The Scorpio Races

by Maggie Stiefvater

Page 4

 

  “Beringer?” I say. “You promised Beringer you’d stay that long? What about us? What’s going to happen to us?”

  He won’t look at me. I’m trying to imagine how we can survive with one less earning Connolly and one more empty bed.

  “You can’t go,” I say. “You can’t go so soon. ” My pulse is clubbing inside my chest and I have to press my jaw shut to keep my teeth from chattering.

  Gabe’s face is utterly unchanged, and I know that I’m going to regret what I say, but it’s the only thing I can think of, so I say it.

  “I’m riding in the races,” I tell him. Just like that.

  Now I have both my brothers’ full attention, and my cheeks feel like I’ve been leaning over a hot stove.

  “Oh, come on, Kate,” Gabe says, but his voice is not as sure as it should be. He half believes me, despite himself. Before I say anything else, I have to think about it and decide if I believe me. I think of this morning, my hair tugged in the wind, the feel of Dove stretching out into a gallop. I think of the day after the races, the red-stained sand high up on the beach where the ocean has yet to reach. I think of the last boats leaving for the winter, and Gabe on one of them.

  I could do it, if it came to it.

  “I am. Didn’t you hear in town? The horses are coming out. Training starts tomorrow. ” I am so, so proud that my words sound firm.

  Gabe’s mouth works, as if he is saying all sorts of things without parting his lips, and I know that he is going through all the counterarguments in his head. Part of me wants him to say “you can’t” so I can ask “why?” and he would have to realize that he can’t answer “because you might leave Finn by himself. ” And he can’t ask “why?” because then he’d have to answer that question as well. I should be feeling very clever and pleased with myself, because it’s very hard to render Gabe speechless, but mostly my heart is just going tip-tip-tip in my chest, very shallow and fast, and I’m half hoping that he’ll say that if I don’t ride, he’ll stay.

  But finally he says, “All right. I’ll stay until after the races. ” He looks cross. “But no longer than that, or the boats will stop running ’til spring. This is a really stupid thing you’re doing, Kate. ”

  He’s mad at me, but I don’t care about that. All I care is that he’s staying, for a little while longer.

  “Well, sounds like we’ll need the money, if I win,” I say, trying to sound as adult and blasé as possible, but thinking that maybe if I do win the money, he won’t have to leave. And then I get up from the table and put my plate and teacup in the sink, like it was a normal evening. Then I walk into my room, close the door, and put my pillow over my head so no one will hear.

  “Selfish bastard,” I whisper, the words close under the pillowcase.

  Then I burst into tears.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SEAN

  I am dreaming of the sea when they wake me.

  Actually, I am dreaming of the night that I caught Corr, but I can hear the sea in my dream. There is an old wives’ tale that capaill uisce caught at night are faster and stronger, and so it is three in the morning and I am crouching on a boulder at the base of the cliffs, several hundred feet from the sand beach. Above me, the sea has made an arch in the chalk, the ceiling a hundred feet over my head, and the white walls hug me. It should be dark, hidden from the moon, but the ocean reflects light off the pale rock, and I can see just well enough not to stumble on the coarse, kelp-covered rocks on the floor. The stone beneath my feet has more in common with the seafloor than the shore, and I have to take care not to lose my footing on the slippery surface.

  I am listening.

  In the dark, in the cold, I am listening for a change in the sound of the ocean. The water is rising, quickly and silently; the tide is coming in, and in an hour, this incomplete cave will be full of seawater higher than my head. I am listening for the sound of a splash, for the rush of a hoof breaking the surface, for any hint that a capall uisce is emerging. Because by the time you hear a hoof click on the stones, you are dead.

  But there is nothing but the eerie silence of the sea: no seabirds at night, no shouts of boys on the shore, no distant hum of a boat’s motor. The wind is ruthless as it finds me in the arch. Unbalanced by its sudden force, I slip and catch my balance again on the wall, my fingers splayed. I hurriedly pull my hand back — the walls of the arch are covered with blood-red jellies that wink and glisten at me by the light of the moon. My father told me they were completely harmless. I don’t believe him. Nothing is completely harmless.

  Below me, the water creeps between the boulders as the tide comes in. My palm is bleeding.

  I hear a sound, like a kitten mewling, or a baby screaming, and I freeze. There are no kittens or babies here on the beach; there is only me and the horses. Brian Carroll has told me that when he is out at sea at night, he can sometimes hear the horses calling to each other under the water, and it sounds like whale song, or a widow wailing, or something chuckling.

  I look down to the water in the deepest cleft of the rocks below me; it has risen fast. How long have I been standing here? The boulders in front of me are already nothing but shiny humps of rock barely above the black water. I am empty-handed, but I am also out of time — I need to turn back and pick my way across the seaweed-slimed rocks while I still can.

  I look at my hand; a thick trickle of blood has welled in my palm and down between the two bones of my arm. It gathers, swells, drips soundlessly into the water. My palm will hurt later. I look at the water where my blood disappears. I am silent. The cave is silent.

