Gabe puts his bicycle away in the little lean-to by the back of the house and then comes to stand behind Finn. Gabe takes off his skullcap and holds it in his armpit, his arms crossed, wordlessly watching what Finn’s doing. I’m not sure Gabe can actually tell what it is that Finn has eviscerated in the barely there blue light of evening, but Finn rocks the body of the chain saw slightly to give Gabe a better view. This apparently tells Gabe everything he needs to know, because as Finn looks up, tilting his chin toward our older brother, Gabe just gives a little nod.
Their unspoken language both entrances and infuriates me. “There’s apple cake,” I say. “It’s still warm.”
Gabe removes his skullcap from his armpit and turns to me. “What’s dinner?”
“Apple cake,” Finn comments from the ground.
“And chain saw,” I reply. “Finn made a lovely chain saw to go with.”
“Apple cake’s fine,” Gabe says, but he sounds tired. “Puck, don’t leave the door open. It’s cold out here.” I step back so that he can walk into the house, and as he does, I notice that he stinks of fish. I hate it when the Beringers have him cleaning fish. He makes the whole house smell.
Gabe pauses in the door. I stare at him then, at the way he stands, his hand on the door frame, his face turned toward his hand as if he is studying his fingers or the chipped red paint beneath them. The way his face looks seems far away, like a stranger’s, and I suddenly want to hug him like I used to when I was small. “Finn,” he says, his voice low, “when you get that together, I need to talk to you and Kate.”
Finn looks up, his face startled, but Gabe is already gone, disappeared past me into the room he still shares with Finn despite our parents’ room being empty. Either Gabe’s request or his use of my real name has gotten Finn’s attention in a way that my apple cake couldn’t, and he begins to assemble the parts rapidly, dumping them into a battered cardboard box.
I feel unsettled while I wait for Gabe to emerge from his room. The kitchen has turned into the small, yellow place that it becomes at night when the darkness outside presses it smaller. I hurriedly wash off three plates that match and cut a fat piece of apple cake for each of us, the biggest one for Gabe. Setting them out on the table, three lonely plates where once there would’ve been five, depresses me, so I busy myself making some mint tea to go with them. As I arrange and rearrange the teacups by our plates, it occurs to me, too late, that mint tea and apple cake might not go together.
By then Finn has begun the process of washing his hands, which can take centuries. Patiently and silently he lathers his hands with the bar of milk soap, working between each finger and rubbing each line in his palm. He keeps doing it when Gabe emerges in fresh clothing but still smelling of fish.
“This is nice,” Gabe tells me as he pulls out his chair, and I’m relieved, because nothing is wrong, everything will be fine. “Mint smells good after today.”
I try to think of what Mum or Dad would’ve said to him then; for some reason, our age difference feels like a massive void just now. “I thought they had you getting the hotel ready today?”
“They were shorthanded at the pier,” Gabe says. “And Beringer knows I’m quicker than Joseph.”
Joseph is Beringer’s son, too lazy to be quick at anything. Gabe told me once that we should be grateful for Joseph’s inability to think of anything but himself, because it is why Gabe has a job. I’m not grateful at the moment, though, because Gabe smells like fish since Joseph is a feck.
Gabe holds his tea but doesn’t drink it. Finn is still washing. I sit down at my place. Gabe waits a few more beats and then says, “Finn, enough, okay?”
Finn still takes another minute to rinse, but then he shuts off the tap and comes and sits across from me. “Do we still say grace if it’s only apple cake?”
“And a chain saw,” I say.
“God, thank you for this cake and Finn’s chain saw,” Gabe says. “Are you happy?”
“God, or me?” I ask.
“God’s always happy,” Finn says. “You’re the one who needs pleasing.”
This strikes me as incredibly untrue, but I refuse to rise to the bait. I look at Gabe, who’s looking at his plate. I ask him, “So, what?”
