The Scorpio Races

by Maggie Stiefvater

Page 25

 

  I push into the butcher’s. As always, it’s the cleanest place in Skarmouth, and it’s lit to a bright, daylight white inside. Two birds have somehow gotten into the building, and as I press my way in, the lights seem to flicker and dim as their wings flash in front of the bulbs.

  I don’t see Peg Gratton behind the counter, so it could have been her in the horse costume. I feel lighter. Less called.

  I stand at the counter and Beech Gratton sullenly takes my order. It’s not me he resents, but the job, keeping him in when he wants out to the festival.

  “Your face is a ruin. ” Beech grunts with admiration, and I remember the woman smearing my face with blood. “You look like the devil. ”

  I don’t reply.

  “I’ll be out of here in twenty minutes,” he tells me, though I didn’t ask.

  “Thirty! “ calls Peg Gratton from the back.

  I taste blood in my mouth. An eye made of shale blinks at me.

  Beech jots down my order, and as he does, I look up at the board behind the counter. There is my name, and Corr’s, and beside us are our current odds: 1–5. Below us are also the names of a score of new entrants from the mainland who have found mounts in the first few days of training. They’ll crowd the beach bad as the first day of training, inept and over-brave. I scan down the list to find Kate Connolly; I see her pony’s name first, and then her name. Her odds are 45–1. I wonder how much of that is because of her pony and how much is because of her gender.

  I let my eyes trail down the list to find Mutt’s name on the list. There it is, and his horse’s beside it. By all rights, the name written beside his should have been Edana, the horse that he has not touched for two days, the bay with white markings. The horse that I told his father to put him on.

  But it doesn’t say Edana.

  The word printed beside Mutt’s is Skata. A good name for a horse, hard and short. Skata is a local name for the magpie. A bird known for its cleverness, for its affection for shiny things, for its black-and-white coloration. There’s only one thing on that beach that’s black-and-white.

  Skata is the piebald mare.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  SEAN

  I find him by one of the bonfires.

  The flames strive high into the black sky, tangled with the night. I can taste the smoke on my tongue.

  “Matthew Malvern,” I say, and it comes out a snarl, a call to battle, no more friendly than one of Corr’s screams across the sand. Mutt is a giant, a mythical creature outlined in black before the bonfire, charcoal in one hand and a scrap of paper in the other: a sea wish. If he has a face, I cannot see it. I shout, “Is it a death wish you have written on that?”

  Mutt twists the paper just long enough for me to see my name on it, written backward. Then he lets it fly over the edge of the cliff. It disappears into the black.

  “That horse will kill you. ”

  Mutt swaggers up to me. His breath is dark, the underside of the sea. “And when, Sean Kendrick, have you ever cared for my safety?”

  He stands closer, and closer, until our shadow is the same. I don’t flinch. If he means to fight tonight, I mean to fight him back. The storm’s inside me already and I can see Fundamental go under again, fresh as the minute it happened.

  “It might not be you she kills,” I say. “And no one deserves to die because of you. ”

  The fire is hot on my skin.

  “I know why you don’t want me on her. ” Mutt laughs. “You know she’s faster than him. ”

  For so many years I have taken every precaution to keep Mutt alive for his father: put him on the safest horse I can manage, trained the hell out of that horse to make it impervious to the ocean, watched him in training to make sure that no one else interfered with him. I have two healed ribs that should be his.

  Now he’s put himself so far outside my ability to protect him that it’s almost relieving. On the piebald, I can do nothing for him.

  I put my hands up. “Do what you want. I’m done. ”

  I see figures at the corner of my eye; they’re here to bring us over for the riders’ parade. The night’s nearly over, and then the training really begins. It’s hard to imagine, right now, a day after this night, which seems like it could go on forever.

  “Yes,” Mutt says, “you are. ”

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  PUCK

  The riders’ parade is not really a parade at all.

  There’s a man calling over the crowd, “Riders? Riders! To the rock!” He clearly means for us to follow him. I keep waiting for it to sort itself out into something more organized, but it never does. The only time it looks anything like a parade, kind of, is when I spy a few of the riders all heading in the same direction, up to the cliff top. The crowd parts for them, and I hurry after them, Finn trailing as best he can. No one moves for me, however, so I get a mouthful of wayward shoulders and a rib cage full of elbows.

  By now it’s blacker than black, and the only light comes from two bonfires, one burning high and furious, and the other smaller and spitting. I’m not certain where I should be.

  “Kate Connolly,” someone says, not in a nice way. When I turn my head, I see nothing but eyes glancing away and eyebrows pulled together. It’s a strange thing, to be talked about instead of talked to.

  A hand grabs my arm, and I turn, hissing and spitting, until I see that it’s Elizabeth, Dory Maud’s sister. Her hair is fair, even in this dim light, and she’s wearing a red frock the color of Father Mooneyham’s car. She makes a sour face. Her lips match Father Mooneyham’s car, too. I’m sort of surprised to see her here; I’ve never seen her outside of the booth or Fathom & Sons, and I thought, possibly, that she would melt or disintegrate if she crossed into the real world. Each of the sisters has her realm: Dory Maud’s is the widest, including the whole island, and then Elizabeth’s is the building and booth, and then Annie’s is the smallest of all, only the second floor of Fathom & Sons.

