I get a little pit of nerves in my stomach thinking about it.
“Yes, are you?” Dory Maud’s voice carries into the room. She stands in the doorway, one of her eyebrows arched. She’s wearing a dress that looks like she stole it. It has lace sleeves and Dory Maud does not have lace sleeve arms.
I frown at her with bad temper. “You aren’t going to try to talk me out of it, are you?”
“The parade, or the race?” Dory Maud pulls out the third chair at the table and sits down. “What I don’t understand,” she says, “is why such a clever and useful girl as yourself, Puck, would waste so much time looking like an idiot or being dead?”
Finn smiles at his biscuit.
“I have my reasons,” I snap. “And don’t tell me that my parents would be so sad about it, either. I’ve already heard it. I’ve heard it all.”
“Has she been this short all week?” Dory Maud asks Finn, who nods. To me, she adds, “Your father would be displeased, but your mother — she wouldn’t have much room to talk. She was a hellion and the only thing she didn’t do on this island was ride in the races.”
“Really?” I ask, hopeful for more information.
“Probably,” Dory Maud replies. “Finn, why are you eating that? It looks like cat food.”
“Brought it from home.” Finn sighs heavily. “At Palsson’s, they were setting out cinnamon twists.”
“Oh yes.” Dory Maud begins scratching something on a piece of paper. Her handwriting is so utterly illegible that I have to believe she works at it. “Even the angels could smell them.”
Finn’s expression is wistful.
I feel guilty about the load of hay and grain I just bought. I’m not sure it’s a better investment than cinnamon twists would’ve been.
“Could I get an advance on some teapots, Dory Maud?” I ask. I push a signed and numbered one toward her so she is convinced of my dutifulness. “Horse food’s expensive.”
“I’m not a bank. If you help me set up the festival booth Friday afternoon, I’ll do it.”
“Thanks,” I say, without feeling much gratitude.
After a moment, Finn says, “I don’t know why you aren’t just riding Dove.”
“Finn.”
“Well, that’s what you said.”
“I’d like to have a chance of winning money,” I say. “I thought it might actually help to ride, you know, a water horse in a race for, you know, water horses.”
“Mmm,” remarks Dory Maud.
“Exactly,” Finn says. “How do you know they’re faster?”
“Oh, please.”
“Well, you are the one who told me that they don’t always go in straight lines. I just don’t see why you’re changing your mind now just because some expert told you.”
I feel my cheeks warm again. “He’s not some expert. And he didn’t tell me anything. I’m just looking.”
Finn presses his thumb into his pile of crumbs, hard, so that the tip turns white. “You said that you weren’t riding one of them on principle. Because of Mum and Dad.”
His voice is even because Dory Maud is there and because he’s Finn, but I can tell he’s agitated.
I say, “Well, principle won’t pay the bills.”
“It’s not much of a principle when you can just change it like — like that. Overnight. Like —” But he must not be able to think of what else it’s like, because he stands up and storms past Dory Maud’s chair and out of the room.
I blink after him. “What? What?”
I think brothers are the most inexplicable species on the planet.
Dory Maud brushes invisible crumbs from her paper and studies what she’s written. “Boys,” she says, “just aren’t very good at being afraid.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
SEAN
That evening, I saddle up a filly named Malvern Small Miracle, so called because she was so motionless and quiet when she was born that everyone thought she was stillborn.
I’m worn and tired. Something’s wrong with my right arm where one of the horses jammed it earlier today, and I want nothing more than to crawl into my bed to consider whether or not my meeting tomorrow with Kate Connolly is a poor idea. But there are two buyers here, just off the boat, and word’s come that I need to show two of the three-year-olds to them while there’s still light. Why it won’t hold until tomorrow, I don’t know.
When I walk out into the golden evening yard to meet the buyers, I’m surprised to find that the other filly, a gray named Sweeter, is already out there, someone on her back. It only takes me half a moment to recognize the silhouette as Mutt Malvern’s, and something in my gut snarls and turns. Three men stand at her shoulder, their attention on Mutt. He turns his head toward me, face in shadow, and I know he means for me to see that it’s him. That he thinks that it’s any of his business to be showing Sweeter offends me badly enough, but when I hear him tell one of the buyers how much he loves this filly, all I can think of is him standing at the point of the cove, waiting for Fundamental to be pulled under.