Outside, I hear Dove whickering where the pasture meets the yard; she wants her handful of grain. Finn looks at Gabe, who’s still looking at his plate, pressing his fingers into the top of the apple cake as if he’s checking the texture. I am suddenly aware of how tomorrow, the anniversary of our parents’ deaths, has been looming inside me, and how it never occurred to me to think that it might be the same for quiet, solid Gabe.
He doesn’t lift his eyes. He simply says, “I’m leaving the island.”
Finn keeps his gaze on Gabe. “What?”
I can’t speak; it’s like he’s said it in a different language, and my brain has to translate it before I can understand it.
“I’m leaving the island,” Gabe tells us, and this time the statement is firmer, more real, though he still doesn’t look at either of us.
Finn manages a whole sentence first. “What will we do with all of our things?”
I add, “What about Dove?”
Gabe says, “I’m leaving the island.”
Finn looks like Gabe has slapped him. I jut my chin out and try to get Gabe to meet my eyes. “You’re going to go without us?” Then, my mind provides an answer, a logical one, one that gives him an excuse, and I give it to him. “So you aren’t going long. You’re just going for —” I shake my head. I can’t think of what he would be going for.
Gabe finally lifts his face. “I’m moving away.”
Across from me, Finn is clinging to the edge of the table, his fingertips pressed into the wood so that they’re white on the very ends but bright red toward the joints; I don’t think he’s aware of it.
“When?” I say.
“Two weeks.” Puffin is mewling around his feet, rubbing her chin against his leg and chair, but Gabe doesn’t look down or acknowledge her. “I promised Beringer I’d stay that long.”
“Beringer?” I say. “You promised Beringer you’d stay that long? What about us? What’s going to happen to us?”
He won’t look at me. I’m trying to imagine how we can survive with one less earning Connolly and one more empty bed.
“You can’t go,” I say. “You can’t go so soon.” My pulse is clubbing inside my chest and I have to press my jaw shut to keep my teeth from chattering.
Gabe’s face is utterly unchanged, and I know that I’m going to regret what I say, but it’s the only thing I can think of, so I say it.
“I’m riding in the races,” I tell him. Just like that.
Now I have both my brothers’ full attention, and my cheeks feel like I’ve been leaning over a hot stove.
“Oh, come on, Kate,” Gabe says, but his voice is not as sure as it should be. He half believes me, despite himself. Before I say anything else, I have to think about it and decide if I believe me. I think of this morning, my hair tugged in the wind, the feel of Dove stretching out into a gallop. I think of the day after the races, the red-stained sand high up on the beach where the ocean has yet to reach. I think of the last boats leaving for the winter, and Gabe on one of them.
I could do it, if it came to it.
“I am. Didn’t you hear in town? The horses are coming out. Training starts tomorrow.” I am so, so proud that my words sound firm.
Gabe’s mouth works, as if he is saying all sorts of things without parting his lips, and I know that he is going through all the counterarguments in his head. Part of me wants him to say “you can’t” so I can ask “why?” and he would have to realize that he can’t answer “because you might leave Finn by himself.” And he can’t ask “why?” because then he’d have to answer that question as well. I should be feeling very clever and pleased with myself, because it’s very hard to render Gabe speechless, but mostly my heart is just going tip-tip-tip in my chest, very shallow and fast, and I’m half hoping that he’ll say that if I don’t ride, he’ll stay.
But finally he says, “All right. I’ll stay until after the races.” He looks cross. “But no longer than that, or the boats will stop running ’til spring. This is a really stupid thing you’re doing, Kate.”
He’s mad at me, but I don’t care about that. All I care is that he’s staying, for a little while longer.
“Well, sounds like we’ll need the money, if I win,” I say, trying to sound as adult and blasé as possible, but thinking that maybe if I do win the money, he won’t have to leave. And then I get up from the table and put my plate and teacup in the sink, like it was a normal evening. Then I walk into my room, close the door, and put my pillow over my head so no one will hear.
“Selfish bastard,” I whisper, the words close under the pillowcase.
Then I burst into tears.
CHAPTER FOUR
SEAN
I am dreaming of the sea when they wake me.
