doorway for a moment, lost in wonder and bemusement, and then Finn bursts out of the hallway. He looks like a man who has been on fire and put himself out; he is frazzled, even more than usual. I swim out of my thoughts to try to puzzle what has happened.

“What’s wrong?” I ask.

Finn tries several times to say something, but only his hands are successful at it. Eventually, he manages, “I thought something — how would I know if something had happened to you?”

“Why would something have happened to me?”

“Puck, it’s
night.
Where have you been? I thought — !”

Slowly it dawns on me. He’d seen me before I left for confession and must’ve expected me not long after.

“I’m sorry,” I tell him.

Finn storms mightily around the room, and I realize that he’s done all this cleaning because he was fretting over me.

“The house looks amazing,” I offer.

He snaps, “Of course it does! I cleaned the whole bloody thing! I didn’t even know how long it would be, if you died, before I knew. Who’d tell me?”

“I’m sorry, I forgot. Time got away from me.”

This makes Finn rage even more. I’ve never seen him in such a state. He’s like my father when he found out that my mother had bought a gray gelding off a farmer. He’d raged about, a furious silent storm contained by the walls, clutching the backs of chairs and staring at the ceiling, until Mum had agreed to sell the gelding.

“Time got away,”
Finn says finally.

“I can say I’m sorry some more, but I don’t see what it will do.”

“No good at all is what it will do!”

“Then what is it you want from me?” The truth is that I did feel bad before, but now my patience is at a thread. It’s not as if I can go back and undo the past.

Finn leans on the back of my father’s armchair, his knuckles white around the top of it.

“I can’t bear it,” he says, and I suddenly see Gabe in him. “I can’t bear not knowing what will happen.”

I creep around to the armchair and crouch in front of it. I fold my arms on the seat and peer up at his face. I’m not sure why he looks so young, if it’s the worry that’s taking the age from him or if it’s because I’ve been looking at Sean Kendrick’s face. I say, “It’s almost over. We’ll be okay. Nothing will happen to me. Even if I don’t win, we’ll be okay, right?”

Finn’s face is bleak and terrible, and I don’t think he believes it.

I add, “Puffin came back, didn’t she?”

“Missing half her tail. You don’t have a tail to spare.”

“Dove does. And that expensive food means hers grows back fast.”

I’m not sure if he’s comforted, but he doesn’t protest further. Later, he drags his mattress into my room and pushes it against the opposite wall. It reminds me strikingly of my childhood, when he and I used to share a room with Gabe, before my father built another room onto the side of our house for him and Mum.

After the light is off, we’re quiet for several long moments. Then Finn says, “What did Father Mooneyham give you?”

“Two Hail Marys and a Columba.”

“Jesus,” says Finn in the dark. “You were worse than that.”

“I tried to tell him.”

“I’ll tell him again, when I go tomorrow. Did you already say them?”

“Of course. It was only two Hail Marys and a Columba.”

Finn rustles in the darkness.

“Do you still talk in your sleep?” I ask.

“How would I know?”

“I’m going to hit you, if you do.”

Finn turns over again, punching his pillow. “This isn’t for always. Just until after.”

“Okay,” I say. Out the window, I can see the shape of the moon, and it reminds me of Sean’s finger pressed against my wrist. I hold the thought carefully in my head, because I want to consider it some more once Finn has stopped speaking. But instead, as I wait for sleep, I find myself thinking about what Finn said about me dying. About how he didn’t know how long it would be before he knew or who would tell him. I realize then that I can’t remember how it is that we found out that our parents were dead. I just remember them going out to the boat together, a very rare occasion indeed, and then I remember knowing they were dead. Not only can I not see the face of who told us, I can’t even remember the telling. I lie there with my eyes tightly closed, trying to bring the moment back to focus, but all I can call up is Sean’s face and the sensation of the ground rushing by beneath Corr.

I think that’s the mercy of this island, actually, that it won’t give us our terrible memories for long, but lets us keep the good ones for as long as we want them.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

SEAN

The morning of the Malvern youngstock auction dawns exceptionally fair, too kind for October. I lost too much sleep after I left Puck behind last night, so I snatch an extra half hour to steel me for what’s to come, and then I dress and head down to the yard. There’ll be no riding Corr this morning, none of my usual stable work. The warm weather that would make the beach bearable is lost to the auction.

The yard is buzzing, full of mainland men holding champagne at nine in the morning and ignoring wives wearing absurd furs too warm for the weather. Every so often, the sound of a horse whinny peals out above their voices. These tourists are a tidier sort than those who arrived in time for the Scorpio Races, more kin to the gentlemen I’d seen staying at the hotel than to any local. Every man Malvern employs is out in force today; this auction funds the yard for the rest of the year.

I’ve only had my feet on solid ground for about a minute when George Holly catches my elbow. “Sean Kendrick. I thought you’d be out there among the beasts.”

“Not today.” The truth is that I’d rather be down there with the grooms, leading the horses into the ring for the buyers to look at. Instead I am to stay always within earshot of Benjamin Malvern so that if he catches my eye or tips a champagne glass in my direction, I’m available to sing the praises of whichever horse is about to go onto the auction block. “Today I’m to sell myself, not them. I’m the novelty.”

“Oh, hence the sharp apparel. I nearly didn’t recognize you in that suit coat.”

“I bought it to be buried in.”

George Holly claps my shoulders. “Planning on staying trim or dying young, then. Such a wise head on such young shoulders. If your Kate Connolly hasn’t seen you in that suit coat, she should.”

I doubt very much that Puck would be affected by the sight of me looking as if I am wanting only for a pocket watch. If she preferred this version of me, it would be unfortunate in any case. I lay a hand flat on the vest and smooth the buttons.

“It’s such a fine thing to see you uncomfortable, Mr. Kendrick,” Holly says. “She has got you bothered! Now tell me which horses to buy.”

Bothered
isn’t the word for it. I can’t focus. I need to be on Corr instead of simmering in this coat. I say, “Mettle and Finndebar.”

“Finn-deh-bahr? I can’t even say it much less remember it. Did Malvern show her to me?”

I say, “Probably not; she’s a broodmare. Getting a little old, so he’s selling her.” I look up in time to see Malvern arrive with a posse of potential buyers following him. They look delighted by the island weather and these island racers and their droll owner. Malvern spots me and I see him filing away my location for future reference.

Holly exchanges a look with Malvern that is not entirely cordial. “Oh, I’m not in the market for baby-makers.”