  “You are lost, aren’t you? Dory Maud said you wouldn’t lose your way but I knew you would. ” Elizabeth’s expression is pure disdain.

  “Lost means I know where I’m going,” I snap. “I’ve never been to the parade before. ”

  “Don’t bite me,” Elizabeth says. “It’s this way. Finn, boy, are you catching midges? Close your mouth and come on. ”

  Her fingers are claws in my upper arm as she guides me up, up, up to the cliff above the racing beach. Finn trots after us, as twitchy as a puppy.

  “Where is Dory?” I shout.

  “Gambling,” snarls Elizabeth. “Of course. While I do the work. ”

  I’m not certain how guiding me to the top of the cliff counts as work, but I’m grateful for it. I’m also not certain I can imagine Dory Maud betting on the horses. Certainly not in any way that justified Elizabeth’s snarled of course. I do my best to imagine Dory Maud in the butcher’s, placing a bet, but the best I can imagine is her in the Black-Eyed Girl. In my imaginings, she manages it better than I do, swaggering up to the bar like a man.

  Elizabeth snaps at me to wake up and propels me with great confidence through the crowd at the cliff top. Only after several long minutes does she stop to catch her bearings. But I can see now that we’re in the right place. Because I spot a point of stillness in the seething crowd: Sean Kendrick. His clothing is dark, his expression darker, and he looks off into the black night in the direction of the sea. He is unmistakably waiting.

  “There,” I say.

  “No,” says Elizabeth, following my gaze. “That is not where you’re headed. I think the race is dangerous enough without that, don’t you? This way. ”

  Sean turns his head just as Elizabeth jerks me in the opposite direction, and our eyes meet. There’s something sharp and unprotected in his expression, and then I have to look down to keep Elizabeth from hauling me off my feet.

  Finn scoots up beside me, hands shoved in his pockets against the cold. He casts a
doleful look toward Elizabeth.

  I turn my head and whisper to him, “You’d think this is the race by the speed she’s going. ”

  Finn doesn’t smile, but his eyes do. Then Elizabeth comes to a halt. “Here,” she says.

  We’ve come around to a third bonfire, and before it is a great, flat rock, splattered and streaked with brown. It takes me a moment to understand what I’m seeing. It’s old, old blood, stained all over the rock. Finn’s face is pinched. There’s a huge crowd of people circling the rock, waiting as Sean was waiting, and already I recognize a few of the riders a short distance away: Dr. Halsal, Tommy Falk, Mutt Malvern. Ian Privett. Some of them are talking and laughing with each other — they’ve done this before, and there’s a sense of familiarity. I feel suddenly ill.

  “What’s the blood from?” I whisper to Elizabeth.

  “Puppies,” Elizabeth says. She’s caught Ian Privett looking at her and she bares her teeth at him in something that I don’t think is supposed to be a smile. Taking me by both my upper arms, she holds me in front of her like a shield. “It’s the riders’. You’ll go up and put a drop of your blood on there to show you’re riding. ”

  I stare at the rock. That’s a lot of blood for just a drop from each rider over the years.

  Now a man’s climbed onto the rock. I recognize him as Frank Eaton, a farmer my father knew. He’s wearing one of the weird traditional scarf-things that the tourists like to buy — it wraps over his shoulder and pins at his hip and looks utterly ridiculous with his corduroy trousers. I have a very strong association of sweat-smell with the traditional costume and he doesn’t look like he will change that impression. Holding a small bowl in his hands, Eaton shouts to the crowd, which is a little quieter now, “It falls to me to speak for the man who will not ride. ”

  Eaton tips the bowl and blood splashes down over the rock at his feet. He doesn’t stand back, and so drops of it mist his pants. I don’t think he minds.

  “Rider without a name,” he says. “Horse without a name. By his blood. ”

  “Sheep’s,” Elizabeth says. “Or maybe horse. I don’t remember. ”

  “That’s barbaric!” I’m aghast. Finn looks like he may throw up.

  Elizabeth shrugs just one shoulder. Ian Privett watches her do it. “Fifty years ago, it was a man they killed up there, just like every year before. The man who will not ride. ”

  “Why?” I demand.

  Her voice is bored; there’s a real answer, possibly, but she’s not interested in knowing it. “Because men like to kill things. Good thing they stopped. We’d run out of men. ”

  “Because,” cuts in a voice that I recognize instantly, “if you feed the island blood before the race, maybe she won’t take as much during it. ”

  Elizabeth turns to Peg Gratton with a sour look. I blink at Peg — she’s barely recognizable under her elaborate headdress. It looks a little like one of the scary tufted puffins that you can sometimes find on the island: It has a great pointed visor that forms the beak, and ropy yellow tassels that come off over each ear like long horns. I search for signs of Peg’s curly hair, but it’s hidden securely under the fabric lining of the headdress.