The Scorpio Races

riders. They’re more riled up than terriers in a butcher shop. I’m glad that Finn’s stormed off because the idea of him seeing me totally bewildered seems unbearable.

The truth is, I have a very rough idea of how to go about securing a horse for the race without money up front, but it’s mostly based on things that we used to talk about in school, when the boys would all boast that they were going to ride in the races when they grew up. They never really did; mostly they just moved away to the mainland or became farmers, but their big plans were a good source of information. Especially since my family was one of the few that didn’t follow the races.

“Girl!” snarls a man holding a roan horse that is pawing and charging, galloping without moving an inch. “Mind your damned feet!”

I stare down at my feet, and it takes me a second too long to realize that there was a circle drawn in the sand, and my boots have scuffed a line through it. I jump out of the circle.

“Don’t bother,” shouts the man as I try to retrace the line of the circle. The roan tugs toward the break in the line. I back up and get shouted at again for my trouble – two men are carrying an older boy away between them. He’s bleeding from his head and he swears at me. I whirl away and almost trip over a scruffy dog with sand in its fur.

“Curse you!” I snap at the dog, just because it won’t say anything back.

“Puck Connolly!” It’s Tommy Falk with his pretty lips. “What are you doing down here?” At least, that’s what I think he says. It’s so loud that other people’s conversations drown out most of his words and the wind robs the rest.

“I’m looking for bowler hats,” I say. Black bowler hats are supposed to mean dealers – on the rest of the island, someone wearing one is called a monger, after the horsemongers, and it’s not the nicest of names. Sometimes the boys wear them if they want to be seen as rebels. Mostly it just means they’re pissers.

Tommy shouts, “I didn’t hear you right.”

But I know he did. He just doesn’t believe what he heard. Dad once said people’s brains are hard of hearing. It doesn’t matter if Tommy’s stone-cold deaf on a plate, though, because I catch a glimpse of a bowler hat, on the head of the little gnome-man who had the piebald mare earlier.

“Thanks,” I tell Tommy, though he hasn’t really helped. I leave him behind and wind through the crowd toward the gnome. Up close, the man does not look quite so short, but he does look like his face has been hit solidly a few times with a brick, twice to really squish it and once more for good measure.

He is arguing with someone.

“Sean Kendrick,” spits the monger, which is a name that sounds familiar for some reason, especially said in that disdainful note. The bowler-hatted gnome doesn’t have a gnome-like voice at all. His voice is lined with cigarette smoke and he puts gritty h’s at the beginning of his words. “Heh. His head’s half full of salt water. What’s he saying about my horses, now?”

“I don’t like to repeat it,” replies the other figure politely. It’s Dr. Halsal, with his shiny black hair parted neatly on the side. I like Dr. Halsal. He’s very levelheaded and he’s a very compact, tidy sort of person, who reminds me of a drawing of a person instead of an actual person. I wanted to marry him when I was six.

“He’s crazy as the ocean,” says the bowler-hatted monger. “Come now, if you back her, you’ll want her.”

“All the same,” Dr. Halsal says, “I’m afraid I’m going to have to pass.”

“She’s fast as the devil,” the gnome says, but the doctor is already retreating, and his back doesn’t listen.

“Excuse me,” I say, and my voice sounds very high to me. The gnome turns. His mismatched face is fearsome when matched with an irritable expression. I try to organize my thoughts into a respectable-sounding question. “Do you do fifths?”

Fifths is another thing I learned about from the daydreaming boys. It’s gambling, more or less. Sometimes a monger will let you have a horse for nothing on the condition that whatever you win in the race, they get four-fifths of it. That’s not really anything, unless you come in first. Then you could buy the whole island, if you wanted. Well, at least most of Skarmouth, except for what Benjamin Malvern owns.

The gnome looks at me.

“No,” he says. But I can tell what he really means is Not for you.