Miracle’s hot. She skitters sideways and then shoots across the yard to where Mutt stands, bold enough that Sweeter moves out of her way. Our blue shadows stand beneath us.
“Sean Kendrick,” says George Holly gladly. At my name, the other two buyers turn to observe me. I don’t recognize either of them. Fresh blood, perhaps.
“Sean will be riding the other filly out,” Mutt tells them, his expression paternal. He smiles. “Since I can’t ride two at the same time.”
I’m not sure he can ride one at the same time. I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen him at the gallops.
One of the buyers mutters my name to the other and Mutt leans toward them to ask, “What’s that?”
“Kendrick. The name sounds familiar.”
Mutt looks at me.
“I just ride the horses,” I say.
George Holly’s smile is light in the darkness.
“Are you riding in the race, too?” asks a buyer. I nod.
“On the red stallion,” Holly tells him. “The one you saw earlier.”
They mumble their appreciation and ask Mutt who he’s riding in the races.
Mutt sets his jaw. I don’t think he even remembers Edana’s name. He has yet to ride her.
I know this is where I, in the employ of the Malverns, am meant to step in and be helpful and humble, to save Mutt’s face. It’s what I’ve done for most of my life, and I can feel on my lips the words that will make Mutt look good. The words that will remind the clients of my relative hierarchy in the Malvern Yard.
But instead, I say, “I’ve chosen the bay mare with the white blaze, Edana, for him. I think they’ll be a good match.”
The yard is silent. There’s something coiled and repugnant in Mutt’s posture as he fixes his gaze on me. The buyers exchange glances as Holly rocks on his heels.
I can see my words burrow under Mutt’s skin. I feel untethered and dangerous.
Miracle shies at nothing in particular, dancing in place. Her hooves clatter and echo across the stones. I turn to Mutt. I imagine him going beneath the water instead of Fundamental. In Corr’s grasp. Beneath hooves in my father’s place. “Light’s failing. Shall we take your fillies out, then?”
Mutt turns Sweeter without a word.
The gallop is seven furlongs, nearly a mile, and straight as an arrow. The horses are spirited as they step onto it, knowing what is coming next. I feel Mutt’s gaze on me, and when I meet it, his mouth twists. This was not meant to be a race between Miracle and Sweeter, but I see now that there’s no way that it won’t be.
Sweeter leaps out. Miracle is only a moment behind as I give her some rein. We streak along the pale gallop, its surface striped with blue shadows. The air screams by my ears, cold and painful. The shadows are so heavy that both fillies mistake them for real things and lift their knees, jumping invisible hurdles.
Mutt glances over at me to see how far I am, but he needn’t bother. We’re right on him. Shoulder to shoulder, the fillies surge down the track. Speedwise, I know the fillies are evenly matched, but I also know that only half of racing is how fast your horse is. I’ve been on this gallop hundreds of times on hundreds of horses, and I know where the incline starts, I know where the ground is soft by the rail, and I know where the horses slow and stare at the tractor parked near the road. I know everything there is to know about Miracle, too, how she likes to run herself out if you don’t keep her in check, how much I’ll need to push her to keep her strong up the incline, how to wave my crop just a bit to keep her attention on the task at hand and not the tractor.
All Mutt knows is how to beat the hell out of his mount as he’s losing.
I know I should hold Miracle back. I know I should let Mutt and Sweeter finish first.
I feel the buyers’ eyes on me.
I lean forward and whisper to Miracle. Her ear tips back at me, and I release the reins.
It’s not even a contest.
Miracle pulls away from Sweeter by one length, two lengths, three lengths, four, not even breathing that hard. Mutt is bogged down somewhere in the wet ground near the rail, Sweeter slow and inattentive.
