The Scorpio Races (27 page)

I don’t want to be accused of being hysterical, so I measure my words out, careful and slow. “I want to know why you care about us now, when next year you’ll be gone and we could both be eaten in October and you’ll be off on the mainland and never know.”

In the dark, I hear Gabe sigh heavily. “It’s not like I want to leave you two behind.”

I hate myself for the little flutter of hope that I feel when he says it. But it’s true that I imagine him with his arms flung wide, announcing that he’s changed his mind as he embraces Finn and Dove and me at once. I say, “Then don’t. Just stay.”

“I can’t.”

“Why not?”

“I just can’t.”

It’s the most we’ve spoken in a week and I wonder if I should just let it go at that. I imagine him leaping up, throwing the bedclothes from himself, and bolting from the room to avoid further questioning. Only, if he wanted to escape, he’d have to cross the bodies of Tommy Falk and Beech Gratton on the mattress on the floor and avoid falling over the couch with Finn on it and then sit by himself in the dark kitchen, and I don’t think he’ll do that.

So I say, “That’s not a real reason.”

For long moments, Gabe doesn’t answer, and I just hear him breathing in and out, in and out. Then he says, in a strange, thin voice, “I can’t bear it anymore.”

I’m so strangely grateful for this honesty that I don’t know what to think. I struggle to think of a good question, a question that will keep him talking like this. It’s like the truth is a bird that I’m worried of frightening away. “What can’t you bear?”

“This island,” Gabe says. He breathes a long pause between every word he says. “That house you and Finn are in. People talking. The fish — goddamn fish, I’ll smell like them for the rest of my life. The horses. Everything. I can’t do it anymore.”

He sounds miserable, but he didn’t look miserable earlier, when we were all in the kitchen, when we were perched all over the sitting room eating. I don’t know what to tell him. Everything that he said are things that I love about the island, except for maybe the smell of fish, which I guess might ruin everything else. But I don’t know if that’s a good enough reason to leave everything behind and start over.

It feels like he’s confessed that he’s dying of a disease I’ve never heard of, with symptoms I can’t see. The utter wrongness of it, the way it won’t fit in my head, keeps coming back to me again and again, as if I’ve only just learned about it.

The only concept I can truly understand is that this thing, this strange and incomprehensible and invisible thing, is big enough and strong enough to drive my brother from Thisby. As much of a pull Finn and I might have on him, this has more.

“Puck?” Gabe says, and I start, because his voice sounds like Finn’s for some reason.

“Yes?”

“I’d like to go to sleep now.”

But he doesn’t. He turns onto his side and his breathing stays light and watchful. I’m not sure how long he stays awake, but I know that I fall asleep before he does.

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

SEAN

In the early, black morning, the storm wakes me.

The wind roars overhead, an engine, the surf, the howl of a sea creature. My eyes adjust to the darkness and I see lights moving outside. Rain bursts across the glass in waves, furious and then more furious.

Now I hear the horses. They whinny and call and thump the walls. The storm has whipped them to a frenzy, and outside, something is screaming. It’s this scream that’s woken me, not the wind.

I sit up to act without considering, and after I do, I hesitate. Those are my horses down there in this beleaguered stable, out there in that fearful night. But at the same time, they are not mine, too, and I’ve quit, making them even less mine than they were before. I should stay here, doing nothing, letting the night do what it will. Let Malvern survey the havoc in the morning light and decide that I’m invaluable.

I close my eyes, my forehead on my fist, and listen to the wail outside. Even closer, downstairs, I hear a terrified horse kicking its stall wall, smashing either the wall or itself to destruction.

You overestimate your importance to this yard, Mr. Kendrick.

But I haven’t.

I can’t let a single horse die because I am playing games with Malvern.

I shove on my boots and snatch my jacket, and as I reach for the knob of my door, there’s a knock on the wood.

It’s Daly. His hair is plastered wet over his face and there’s blood on his shirtsleeves. He shivers helplessly. “Malvern says to do it without you, but we can’t. He doesn’t have to know. Please.”

I lift my jacket to show him I was already coming, and together we jog down the narrow dark stairs to the stable. Everything smells of rain and the ocean and yet again more rain.

