The Scorpio Races

“The mainland.”

He says it without force, and I wonder if it’s stopped stinging or if it never stung at all. “Okay, if they were here tonight, where would they be?”

“Well,” Brian says, thoughtful and slow, hard to hear above the shouted conversation around us, “the quay or the pub. Shall we look?”

Suddenly, I feel strange having this conversation with Brian Carroll. He’s standing close enough to be heard, looking at me, and he seems enormous and square and grown-up with his curls and his fisherman’s muscles, and the steady way he looks at me is not like I’m used to. Part of me thinks he’s just humoring me, me a kid, him most of the way to man, but then part of me sees my hands in front of me. They’re Mum’s hands, not a little girl’s hands, and I know I’m wearing Mum’s face, too. I wonder how long it will take for me to feel as adult inside as I look outside.

“Okay,” I agree.

We strike off down the street. Brian’s broad shoulders plow a way through the people. Tourists, a lot of them, wearing unfamiliar faces. There is something subtly different about them, like they’re a different species. Their noses are a little straighter, their eyes a little closer together, their mouths narrower. They’re related to us like Dove is related to the water horses.

There’s no sign of Gabe. But how would we find him among all these people anyway? Brian keeps pressing on, though, downward in the direction of the pier.

There’s noise, noise, noise. Drums and shouts, laughing and singing, motorbikes and fiddles.

We push our way down to the quay, which is a little quieter, flanked by ocean on one side instead of people. The water moves restlessly against the wall, closer than usual, reaching up toward us. It’s quiet enough that I hear commotion from the cliffs above the town.

“What’s going on up there?” I ask. “The bonfire?”

Brian squints up as if he can see anything but the buildings glued to the side of the incline. “That, and the sea wishes.”

The only thing I know of the sea wishes is that Father Mooneyham told us not to do them. I’d been unable to get more information out of Mum. “Have you made a sea wish before?”

Brian looks stricken. “No, indeed.”

“What are they?”

“It’s a bit of paper you write on with charcoal from the bonfire. You write something on it and toss it over the cliffs.”

“That doesn’t sound bad.”

“A curse, Kate. They’re curses. You write them backward and throw them to the sea.”

I’m thrilled and horrified. Immediately I try to imagine if there is any curse that I can see myself throwing over the cliff. I pose a striking figure in my mind, silhouetted by the bonfire, hurling something foul into the ocean.

“You’re wild, Kate Connolly,” Brian says. “I can see it in your face.”

I’m not sure about that, but when I look up at him, he’s studying me intently. Suddenly and terrifyingly, I get the idea that he’s going to kiss me, and I shy backward several feet before I realize that he hasn’t moved an inch. He laughs at me, a kind, safe laugh. Maybe I am wild after all.

“Come on,” Brian says. “Let’s see if he’s here.”

We continue down the quay. Here there are food vendors beneath canvas, and this is clearly where Brian thought that Gabe might be. The vendors are doing brisk trade, and we have to thread through the lines. Brian is craning his neck again to look for my brother, and again, I feel strange, performing this personal quest with someone outside my family. What business of it is his, spending his festival finding Gabe instead of having a good time?

“You shouldn’t be spending your evening doing this,” I say. “You should be having fun. I’ll keep looking.”

Brian looks down at me. I think he’s been getting taller throughout the evening. By the time we find Gabe, he’ll be as tall as St. Columba’s on the hill and I’ll have to have a step-ladder to hold a conversation with him. “I am having fun. Do you want me to go?”

I don’t believe him. I’ve seen fun, and it involves hooting and tearing in circles and possibly getting a skinned knee. This is interesting, not fun. “I just feel guilty for keeping you.”

Brian swallows and looks off over the crowd as if he’s still searching for Gabriel. “The last of my sisters went to the mainland last year. Normally I would have been here with her.”

“Gabe says he’s going.”

It’s out before I even think of it, and immediately, I can’t imagine why I said it. Why did I mention this to Brian Carroll when I haven’t even really discussed it with Finn? The most detailed conversation I’ve had with Brian Carroll in my life involved spitting on his yet-to-be-dug grave and now I’m turning my pockets inside out on family secrets.

“So he says,” Brian replies.

I want to shout, He didn’t tell us until he had to, but that really would be a family secret, so I just seal my mouth shut. I wish I hadn’t come. I wish I were at home. I wish Brian Carroll weren’t looking at me from his ever-increasing height. I cross my arms and stuff them into my armpits. When I find Gabe, I’m going to punch him right in his eye.

Brian Carroll seems oblivious to my distress. He adds, “I think he said he was going over with Tommy Falk and Beech Gratton.”

I let a small noise of rage escape from me. “Of course! Everyone knows! Everyone’s going. Are you going to the mainland, too?”

“No,” Brian says seriously. “My great-great-grandfather helped build this pier, and I’m not leaving it.”

He sounds like he’s married to it, and that suddenly makes me feel tired and cross.

“Hey now,” Brian says, as if he has now finally discovered my annoyance. “Let’s go look in the pub. That’s where I was headed. He might be there – that’s where the locals hide, sometimes. If nothing else, we can get out of the cold for a moment.”

We make our way back through the people to the Black-Eyed Girl, a green-fronted building with the doors propped open. It always struck me as too distinguished to be a pub, all polished wood and dimpled leather and brass fittings. It’s impeccably clean and, for most of the day, incredibly empty. Then, at night, when the sailors get tired of being sober, the pub fills up and becomes the sort of noisy that spills out into the street and vomits into the quay.

I’ve never been inside that second version of the pub until tonight. It’s a completely different kind of full from the street. A dense, smoky, too-hot claustrophobia, full of shouting and laughter and, disconcertingly, my name in conversations.

“Hey now, is that our Kate Connolly?” says a man standing by the door. The mention of my name turns a few other heads our way. It feels like they all have more than one set of eyes each.

“Kate Connolly!” shouts another man, gladly, by the bar. He pushes off a barstool to come closer. Barrel- chested and ginger-haired, he smells like garlic and beer. “The hen among the cocks!”

Brian takes my arm, not gently, and gestures with his other hand to the back of the pub. Then he turns to the man and says, “It sure is. So, now, John. What do you think of this tide coming in? Due for a storm?”

I know a rescue effort when I see one, so I push farther into the pub away from them. I search the back of the pub and there, in the corner booth, is Gabe. He’s leaned forward, a pint in front of him, long fingers spread like a spider on the table as he makes some point. When he laughs, even without hearing him, his expression looks looser and coarser than I remember. Anger snakes through me.

Brian’s still covering for me, so I surge through the smoke and stand beside Gabe’s chair at his shoulder. I wait for him to notice me; Tommy Falk – damnable co-conspirator – across the table has already seen me and smiled prettily. But Gabe keeps gesturing.

“Gabe,” I say. I feel, annoyingly, like a child standing at the arm of Dad’s chair, interrupting him from reading the paper.

He turns. I can’t tell if his expression is guilty. Now that I look, I don’t think it is at all. He says, just this, “Oh, Puck.”

“Yes, oh, Puck.”

“I can’t believe you’re riding in the races,” Tommy breaks in. He has two empty glasses in front of him and so