The Scorpio Races

We both turn our heads. There’s Eaton in his sweaty traditional garb, standing at the base of the rock, his head craned back so he can see us. A group of men stands around him, hands in pockets and tucked in vests. Some of them are riders who still hold their hands gingerly so they won’t bleed more. Some of them wear traditional scarves like Eaton does. They’re frowning.

I said it wrong. I came up out of turn. I did something wrong. I can’t think of what it would be, but I feel uncertainty chewing on my guts.

Eaton says, “She can’t ride.”

My heart falls out of me. Dove! It must be Dove. I should’ve gotten the piebald mare when I had the chance.

“No woman’s ridden in the races since they began,” he says. “And this isn’t going to be the year when that changes.”

I stare at Eaton and the men around him. Something about the way they stand together is familiar, comradely. Like a herd of ponies bunched up against the wind. Or sheep, staring warily out at the collie that means to move them. I’m the outsider. The woman.

Of all the things that could stand between me and the races, I can’t believe that this will be it.

My face flushes. I’m aware that hundreds of people are watching me stand on this rock. But I find my voice anyway. “It didn’t say anything about that in the rules. I read them. Every single one.”

Eaton looks to the man next to him, who licks his lips before saying, “There are rules on paper and rules too big for paper.”

It takes me a moment to realize what this means, which is that there really is no rule against it, but they’re not going to let me ride anyway. This is like when Gabe and I would play games when we were younger – as soon as I got close to winning, he would change the rules on me.

And just like back then, the unfairness of it makes my chest burn.

I say, “Then why have rules on paper at all?”

“Some things are too obvious to have to write down,” says the man next to Eaton, who is wearing a very tidy three-piece suit with a scarf in place of the jacket. I can see the neat triangle of the vest, dark gray against white, more clearly than his face.

“Come down now,” Eaton says.

There is a third man at the base of the rock where I just climbed up, and he holds his hand up in my direction, as if I am going to just take it and go back down.

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.