I feel a little shaky inside, because it hadn’t occurred to me that they would say no – were there that many people who would ride capaill uisce that the mongers could be choosy? I hear myself say, “Okay. Could you point me toward someone else who might?” I add, hurriedly, “Sir,” because Dad once said that saying “sir” makes gentlemen out of ruffians.

The gnome says, “Bowler hats. Ask ’em.”

Some ruffians stay ruffians. When I was younger, I would have spit on his shoes, but Mum had broken me of the habit with the help of a small blue stool and a lot of soap.

So I just leave without saying thanks – he was even less help than pretty Tommy Falk – and I wind my way through the crowd looking for the next bowler hat, only to get the same results. All of them say no to the ginger- haired girl. They don’t even consider it. One frowns and one laughs and one doesn’t even let me finish my sentence.

By now it’s lunchtime and my stomach is snarling at me. There are people hawking food to the riders, but it’s expensive and everything smells like blood and bad fish. There’s no sign of Finn. The tide is starting to creep in and some of the less brave souls have already left the beach. I retreat a bit and press my back against the chalk cliff, my hands spread out on the cold surface. Several feet above my head, the chalk is lighter, marking where the water will rise in a few hours. I imagine standing here until it does, salt water slowly swallowing me.

Tears of frustration burn behind my eyes. The worst of it is that I’m sort of glad they all said no. These terrifying monsters are not at all like Dove, and I can’t even start to imagine myself trying one out, much less taking it home and training it to eat expensive, bloody meat instead of me. In the summer, children sometimes catch dragonflies and tie strings round them, just behind their eyes, and lead them like they are pets. Those dragonflies are what these grown men look like with the capaill uisce. The horses drag them around like they have no weight whatsoever. What would they do to me?

I look out across the sea. Close to the shore, the water is turquoise in places where white rocks have fallen from the cliffs into the water, and black where dark brown kelp covers the boulders. Somewhere across all these buckets of water are the cities we’ll lose Gabe to. I know we’ll never see him again. It won’t matter that he’s still alive somewhere; it will be just as bad as Mum and Dad.

Mum liked to say that some things happen for a reason, that sometimes obstacles were there to stop you from doing something stupid. She said this to me a lot. But when she said it to Gabe, Dad told him that sometimes it just means you need to try harder.

I take a deep breath and head back toward the only bowler hat who doesn’t avoid my eye. The gnome. He has only one horse in his hands now: the piebald mare that screamed earlier.

“Heh, you!” He says this as if I’m about to pass him by.

“I think we need to talk,” I tell him. I feel unfriendly and messy. Any charm I had when I started this is back at home with the makings of a sandwich.

“I was thinkin’ the same thing. I’m about to be off. I’d rather not be back tomorrow and you’d rather have a capall. What will you give me for her?”

My first reaction is to think, Well, how much do I have? and then I come to my senses and remember his unhelpfulness from earlier. “Nothing up front,” I say. I have to be firm on this. If Gabe really does leave us to fend for ourselves, we’ll have nothing at the end, either. “I’m just looking for a fifth.”

“This mare is amazing,” the gnome says. “Fastest thing on land at the moment.” He stands back so I can see her, restless on the end of the lead, a chain wrapped over her nose and fed through her halter. She is drop-dead gorgeous and absolutely giant. I feel I could stack Dove on top of Dove and only then be able to look the piebald in her wild eye. She stinks like a corpse washed up after a storm. She eyes one of the loose dogs that darts around the beach. Something about her gaze is deeply unsettling.

“Then you wouldn’t mind taking a gamble on her,” I say. I feel petulant but I try to sound businesslike. It’s not the easiest thing in the world trying to be treated like an adult during a negotiation when the idea of driving a successful bargain is making you a little sick to your stomach.

“I’m not in the mood to come back and collect,” the monger says.

I cross my arms. I pretend I’m Gabe. He has a way of looking both unimpressed and disinterested when he’s really both of these things. I sound as bored as possible. “Either she’s everything you say, or she isn’t. If she’s the