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

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