Daly hurries alongside me. “They won’t calm down. There’s a
capall uisce
somewhere outside and we don’t know if he’s among the horses or — we don’t know who’s hurt, because that sound — you can hear it. They’re all kicking themselves lame. You get one calm and the others drive it crazy again.”

“They won’t be calm with that scream going on,” I say. Every groom and stable boy and rider that Malvern has is in evidence, trying to calm the most precious of the horses. The bulbs overhead sway in wind that’s found its way inside, and the swinging light stripes over me and away, like I am losing consciousness. I pass Mettle in her stall. She keeps rearing and clawing her front hooves against the wall as she comes back down. If she’s not unsound now, she’ll be soon. I hear Corr clucking and singing, driving the horses near him to madness. Somewhere behind me, another horse is slamming a hoof against a wall, rhythmic and senseless. Outside, the screaming continues.

Daly trails me as I go to Corr’s stall. In my pocket, my hand closes around a stone with a hole through it. If Corr were any other water horse, I’d string it onto his halter tonight, to make more noise in his head than the approaching November sea does. But Corr is not any other water horse, and my tricks will only make him more anxious.

I open my hand and leave the stone in my pocket.

“Keep everyone clear,” I snap. “Keep them out of my way.”

I push open Corr’s door and he charges toward the aisle. I press my hand into his chest and then slap it, shoving him back. One of the thoroughbreds whinnies piercingly.

“Keep them clear,” I remind Daly.

He bolts ahead of me to pass this along, and then I let Corr plunge out of his stall and tug me down the aisle toward the door to the yard. It’s closed against the rain and worse.

“Not out there —” Daly protests from behind me. “Malvern’s out there.”

That’s too bad. So Malvern will know that I’m still among his horses. But I can’t stop any of what is going on in here without fixing the problem out there first.

I push through the door, Corr strong and difficult on the other end of my lead line. I’m instantly wet to the skin. There’s water in my ears, my eyes. I’m drinking the sky. I have to swipe the water from my forehead and blink to clear my vision. Shingles from the stable are scattered all across the yard. Every light in the yard is on, and there are waterlogged halos around each of them. Three mares stand at the gate, pressing, desperate to get in — they’re broodmares from some of Malvern’s far-flung pastures on the way to Hastoway. The fact that they’re free means that something bad has happened to their fencing and they came seeking the familiar. One of them limps so badly that my heart sinks. The largest of the mares must recognize something in my walk, because she stops struggling and whinnies to me, long and entreating. Trusting me to rescue her from whatever made her come here.

And there’s Malvern and David Prince, the head groom. Malvern holds a shotgun; it’s an optimistic thought on his part.

Out here, the scream sounds like it’s coming from all around us. It vibrates in every raindrop, throbs in the clouds overhead. It’s a howl like venom, a paralyzing promise. This storm has driven the island mad.

Corr jerks and hauls at my arm. I see his hooves leave the cobbles and return, but I can’t hear the sound of them. I can only hear the throbbing scream, loud as if it’s in my head. It’s meant to travel miles underwater.

I yank Corr’s halter to catch his attention, and then I haul his head down next to mine. His lips are pulled back in a ghastly grin; it’s not a Corr I like seeing. My pulse races despite every year we’ve spent together. He’s a monster. With one hand, I press those teeth away from me, and with the other, I turn his ear toward me.

Pursing my lips, I keen into his ear. It’s lower than the scream that we hear now. The scream that’s getting closer.

Corr is distracted. His lips are pulled far, far back from his teeth; he is no horse. I twist his ear hard enough to hurt, and again, I hum into his ear, a low hum that dips to a groan at the end.

Malvern lifts his shotgun, looking at something I can’t see in the dark and the mist.

“Corr!” I shout. Rain creeps into my mouth when I do. And I keen again to him.

Malvern fires, but the scream from the approaching
capall uisce
is unbroken. It cannot get any louder.

And then, finally, Corr begins to keen as I prompt him. Low, groaning, so that I feel it in the lead rope I hold. So I feel it in the soles of my shoes. So it bubbles beneath the scream. Corr’s keen grows and widens to a groan, a growl, a roar like the wind against the buildings. The sound fills the yard and rolls out through the rain. It’s a territorial battle cry, a threat, a statement:
This land is already mine. This is my herd.