  I turn around and there is a horse.

  It is close enough to smell the briny odor of it, close enough to feel the warmth off its still-wet skin, close enough to look into its eye and see its dilated square pupil. I smell blood on its breath.

  And then they wake me.

  It is Brian and Jonathan Carroll, and their faces both spell concern. Brian’s face wears the traditional brand: furrowed eyebrows, lips puckered. Jonathan’s comes out as an apologetic smile that changes shape every few seconds. Brian is my age and I know him from the piers; we both deal with the water for our living and so we have history together, though we are not friends. Jonathan is his brother, trailing Brian in every way, including brains.

  “Kendrick,” says Brian. “You up?”

  I am now. I lie there in my bunk like I am tied to it and say nothing.

  Jonathan adds, “Sorry to wake you, mate. ”

  “You’re the man,” Brian says. Though I’m feeling no kinship for him now in the middle of the night, I don’t mind Brian. He says what he means. “There’s nothing else for it; Mutt’s in a world of trouble. He had a mind to wait up for one of the capaill to come out of the water and now he’s gotten what he asked for and I don’t think he likes it. ”

  “It’s going to kill them,” Jonathan says. He looks pleased to have been able to state something so obvious before Brian could.

  “Them?” I echo. It’s cold and I’m wide awake.

  “Mutt and a bunch of his mates,” Brian says. “They’re all in it, and they’ve got the capall sort of caught, but they can’t let it go and they can’t bring it in. ”

  Now I’m sitting. I don’t have any love in the world for Mutt — also known as Matthew Malvern, the bastard son of my boss — or any of the grooms who scurry in submissive friendship behind him, but they can’t leave a horse tangled up on the beach in whatever fool trap they’ve devised.

  “You’re the one for the horses, Kendrick,” Brian says. “I reckon someone’s going to get killed unless we fetch you back there. ”

  Back there. Now I understand their expressions; they were part of this and they know that I’ll think less of them for it.

  I don’t say anything else. Just get out of bed, pulling on my old sweater and snatching up my grease-black-blue coat with all my things in its pockets. I jerk my chin toward the door, and they scurry b
efore me like sandpipers, Jonathan wrenching the door open so that Brian can lead the way out of the stable.

  Outside, the wind is a live, starving thing. The sky over Skarmouth is a dull brown, lit by the streetlights, but everywhere else is inky. There is a bit of a moon, so it will be brighter by the ocean, but not much. We strike out across the fields, taking the straightest path to the beach. There’s nothing out here but rocks and sheep, but it’s easy enough to fall over either of them.

  “Torch,” I say, and Brian flicks on a flashlight and offers it to me. I shake my head. I’ll need my hands free. Behind us, Jonathan jogs and trips keeping up with our pace, making a beam of light arc crazily as his flashlight-hand jerks. I’m reminded of my mother pretending to write words on the wall with a flashlight when the storm knocked out our power.

  “How far up the beach?” I ask. The tide will be coming in in a few hours, and if they are around the point, a new capall uisce will be the least of their problems.

  “Not far,” pants Brian. He is not unfit, but strenuous activity tends to wind him. If not for their expressions earlier, I would’ve stopped to let him catch his breath.

  I can just see where the hills split and cleft for the path down to the sand — the land is a darker black against the sky — and then I hear a scream. The wind carries it to us, high and thin and ragged, and it is impossible to say whether it is human or animal. The hairs on the back of my neck prickle in a warning I ignore as I break into a run.

  Brian does not follow my lead — I don’t think he can — and I sense that Jonathan is torn between staying with Brian and accompanying me.

  “I need the torch, Jonathan!” I shout back over my shoulder. The wind throws my words behind me and though Jonathan replies, I can’t hear him. I pelt out of the dim circle of his flashlight and into the darkness, stumbling and slipping down the steep descent to the beach. For a brief moment I think I can’t go forward any more because I cannot see, but then I step a few feet on and glimpse a knot of wildly moving flashlights down on the sand. Beyond them, I see the water dimly illuminated by the scant light of the moon.

  The wind is sucking the sound away from me, so as I approach the scene, it seems as if the men are voiceless. The struggle is almost artful, until you get up to it. It’s four men, and they’ve snagged a gray water horse around its neck and by the pastern on one of its hind legs, right above the hoof. They tug and they jump back as the horse lunges and retreats, but they are in a bad place and they know it. They have the tiger by its tail and have just realized the tail is long enough for the claws to reach them.

  “Kendrick!” shouts someone. I cannot tell who it is. “Where’s Brian?”

  “Sean Kendrick?” shouts someone else, and this, I know, is Mutt, holding the line that leads to the horse’s neck. I can tell by the shape of his silhouette, the broad shoulders and thick neck that is both neck and chin. “Who asked for that bastard to come? Go back to sleep, knacker — I’ve got this under control!”