Maggie Stiefvater: The Scorpio Races

I say, “Myself I can be sure of.”

“Hmm,” he says.

“Don’t say ‘ hmm ’ to me, Mr. Holly. You can’t come in here with your red hat and those shoes and play the wise man.”

“Yes, says the man wearing no shoes at all,” says Holly. He stands and takes the step that brings him to my stove. “How do you live here, Sean? How do you make a cup of tea without burning your johnny? If you rolled over in your bed, you’d end up in the sink. Every morning is breakfast in bed because there’s no floor to speak of.”

“It’s tolerable.”

“Hmm,” says Holly again. “Tolerable covers a wide range of situations. If you win, this is what you come back to?”

“My father’s house is an hour’s walk from here, on the northwestern cliffs. If I was free to live anywhere, that’s where I’d live.” I can’t quite remember living in my father’s home, though I’ve ridden by it before. My memories of the space inside are fragmented: me in bed, me at a window, my mother in a chair. It’s quite run-down now. It’s still in my name, but it’s too far to serve me well working for Malvern.

“That’s where you would keep the broodmare I just bought until she had a lovely red colt by your stallion?”

I reach for my socks on the radiator and the boots beneath them. “I didn’t say I would start a yard.”

“You didn’t have to. I’ll come back next year and you’ll have a nest of horses outside your window and Puck Connolly in your bed and I’ll buy from you instead of Malvern. That’s your future for you.”

“The future sounds much kinder in your accent.” I sigh and reach for my jacket.

“Where are you going? I’m not nearly done with my prognostication.”

I shoulder on my jacket. “To the beach. You’ll never get that colt of yours if I don’t win Corr.”

In the night, I’ve shrunk and everyone else on the island has grown. They’re all nine feet tall and men and I’m four feet and a child. Dove, too, is a toy or possibly a dog as I lead her through the throngs of people. The cliff road is already seething; the early races began hours ago and fifths are running the short skirmishes down on the sand. I hear groans and laughs from the spectators on the cliff. The wind tears at us all.

I peer up at the clouds, but they’re lackluster clouds, the sort that stay for a moment, not a day. I’m relieved; I’d thought it might be as ill as the day that we’d found Tommy dead on the beach. It is cold, but it’s November. I expected cold.

Everyone’s watching me and I keep hearing my name, or keep thinking that I hear it, anyway. Someone spits at Dove’s hooves, or maybe my feet. I hear exclamations in broad mainland accents and comments about my breeding in Thisby’s clipped one. I feel, strangely, like I’m the stranger and the tourist, come to visit a friendless island. Everyone’s touching Dove, and she’s flighty and uncertain. At one point, she lifts her head and whinnies, though there’s no one on this side of the island to answer her. Far down on the beach, a capall uisce screams back. Dove shivers and drags me at the end of the lead; it takes my heels several feet to find traction again.

I hear laughter and someone asks if I need help, not in a nice way. I snarl, “What I need is for your mother to have thought a little harder nine months before your birthday.”

“She bites!” says someone.

I seal my mouth shut and push farther on. Somewhere in this mess is Gabe, possibly, with my colors, and Finn, possibly, with my lunch.

“Kate Connolly, do you mean to change the establishment?”

I blink and step backward. There’s a man directly in front of me, dressed in a brown suit that looks like it cost more than our house, and he holds a notebook. Behind him stands a photographer with a massive flashbulb. There is an edge of people behind me and Dove. I feel cornered.

“I’m not trying to change anything but my own situation,” I say.

“So you wouldn’t say you were inspired by the women’s suffrage movement?”

I crane my neck around, looking for my brothers or for Dory Maud or for anyone that I know. I’ve never seen so many bowler hats in my life. “I’m just a person with a horse, same as anyone else on this island. Do you mind? You’re making my horse nervous.”

The reporter asks, “What would you say to those on Thisby who say you don’t belong in the Scorpio Races?”

“I don’t have a clever answer for you,” I say crossly.

“Just one more, Miss Connolly. Where do you think you’ll end up? Do you think you stand a chance of finishing?” They trot to keep up with me as I turn Dove’s shoulder toward them. I’m oddly undone by the reporter and the photographer, more than anything I’ve encountered so far. I hadn’t considered eyes on me, much less eyes all the way from a mainland newspaper.

I scowl at him. “Go ask at Gratton’s. They know everything.”

I try to turn Dove again, to push them away from me.

“Puck!”

I turn in the direction of my name, my insides raw, and there is Sean. Unlike me, who had to push through this crowd, he cuts neatly through the people. They make room for him as if unaware that they do. He is in only white shirtsleeves and he’s out of breath, which is to say that for a moment I cannot believe it’s him.

He comes in close, turning his back to the reporter, and ducks his head to me. I’m very aware of all the eyes on us, but Sean seems oblivious. He asks, “Where are your colors?”

“Gabe went looking for them.”

“They’re down on the beach,” he says. “You’ve got to pick them up down there.”

“Have you got yours?”

“Yes. I can hold Dove while you go get yours.”

Dove shudders as someone touches her rump. It’s too loud and too much for her. I’m worried that she’ll use up all of her spirit here on the cliffs, long before we ever get down to the beach. I remember Peg Gratton telling me not to let anyone else tighten my girth on race day. Sean, I decide, is not anyone else. “Can you make them leave her alone?”

He jerks a nod at me.

In a low voice, so he has to lean his head toward me, I say, “Thank you.”

Sean reaches between us and slides a thin bracelet of red ribbons over my free hand. Lifting my arm, he presses his lips against the inside of my wrist. I’m utterly still; I feel my pulse tap several times against his lips, and then he releases my hand.

“For luck,” he says. He takes Dove’s lead from me.

“Sean,” I say, and he turns. I take his chin and kiss his lips, hard. I’m reminded, all of a sudden, of that first day on the beach, when I pulled his head from the water.

“For luck,” I say to his startled face.

A flashbulb goes off and there’s appreciative hooting.

“Okay,” Sean says, as if we’ve just made a deal and it’s all right to him. He turns to the crowd and says, “If you want a race, you’ll give this horse some room. Now.”

As they scatter outward, I push my way through them toward the cliff path. Before I head down, I look over my shoulder to find Sean, and there he is with the wide berth around him and Dove, still watching me. I feel the island underneath me, and Sean’s mouth on my lips, and I wonder if luck will be on our side today.

The beach is not as crowded as I had expected. It’s between two of the smaller races, and only the capaill uisce who are entered in the next races are on the beach. All of the spectators who were down on the sand before are now huddled up on the cliffs, pressed as close as they dare to the edge. The sky above them has cleared to a deep, deep blue like you only get in November, and the ocean to my right is dark as night.