I turn around, standing in my stirrups, and salute Mutt Malvern with my crop.
I know it’s a deadly game I’m playing.
“Not a jockey?” Holly says to me as I walk Miracle back into the yard.
“Just a horse lover,” I reply.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
PUCK
Sean Kendrick told me to meet him at the point of the cliffs over Fell Cove, but there’s no sign of him when I get there.
The cliffs here aren’t as high as the ones that border the racing beach, and they’re not as pure white. The shore by the cove is a weird, awkward place to get to, and once Dove and I manage to creep down the narrow, uneven path to the beach, I find that it’s no good for riding on. The beach here is rocky and uneven, and the sea hugs it closely. It’s low tide, but still, there’s only fifteen feet of rocks before the unruly sea smashes itself against them. It’s the sort of place we were always warned against, because a horse could be up out of that ocean and back down with us before one wave had gone out and another taken its place.
I wonder, suddenly, if Sean Kendrick sent me here as a prank.
Before I have time to consider if he seemed like that sort of person and think something truly foul about him, I hear hoofbeats. I can’t tell at once where they’re coming from, and then I realize that they’re coming from above me. I crane my head up to look.
I see a lone horse, stretched out to its fullest, galloping along the edge of the cliff, bits of turf plowed up beneath its hooves. I recognize the horse a moment before I recognize the rider — Sean Kendrick, folded up tightly along the stallion’s back, moving as one with the horse. As the bloody red capall uisce pounds past me overhead, I see that Sean rides bareback, the most dangerous way of all. Skin to skin, pulse to pulse, nothing to protect you should the horse’s magic seize you.
I don’t want to admire them, to admit that the two of them together are something altogether different than I’ve ever seen, but I can’t help it. The red stallion is so fast that it steals my breath and speeds my heart with the thrill of it. I thought the horses I saw on the first day of training were fast, but I’ve never seen a horse move like this before. And Sean Kendrick on him, bareback. He is a pisser, for sure, but the old man I met in the butcher’s is right: There is something about him. He knows his horses, but there is something else about him, too.
I think about the way his face felt in my hand when I pulled it above the water.
I think, too, about what it would be like to ride a horse like that. A bit of guilt stabs just inside my ribs as I remember Finn and his principles, or rather, my principles, the ones that started to slip when the house was at stake. I wish the idea of this sat more easily with me.
Back we go to the top of the cliff, Dove prancing a bit. Even going uphill, even after being ridden well for days now, she’s still excited about running. I hear Finn’s voice whispering in my ear as she flicks her tail.
By the time I get to the top of the cliff road, I know what I’m going to ask Sean.
SEAN
There’s no sign of Kate Connolly when I arrive at the point of the cliff, though I wait for several long moments — moments I can’t spare. I tie the bay mare down, draw a circle around her and spit in it, and take Corr out for a run. If Kate doesn’t show up, I’ll at least have stretched him out. He’s eager and forward today, glad as me for the gallop.
Galloping up at the top of this cliff requires a gull’s heart and a shark’s nerve. It’s not as high as the cliffs over the racing beach, sure, but a fall over these would kill you just the same. And to a capall uisce, the call of the sea is nearly as powerful one hundred feet above it as it is one hundred feet across a beach from it. More than one man has ridden that sinking ship over the edge and onto the rocks, just shy of the ocean.
But these low cliffs are the first place that my father ever set me on one of the capaill uisce. Not the beach where he had been taught. Because always, always, my father feared the sea more than he feared the heights.
I think they’re both deadly, which isn’t the same as being afraid.
When I double back, Corr stepping high over the long cliff grass, I see Kate Connolly standing beside her little dun pony. Kate’s hair is the color of the cliff grass turned red by autumn, and she has a spatter of freckles across her face that at first glance makes her look far younger. It’s a strange magic: At once she’s a cross child and also something older and wild, something grown from this coarse island soil. She’s looking at my things — my saddle tipped up on its pommel, my rucksack, my thermos, my bells — where I’ve left them, and for some reason, that makes me feel odd, like skin rubbed raw by sand in the wind.