The other scream diminishes in the wake of Corr’s howl, which ascends to fill the space that’s left behind. The mares at the gate go wild with fear and I know the horses in the stable are worse for it. Corr’s pure, high scream is no different from the scream it replaced — except this one I can stop.

I listen and listen to be sure that Corr’s cry is the only one. One of my eardrums, the one closest to Corr, merely hisses. But my left ear hears no other contender.

Now I hold Corr’s halter in a tight fist and press my fingers against his veins, tracing counterclockwise. Corr’s scream falters. I press my lips to his shoulder and whisper to his rain-soaked skin.

The night falls silent. My right ear still hums, a radio tuned to an empty frequency. Malvern and Prince look at me. The broodmares at the gate shiver and huddle together. Inside the stable, the kicking has died down.

The rain streams down; there’s not a single dry thing left in the world. Across the yard, Malvern gestures shortly to me.

I lead Corr into the hazy light that Malvern stands in.

Malvern’s eyes flick from me to Corr, who’s black in the wet and the night.

“Have you changed your mind yet?” Malvern asks me. “No.”

Malvern’s tone is dismissive. “I haven’t, either. This changes nothing.”

I’m not sure I believe him.

CHAPTER FORTY

PUCK

As Finn predicted, the storm pounds Thisby for a night and a day, and by the end of that rainy day, we’re able to retreat back to our house. I’m relieved because I’d rather run barefoot in the Scorpio Races than try to sleep in Beech’s narrow ham-scented bed with Gabe again. Tommy’s eager to return home because he left his
capall uisce
in the care of his family across the island and he’s not certain how well they’re doing. I think that I’d like to meet Tommy’s family, if they are the sort who wouldn’t mind having a water horse left in their care while Tommy ventures out to save the neighbors. It’s not exactly like asking your mother to put out a tin of chopped meat for your cat while you’re gone. I know I must’ve met Tommy’s parents at some point — I must’ve met everyone on Thisby at some point — but I cannot accurately place them in my head. In my imagination Mr. and Mrs. Falk both have Tommy’s brilliant blue eyes and his lovely lips. I also grant him some siblings, while I’m at it. Two brothers and a sister. The sister is homely. The brothers are not.

By evening, we are ready to strike out. The boys are so manly that they have to ride in Tommy’s car again, but I make a hasty bridle by looping Dove’s lead line back through her halter, creating reins so that I can ride her bareback after them.

The door to the house slams, and a moment later, I realize Peg Gratton has come out to stand by me. Her arms crossed, she watches silently as I curry off Dove’s shoulders.

“Thank you again,” I say finally, because I need to say something.

She doesn’t reply, just lifts her eyebrows, like a nod without the head movement. “There’s still a lot of people who don’t want you on that beach.”

I try not to feel angry at her. “I told you I wasn’t going to be talked out of it.”

Peg laughs then, a sound like a crow cawing. “I’m not talking about me. I’m talking about men who don’t want a girl in their race.”

My mouth says “oh” but my voice doesn’t.

“You just watch yourself. Don’t let anyone tighten your girth for you. Don’t let anyone else feed your mare.”

I nod, but I’m thinking that it’s easy to imagine someone being annoyed by me riding, but harder to imagine someone being willing to do anything nefarious about it.

I ask, “What about Sean Kendrick?”

I look at Peg Gratton, and she is smiling a small, secret smile at me, as masked as she was beneath the bird headdress. “You sure don’t like to do anything the easy way, do you?”

“I didn’t know,” I start truthfully, “that it was the hard way when I started on it.”

Peg plucks a piece of straw out of Dove’s mane. “It’s easy to convince men to love you, Puck. All you have to do is be a mountain they have to climb or a poem they don’t understand. Something that makes them feel strong or clever. It’s why they love the ocean.”

I’m not sure that is why Sean Kendrick loves the ocean.

Peg continues, “When you’re too much like them, the mystery’s gone. No point seeking the grail if it looks like your teacup.”