The Scorpio Races (11 page)

I return to Finn and Dove. They’re playing a game that seems to involve him tapping Dove on the upper lip and Dove looking peevish. Finn looks up and I say, “Sheep.”

He says, “I knew it was a sheep.”

I reply, “Next time you can cast your seeing eye into the pasture before I walk through the mud.”

“You didn’t ask.”

And we start on again toward Skarmouth.

We’re headed to Dory Maud’s shop, which is called Fathom & Sons for no reason that I can imagine, as Dory has no sons and no husband for that matter. She lives with her two sisters, neither of whom are named Fathom or have sons, and she collects things year-round to sell to tourists during October and November. As a child, the chief thing I noticed about Dory was that she was always wearing a different pair of shoes, a strange and extravagant thing on the island. Now mostly what I notice about her is that she and her sisters have no last name, a strange and extravagant thing just about anywhere.

Fathom & Sons is down one of the little side streets in Skarmouth, a stone-lined track barely wide enough for Dove and her pony cart. Neither the mist nor the sun can reach inside this alley, and we shiver as Dove’s hoofsteps clatter and echo up the sides of the buildings.

Standing in the blue-morning shadows a few doors down is Jonathan Carroll, throwing pieces of biscuit at a collie. Both Carroll brothers have dark, curly hair, but one of them has a lump of uncooked dough for a brain and the other has a lump of uncooked dough for his lungs. Once, when I came into town with Mum, we ran across Brian, the one with dough for lungs, crouched by the quay, shaking and starving for air. Mum had told him to breathe all of the bad air out before he tried to get more in and then she’d left me watching him while she went to buy him a black coffee. I’d been very annoyed, because she’d promised me one of Palsson’s cinnamon twists, which sold out very quickly. I’m a bit ashamed to recall that I told Brian that if he died and kept me from my cinnamon twist, I’d spit on his grave. I don’t know if he remembers it at all, since he’d seemed very focused on breathing through a cup made of his hands. I hope he doesn’t, because my character’s improved a lot since then. Nowadays I would’ve only
thought
the spitting part instead of saying it to his face.

But, regardless, it’s not Brian but Jonathan who’s throwing biscuits. He looks at me and Dove and Finn and says merely, “Hi, pony,” which only confirms that he’s the one with dough for brains.

“Wait here,” I tell Finn. “Start unloading. I’ll see about the cart.”

Fathom & Sons is a narrow, dark corridor of a shop, stuffed like a Cornish hen, with odds and ends labeled with little price tags that glow like white teeth in the dim light. It always smells a little like butter browning in a pan — so, like heaven. I’m not sure how many customers actually come into the shop itself to buy things; I think most of the business is done under a tent on weekends and during the rush for the races. So both the price tags and the delicious butter smell are probably unnecessary for most of the year.

Today is no exception; I take a deep, slightly hungry breath as I open the door. Inside the shop, the sisters are fighting, as usual. I have no sooner gotten inside the doorway and into the dim clutter than Dory Maud thrusts a catalog into my hands.

“There,” she says. “That. You’d buy from that, wouldn’t you, Puck?” The sisters call me Puck instead of Kate because all three of the sisters agree that you should be called what you want to be called instead of simply falling into what you were given at birth. I don’t remember ever telling them I wanted to be called Puck instead of Kate — both of them are my names — but still, I don’t mind it.

“She’s got no money at all,” Elizabeth says dismissively from the stairs at the back of the shop. The stairs lead up to the second story, which the sisters share. I’ve never been up there and I harbor a secret wish to. I think it must be all shoes and beds. And butter.

Elizabeth continues, “Of course it’s going to look good to her.”

I glance at what Dory Maud has thrust into my hand. To my surprise, it’s a neatly printed catalog for Fathom & Sons. When I tip my hands, it falls open to a random page with stylish black-and-white illustrations of a woman in a knitted sweater and a pair of hands wearing crocheted gloves and a disembodied neck bearing one of the rock cross necklaces that tourists love. The tidy letters describe each in uncompromising detail while a banner declares
SEIZE YOUR HERITAGE! STRETCH YOUR PENNY WITH FASHION THAT LASTS!
It looks like a real catalog that the post boat brings, only it has all the things from the store in it. My bad mood melts away.

