The Scorpio Races

on the beach, when I pulled his head from the water.

“For luck,” I say to his startled face.

A flashbulb goes off and there’s appreciative hooting.

“Okay,” Sean says, as if we’ve just made a deal and it’s all right to him. He turns to the crowd and says, “If you want a race, you’ll give this horse some room. Now.”

As they scatter outward, I push my way through them toward the cliff path. Before I head down, I look over my shoulder to find Sean, and there he is with the wide berth around him and Dove, still watching me. I feel the island underneath me, and Sean’s mouth on my lips, and I wonder if luck will be on our side today.

CHAPTER SIXTY

PUCK

The beach is not as crowded as I had expected. It’s between two of the smaller races, and only the capaill uisce who are entered in the next races are on the beach. All of the spectators who were down on the sand before are now huddled up on the cliffs, pressed as close as they dare to the edge. The sky above them has cleared to a deep, deep blue like you only get in November, and the ocean to my right is dark as night.

I can’t think that I’ll soon be racing beside it or I won’t be able to move.

I quickly find the race officials’ table in the shelter of the cliff; two men in bowler hats sit behind a table with tantalizingly varied racing colors folded in front of them. I hurry across the sand and duck close so that I won’t have to shout.

“I need to pick up my colors,” I say. I recognize the man on the right; he sits near us in St. Columba’s.

“None left for you,” replies the other official. His crossed arms rest on a stack of them.

“I’m sorry?” I ask politely.

“None left. Good-bye.” He turns to the official next to him and says, “What do you think of this weather? Warm, isn’t it?”

“Sir,” I say.

“I’m not complaining about the heat, that’s for sure, but it’ll bring out the midges,” says the other official.

“You can’t just pretend I’m not here,” I say.

But they can. They make pointed small talk, ignoring my presence, until I swallow my anger and humiliation and give up. I tell them that they’re bastards, because they won’t say anything back to me anyway, and go back the way I’ve come. I meet Gabe on his way down the cliff road. The wind has made his hair a mess.

“Where are your colors?” he asks.

I don’t really want to confess it to him, but I do. “They won’t give them to me.”

“Won’t!”

I cross my arms over my chest. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll race without them.” But it does matter, a little.

“I’m going to go talk to them,” Gabe says. His righteous anger is a welcome thing to see, even if I don’t think it will help. Sometimes it helps just to have it shared with another person. “This is stupid.”

I watch him descend and cross the sand, but I can tell from their faces as they watch him approach that he won’t get a different answer. I tell myself it doesn’t matter. I don’t need to look like one of them. I don’t need to belong.

“Sod them,” Gabe says when he returns. “Old Thisby biddies.”

Beside us, someone shouts out that everyone but the entrants in this last match race need to clear the beach, because it’s nearly time for the final race.

That means us.

CHAPTER SIXTY-ONE

SEAN

By the afternoon, the sun is strong but cold on the beach. The wind tears the surface of the blue-black sea into a thousand whitecaps. Up on the cliffs, there is the silhouette of a crowd, watching the pale road of sand between them and the ocean.

Every so often, I can see the head of a capall uisce in the water, far out from shore, driven toward the sand by the November current. The ones we have caught struggle against us in bridles hung with bells and red ribbons, iron and holly leaves, daisies and prayers. The water horses are hungry and wicked, vicious and beautiful, hating us and loving us.

It is time for the Scorpio Races.

I am so, so alive.

Beneath me, Corr is powerful and restless. The sea sings to him in a way that it didn’t yesterday, and when another capall uisce moves past us, he snaps at it. Before Puck, I’d never been so aware of how many of us there were on the beach for this race. Capaill uisce of every color pressing against each other, crushing, biting, snorting, kicking. The north end of the beach has never seemed so distant.

In eighteen furlongs and five minutes, this will all be over.

I find Puck in the crowd. Unlike the others, she’s not hanging last minute baubles and trinkets onto her horse’s mane. She’s leaned over Dove’s neck, her cheek pressed into Dove’s mane.

“Sean Kendrick.”

I recognize Mutt’s voice before I turn my head. He sits nearby on the piebald mare. When she tosses her mane, the bells he’s braided in her mane ring a discordant chord. I don’t see how he means for her to be fast under all of the iron he has hanging off her breastplate and her crupper.

“Don’t talk to me,” I say.

“This race is going to be hell for you,” Mutt replies.

Corr lays his ears flat back and the piebald mare responds in kind. I say, “You can’t intimidate me on this beach.”

Mutt Malvern backs the piebald away; she jangles and snorts. He follows my gaze back to Puck. “I know what you care about, Sean Kendrick.”

PUCK

I’m trying, unsuccessfully, to pretend that this will be just another sprint. I’m trying not to look at how far we have to go. I’m trying to remember that I not only have to survive but do well. I need to win. For a moment, I feel a pang of guilt, that if I get what I need, Sean doesn’t, but maybe it doesn’t have to be that way. If I win, surely there will be enough to both save the house and buy Corr?

“Puck. Climb off for a moment.” I’m surprised to hear Peg Gratton’s voice. She stands at Dove’s shoulder, looking up at me. Her hair is frazzled in the wind and her face serious. I obediently slide off. She’s holding her Scorpio bird costume in her arms, a fact that I can’t understand. “How are you doing?”

“Okay,” I say.

“So, terrible,” she says. “Gabe told me they wouldn’t give you any colors.”

I shake my head. I won’t let my face show anything.

Peg says, “Right, then. Off with the saddle.”

Mystified but trusting, I pull off the saddle and watch Peg carefully unfold the costume in her arms. I see now that the great, terrifying bird head is no longer attached; it’s just the back of the feather-covered cape. Peg lays it down on Dove’s back where the colors would have gone, and then she takes the saddle and looks to make certain