I hear a terrific crash. She has disappeared into the surf, her tail the last thing I see.
I sigh and put my hands in my pockets. I can’t tell if she’s survived the dive or not. My saddle’s gone, either way. I’m glad it wasn’t my father’s, back at the barn, though it was still dear; I’d had it made for me two years ago, a rare indulgence. I don’t swear, but I consider the shape of the word in my mouth.
Hot breath whuffs out on my shoulder. It’s Dove, and Kate standing on the other side of her, her ginger hair all pulled out of its ponytail. Dove is out of breath, but not as much as I’d expect.
Kate looks over the cliff and frowns for a moment, and then she points.
I follow her gaze to a glistening dark back swimming out to sea. My mouth quirks. “It looks like you won, Kate Connolly.”
She pats Dove’s shoulder and says, “Call me Puck.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
I get back to the yard and find it in disarray. Half the horses didn’t make it out for their exercise on time. Mettle is up in the paddock by the stable, chewing and sucking steadily on the top board of the fence. Edana hasn’t been taken out at all, and there’s no sign of Mutt. If he’s thinking that he means to challenge me and Corr at the races this year, he’s going about it the wrong way.
I keep feeling I’ve forgotten to do something, until I realize that I’m disconcerted by leaving with two horses and returning with one. I’ve no horse to un-tack, no saddle to put away.
George Holly finds me just as I’m walking back into the yard, a blood-streaked bucket in my hand from feeding the
“Well, your face looks like it remembers a smile,” Holly says. He looks down at my clothing; I’m wearing the island all over my left side.
I kick on the hose pump with my knee and begin to rinse the bucket over the top of the drain. “I lost a horse today.”
“That sounds careless. What happened?”
“She jumped off a cliff.”
“A cliff! Is that normal?”
In the barn, Edana lets out a keening, impatient wail, hungry for the sea. This time last year, Mutt was already pounding the hell out of his chosen mount on the beach. Right now, the yard seems quiet without him: the blue sky before a storm. I think about the Scorpio Festival tomorrow, how the riders’ parade this year will be me and Mutt and insane Kate Connolly.
I shut off the water pump and regard him. “Mr. Holly, nothing about this month is turning out to be normal.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
So tonight is the night of the great Scorpio Festival.
I’ve only been to the Scorpio Festival once; Mum took us one year while Dad was out on the boat. Dad didn’t approve of the festival or the races in general. He said that one bred hooligans and that the other gave those hooligans two more legs than they could steer. We’d always thought Mum didn’t approve, either. But still, that year, when it became clear that Dad wasn’t going to be back that evening, Mum told us to fetch our hats and coats and told Gabe to kick the Morris into life (it was dodgy, even back then). With illicit fervor, we piled in: Gabe took the coveted passenger seat while Finn and I fought and slapped each other in the backseat. Mum shouted at us and tore along the little road to Skarmouth, bent over the steering wheel like it was a troublesome horse.
And then, Skarmouth! Everywhere there were costumes and the Scorpio drummers and the wail of the singers. Mum bought us bells and ribbons and November cakes, which made my hands sticky for days. Everywhere, noise, noise, noise, until Finn, who was just a little urchin then, had started to cry from it. Dory Maud whirled over from nowhere with one of the terrifying curse masks and put it on Finn. Hidden behind the flat-toothed monster mask, he became as fierce as my mother.
Over the years that I knew Mum, I more often saw her mucking Dove’s lean-to or cleaning pots or painting pottery or leaning up against the roof to smack a shingle back on with a hammer. But for some reason, now, when I call up thoughts of Mum, I remember that night at the festival, her dancing wildly in a circle with us, a mouth full of glinting teeth, face strange in the firelight, singing the November songs.
And now it’s years later, and it’s the day of the festival, and we can go if we want to because there’s no one alive to tell us otherwise. It’s a strange and hollow feeling.
“I got the Morris running,” Finn says now, coming into the house. He regards my dish washing with more interest than dish washing warrants. “It took awhile.” I believe him. He’s grubby and black.
“You look like homemade sin,” I tell him. “What are you doing?”
Instead of heading to the bathroom to clean up, he’s fetching his coat, which has fallen onto the floor behind Dad’s sitting chair by the fire.
Finn rubs his forehead, leaving a black smear. “I’m afraid to turn the Morris off or it might not start again.”
“You can’t let it run all night.”
My brother puts on his lumpy hat. “I can’t believe Mum called you the clever one.”
“She didn’t. She called Gabe that,” I say. As he puts his hand on the door, I realize where he thinks he’s going. “Wait – you think you’re going to the festival?”
Finn just turns and gives me a look.
“Gabe’s not even here. Why do you think we’re going? I have to be up early.”
“Because you have to go finalize your registration,” Finn says. “That’s what
Of course he’s right. I feel foolish for not remembering it, and then I feel my stomach drop to my feet. Before, I had a few yards of seawater between me and everyone who might say something about me being in the races. Now the only thing between me and everyone else will be a few pints of beer.
But there’s no way around it. And maybe, just maybe, Gabe will be there. The rest of the island will be.
Unreluctantly, I abandon the dish washing, and reluctantly, I find my ratty green coat and get my hat as Finn flings open the door. Now that I know to look for it, I can see that he’s crawling out of his skin with excitement. Finn never looks more excited – he just gets faster. Finns are generally slow-moving creatures.
The Morris looks ominous under the darkening pink sky, the widening black hands of clouds stretching across the sunset, but Finn’s face is a shining beacon in the driver’s seat as he waits for me. I think of him behind Dory Maud’s fearsome curse mask and imagine him that happy again, his fingers sticky for days.
“Wait -” I say, and run back inside to pull a few slender coins from the increasingly shallow collection in the biscuit tin on the counter. I will find a way to earn it back. Even if we eat nothing but November cakes for this week. I run back out into the car and sit. Finn’s repair of the seat digs into my thigh. “Is this thing going to stop on us? I don’t want to be stuck in the middle of some field after dark with a horse looking in.”
“Just don’t turn on the heater,” Finn says.
I don’t want to know how he got it started. Last time it required two men pushing it at a run while Finn steered. As we bump along the roads, he adds, “I’ll bet that’s where Gabe is. I’ll bet he’s at the festival.”
And at that, I get an even more severe prickle of nerves, because the idea of confronting Gabe over Malvern’s