“This is amazing!” I say. I move slightly so the dusty antique fertility statue by the door will stop poking my shoulder with her stone fingers. She’s been for sale for a long time. “How did you do it? Look at the letters! They’re so perfect.”

“Mr. Davidge the printer did that,” Dory Maud replies, pleased, looking over my other shoulder.

“Because Dory Maud did Mr. Davidge,” Elizabeth says from the stairs. She’s still wearing her nightgown and her invented curls are two days old.

“Oh, go on back to bed,” Dory replies, without heat. I don’t want to think much on this. Dory is what Mum used to call a “strong-looking woman,” which meant that, from the back, she looked like a man, and, from the front, you preferred the back. Elizabeth is the pretty sister, with long straw-colored hair and a nose turned up by lineage and habit. No one notices what the third sister, Annie, looks like, because she’s blind.

I page through the catalog. I know that I’m being stalled but I discover that I’m rather happy to be stalled. “Are our teapots in here? Who will see this?”

“Oh, the three people who read the adverts at the very end of the
Post
,” Elizabeth says. She’s gone up two more stairs but is far from back in bed. “And who are willing to wait a few years for shipping.”

“The
Post
? On the mainland!” I exclaim. I’ve found our teapots — there is a very precise line drawing of one of the stout pots with my utilitarian thistles on the side of it, and now I can see that the illustrations are in the same hand that draws the adverts in the back of our own little Skarmouth newspaper that comes out each Wednesday. The printing says that the teapot pictured is a “representative design” and that “supplies are limited.” It also says that they are signed and numbered, which my teapots are not. It is strange to think of something of mine heading over the ocean without me. I point to the signed bit and ask, “What’s this?”

Dory Maud reads the description. “That makes them more valuable. It won’t take you but a moment to sign and number them. Come in and have tea. Elizabeth will stop grousing. Where is your brother?”

“I can’t stay,” I say regretfully. “I need to take — Dove — tothebeach. Do you think Finn can leave the cart behind the shop when he’s done unloading?” I run all the words together to avoid being asked about it, but the sisters aren’t paying any attention, so I needn’t have bothered. Dory Maud has opened the door and found Finn standing there holding Puffin, who has followed us all the way to Skarmouth after all.

“I hope you enjoy the taste of poverty in your bowl,” Elizabeth is saying. “The price of that advert was dear enough, but have you thought of what it will cost to ship those catalogs out to mainland wives?”

Dory Maud says, “They pay for the catalog. It says that right in the advertisement that I showed to you not an hour ago. If you didn’t have shingles for eyes, you might have seen it. Finn Connolly, come in here. Why do you have that cat? Is she for sale as well? Has it come to that?”

Finn says, “No, ma’am,” as he enters the shop, where he gets poked directly in the chest by the fertility goddess. I move a step backward so he can get away because the last thing I need is for Finn to suddenly decide to become fertile.

“I really have to go,” I say. I don’t want to seem rude.

“Where are you going again?” Dory Maud asks me.

“Perhaps I should ring Mr. Davidge, too,” Elizabeth says from the stairs. “Then I might not mind the bills, either. How is it done, sister? ‘Mr. Davidge, will you set my type?’”

Dory Maud turns to her and thunders pleasantly, “Shut up, you cow.”

Finn wears his wide-eyed expression. So does Puffin. Dory Maud seizes his arm with great enthusiasm and begins to propel him toward the back of the shop, where the teapot waits.

“Bye,” I whisper to him. I feel a little bad about abandoning him to their clutches, but at least he’ll get tea out of it.

I let the door close behind me.

Dove, patiently waiting by the door, looks up as I step out. Finn has unfastened the cart but she still wears her harness. She doesn’t look much like a racehorse.

I pull my hair back into a new ponytail; two or three dozen strands had already begun to escape.

I probably don’t look much like a jockey, either.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

SEAN

There’s a girl on the beach.

