Maggie Stiefvater: The Scorpio Races

Puck’s scrubbing her eyes busily as if she has something in them. George Holly bites his lip. The cliffs tower above me and I try to console myself, I will find another capall uisce, I will ride again, I will move to my father’s home and be free. But there’s no comfort in my thoughts.

Behind me, the ocean says shhhhhhhh, shhhhhhhhh.

There’s a thin, long wail. I keep walking, my bare feet slow on the uneven stones.

The wail comes again, low and keening. Puck and Holly are looking past me, so I turn around. Still at the shoreline, Corr has noticed my going, and he stands where I left him, looking back at me. He lifts his head again and keens to me.

The irresistible ocean sucks around his hooves. But still he looks over his withers at me and he wails, again and again. The hair on my arms stands with his call. I know he wants me to go to him, but I can’t go with him where he needs to go.

Corr falls silent when I do not come to him. He looks back out to the endless horizon. I see him lift a hoof and put it back down. He tests his weight again.

Then Corr turns, stepping out of the ocean. His head jerks up when his injured leg touches the ground, but he takes another labored step before keening to me again. Corr takes another step away from the November sea. And another.

He is slow, and the sea sings to us both, but he returns to me.

As a teen, I was always intrigued when I read articles about authors mulling over story ideas for months or years before they knew how to write them. As a teen writer who scribbled down novel ideas as soon as they came to her, this seemed quaint and foreign. How could you not know how to write your own story? I thought, as I dashed out another terrible novel in a month.

Well, here I am, being one of those authors. I have wanted to write about water horses for a very long time. I’ve actually attempted it several times. First while in college, then again right after. I’d almost given up, but a few years ago – after I’d published three novels and really should’ve known what I was doing – I threw myself at the legend one more time. And failed again.

The only difference to this failure was that it was not a bang, as before, but a whimper.

The problem was that the myth was both complicated and plotless, with no inherent narrative to guide a daunted author. There were rather a lot of variations: a Manx version called glashtin ; Irish versions called capall uisge, cabyll ushtey, and aughisky ; Scottish versions called each uisge and kelpies. Apart from being nearly universally impossible to pronounce (the name I went with, capall uisce , is pronounced CAPple ISHka), the main feature of each was a dangerous fairy horse from the water.

There were many magical elements that appealed to me: The horses were associated with November; they ate flesh; if you lured them away from the ocean, they made the finest mounts imaginable… unless they touched salt water again.

But then there was also an eerie shape-shifting element to the myth. Some versions involved a water horse turning into a handsome young man with chestnut hair. The newly minted young man would wander by the waterside, luring maidens closer – because of course there is nothing more irresistible than a strange redheaded boy who smells vaguely of fish – and then drag the victims down into the water to devour them. Lungs and liver would wash up later.

It was this second half that slayed me. Every time I tried to work in the creature both man and horse, I realized I was telling a story I didn’t want to tell. It wasn’t until I wrote the Shiver trilogy with its rather corrupted version of the werewolf legend that I realized I didn’t have to take the water horses at face value. I could be as choosy as I liked with my mythology.

I threw out absolutely everything that I didn’t need about the water horses, and ended up with The Scorpio Races, a story that isn’t really about water horses or fairies at all, now that I think about it.

Now, if you’d like to find out more about the creepy redheaded water boys with kelp in their hair, I urge you to hunt down a copy of Katharine Briggs’s An Encyclopedia of Fairies: Hobgoblins, Brownies, Bogies, and Other Supernatural Creatures, which is an excellent starting point for all things fairy.

I suppose it’s still possible I might one day write the other half of the legend.

No, actually. No, it’s not.

I could probably keep these acknowledgments pretty short by saying merely: I would like to thank everyone who enabled me to visit cliffs in the last year and a half.

But I suppose it would be lazy, and in any case, they deserve mention by name: my first publicist at Scholastic, Samantha Grefé, who moved my schedule around so that I could visit cliffs in California. My lovely foreign rights team, Rachel Horowitz, Janelle DeLuise, Maren Monitello, and Lisa Mattingly, who coordinated my overseas tours so that I had time to visit cliffs in Normandy. My Scholastic UK publicists, Alyx Price and Alex Richardson, who did their absolute best to make sure I got to cliffs in the south of England. And my very dear friends Erin and Richard Hill, who endured UK cliff hunting with me not once but twice, once facing south and once facing east.

I should thank those involved with the writing as well: my long-suffering editor, David Levithan, who didn’t panic when I told him my next book was about killer horses. My passionate agent, Laura Rennert, for paving the slightly crooked way for this book. Tessa Gratton and Brenna Yovanoff, my critique partners, for playing Spot the Travesty! Carrie Ryan, Natalie “Good Point” Parker, Jackson Pearce, and Kate Hummel for plot commentary and stories about jockeys’ locker rooms.

As always, I’m eternally grateful to my family for holding down the fort during deadlines – forts that have many movable parts, and deadlines that are often painted with holiday colors. I’m also grateful for my parents in particular, who protested, but only gently, when we rode our horses bareback.

And most of all, of course, I have to thank Ed, my husband, who always climbs cliffs with me.

MAGGIE STIEFVATER is the #1 New York Times bestselling author of the novels Shiver, Linger, and Forever. She is also the author of Lament: The Faerie Queen’s Deception and Ballad: A Gathering of Faerie . She lives in Virginia with her husband and their two children. You can visit her online at www.maggiestiefvater.com.