I don’t move. “It’s not obvious to me.”
Eaton frowns for half a moment, and then he explains, slowly putting the words together as the explanation comes to him, “The women are the island, and the island keeps us. That’s important. But the men are what drive the island into the seabed and keep it from floating out to sea. You can’t have a woman on the beach. It reverses the natural order.”
“So you want to disqualify me because of superstition,” I say. “You think ships will run aground because I ride in the races?”
“Ah, that’s putting too fine a point on it.”
“So it’s just me. You think it’s wrong to have me in the races.”
Eaton’s face reminds me of Gabe’s, down at the pub, as he looks to the crowd with an incredulous expression, certain they, too, see how difficult I’m being. The longer I look at him, the more I find to dislike. Does his wife not find his larger lower lip horrifying? Can he not part his hair so it doesn’t reveal such a lot of scalp? Does he have to work his chin like that between words? He tells me, “Don’t take it personally, now. It’s not like that.”
“It’s personal to me.”
Now they’re annoyed. They thought I would just come down at the first whisper of the word no, and now that I haven’t, I’m less of a story for later and more of a fight for now. Eaton says, “There are other things you could do in the month of October that will please more people than just you, Kate Connolly. You don’t have to ride in the races.”
I think about Benjamin Malvern sitting at our kitchen table, asking what we’re willing to do to save the house. I think about how if I step off this rock right now, Gabe will have no reason to stay, at all, and no matter how angry I am with him, I can’t have that conversation be our last. I think about how it felt to race Sean Kendrick on his unpredictable capall uisce.
“I have my own reasons for riding,” I snap. “Just like every man who climbed onto this rock. Just because I’m a girl doesn’t make those reasons any less.”
Ian Privett, from a few steps away, says, “Kate Connolly, who do you see standing beside you? A woman takes our blood. A woman grants our wishes. But the blood on that rock is men’s blood, blood of generations. It’s not a question of if you want to be up there or not. You don’t belong up there. Now stop this. Come down and stop being a child.”
Who is Ian Privett to tell me anything? This, too, reminds me of Gabe, telling me to stop being hysterical when I didn’t think I was being hysterical at all. I think of Mum on the back of a horse, teaching me to ride, so much a part of the horse herself. They can’t tell me I don’t belong up here. They might force me off no matter what I say, but they can’t tell me I don’t belong.
“I’ll follow the rules I was given,” I say. “I’m not following something unwritten.”
“Kate Connolly,” says the man in the vest. “There has never been a woman on that beach and you’re wanting us to make this the first year for it? Who are you to ask for that?”
By some unspoken signal, the man who’d held out his hand for me to come down starts up the stairs; they will take me down if I won’t come.
It’s over.
I can’t really believe that it’s over.
“I’ll speak for her.”
Every face turns to where Sean Kendrick stands a little apart from the crowd, his arms crossed.
“This island runs on courage, not blood,” he says. His face is turned toward me, but his eyes are on Eaton and his group. In the hush after he speaks, I can hear my heart thudding in my ears.
I can see they’re considering his words. Their faces are clear: They want to be able to ignore him, but they’re trying to decide how much weight you give the words of someone who has cheated death in the races so many times.
As before, in Thomas Gratton’s truck, Sean Kendrick says nothing more. Instead, his silence draws them out, forces them to meet him.
“And you say to let her ride,” Eaton says finally. “Despite everything.”
“There’s no everything,” Sean replies. “Let the sea decide what’s right and what’s wrong.”
There is an agonizingly long pause.
“Then she rides,” Eaton says. Around him, there’s head-shaking, but no one speaks out. Sean’s word holds. “Give your blood, girl.”
Peg Gratton doesn’t wait for me to stretch my hand out any farther. She snakes forward and slices my finger, and instead of pain, there’s a searing heat that runs all the way up to my shoulder. The blood wells and drips freely onto the rock.
I have that feeling again like I did before, when Sean Kendrick was up here; my feet are rooted to the rock, part of the island, and I’m grown up out of it. The wind rips at my hair, pulling it out of my hair band and whipping the strands across my face. The air smells like the ocean breaking up across the shore.
I lift my chin again and say, “Kate Connolly. Dove. By my blood.”
I find Sean Kendrick in the crowd again. He’s turned as if he’s going, but he looks over his shoulder at me. I hold his gaze. I feel like everyone in the crowd is watching this moment, like to hold Sean Kendrick’s eye is to promise something or to get into something I’m unsure of, but I don’t look away.
“By their blood, let the races begin,” Peg Gratton says to the night and to the crowd, but they aren’t watching her. “We have our riders, let the races begin.”
Sean Kendrick holds my gaze a second longer, and then he strides away from the crowd.
Two weeks until the races. Everything starts tonight. I can feel it in my heart.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
SEAN
The next morning finds the island ghostly quiet. Though the frenzy of last night seemed to suggest that training would begin in earnest today, the stables are still, the roads silent. I’m happy for it; I have a lot to get done in the next twenty-four hours. I cast a glance toward the sky; a dimpled quilt of cloud hides the sun, and below it, smaller clouds race by, in a hurry to get on their way. I’ll know better how long I have until the storm gets here once I see the ocean.
In the eerie quiet of the morning, I turn out the youngest of the thoroughbreds for a bit of exercise and grass before the weather gets poor, and then I gather my supplies to take down to the shore. Two buckets and my pockets sunk full of weak magic.
As I’m about to head out, I hear a voice. “So you’re not a churchgoer, then.”
“Good morning, Mr. Holly,” I reply.
He’s in what I think they must consider Sunday finery in America: a white V-necked sweater and light jacket over creased khaki pants. He looks like he might be ready to pose for one of the mainland paper’s society pages.