The wind’s torn the mist to shreds here by the ocean, so unlike on the rest of the island, the horses and their riders appear in sharp relief down on the sand. I can see the buckle on every bridle, the tassel on every rein, the tremor in every hand. It is the second day of training, and it’s the first day that it isn’t a game. This first week of training is an elaborate, bloody dance where the dance partners determine how strong the other ones are. It’s when riders learn if charms will work on their mounts, how close to the sea is too close, how they can begin to convince their water horses to gallop in a straight line. How long they have between falling from their horses and being attacked. This tense courtship looks nothing like racing.

At first I see nothing out of the ordinary. There is the surviving Privett brother beating his gray
capall
with a switch and Hale selling charms that will not save you, and there is Tommy Falk flapping at the end of the lead as his black mare strains for the salt water.

And there is the girl. When I first see her and her dun mare from my vantage point on the cliff road, I am struck first not by the fact that she is a girl, but by the fact that she’s in the ocean. It’s the dreaded second day, the day when people start to die, and no one will get close to the surf. But there she is, trotting up to the knee in the water. Fearless.

I make my slow way down the cliff road to the sand. Any wicked thoughts Corr might have had this morning have been jolted out by his trot earlier. But the two mares are neither as tired nor as tame as Corr. Their hooves jangle every time they dance sideways; I’ve tied bells around their pasterns, reminding me every moment that I cannot let down my guard. The worse of the two mares wears a black netted cloth over her haunches. The cloth, passed down from my father, is made of thread and hundreds of narrow iron eyelets: part mourning cloth, part chain mail. I hope it weighs her to the ground. It’s the sort of thing I’d never use on Corr — it would only make him irritable and uncertain, and in any case, we know each other better than that.

Now, closer to the surf, I see why the girl’s so brave. Her horse is just an island pony, with a coat the color of the sand, legs black as soaked kelp. I see from her belly that the poor Thisby grass has stuffed her but not fed her.

I want to know why she’s on my beach. And I want to know why no one’s confronting her. All of the horses are aware of her, though. Ears pricked, necks arched, lips curled up in her direction. And of course there’s the piebald mare among them, wailing her hunger and desire. I should have known Gorry wouldn’t let her go.

At the sound of the piebald
capall,
the dun island mare lays her ears back to her neck with fear. She knows that she’s a meal here, that the sound the piebald makes is a plea for her death. The girl leans and pats the dun’s neck, soothing her.

Reluctantly, I turn to go about my business. My mouth tastes of salt, and the wind finds me wherever I lead the horses. Today’s one of those days where no one will get warm. I find a crevasse in the cliffs, a giant’s axe mark, and lead the mares and Corr into it. The wind makes a muted scream at the apex of the crevasse, like someone dying out of sight. I draw a circle in the sand and spit into it.

Corr watches me. The mares watch the ocean. I watch the girl.

My thoughts turn the mystery of her presence over and over as I flip open my leather bag and remove the wax-paper bundle I put in there earlier. I toss the bits of meat into the circle, but the mares don’t touch them. They’re watching the pony and the girl in the ocean, a more interesting meal.

With the bag over my shoulder, I return to the mouth of the crevasse and cross my arms, waiting for a gap in the murder of horses and men to open so I can see the mare and girl again. There’s nothing special about the mare, nothing at all. A fine enough head, good enough bone. As a pony, she is a beauty. As a
capall uisce,
she is nothing.

The girl, too, is nothing special — slight, with a ginger ponytail. She looks less afraid than her mare, but she’s in more danger.

I hear one of my mares scream, and I turn long enough to flip open my bag and throw a handful of salt in her direction. She jerks her head up as some of it sprinkles her face; she’s offended but not hurt. I look her in the eye long enough that she knows there’s more where that came from. She’s a bay, no white markings on her anywhere, which is supposed to speak to her speed, but I’ve yet to get her going in a straight enough line to find out.

I turn back to the ocean, and the wind throws sand in my face, hard enough to offend but not to hurt. I smile a thin smile at the irony and turn up my collar. The girl circles her pony through the water again. I have to appreciate that she’s chosen the only place she can be sure that no one will approach her today. Of course, it’s not just the
capaill uisce
on the beach the girl has to worry about, but I can tell that she’s already considered that. She glances toward the curve of the incoming surf every so often. I can’t imagine that she’d be able to see a hunting
capall uisce
— when they swim parallel to the breakers, fast and dark beneath the surface, they’re almost impossible to see — but I also can’t imagine not looking.