Actually, I am dreaming of the night that I caught Corr, but I can hear the sea in my dream. There is an old wives’ tale that capaill uisce caught at night are faster and stronger, and so it is three in the morning and I am crouching on a boulder at the base of the cliffs, several hundred feet from the sand beach. Above me, the sea has made an arch in the chalk, the ceiling a hundred feet over my head, and the white walls hug me. It should be dark, hidden from the moon, but the ocean reflects light off the pale rock, and I can see just well enough not to stumble on the coarse, kelp-covered rocks on the floor. The stone beneath my feet has more in common with the seafloor than the shore, and I have to take care not to lose my footing on the slippery surface.
I am listening.
In the dark, in the cold, I am listening for a change in the sound of the ocean. The water is rising, quickly and silently; the tide is coming in, and in an hour, this incomplete cave will be full of seawater higher than my head. I am listening for the sound of a splash, for the rush of a hoof breaking the surface, for any hint that a capall uisce is emerging. Because by the time you hear a hoof click on the stones, you are dead.
But there is nothing but the eerie silence of the sea: no seabirds at night, no shouts of boys on the shore, no distant hum of a boat’s motor. The wind is ruthless as it finds me in the arch. Unbalanced by its sudden force, I slip and catch my balance again on the wall, my fingers splayed. I hurriedly pull my hand back — the walls of the arch are covered with blood-red jellies that wink and glisten at me by the light of the moon. My father told me they were completely harmless. I don’t believe him. Nothing is completely harmless.
Below me, the water creeps between the boulders as the tide comes in. My palm is bleeding.
I hear a sound, like a kitten mewling, or a baby screaming, and I freeze. There are no kittens or babies here on the beach; there is only me and the horses. Brian Carroll has told me that when he is out at sea at night, he can sometimes hear the horses calling to each other under the water, and it sounds like whale song, or a widow wailing, or something chuckling.
I look down to the water in the deepest cleft of the rocks below me; it has risen fast. How long have I been standing here? The boulders in front of me are already nothing but shiny humps of rock barely above the black water. I am empty-handed, but I am also out of time — I need to turn back and pick my way across the seaweed-slimed rocks while I still can.
I look at my hand; a thick trickle of blood has welled in my palm and down between the two bones of my arm. It gathers, swells, drips soundlessly into the water. My palm will hurt later. I look at the water where my blood disappears. I am silent. The cave is silent.
I turn around and there is a horse.
It is close enough to smell the briny odor of it, close enough to feel the warmth off its still-wet skin, close enough to look into its eye and see its dilated square pupil. I smell blood on its breath.
And then they wake me.
It is Brian and Jonathan Carroll, and their faces both spell concern. Brian’s face wears the traditional brand: furrowed eyebrows, lips puckered. Jonathan’s comes out as an apologetic smile that changes shape every few seconds. Brian is my age and I know him from the piers; we both deal with the water for our living and so we have history together, though we are not friends. Jonathan is his brother, trailing Brian in every way, including brains.
“Kendrick,” says Brian. “You up?”
I am now. I lie there in my bunk like I am tied to it and say nothing.
Jonathan adds, “Sorry to wake you, mate.”
“You’re the man,” Brian says. Though I’m feeling no kinship for him now in the middle of the night, I don’t mind Brian. He says what he means. “There’s nothing else for it; Mutt’s in a world of trouble. He had a mind to wait up for one of the capaill to come out of the water and now he’s gotten what he asked for and I don’t think he likes it.”
“It’s going to kill them,” Jonathan says. He looks pleased to have been able to state something so obvious before Brian could.
“Them?” I echo. It’s cold and I’m wide awake.
“Mutt and a bunch of his mates,” Brian says. “They’re all in it, and they’ve got the capall sort of caught, but they can’t let it go and they can’t bring it in.”
Now I’m sitting. I don’t have any love in the world for Mutt — also known as Matthew Malvern, the bastard son of my boss — or any of the grooms who scurry in submissive friendship behind him, but they can’t leave a horse tangled up on the beach in whatever fool trap they’ve devised.