“Good morning,” Holly returns. He peers inside my buckets and rears back with a wince. They’re full of Corr’s rank manure and even I have a hard time getting used to the odor. “Sweet Mary and Coca-Cola, that’s hard to bear.” Seeing that I’m struggling to open the gate without setting down my buckets, he opens it for me and closes it behind me, following amiably. “So you’re not a believer?”
“I believe in the same thing they believe in,” I say, with a jerk of my chin toward town and St. Columba’s. “I just don’t believe you can find it in a building.”
The ground is soft and scented lightly with horse manure as I start down the roads toward the shoreline that borders most of Malvern’s pastures. It’s on the opposite side of the island from the racing beach, and while there are still cliffs, they’re lower and more uneven, with uncertain beaches and more places for the ocean and the creatures who live in it to crawl onto shore.
Holly trots to catch up with me and slides one of the bucket handles out of my hand and into his. He grunts at the weight but says nothing else.
“What are you doing?” I ask.
“Looking for God,” Holly says, matching my stride. “If you say he’s out here, I’ll take a gander.”
I’m not certain he’ll find his sort of God sharing this work with me, but I don’t protest. It’s a bit of a walk to the cliffs and having company might not be terrible. As we get farther away from the protection of the stable yard buildings, the wind becomes more insistent, gusting across the fields unchecked. The only signs of civilization are the stone walls that mark Malvern’s pastures. They long predate Malvern’s herds; this is a Thisby many have forgotten.
Holly, to his credit, walks in silence for several long minutes before he asks, “What is it we’re doing, exactly?”
“Storm’s coming,” I answer. “Already it’ll be worse out at sea, and that will drive the horses in.”
“By horses, you mean” — again he pauses carefully before attempting a pronunciation — “the capaill uisce.”
I nod.
“And drives them in where, exactly? Whoa and hey!”
This last exclamation is because we’ve just gotten to a high point where we can see the ocean and the area around us. The land is all perilous, low cliffs, cracked and cut deeply into the green: pasture and then suddenly empty air and then pasture again. Below us and beyond us, the sea is whitecaps and foam and black rocks like teeth. A busy sea. Tomorrow will be hell, I think. I give Holly a long moment to drink in the sight before I answer his question.
“Drives them inland. If they’re in the shallow water around the island, they’d sooner be on land than facing those rocks and current. And capaill uisce newly on land isn’t something you’d like to see.”
“Because they’re hungry?”
I tip my bucket to allow a bit of the foul cargo to spill out onto the path, then continue picking my way along. “Because they’re hungry, yes. But they’re also uncertain, and that makes them worse.”
“So you’re dumping crap —”
“To mark territory. If they come onshore here, I want them to think they’ll meet Corr.”
“And not Benjamin Malvern’s broodmares?” finishes Holly. We work in silence then, marking the places of easy access along the high ground first, and then working our way down. Finally, there’s only the rocky beach to attend to.
“Perhaps you’d like to stay up for this,” I suggest. I can’t guarantee his safety next to the water. The sea is already tumultuous and dangerous, and there’s nothing to say that there won’t already be capaill uisce down there. Malvern would be displeased if I lost one of his buyers two days after losing a horse the same way.
Holly nods as if he understands me, but when I start down the path, he comes with me. This is a small bravery and I respect him for it. I trade my empty bucket for the one he holds and he massages his palm where the bucket handle pressed into it.
Here at the base of the path, the best of the shoreline is made of rocks the size of my fist, and the rest is boulders and pieces of the cliff that fell short of the water. Before me, the ocean stretches longingly toward my feet. It smells like dead things off at sea.
“If I were trying to catch another horse,” I say, “this would be a good time to do it.”
The surf has found its way into a shallow pool by our feet and George Holly inexplicably dips his fingers into the water. The pool is full of opportunistic anemones that stretch their tentacles out in the surf and urchins that would cut you if you stood on them and crabs that are too small to make a good meal.
“Warmer than I expected,” Holly remarks. “Why aren’t you trying to catch another horse, then? Since you lost one the other day?”
The truth is that there’s precious little reason to catch another capall uisce now that Mutt Malvern has put himself on Skata. There’s not much reason to have Edana, either, at this point. “I don’t need another horse. I have Corr.”
Holly prods one of the urchins with a stone. “How do you know there isn’t a faster horse than Corr out there? Waiting to be caught?”
I think of the piebald and her tremendous speed.
“Maybe there is. I don’t need to know. I’m not tempted,” I say. Of course, it’s not just the winning. I don’t know how to explain that I know his heart better than anyone’s, and he mine. “I don’t need another horse. I just —”
I close my mouth and pick my way to the other access point on this otherwise inaccessible beach. Drawing a handful of salt out of my pocket, I spit on it before throwing it across the mouth of the other path. I tip some of Corr’s manure out. Then I head back up the path without another word.
Holly follows me, and though I don’t turn around, I hear his voice clearly.
“It’s just that he’s not yours.”
I’m not certain I want to have this conversation. “It’s not that he’s not mine. It’s that he’s Benjamin Malvern’s.”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It makes all the sense in the world, on this island.” Thisby is defined by things that are Malvern’s and things that aren’t. “It matters, like this: I belong to Malvern. You don’t.”
“So, freedom.”
I stop what I’m doing and regard him. Holly stands there below me on the path, gazing up, looking incredibly well kept and domesticated in his clean sweater and his pressed slacks. But his expression is anything but vapid. I still don’t think that freewheeling George Holly, American investor, has ever been anything but freewheeling George Holly, American investor, but for the first time, that doesn’t matter. I think he understands me regardless.